MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY

A HISTORY OF FRANKISH GREECE (1204-1566)

CHAPTER IV

THE ZENITH OF FRANKISH RULE (1214-1262)

The new Despot of Epiros had not been long on the throne, when the Latin Empire of Romania received a blow, which was severely felt throughout continental Greece. The Emperor Henry suddenly died in 1216, perhaps poisoned by the relentless Count of Biandrate, still in the prime of life, “a second Ares” in war, a friend to the Greeks, the ablest among the Latins of Constantinople. As he left no heirs, Peter of Courtenay, the husband of his sister Jolanda, succeeded him as emperor, and from that moment the fortunes of the empire began to decline. Peter never lived to reach his capital. After receiving his crown from the hands of Pope Honorius III in the church of S. Lorenzo, outside the walls of Rome, he crossed over to Durazzo with the intention of marching along the classic Via Egnatia, which so many a Latin commander had trod, to Salonika and the East. Albania was even then a dangerous country, and the crafty ruler of Epiros saw a splendid opportunity of destroying the emperor of his natural enemies, the Franks. The Epirote troops fell upon the unfortunate Peter in the defiles near Elbassan; the emperor and the papal legate who accom­panied him were captured; and, while the latter was ultimately released, the former died in prison, perhaps by the sword. His death, as the historian Akropolita says, was “no slight aid to the Greek cause”, for both the Latin Empire and the kingdom of Salonika were now in the hands of women, as regents:the Empress Yolanda and Margaret, the widow of Boniface, whose chief adviser was the Marquis of Boudonitza. The victorious Despot of Epiros, energetic and ambitious, followed up his success by extending his dominions at the expense of his Frankish and Bulgarian neighbours in Thessaly and Macedonia; soon Larissa alone survived of the Thessalian baronies, for the doughty Katzenellenbogen, who might have resisted him, had returned to his home on the Rhine, and, in 1222, Theodore’s career of conquest culminated with the acquisition of Salonika and the extinction of that ephemeral Lombard kingdom. Thus, after only eighteen years of existence, it fell ingloriously, the first of the creations of the Fourth Crusade to succumb. For the conqueror of a kingdom the title of Despot seemed too humble. So, with a fine disregard for the oath which he had once sworn to recognise no other emperor than him of Nice, Theodore had himself crowned at Salonika, assumed the imperial title, the purple mantle, and the red sandals of Byzantine royalty, and appointed all the great officials of an imperial court. The metropolitan of Salonika, faithful to the oecumenical patriarch whose seat was at Nice, refused to perform the coronation ceremony; but his place was taken by the Archbishop of Ochrida and all Bulgaria. The result was a deadly feud between the rival Greek Empires of Nice and Salonika, which had the effect of giving the Latin Empire of Constantinople a brief respite. The ecclesiastics of the two Greek capitals espoused with all the zeal of their profession the quarrel of the respective sovereigns, for the political schism at once affected so essentially political an institution as the Greek Church. An emperor whose sway extended from the Adriatic to the Aegean, and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth, might consider himself the heir of Constantinople with as much reason as “the true Emperor of the Romans” at Nice; his clergy, who looked to him for the advancement of themselves and of the Greek idea, could easily meet the Nicene theologians with plausible arguments for ecclesiastical autonomy. One of these apologies for Salonika and its ruler has been preserved in the shape of a verbose and long epistle from George Barddnes, metropolitan of Corfù, to Germands, the oecumenical patriarch. The Corfiote divine, who also composed theological treatises against the Minorites, on the use of leavened bread in the Sacrament, and on the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father alone, had received the epithet of Atticus from his literary skill, and some tolerable iambics, the sole relic of the old cathedral at Corfú, have been ascribed to him. We learn from his letter that his beloved emperor “imitated the mildness of David,” and that at his court “learning lacked not arms, nor yet the armed man learning”. The metropolitan had his reward. Theodore, who signed himself “King and Emperor of the Romans,” confirmed by a golden bull of 1228, all the privileges of the church of Corfu, granted by Alexios I and Manuel I. Among the gifts of the latter emperor were 220 serfs, the living chattels of the church, such as we saw in the possession of the Latin archbishopric of Patras, and a number of “sacred slaves”, whose task it was to till the glebe and do other work, and whose name still survives in that of a Corfiote village.

The capture of Salonika made a great impression in the west. Pope Honorius III ordered the two bulwarks of Northern Greece, the castles of Salona and Boudonitza, to be put in a thorough state of defence; bade the rulers of Athens and Achaia to be of good cheer and to attack the conquered city, and endeavoured to organise a new crusade for its recovery. The prelates and clergy generously subscribed money for the defence of Boudonitza, and Demetrios, the ex-king of Salonika, and his half-brother, the Marquis William of Montferrat, did, indeed, head an expedition against the usurper Theodore, which penetrated as far as Thessaly. There the marquis died, poisoned it was said, and the feeble Demetrios then returned to Italy, where he too died, soon afterwards, in 1227. No further attempt was made to recapture his kingdom; but for another century one person after another was pleased to style himself titular king of Salonika. The Emperor Frederick II, the marquises of Montferrat, and one of the triarchs of Euboea bore the empty title, which passed by marriage with a princess of Montferrat to the Greek Emperor Andronikos II, who thus combined in his own person the real and the nominal sovereignty. Even then there continued to be titular kings of Salonika among the members of the ducal House of Burgundy, which had received the barren honour from the last Latin emperor of the East. Their shadowy claim was finally sold to Philip of Taranto in 1320, after which this phantom royalty vexed court heralds no more.

The fall of the kingdom of Salonika separated the Frank states in the south from the Latin Empire at Constantinople, and the fate of the latter had therefore comparatively little influence upon the much stronger dynasties of Athens and Achaia. There Geoffroy de Villehardouin had crowned his successful career by marrying his elder son and heir to Agnes, daughter of the Emperor Peter of Courtenay. Before that ill-fated monarch had started for Constantinople by land, he had sent his wife and daughter on by sea. On the way, the imperial ladies put into the port of Katakolo, at which the traveller now lands for Olympia, and which owes its name to the great Byzantine family of Katakaldn. Geoffrey chanced to be in the neighbourhood, and, hearing of their arrival, hastened down to greet them, and invited them up to the adjoining “Mouse Castle”, Pontikokastro, which the Franks had appropriately christened Beauvoir from the splendid view of the sea and the islands which it commands. During their visit, at the suggestion of Geoffrey’s advisers, and by the mediation of the Bishop of Olena, a marriage was arranged between young Geoffrey and the daughter of the Empress Yolanda, to the advantage of both parties, for the empress saw that her child would be well married, while in all Achaia there was no daughter worthy of the ruler’s son. One result of this alliance was that, later on, the Emperor Robert, son and successor of Peter, officially recognised his brother-in-law as “Prince of Achaia”, a title which, though applied by Innocent III, as we saw, to both Champlitte and Geoffrey I, and used by the latter in documents, had not previously received the imperial sanction.

A year later, in 1218, Geoffrey I died, and great was the grief throughout the Morea. “All mourned”, we are told, “rich and poor alike, as if each were lamenting his own father’s death, so great was his goodness.” An able, if unscrupulous, statesman, he had shown great skill in con­ciliating the Greeks, and we may endorse the judgment of a modern Greek historian, that he was “perhaps the ablest of all the Frank princes of the East”.

The prosperous reign of his son and successor, Geoffrey II, whom the Venetian historian, Sanudo the elder, calls, with technical accuracy, “the first Prince of Achaia”, was of great benefit to the principality. He possessed a broad domain and great riches; he was wont to send his most confidential advisers from time to time to the courts of his vassals, to see how they lived and how they treated their subjects. At his own court he constantly maintained eighty knights with golden spurs, to whom he gave all that they required besides their pay; so knights came from France, from Burgundy, and, above all, from Champagne, to follow him. Some came to amuse themselves, others to pay their debts, others because of crimes which they had committed at home. The only difficulty which the prince had to face was the unpatriotic conduct of the Latin clergy, who, in the snug enjoyment of nearly one-third of the land, declined to assist him in driving the Greeks out of the still unconquered stronghold of Monemvasia. As we saw, by the constitution of the principality, the fiefs of the clergy depended upon the performance of certain military services; so that when they refused to serve, on the ground that they owed obedience to the pope alone, Geoffrey was strictly within his rights in confiscating their fiefs. But, in order to show his own disinterested patriotism, he spent the funds which thus accrued to his exchequer in building a great fortress at Glarentza, in the west of Elis, then the chief port of the Morea, and now recovering some of its mediaeval importance. This castle, the ruins of which still stand out like the boss of a shield from a round hill —a landmark for miles around— took three years to construct, and was then called Clermont, or Chloumootsi, to which the later name of Castel Tornese was added, when it became the mint for the coins known as tournois, so called because they had been originally minted at Tours. The prince proceeded calmly with his building, regardless of interdicts and excommunications; but when the castle was finished, he laid the whole matter before the pope, who had hitherto taken the side of the clergy, and had described Geoffrey as “more inhuman than Pharaoh” in his treatment of them. He pointed out that, if the Latin priests would not help him to fight the Greeks, they would only have themselves to blame if the principality, and with it their Church, fell under the sway of those schismatics. Honorius III. saw the force of this argument; the ecclesiastical thunders ceased, and a concordat was drawn up in 1223 between Church and State, on the lines laid down for Northern Greece at the second parliament of Ravenika. It was arranged that all Achaian sees should have, free from all secular dues and jurisdiction, all the estates which were or had been theirs from the coronation of the Emperor Aldxios Mourtzouphlos, that is to say, all the estates of the Greek Church in the Peloponnese on the eve of the Latin Conquest. The prince was to keep the treasures and moveable property of the Church, on condition that he, his barons, and other Greek and Latin subjects, paid a tithe estimated at 1000 hyperperi a year, a sum which was apportioned between the two archbishoprics of Patras and Corinth, and the six bishoprics of Lacedaemonia, Amyklai, Coron, Modon, Olena, and Argos. The concordat farther regulated the position of the Greek priests, whom the prince had been accused of treating as his own peasants. The number of the country popes who were allowed exemption from all secular jurisdiction was fixed in proportion to the size of the village: two in a hamlet of from 25 to 70 households, four in a village of from 70 to 125 families, six in places of a still larger population. Where the number of households was less than 25, that number was made up out of the scattered dwellings of the neighbourhood. The exemption was extended to the wives and families of the priests, provided that their children lived at home. All the other country popes were bound to perform the usual services to the secular authorities, but their temporal lord might not lay hands upon their sacred persons, and the clergy of the towns were to be accorded similar treatment. This system was based upon a just principle. It limited the number of idle priests; while it exempted the poor and fully-occupied country clergy from all services and dues. Henceforth peace usually reigned between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities of the Morea. Ten years later, however, we find Geoffrey complaining to Gregory IX that the Archbishop of Patras, to whom the prince had entrusted that important castle, apparently on the death of Walter Aleman, had made a truce with the Greeks, the prince’s enemies, and had allowed them to enter the principality, an incident which would seem to indicate a Greek invasion from Epiros, to which Patras would be naturally exposed.

But, when the Latin Empire was menaced by the attacks of the Greek Emperor of Nice and the Bulgarian Tsar in 1236, both prince and clergy alike responded to the papal appeal, urging them to contribute money towards its maintenance. The tithe of all ecclesiastical revenues was to be devoted to the cause, while Geoffrey, in whose land the Emperor Robert,his brother-in-law, had ended his wretched existence in 1228, offered a yearly subsidy of 22,000 hyperperi to his successor, Baldwin II, for the defence of Constantinople, a striking proof of the excellent state of his finances. He also proceeded to Constantinople with a considerable force, including six vessels, although Venice was so jealous of another Latin sea-power arising in the near East, that she had taken proceedings against one of her subjects who had sold him a galley. With this fleet he broke the Greeks’ line, and entered the harbour, after destroying fifteen of their ships.

As a reward for this service, Baldwin conferred upon him the suzerainty over the duchy of the Archipelago, which had been a fief of the Latin Empire since the time of the Emperor Henry, and over the island of Euboea, which was in reality under the overlordship of Venice, but which the Latin Emperor might consider as his to bestow in virtue of its former dependence on the extinct kingdom of Salonika. The three lords of Euboea were bound by this investiture to supply a galley, or eight knights, to their new suzerain, who also received a grant of land in their island. Nor did the imperial marks of favour stop here. The prince, who, like his sire, was Seneschal of Romania, also became suzerain of Boudonitza, and received, as the price of further aid, the emperor’s family fief of Courtenay, which, however, Louis IX of France declined to permit. A second papal appeal found him willing to equip ten galleys for Baldwin’s service, and on a false rumour of the emperor’s death, he proceeded to Constantinople with ships and a large retinue to act as regent. Once again, in 1244, Innocent IV urged him to defend the capital of the Latin Empire, and allowed him to deduct from the annual revenues of the Peloponnesian Church sufficient for the maintenance of 100 archers. He was justly regarded as the strongest Frank prince of his time, the leading man in “New France”, where the Empire of Romania grew yearly weaker. Such was his prestige that the Despot Manuel of Epiros and the Count of Cephalonia and Zante voluntarily became his vassals, and the latter was henceforth reckoned, like the three barons of Euboea and the Duke of the Archipelago, among the peers of the principality of Achaia. Now that the Venetians had lost Corfu, the crafty count had no longer the same motive for acknowledging their supremacy.

Although he had resolved to be master in his own house, Geoffrey II  was no enemy of the Church, when it did not neglect its duties to the State. He invited the Cistercians, already established, as we saw, at Athens, to send some of their order to the Morea, where both they and the Dominicans founded monasteries; the Chronicle tells us that when he felt himself dying he bade his brother, William of Kalamata, carry out a vow which he had himself omitted tofulfil, that of building a church in which his body and that of his father could repose. But we learn from the corre­spondence of Pope Gregory IX that it was his father who founded the church and hospital of St James at Andravida, where in due course the bones of the three first Villehardouin rulers of Achaia were laid. The two accounts are not, however, inconsistent, if we suppose that Geoffrey I built no more than a modest chapel, leaving it to his sons to erect a more ambitious memorial church, “the glorious minster of Monseigneur St James”, as the French Chronicle calls it. Little now remains of this famous mausoleum of the Villehardouin family; like its founder, it has passed into history. But a Norman arch near the little railway station still testifies to the past glories of Sta. Sophia, the cathedral of the Frankish capital.

Meanwhile, the next most important French state in Greece, that of Athens, had passed into the hands of a new ruler. Othon de la Roche, like Berthold von Katzenellenbogen and several other doughty barons of the Conquest, felt, as age crept on, that he would like to spend the evening of his days in his native land, which he had never forgotten in his splendid exile. Almost to the end of his reign, we find him under the ban of the Church; in 1225, soon after he had made his peace with the pope, he departed for Burgundy with his wife and his two sons, leaving his Greek dominions to his nephew Guy, who had already enjoyed the ownership of half Thebes.If the Burgundian noble, whom chance had made the successor of Kodros at Athens, of Agamemnon at Argos, had the least imagination, or had enjoyed the classical culture of the Greek divine whom he had driven from the Akropolis, he must have been stirred by the thought that it was his lot to rule over the most famous land of the ancient world. But classical allusions did not appeal to the Frank conquerors of the thirteenth century, who looked upon Greece much as we look upon Africa. Cultured men there were among them; Conon de Béthune was a poet and an orator; even the first Geoffroy de Villehardouin wrote verses which have been preserved; Elias Cairels is a poetic authority for the Lombard rebellion; but the most inspired of them all, the troubadour Rambaud de Vaqueiras, though rewarded for his songs by honours and lands in Greece, sighed for the days when he made love to a fair dame in the Far West, when canto pur Beatrice in Monferrato. Homesickness, the special malady which prevents the French from being colonists, seems to have afflicted many of the founders of “New France.”

Othon passed the rest of his life in his beloved Franche-Comté, where he lived at the most some nine years more, and where his descendants became extinct only in the seven­teenth century. His sepulchre is doubtful; but the archives of the Haute-Saône contain his seal bearing the arms of his family. The counter-seal, consisting of an ancient gem of Hellenic workmanship, which Othon may have picked up at the sack of Constantinople or in some shop at Thebes, represents three naked children teasing a large dog. This is the sole relic of the Megaskyr. Guy I, his successor, resided at Thebes, the most flourishing town in his dominions. Half of that city now passed, by the second marriage of Othon’s niece, to Bela de St Omer, a member of that famous Flemish family whose name still survives, after the lapse of centuries, in the Santameri tower at Thebes and in the Santameri mountains of the Peloponnese. Thus, as the residence of two such important and allied clans, the old Boeotian capital attained to great celebrity. The silk manufacture still continued there, and the Jewish colony was tolerated, for we hear of Hebrew poets at Thebes under Othon —bards whose verses, so a rival singer tells us, were a mass of barbarisms. Besides the Jews, there was also a Genoese settlement there, which already had its own consul. In 1240 he negotiated a commercial treaty with Guy, by which “the Lord of Athens” granted Genoese merchants freedom from all taxes, “except the usual duty paid on all silk stuffs woven in his land”. He also permitted them to have not only their own consul, but also their own court of justice for all except criminal cases and appeals, which were reserved for the tribunals of the country. Both at Athens and Thebes, an open space and consular buildings were assigned to them. In return for these favours, the Genoese were to protect “the Lord of Athens”, his land, and his subjects. The Greeks, too, as well as the Jews and the Genoese, enjoyed the protection of this enlightened ruler. When the Archdeacon of Athens insisted on levying marriage-fees in money, instead of the hen and the loaf, which the Athenian bridegrooms had paid from time immemorial, he was made to disgorge. Every traveller to Marathon has seen by the side of the road, nearly seven miles out of the city, a Byzantine column with an inscription in iambics. The inscription tells us how “the servant of the Lord, Neophytos by name”, made a road to the monastery of St John the Hunter, of which he was probably the abbot. Those who have visited the famous fort of Phyle may have turned aside to rest at the quaint little monastery of the Virgin of the Defile. I was there informed by the abbot that the more modern of the two churches was founded in 1242, that is to say, under the rule of Guy. These two examples show that the Greek monks were usually unmolested by the Franks of Athens in his time. Once, indeed, we find him begging the pope to turn out the inmates of a monastery near the frontier, suspected of betraying state secrets to his enemies. For his capital, we are told, was exposed to “frequent devastations” by the Greeks. But Guy was no lover of adventures, and turned a deaf ear to the papal appeal, urging him to join the Prince of Achaia and Count Matthew of Cephalonia, in defending Constantinople.

While Athens thus enjoyed comparative peace, the new Greek Empire of Salonika had been shaken to its founda­tions. Theodore Angelos was not the man to be content with the vast dominions which he had conquered. He was now at the zenith of his power; his Italian neighbour, Count Matthew of Cephalonia, was glad to purchase his friendship and secure immunity from attack by marrying his sister—the first of the matrimonial unions between the Greeks of Epiros and the Franks. Even the Emperor Frederick II, the most remarkable ruler of the Middle Ages, did not scorn an alliance with his brother of Salonika, brought about by the good offices of the count, the brother-in-law of one party, the vassal of the other. Copper coins are still extant, showing Theodore and St Demetrios, the patron saint of Salonika, supporting the imperial city, which might claim to have taken the place of Byzantium as the seat of the Greek Empire. But ambition urged Theodore to attack the powerful Bulgarian Tsar, John Asen II, in spite of the treaty of peace which existed between them. The tsar advanced to meet him, bearing aloft on his standard the written oath of the perjurer, and at Klokotinitza, on the Maritza, he routed the Epirote army, and took his adversary prisoner. The Bulgarian, less savage than his kind, treated his captive well, till he detected him plotting fresh schemes of conquest. To unfit him for further political adventures, the tsar ordered his eyes to be put out, the traditional punishment of the Byzantine Empire. Profiting by Theodore’s misfortunes, his younger brother, Manuel, seized the remains of his empire, styling himself Despot and Emperor, striking gold and silver coins with the effigy of St Demetrios, and counting upon the toleration of the Bulgarian Tsar, whose illegitimate daughter he had married. Determined to reign at any cost, the new emperor first endeavoured to pacify the court and Church of Nice by ecclesiastical reunion. He wrote to the oecumenical patriarch, apologising for the consecration of his bishops by the Metropolitan of Naupaktos, and suggesting that, as pirates made the journey to Nice too dangerous for the ecclesiastics of Epiros, the patriarch should either allow the present system to continue, or should permit some Nicene divine to run the risks of the voyage. Naturally, the patriarch did not see the force of this argument; “when”, he said, “had piracy not existed? All this talk is a mere excuse”. Having thus failed to conciliate the patriarch, Manuel promised submission to the pope, sending the ever­ useful metropolitan Bardanes on a mission to Rome, and even took an oath of homage to the powerful Prince of Achaia. But meanwhile the heart of the Bulgarian monarch had been touched by the beauty of blind Theodore’s daughter. She accepted his offer of marriage on condition that he released her father, and the latter was no sooner free than he resumed his schemes. Entering Salonika in disguise, he quickly won over a considerable party by his skilful intrigues; his friends aided him in driving out his usurping brother; and, though his physical infirmity prevented him from re­occupying the throne himself, he was able to exercise the real power in the name of his son John, who received the nominal dignity of emperor. The independent Greek Empire of Salonika was, however, not destined to survive the attacks of its stronger rival at Nice, where the powerful emperor, John Vatatzes, was bent on restoring the unity of the free Greeks under his sceptre. Thus, the exiled Manuel not only found a welcome at his court, but by his assistance was enabled to invade Thessaly, where he rapidly made himself master of the principal towns, and became the ally of the triarchs of Euboea as well as of the Prince of Achaia. In vain Theodore tried to keep the empire in the family by making terms with his brother. Vatatzes crossed over into Macedonia, and compelled the feeble Emperor John, whom nature had meant for a monk and his father had placed on the throne, to abandon the coveted title of emperor, the red sandals, and the ruby-topped “pyramid” of pearls, and resume the less dignified style of Despot. On these terms, he was allowed to keep his possessions; but, on his death, his brother and successor, Demetrios, so greatly irritated his subjects by his debaucheries that they were glad to welcome the troops of Vatatzes. No opposition was to be feared from the Bulgarians, for their great tsar was dead, so, in 1246, the Emperor of Nice annexed the short-lived Greek Empire of Salonika to his dominions. These rival and scattered Greek forces were thus combined, and their fraternal divisions, which had given the tottering Latin Empire of Constantinople a respite, ceased for the present.

Even yet, however, Hellenism was not united against the foreign foe. The Despotat of Epiros, thanks to the energy of another member of the house of Angelos, had survived the untimely fall of the less stable, but more pretentious, Empire of Salonika. Ten years before that event, a bastard son of the first Despot, styling himself “Michael II, Despot of Hellas”, had made himself master of Epiros, Aetolia, and Corfú. Circumstances favoured his usurpation, for the Empire of Salonika had not recovered from the blow which the Bulgarians had dealt it, Theodore was still a prisoner, and the Epirotes saw that they must have a strong man to rule over them. Michael II won over the Corfiotes by following the traditional policy of his family towards them. Just as Michael I and Manuel had guaranteed the privileges of the metropolitan church and people of the island, so Michael II, by four successive bulls, exempted them from practically all taxes and duties, relieved the clergy from all forced labour, and granted the Ragusan traders equal rights with the islanders. On the death of his uncle, Manuel, in 1241, he succeeded to the latter’s Thessalian dominions, while old blind Theodore, with whom the love of power was still the ruling passion, managed to retain, even after the fall of Salonika, a small piece of territory round Vodena in Macedonia.

Michael II was at first anxious to remain on good terms with the powerful Emperor of Nice. He had married a saintly woman, whose life, written by a monk in the seventeenth century, is one long record of ill-treatment patiently borne, of Christian forgiveness, and of a devotion to her husband, ill-requited by that passionate man. The Blessed Theodora was the daughter of John Petraleiphas, a member of a distinguished Frankish family from Provence, Pierre d’Aulps (or de Alpibus), established even before the Conquest in the mountainous region of Agrapha. The legend tells us that her husband, tempted by the devil and enchanted by the charms and spells of a fair Greek, called Gangrené, drove his lawful wife into the wilderness and received his paramour into the palace. Remorse, or the remonstrances of his councillors, at last prevailed upon him to recall Theodora, and, as a sign of his repentance, he founded, at her request, the monastery of the Saviour at Galaxidi, on the Gulf of Corinth, which, though now ruined by earthquakes, was still inhabited in the eighteenth century, when it produced the short, but interesting Chronicle of Galaxidi, which is one of our authorities for the history of Frankish and Turkish Greece. But Theodora united the usually incompatible qualities of a saint and a diplomatist; she readily went on a mission to arrange a match between her son Nikephdros and the grand-daughter of the Greek Emperor Vatdtzes. The emperor consented, and it seemed as if peace were firmly cemented between Nice and Epiros. Indeed, the Emperor Frederick II. actually wrote to the Despot in 1250, begging him to grant a free passage across Epiros to the troops, which his own son-in-law, Vatatzes, was sending him to assist in his struggle against Pope Innocent IV.

Such was the condition of Northern Greece when, in 1246, Geoffroy de Villehardouin died, and his brother William Barone, became Prince of Achaia in his stead. During his long reign of over thirty years, he is the central figure in Greek history, for he intervened in the affairs of nearly every state in Greece, in Euboea, in Attica, and in Epiros. The new prince was the first of his race born in the country —for his birthplace had been the family castle of Kalamata, which had been his father’s fief, and he spoke Greek as his native tongue. In cleverness and energy he surpassed all his subjects; he was the most adventurous and knightly figure of Frankish Greece, combining at times the chivalrous spirit of France with the wiles of the Homeric Odysseus. He, too, has been made the hero of a poem, The Chronicle of the Morea, which in jog-tot “political” verse that is almost prose extols the deeds of this prince “who toiled more than all who were born in the parts of Romania”. But his reign was, thanks to his love of fighting, an almost unbroken series of wars; and if he was able for a brief space to effect the complete conquest of the peninsula, it was in his days that its reconquest by the Greeks began.

His first enterprise was the subjugation of Monemvasia, the last Greek stronghold, which had defied his three pre­decessors, and which was in uninterrupted communication with the Emperor of Nice. No one who has seen that picturesque spot can wonder at its continued independence in the face of such arms as the Franks could bring against it. The great rock of Monemvasia, the Gibraltar of Greece, stands out defiantly in the sea, and is only accessible from the land by a narrow causeway, the “ single entrance,” to which it owes its name. It had long enjoyed special privileges from the Byzantine emperors, and was governed by three local magnates, who styled themselves archons— Mamonas, Daimonoyannes, and Sophianós. William made elaborate preparations for the siege. He summoned to his aid the great vassals of the principality: Guy I of Athens, who owed him allegiance for Argos and Nauplia; the three barons of Euboea; Angelo Sanudo, Duke of Naxos, with the other lords of the Cyclades; and the veteran Count Matteo Orsini of Cephalonia. But he saw that without the naval assistance of Venice, which had taken care that his principality should not become a sea-power, he could never capture the place. He accordingly obtained the aid of four Venetian galleys, and then proceeded to invest the great rock-fortress by land and water. For three long years or more the garrison held out, “like a nightingale in its cage”, as the chronicler quaintly says —and the simile is most appropriate, for the rock abounds with those songsters— till all supplies were exhausted, and they had eaten the very cats and mice. Even then, however, they only surrendered on condition that they should be excused from all feudal services, except at sea, and should even in that case be paid. True to the conciliatory policy of his family, William wisely granted their terms, and then the three archons of Monemvasia advanced along the narrow causeway to his camp, and offered him the keys of their town. The conqueror received them with the respect of one brave man for another, loaded them with costly gifts, and gave them fiefs in the district of Vatika, near Cape Malea. A Frankish garrison was installed in the coveted fortress, a Latin bishop at last occupied the episcopal palace there; but the traveller searches in vain among the picturesque Byzantine and Venetian remains of the rock for the least trace of the French prince’s brief rule of thirteen years over the Gibraltar of the Morea. Local tradition, however, still indicates the spot on the mainland where his cavalry was left. The surrender of Monemvasia was followed by the submission not only of Vatika, but of the Tzdkones also, whose lands had been ravaged by Geoffrey I, but who, even if they had promised to obey him, had never really acknowledged the Frankish sway till now. To complete the subjugation of the Morea, William built three strong castles, specially intended to overawe the Slavs of Taygetos and the mountaineers of Maina. Three miles from Sparta, on a steep hill which is one of the spurs of Taygetos, and was perhaps the site of the “dove-haunted Messe” of Homer, he erected the fortress of Mizithra, or Mistra, the ruins of which are still one of the mediaeval glories of the Morea, and which played a great part in the history of the next two centuries. One wonders, on visiting Villehardouin’s castle today, how the ancient Spartans can have neglected a strategic position so incomparably superior to their open village down in the plain by the Eurotas, and even now, when it is abandoned to the tortoises and the sheep, the hill of Mistral looks down, as it were, with feudal pride upon the brand-new streets and hideous cathedral of the modern Sparta. Scholars differ as to the origin of its name, but whether it be of Slavonic derivation, or whether it be Greek, Mizithra stands, more than any other spot, except Constantinople, for the preservation of mediaeval Hellenism against the Franks. But the French prince was not content with Mistra alone. Down in the direction of Cape Matapan, he built the castle of Old Maina, and on the western side of the promontory, near Kisternes, he constructed yet a third fortress, which the Greeks called Levtro and the French Beaufort. The immediate result of this policy was the submission of the Slavonic tribe of Melings, who had given so much trouble to the Byzantine authorities in earlier days, but who now saw that the new forts confined them to the barren mountains, where they could not find subsistence. Accordingly, they promised to be the prince’s vassals, and to serve in his army on the same terms as in the time of the Byzantine emperors, on condition that they were held exempt from dues and other feudal service. The last two castles also shut in the Mainates, so that William’s sway was now acknowledged all over the Morea, save where the lion banner of St Mark floated over the two Messenian stations of Modon and Coron. In their own barren land, however, the Mainates continued to indulge in warfare, for, a few years later, the Catholic bishop of Maina was allowed by Pope Alexander IV to reside in Italy, because the prevailing strife prevented him from living in his own see.

The principality had now reached its zenith. The barons had built themselves castles all over the country, whence they took their titles, and where they lived “the fairest life that a man can”. The prince’s court at Lacedaemonia, which the Franks called La Cremonie, and of which an Englishman, William of Faversham, was then bishop, was considered as the best school of chivalry in the East, and “more brilliant than that of a great king”. The sons of his great vassals and of the other Frank rulers of the Levant came there to learn war and manners; and personages like Marco II Sanudo, afterwards Duke of Naxos, from whom our chief authority, Marino Sanudo the elder, derived his information, and Hugh, Duke of Burgundy, were his honoured guests. Never since the days of the ancient Spartans had such splendid warriors been seen on the banks of the Eurotas, and Louis IX of France, the mightiest Latin sovereign of the age, might well wish that he had the giant knights of Achaia to assist him in his crusade against the infidel. From 700 to 1000 of these horsemen always attended the prince, and William was able to fit out a fleet of about 24 vessels and sail with 400 knights to meet the King of France in Cyprus, and to leave behind in Rhodes “more than a hundred noble men and good cavaliers”, to assist the Genoese in defending that fine island, which they had recently captured, against the Empire of Nice. We are told that the Morea was at this time the favourite resort of the chivalry of France, and the French soldiers, who had been collected for the defence of Constantinople in 1238, had been content to stop short in Achaia and remain there. But all this brilliance was not merely on the surface. Trade flourished, and “merchants”, says Sanudo, “went up and down without money, and lodged in the houses of the bailies, and on their simple note of hand people gave them money”. Commercial travellers from Florence and Siena visited Andravida, and Urban IV could write to the bishops of Achaia to send him some of those silken garments for which Greece was still famed. For a prince so martial and a state so important, where commercial transactions were constant, a local coinage had become a necessity. William therefore availed himself of his meeting with the King of France in Cyprus to obtain the right of coining money from that sovereign. “Sire”, said the soldierly prince, “you are a mightier lord than I, and can lead as many men as you like where you please without money; I cannot do so”. The king thereupon permitted him to coin tournois, such as circulated in France. The Achaian mint was established in the castle of Chloumoutsi, which thus obtained its Italian name of Castel Tornese, and ere long coins bearing the princely title, the church of St Martin of Tours, and the inscription De Clarencia, were issued from it. For more than a century it continued working, and many thousands of its tournois have been found in Greece.

Unfortunately, William’s ambition, not content with ruling over a realm compared with which that of ancient Sparta was small, soon plunged the country into another, and this time a fratricidal, war. Geoffrey II on his deathbed had urged his brother to marry again, and secure the succession in the family; and William had hastened to follow his advice. His second wife, Carintana, was one of the Dalle Carceri of Euboea, and baroness in her own right in the northern third of that island. When she died in 1255, her husband claimed her barony as her heir, and actually had coins minted with the superscription “Triarch of Negroponte”. Although the Prince of Achaia was suzerain of the island, neither the other triarchs nor the Venetian bailie were desirous that so restless a man should become their neighbour. One of the triarchs, Guglielmo da Verona, was, indeed, the prince’s kinsman, for he was married to Villehardouin’s niece; but he could not forget that, by a former marriage, he was titular king of Salonika, and therefore a great personage in heraldic lists, and he was rich enough to keep 400 knights at his court. Accordingly, he and his fellow-triarch, Narzotto dalle Carceri, placed his nephew Grapella in possession of the disputed barony. They then concluded treaties with the Venetian bailie, promising to wage “lively war” against the Prince of Achaia, and to make no peace with him without the consent of the republic, which, in return, was to consult them before ceasing hostilities. The castle on the bridge of Negroponte was to be entrusted to the Venetians, who were also to receive a strip of land from St Mary of the Crutched Friars down towards the castle and two other strips in the vicinity. The former pacts of 1209 and 1216 were renewed, with the exception that, instead of the payment of 700 hyperperi from each of the triarchs, Venice should take all the tolls, the triarchs being, however, exempt from paying them. A further treaty localised the war to the Empire of Romania.

The Prince of Achaia was not the man to be deterred by coalitions. Using his late wife’s Euboean barony as a base of operations, he summoned the two triarchs, Narzotto and Guglielmo, to appear before him, their suzerain, at Oropos; and, so strong was the feudal tie which bound a vassal to his lord, that they obeyed his summons, and were at once arrested, remaining in captivity till after the capture of their own captor. Their wives, accompanied by many knights of the Dalle Carceri clan, now numerous in the island, went weeping to the Venetian bailie, with dishevelled hair and clothes rent, and implored his aid. The bailie, moved alike by policy and sympathy, at the spectacle of the two noble dames, consented; but the energy of the Achaian prince had already secured the town of Negroponte. Thrice the capital changed hands, till finally, after a siege of thirteen months, the Venetians succeeded in re-occupying it, and then inflicted a crushing defeat on the famous cavalry of Achaia. Mean­while, in spite of the wise warnings of Pope Alexander IV, who urged the prince to release his prisoners and make peace “lest the Greeks should become more powerful in the Empire of Romania”, the war had spread to the Morea and continental Greece. Guillaume de la Roche, brother of the “Great Lord” of Athens, though by marriage he had become baron of Veligosti and Damala (the ancient Troezen), and therefore a vassal of the Prince of Achaia, had actively assisted the Venetians at the siege of Negroponte, and they had granted him lands in their territory, and had promised him an annuity in case his Peloponnesian barony was confiscated. He had set his name as a witness to the arrangements between Venice and the triarchs, and one of those treaties had actually been “done at Thebes”, in the capital of his brother, Guy I. On the other hand, the Prince of Achaia had summoned the “Great Lord” of Athens, his vassal for Argos and Nauplia, to assist him in the conflict against the Euboean barons and their Venetian allies. It was even pretended that Attica and Boeotia, the marquisate of Boudonitza, and the three Euboean baronies, had been placed by Boniface of Salonika under the suzerainty of the first Frank ruler of Achaia at the time of the Conquest. The result of such a claim, recorded by the author of the Chronicle of the Morea, perhaps for the glorification of his favourite hero William, perhaps by an anachronism pardonable in one who wrote in the following century, would have been to establish the supreme authority of that ambitious prince over all the Frankish states of Greece. But, as we have seen, the suzerainty over the three Euboean baronies and Boudonitza had been given much more recently to William’s brother by the Emperor Baldwin II, while the Sire of Athens owed him allegiance for Nauplia and Argos alone. Although Guy I had married one of William’s nieces, he not only refused to assist him, but aided his enemies, dispatching troops to Negroponte and Corinth, and sending out his galleys from Nauplia to prey upon any passing ships, without regard for the rights of neutrals. Another Frank potentate, also married to a niece of William, Thomas II de Stromoncourt, Lord of Salona, joined the Sire of Athens and Ubertino Pallavicini, Marquis of Boudonitza, against the Prince of Achaia, while Geoffroy de Bruyères, baron of Karytaina, “the best soldier in all the realm of Romania”, who had fought for his prince in Negroponte, after a struggle between conflicting ties of kinship, deserted his liege lord and uncle, William, for the side of his father-in-law, Guy. Thus a baron’s league was formed against the prince, whose pretensions were doubtless resented and feared by all the Frank states of Northern Greece. William was not, however, without allies. The Genoese, ever ready to injure their great commercial rivals the Venetians, and grateful for the assistance which the knights of Achaia had rendered them in Rhodes, manned his galleys, which darted out from behind the rock of Monemvasia when the lion-banner was seen out at sea; while Othon de Cicon, though a relative of the Sire of Athens, held the fine castle of Karystos and made the difficult passage of the Doro Channel even still more difficult for Venetian vessels. William displayed his restless activity in all directions. At one moment he was besieging the Venetians in Coron; at another, he was nearly captured on a rash raid into Attica. Then he resolved on a regular invasion of the Athenian state. Accordingly, in 1258, he mustered all the forces of the principality at Nikli, near the classic Tegea, crossed the isthmus, and, forcing the narrow and ill-famed road which leads along the rocky coast of the Saronic Gulf towards Megara, met Guy’s army at the pass of Mount Karydi, “the walnut mountain”, which lies three hours from Megara on the way to Thebes. There took place the first battle between Frankish Athens and Frankish Sparta; the Sire of Athens was routed; and, leaving many of his warriors dead on the field, took refuge with his allies behind the ramparts of Thebes. Thither William followed him, but the prayers of the archbishop and the arguments of his own nobles, who pleaded for peace between relatives and old comrades-in-arms, prevailed upon him to desist from an assault upon his enemy’s capital. Guy thereupon promised to appear before the High Court of the barons of Achaia and to perform any penalty which it should inflict upon him for having borne arms against the prince.

The High Court met at Nikli, and the Sire of Athens appeared before it, escorted by all his chivalry, a brave sight to all beholders. If William had expected that his barons would humiliate his rival, he was disappointed. They decided that they were not Guy’s peers, and therefore were incompetent to be his judges. They accordingly proposed to refer the matter to Louis IX of France, the most chivalrous and saintly monarch of that age, and the natural protector of the French barons of the East, many of whom had seen him in Cyprus a few years before. William, a powerful prince, but still only primus inter pares by feudal law, felt bound to accept their decision, and, summoning Guy to his presence and that of his great lords, bade him go in person for judgment to the King of France. Then came the turn of the traitor Geoffroy de Bruyères. With a halter round his neck, the proud baron of Karytaina came before his prince. Moved by the sad spectacle of so famous a warrior in the guise of a criminal, his fellow-barons flung themselves on their knees, and implored William’s mercy for his erring vassal and kinsman. The prince was long obdurate, for Geoffroy was his undoubted subject, and had been guilty of the gravest of all feudal offences, that of aiding the enemies of his liege lord. At last he yielded, and restored to the culprit his forfeited fief, but only for life, unless he left direct heirs of his body. Then the parliament broke up with jousts, tourneys, and tilting at the ring on the fair plain of Nikli.

When the spring came, Guy started for Faris, leaving his brother Othon as his deputy at Thebes, and stopping some time on the way in his native Burgundy to see his relatives and borrow money “for the needs of his land. Louis IX received him graciously, and also the messenger of Prince William, who bore the written statement of the case. The king referred the matter to a parliament at Paris, which decided that Guy, being a vassal of William, had been guilty of a technical offence in taking up arms against his lord, but that as he, in fact, had never paid homage to the Prince, he was not liable to the forfeiture of his fief. Moreover, it was considered that his long and costly journey to France was a quite sufficient punishment for any offence he might have committed. The king then told him that he must not return empty-handed, and asked what mark of royal favour he desired. Guy replied that he would prize above all else the title of “Duke of Athens”, for which, he told the king, there was an ancient precedent. Neither Guy nor his predecessor had ever borne it, but the Byzantine historian, Nikephoros Gregoras, writing in the next century, tells a fabulous story, that in the time of Constantine the Great the governor of the Peloponnese had received the rank of “Prince”, the commander of Attica and Athens, the title of “Grand-Duke”, and his fellow of Boeotia and Thebes that of “First Lord”; this last name, he adds, “has now been corrupted by an alteration of the first syllable into ‘Great Lord’, while the ruler of Athens has dropped his adjective and become ‘Duke’, instead of Grand-Duke’.” There is, however, no trace of such an official at Athens in Byzantine times; though the Latin word “Duke” was sometimes used, even by Greek writers, as the equivalent of their own word “General”. But it is quite natural that the Sire of Athens, in asking for a title which would put him on a level with the Duke of Naxos, should, after the manner of the newly-ennobled in all ages, seek for some venerable precedent for it. Louis IX willingly conferred it upon him, and the title, borne by his successors for two centuries, has become famous in literature, as well as in history, from its bestowal, by a pardonable anacronism, upon Theseus by Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and upon Menelaos by the Catalan chronicler, Ramon Muntaner. All of these authors, except Shakespeare, were the contemporaries, one of them —Muntaner— the friend, of Athenian dukes. Accordingly, they transferred to the legendary founder of Athens the style of its mediaeval rulers, whose names were well known in Italy, and thence passed to England.

During Guy’s absence in France, great events had happened in Greece. The success of William at Karydi, coupled with another victory of his forces over the Venetians at Oreos, in North Euboea, had induced the doge to authorise the bailie of Negroponte to make terms with the victor. But suddenly, by a turn of fortune and his own rashness, the victorious prince had himself become a prisoner of war. Since the death of his wife, Carintana, William had been looking out for a third consort, who would give him an heir, and in 1259, his choice fell upon Anna, daughter of Michael II, the ambitious Despot of Epiros. The alliance involved him in the politics of that troubled state.

The peace between the two Greek states of Nice and Epiros had been of short duration. Abetted by that restless intriguer, blind old Theodore, Michael had, in 1251, once more resumed hostilities. But the rapid successes of Vatatzes in Macedonia, and the defection of his own supporters, convinced him that he had better temporise. His enemy accepted the suggestion that they should come to terms, and sent the historian George Akropolita as one of his envoys to Larissa to arrange conditions of peace. The historian returned to his master with old Theodore in chains, and the varied career of that versatile and ambitious man closed in the dungeons of Nice. But Michael II was only waiting for a favourable opportunity to renew the attack, and it was not long in coming. After the death of Vatatzes, in 1254, his son and successor, Theodore II Laskaris, had invested the worthy Akropolita with the chief civil command in his European provinces. The historian soon found that his post was no sinecure. The Despot of Epiros had been further incensed by being compelled to cede the valuable fortress of Durazzo, on the Adriatic, which his predecessors had taken and strengthened, as the price of his son’s tardy and long-delayed marriage with the daughter of the new emperor. He accordingly excited the Albanians to rise, and blockaded the historian in the strong castle of Prilap. The treachery of the garrison opened the gates to the besiegers, and the historian, in his turn, was led off in chains to the prison of Arta, where he had ample leisure for meditating that literary revenge, which colours his history of his own times. Michael was now master of all the country to the west of the river Vardar, and the death of the Emperor Theodore II, in 1258, and the succession of a child to the throne of Nice, might well encourage his aspirations to displace the tottering Latin Empire of Romania and reign at Byzantium. An alliance between so important a ruler and the powerful Prince of Achaia seemed to both parties to have much to commend it. William doubtless thought that a Greek marriage would please his own Greek subjects, whom it was the traditional policy of his dynasty to conciliate; Michael II was anxious to have the assistance of the famous chivalry of Achaia in his coming struggle with the Nicene Empire for the hegemony of the Greek world. Determined to make himself doubly sure, the Despot, whose daughters, like Montenegrin princesses in our own day, were a valuable political asset, had given Anna’s lovely sister, Helene, to Manfred the ill-fated king of the two Sicilies, who received as her dowry several valuable places in Epiros, which had once belonged to his Norman predecessors, and the splendid island of Corfù, which he entrusted to his admiral, Filippo Chinardo, a Cypriot Frank of distinguished bravery. Indeed, it is probable, as a Byzantine historian suggests, that Michael’s two sons-in-law were both scheming to carve out for themselves a vast domain in Northern Greece at his expense. William may well have aspired to revive the Lombard kingdom of Salonika, and rule from Macedonia to Matapan.

It was not long before the wily Despot had to invoke the aid of his new allies. The real power of the Nicene Empire was now wielded by a strong man, Michael Palaiologos, scion of a family which is first mentioned about the middle of the eleventh century, and which was connected by marriage with the imperial house of Comnenos. The great-grandson of Alexios III on his mother’s side, Michael Palaiologos had been more than once accused of aiming at the purple, and his strong character and great experience of affairs quite overshadowed the child in whose name he ruled. He had already held command in Europe, like his father before him, and was therefore well acquainted with the character and designs of his namesake of Epiros. One of his first acts as regent was to despatch his brother John with a force against the Despot, while, by the agency of a special envoy, he gave the latter the option of peace on very favourable terms. But Michael of Epiros, relying on the two great alliances which he had contracted, replied with insolence to the proposals of Palaiologos, who had now mounted, as Michael VIII, the imperial throne of Nice. The envoy returned to his master after a sinister threat that ere long the Despot should feel the force of the imperial arm. Embassies sent from Nice to the Sicilian and Achaian courts proved equally futile. Accordingly the emperor ordered his brother to march without delay against the rival who dared to reject his offers. Meanwhile, Manfred had responded to his father-in-law’s appeal by sending him 400 German knights in full armour, and William came in person at the head of a force, mainly consisting of Franks, but also containing a contingent of Moreot Greeks. So great was the prince’s prestige after his recent successes, that the troops of Euboea and of the Archipelago, Count Richard of Cephalonia, Thomas II of Salona and Ubertino of Boudonitza, and a body of soldiers from Thebes and Athens under the command of Guy’s brother and deputy Othon, did not fail this time to rally round the flag of Achaia. Never had the prince commanded so fine an army, gathered from every quarter of Frankish Greece.

After spending some time in plundering, the allied army met the imperial forces on the plain of Pelagonia, in Western Macedonia, in 1259 —a spot where, centuries before, the Spartan Brasidas had encountered the Illyrian hosts. The imperial general had wisely hired foreign troops to contend against the dreaded Frankish chivalry— 300 German horsemen under the Duke of Carinthia, 1500 mounted archers from Hungary, and 600 more from Servia, a detachment of Bulgarians, a large number of Anatolian warriors accustomed to fight against the Turks, 500 Turkish mercenaries, and 2000 light Cuman bowmen on horseback. Various devices were adopted to exaggerate the size of his army, and a scout was sent privily to spread discord between the Franks and Greeks. The lack of harmony between the unnatural allies was increased by a private quarrel between the Prince of Achaia and John, the Despot’s bastard, who complained that some of the Frank knights had paid unwarrantable attentions to his beautiful wife, and received for reply from the prince, instead of justice, an insulting allusion to his birth. The bastard, in revenge, deserted to the enemy at a critical moment; the Despot, warned of his son’s intended treachery, fled in the night, and the Franks were left alone to face the foe. For an instant even William’s courage seems to have failed him; but the reproaches of that stalwart baron, Geoffroy de Bruyeres, prevailed on him to lead his diminished but now homogeneous army against the heterogeneous host of Greeks, Hungarians, Germans, Slavs, and Turks. The Franks fought with all the courage of their race; picking out the Germans as their most dangerous enemies, they fell upon them with lance and sword; Geoffroy de Bruyeres slew the Duke of Carinthia in single combat, and the German knights dropped before the sweep of his blade “like grass upon a meadow.” The Greek commander then ordered his Hungarian and Cuman bowmen to shoot at the horses of the Frankish knights now inextricably mingled with his German mercenaries, whose lives he cheerfully sacrificed. The archers did their work well; horseman after horseman fell; Geoffroy de Bruyeres, “the flower of the Achaian chivalry”, was taken prisoner, and the prince, while charging to the rescue of his nephew, was unhorsed. The prince tried to conceal himself under a heap of straw, but was discovered and identified by his prominent front teeth. Only the rank and file escaped, and of those, only some evaded the clutches of the predatory Wallachs of Thessaly, who were devoted to the person of the treacherous bastard, and made their way back to the Morea. William and the other principal prisoners were led to the tent of the Greek commander, where the prince’s knowledge of the Greek tongue, which he spoke with native fluency, enabled him to hold his own against the reproaches of his conqueror. Sending his prisoners to his brother’s court at Lampsakos, the Greek general followed up his victory in Epiros and Thessaly. While one detachment of his army besieged Joannina and occupied Arta, the two chief towns of the Despotat, releasing the unhappy Akropolita from prison, he marched with the Despot’s bastard through Thessaly to Neopatras, and thence to Thebes. He was engaged in plundering that city, when the bastard again turned traitor and fled to his father, who had taken refuge with his family in the islands of Leukas and Cephalonia. The house of Angelos was popular in Epiros, where the natives regarded the Greeks of Nice as interlopers, and the tactless conduct of the victors soon aroused the discontent of the vanquished; Arta declared for its old Despot, the siege of Joannina was raised, and the imperial commander thought it prudent to abandon Boeotia and return home.

The versatile Despot of Epiros speedily recovered from the results of this campaign. A year after the battle of Pelagonia he received a fresh contingent of troops from his son-in-law Manfred, with which his eldest son, Nikephdros, severely defeated the imperial general, Aldxios Strategopoulos, and took him prisoner. A brief truce followed, Strategdpoulos was released, and was thus enabled to cover himself with glory by capturing Constantinople from the Latins in the following year. But the captor of Constantinople, by a sudden change of fortune which astounded the Byzantine historians and led them to compare him with Cyrus, Hannibal, and Pompey, again became the captive of the crafty Despot, whom he had a second time attacked, and was sent to the custody of Manfred, where he remained till he was exchanged for the King of Sicily’s sister, Anna. Three years later, the emperor’s brother John, the victor of Pelagonia, once more attacked his old enemy with such success that Michael II had to invoke the diplomatic aid of his saintly wife, who went to Constantinople with her second son John, and left him there as a hostage for her husband’s good behaviour. The expostulations of the patriarch, who rebuked the emperor for making war against a fellow-Christian —that is to say, a member of the Orthodox Church— combined, with the expense and difficulty of these Epirote campaigns, to bring about peace; and the Despot’s eldest son, Nikephoros, now a widower, received the emperor’s niece as a wife and a pledge of union between the two Greek states.

But, while the battle of Pelagonia had thus only a passing effect upon the fortunes of Epiros, it was a fatal blow to the Frankish principality of Achaia. It was the primary cause of all the subsequent disasters, for the capture of the prince gave the astute Emperor Michael the means of gaining a foothold in the Morea, from which, little by little, Byzantine rule was extended once more over the whole peninsula. Such was the result of Villehardouin’s rashness. Well, indeed, might the troubadours of France lament the captivity of their hero, and mournfully prophesy the loss of Achaia after that of Constantinople.

When the prisoners had arrived, the emperor summoned them before him, and offered them money for the purchase of broad lands in France, on condition that William should cede to him the Morea. The prince replied that it was not in his power to cede that, in which he had only a qualified share. He explained that the land had been conquered by his father and his father’s comrades, that the Prince of Achaia was no absolute monarch, but was bound in all matters to consult the opinion of his peers, and to observe the agree­ments made at the time of the Conquest. The emperor, irritated at this plain statement of the principles of feudalism, ordered his Varangian guards, among whom there may have been some of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, to take the prince and his companions back to their prison. For three long years they remained prisoners, while their captor dealt the Latin Empire of Romania its death-blow, and restored the Greek throne from Nice to Constantinople.

The capture of the prince and so many of his barons had deprived the principality of all its leading men. Accordingly, the princess and those Franks who remained, in order to prevent a threatening rising of the Greeks, wrote to the Duke of Athens, who was still in France, offering him the post of Bailie of Achaia. Rarely had the wheel of fortune turned with such rapidity; the victor of Karydi was now a prisoner, the vanquished whom he had haled before the High Court at Nikli as a rebellious vassal was now a Duke of Athens and administrator of his conqueror’s estates. He had been detained in France owing to the troublesome complaints of some French merchants and pilgrims to King Louis, that they had been injured by the Athenian privateers which issued from the port of Nauplia, and had not received compensation from the duke. Guy now settled this matter, and started for the Morea. His first act on landing was to order the liberation of the two imprisoned triarchs of Euboea; and he commemorated his governorship of Achaia and his acquisition of the ducal title by striking a coin at the mint of Glarentza, the earliest coin of an Athenian duke which we possess. He was engaged in administering the country to the general satisfaction, when the startling news of the recapture of Constantinople by the Greeks and of the flight of the last Latin emperor, Baldwin II, reached him. The fugitive first stopped at Negroponte, where his wife had stayed to raise money from the wealthy citizens thirteen years before, and where the three barons received him with the magnificent honours due to his exalted rank. Thence he proceeded to Thebes and Athens, where he found the duke waiting to greet him. In the Castle of the Kadmeia and on the ancient Akropolis, which, fifty years earlier, had welcomed another Latin emperor in his hour of triumph, there gathered round their feudal chief, now a landless exile, the barons who had survived the fatal day of Pelagonia and the prisons of Palaiologos. The Duchess of Naxos came with her ladies to offer presents to him, and Othon de Cicon, lord of Karystos and Aigina, who had played so active a part in the Eubcean war, and had lent him 5000 hyperperi in his sore need. Baldwin had nothing but barren titles and a few relics, the remnant of the Byzantine sacristies, to bestow. But he was generous of knighthoods, and he liquidated his debt to the baron of Karystos with an arm of St John the Baptist, which the pious Othon subsequently presented to the Burgundian Abbey of Citeaux. Thus, on the venerable rock of Athens was played the last pitiful scene in the brief drama of the Latin Empire of Constantinople. Then Baldwin sailed from the Piraeus for Monemvasia; and, leaving behind him not a few of his noble retinue in the Morea, set out for Europe, to solicit aid for his lost cause and to play the sorry part of an emperor in exile.

The “new Constantine”, as Michael Palaiologos styled himself after the recovery of Constantinople, was now doubly anxious to restore Greek rule in the Morea also. Three years of confinement had somewhat broken William’s Frankish pride; some of his fellow-captives had died in prison; and, as Michael VIII was now more moderate in his demands, a compromise was possible. The emperor desired Argos and Nauplia to be included among the places to be ceded to him; but his prisoner could plead that they were the fief of the Duke of Athens. William might, however, conscientiously agree to the surrender of the three castles of Monemvasia, Maina, and Mistrzi, which he had either captured or built himself, and which were therefore his to bestow. The contemporary Greek historian, Pachymeres, anxious to magnify the emperor, adds that the prince was to become Michael’s vassal for the rest of the principality and received from his suzerain the title of Grand Seneschal, an obvious attempt at explaining, in a way flattering to Greek vanity, the origin of an office which the Latin emperors had conferred upon the rulers of Achaia. In return for the three castles, William and his comrades were to be set at liberty, and the prince swore a most solemn oath over the baptismal font of the emperor’s infant son that he would never levy war against Michael again. Geoffroy de Bruyeres, who was a special favourite of the emperor, was released from prison and sent to arrange for the transference of the castles to the imperial authorities.

Guy of Athens received the message with grave misgivings. He saw that the three castles would be a lever with which the emperor could shake the Frankish power in the peninsula, and that Monemvasia in particular would provide him with an admirable landing-place for his troops. As was his duty, he convened the High Court of the principality at Nikli, the same spot where he had himself stood to await his sentence. But this time it was a ladies’ parliament which met on the plain to decide the future of the state—for all the men of mark had been slain at Pelagonia or were in prison at Constantinople, and their wives or widows had to take their places at the council. Only two of the stronger sex were present, the Chancellor of Achaia, Leonardo of Veroli in Latium, and Pierre de Vaux, “the wisest head in all the principality”. It was only natural that with an assembly so constituted sentiment should have had more weight than reasons of state. In vain the Duke of Athens argued in scriptural language, that “it were better that one man should die for the people rather than that the other Franks of the Morea should lose the fruit of their fathers’ labours”; in vain, to show his disinterestedness, he offered to take the prince’s place in prison or pledge his own duchy to provide a ransom. The men were, we are told, unwilling to cede the castles, justly surmising that this might be the ruin of the country. But the conjugal feelings of the ladies who formed the majority found a convenient legal excuse for the surrender of the three castles in the technical argument that they were the prince’s to give or to keep, and Guy, anxious not to lay himself open in Greece and at the French court to the charge of cherishing malice against his late enemy, finally yielded. The castles were forthwith surrendered, and two noble dames, Marguerite, daughter of Jean de Neuilly, Marshal of Achaia, and the sister of Jean de Chauderon, the Grand Constable of the principality and nephew of the prince, were sent as hostages to Constantinople.

As soon as he was released, William set out for Negroponte, where he was received with great honour, and where the Duke of Athens met him and escorted him to Thebes. There, in the house of the Archbishop Henry, a treaty of peace between the Prince of Achaia of the one part, and Venice and the triarchs of the other part, was concluded. The treaty of Thebes practically restored the status quo before the death of Carintana, which had been the occasion for the war. William recognised Guglielmo da Verona, Narzotto dalle Carceri, and Grapella as triarchs, and they, in turn, recognised him as their suzerain, and promised to destroy the castle of Negroponte at their own expense, retaining its site for themselves. Venice kept the strips of land conceded to her by the triarchs in 1256, as well as the right of levying the tolls; but the prince, as well as the triarchs with their Greek and Latin retainers, and all clerics were exempted from paying them, and the house of his agent at Negroponte was restored to him. Finally, the republic engaged to cancel all fiefs granted by her bailie since the death of Carintana, and received from the prince the right of free trade and personal security for all her subjects throughout his estates. Thus, of all the parties, Venice had gained least by the Euboean war. She had incurred great expense for no special result, and the island had suffered from the ravages of the soldiers. The Venetian Government felt the failure of its Eubcean policy so strongly, that it prohibited its bailies in Euboea from interfering in questions of feudal rights, a salutary provision which long remained in force.

The combatants had good reason for making up their differences. They were all alarmed at the restoration of the Greek Empire in Constantinople, and Venice feared even more than the Greeks her ancient rival Genoa, which had just become their ally. A year earlier, shortly before the Latin Empire fell, the Genoese had concluded a treaty with the Emperor Michael VIII at Nymphaion in Lydia, which by a stroke of the pen transferred from Venice to themselves the monopoly of the Levantine trade. The Ligurian republic, which had taken no part in the labours of the Fourth Crusade, was now granted, in return for its pledge to make war against Venice, free trade throughout the Greek empire and in the Venetian islands of Crete and Negroponte, which the emperor hoped to conquer. The Genoese received permission to found colonies at Anaea, Lesbos, and in the rich mastic-island of Chios, which had been captured from the Latin Empire by Vatatzes fourteen years earlier; they obtained the city of Smyrna, and were assigned after the conquest of Constantinople, the suburb of Galata as their special quarter. Finally, the Black Sea was closed to their enemies. From the treaty of Nymphaion in 1261 dates the growth of Genoa as a Levantine power; from that moment she became an important factor in the Eastern question.

The Prince of Achaia might reasonably imagine that he had nothing to fear from the Genoese, for they had been his allies against Venice, and they had expressly stipulated at Nymphaion that they should not be called upon to make war upon him. But he knew full well that he would ere long have to grapple with the Byzantine Empire in his own land. The Emperor Michael VIII attached much importance to the new Byzantine province in the Morea, which not only furnished him with excellent light troops, whom he settled at Constantinople and employed as marines on his ships, but was also a stepping-stone towards the reconquest of the whole peninsula. An imperial viceroy, called “Captain of the Territory in the Peloponnese and its Castles”, was appointed, at first for an annual term; a marshal was instituted, as in the Frankish principality; and a Byzantine hierarchy grew up around the viceregal residence at Mistra. It was there­fore obvious that ere long war must ensue between the prince and the imperial viceroy. From 1262, the date of the cession of the fortresses, began the decline of Frankish power in the Peloponnese. Henceforth the rivalry between the Franks of the principality and the Greeks of the adjoining Byzantine province led to almost constant conflicts, which devastated the country, especially as mercenaries were usually employed on both sides, who, in default of their pay, pillaged the hapless inhabitants without mercy. Moreover, in the neighbouring Byzantine districts the discontented Greek subjects of the Franks found support and encouragement; the unity of the Morea was destroyed almost as soon as it had been established, and by the same wilful ruler, and the way was thus ultimately prepared for the Turkish conquest.

In 1263, a year after the peace had been signed in his capital of Thebes, Guy I of Athens died. During his long reign he had experienced various extremes of fortune, and had enjoyed the privilege of heaping coals of fire upon the head of the foe who had defeated him. He had emerged from his defeat with honour, and he was able to leave to his elder son John, not only a ducal title, but a state which was more prosperous than any other in Greece.

Thus the seventh decade of the thirteenth century marks the close of an era in the history of the Latins in the Levant. The Latin Empire has fallen; a Greek emperor rules once more on the Bosporos, and has gained a foothold in the Morea; a rival of his own race faces him in Epiros, but he has learned the art of dividing the Latins against each other, and has found in Genoa a makeweight against Venice.

CHAPTER V

THE GREEK REVIVAL (1262-1278)