No More Learning

Practically the whole of Frankish Greece took sides in the conflict, despite
the wise warnings of the Pope, anxious lest the cause of the Church
should be weakened by this division among its champions at a time when
their national enemy had grown stronger. In 1258, at the pass of Mt
Karýdi, between Megara and Thebes, Frankish Athens first met Frankish
Sparta face to face. The battle of “the Walnut Mountain ” was a
victory for the latter; the Athenian army retreated upon Thebes, before
whose walls the prayers of his nobles prevailed upon the victor to make
peace with their old comrades. Guy of Athens, summoned to appear
before the High Court of Achaia at Níkli near Tegea for his alleged
breach of the feudal code, was sent by the Frankish barons before
the throne of Louis IX of France, whose authority they recognised
as supreme in a case of such delicacy. The question was referred by
the king to a parliament at Paris, which decided that Guy had been,
indeed, guilty of a technical offence in taking up arms against his lord,
CH, XY.


## p. 442 (#484) ############################################

442
Battle of Pelagonía
but that, as he had never actually paid him homage, his fief could
not be forfeited. His long journey to France was considered sufficient
punishment for his disobedience. Guy did not return empty-handed;
asked by the king what mark of royal favour he would prefer, he begged,
and obtained, the title of Duke, which would raise him to the heraldic
level of the Duke of Naxos, and for which, he said, there was an ancient
precedent at Athens. The style of “Duke of Athens ” was not only
borne by his successors for two centuries, but has been immortalised by
Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, who by a pardonable
anachronism transferred to Theseus the title of the French, Sicilian,
Aragonese, and Florentine rulers of the medieval city.
The history of Frankish Greece is full of sudden reverses of fortune,
by which the victor of one day became the vanquished of the next.
Guy I had left his country a defeated and an accused man, while his
successful rival was the practical leader of the Latin Orient; he returned
with the glamour of the ducal title to find his conqueror and feudal
lord a prisoner of the Greeks. During Guy's absence, William of
Achaia, by his third marriage with Anna, daughter of the Despot
Michael II of Epirus, had become involved in the tortuous politics of
that restless sovereign. It was Michael's design to anticipate the Greeks
of Nicaea in their projected re-conquest of Constantinople, and he was
anxious to secure his position by marrying one of his daughters to the
powerful Prince of Achaia and another to Manfred, the ill-fated Hohen-
staufen King of Sicily. This latter alliance by making Corfù a part of
the Epirote princess's dowry led to the subsequent occupation of that
island by the Angevin conquerors of Naples. But the plans of the
crafty despot met with a serious obstacle in the person of Michael VIII
Palaeologus, who had usurped the Nicene throne and intended to make
himself master of Byzantium, and who ordered his brother to punish
the insolence of his Epirote rival. In 1259 the hostile Greek forces met
on the plain of Pelagonía in Western Macedonia; William of Achaia
with a chosen band of Franks and a contingent of native troops was
among the despot's allies.
At a critical moment, a private quarrel
between the despot's bastard John and the Frankish prince led the in-
dignant Epirote to desert to the enemy; the despot, warned of his
son's intention, fled in the night, and the Franks were left to meet the
foe's attack. Despite their usual prowess in the field, the battle was
lost; the prince, unhorsed and hiding under a heap of straw, was recog-
nised by his prominent teeth and taken prisoner with many of his nobles.
Michael VIII saw at once that the capture of so distinguished a man
might be made the means of re-establishing Greek rule in the Morea,
and offered him and his fellow-prisoners their liberty and money for the
purchase of other lands in France in return for the cession of Achaia. The
prince, however, replied in the true spirit of feudalism, that the land con-
quered by the efforts of his father and his father's comrades was not his to


## p. 443 (#485) ############################################

The Ladies' Parliament
443
dispose of as if he were an absolute monarch. For three years he remained
in captivity, while the Latin Empire fell. Michael VIII restored the seat
of his government to Constantinople, and the Duke of Athens acted as
bailie of the widowed principality of Achaia. It was, indeed, a tragic
moment in the history of Greece when there devolved upon the Duke of
Athens the task of receiving the fugitive Latin Emperor Baldwin II as
his guest in the castle of the Cadmea at Thebes and upon the sacred
rock of the Athenian Acropolis.
Master of Constantinople, Michael VIII was more than ever anxious
to obtain a foothold in the Morea. He moderated his demands, in the
hope of exhausting the patience of his wearied captives, and he professed
that he would be content with the surrender of the three castles of
Monemvasía, Maina, and Mistrâ, which had been either captured or
built by the prince himself, and which were therefore his to bestow.
The question, vital for the future of the Frankish principality, was
referred to the high court at Níkli-a parliament consisting, with two
exceptions, of ladies only, for the fatal day of Pelagonía had left most of
the baronies in the possession of either the wives of the prisoners or the
widows of the slain. In an assembly so composed, reasons of state and
the scriptural argument employed by the Duke of Athens, that "it were
better that one man should die for the people rather than that the other
Franks of the Morea should lose the fruits of their fathers' labours," had
naturally less weight than sentiment and the voice of affection. In vain
Guy offered to pledge his own duchy to raise the ransom, or even to take
the prince's place in prison. The three castles—with the doubtful
addition of Geráki, which in any case soon became Greek—were sur-
rendered; the prisoners were released; the noble dames were sent as
hostages to Constantinople; and a Byzantine province, based on the
ceded Frankish quadrilateral, was established in the south-east corner of
the Morea, whose capital was Mistrâ, the seat of the “ Captain of the
Territory in the Peloponnese and its Castles. ” From the date of this
surrender in 1262 began the decline of Frankish power; thenceforth
friction between the rival elements in the population was inevitable;
and while the discontented Greeks of the still Frankish portion of the
peninsula found a rallying-point at Mistrâ, the Greek Emperor gained an
excellent recruiting-ground for his light troops and his marines. In a
word, the Ladies' Parliament of Níkli by destroying the unity of the State
paved the way for the Turkish conquest.
The solemn vow that William had taken never again to levy war
against the Greek Emperor was soon broken ; hostilities inevitably
followed the proximity of the rival residences of Mistrâ and Sparta, and
weary years of warfare depopulated the peninsula. One woman, we are
told, lost seven husbands one after the other, all killed in battle; such
was the drain upon the male portion of the inhabitants. The Greeks
imported Turkish mercenaries to aid them against the Frankish chivalry,
CH. XV.


## p. 444 (#486) ############################################

444
The Angevins and Greece
יל
and thus the future masters of the peninsula made their first appearance
there. But the Turks, unable to obtain their pay, deserted to the
Franks, whom they helped to win the battle of Makryplági on “the broad
hillside” now traversed by the railway to Kalamáta, receiving as a
reward lands on which to settle. Had the pride of the Franks then
allowed them to accept Michael VIII's proposal for a marriage between
his heir, the future Emperor Andronicus II, and the prince's elder
daughter Isabelle, the future of the Morea might have been different;
the two races might have been welded together ; Eastern and Western
Christendom might really have met in a firm alliance at Mistrâ; and
the Morea might perhaps have resisted the all-conquering Turks. But
racial prejudice would not have it so; and Isabelle was made the instru-
ment of uniting the fortunes of the principality with those of the
Neapolitan Angevins, whose founder, Charles I, in 1267, received from the
exiled Latin Emperor by the treaty of Viterbo the suzerainty of Achaia-
the beginning of many unsuspected woes for that beautiful land.
From the first, William, who had welcomed this new feudal tie with
the brother of the King of France, found that it constituted an obliga-
tion rather than a benefit. He was summoned to the aid of his Angevin
suzerain against Conradin at the battle of Tagliacozzo, and when his
daughter espoused the second son of Charles I the marriage contract
stipulated that, whether the Prince of Achaia left heirs or not, the
principality should belong to the house of Anjou, which since 1267
likewise held Corfù and aspired to be the dominant factor in south-
eastern, as it already was in southern, Europe. It was true that Nea-
politan troops assisted him in the desultory warfare against the Greeks
which, together with feudal disputes, occupied the rest of his reign.
But when in 1278 the third Villehardouin prince was laid to rest beside
his father and brother in the church of St James at Andravida, and the
male stock of the family thus came to an end, the evils of the Angevin
connexion began to be felt.
Elsewhere also the Greek cause had prospered at the expense of the
Latins. In the north, it was true, Hellenism had split up into three
divisions, for on the death of Michael II of Epirus his bastard, John I,
had established himself as independent ruler of Neopatras—a splendid
position on a spur of Mt Oeta, which commands the valley of the
Spercheus and faces the barrier of Mt Othrys, while the snows of
Tymphrestós bound the western horizon, beyond which lay the Epirote
dominions of the lawful heir, Nicephorus I. As the champion of
Orthodoxy at a time when Michael VIII was coquetting with the
Papacy in order to avert the Angevin designs on Constantinople, the
“Duke” of Neopatras, as the Franks called John Ducas Angelus, was
a formidable adversary of the restored Greek Empire. When the
imperial forces were sent to besiege his capital, he escaped by night and
fled to Duke John of Athens, who in 1263 had succeeded his father


## p. 445 (#487) ############################################

Career of Licario
445
Guy, and who assisted his namesake to rout them. But the imperial
commander inflicted a crushing defeat off Demetriás in the Gulf of Volo
upon a flotilla equipped by the Lombard barons of Euboea, while in
that and the other islands of the Aegean the meteoric career of
Licario, a knight of Kárystos, caused serious losses to the Latins.
Mortally offended by the proud Lombards, this needy adventurer, whose
family, like theirs, had come from Northern Italy, gratified his vengeance
by offering to subdue the long island to the Emperor's authority.
Michael VIII gladly welcomed so serviceable a henchman; Licario's
capture of Kárystos proved that he was no vain boaster after the
manner of the Franks; he received from his new master the whole of
Euboea as a fief, and soon one Lombard castle after another fell into his
hands. Knowing full well the rashness of his fellow-countrymen, he
easily entrapped one of the triarchs and Duke John of Athens, the
victor of Neopatras, outside the walls of Negropont, and had the satis-
faction of dragging them in chains to Constantinople. One of the most
dramatic scenes in Byzantine history is the passage which describes the
triumph of the once despised knight over his former superior, the rage
and fury of the triarch and his sudden death of chagrin at the spectacle
of the Emperor and Licario in confidential conversation. Ere long,
Licario became Lord High Admiral, and spread devastation throughout
the archipelago. Already the supposedly impregnable rock of Skopelos,
whose Latin lord had believed himself to be beyond the reach of
malicious fortune, had surrendered to the traitor of Kárystos; the rest
of the northern Sporades, and Lemnos, the fief of the Navigajosi, shared
its fate, and thenceforth remained in Greek hands till the fall of Con-
stantinople. Ten other Latin islands were lost for twenty years or more,
and two dynasties alone, those of Sanudo and Ghisi, survived this fatal
cruise in the Aegean, while the two Venetian Marquesses of Cerigo and
Cerigotto were driven from the southern March of Greece, and one of
the three Monemvasiote archons, Paul Monoyánnes, received the island
of Venus as a fief of the Greek Empire. Licario disappeared from
history as rapidly as he had risen ; we know not how he ended; but his
career left a permanent mark on Greek history. Thus Michael VIII had
obtained extraordinary success over the Franks. He had destroyed
the Latin Empire, recovered a large part of Negropont and many
other islands ; as early as 1256 his brother, as governor, had replaced
the independent Greek dynasty of Gabalâs in Rhodes? ; another viceroy
was established at Mistrâ; and both a Prince of Achaia and a Duke
of Athens had been his prisoners at Constantinople. But John of
Athens was released on much easier terms than William of Achaia ; for
Michael VIII feared to provoke the Duke of Neopatras, who was bound
by matrimonial ties to the ducal house of Athens and by those of
1 Miklosich and Müller, Acta et diplomata, vi. 198.
CH. XV.


## p. 446 (#488) ############################################

446
Nicholas II de St Omer
commerce to the royal house of Naples, the dreaded enemy of the
restored Greek Empire. Soon afterwards the gouty Duke of Athens
died, and William, his brother, reigned in his stead. A new era had
begun all over the Frankish world. The house of Anjou was now the
dominant factor in Greece. Isabelle de Villehardouin had been left a
widow before her father died, and by virtue of her marriage contract
Charles I of Naples and Sicily was now Prince as well as suzerain of
Achaia, and governed that principality, as he governed Corfù, by means
of deputies. While these two portions of Greece were his absolute
property, he was acknowledged as suzerain of both the Athenian duchy
and the palatine county of Cephalonia and Zante, and considered
himself as the successor of Manfred in Epirus as well as in the Corfiote
portion of the latter's Greek possessions. Alike in Corfù and Achaia
his early governors were foreigners, and the Corfiotes for the first time
found their national Church degraded and their metropolitan see
abolished by the zeal of the Catholic Angevins. In Achaia, where the
Frankish nobility was strongly attached to its privileges and looked upon
newcomers with suspicion, the rule of the Angevin bailies was so
unpopular that Charles was obliged to appoint one of the local barons,
and almost the first act of the regency which followed his death was to
confer the bailiwick upon Duke William of Athens, whose riches were
freely expended upon the defences of Greece. Upon his death in 1287 he
was succeeded at Athens by his infant son Guy II, under the regency
of
the duchess, a daughter of the Duke of Neopatras and the first Greek
to hold sway over the Athenians since the conquest, while in the Morea
a great Theban magnate, Nicholas II de St Omer, governed for Charles II
of Anjou. This splendour-loving noble, then married to the widowed
Princess of Achaia, had built out of the dowry of his first wife, a Princess
of Antioch, the noble castle of St Omer, of which one tower alone
remains, on the Cadmea of Thebes. An Emperor and his court could
have found room within its walls, which were decorated with frescoes repre-
senting the conquest of the Holy Land by the ancestors of the Theban
baron. Similar frescoes of the tale of Troy existed a century later in
the archiepiscopal palace of Patras, and may still be seen, on a smaller
scale, in the churches of Geráki. Besides the castle of St Omer,
Nicholas built that of Avarino on the north of the famous bay of
Navarino, the “harbour of rushes” as the Franks called it. And in the
north-west of the peninsula the mountains and castle of Santaméri still
preserve the name of this once-powerful family.
The barons soon, however, longed for a resident prince. In the
eleven years that had elapsed since the death of William of Achaia, they
had had six bailies—two foreigners, two of their own order, and two
great Athenian magnates. At last they represented to Charles II that
he should marry Princess Isabelle, “the Lady of the Morea,” who was
still living in widowhood at Naples, to Florent d'Avesnes, a young


## p. 447 (#489) ############################################

The Theban Court
447
לל
Flemish nobleman, brother of the Count of Hainault and great-nephew
of the conqueror of Euboea. Florent was already a favourite of the king,
who accordingly consented to the marriage, on condition that, if Isabelle
should survive her husband, neither she nor her daughter nor any other of
her female descendants should marry without the royal consent; the penalty
for so doing was to be the reversion of the principality to the Neapolitan
crown. This harsh stipulation was in the sequel twice enforced ; but in
the meanwhile all were too well satisfied with the alliance to consider its
disadvantages. In 1289 Florent married and became Prince of Achaia,
and for seven years the country had peace. The ravages of the Angevin
bailies were repaired, and in the words of the Chronicle of the Morea,
“all grew rich, Franks and Greeks, and the land waxed so fat and
plenteous in all things that the people knew not the half of what
they possessed. ” But the insolence of the Flemings, who had followed
their countryman to the Morea, another Epirote campaign, and a raid
by Roger Loria, the famous Admiral of Aragon, marred this happy
period of Moreote history. Unfortunately, in 1297, soon after the
peace with the Greeks of the Byzantine province had expired, Florent
died, leaving Isabelle again a widow with one small daughter, who was
affianced to Guy II, the young Duke of Athens, and rightly regarded as
“ the best match in all Romania. "
The pen of the contemporary Catalan chronicler, Ramón Muntaner,
who was personally acquainted with Guy, has left us a charming picture
of the Theban court at this period. Muntaner, who had seen many
lands, described him as one of the noblest men in all Romania who
was not a king, and eke one of the richest. ” His coming of age was a
ceremony long remembered in Greece, for every guest that came to do
him honour received gifts and favours from his hand, and his splendid
munificence to Boniface of Verona, a young cavalier from Euboea, who
was chosen to dub him a knight, struck the shrewd Catalan freebooter
as the noblest gift that any prince made in one day for many a long
year. Jongleurs and minstrels enlivened the ducal leisure ; in the noble
sport of the tournament the young duke knew no fear, and in the great
jousts at Corinth, in which more than a thousand knights and barons
took part, he did not shrink from challenging a veteran champion from
the West. Now for the first time we find the “ thin soil” of Attica
supplying Venice with corn, while the Theban looms furnished the
Pope with silken garments. The excellent French that was spoken at
Athens struck visitors from France, while long ere this the foreign
rulers of Greece had learned the language of their Greek subjects. One
Duke of Athens had even quoted Herodotus; one Archbishop of
Corinth had actually translated Aristotle. In short, the little Frankish
courts at the end of the thirteenth century were centres of prosperity,
chivalry, and a large measure of refinement, while the country was far
more prosperous than it had been in the later centuries of Byzantine
CH. XV.


## p. 448 (#490) ############################################

448
Philip of Taranto
rule, or than it was either beneath the Turkish yoke or in the early years
of its final freedom under Otto of Bavaria. Unhappily, the Athenian
duchy had scarcely reached its zenith, when the French dynasty fell for
ever beneath the blows of another and a ruder race.
The same year 1294 that made the young Duke of Athens his own
master strengthened the hold of the Angevins upon Greece. The
ambitious plans of Charles I for the conquest of Epirus and the restora-
tion of the Latin Empire at Constantinople had been baffled by the
defeat of his forces amid the mountains of the Greek mainland, and by
the Sicilian Vespers and the consequent establishment of the rival house
of Aragon on the throne of Sicily. Charles II attempted to recover by
diplomacy what his father had lost by arms, and in 1294 he transferred
all his claims to the Latin Empire, the actual possession of Corfù with
the castle of Butrinto on the opposite coast, as well as the suzerainty
over the principality of Achaia, the duchy of Athens, the kingdom of
Albania, and the province of Vlachia (as Thessaly was still called), to
his second son, Philip, Prince of Taranto. This much-titled personage,
who thus became the suzerain of all the Frankish states in Greece, there-
upon married, after the fashion of the luckless Manfred, whose sons were
still languishing in an Angevin dungeon, a fair Epirote princess, daughter
of the Despot Nicephorus I, who promised to give him as her dowry the
castle of Lepanto with three other fortresses, and, if the heir apparent
died, to make Philip Despot of Epirus, if the heir apparent lived, to
make him its suzerain. Philip of Taranto by these extraordinary
arrangements became the most important figure, at least on paper, in
the feudal hierarchy of medieval Greece. In this capacity he was called
upon to give his consent to the third marriage of Princess Isabelle
of Achaia, who, during the Papal Jubilee of 1300, had met in Rome
Philip, a young scion of the house of Savoy, and desired to wed so likely
a defender of her land. The Savoyard was reluctantly invested with the
principality by Charles II on behalf of his son, and thus inaugurated the
connexion of his famous family with the Morea. But Philip of Savoy,
though a valiant knight, looked upon his Greek principality as a means
of making money against the evil day when the Angevins, as he felt
convinced, would repent of having appointed him and when Philip of
Taranto would desire to take his place. He and his Piedmontese
followers became very unpopular; for, while they occupied the chief
strategic positions, he extorted loans and forced presents from his
subjects. Before long Charles II revived the legal pretext that
Isabelle's third marriage had been against his consent, and that she
had therefore forfeited her principality; and Philip's refusal to assist in
furthering the Angevin plans of conquest in Epirus gave him an excuse
for releasing the Achaian barons from their allegiance to one who had
broken the feudal law. Philip and Isabelle left the Morea for ever; an
estate on the Fucine lake was considered adequate compensation for the


## p. 449 (#491) ############################################

Walter of Brienne. The Catalans
149
loss of Achaia ; and, in 1311, the elder daughter of the last Ville-
hardouin prince, after having been the tool of Angevin diplomacy ever
since her childhood, died in Holland far from the orange-groves of
Kalamáta. Her husband remarried, and his descendants by this second
union continued to bear the name of “Achaia," and, in one case,
endeavoured to recover the principality which had for a few brief years
been his. Philip of Taranto, the lawful suzerain, became also the
reigning prince, but, after a short visit, he resorted to the old plan of
governing the Morea by means of bailies. Of these the first was Guy II,
“the good Duke" of Athens, whose wife, the elder daughter of Isabelle,
might be regarded by the old adherents of the family as the rightful
heiress of Achaia.
Guy had latterly become more influential than ever; for death had left
his mother's old home of Neopatras in the hands of a ninor, John II, and
the Duke of Athens had been appointed as regent there. Thus Athenian
authority extended from the Morea to Thessaly; the Greek nobles of
the North learnt French, and the coins of Neopatras bore Latin inscrip-
tions in token of the Latinisation of the land. Alas! the duke was
suffering from an incurable malady; he had no heir; and, when in
1308 he was laid to rest in the abbey of Daphní, the future destroyers
of the French duchy were already at hand. For the moment, however,
the future of Athens seemed to be assured. Guy's mother had married,
after his father's death, a member of the great crusading family of
Brienne, which had already provided a King of Jerusalem and Emperor
of Romania and held the less sonorous but more profitable dignity of
Counts of Lecce. By a previous marriage with an aunt of the duke,
his stepfather had had a son Walter, who now succeeded to his cousin's
dominions. Walter of Brienne possessed all the courage of his race ;
but he lacked the saving virtue of caution, and his recklessness at a
critical moment destroyed in a single day the noble fabric which the
wise statesmanship of the house of De la Roche had taken a century to
construct. So dramatic are the vicissitudes of the Latin Orient: the
splendid pageants of chivalry one day, absolute ruin the next.
The new conquerors of Athens came from an unexpected quarter.
During the struggle for Sicily between the houses of Aragon and Anjou,
Frederick II, the Aragonese king of the island, had gladly availed himself
of the support of a band of Catalans, whose swords were at the disposal
of anyone who would pay them.
them. When the peace came, they found it
necessary to seek employment elsewhere. At that moment the Greek
Emperor, Andronicus II, hard pressed by the growing power of the
Turks in Asia, was glad of such powerful assistance, and, to the detri-
ment of Greece, took the Catalans into his service. In the East they
repeated on a much larger scale their performances in the West; the
Emperor, like the King of Sicily, found them valuable but dangerous
allies, who quarrelled with his subjects, plundered his cities, and defied
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XV.
29


## p. 450 (#492) ############################################

450
Battle of the Cephisus
his orders. At last they constituted themselves into an organised
society, and set out to ravage Macedonia and Greece on their own
account.
When they had exhausted one district they moved on to
another, and by this locust-like progress they and some of their
converted Turkish auxiliaries entered the great Thessalian plain in
1309. The young Duke of Neopatras, now emancipated by the death
of Guy, was too feeble to oppose them till an imperial force compelled
them to move on towards the Eden which awaited them in the Duchy
of Athens. Walter of Brienne was at first by no means displeased with
their appearance.
He knew their language, which he had learnt as a
child in Sicily, and he thought that he might use them for the accom-
plishment of his immediate object—the restoration of Athenian influence
over the moribund principality of the Angeli at Neopatras. The
Catalans accepted his proposals, and in six months they had captured
more than thirty castles of northern Greece for their new employer.
Having thus rapidly obtained his end, Walter wished to dispense
with his instrument. He picked out the best of the Catalans for his
future use and then peremptorily bade the rest begone without the for-
mality of payment for their recent services. The Catalans, thus harshly
treated, remonstrated ; Walter vowed that he would drive them out by
force, and took steps to make good his threat. In the spring of 1311,
at the head of such a force as no Athenian duke had ever led before, a
force recruited from the baronial halls of the highlands and islands of
Hellas, he rode out to rout the vulgar soldiers of fortune who had dared
to defy him. Once again, after the lapse of many centuries, the fate of
Athens was decided on the great plain of Boeotia. The Catalans, who
knew that they must conquer or die, prepared the battlefield with con-
summate skill. They ploughed up the soft ground in front of them, and
irrigated it from the neighbouring Cephisus; nature herself assisted
their strategy, and, when the armies met on 15 March, the quaking bog
was concealed with an ample covering of verdure. Walter, impetuous
as ever, charged across the plain with a shout, followed by the flower of
the Frankish chivalry. But, long before they could reach the Catalan
camp, they plunged into the quagmire. Their heavy armour and the
harness of their horses made them sink yet deeper, till they stood
imbedded in the marsh, as incapable of motion as equestrian statues.
The Catalans plied them with missiles; the Turks completed the deadly
work; and such was the carnage of that fatal day, that only some four or
five of the Frankish knights are known to have survived. The duke
was among the slain, and his head, severed by a Catalan knife, was borne
to rest in his good city of Lecce long years afterwards. His duchy lay
at the mercy of the victors, for there was none left to defend it save the
heroic duchess. But, finding resistance vain, she escaped with her little
son to France, and thus avoided the fate of many another widowed dame
of high degree who became the wife of some rough Catalan, “unworthy,"


## p. 451 (#493) ############################################

Catalan organisation of Athens
451
in the phrase of Muntaner, “ to bear her wash-hand basin. ” As for the
Greeks, they made no effort to rise in defence of the old order against
their new masters; so shallow were the roots which French rule had
struck in that foreign land. Nor have the Burgundian Dukes of Athens
left many memorials of their sway. A few coins, a few arches, a few
casual inscriptions—such is the artistic patrimony which Attica and
Boeotia have preserved from this brilliant century of Latin culture.
The victors of the Cephisus were in one respect embarrassed by the
completeness of their victory. They realised that they had no one in
their own ranks of sufficient standing to become their ruler in the
new position which their success had thrust upon them. They accord-
ingly adopted the strange plan of offering the leadership to one of their
prisoners, Boniface of Verona, the favourite of Guy II, and a great man
in Euboea. Boniface was ambitious, but he felt that he could not, with
his wide connexions in the Frankish world, cominit such an act of baseness.
He, therefore, declined; but his fellow-prisoner, Roger Deslaur, a knight
of Roussillon who had already acted as intermediary between the late
Duke and the company, had no such obligations, and accepted the post
with the castle of Sálona and the hand of its widowed lady. A year
later, however, the Catalans realised that their precarious situation (for
all the Powers interested in Greece regarded them as interlopers)
required to be strengthened by the invocation of some powerful and
recognised sovereign as their protector. Their eyes naturally turned to
their old employer, Frederick II of Sicily, and they begged him to send
one of his sons to rule over them. Frederick gladly consented to a
proposal which would add lustre to his house, and for the next 65 years
the royal family of Sicily provided absentee dukes for the Catalan
duchy of Athens, while the real political authority was always wielded
by a vicar-general whom they appointed to represent them at the
capital of Thebes. A marshal for long existed by the side of this
official, till the two offices were first combined in the same person
and then that of marshal was allowed to drop. An elaborate system of
local government was created; representative institutions were adapted
from Barcelona, whose “ Customs” supplanted the “Assises of Ro-
mania," and whose language became the official as well as the ordinary
idiom. The Greeks were, till towards the close of Catalan rule, treated
as an inferior race, while the Orthodox Church occupied the same
humble position that it had held in the Burgundian times. Feudalism
lingered in a modified form ; but it had lost its glamour, and the
court of the Catalan vicar-general must have been a very drab and
prosaic affair after the magnificent pageants of the splendour-loving
Dukes of Athens, whose flag still floated over the Argive fortresses that
had been granted to Othon de la Roche a century before.
Having thus established a connexion with one of the acknowledged
states of Europe, the Catalan Grand Company began to extend its
CH. XV.
2942


## p. 452 (#494) ############################################

452
The Infant Ferdinand of Majorca
operations in Greece. A Catalan claim to the Morea furnished it with
a plausible pretext for a raid.
Two years after the battle of the
Cephisus, Philip of Taranto had conferred that principality on
Matilda of Hainault, the daughter of Isabelle and widow of Guy II of
Athens, on condition that she married and transferred the princely
dignity to Louis of Burgundy. The object of this maneuvre was to
compensate his brother the Duke of Burgundy for losing the hand of
the titular Latin Empress of Constantinople, whom Philip, then a
widower, had resolved to marry himself. But before Louis of Burgundy
had taken possession of his Achaian principality, another claimant had
appeared there. Besides Isabelle, William of Achaia had left another
daughter, the Lady of Akova, who was regarded by some as the lawful
representative of the Villehardouin dynasty, on the ground of a supposed
will made by her father. With the object of securing her claims for her
posterity, if not for herself, she married her danghter to the Infant
Ferdinand of Majorca, who had at one time played an adventurous
part in the career of the Catalan Company and was well known in
Greece. Both the Lady of Akova and her daughter died before these
claims could be realised, but her daughter left a baby behind her, the
future King James II of Majorca ; and, on behalf of this child,
Ferdinand landed in the Morea to receive the homage of the principality.
His usurpation was at first successful; he even coined his own money at
the mint of Glaréntza, while the Catalans of Athens set out to aid their
old comrade against the Burgundian party. A battle in the forest of
Manoláda, in 1316, proved fatal, however, to the Infant's cause; and his
head, severed on the field, was displayed before the gate of Glaréntza.
The Athenian Catalans turned back at the sad news, but Louis of
Burgundy did not long enjoy the fruits of this victory; barely a month
afterwards he died, poisoned, so it was said, by the Italian Count of
Cephalonia, a medieval villain believed to be capable of every crime.
Louis' widow, the Princess of Achaia, was forced against her will by the
crooked diplomacy of Anjou to go through the form of marriage, in
1318, with John of Gravina, brother of Philip of Taranto. Matilda
stoutly refused to be this man's wife, and when at last pressure was put upon
her by the Pope to make her consent she replied that she was already
another's. This confession proved to be her ruin. The crafty Angevins
appealed to the clause in her mother's marriage contract which declared
the principality forfeit should one of Isabelle's daughters marry without
her suzerain's consent. While John of Gravina governed as Prince of
Achaia, she languished in the Castel dell'Uovo at Naples, till at last, in
1331, death released her from the clutches of her royal gaoler. Thus
closed the career of the Villehardouin family; thus, in the third genera-
tion, was the deceit of Geoffrey I visited upon the unhappy daughter of
the unhappy Isabelle. Two years later, John of Gravina exchanged the
Morea for the duchy of Durazzo, the kingdom of Albania, and the
ܪ


## p.
453 (#495) ############################################

The Duchy of Neopatras
453
Angevin possessions in Epirus ; while the titular Empress Catherine of
Valois, acting for her son Robert of Taranto, whose father Philip was
then dead, combined in her own person the suzerainty and actual
ownership of Achaia, as well as the claim to the defunct Latin Empire.
This arrangement had the advantage of uniting in a single hand all the
Angevin dominions in Greece—the principality of Achaia, the castle of
Lepanto, the island of Corfù, and the island-county of Cephalonia,
which last had been conquered from the Orsini by John of Gravina in
1324.
If the Catalans had failed to found a principality in the South, they
were much more successful in the North. The feeble Duke of Neopatras
had died, the last of his race, in 1318, and the head of the Company, at
the time Alfonso Fadrique, a bastard of King Frederick II of Sicily,
conquered the best part of the former dominions of the Thessalian
Angeli. At Neopatras itself he established a second Catalan capital,
styling himself Vicar-General of the Duchies of Athens and Neopatras.
The Sicilian Dukes of Athens assumed the double title, and, long after
the Catalan duchies had passed away, the Kings of Aragon, their
successors, continued to bear it. Venice profited by the dismemberment of
this Greek state to occupy Ptéleon at the entrance to the Pagasaean Gulf,
her first acquisition on the Greek mainland since Modon and Coron. On
the other side of Greece the principal line of the Angeli had also been
extinguished in 1318 by the murder of the Despot Thomas, a victim of
Count Nicholas of Cephalonia, another member of that unscrupulous
family. The assassin soon perished by the hand of his brother John II,
who thus continued the traditions of the Hellenised Orsini. But the
new ruler of Epirus was a patron of Greek letters ; at his command a
paraphrase of Homer was written; while the famous church of Our Lady
of Consolation at Arta still contains an inscription recording the Orsini
and the two bears? which were the emblems of their house-one of the
most curious and least-known monuments of the Latin domination in
Greek lands.
Meanwhile, the house of Brienne had not abandoned the idea of
recovering the lost duchy of Athens. Young Walter had grown up
to manhood, and, in 1331, landed in Epirus to reconquer his father's
dominions. Once again, however, the brilliant qualities of chivalry were
seen to be inferior to the less showy strategy of the Catalans. The
Greeks remained unmoved by the appearance of this deliverer from the
“extreme slavery” which a contemporary described as their lot, and the
only lasting result of this futile expedition was the destruction by
the Catalans themselves of the noble castle of St Omer, for fear lest it
should fall into the invader's hands. The abode of the Theban barons
is connected with literature as well as art, for the original of one of the
1 See the author's article on the old Epirote capital in the Morning Post for
16 May 1908.
CH. XV.


## p. 454 (#496) ############################################

454
Rise of the Acciajuoli
most valuable memorials of Frankish rule, the French version of the
Chronicle of the Morea, was found within its walls—a proof of culture
among its inmates.
Walter's subsequent career was connected with
Florentine and English history rather than with Athens, for he became
tyrant of Florence, and died, fighting against our Black Prince, at the
battle of Poitiers. The family of Enghien, into which his sister had
married, succeeded to his Argive castles and his Athenian claims.
While the titular Duke of Athens thus retired to rule over Florence,
a Florentine family, destined ultimately to succeed to his Greek duchy,
established itself in the Morea. Of the numerous visitors who have
journeyed from Florence to see the famous Certosa, few realise that it
was constructed out of the Greek revenues of its founder. Niccolò
Acciajuoli had made the acquaintance of the titular Empress Catherine
of Valois at the Neapolitan Court, whither he had gone to seek his
fortune; he became her man of business and the director of her children's
education, and, when she and her son Robert obtained through his
negotiations the principality of Achaia, he received his reward in the
shape of broad estates in that land. He gradually increased his stake
in the country, and in 1358 was invested by his old pupil, the Emperor
Robert, with the town and castle of Corinth, whence the Acropolis of
Athens can be seen, and whence, thirty years later, it was to be conquered.
At the other end of the Corinthian Gulf, the archbishopric of Patras
was occupied by three members of the Acciajuoli clan, which thus con-
tinued to prosper while the feeble rule of an absentee prince and another
disputed succession on his death in 1364 weakened the hold of the
Angevins upon the principality. Philip II' of Taranto, the brother, and
Hugh of Lusignan, Prince of Galilee, the stepson, of the titular Emperor
Robert, then contended for the possession of the Morea till the latter
abandoned the struggle for another similar contest in Cyprus. During
these internal convulsions, the Byzantine province had grown stronger
and was better governed than the neighbouring Frankish principality.
The imperial viceroys of Mistrâ had been appointed for much longer
periods than had been the case before; and, in 1348, the Emperor John
Cantacuzene had sent his son Manuel as Despot for life to the Morea.
Thenceforth, as the seat of a younger member of the imperial family,
Mistrâ became more and more important; and its splendid Byzantine
churches still testify to the value which, as the Greek Empire declined,
the Emperors attached to this isolated fragment of Greece. It is a
curious freak of history that, in the last as in the early days of Greek
freedom, the two most flourishing cities of Hellas were once more Athens
and Sparta—the Athens of the Acciajuoli, the Sparta, as Mistrâ was
often pedantically styled, of the Palaeologi.
The peril that was to prove fatal alike to the medieval Athens and
i Philip III on the list of titular Emperors of Romania.


## p. 455 (#497) ############################################

The Serbians in Northern Greece
455
ܪ
the medieval Sparta had ere this appeared on the horizon of Greece.
The growing Turkish danger had at last induced the Papacy to recog-
nise the Catalan conquest of Attica, and extend its benediction over
those whom it had hitherto described as “sons of perdition. ” But the
new generation of Catalans that had succeeded to the sturdy conquerors
of the Cephisus was a degenerate race, given to drink and divided by
quarrels, which led to the introduction of the Turks, by this time
established in Europe. For the moment, however, the north of Greece
had been annexed to the ephemeral empire of the great Serbian Tsar,
Stephen Dušan; and, even after his death in 1355, Serbian rule lin-
gered on for a time and provided a more or less feeble barrier between
the duchy of Athens and the Ottoman power. On the other side of con-
tinental Greece, the tottering Greek despotat of Epirus, long disputed
between the Byzantine and the Serbian Empires, had finally perished in
1358 with the Despot Nicephorus II, becoming partly Serb and partly
Albanian, while the former island-domain of the Orsini, the county
palatine of Cephalonia, had been conferred by the Angevins upon
Leonardo Tocco of Benevento, who united four out of the seven Ionian
islands in his hand, adopted from one of them the style of “ Duke of
Leucadia," and founded a family which, after over a century's rule in
Greece, has only become extinct at Naples in our own time. Elsewhere,
in Chios and Lesbos, two other fresh Italian factors had appeared in the
many-coloured map of the Levant: the Genoese families of Zaccaria and
Gattilusio. The rule of the Zaccaria in the former island lasted only
from 1304 to 1329, but in 1346 Chios was re-conquered by a band of
Genoese, who formed a chartered company, or maona, which, reconstituted
some years later under the title of the “ Maona of the Giustiniani,” held
the island till the Turkish conquest in 1566. Lesbos, in 1355, was bestowed
by the Greek Emperor, John V, upon his brother-in-law, Francesco
Gattilusio, whose dynasty survived by nine years the fall of Constanti-
nople, while in 1374 Genoa obtained Famagosta in pledge from King
Peter II of Cyprus. Yet another bulwark of Latin rule had been
created in the Aegean by the capture of Rhodes from the Seljūqs, the
successors of the Greek governors, by the Knights of St John in 1309.
But, if Latin Christendon was as strong as ever in the islands of the
Aegean and the Ionian seas, it was weaker in the continental states
that lay between them.
The death of Frederick III, King of Sicily and Duke of Athens, in
1377, was a severe blow to the two Catalan duchies, for the claims
of his daughter and heiress, Maria, were disputed by Pedro IV of
Aragon, who found support with the clergy, the leading nobles, and the
burgesses of Athens and Neopatras. Another competitor, however,
appeared upon the scene, and repeated on a smaller scale the history of
the Catalan Company seventy years earlier. During the struggle between
the Kings of France and Navarre, the latter had been assisted by a body
יל
CH. XV.


## p. 456 (#498) ############################################

456
The Navarrese Company
וי
of Navarrese of good family, who, at the peace, had offered their services
to their sovereign's brother for the conquest of Durazzo, and were at this
time lying idle in the south of Italy. Meanwhile, the principality of
Achaia, on the death of the childless Philip II in 1373, had been offered
to Queen Joanna I of Naples, conferred by her upon one of her numerous
husbands, Otto of Brunswick, and then pawned in 1377 for five years
to the Knights of St John. All the time, however, the lawful heir
was the nephew of Philip and last titular Emperor of Constantinople,
Jacques de Baux, who thought that in the disturbed condition of Greece
the moment had arrived to make good his claim to Achaia, and that the
Navarrese Company would be the best means of doing so. The Company
entered his service, captured Corfù from the Neapolitan officials, and in
1380 entered Attica, of which Baux as Prince of Achaia might claim
the suzerainty, and as the uncle of Maria of Sicily might desire the
conquest. The Navarrese, under the leadership of Mahiot de Coquerel,
and Pedro de S. Superan, known as “Bordo” or the “bastard,” were
aided by the Sicilian party against the mutual enemy, and the important
castle of Livadia, a town which had attained great prominence under
Catalan rule and had received special privileges at the Catalan conquest,
fell into their hands. Sálona and the castle of Athens, however, held
out, and their defenders expected their duke, the King of Aragon, to
reward their loyalty by signing two series of capitulations which their
envoys presented to him. Pedro IV granted many of their requests, and
shewed his appreciation of the glamour which must ever attach to the
sovereign of the Acropolis by describing that sacred rock as “the most
precious jewel that exists in the world, and such that all the kings of
Christendom together could in vain imitate. ” But so great had been
the ravages of civil war in the duchy, that he was forced to invite Greeks
and Albanians to settle there, the beginning of the Albanian colonisation
of Attica and Boeotia. As for the Navarrese, they marched into the
Morea in 1381, came to terms with the Knights of St John, already
weary of their bargain, and occupied the principality in the name of
Jacques de Baux. When the latter died in 1383, they became practi-
cally independent, despite the protests of rival claimants. Androllsa,
in Messenia, was the Navarrese capital; Coquerel, and, after him, S.
Superan, ruled with the title of Vicar, which the latter in 1396
exchanged for that of Prince. Thus, at the end of the fourteenth century,
a Navarrese principality was carved out of Achaia, just as at its begin-
ning a Catalan duchy had been created in Attica.
The existence of the latter was now drawing to a close. While the
Duke of Athens remained an absentee at Barcelona, Nerio Acciajuoli,
the adopted son of the great Niccolò, was watching every move in the
game from the citadel of Corinth. Like a clever diplomatist, he pre-
pared his plans carefully; and, when all was ready, easily found his
casus belli.
The important castle of Sálona was at this time in the


## p. 457 (#499) ############################################

Florentine capture of Athens
457
possession of a woman, and her only daughter, the young countess, was
the greatest heiress of the Catalan duchies. Nerio applied, on behalf of
his brother-in-law, for her hand; the offer was scornfully refused, and a
Serbian princeling preferred to the Florentine upstart's kinsman. The
choice of a Slav offended Franks and Greeks alike; Nerio invaded
the duchies by land and sea, and in 1387 was master of the city of
Athens. The Acropolis, however, held out under the command of a
valiant Spaniard, Pedro de Pau, and John I of Aragon, who had by that
time succeeded Pedro IV as Duke of Athens and Neopatras, wrote as late
as 22 April 1388 to the Countess of Sálona, offering her the “Castle
of Athens," if she could succour its garrison? Ten days later, the
Acropolis was Nerio's; Catalan domination was over. Two Catalan
fiefs alone, the county of Sálona and the island of Aegina, remained
independent, but memorials of Catalan rule may still be seen in the
castles of Livadia and Lamia and in a. curious fresco at Athens. Other-
wise, the Catalans melted away, as if they had never been masters of the
city of the sages, till at last the title of Athens and Neopatras in the
style of the Kings of Spain was the sole reminder of the Greek duchies
that had once been theirs.
The epoch that had now been reached was one of change all over
Greece. Two years before Nerio hoisted his flag on the Acropolis,
another Florentine, Esau Buondelmonti, had put an end to Serbian rule
at Joánnina by marrying the widow of Thomas Preljubović, the former
ruler of Epirus, while Esau's sister was regent of Cephalonia. Venice,
as well as Florence, had increased her Greek possessions. In 1363 a
Cretan insurrection, more serious than any that had yet occurred
because headed by Venetian colonists, involved Tito Venier, the Marquess
of Cerigo, whose family had recovered their island by intermarriage with
its Greek lords. Thenceforth Cerigo remained either wholly or partially
a Venetian colony. In 1386 Venetian replaced Neapolitan rule at
Corfù, and in 1388 the republic purchased Argos and Nauplia, the
ancient fiefs of the French Dukes of Athens, from their last representa-
tive, Marie d'Enghien. Two years later, the islands of Tenos and
Myconus became Venetian by bequest of the Ghisi. In 1383 the murder
of Niccolò dalle Carceri, a great Euboean baron who was also Duke of
Naxos, and the usurpation of Francesco Crispo, a Lombard of Veronese
origin, had installed a new dynasty in the archipelago, which not only
allowed two Euboean baronies to come under Venetian influence but also
made the duchy of Naxos more dependent upon the goodwill of the
republic. Thus, if Florence was predominant at Athens, in Epirus,
and in the county palatine, Venice was stronger than ever in Negropont
and Crete, held the Argive castles as well as Modon and Coron in the
Morea, and was mistress of Corfù and Cerigo. As Ptéleon was a
1 Institut d'Estudis Catalans : Anuari (1907), p. 253.
CH. XV.


## p. 458 (#500) ############################################

458
Nerio Acciajuoli
Venetian colony, and as the Marquess of Boudonitza had long belonged
to the Venetian family of Zorzi, both the northern and the southern
Marches of Greece were in Venetian hands. Athens itself was soon to
follow.
Nerio's ambition had not been appeased by the acquisition of that
city; he coveted the Argive appurtenances of the Athenian duchy in its
palmy days. Accordingly, he instigated his son-in-law, the Despot
Theodore Palaeologus, who then ruled at Mistrâ, to seize Argos before
the Venetian commissioner could arrive. On this occasion, however, the
wily Florentine over-reached himself; he became the prisoner of the
Navarrese Company, acting on behalf of Venice, and had to strip the
silver plates off the doors of the Parthenon and rob the treasury of
that venerable cathedral in order to raise his ransom. In 1393 the
Turks, by the conquest of Thessaly and Neopatras, became his neighbours
on the north, and it became evident that the Turkish conquest of Athens,
which he avoided by the payment of tribute, was only a question of
time. Before the year 1394 was many weeks old, the Catalan county of
Sálona had become Turkish, the Dowager Countess had been handed
over to the insults of the soldiery, and her daughter sent to the harem
of the Sultan, who ere long was reported to have murdered the ill-fated
heiress of the Fadriques. The memory of her tragic fate still lingers
round the castle rock of Sálona, and the loss of this western bulwark of
Athens sounded like a death-knell in the ears of Nerio. King Ladislas
of Naples might confer upon him the coveted title of Duke of Athens-
a name to conjure with in the cultured world of Florence, but when, a
few months later, the first Florentine wearer of the title lay a-dying, he
foresaw clearly the fate that was hovering over his new-won dominions.
Nerio left no legitimate sons; but he had a bastard, Antonio, the
child of a fair Athenian, and to him he left Thebes and Livadia, while
he bequeathed the city of Athens and his valuable stud to the Parthenon,
in which he desired to be buried. It was not to be expected that
the Orthodox Greeks, who had recently been allowed for the first time
since the Frankish conquest to have their own metropolitan resident at
Athens, and had thereby recovered their national consciousness, would
permit their city to become the property of a Roman Catholic cathe-
dral. While, therefore, Nerio's two sons-in-law, the Despot Theodore I
and Carlo I Tocco, were fighting over the possession of Corinth, the
Metropolitan of Athens called in the Turks. The Acropolis, however,
held out, and its governor, one of Nerio's executors, offered to hand
over Athens to the Venetian bailie of Negropont for the republic, on
condition that the ancient privileges of the Athenians should be re-
spected. The bailie dispersed the Turks, and the home government
decided to accept Athens, but on one ground alone: its proximity to
the Venetian colonies, which might be injured if it were allowed to fall
into Turkish or other hands. A governor, styled podestà and captain,


## p. 459 (#501) ############################################

Condition of Athens
459
יל
was appointed, and so little desirable did the position seem that four
months elapsed before any Venetian noble could be found to accept it.
Nor need this reluctance surprise us. Athens at the close of the four-
teenth century, as we know from the contemporary account of an Italian
visitor, could not have been a very desirable residence. The city con-
tained “about a thousand hearths” but not a single inn ; Turkish
pirates infested the coast, and Antonio Acciajuoli harried the country-
side. Still, the “Church of St Mary” was the wonder of the pious
pilgrim, just as the relics which it contained had been the envy of
Queen Sibylla of Aragon. Twenty of the columns of the “house of
Hadrian,” as the temple of the Olympian Zeus was popularly described,
were then standing, and the remains of the Roman aqueduct marked,
according to the local ciceroni, “ the study of Aristotle. ” Venice,
however, was not long concerned with the care of this glorious
heritage which she so lightly esteemed. The bastard Antonio routed
her forces in the pass between Thebes and Negropont, and after a long
siege forced the gallant defenders of the Acropolis to surrender from
sheer starvation. To save appearances the shrewd conqueror, having
obtained all that he wanted, agreed to become the nominal vassal of the
republic for “Sythines," as Athens was then called, while the Venetians
compensated themselves for its actual loss by the acquisition of the two
keys of the Corinthian Gulf-Lepanto, in 1407, from Paul Boua Spata,
its Albanian lord, and Patras from its Latin archbishop on a five years'
lease. The former of these places remained Venetian for over ninety
years; the latter, with an interval, till 1419, when it was restored to
ecclesiastical rule, and consequently lost. Four years later the republic
purchased Salonica.
The Turkish defeat at Angora in 1402 gave Greece, like the other
Christian states of the Near East, a brief respite from her doom, and the
tide of Turkish conquest temporarily receded. The Despot Theodore I
of Mistrâ, who had endeavoured to strengthen the fighting forces of the
Morea by the admission of a large Albanian immigration, and by handing
over Corinth to the Knights of St John, now urged the latter to occupy
the county of Sálona instead. Turkish rule was, however, soon restored
there; and in 1414 the sister creation of the Crusaders, the historic
marquessate of Boudonitza, finally disappeared from the map. Mean-
while, in the Frankish principality of Achaia a new and vigorous prince,
the last of the line, had arisen. On the death of S. Superan in 1402,
his widow had succeeded him, but the real power was vested in her
nephew Centurione Zaccaria, a member of the Genoese family which
had once ruled over Chios. Centurione, following the precedent of the
first Villehardouin, deprived S. Superan's children of their birthright
and, by the same legal quibble, received in 1404 the title of Prince of
Achaia from the King of Naples. But the Frankish portion of the
peninsula was dwindling away before the advancing Greeks. The young
CH, XV.


## p. 460 (#502) ############################################

460
Greek revival in the Morea
Despot Theodore II, who had succeeded his namesake in 1407, was a
son of the Emperor Manuel II, who therefore took a double interest in
a part of his diminished Empire which seemed best able to resist a
Turkish attack. Manuel visited the Morea, rebuilt the six-mile rampart
across the Isthmus, and reduced the lawless Mainates to order. Nor
was he the only Greek who occupied himself in the welfare of the
Peloponnese. It was at this time that the philosopher George Gemistòs
Pléthon, who was teaching the doctrines of Plato at Mistrâ, drew up his
elaborate scheme for the regeneration of the country. If Pléthon was
an idealist, the other side of the picture is supplied by the contemporary
satirist Mázares, who described in dark colours the evil qualities of the
seven races then inhabiting the peninsula, the insecurity of life and
property, and the faithlessness and craft of the Greek archons. Unfor-
tunately, the last period of Moreote history before the Turkish conquest
proved that the satirist was nearer the truth than the philosopher.
It was soon obvious that neither ramparts across the Isthmus nor
Platonic schemes of reform could save the disunited peninsula. In
1423 the great Turkish captain Tura-Khān, accompanied by the Sultan's
frightened vassal, Antonio of Athens, easily demolished the Isthmian
wall, and only evacuated the Morea on condition that the rampart
should be left in ruins and an annual tribute should be paid to his
master. But, before the end came, it was fated that the Greeks should
first realise the aspirations of two centuries, and annex all that remained
of the Frankish principality. This achievement, which threw a final
ray of light over the darkness of the land, was the work of Constantine
Palaeologus, destined to die the last Emperor of the East. The necessity
of providing this prince with an appanage in the Morea outside of his
brother Theodore's possessions, was the occasion of the Greek re-conquest.
Constantine first obtained Glaréntza by a politic marriage, and took up
his residence in the famous castle of Chloumoûtsi. There he prepared,
with the aid of his confidential agent, the historian Phrantzes, his next
move against Patras. The folly of the Church in insisting on the
restitution of that important city to the archbishop was now demon-
strated; the citizens opened their gates to the Greek conqueror, and the
noble castle, still a splendid memorial of Latin rule, was forced by lack
of provisions to surrender in 1430. Meanwhile, Constantine's brother
Thomas, who had also come in quest of an appanage in the Peloponnese,
had besieged Centurione at Chalandritza with such success that the
Prince of Achaia was compelled to bestow upon his assailant the hand of
his daughter with the remains of the principality as her dowry, reserving
for himself nothing but the family barony of Kyparissia and the princely
title. Two years later, in 1432, the last Frankish Prince of Achaia died,
leaving a bastard behind him to dispute later on the Greek title to
his dominions. For the time, however, this man was a fugitive, and
the whole peninsula was at last in Greek hands, save where the lion of


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Turkish capture of Joánnina
461
רי
רי
St Mark waved over Nauplia and Argos in the east, and over the ancient
colonies of Modon and Coron, recently extended to include Navarino, in
the south-west. The three brothers divided the rest of the Morea
between them ; Theodore II continued to reside at Mistrâ, Constantine
removed his abode to Kalávryta, and Thomas received in exchange
Glaréntza as his capital.
The triumph of the Greeks in the Morea was contemporaneous with
two far more lasting Turkish conquests in the north. The year 1430,
fatal to the Franks of Achaia, saw the fall of both Salonica and
Joánnina. Salonica had been for seven short years a Venetian colony,
while Joánnina with Epirus, seized by an Albanian chief after Esau
Buondelmonti's death in 1408, had been conquered by Esau's nephew
and rightful heir, Carlo I Tocco of Cephalonia, who had thus revived the
former dominion of the Orsini over the islands and the mainland of
north-western Greece. “ In military and administrative ability, he
was,” according to the testimony of Chalcocondyles, “inferior to none
of his contemporaries," while his masterful consort, a true daughter of the
first Florentine Duke of Athens, was regarded as the most remarkable
woman of the Latin Orient. Froissart extolled her magnificent hospi-
tality, and described her island-court as a sort of fairyland. But Carlo's
death without legitimate sons in 1429 exposed his hitherto compact
state to the dissensions of his five bastards and his nephew Carlo II.
One of the former had the baseness to invoke the aid of the Turks, and
the surrender of Joánnina was the result of his selfishness.
Carlo II was
allowed to retain the rest of Epirus, with Acarnania and his islands, but
from that day till 1913 the city of Joánnina with its beautiful lake
never ceased to be a part of the Ottoman Empire-another example of
Christian jealousies.
Meanwhile, amidst the fall of principalities and the annexation of
flourishing cities, the statesmanlike policy of Antonio Acciajuoli had
maintained the practical independence of the Athenian duchy. An
occasional Turkish raid, such as that which had forced him to accom-
pany the Ottoman troops to the Morea, reminded him that diplomacy
must sometimes bow to force ; and once, the claim of Alfonso V of
Aragon and Sicily to this former Catalan colony gave him momentary
alarm. But, with these exceptions, his long reign was a period of
almost unbroken prosperity. Himself an honorary citizen of his family's
old home of Florence, he encouraged Florentine trade, and welcomed
Florentine families at his court, now established in the Propylaea instead
of at Thebes. The Athenian history of the time, interspersed with
such names as Medici, Pitti, and Machiavelli
, reads like a chapter of the
Tuscan annals, and the life of the Florentine family party which
assembled there was almost as agreeable as it would have been by the
banks of the Arno. Good shooting and good mounts from the fainous
Acciajuoli stable were to be had, and one of the visitors wrote with
CH, XV.


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462
Constantine Palaeologus in Greece
enthusiasm that “fairer land nor fairer fortress” than Attica and the
Acropolis could nowhere else be seen. Nor did the Acciajuoli forget to
strengthen the fortifications of their capital; for to them may be
ascribed the “ Frankish tower” which once stood on the Acropolis, and
perhaps the so-called “wall of Valerian " which may still be seen in the
city. Even culture began to shew signs of life in Florentine Athens ;
it was under Antonio that Laónikos Chalcocondyles, the last Athenian
historian, and his scholarly brother Demetrius, were born, and a young
Italian sought at Athens and Joannina a chair of any science that
would bring him in an income.
When, however, in 1435 Antonio I was one morning found dead in
his bed, two parties, one Latin, one Greek, disputed the succession. The
Latin candidate to the ducal dignity, young Nerio Acciajuoli, whom the
childless duke had adopted as his heir, occupied the city, while the
dowager duchess, a noble Greek dame, and her kinsman, the father of
the historian Chalcocondyles, held the castle. The Greek party entered
into negotiations with the Sultan on the one hand and with Constantine
Palaeologus on the other, offering a bribe to the former and the duchy to
the latter. Both schemes failed, and peace was secured by the marriage
of Antonio's widow with his heir. But Nerio II soon made himself un-
popular by his arrogance, and was deprived of the throne by his brother
Antonio II. On the death of the latter, however, in 1441, he returned
to his palace on the Acropolis, where he received a visit from Cyriacus
of Ancona, the first archaeologist who had set foot in Athens since the
conquest. But Nerio had occupations more serious than archaeology.
In the year of this very visit the Despot Constantine threatened the
existence of his tottering state. Theodore II had by that time retired
from Mistrâ to the Sea of Marmora, so as to secure the succession to the
imperial throne, while Constantine and Thomas divided the Morea
between them. At this moment, the news of Hunyadi's successes over
the Turks encouraged Constantine to ravage Boeotia and occupy Thebes.
A large part of northern Greece declared for the Greek prince, and
Cardinal Bessarion dreamed of a resurrection of the ancient glories
of Hellas. Nerio escaped destruction by promising tribute, but thereby
called down upon himself the vengeance of the Turks, who, after the
rout of the Christian forces at Varna, were able to turn their attention
to Greece. Placed between Turk and Greek, the wretched puppet on
the Acropolis threw in his lot with the former, and joined the Sultan in
invading the Morea. In 1446 Murād II stormed the restored Isthmian
wall, ravaged the country behind it, and retired to Thebes with a vast
train of captives and the promise of a tribute. All Constantine's
recent conquests in the north were lost again, and the death of
the Emperor John VI in 1448 ended that adventurous prince's
direct connexion with Greece proper. On 6 January 1449 the last
Emperor of the East was crowned at Mistrâ; upon his brother Demetrius


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Mahomet II in the Morea
463
רי
he bestowed his own previous government, and in vain bade both him
and Thomas live in unity and brotherly love, the sole means of saving
the Morea. Scarcely had he been crowned than the Christian rulers of
Greece received another warning of their fate, the annexation by the
Turks of all the continental dominions of the Tocco dynasty save three
fortresses. Four years later came the awful news that Constantinople
had fallen and that the Emperor was slain. The terrified Despots of the
Morea, whose first impulse had been flight to Italy, purchased a reprieve
by the promise of tribute, while the Albanian colonists, under the
leadership of Peter Boua, “the lame,” rose against their feeble rulers,
and Giovanni Asan, the bastard son of the last Prince of Achaia, raised
the standard of a second revolt. Turkish aid was required to suppress
these insurrections, for it was the policy of Mahomet II to play off
one Christian race against the other, and so weaken them both, till
a suitable moment should arrive for annexing Greek and Albanian,
Orthodox and Roman Catholic, to his Empire. Giovanni Asan died in
Rome, a pensioner of the Pope, like the Despot Thomas whom he had
sought to dethrone. For a few more years, however, the two despots
remained in possession of their respective provinces, which they might
have retained for their lives had they not allowed the promised tribute
to fall into arrears. At last Mahomet's patience was exhausted ; he
sent an ultimatum ; and when Thomas refused to pay, he entered the
Morea in 1458 at the head of an army. The despots fled at his
approach ; Acrocorinth surrendered after a gallant resistance; and the
cession of about one-third of the peninsula, including Corinth, Patras,
and Kalávryta, as well as an annual tribute, were the conditions under
which alone Mahomet would allow the two brothers a further respite.
Then the conqueror set out for Athens, the city which he longed to
visit, and which the governor of Thessaly, Omar, son of Tura-Khān, had
captured two years before the campaign in the Morea.
Florentine rule at Athens had ended in one of those domestic
tragedies of which the history of the Franks in Greece was so productive.
Nerio II, left a widower, had married a beautiful Venetian, daughter of
the baron of Kárystos, by whom he had a son Francesco. When his
father died in 1451, this child was still a minor, and his mother assumed
the regency with the consent of the Sultan. But the duchess had other
passions besides the love of power. She became enamoured of a young
Venetian noble, Bartolomeo Contarini, who chanced to visit her capital,
and bade him share her couch and throne. Contarini had a wife at
home, but poison freed him of that encumbrance, and he returned to the
palace on the Acropolis to wed the tragic widow. But the Athenians ·
were not minded to support this Venetian usurpation. They complained
to Mahomet, who cited Contarini and his stepson to appear before his
court, where a dangerous rival awaited them in the person of the former
Duke Antonio II's only son Franco, a special favourite of the Sultan.
CH. XV.


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464
Turkish capture of Athens
ול
The real master of Athens ordered the deposition of the duchess and
her husband; Francesco disappeared, and Franco ruled, by Mahomet's
good pleasure, at Athens.