MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

A HISTORY OF FRANKISH GREECE (1204-1566)

CHAPTER X

THE NAVARRESE COMPANY1373 - 1388

The fast approaching Turkish danger ought to have aroused all the Latins of the Levant to present a united front against the common foe, whom concerted action might have kept at a distance. But the motley population of the Balkan Peninsula had then, as now, no common bond which would prevent them from sacrificing the general welfare to some temporary advantage. Thus the Byzantine emperor, John V Palaiologos, instead of joining the Serbs and Bulgarians in a league against Murad I, had contracted a selfish alliance with the Sultan, which had not even the merit of saving him from the ignominy of sacrificing his honour in Venice and the religion of his ancestors in Rome for the vain hope of aid from the West. The new pope, Gregory XI, was, however, so much moved by “the tearful exposition” of the Archbishop of Neopatras, who told him how the Turks had subdued and held enslaved the Greek Christians almost up to the frontiers of the principality of Achaia and the duchy of Athens, and threatened the very existence of those states, that he summoned the Christian rulers of the East to a congress to be held at Thebes on 1st October 1373. The papal invitation was addressed to the real emperor, John V, and to the titular emperor, Philip III; to the republics of Venice and Genoa; to the Knights of St John; to the kings of Cyprus, Hungary, and Sicily; to the last named’s vicar-general of the duchies of Athens and Neopatras; Niccolo III dalle Carceri, Duke of the Archipelago; Leonardo Tocco, Duke of Leucadia; Nerio Acciajuoli, “Prince of Corinth”; Francesco Giorgio, Marquis of Boudonitza; Francesco Gattalusio, “Prince of Mytilene”; and Ermolao Minotto, lord of little Seriphos. We can well imagine how the ancient city of Thebes was enlivened by the arrival of these more or less eminent persons, or their plenipotentiaries, how union against the infidel was preached by the Archbishops of Neopatras and Naxos, how their excellent advice was loudly applauded, and how personal jealousies conspired to render abortive the resolutions of the congress, just as they have marred those of every subsequent congress on the Eastern question. Scarcely had the delegates separated, when Nerio Acciajuoli, the boldest and astutest of them all, disregarding the pope’s appeal to him as a champion of Christendom, seized the excuse afforded by the Company’s refusal to hand over some of his fugitive vassals, to attack Megara and to make himself master of that important position on the way to Athens. It is remarkable as a proof that Catalan rule was not altogether unpopular in Greece, that one of its warmest defenders was a Greek notary, Demetrios Rendi, who a few years before had received the Catalan franchise and a grant of lands from Frederick III, and afterwards rose to wealth and importance at Athens. But, in all countries governed by foreigners, there are always natives bound by ties of interest to the governing class. Nerio returned with some distin- quished captives to Corinth; Megara remained in his power, and its bishop was glad to find a living as priest of the chapel of St Bartholomew, which was in the governor’s palace on the Acropolis. So weak was the once famous Company that it could not protect its own territory from the upstart Florentine. Disturbances, which broke out on the death of Matteo de Peralta, the vicar-general, in the following year, prevented reprisals; in his place, the various communities of the duchies, without waiting for orders from Sicily, unanimously elected Louis Fadrique, Count of Salona and grandson of the famous Alfonso, an excellent appointment— for Fadrique was now the most important member of the old colonial families— which Frederick III did not fail to ratify. He was wise to waive the irregularity of the election, for Fadrique had restored order to his Greek states.

The death of that weak monarch, in 1377, led to a complete change in the ducal dynasty. Frederick III, dying without legitimate sons, bequeathed the duchies to his young daughter Maria; but the succession was disputed by his brother-in-law, King Pedro IV of Aragon, who appealed to the principal of the Salic law as laid down by Frederick II. The prospect of having a girl at their head was naturally displeasing to the Catalans of Athens at a moment when the Turkish danger was imminent. It was no wonder, then, that all the three archbishops —Ballester of Athens, Simon of Thebes, and Matthew of Neopatras— and the principal barons and knights at once declared for Pedro IV. Among them were, first and foremost, the vicar-general, Louis Fadrique, Count of Salona and lord of Lamia, with his cousin, Don John of Aragon; the Count of Mitre, or Demetrias, on the Gulf of Volo, who kept 1500 Albanian horsemen in his pay, and enjoyed the privilege of bearing the royal standard; the governors of the four important military positions of Athens, Livadia, Salona, and Neopatras; the two brothers Puigpardines, lords of Karditza and Atalante; Pedro de Ballester, who held the sordid village of Kapraina, which has grown up on the site of Chaironeia; and Melisseno Novelles, half-Greek, half-Catalan, whose castle bore the name of Estanol. There was, however, a minority in favour of Maria of Sicily, the leader of which was Francesco Giorgio, Marquis of Boudonitza, who was naturally eager to shake off his vassalage to the vicar-general, and who, as a Venetian, had no sympathy with the Catalans. With him were Don Pedro Fadrique, lord of TEgina, whose rebellion caused him to forfeit his island to his cousin, the vicar-general; and Thomas de Pou, a son-in-law of Roger de Lluria. The burgesses, anxious for security, supported the King of Aragon.

The Aragonese party, represented by the vicar-general and the governor of Athens, sent two envoys to Pedro IV’s court, informing him that the people of the duchies awaited his commands, and craving him to appoint someone as his representative there. The king replied, thanking the vicar­general and the governor for their faithful services, and requesting them to remain in office until the arrival of the new vicar-general. For that post he selected, in 1379, Philip Dalmau, Viscount of Rocaberti, whose appointment he notified to the authorities and communities of Thebes, Athens, Livadia, Neopatras, and Siderokastron. At the same time, he sent Berenguer Ballester of Thebes, one of the envoys, back to the duchies, requesting that he might return, together with some other suitable person, authorised to offer their homage to the new “Duke of Athens and Neopatras.”

At this moment, however, another competitor appeared in the Catalan duchies. The origin of the Navarrese Company, which now attempted to repeat the exploits of the Catalan Company seventy years earlier, is still obscure. But it seems probable that it resembled that of its more famous predecessor. Employed by King Charles II of Navarre in his struggle with Charles V of France, the Navarrese Company found no further occupation at home when the two enemies made peace in 1366, just as the Catalans were no longer able to practise their profession in Sicily after the peace between the houses of Anjou and Aragon in 1302. But Don Louis, the adventurous brother of the King of Navarre, had just married the Duchess of Durazzo, who had inherited the claims of her grandfather, John of Gravina, to Albania, and when, in 1368, the Albanians captured Durazzo, and with it the last vestige of Angevin rule over their country, the chivalrous Louis naturally set about making preparations to recover his wife’s lost dominions. A body of 800 Navarrese and Gascons, mostly men of good family, had accompanied him to Naples, where his wife resided; more followed, and a further force of 400 was furnished him by the King of Navarre, by the latter’s chamberlain, Mahiot de Coquerel, whom we shall later on find as bailie of Achaia, and others. But the death of Don Louis in 1376 put an end to his plans for the reconquest of Durazzo, and we hear no more of the Navarrese Company till 1380. In that year, Jacques de Baux, titular emperor of Constantinople and Prince of Achaia, thought that the moment had come to occupy the Greek dominions, which should have been his, and that the Navarrese Company would be the best instrument for his purpose.

Philip III had died, like his brother, without children, in 1373, so that his title of Emperor of Constantinople and his principality of Achaia should have passed to his nephew, Jacques de Baux, son of his sister, the widow of King Edward Baliol of Scotland, who had subsequently married Francois de Baux, Duke of Andria, in Apulia, a member of a distinguished Provencal family, which had followed the fortunes of Charles I of Anjou to Naples, and had attained to high dignities under the Angevin rule. The Baux were already connected with Achaia, where Jacques’s grandfather had been twice bailie for the Empress Catherine of Valois, and at first the barons recognised his mother as their lawful princess. Indeed, during the civil war between the Baux and Queen Joanna I of Naples, who twice drove Jacques’s rebellious father from her kingdom, the son found a temporary refuge, and perhaps recognition, in Greece. But as one of her numerous husbands had been the son of King James II of Majorca, and therefore a direct descendant of the Villehardouins, Joanna might advance some sort of claim to the principality, to which he had already been a pretender. It seems probable that there had always been a party favourable to his pretensions, for it is remarkable that among the envoys whom the barons sent in 1374 to offer the princely dignity to Queen Joanna, was the same Erard le Noir, who had signed the similar document to the King of Mallorca thirty years earlier. The embassy, which was very repre­sentative—for it included Leonardo Tocco, Count of Cephalonia, and, as such, one of the peers of the principality, and the two great barons, Centurione Zaccaria and Janni Misito, informed the queen that they would accept her as their princess on condition that she promised to maintain their old constitution, or, in other words, leave them alone. The queen naturally agreed to such easy terms, took the oath and the title of princess, and sent a bailie to govern in her name. This official was, however, a restless man, who not only broke the long peace between the principality and the Despot Manuel of Mistra, by besieging the oft-mentioned castle of Gardiki in the pass of Makryplagi, but also irritated the Venetians by raising a question as to the boundaries of their Messenian colonies. The queen was willing to refer this dispute to a joint commission, and told her bailie to treat the Venetians properly; but she had already grown tired of what had turned out to be a troublesome possession; so, when she had taken a fourth husband, Otto of Brunswick, in 1376, she conferred the principality upon him, and, in the following year, they pawned it to the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem for five years, in consideration of an annual payment of 4000 ducats.

The Knights of St John were no strangers in the Morea. Like the Templars and the Teutonic Knights, they had received four fiefs there at the time of the Conquest, and the possessions of the Templars had passed to them on the dissolution of that order in 1312. On the roll of 1364, we find two castles belonging to them; a little earlier, Innocent VI had suggested that they should move from Rhodes, which had been their headquarters since 1309, to the Peloponnese, and defend it against the Turks. Their grand-master at this time was Juan Fernandez de Heredia, a noble and adventurous Spaniard, who had won the favour of Innocent VI, had become “the right arm of the Avignon papacy,” had fought against the Black Prince at Poitiers, and had lately escorted Gregory XI to Rome, when that pontiff, in obedience to St Catherine of Siena, ended the “Babylonish captivity” and returned to the widowed city. The barons, notably the Venetian Archbishop of Patras, welcomed the advent of so distinguished a soldier, who seemed a heaven-sent defender of their threatened land. A new and vigorous race of invaders had now appeared to contest the country with the remnant of the Franks. Since the collapse of the Despotat of Epiros, and the establishment of two Albanian chieftains on its ruins, the north of Achaia had been menaced by an Albanian immigration, as well as by Turkish raids. The very year after the Knights had acquired the principality, one of those chieftains, Ghin (or John) Boua Spata, who had already seized the possessions of the rival clan of Liosa at Arta upon the death of its chief by the plague, and had thus united Aitolia and Akarnania in his own person, captured Lepanto, and thus destroyed the last vestige of Angevin rule on the continent of Greece. For over eighty years the French lilies had waved over the triple fortifications of that celebrated castle; it had been part of the dowry which Philip of Taranto had received in 1294 with the unhappy Thamar; now it had gone, and an Albanian chieftain held one of the keys of the Corinthian Gulf. Heredia judged that this insult must be avenged; he crossed the gulf, and recaptured Lepanto, But his imprison­ment by the Black Prince after the battle of Poitiers had not taught him prudence; he marched rashly into the heart of the enemy’s country, intending to take Arta, was defeated by the Albanians, and brought as a prisoner to Spata. The chieftain was “a man of thought and action, in all things distinguished, and of striking beauty”; but, with all these qualities, he lacked generosity, and, without hesitation, he sold his noble captive to the Turks. In spite of the efforts of the Knights, assisted by the money of the Archbishop of Patras, to retain the important position of Lepanto, it fell again into the possession of the redoubtable Spata. Heredia, after languishing for two years in prison, was ransomed in 1381, and returned to the Morea.

Meanwhile, the lawful heir of that principality thought that his hour of triumph had come. His rival, Queen Joanna of Naples, had recently been deposed by Pope Urban VI, and in Greece circumstances seemed peculiarly favourable to the claimant’s plans; in Achaia, the Knights of St John were growing tired of their lease; in Attica there was a disputed succession. As instruments of his policy, Jacques de Baux naturally chose the men of the disoccupied Navarrese Company, who probably regarded him with favour as the husband of their late leader’s sister-in-law. For him, they took Corfu from Queen Joanna’s officials; and then directed their steps, early in 1380, towards Attica. There were special reasons for attacking the Catalan duchy. The Navarrese had an old grudge against Pedro IV, who had imprisoned their late beloved leader; Baux, as the uncle of Maria of Sicily, regarded Pedro as an usurper; while he was also connected with the family of Enghien, who were claimants to the duchy; moreover, as Prince of Achaia, he might claim suzerainty over Attica, as some of his predecessors had done, while, as titular emperor, he could cast the shadow of his authority over the whole Latin Orient.

The Navarrese Company was under the command of Mahiot de Coquerel and Pedro de S. Superan, surnamed Bordo, either because he had received the freedom of Bordeaux from our Black Prince, or, as is more probable, because he was a “bastard”, like so many other famous commanders of the Middle Ages. These experienced personages found valuable auxiliaries in the leaders of the Sicilian party. The Marquis of Boudonitza, whose castle commanded the defile of Thermopylae, allowed them to pass beneath his walls and assisted their enterprise; Niccoló III dalle Carceri, Duke of the Archipelago and lord of two out of the three great baronies of Euboea, was their ally, hoping by means of their swords to make himself master of the city of Negroponte. From the Morea, the Knights of St John came to pillage the distracted duchy of Athens, where they possessed a stronghold, in the castle of Sykaminon; and it seems probable that the Count of Conversano had made a second attack upon the lawful heritage of his house, for at the time of the Navarrese invasion, John de Lluria of Thebes had been already two years his prisoner. Added to these misfortunes were the mutual jealousies of that city and Athens, which had recently aimed at some form of autonomy, and had chafed at being regarded as inferior to the capital in Boeotia. Finally, among the Greeks not a few were disaffected to the Catalan rule. It is no wonder, then, that one place after another fell rapidly into the hands of these fresh adventurers from the West, fresh in both senses of the word, if we contrast them with the degenerate grandsons of the Catalans who had conquered Attica. The fine castle, which still stands on the hill above Livadia, a noble monument of Catalan rule in Greece, was, indeed, bravely defended by its veteran governor William de Almenara and James Ferrer, a Catalan from Salona. The citizens were mostly loyal, for the Greeks of Livadia had received special privileges at the Catalan Conquest, and their town had attained great prominence under Catalan rule. But the treachery of a Greek from Durazzo opened the gates to the enemy, and Almenara lost his life in the vain effort to save the betrayed citadel. On the other hand, two Greeks, Dimitre and Mitro, gallantly defended Thebes, in the absence of John de Lluria, and of the three traitors who surrendered it to the Navarrese, two bore Spanish names. Rather than remain under these new masters, many of the terrified inhabitants of both these cities, Greeks as well as Catalans, fled for safety to the Venetian colony of Negroponte, where they remained for months, wandering about the island with their flocks and herds. Dimitre and Mitro were rewarded for their fidelity with the governorship of Salona, and that castle, as well as Lamia and Siderokastron, defied the assaults of the Navarrese, thanks to the efforts of the vicar-general on behalf of his own possessions, and the invaluable aid of the Count of Demetrias and his Albanians —not by any means the last service rendered by that sturdy race to Greece. Like Salona, the Akropolis of Athens offered a resolute resistance to the enemy. Galcerdn de Peralta, the governor of the city, was unfortunately taken prisoner in a sortie, together with many others; but Romeo de Bellarbe, the commander of the castle, assisted by the faithful Greek notary, Demetrios Rendi, whom we saw fighting manfully at Megara six years earlier, baffled the machinations of a little knot of traitors and defied the soldiers of Navarre. The garrison had good reason to remember with gratitude the wise policy of their late duke, who had ordered that the revenues of certain lands, originally intended for the defence of the castle, but bestowed by his predecessors on a Catalan favourite, should again be devoted to that object. By the 20th May the Athenians could meet in security under the presidency of Romeo de Bellarbe for the purpose of drawing up a petition to King Pedro embodying their requests. As a similar assembly was held at Salona on the last day of the month, the invaders had by that time withdrawn to Bceotia, which was still in their power.

These capitulations, drawn up in the Catalan language and still preserved in the archives of Barcelona, throw a flood of light upon the condition of the duchy in this, the last decade of its existence. They show us, too, that the leaders of the Aragonese party, scarcely emerged from a desperate struggle for the existence of the country, were fully conscious of the value of their services, and desired to have them amply rewarded. As is the case with most practical as distinct from philosophical politicians, the Athenian Parliament of 1380 mainly occupied itself with personal questions. The community of Athens prayed King Pedro to send them a vicar-general who would restore the country from the power of the invaders, or, failing that, to appoint Romeo de Bellarbe their governor for life, on the ground of his intimate personal acquaintance with their affairs and the poverty and distress of the people. They begged him to bestow upon Romeo all the Athenian property of three of his majesty’s enemies, and to grant to his mistress, a Greek slave from Megara, the full rights and franchises of a Catalan. Large favours were asked for another Greek, the notary Demetrios Rendi, who had already received lands at Athens and the franchise from Frederick III, and whose loyalty to Pedro IV had caused him pecuniary damage. The petitioners craved for him, for his relative, Joannes Rendi, and for their descendants, all the rights and privileges enjoyed by the Conquistadors of the duchies, and that their property might be free from every kind of tax; furthermore, they asked his majesty to bestow upon him and his heirs for ever the office of Chancellor of the city of Athens, with an annual stipend of 40 gold dinars, payable out of the customs and dues thereof. They requested that Guerau de Rodonella, one of their envoys, Francisco Pons, and Berenguer Oroniola, might be rewarded with grants of traitors’ or criminals’ lands and possessions; that his majesty would be pleased to provide for the liberation from captivity of his loyal subject Galceron de Peralta, for whom the Navarrese demanded a higher ransom than the Athenians could raise; and that he would confer upon Pedro Valter, who had been captured with Galceron, all the notarial offices of both duchies for life. The king granted all these petitions, except the last, remarking that one clerkship would suffice to keep the worthy Valter in decent affluence; later on, he showered yet further benefits —lands, goods, and serfs, in both Athens and Thebes— upon the ever-useful Demetrios Rendi. From the time of the Frankish Conquest of Attica no Greek had ever risen to such distinction as this serviceable notary, whose good fortune was not even yet exhausted.

Of the sixteen clauses which compose the Athenian petition, four alone deal with questions of general policy. The first of these reflects that municipal jealousy, or spirit of local patriotism —the terms are synonymous —which has in all ages been characteristic of Greece. It consisted of a prayer that Athens might retain under the new regime that measure of autonomy which she had recently obtained from the central authorities at Thebes. This King Pedro absolutely refused, asserting his intention of treating the two duchies as an indivisible whole, governed by his vicar-general, without regard for any special aspirations for home rule which Athens might cherish. The second clause met with an equally decisive negative. The king declined to grant the request of the pious Athenians, prompted no doubt by the powerful ecclesiastics who had supported the Aragonese cause, that they might henceforth be permitted to bequeath their property and serfs to the Catholic Church for the good of their souls, and to emancipate their villains whenever they chose. According to the existing constitution of the duchies, this had been strongly forbidden, and a special proviso had nullified any such bequest, and ordered that all goods or serfs bequeathed to the Church should be forfeited to the use of the castle of Athens. The king, as a practical statesman, pointed out that the Catalans were only a small garrison in Greece, and that if Holy Church became possessed of their property, there would be no one left to defend the country, for the clergy were neither liable to bear arms nor dependent upon the royal jurisdiction. Besides, the existing law of Athens was also that of his kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia. Finally, the petitioners begged that they might continue to be governed by the customs of Barcelona, and that they might be joined for ever to the crown of Aragon—requests which his majesty naturally granted. These capitulations, laid before him at Ldrida by the two Athenian envoys, Boyl, Bishop of Megara, and Rodonella, were solemnly signed by the king on ist September, whereupon the envoys did homage to him as their lawful duke.

On the same day, Pedro IV confirmed the capitulations drawn up at Salona, and laid before him by Bernard Ballester, who also represented the two important communities of Thebes and Livadia, which were still in the hands of the Navarrese. The petition of Salona is even more personal and egotistical than that of Athens, for it relates entirely to Don Louis Fadrique. It begged the king to bestow upon him and his heirs the dignity of Counts of Malta, to confirm to him the castle of Siderokastron, captured by his father from the rebellious Marshal Ermengol de Novelles, the island of Aigina, and any castles which he might be able to recover from the Navarrese and their allies before the arrival of the new vicar-general. The king, conscious of the Count of Salona’s services, granted all these requests, and received the envoy’s homage. Then he again notified his faithful subjects of his intention to send Rocaberti to govern them; ordered the new governor to allow the clergy of the duchies and their Latin and Greek dependants the privileges enjoyed by the Church in Aragon and Cataluna, and to see that their stolen property was restored; and granted the bishop of Megara twelve men-at-arms, with four months’ pay, for the defence of “the Castle of Athens.” Of that noble rock the poetic monarch —himself a troubadour and a chronicler— wrote to his treasurer in eloquent language as “the most precious jewel that exists in the world, and such that all the kings of Christendom together could in vain imitate”. Thus, from the pen of a King of Aragon, we have the first allusion in the whole range of the history of Frankish Athens to the classic beauties of the Akropolis. The king had doubtless heard from the lips of the bishop, who was chaplain in the governor’s palace, an enthusiastic description of the ancient buildings, then almost uninjured, which the latter knew so well. While Pedro IV waxed enthusiastic over the classical glories of the Parthenon, his pious queen, Sybilla, was keen to possess the relics of the Virgin and other saints, which it then contained, and begged the archbishop to send them to her. Yet this rare “jewel,” so dear at once to the man of taste and the devotee, could be defended in that age by a mere handful of men. When, more than four centuries later, the Akropolis sustained its last siege, its garrison consisted of a thousand.

Their mission satisfactorily accomplished, the envoys departed, laden with marks of royal esteem; the Bishop of Megara was specially favoured, for the king not only granted him the goods of one of the Theban traitors, and ordered the payment to him of an annual stipend on account of “the Chapel of St Bartholomew in the palace of the Castle of Athens,” but begged the pope to appoint him Archbishop of Thebes. Rocaberti, however, in consequence of important political events in Cataluna and Sicily, delayed his departure, so that he did not arrive in the Piraeus, with his fleet of four galleys till the autumn of 1381, whereupon Louis Fadrique and Galceran de Peralta, who had escaped from captivity, handed over their offices to him. His instructions were to establish friendly relations with all the neighbouring potentates, to grant a general amnesty in his master’s name to all the inhabitants of the duchies, and to reward those who had been conspicuous for their loyalty to the king. Royal letters had already been sent to “the Emperor” Matthew Cantacuzene, who, in 1380, had succeeded his brother Manuel as Despot of MistiA, commending the king’s Athenian subjects to his good offices; the Venetian bailie of Negroponte had been requested to render aid against the Navarrese Company, and to prevent the Duke of the Archipelago and the Marquis of Boudonitza from molesting the king’s Greek dominions; and similar appeals were made to Nerio Acciajuoli, the lord of Corinth ; to Maddalena Buondelmonti, widow of the Count of Cephalonia and regent for her infant son; to the powerful Archbishop of Patras; and to the Grand-master Heredia, now liberated from his captivity, whose Knights had hitherto joined in pillaging the duchies. All these persons regarded the Navarrese as their common foe; of Heredia we are specially told that he and his Knights were Rocaberti’s most valuable support, while Queen Sybilla of Aragon did not hesitate to ask him to bestow the Athenian castle of Sykaminon upon one of her protlgls. The Navarrese Company, faced by this coalition, withdrew from Bceotia to the Morea, leaving, however, garrisons behind them in Livadia and Thebes, the former of which soon fell, while the latter was still in their possession two years later, and never appears again in the Aragonese archives. As a reward for what the good people of Livadia had undergone, they received from the king a formal confirmation of all the privileges conferred upon them by his predecessors, including the right to be governed by the usages of Barcelona. At their own request, he established in their town, where the head of St George was preserved, a branch of the order of that saint, the insignia of which he conferred upon the late vicar-general and other prominent men. But he privately ordered Rocaberti to bring with him, when he returned to Spain, the relic of the popular Greek saint —an order, however, never executed. He also requested the vicar-general to restore to the rebel branch of the Fadrique clan all the castles and goods which they had forfeited. Among these was the classic island of Jigina, which thus came into the hands of Boniface’s second son, John. Finally, in order to fill up the gaps in the population of the duchy, caused by the Navarrese invasion, Pedro told his vicar-general to grant exemption from taxes for two years to all Greeks and Albanians who would come and settle there. This was the beginning of that Albanian colonisation of Attica and Boeotia, of which so many traces remain, both in the population and in the geographical nomenclature, to the present day. Numbers of villages round Athens are still inhabited by Albanians, who speak Albanian as well as Greek, and such names as Spata, Liosia, and Liopesi are of Albanian origin.

While the Catalans were thus replenishing their Athenian duchy, their rivals and imitators, the Navarrese, had carved out for themselves a state in the Morea. Marching in 1381 along the south shore of the Corinthian Gulf, they found no one to contest their claims, for the Knights of St John, weary of their profitless lease of the principality, were ready to make terms with the new arrivals, and soon afterwards abandoned the country altogether. Their five years were not yet up; but, though the land tax of Achaia yielded them 9000 ducats, their expenses had been so heavy that they asked the Queen of Naples to relieve them of their bargain. But as she was murdered, and her husband captured by Charles of Durazzo in the following year, the Navarrese remained masters of the principality. Their commander Mahiot de Coquerel condescended, indeed, to call himself bailie for the titular emperor and Prince of Achaia, Jacques de Baux, so long as the latter lived. But when, in 1383, the last Latin Emperor of Constantinople died at Taranto without children, the Navarrese became absolutely independent. They and not he —as the pompous inscription on his tomb in the church of St Cataldo states— had “subjected by war the cities of Greece,” and they remained the real masters of Achaia, although his heir, Louis of Anjou, the still living empress and former princess, Marie de Bourbon, and Charles of Durazzo, the new King of Naples, might each claim to be the rightful sovereign. The first two thought it worth while to transmit their unreal rights to their heirs—Louis of Anjou to his widow, Marie of Brittany; the empress to her nephew, de Bourbon; and a further pretender arose in the person of Amadeo, grandson of Philip of Savoy, the former prince. Amid these conflicting claims, Mahiot de Coquerel was willing to keep up the fiction that he was the representative of Charles III. Naples, the strongest and nearest of the claimants; but both he and Pedro, the famous bastard of S. Superan, who succeeded him as vicar in 1386, were, to all practical purposes, independent of foreign suzerainty. The Navarrese treated the country as a conquered land, just as the French had done, dividing the old fiefs, including most of the Acciajuoli estates, among themselves, except in one or two cases, where the barons came to terms with them. The Greek archons of Mistra, where Theodore Palaiologos, son of the Emperor John V, was now Despot, sided with them, and seized the opportunity to rebel against the imperial representative. As for the Venetian governors of Modon and Coron, they were glad to make peace with these uncomfortable neighbours, who drew nearer and nearer to their two valued Messenian colonies. When the Navarrese occupied Navarino —a place already long known by that name— and the then important town of Androusa, which became their headquarters, it was felt that an arrangement must be made. The republic was particularly nervous about the fine bay of Navarino, which she feared might be purchased by her hated rival Genoa; she accordingly offered to buy it from the Navarrese. Her offer was declined, but she obtained the right of pre­emption to the place. Thus, this company of adventurers from Navarre had established itself as a recognised power in the Peloponnese by the side of the Greeks of Mistra and the two ancient colonies of Venice.

All efforts to oust the interlopers failed. Heredia, who had never abandoned the idea, which appealed to his romantic mind, of regaining the principality for the Knights of St John, did, indeed, succeed in purchasing Marie of Brittany’s claim. But the rival claimant, Amadeo of Savoy, protested against this sale, and induced the anti-pope Clement VII to annul it. Even then Heredia was not discouraged; as late as 1389 we find him endeavouring to organise an expedition to his beloved Morea. But that was his last effort; he spent the rest of his life at Avignon, surrounded by men of letters, and devouring in his library the romantic biographies of the great conquerors of olden times. To the last he kept up his interest in Greece; and it was by his command that in 1393 was compiled the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea, which, in spite of some glaring anachronisms, contains much valuable information about the later period of Latin rule. Louis de Bourbon seemed at one time a more formidable competitor; he entered into negotiations with discontented survivors of the old feudal nobility, like Erard le Noir, the baron of Arkadia, and we have it on the authority of his secretary, that “the Moreots were only waiting to receive him as their lord”. But they waited in vain, for the Bourbon claimant never came, but remained till his death merely titular prince of Achaia, the last of that historic race which ever set up its title to rule over Greece. As for Amadeo of Savoy, he corresponded with the cautious Despot Theodore, and endeavoured to win over Venice to his side. Finally, as if there were not claimants enough, Pope Urban VI, “in the interests of peace and justice”, appointed the Archbishop of Patras, whose see was now independent, as vicar-general of the principality.

Besides the Navarrese, the Greeks, and the Venetian colonies, there were two other important factors in the politics of the Peloponnese: Nerio Acciajuoli, who held Corinth and its appurtenances; and the last fragment of the old Athenian duchy, the castles of Nauplia and Argos. There a woman, Marie d’Enghien, the last of her race, held nominal sway. But, on her father’s death, Venice had convinced the two leading archons of Nauplia, Kamateros and Kaloethos, by judicious bribery, that it was for the good of the place that she should marry a Cornaro. Thus, the republic was already practically mistress of those coveted fortresses.

By this time, in Euboea, too, Venice had become absolute mistress, except in name. In 1383, the assassination of the powerful triarch, Nicoló III dalle Carceri, who not only held two-thirds of the island but was also Duke of Naxos, removed her last rival —for he left no legitimate heirs. Seven years later, the holder of the other third, Giorgio Ghisi, bequeathed his share to the republic, which could thus have easily annexed the whole island, had she pleased. But, with its usual shrewdness, the Venetian Government saw that it would be more advantageous to retain the substance of power, while allowing petty lords to have the empty honour and large expense of maintaining the castles of the island. The example of Karystos had served as a warning; that coveted barony yielded to the Venetians less than one-third of what Bonifacio had obtained from it; many of the inhabitants had emigrated to Attica, and an attempt to colonise it with people from Tenedos failed. Accordingly, it was decided to let it to three Venetians, the brothers Giustiniani, at a very low rent. The Greeks were among the first to benefit by this complete supremacy of Venice, for the Government, never unduly tender to the Catholic Church, abolished the tax which the Orthodox clergy had been accustomed to pay to the titular patriarch of Constanti­nople, who resided in Euboea.

Freed from the horrors of civil war and foreign invasion, the Catalans of Attica had no reason to suspect that their doom was impending, and that in a few years their dominion would for ever pass away from Greek lands. Their absent sovereign with his rhapsodies over the Acropolis, and his vicar-general at Athens, both acted as if they regarded the duchies as now firmly assured to the crown of Aragon. To Rocaberti the connection seemed so durable that he was anxious to establish his family in Greece, and to secure for his son the famous fief of Salona. Louis Fadrique, the last count, died in 1382, after affiancing his sole heiress, Maria, to young Rocaberti, and the King of Aragon wrote urging her mother to hasten on the marriage, of which the castle of Siderokastron, granted to her father for his life, should be the reward. It was naturally to his interest that Salona, and Lamia, which went with it, should be in strong hands. The county had a large population of both Franks and Greeks, and its geographical position made it a valuable bulwark against the Turks, now only a single day’s journey from Neopatras. But before the wedding had been cele­brated, Rocaberti had left Greece. In the late summer of 1382 we find him in Sicily, occupied in obtaining posses­sion of the young Queen Maria, who, as the heiress of Frederick III, should have been Duchess of Athens, and whom Pedro IV was anxious to have in his clutches. As his deputy at Athens, Rocaberti left behind him Ramon de Vilanova, a man of great valour and prudence, who governed the duchies well. During his time the last of the Navarrese must have left Boeotia, and the relations between the King of Aragon and his old enemies, now established in the Morea, became so good, that they assisted in repelling the frequent attacks made by the Greeks and Turks upon the duchy of Athens. We are told that Vilanova was preparing to recover what was in the power of these enemies, when the domestic quarrels between Pedro and his son John compelled him, too, to return to Spain, leaving the military command in the hands of Roger and Antonio de Lluria, sons of the former vicar-general, and entrusting the command of the castle and city of Athens and the other places in the duchies to a gallant soldier, Don Pedro de Pau. Rocaberti, who had espoused the cause of the king’s son, consequently fell into disfavour with Pedro, who insisted upon his releasing his lieutenant Vilanova from the oath of fealty which the latter had taken to him, dismissed him from his post as vicar-general, and prevented the projected marriage between Rocaberti’s son and the Countess of Salona. After a long delay, caused by important affairs of state at home, the king appointed, in June 1386, Bernardo de Cornellá as his vicar-general. The appointment was notified to all the friendly potentates of Greece, among whom the leaders of the Navarrese Company were now reckoned. The King of Aragon told them that his representative would co-operate with them, and would leave for Greece with a large force in the following spring. But before that date the ceremonious sovereign was dead, and most of the Athenian duchy no longer owned the sway of Aragon.

Nerio Acciajuoli had long been watching attentively from the rock of Corinth, and from the twin hills of Megara, the rapid dissolution of the Catalan rule. He saw a land weakened by civil war and foreign invasion; he knew that the titular duke was an absentee, engrossed with more important affairs; he found the ducal viceroys summoned away to Spain or Sicily, while the old families of the duchy were almost extinct He was a man of action, and he saw that the moment had come to strike. Like the clever diplomatist that he was, he had prepared the ground well, and had established friendly relations with most of his neighbours, Greeks and Latins alike. He had married his elder daughter, the beautiful Bartolomea, said to be the fairest woman of her time, to Theodore I Palaiologos, the Despot of Mistra, to whom he promised as her dowry the future possession of Corinth, and this alliance secured for his schemes the approval of both the Despot and his brother Manuel, at that time Imperial Viceroy at Salonika. Through his trusty agent, the Bishop of Argos, he had gained the acquiescence of Pietro Cornaro, the Venetian consort of the Lady of Argos, and had conveyed some inkling of his schemes to his relatives in Italy. His own marriage with a Saraceno of Euboea had connected him with one of the most influential families of that important island. The disturbed state of the Morea, where the Navarrese were threatening his son-in-law, the Despot, provided him with an excellent excuse for collecting an army, nominally for the aid of Theodore, really for the conquest of Athens. A letter of the Bishop of Argos, written early in 1385, informs us that Nerio was “gathering men-at-arms from every possible quarter,” and that he could put into the field “full 70 lances, 800 Albanian horsemen, and a very large number of foot soldiers” It only remained to provide for an attack by sea as well as by land. This was a more difficult matter, for it was against the policy of Venice to allow the Latin lords of the Levant to maintain navies. But Nerio had hired a galley from the Venetian arsenal at Candia, under the plausible pretext of keeping the twin seas on either side of the isthmus free from Turkish corsairs, whereas, as a matter of fact, he was giving them shelter at Megara. When all was ready, he easily found a casus belli.

The pride of a noble dame was the occasion of the fall of Catalan Athens, just as, two generations later, the passion of a beautiful woman led to the Turkish Conquest. Again and again the fair sex had played a leading part in the fortunes of Frankish Greece, owing to the absence of that Salic law which might have saved the country many disasters, but which would have robbed mediaeval Greek history of half its romance. The county of Salona was the most important fief of the Catalan duchy, and at this time there dwelt in the old castle of the Stromoncourts and the Fadriques, the widowed Countess Helene and her only daughter Maria, to whom Rocaberti’s son had been in vain affianced. Nerio now made an offer for the hand of the young countess, the greatest heiress of Catalan Athens, on behalf of his brother-in-law, Pietro Saraceno of Euboea. The dowager countess, in whose veins was the blood of the Cantacuzenes—she was a direct descendant of the famous emperor and a cousin of the Despot of MistrH—scornfully rejected the proposal of the Florentine tradesman, and affianced her daughter to Stephen Doukas, a Servian princeling of Thessaly. This alliance with a Slav naturally aroused the indignation of both Greeks and Franks at Salona. At this critical moment, Nerio’s horsemen invaded Salona and the rest of the Catalan duchy, while his galley made straight for the Piraeus. The details and precise date of this Florentine Conquest are unknown, but in July 1385 Nerio was already able to style himself “Lord of Corinth and the duchy”, and in January 1387 he was signing a patent in that capacity in the city of Athens. We now know, however, that the Akropolis held out for sixteen months longer. That noblest of all fortresses was com­manded by Don Pedro de Pau, the gallant officer whom Vilanova had left behind him, and whose name deserves to be included in the long roll of heroes associated with the sacred rock. Down to almost the close of 1387 he managed to keep up communications with the Home Government. In March of that year, his envoy, Rodonella, the same man who had laid the Athenian capitulations before Pedro IV seven years before, appeared before Pedro’s son and successor, John I, at Barcelona, to hear his majesty’s pleasure concerning the duchies, and to do him homage. The new duke had already reappointed his friend Rocaberti vicar-general, and announced his intention of sending him with a fleet to “confound his enemies”. This announcement was made to the Captain of the Navarrese Company, to the Archbishop of Neopatras, and to the Dowager Countess of Salona. From the phraseology of the royal letter to the archbishop, it is clear that much of that duchy was no longer in the possession of the Catalans, though the castle had not been taken; from the document addressed to the countess, we see that Salona was still hers, and that the king was anxious to secure the hand of her much-wooed daughter for the son of his favourite Rocaberti, although that damsel, the Helen of mediaeval Greece, was already affianced to another. At the same time, his majesty assured the sindici of Athens that he would never “forget so famous a portion of our realm”, which he hoped by God’s grace to visit in person. Affairs of State at home prevented, however, this projected journey, while Rocaberti’s promised fleet seems never to have arrived at the Piraeus. On the contrary, in November 1387 we find him still lingering in Spain. Such was the practical sympathy shown by the effusive kings of Aragon for their distant dominions.

Meanwhile, abandoned by his Government at home, Don Pedro de Pau still held out, a lonely and pathetic figure on the Akropolis. Circumstances in Greece favoured his defence, for the attention of the besiegers had been distracted by a raid of Turkish pirates, which they joined the Venetian bailie of Negroponte in repulsing. On 5th November 1387, a rumour of the brave commander’s death reached Cataluna, and a successor was appointed in the person of P. de Vilalba, who was to hold the two still unconquered castles of Athens and Neopatras. Eleven days later, however, a second messenger arrived with the news that Don Pedro was alive, and Vilalba’s warrant was cancelled. From that moment the Aragonese archives are silent as to the fate of Athens. But a letter, preserved in the Lauren ziana library at Florence, laconically informs us that on 2nd May 1388, “Messer Neri had the castle of Setines.” The victor was unable at once to establish himself on the Akropolis, for plague had broken out at Athens, many had died, and among the victims had been his own valet. Nerio and all his family accordingly withdrew to Thebes to reflect in safety over his new position. His triumph was, indeed, complete; not only was he master of Athens, but a fortnight before the Akropolis fell he had yet further strengthened his position in Greece by bestowing the hand of his second and favourite daughter, Francesca, upon Carlo Tocco, the young Duke of Leucadia and Palatine Count of Cephalonia, the most powerful Latin ruler of the Levant.

The Catalan rule over the duchies had thus ended for ever. The sovereigns of Aragon and Sicily might continue to style themselves Dukes of Athens and Neopatras —a title also borne by Queen Maria of Sicily and her husband, and which was included among the dignities of the Spanish crown down to the end of the seventeenth century. Courtly Spanish poets might enumerate “thy great Athens, thy Neopatria,” among the “good lands” of a dead Aragonese monarch, and the rulers of Sicily might gratify their vanity by appointing a titular vicar-general with a pompous patent to rid the land of the “tyrants” who had occupied it. Alfonso V even went so far as to create one of his subjects Duke of Athens, and in 1444 actually demanded the restitution of his two duchies. But, since that memorable 2nd May 1388, the flag of Aragon has never waved again from the castle of Athens.

The Catalan Grand Company disappeared from the face of Attica as rapidly as rain from its light soil. Like their Burgundian predecessors, these soldiers of fortune came, conquered, and disappeared, without taking root in the land. Only two generations had elapsed since the battle of the Kephissds, and already one family after another had died out, while now and again an old Catalan had returned to spend the evening of his life in his old home, so that King Pedro could point to the smallness of the Catalan garrison in Greece. After the fall of Athens, some, like the brothers Lluria, took ship for Sicily; others, like Ballester, the last Catalan Archbishop of Athens, returned to Barcelona, while others again lingered on for a time, among them the two branches of the Fadrique family, the former represented by the Countess of Salona and her daughter, the latter by John, the baron of Aigina. The masterful countess, either by her courageous defence or her patrician airs, sure to impress the Florentine upstart whom she had affronted, held her own for nearly six years longer. In 1390 we find King John of Aragon again asking the hand of her much-disputed daughter for a noble scion of the Moncada family.The final disappearance of the county of Salona we shall see in the next chapter. The famous island of Aigina remained still longer in Catalan hands. From John Fadrique it passed, presumably by the marriage of his daughter, to the family of Caopena, then settled at Nauplia, whose name undoubtedly points to a Catalan origin, though Venetian genealogists make them come from the Dalmatian island of Lesina —a name easily confused with “Legena”, the Venetian form of Aigina—and others suppose Cyprus to have been their home. At Aigina the Caopena held sway till 1451, and this explains the boast of a much later Catalan writer, that his countrymen maintained their “ancient splendour” in Greece till the middle of the fifteenth century. It seems probable that, soon after the Florentine Conquest, the Catalan lord of Aigina conveyed thither the head of St George, which King Pedro had wished to have removed from Livadia to Spain, but which was still preserved there in 1393, for the Venetians found it at TEgina when they became possessed of the island, and transported it thence to Venice in 1462.¹ We hear of a Catalan living at Modon in 1418, and of a Catalan corsair at Monemvasia in 1460, and in 1609 a Catalan was Bishop of Cerigo. There is still a noble family in Zante called Katalidnos, and persons of the same name have been found at Patras, Kalamata, and Aigion within recent years. The island of Santorin possesses three families of Spanish origin —those of Da Corogna, De Cigalla, and Delenda, the latter a name common in Sardinia in the form Deledda. Thus, it happens that the present Roman Catholic Archbishop of Athens, Mgr. Delenda, is a descendant of its Catalan conquerors.

Memorials of the Catalan domination may still be seen in Greece. The fine castles of Salona, Livadia, and Lamia— all important places at that epoch, contain Catalan work, and the three ruined churches still to be seen within the precincts of the first of those fortresses were certainly used, if not built, by the devout soldiers of Spain who resided there. We know, too, that in their time there were churches of St George, St Mary, and St Michael at Livadia, but we are not told that they were of Catalan origin. Probably the row of towers between Thebes and Livadia dates from this period, as it was naturally most important to keep up communication between the capital and the chief fortress of the duchies. We are expressly told that they fortified the Akropolis, and that the governor had his residence and a chapel dedicated to St Bartholomew there. But of this nothing now remains. The Christian Archaeological Museum at Athens contains, however, one very curious memorial of Catalan rule—a fresco of the Virgin and Child, with two armorial shields hanging from trees, and some mysterious letters in Gothic character, which came from the church of the Prophet Elias, near the gate of the Agora. The Gothic inscription on the west front of the Parthenon does not, however, appear to be Catalan. It is no wonder that the Catalans left few great buildings behind them, when it is remembered that they lacked the stimulus of a ducal court, such as had existed in the time of the Burgundians, and that they were not, for the most part, the younger sons of noble houses, but a band of soldiers of fortune, who, by the strangest of accidents, had become the heirs of Perikles and Phidias. Being merely the representatives of the absent dukes, the Catalan vicars-general coined no money, but the kings of Sicily and Aragon bore the title of “Duke of Athens and Neopatras” on their coins.

Such a society as this was not likely to encourage culture, and it is significant that the Catalan dialect has left no mark on the Greek language; yet even in Catalan Athens we find an Athenian priest copying medical works, while we know that the Catholic bishops of Salona and Megara had libraries. But professional men seem to have been scarce in the country, if we may judge from the fact that on one occasion a doctor had to be sent from Sicily to Thebes. Trade, on the other hand, naturally flourished between Barcelona and her Greek colony. The Venetian archives contain several allusions to the commercial relations between Thebes and both Barcelona and Majorca; Thebes, “the head, as it were, and mistress” of the cities of the duchies, had its own measures, and levied an octroi of 2 per cent, on all merchandise that went in or out of its gates; the contemporary geographer Abulfeda, mentions its gold and silver embroideries, but a Catalan traveller tells us that it suffered severely from earth­quakes. Although Venice bound down the Company to keep no galleys in the Piraeus, and prohibited the Catalans of Aegina from all traffic by sea, the “port of Athens” had recovered some of its importance, for we hear of a harbour­master being appointed, and of ships from Spain being anchored there. From the beginning of the fourteenth century it had borne the name of Lion, or Porto Leone, by which it was known down to late Turkish tiiries, from the great stone lion which then stood there, and which was removed by Morosini to Venice, where it still guards the entrance to the arsenal, waiting for the day when all her stolen treasures shall be restored to free Greece. Athens, on the other hand, had sunk into insignificance, as compared with Thebes. The Westphalian priest, Ludolph, who travelled in Greece between 1336 and 1341, describes it as “almost deserted”, and he adds the curious remark, which perhaps must not be taken too literally, that “there is not a marble column nor any good work of cut stone in the city of Genoa which has not been brought thither from Athens, so that the city has been wholly built out of Athens”. Forty years later the Catalans of Athens lamented to Pedro IV their “poverty and distress”. Livadia under the Catalans obtained an importance, which it retained in Turkish times; the county of Salona was the largest fief in the country; and the fortress of Siderokastron is described as “the key of the duchy of Athens”. Boudonitza, whose Venetian marquis was a Catalan vassal; Demetrias, “the boundary of Hellas”, the last fragment of the Catalan possessions in Thessaly; Lamia, under its name; of Citon; the Boeotian Karditza; Atalante, or La Calandri; Kapraina, the ancient Chaironeia; Stiris, or Estir, near the monastery of the Blessed Luke; and Vitrinitza, or La Veternica, on the Gulf of Corinth, all figure in the history of the Catalan, duchies; while their second capital, Neopatras, or La Patria, by furnishing one half of the ducal title, became a household word all over the Spanish world, and a Spanish poet com­memorated it long after the last Catalan governor had left its walls.

The Greeks long remembered with terror the Catalan domination; a Greek girl in a mediaeval song, prayed that her seducer might “fall into a Catalan’s hands”, and even a generation ago in Attica, in Euboea, in Acarnania, Messenia, Lakonia, and at Tripolitza, the name of “Catalan” was used as a term of reproach; but the present author’s enquiries in Greece have not succeeded in tracing this curious survival to the present day. Professor Polites, the leading authority on Greek folklore, states, however, that in Mane a child is some­times christened “ Catalan,” as an omen of his future strength and courage, and that there the name is held in high esteem. The distinguished Greek historian, Professor Ldmpros, in his juvenile drama, “The last Count of Salona,” and Koutoubdles in “John the Catalan, Archon of Olympos,” have embodied in literature the Greek conception of the Catalans as monsters, but there is more of rhetoric than of history in those produc­tions. That the Catalans were harder masters than the French is very probable; yet it is remarkable that the Greeks did not stir a finger to assist in a French restoration, when they had the chance. The probability is, that the Catalans have obtained their bad name from their cruelties before they settled down in Attica, and that they became staider and more tolerant as they became respectable; towards the close, as we have seen, King Pedro was not only liberal towards the Greeks, but waxed as enthusiastic as any philhellene over the splendours of the Parthenon. If, in spite of his liberality, they assisted Nerio, as has been plausibly argued, to conquer Athens, that merely proves that they recognised in him a strong man on the spot, connected by marriage with the chief representative of Hellenism in Greece, who would perhaps give them that peace which their absent duke could not ensure.

But if the modern Greeks do not view the Catalans with favour, the modern Catalans look back with justifiable pride on the connection between their countrymen and Athens. Catalan divines have truly boasted that their tongue was once spoken in the precincts of the Parthenon; Catalan poets and dramatists have chosen the Catalan Grand Company for their theme; to the labours of a brilliant Catalan scholar we owe the documents which have thrown so much light on this period; and in the history of Athens, where nothing can lack interest, these rough soldiers from the West are also entitled to a place.

About the same time that Nerio Acciajuoli obtained possession of Attica, a relative of his completed the phe­nomenal good fortune of the family by becoming Despot of Epiros. We last saw all Akarnania and Astolia in the possession of an Albanian chieftain, Ghin (or John) Boua Spata, while a Serb, Thomas Preliubovich, ruled at Joannina. “At first”, says the Chronicle of Epiros, “he wore a fox’s skin; but he soon threw it off, and put on that of a lion.” Every class and race suffered from the persecutions of this petty tyrant; he first attacked the Greek Church, ex­pelling the metropolitan, and distributing the ecclesiastical property among his Servian followers; then it was the turn of the native magnates, whom he either banished, or imprisoned, then that of the common people, whose food he taxed and whose savings he extorted. Wine, corn, meat, and cheese, the fish of the lake, the fruit of the orchards, all became monopolies of the tyrant, who compelled the peasants to work for him without pay. The Albanians do not usually turn the left cheek to the smiter; they called in the aid of their countryman, Boua Spata, who more than once besieged Joannina, but in vain. The Archangel Michael —so ran the story— saved the threatened city, and its tyrant, imitating Basil “the Bulgar-Slayer,” was able to style himself with pride Thomas “the slayer of the Albanians,” from the number of his victims. “ All wickedness is small compared with the wickedness of Thomas”— such is the constant refrain of the tearful chronicler. Even his Serbs fled from before his face; and thus, having forfeited the sympathies of all, he completed his enormities by calling in the Turks. In 1385, for the first time, a Turkish force marched on Arta, under the command of Timourtash, carrying away a number of prisoners. Boua Spata, at this crisis, in vain proposed to Preliubovich an alliance against the common enemy; but vengeance was at hand, and before the year was out, the tyrant fell by the hands of his own bodyguard. The people of Joannina joyfully proclaimed his widow, who called her brother, the famous Abbot of Metdora, “King Joseph,” to her councils, and, on his advice and that of the leading magnates, resolved to marry a strong man who could help her to reorganise her distracted country and protect it from the renewed attacks of the ambitious Spata. Such a consort was found in the person of Esau Buondelmonti, a Florentine of noble family, connected with the Acciajuoli and brother of the Duchess of Leucadia, in whose island dominions he was then residing. The elegant and quiet Florentine pleased the Servian widow all the more by contrast with her first husband’s barbarous ways; indeed, according to one account, Esau had already been her paramour, having been captured, in battle by Preliubovich, pardoned at the instance of his wife, and then having helped her to get rid of the tyrant. The people received him with intense relief; he restored their confiscated property, recalled the banished metropolitan, re-endowed the Church, opened the doors of the prisons, summoned back the exiled magnates, and abolished the hateful corvées. Like his predecessor, he strove to legitimise his rule with the Greeks by accepting the title of Despot from the imperial court at Constantinople; but he needed more efficient aid against Spata and his Albanians, and had to ask the Sultan Murad I in person for his protection—to such a state of weakness were the Christian states of the East now reduced. A Turkish force appeared at Joannina; Spata, who was besieging the town by both land and water, was forced to withdraw, and sorely-tried Epiros enjoyed for a few years the blessings of peace.

Thus, in the year 1388, by an extraordinary coincidence, Florentines held sway alike at Athens, at Corinth, in Epiros, and in the island county of Cephalonia, where Esau’s sister, the Duchess Maddalena, widow of Leonardo Tocco, was regent for her son Carlo, himself affianced to an Acciajuoli. Another daughter of that dominant house charmed with her beauty the ceremonious Byzantine court of Mistra. If Florence was thus the leading Latin power in Greece, Venice came near her; for she was firmly settled in Crete, and was practically mistress of Euboea and of Argolis, where a noble French dame still maintained the appearance of power in the last fragment of the old French duchy of Athens. Venice held, too, her Messenian colonies; the possession of Pteleon gave her a post of observation in Thessaly; she had just acquired the island of Corfii, the key of the Adriatic; and in the Cyclades the new Italian dynasty was more susceptible to her influence than the previous dukes of the Archipelago had been. The Navarrese in the principality of Achaia, and the Catalans at Salona, completed the Latin element. While the Albanian chieftains still held Arta and Lepanto, and the Servian dominion was fast waning in Thessaly, the Turk was surely approaching. Already his aid is invoked in Greek affairs; already his shadow is over the vale of Tempe and the great Thessalian plain. Too late the Greek people, so long inarticulate, was growing conscious of its nationality and of its power. The last period of Latin rule at Athens witnessed, on the eve of the Turkish Conquest, the revival of the Greek Church and the national aristocracy.

CHAPTER XI

FLORENTINE AND VENETIAN ATHENS (1388-1415)