§ 4. CHAP. VII. foreign invaders or internal brigandage. The lieutenantsgeneral of the dukes, who arrived from Sicily, were always compelled to bring with them fresh supplies of mercenary troops. The lieutenants of the Sicilian dukes mentioned in history are Berengar d'Estañol, and Alphonso, the natural son of king Frederic II., who governed in succession during the life of Manfred. Roger de Lauria, son of the renowned admiral, represented Frederic of Randazzo. Afterwards, Francis George, marquis of Bodonitza, Philip of Dalmas, and Roger and Antonio de Lauria, sons of the preceding Roger, ruled the duchy.2 During the government of Roger and Antonio de Lauria, Louis, count of Salona, son of the regent Alphonso, died, leaving an only daughter as his heiress.3 Louis was proprietor of a very large portion of the duchy, and the disputes that arose concerning the marriage of his daughter caused the ruin of the Catalan power, and the conquest of Athens by Nerio Acciaiuoli, the governor of Corinth. The Catalans were the constant rivals of the Franks of Achaia, and Nerio Acciaiuoli, as governor of Corinth, was the guardian of the principality against their hostile projects. The marriage of the young countess of Salona involved the two parties in war. The mother of the bride was a Greek lady: she betrothed her daughter to Simeon, son of the prince of Vallachian Thessaly; and the Catalans, with the two Laurias at their head, supported this arrangement. But the barons of Achaia, 1 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, i. 99, note. 2 The count de Foix, endeavouring to persuade Roger de Lauria, the great admiral, to consent to a truce, observed, "France can arm three hundred galleys." "Let her do it," exclaimed Lauria: "I will sweep the sea with my hundred, and no ship without leave from the king of Aragon shall pass: no, nor shall a fish dare to raise its head above the water, unless I can see that it bears the arms of Aragon on its tail." "No creu que negun peix se gos alzar sobre mar, sino porta hun escut o senyal del Rey d'Arago en la coha."-Desclot., c. 166. 3 Moncada expedicion de los Catalanes y Aragoneses, cap. lxx. Some doubt has been expressed concerning the identity of La Sole, or Soula, with Salona, the ancient Amphissa; but the Chronicle of the Conquest fixes the position with certitude. Troops marching from Vetrinitza to Gravia pass by La Sola.Livre de la Conqueste, p. 413. Ducange, Histoire de Constantinople, 243, 299. ATHENS CONQUERED BY NERIO ACCIAIUOLI. 181 headed by Nerio Acciaiuoli, pretended that the feudal suzerain of Athens and Achaia was entitled to dispose of the hand of the countess, though the race of Baldwin II. was extinct; for Jacques de Baux, the last titular emperor of Romania, died before the war between the Catalans and the governor of Corinth commenced. Nerio was nevertheless determined to bestow the young countess with all her immense possessions, on a relation of the Acciaiuoli family, named Peter Sarrasin. The war concerning the countess of Salona and her heritage appears to have commenced about the year 1386. The Catalans were defeated, and Nerio gained possession of Athens, Thebes, and Livadea; but a few of the Spanish proprietors, and the remains of the military force attached to the viceroys, continued for some years to offer a determined resistance in other parts of the duchy, and rallied round them a body of Navarrese troops in the service of the last Spanish governors. During the war, a quarrel broke out between the dowager countess of Salona and the bishop of Phocis. The Athenian historian Chalcocondylas narrates that the bishop accused the lady, whose name was Helena Kantakuzena, of adultery with a priest, and that this conscientious bishop hastened to the court of the sultan Bayezid I., (Ilderim,) who was then in Thessaly, and begged him to remove the scandal from Greek society by conquering the country. In order to attract the sultan, who was passionately fond of the chase, the reverend bishop vaunted the extent of the marshes of Boeotia filled with herons and cranes, and the numerous advantages the country offered for hunting and hawking. Bayezid made his interference a pretext for occupying the northern part of the duchy around Neopatras; but, being soon after engaged with other projects, the Turks do not appear to have retained permanent possession of 1 Ducange, Histoire de Constantinople, 299. A. D. 1386. $ 5. CHAP. VII. the district then seized. Chalcocondylas affirms that the dowager countess delivered up her daughter to Bayezid to be placed in his harem, which would imply that her marriage with the prince of Vlachia had not yet been celebrated.1 The Laurias, pressed by the Turks on the north, and by Nerio Acciaiuoli and the Franks of Achaia on the south, abandoned the duchy, in which only a few small bands of troops continued to defend themselves almost in the capacity of brigands. SECT. V.-DUKES OF THE FAMILY OF ACCIAIUOLI OF FLORENCE. The decline of medieval Athens commences with the Catalan conquest. The ties of interest which had hitherto connected the prosperity of the Greek landed proprietors with the power of the sovereign were then broken, and every Greek was exposed to the oppression and avarice of a thousand mercenary soldiers suddenly converted into petty princes, and to the exactions of the rapacious agents of absent sovereigns. The feudal system was everywhere giving way; the authority of the prince and the money of the commons were rapidly gaining power, as the new elements of political government. Several members of the family of Acciaiuoli, which formed a distinguished commercial company at Florence in the thirteenth century, settled in the Peloponnesus about the middle of the fourteenth, under the protection of Robert, king of Naples. Nicholas Acciaiuoli was invested, in the year 1334, with the administration of the lands which the company had acquired in payment or in security of the loans it had made to the royal house of Anjou; and he acquired additional possessions in the principality of Achaia, both by 1 Ducange, Histoire de Constantinople, 298. Chalcocondylas, p. 35, edit. Par. The affair of the dowager countess must have occurred after 1389, as Bayezid succeeded his father Murad I. in that year. purchase and by grant, from Catherine of Valois, titular empress of Romania, and regent of Achaia for her son prince Robert.1 The encroachments of the mercantile spirit on the feudal system are displayed in the concessions obtained by Nicholas Acciaiuoli, in the grants he received from Catherine of Valois. He was invested with the power of mortgaging, exchanging, and selling his fiefs, without any previous authorisation from his suzerain.2 Nicholas acted as principal minister of Catherine, during a residence of three years in the Morea; and he made use of his position, like a prudent banker, to obtain considerable grants of territory. He returned to Italy in 1341, and never again visited Greece; but his estates in Achaia were administered by his relations and other members of the banking house at Florence, many of whom obtained considerable fiefs for themselves through his influence. Nicholas Acciaiuoli was appointed hereditary grand seneschal of the kingdom of Naples by queen Jeanne, whom he accompanied in her flight to Provence when she was driven from her kingdom by Louis of Hungary. On her return, he received the rich county of Amalfi, as a reward for his fidelity, and subsequently Malta was added to his possessions.3 He was an able statesman, and a keen political intriguer; and he was almost the first example of the superior position the purse of the moneyed citizen was destined to assume over the sword of the feudal baron, and the learning of the politic churchNicholas deserved to have his life written by a man of genius; but his superciliousness and assumption of princely state, even in his intercourse with the friends man. 1 The company of Acciaiuoli made a loan to John, count of Gravina, brother of Robert, king of Naples, to enable him to prosecute his iniquitous scheme of seizing the principality of Achaia, under the pretext that he was the husband of the princess Maud of Hainault, who was already married. 2 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, Diplomes, Florence, No. VII., tom, ii. p. 70. 3 Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, i. 101, cites some documents, relating to the possession of the county of Malta by the Acciaiuoli, not previously known. The imposing ruins of a castle built by Nicholas at Lettore may still be seen, after quitting the valley of Gragnano, near Castellamare. A. D. 1341. § 5. CHAP. VII. of his youth, disgusted Boccacio, who alone of his Florentine contemporaries could have left a vivid sketch of the career which raised him from the partner of a banking-house to the rank of a great feudal baron, and to live in the companionship of kings. Boccacio, offended by his insolence, seems not to have appreciated his true importance, as the type of a coming age and a new state of society; and the indignant and satirical record he has left us of the pride and presumption of the mercantile noble is by no means a correct portrait of the Neapolitan minister. Yet even Boccacio records, in his usual truthful manner, that Nicholas had dispersed powerful armies, though he unjustly depreciates the merit of the success, because the victory was gained by combinations effected by gold, and not by the headlong charge of a line of lances.1 Nicholas Acciaiuoli obtained a grant of the barony and hereditary governorship of the fortress of Corinth in the year 1358. He was already in possession of the castles of Vulcano, (Messene,) Piadha, near Epidauros, and large estates in other parts of the Peloponnesus. He died in 1365; and his sons, Angelo and Robert, succeeded in turn to the barony and government of Corinth.2 Angelo mortgaged Corinth to his relation, Nerio Acciaiuoli, who already possessed fiefs in Achaia, and who took up his residence at Corinth, on account of the political and military importance of the fortress, as well as to enable him to administer the revenues of the barony in the most profitable manner. Nerio Acciaiuoli, though he held the governorship of Corinth only as the deputy of his relation, and the 1 Boccacio, Opere Volgari, Florence, 1834, tom. xvii. p. 37, quoted at length by Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, i. 87. Nicholas was unfortunate in his intercourse with the great literary characters of his age. Petrarch was displeased with him for not keeping a promise, for which act he is sharply reproached by the poet.-Napier, Florentine History, ii. 163, note. 2 The tomb of Nicholas Acciaiuoli, in the monastery of St Lawrence, near Florence, is said to be the workmanship of Andrea Orcagna, and is one of the richest sepulchral monuments of the time.-Buchon, Nouvelles Recherches, plate xxxvii. |