Tue Jun 18, 2013 7:00 pm
Having been intrigued by the phrase "Grand Catalan Company" I found the following "
Catalan Company (1302-1388 AD)
By David Kuijt and Chris Brantley
The Catalan Company may have been the first true mercenary company in Western Europe, long before the Italian Condottas and the infamous Free Company of Sir John Hawkwood.
The Catalan Company was raised in 1281 to fight as mercenaries in the War of the Sicilian Vespers, where the Angevin and Aragonese dynasties fought over the Kingdom of Sicily. When the war ended 20 years later its commander was Rutger von Blum, better known as Roger de Flor. De Flor was originally a Templar sergeant. At the fall of Acre in 1291 he became rich using one of the Templar galleys to shuttle fugitives from Acre to Cyprus for enormous fees; later he was a pirate before he joined the Catalan Company and worked his way up to command it.
When peace broke out in Sicily the Catalan Company was surplus, and Sicily was strongly interested in seeing the last of them. De Flor negotiated a good deal with the Byzantine Emperor, Andronikos II, who desperately needed mercenaries to fight the Turks after the Byzantine at Nicomedia in July 1302.
The Company arrived at Constantinople in September 1303. They had no sooner arrived in Constantinople than they got involved in a bloody melee in the street with the local Genoese community. Soon afterwards they were shipped to Anatolia to reinforce Philadelphia, a Byzantine city entirely surrounded by the Turks for some years. A large force of Alan cavalry (survivors of Nicomedia) were sent with them but didn't stay long. In short order there was a falling out between the Catalans and the Alans, and a sharp skirmish in which the Alans suffered 300 casualties including the son of their chieftain. Afterwards all but 1000 of the Alans left.
Catalan Company Knights The Catalans then conducted a raiding campaign throughout the Turkish-held lands in Byzantine Nicaea, landing at Cyzicus in 1303 and striking south to Philadelphia, passing through Sardis, Magnesia, and Ephesus before recrossing the Straights of Bosphorus to land at Neapolis in Gallipoli. By this point, the Catalans, who had recruited nearly 3000 Turkic horse into their ranks, were considered by the Byzantines to be little better than brigands and freebooters. The successes had inflated the already arrogant De Flor, leading him to entertain plans of a setting up his own version of the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia. Needless to say, this put him at odds with the Byzantine Emperor, and eventually led to De Flor's assassination in an Alan ambush at 1305 and the subsequent Byzantine massacre of as many of the Catalan Company as they could reach. Command of the Catalan company fell on Ramon Muntaner. Further losses occurred in conflict with the Genoese soon after, but Catalan and Aragonese reinforcements, plus the addition of a significant number of disaffected Turkish and Turkopouli deserters from the Byzantine army kept the Catalan Company in existence.
The Byzantine emperor then attempted to stop the Catalans with a large army, but was defeated at Apros in 1305; in part because the Alans, fearful of Catalan wrath at the loss of de Flor, deserted the Byzantine army in the field. The Catalans then advanced to Rhaidestos, which became a center of operations for an ineffectual blockade of Constantinope and raids throughout Thrace for approximately two years (1306-1307 AD).
By 1308 bloody internal dissension and Byzantine resistance to their constant raids from their base in Gallipoli forced them to move into Thessaly, in Northern Greece. Using Salonica as a center of operations, they raided that region and ravaged the rich Eastern Orthodox monasteries at Mt. Athos.
In 1310, the Catalans accepted a new employer, Walter de Brienne, the Duke of Athens and one of the promient leaders of the so-called Romanian Frankish "Latin Empire." They captured over thirty castles for him, but when peace was concluded in 1311 de Brienne attempted to dismiss them without pay, and answered their reasonable demands with insults. This led to their rebellion and open battle. They laid a trap for the Duke at Kephissos by arraying for battle behind a newly flooded field. Walter and his Frankish knights charged unknowingly into the mire and were destroyed by the resourceful Catalans. Duke Walter and a huge proportion of his knights were slaughtered, leaving the Catalans masters of his Duchy.
The Catalan Company asked the royal house of Catalonia-Aragon to provide them with a Duke as a figurehead; during the next seventy years they were "ruled" by a succession of eight absentee Dukes, none of which seem to have ever set foot in their Duchy. Having seized their own country, the Catalans then apparently settled down to defend it, and were able to hold Athens for nearly eighty years.
In 1379 another force from the Iberian peninsula, the Navarrese Company, moved on from its efforts to conquer Albania and attacked the Catalan Duchy of Athens in concert with a Florentine force. In 1388 a a Florentine army defeated the Catalans in a decisive battle at Kaledes (a.k.a. Peritheorion or Anastasioupolis), at the far end of Lake Vistonis on the road from Xanthi to Komotini. Following this defeat and the subsequent loss of their Duchy, the Catalan Grand Company disbanded.
The Catalan Grand Company had a habit of making enemies of its friends and friends of its enemies, which included the Alans, Romanian Franks, Late Byzantines, and Early Ottomans.
