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state: The Norman claim and sweep the Ocean, And Argolis again make great.

We saw in the last essay, how at the beginning of the thirteenth century a small body of Franks conquered nearly the whole of Greece, and how, as the result of their conquests, a group of Latin states sprang into existence in that country--the Duchies of Athens and of the Archipelago, the principality of Achaia, the County Palatine of Cephalonia, the three baronies of Euboea, and the Venetian colony of Crete, while at two points alone--in the mountains of Epeiros and on the isolated rock of Monemvasia, so well-known to our ancestors as the place whence they obtained their Malmsey wine--the Greek flag still waved. In the present essay, I would give some account of Frankish organisation, political and ecclesiastical, of Frankish society, and of Frankish literature.

There was another marked distinction between Attica and the Morea. Niketas mentions no great local magnates as settled at Athens or Thebes in the last days of the Byzantine domination, nor do we hear of such during the whole century of Burgundian rule. Thus, whereas Crete, Negroponte, and the Morea still retained old native families, which in Crete headed insurrections, in Negroponte showed a tendency to emigrate, and in the Morea held fiefs and even occasionally, as in the case of the Sgouromallaioi, intermarried with the Franks, who usually, as Muntaner tells us, took their wives from France and despised marriages with Greeks even of high degree, Athens contained no such native aristocracy. It is only towards the close of the fourteenth century that we hear of any Greeks prominent there, and then they are not nobles, but notaries. Only in the last two generations of Latin rule, is there a national party at Athens, in which the famous family of Chalkokondyles, which produced the last Athenian historian, was prominent. The Greeks of Attica were, therefore, mostly peasants, whose lot was much the same as it was all over the feudal world, namely that of serfdom. We have examples, too, of actual slavery at Athens, even in the last decades of the Latin domination.

Othon's dominions were large, if measured by the small standard of classical Greece. Burgundian Athens embraced Attica, Boeotia, the Megarid, the ancient Opuntian Lokris, and the fortresses of Nauplia and Argos, which the "Great Lord" had received as a fief from the principality of Achaia in return for his services at the time of their capture. Thus situated, the Athenian state had a considerable coast-line and at least four ports--the Piraeus, Nauplia, the harbour of Atalante opposite Euboea, and Livadostro, or Rive d'Ostre, as the Franks called it, on the Gulf of Corinth--the usual port of embarkation for the West. Yet the Burgundian rulers of Athens made little attempt to create a navy, confining themselves to a little amateur piracy. Venice was most jealous of any other Latin state, which showed any desire to rival her as a maritime power in the Levant, and in a treaty concluded in 1319 between the Republic and the Catalans, who then held the Duchy of Athens, it was expressly provided that they should launch no new ships in "the sea of Athens" and should dismantle those already afloat and place their tackle in the Akropolis.

I have spoken of the political organisation of the two chief Frankish states of Greece; I would next say something of their ecclesiastical arrangements. The policy of the Franks towards the Greek Church was more than anything else the determining factor of their success or failure in Greece, for in all ages the Greeks have regarded their Church as inseparably identified with their nationality, and even to-day the terms "Christian" and "Greek" are often used as identical terms. Now, as that fair-minded modern Greek historian, Paparregopoulos, has pointed out, the Franks were confronted at the outset with an ecclesiastical dilemma, from which there was no escape. Either they must persecute the Orthodox Church, in which case they would make bitter enemies of the persecuted clergy and of the Nicene and Byzantine Emperors; or they must tolerate it, in which case their Greek subjects would find natural leaders in the Orthodox bishops, who would sooner or later conspire against their foreign rulers. This was exactly what happened as soon as the Franks abandoned the policy of persecution for that of toleration. At first, they simply annexed the existing Greek ecclesiastical organisation, which had subsisted, with one or two small changes, ever since the days of the Emperor Leo the Philosopher, ousted the Orthodox hierarchy from their sees, and installed in their places Catholic ecclesiastics from the West.

It would be interesting to present a few portraits of the leading women of Frankish Greece. There were the two daughters of Prince William, of whom the elder, Princess Isabelle, succeeded him and whose hand was eagerly sought in marriage by three husbands; her younger sister, Margu?rite, died in the grim castle of Chlomoutsi, the prisoner of the turbulent Moreote barons, who never forgave her for having married her daughter without their approval. There was Isabelle's daughter, Matilda, who had already been twice a widow when she was only 23, and who was left all alone to govern the principality, where every proud feudal lord claimed to do what was right in his own eyes. Compelled by King Robert "the Wise" of Naples to go through the form of marriage with his brother, John of Gravina, a man whom she loathed, she was imprisoned for her contumacity in the Castel dell' Uovo of Naples. There were the three Duchesses of Athens--Helene Angela, widow of Duke William, Regent for her son, and the first Greek who had governed Athens for 80 years; Maria Melissene, widow of Duke Antonio I, who tried to betray the Duchy to her countrymen the Greeks; and most tragic of all, Chiara Giorgio, a veritable villain of melodrama, widow of Nerio II, who fell in love with a young Venetian noble, induced him by the offer of her hand and land to poison the wife whom he had left behind in his palace at Venice, and expiated her crime before the altar of the Virgin at Megara at the hands of the last Frankish Duke of Athens, thus causing the Turkish conquest. Of like mould was the Dowager Countess of Salona, whose evil government drove her subjects to call in the Turks, and whose beautiful daughter, the last Countess of that historic castle, ended her days in the Sultan's harem. Another of these masculine dames was Francesca Acciajuoli, wife of Carlo Tocco, the Palatine Count of Cephalonia, the ablest and most masterful woman of the Latin Orient, who used to sign her letters in cinnabar ink "Empress of the Romans." In her castles at Sta Maura and at Cephalonia she presided over a bevy of fair ladies, and Froissart has quaintly described the splendid hospitality with which she received the French nobles, whom the Turks had taken prisoners at the battle of Nikopolis on the Danube. "The ladies," writes the old French chronicler, "were exceeding glad to have such noble society, for Venetian and Genoese merchants were, as a rule, the only strangers who came to their delightful island." He tells us, that Cephalonia was ruled by women, who scorned not, however, to make silken coverings so fine, that there was none like them. Fairies and nymphs inhabited this ancient realm of Odysseus, where a mediaeval Penelope held sway in the absence of her lord! Yet another fair dame of the Frankish world, the Duchess Fiorenza Sanudo of Naxos, occupied for years the astute diplomatists of Venice, who were resolved that so eligible a young widow should marry none but a Venetian, and who at last, when suitors of other nationalities became pressing, had the Duchess kidnapped and conveyed to Crete, where she was plainly told that, if she ever wished to see her beloved Naxos again, she must marry the candidate of the Most Serene Republic. And finally, we have the portrait of a more feminine woman than most of these ladies, Marulla of Verona, a noble damsel of Negroponte, whom old Ramon Muntaner describes from personal acquaintance as "one of the fairest Christians in the world, the best woman and the wisest that ever was in that land."

The bright and chivalrous Frankish society has long passed away; but a few Italian and Catalan families still linger in the Cyclades, there are still Venetian names and titles in the Ionian Islands; the Tocchi were till lately represented at Naples and the Zorzi still are at Venice; the towers of Thebes and Paros, the Norman arch of Andravida, the noble castles of Karytaina and Chlomoutsi, and the carvings and frescoes of Geraki still remind us of the romance of feudal Greece, when every coign of vantage had its lord, and from every donjon floated the banner of a baron.

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Yet a modern Greek historian of singular fairness, the late K. Paparregopoulos, has remarked how great was the change in the Turkish times. The descendants of the unwarlike Moreotes, who fell so easy a prey to the Frankish chivalry in 1205, never lost an opportunity of rising against the Turks after the Frankish domination was over. As he justly says, one of the main results of the long Latin rule was to teach Greek "hands to war and their fingers to fight."

Under his son and successor, Geoffrey II, the Frank principality prospered exceedingly. The Venetian historian, Marino Sanudo, who derived much of his information from his relative, Marco II Sanudo, Duke of Naxos, has given us a vivid picture of life at the Peloponnesian court under the rule of the second of the Villehardouins. A just prince, Geoffrey II used to send his friends from time to time to the baronial castles of the Morea to see how the barons treated their vassals. At his own court he kept "eighty knights with golden spurs"; and "knights came to the Morea from France, from Burgundy, and above all from Champagne, to follow him. Some came to amuse themselves, others to pay their debts, others again because of crimes which they had committed." In fact, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, the Morea had become for the younger sons of the French chivalry much what the British colonies were to adventurers and ne'er-do-weels fifty years ago. It was a place where the French knights would find their own language spoken--we are specially told what good French was spoken in Greece in the Frankish period--and could scarcely fail to obtain congenial employment from a prince of their own race.

One difficulty, however, had soon arisen in the Frank principality. The Latin clergy, who had had their full share of the spoils, declined to take any part in the defence of the country. Geoffrey, with all the energy of his race, opposed a stout resistance to these clerical pretensions, and confiscated the ecclesiastical fiefs, spending the proceeds upon the erection of the great castle of Clermont or Chlomoutsi above the busy port of Glarentza, the imposing ruins of which are still a land-mark for miles around. When he had finished the castle Geoffroy appealed to the Pope, placing before the Holy Father the very practical argument that, if the principality, through lack of defenders, were recaptured by the Greeks, the loss would fall just as much on the Roman Church as on the prince, while the fault would be entirely with the former. The Pope was sufficiently shrewd to see that Geoffroy was right; the dispute was settled amicably; and both the prince and the Latin clergy subscribed generously for the preservation of the moribund Latin empire, which exercised a nominal suzerainty over the principality of Achaia.

Unhappily for the principality, as the chronicler remarks, Guillaume de Villehardouin left no male heir; and nothing more strongly justifies the Salic law than the history of the Franks in the Morea, where it was not applied. Anxious to take what precautions he could against the disruption of his dominions after his death, the last of the Villehardouin princes married his elder daughter Isabelle to the second son of Charles of Anjou, the most powerful sovereign in the south of Europe at that time, who, in addition to his other titles, had received from the last Latin Emperor of the East, then a fugitive at Viterbo, the suzerainty over the principality of Achaia, hitherto held by the Emperor. This close connection with the great house of Anjou, to which the kingdom of the Two Sicilies then belonged, seemed to provide Achaia with the strongest possible support. The support, too, was near at hand; for communication between Italy and Glarentza, the chief port of the Morea, was, as we know from the novels of Boccaccio, not infrequent; and we hear of Frankish nobles from Achaia making pilgrimages to the two great Apulian sanctuaries of St Nicholas of Bari and Monte Santangelo. But, when Guillaume de Villehardouin died in 1278 and was laid beside his brother and father in the family mausoleum at Andravida , his daughter Isabelle was still a minor, though already a widow.

Florenz of Hainault lived too short a time for the welfare of the Morea; and Isabelle, once more a widow, was married again in Rome to a prince of the doughty house of Savoy, which thus became concerned with the affairs of Greece. Philip of Savoy was at the time in possession of Piedmont; and, as might have been expected, Piedmontese methods of government were not adapted to the latitude of Achaia. He was a man fond of spending, and an adept at extorting, money. The microscopic Dr Hopf has unearthed from the archives at Turin the bill--a fairly extensive one--for his wedding-breakfast; and the magnificent tournament which he organised on the Isthmus of Corinth, and in which all the Frankish rulers of Greece took part, occupied a thousand knights for more than twenty days. "He had learned money-making at home," it was said, when the extravagant prince from Piedmont let it be understood that he expected presents from his vassals, and imposed taxes on the privileged inhabitants of Skorta. But the days of the Savoyard in Achaia were numbered. The house of Anjou, suzerains of the principality, had never looked with favour on his marriage with Isabelle; an excuse was found for deposing him in favour of another Philip, of Taranto, son of the King of Naples. To make matters smoother, Isabelle and her husband received, as some compensation for relinquishing all claims to the Morea, a small strip of territory on the shores of the Fucine lake. They both left Greece for ever. Isabelle died in Holland; and Philip of Savoy sleeps in the family vault at Pinerolo, near Turin, leaving to his posterity by a second marriage the empty title of "Prince of Achaia."

The house of Villehardouin was not yet extinct. Isabelle had a daughter, Matilda of Hainault, whose husband, Louis of Burgundy, was permitted, by the tortuous policy of the Neapolitan Angevins, to govern the principality. But a rival claimant now appeared in the field in the person of Fernando of Majorca, one of the most adventurous personages of those adventurous times, who is well known to us from the quaint Catalan Chronicle of Ramon Muntaner. Fernando had already had his full share of the vicissitudes of life. He had been at one time head of the Catalan Grand Company, which had just won the Duchy of Athens on the swampy meadows of the Boeotian Kephissos, and he had sat a prisoner in the castle of Thebes, the famous Kadmeia, whose walls were painted with the exploits of the crusaders in the Holy Land. He had married the daughter of Guillaume de Villehardouin's younger child, the Lady of Akova, and he claimed Achaia in the name of his dead wife's infant son. Such was the violence of the age that both the rivals perished in the struggle, Fernando on the scaffold, and Louis of Burgundy by a poison administered to him by one of the petty potentates of Greece. Even more miserable was the end of the unhappy Matilda. Invited by the unscrupulous King of Naples to his court, she was informed that she must marry his brother, John of Gravina. With the true spirit of a Villehardouin, the Princess refused; and even the Pope himself, whose authority was invoked, could not make her yield. She had already, she said, married again, and must decline to commit bigamy. This gave the King of Naples the opportunity he sought. He declared that, by marrying without her suzerain's consent, she had forfeited her principality, which he bestowed upon his brother. The helpless Princess was thrown into the Castel dell' Uovo at Naples, and was afterwards allowed to die a lingering death in that island-prison, the last of her race. So ended the dynasty of the Villehardouins.

Cantacuzene, however, took a step which ultimately led to the recapture of the Morea, when he abolished the system of sending a subordinate Byzantine official to Mistra, and appointed his second son, Manuel, with the title of Despot, as governor of the Byzantine province for life. The Despot of Mistra at once made his presence felt. He drove off the Turkish corsairs, who had begun to infest the deep bays and jagged coast-line of the peninsula, levied ship-money for its defence against pirates, and, when his Greek subjects objected to be taxed for their own benefit, crushed rebellion by means of his Albanian bodyguard. Now, for the first time, we hear of that remarkable race, whose origin is as baffling to ethnologists as is their future to diplomatists, in the history of the Morea, where hereafter they were destined to play so distinguished a part. It is to the policy of Manuel Cantacuzene, who rewarded his faithful Albanians with lands in the south-west and centre of the country, that modern Greece owes the services of that valiant race, which fought so vigorously for her independence and its own in the last century. Manuel's example was followed by other Despots; and ere long ten thousand Albanians were colonising the devastated and deserted lands of the Peloponnese.

Meanwhile the barren honour of Prince of Achaia had passed from one absentee to another. John of Gravina, who had been installed in the room of the last unhappy Villehardouin princess, grew disgusted with the sorry task of trying to restore order, and transferred his rights to Catherine of Valois, widow of his brother, Philip of Taranto; her son Robert, who was both suzerain and sovereign of the principality, was a mere phantom ruler whom the Achaian barons treated with contempt. After his death they offered the empty title of princess to Queen Joanna I of Naples on condition that she did not interfere with their fiefs and their feuds. Then a new set of conquerors descended upon the distracted country, and began the last chapter of Frankish rule in Achaia.

The great exploit of the Catalans in carving out for themselves a duchy bearing the august name of Athens had struck the imagination of Southern Europe. Towards the close of the fourteenth century a similar, but less famous band of freebooters, the Navarrese Company, repeated in Achaia what the Catalans, seventy years earlier, had achieved in Attica and Boeotia. Conquering nominally in the name of Jacques de Baux, a scion of the house of Taranto, but really for their own hands, the soldiers of Navarre rapidly occupied one place after another. Androusa, in Messenia, at that time the capital of the Frankish principality, fell before them; and at "sandy Pylos," the home of Nestor, then called Zonklon, they made such a mark that the spot was believed by Hopf to have derived its name of Navarino from the castle which they held there. In 1386 their captain, Pedro Bordo de San Superan, styled himself Vicar of the principality, a title which developed into that of prince.

Meanwhile another Western Power, and that the most cunning and persistent, had taken advantage of these troublous times to gain a footing in the Peloponnese. Venice, true to her cautious commercial policy, had long been content with the two Messenian stations of Modon and Koron, and had even refused a tempting offer of some desperate barons to hand over to her the whole of Achaia. During the almost constant disturbances which had distracted the rest of the peninsula since the death of Guillaume de Villehardouin, the two Venetian ports had enjoyed comparative peace and prosperity. The high tariffs which the Frankish princes had erected round their own havens had driven trade to these Venetian harbours, so conveniently situated for trade with the great Venetian island of Crete as well. The documents which Sathas has published from the Venetian archives are full of allusions to these two now almost forgotten places. But at last, towards the end of the fourteenth century, Venice resolved on expansion. She accordingly bought Argos and Nauplia, the old fiefs which the first French Lord of Athens had received from the first of the Villehardouins, and which lingered on in the hands of the representatives of the fallen Athenian duke. A little later Lepanto, the old Naupaktos, gave the Venetians a post on the Corinthian Gulf.

As the Byzantine Empire dwindled before the incursions of the Turks, the Greek province of Mistra assumed more importance in the eyes of the statesmen at Constantinople. In 1415 the Emperor Manuel II, with an energy which modern sovereigns of Greece would do well to imitate, resolved to see for himself how matters stood, and arrived in the Morea. He at once set to work to re-erect the six-mile rampart, or "Hexamilion," across the Isthmus, which had been fortified by Xerxes, Valerian, Justinian, and, in recent times, by the last Despot of Mistra, Theodore I Palaiologos. Manuel's wall followed the course of Justinian's; and, in the incredibly short space of twenty-five days, forced labourers, working under the imperial eye, had erected a rampart strengthened by no less than 153 towers.

Even in the midst of alarms an eminent philosopher--to the surprise of the elegant Byzantines, it is true--had fixed his seat at Mistra. George Gemistos Plethon believed that he had found in Plato a cure for the evils of the Morea. Centuries before the late Mr Henry George, he advocated a single tax. An advanced fiscal reformer, he suggested a high tariff for all articles which could be produced at home; a paper strategist, he had a scheme which he submitted, together with his other proposals, to the Emperor, for creating a standing army; an anti-clerical, he urged that the monks should work for their living, or discharge public functions without pay. The philosopher, in tendering this advice to the Emperor, modestly offered his own services for the purpose of carrying it out. Manuel II was a practical statesman, who knew that he was living, as Cicero would have said, "non in Platonis republica, sed in faece Lycurgi." The offer was rejected.

At last the long threatened Turkish peril, temporarily delayed by the career of Timour and the great Turkish defeat at Angora, was at hand. The famous Ottoman commander, Evrenos Beg, had already twice entered the peninsula, once as the ally of the Navarrese prince against the Greek Despot, once as the foe of both. In 1423 a still greater captain, Turakhan, easily scaled the Hexamilion, leaving behind him at Gardiki, as a memorial of his invasion, a pyramid of eight hundred Albanian skulls. But, by the irony of history, just before Greeks and Franks alike succumbed to the all-conquering Turks, the dream of the Byzantine court was at last realised, and the Frank principality ceased to exist.

The Greek portion of the Morea was at this time in the hands of the three brothers of the Emperor John VI Palaiologos--Theodore II, Thomas, and Constantine--the third of whom was destined to die on the walls of Constantinople as last Emperor of the East. Politic marriages and force of arms soon extinguished the phantom of Frankish rule; and the Genoese baron, Centurione Zaccaria, nephew of Bordo de San Superan, who had succeeded his uncle as last Prince of Achaia, was glad to purchase peace by giving his daughter's hand to Thomas Palaiologos with the remaining fragments of the once famous principality, except the family barony and the princely title, as her dowry. Thus, when Centurione died in 1432, save for the six Venetian stations, the whole peninsula was once more Greek. Unhappily, the union between the three brothers ended with the disappearance of the common enemy. Both Theodore and Constantine were ambitious of the imperial diadem; and, while the former was pressing his claims at Constantinople, the latter was besieging Mistra, having first sent the historian Phrantzes, his confidential agent in these dubious transactions, to obtain the Sultan's consent. Assisted by his brother Thomas and a force of Frank mercenaries, Constantine was only induced to keep the peace by the intervention of the Emperor; till, in 1443, Theodore removed this source of jealousy by carrying out his long-cherished scheme of retiring from public life. He accordingly handed over the government of Mistra to Constantine and received in exchange the city of Selymbria on the Sea of Marmora, where he afterwards died of the plague.

The Morea was now partitioned between Constantine, who took possession of the eastern portion, embracing Lakonia, Argolis, Corinth, and the southern shore of the Corinthian Gulf as far as Patras, and Thomas, who governed the western part. With all his faults Constantine was a man of far greater energy and patriotism than the rest of his family, and he lost no time in developing a national policy. His first act was to restore the Hexamilion; his next, to attempt the recovery of the Athenian duchy from the Acciajuoli family for the Greek cause, which he personified. Nine years earlier, on the death of Duke Antonio, he had sent Phrantzes to negotiate for the cession of Athens and Thebes. Foiled on that occasion, he now invaded the duchy and forced the weak Duke Nerio II to do homage and pay tribute to him. The Albanians and Koutso-Wallachs of Thessaly rose in his favour; the Serbs promised to aid him in defending the Isthmus against the Turks; it seemed for the moment as if there were at last some hope of a Christian revival in the Near East. But the battle of Varna soon put an end to these dreams. Murad II, accompanied by the Duke of Athens, set out in 1446, at the head of a large army, for the Isthmus. The two Despots had assembled a considerable force behind the ramparts of the Hexamilion, which seemed so imposing to the Sultan that he remonstrated with his old military counsellor, Turakhan, for having advised him to attack such apparently impregnable lines so late in the season. But the veteran, who knew his Greeks and had taken the Hexamilion twenty-three years before, replied that its defenders would not long resist a determined attack. A Greek officer, who had been sent by Constantine to reconnoitre the Turkish position, came back so terrified at the strength of the enemy that he urged his master to retreat at once to the mountains of the Morea. The Despot ordered his arrest as a disciplinary measure, but he was so greatly struck by what he had heard that he sent the Athenian Chalkokondyles, father of the historian, to offer terms of peace to the Sultan. Murad scornfully rejected the proposals, arrested the envoy, and demanded, as the price of his friendship, the destruction of the Hexamilion and the payment of tribute. This was too much for the high-spirited Despot, and the conflict began.

For three whole days the excellent Turkish artillery played upon the walls of the rampart. Then a general assault was ordered, and, after a brave defence by the two Despots, a young Serbian janissary climbed to the top of the wall and planted the Turkish flag there in full view of the rival hosts. The towers on either side of him were soon taken by his comrades, the gates were forced in, and the Turks streamed through them into the peninsula. The Greeks fled; the two Despots among them; Akrocorinth surrendered, and a band of 300, who had thought of "making a new Thermopylae" at Kenchreae, were soon forced to lay down their arms. Together with 600 other captives, they were beheaded by the Sultan's orders. Then the Turkish army was divided into two sections; one, under old Turakhan, penetrated into the interior; the other, commanded by the Sultan in person, followed the coast of the Corinthian Gulf, burning the mediaeval town which had arisen on the ruins of Sikyon. Aigion shared the same fate; but most of the inhabitants of Patras had escaped over the Gulf before Murad arrived there. The old Frankish citadel defied all the efforts of the besiegers, for the besieged knew that they had nothing to hope from surrender. A breach was made in the walls, but the defenders poured boiling resin on to the heads of the janissaries and worked at the rampart till the breach was made good. The season was by this time very far advanced, so the Sultan and his lieutenant withdrew to Thebes, dragging with them 60,000 captives, who were sold as slaves. The Despots were glad to obtain peace and a qualified independence by paying a capitation tax, and by sending their envoys to do homage to the Sultan in his headquarters at Thebes. The Greeks ascribed their misfortunes to their Albanian and Frankish mercenaries, the former of whom had begun to feel their power, while the latter had espoused the cause of Centurione's illegitimate son at the moment when the Despots were engaged in the defence of the country.

On the death of the Emperor in 1448 the Despot Constantine succeeded to the imperial title; and it is a picturesque fact that the last Emperor of Constantinople was crowned at Mistra, where his wife still lies buried, near that ancient Sparta which had given so many heroes to Hellas. His previous government was bestowed on his youngest brother Demetrios, with the exception of Patras, which was added to the province of Thomas. The new partition took place in Constantinople, where the two brothers solemnly swore before God and their aged mother to love one another and to rule the Morea in perfect unanimity. But no sooner had they arrived at their respective capitals of Mistra and Patras than they proceeded to break their oaths. Thomas, the more enterprising of the two, attacked his brother; Demetrios, destitute of patriotism, called in the aid of the Turks, who readily appeared under the leadership of Turakhan, made Thomas disgorge most of what he had seized, and on the way destroyed what remained of the Hexamilion. The object of this was soon obvious. As soon as the new Sultan, Mohammed II, was ready to attack Constantinople, he ordered Turakhan to keep the two Palaiologoi busy in the Morea, so that they might not send assistance to their brother the Emperor. The old Pasha once again marched into the peninsula; but he found greater resistance than he had expected on the Isthmus. He and his two sons, Achmet and Omar, then spread their forces over the country, plundering and burning as they went, till the certainty of Constantinople's fall rendered their presence in the Morea no longer necessary. But as Achmet was retiring through the Pass of Dervenaki, that death-trap of armies, between Argos and Corinth, the Greeks fell upon him, routed his men and took him prisoner. Demetrios, either from gratitude for Turakhan's recent services to him, or from fear of the old warrior's revenge, released his captive without ransom. It was the last ray of light before the darkness of four centuries descended upon Greece.

The news that Constantinople had fallen and that the Emperor had been slain came like a thunderbolt upon his wretched brothers, who naturally expected that they would be the next victims. But Mohammed was not in a hurry; he knew that he could annihilate them when he chose; meanwhile he was content to accept an annual tribute of 12,000 ducats. The folly of the greedy Byzantine officials, who held the chief posts at the petty courts of Patras and Mistra, had prepared, however, a new danger for the Despots. The Albanian colonists had multiplied while the Greek population had diminished; and the recent Turkish devastations had increased the extent of waste land where they could pasture their sheep. Fired by the great exploits of their countryman, Skanderbeg, in Albania, they were seized by one of those rare yearnings for independence which meet us only occasionally in Albanian history. The official mind seized this untoward moment to demand a higher tax from the Albanian lands. The reply of the shepherds was a general insurrection in which 30,000 Albanians followed the lead of their chieftain, Peter Boua, "the lame." Their object was to expel the Greeks from the peninsula; but this, of course, did not prevent other Greeks, dissatisfied, for reasons of their own, with the rule of the Despots, from throwing in their lot with the Albanians. A Cantacuzene gained the support of the insurgents for his claims on Mistra by taking an Albanian name; the bastard son of Centurione emerged from prison and was proclaimed as Prince of Achaia. Both Mistra and Patras were besieged; and it soon became clear that nothing but Turkish intervention could save the Morea from becoming an Albanian principality. Accordingly, the aid of the invincible Turakhan was again solicited; and, as Mohammed believed in the policy--long followed in Macedonia by his successors--of keeping the Christian races as evenly balanced as possible, the Turkish general was sent to suppress the revolt without utterly destroying the revolted. Turakhan carried out his instructions with consummate skill. He soon put down the insurgents, but allowed them to retain their stolen cattle and the waste lands which they had occupied, on payment of a fixed rent. He then turned to the two Despots and gave them the excellent advice to live as brothers, to be lenient to their subjects, and to be vigilant in the prevention of disturbances. Needless to say, his advice was not taken.

Thomas at once complied with his conqueror's demands; but his ambition soon revived when Mohammed had gone. Fresh victories of Skanderbeg suggested to him the flattering idea that a Palaiologos could do more than a mere Albanian. Divisions among the Turkish officers in his old dominions increased his confidence--a quality in which Greeks are not usually lacking. Early in 1459 he raised the standard of revolt; but, at the same time, committed the folly of attacking his brother's possessions. Phrantzes, who, after having been sold as a slave when Constantinople fell, had obtained his freedom and had entered the service of Thomas, has stigmatised in forcible language the wickedness of those evil counsellors who had advised his master to embark on a civil war and to "eat his oaths as if they were vegetables." Most of Thomas' successes were at the expense of his brother, for, of all the places lately annexed by the Turks, Kalavryta alone was recovered. But the Albanians did far more harm to the country than either the Greeks or the Turkish garrison by plundering both sides with absolute impartiality and deserting from Thomas to Demetrios, or from Demetrios to Thomas, on the slightest provocation. Meanwhile the Turks attacked Thomas at Leondari, at the invitation of his brother; and the defeat which he sustained induced the miserable Despot to go through the form of reconciliation with Demetrios, under the auspices of Holy Church. This display of brotherly love had the usual sequel--a new fratricidal war; but Mohammed II had now made up his mind to put an end to the Palaiologoi, and marched straight to Mistra. Demetrios soon surrendered, and humbly appeared in the presence of his master. The Sultan insisted upon the prompt performance of his former command, that the Despot's daughter should enter the seraglio, and told him that Mistra could no longer be his. He therefore ordered him to bid his subjects surrender all their cities and fortresses--an order which was at once executed, except at Monemvasia. That splendid citadel, which had so long defied the Franks at the zenith of their power, and boasted of the special protection of Providence, now scorned to surrender to the infidel. The daughter of Demetrios, who had been sent thither for safety, was, indeed, handed over to the Turkish envoys, and Demetrios himself was conducted to Constantinople; but the Monemvasiotes proclaimed Thomas as their liege lord, and he shortly afterwards presented Monemvasia to the Pope, who appointed a governor.

Having thus wiped the province of Demetrios from the map, Mohammed turned his arms against Thomas. Wherever a city resisted, its defenders were punished without mercy and in violation of the most solemn pledges. The Albanian chiefs who had defied the Sultan at Kastritza were sawn asunder; the Albanian captain of Kalavryta was flayed alive; Gardiki was once more the scene of a terrible massacre, ten times worse than that which had disgraced Turakhan thirty-seven years before. These acts of cruelty excited very different feelings in the population. Some, especially the Albanians, were inspired to fight with the courage of despair; others preferred slavery to an heroic death. From the neighbourhood of Navarino alone 10,000 persons were dragged away to colonise Constantinople; and a third of the Greeks of Greveno, which had dared to resist, were carried off as slaves. The castles of Glarentza and Santameri were surrendered by the descendants of Guillaume de Villehardouin's Turks, who experienced, like the Albanians, the faithless conduct of their conquerors. Meanwhile Thomas had fled to Navarino, and, on the day when the Sultan reached that place, set sail with his wife and family from a neighbouring harbour for Corf?. There the faithful Phrantzes joined him and wrote his history of these events--the swan-song of free Greece.

Another Palaiologos, however, Graitzas by name, showed a heroism of which the Despot was incapable. This man, the last defender of his country, held out in the castle of Salmenikon between Patras and Aigion till the following year, and, when the town was taken, still defied all the efforts of the Turks, who allowed him to withdraw, with all the honours of war, into Venetian territory at Lepanto. In the autumn of 1460 Mohammed left the Morea, after having appointed Zagan Pasha as military governor, with orders to install the new Turkish authorities and to make arrangements for the collection of the capitation tax and of the tribute of children. Thus the Morea fell under Turkish rule, which thenceforward continued for an almost unbroken period of three hundred and fifty years. Save at Monemvasia, where the papal flag still waved, and at Nauplia, Argos, Thermisi, Koron, Modon, and Navarino, where Venice still retained her colonies, there was none to dispute the Sultan's sway.

THE NAME OF NAVARINO

Nations, like individuals, sometimes have the romance of their lives in middle age--a romance unknown, perhaps, to the outside world until, long years afterwards, some forgotten bundle of letters throws a flash of rosy light upon a period hitherto regarded as uneventful and commonplace. So is it with the history of Athens under the Frankish domination, which Finlay first described in his great work. But since his day numerous documents have been published, and still more are in course of publication, which complete the picture of mediaeval Athens as he drew it in a few master-strokes. Barcelona and Palermo have been ransacked for information; the Venetian archives have yielded a rich harvest; Milan has contributed her share; and a curious collection of Athenian legends has been made by an industrious and patriotic Greek. We know now, as we never knew before, the strange story of the classic city under her French, her Catalan, and her Florentine masters; and it is high time that the results of these researches should be laid before the British public. The present paper deals with the first two of these three periods.

Othon's dominions were large, if measured by the small standard of classical Greece. The Burgundian state of Athens embraced Attica, Boeotia, Megaris, and the ancient Opuntian Lokris to the north; while to the south of the isthmus the "Great Lord's" deputies governed the important strongholds of Argos and Nauplia, conferred upon him, in 1212, by Prince Geoffroy I of Achaia as the reward of his assistance in capturing them, and thenceforth held by Othon and his successors for a century as fiefs of the Principality. The Italian Marquess of Boudonitza on the north, the Lord of Salona on the west, were the neighbours, and the latter subsequently the vassal, of the ruler of Athens, his bulwarks against the expanding power of the Greek despots of Epeiros. Thus situated, mediaeval Athens had at least four ports--Livadostro, or Rive d'Ostre, as the Franks called it, on the Gulf of Corinth, where Othon's relatives landed when they arrived from France; the harbour of Atalante opposite Euboea; the beautiful bay of Nauplia; and the famous Piraeus, known in the Frankish times by the name of Porto Leone from the huge lion, now in front of the Arsenal at Venice, which then guarded the entrance to the haven of Themistokles. It is strange, in these circumstances, that the Burgundian rulers of Athens made little or no attempt to create a navy, especially as Latin pirates infested the coast of Attica, and a sail down the Corinthian Gulf was described as "a voyage to Acheron."

Guiltless of a classical education, and unmoved by the genius of the place, Othon abstained from seeking a model for the constitution of his new state in the laws of Solon. Like the other Frankish princes of the Levant, he adopted the "Book of the Customs of the Empire of Romania," a code of usages based on the famous "Assizes of Jerusalem." But the feudal society which was thus installed in Attica was very different from that which existed in the Principality of Achaia or in the Duchy of the Archipelago. The "Great Lord" of Athens had, at the most, only one exalted noble, the head of the famous Flemish house of St Omer, near his throne. It is obvious, from the silence of all the authorities, that the Burgundians who settled in Othon's Greek dominions were men of inferior social position to himself, a fact further demonstrated by the comparative lack in Attica and Boeotia of those baronial castles so common in the Peloponnese.

The renewal of the divine grace suffereth not the ancient glory of the city of Athens to grow old. The citadel of most famous Pallas hath been humbled to become the seat of the most glorious Mother of God. Well may we call this city "Kirjath-sepher," which when Othniel had subdued to the rule of Caleb, "he gave him Achsah, his daughter to wife."

Othon was more loyal to the Empire than to the Papacy. When the Lombard nobles of Salonika, on the death of Boniface, tried to shake off the feudal tie which bound that kingdom to the Latin Emperor, he stood by the latter, even though his loyalty cost him the temporary loss of his capital of Thebes. He was rewarded by a visit which the Emperor Henry paid him at Athens, where no Imperial traveller had set foot since Basil "the Bulgar-slayer," two centuries earlier, had offered up prayer and thanksgivings in the greatest of all cathedrals. Like Basil, Henry also prayed "in the Minster of Athens, which men call Our Lady," and received from his host "every honour in his power." Only once again did an emperor of Constantinople bow down in the Parthenon; and then it was not as a conqueror but as a fugitive that he came.

The "Great Lord" was not fired with the romance of reigning over the city of Perikles and Plato. When old age crept on, he felt, like many another baron of the conquest, that he would like to spend the evening of his days in his native land; and in 1225 he departed for Burgundy with his wife and sons, leaving his nephew, Guy, to succeed him in Greece. Under the wise rule of his successor, the Athenian state prospered exceedingly. Thebes, where Guy and his connections, the great family of St Omer, resided, had recovered much of its fame as the seat of the silk manufactory. Jews and Genoese both possessed colonies there; and the shrewd Ligurian traders negotiated a commercial treaty with the new ruler which allowed them to have their own consul, their own court of justice, and their own buildings both there and at Athens.

The Greeks too profited by the enlightened policy of their sovereign. One Greek monk at this time made the road to the monastery of St John the Hunter on the slopes of Hymettos, to which the still standing column on the way to Marathon alludes; another built one of the two churches at the quaint little monastery of Our Lady of the Glen, not far from the fort of Phyle. For thirty years Athens enjoyed profound peace, till a fratricidal war between Guillaume de Villehardouin, the ambitious Prince of Achaia, and the great barons of Euboea involved Guy in their quarrel. The prince summoned Guy, his vassal for Argos and Nauplia, to assist him against his foes; Guy, though bound not only by this feudal tie but by his marriage to one of William's nieces, refused his aid, and did all he could to help the enemies of the prince. The latter replied by invading the dominions of his nephew. Forcing the Kak? Sk?la, that narrow and ill-famed road which leads along the rocky coast of the Saronic Gulf towards Megara, he met Guy's army at the pass of Mount Karydi, "the walnut mountain," on the way to Thebes. There Frankish Athens and Frankish Sparta first met face to face; the Sire of Athens was routed and fled to Thebes, where he obtained peace by a promise to appear before the High Court of Achaia and perform any penalty which it might inflict upon him for having borne arms against the Prince.

Meanwhile the wheel of fortune had avenged the Duke of Athens. His victorious enemy, involved in a quarrel between the rival Greek states of Nice and Epeiros, had been taken prisoner by the Greek Emperor; and the flower of the Achaian chivalry was either dead or languishing in the dungeons of Lampsakos. In these circumstances the survivors offered to Guy the regency of Achaia--a post which he triumphantly accepted. But he had not been long in Greece when another blow descended upon the Franks. The Latin Empire of Constantinople fell; and the Emperor Baldwin II, a landless exile, was glad to accept the hospitality of the Theban Kadmeia and the Castle of Athens. Thus, on that venerable rock, was played the last pitiful scene in the brief Imperial drama of the Latin Orient.

Prosperous indeed must have been the state whose ruler could afford such splendid generosity. Worthy too of such a sovereign was the castle in which he dwelt--the work of the great Theban baron, Nicholas II de St Omer, who had built it out of the vast wealth of his wife, Marie of Antioch. The castle of St Omer, which was described as "the finest baronial mansion in all Romania," contained sufficient rooms for an emperor and his court; and its walls were decorated with frescoes illustrating the conquest of the Holy Land by the Franks, in which the ancestors of its founder had borne a prominent part. Alas! one stumpy tower, still bearing the name of Santameri, is all that now remains of this noble residence of the Athenian dukes and the Theban barons.

The succession to the "delectable duchy" of Athens--for such, indeed, it was in the early years of the fourteenth century--was not seriously disputed. There were only two claimants, both first cousins of the late duke--Eschive, Lady of Beyrout, and Walter de Brienne, Count of Lecce, a true scion of that adventurous family, who had been a "knight of death" in the Angevin cause in Sicily, and had fought like the lion on his banner at the fatal battle of Gagliano. The rival claims having been referred to the High Court of Achaia, of which the Duke of Athens was, in Angevin times, a peer, the barons decided, as was natural, in favour of the gallant and powerful Count of Lecce, more fitted than a lonely widow to govern a military state. Unfortunately, Duke Walter of Athens was as rash as he was brave; prison and defeat in Sicily had not taught him to respect the infantry of Catalu?a. Speaking their language and knowing their ways, he thought that he might use them for his own ends and then dismiss them when they had served his purpose.

Walter now rashly resolved to rid himself of the expensive mercenaries for whom he had no further use. He first selected 500 men from their ranks, gave them their pay and lands on which to settle, and then abruptly bade the others begone, although at the time he still owed them four months' wages. They naturally declined to obey this summary order, and prepared to conquer or die; for retreat was impossible, and there was no other land where they could seek their fortune. Walter, too, assembled all available troops against the common enemies of Frankish Greece--for as such the savage Catalans were regarded. Never had a Latin army made such a brave show as that which was drawn up under his command in the spring of 1311 on the great Boeotian plain, almost on the self-same spot where, more than sixteen centuries before, Philip of Macedon had won that "dishonest victory" which destroyed the freedom of classic Greece, and where, in the time of Sulla, her Roman masters had thrice met the Pontic troops of Mithridates. All the great feudatories of Greece rallied to his call. There came Alberto Pallavicini, Marquess of Boudonitza, who kept the pass of Thermopylae; Thomas de Stromoncourt of Salona, who ruled over the slopes of Parnassos, and whose noble castle still preserves the memory of its mediaeval lords; Boniface of Verona, the favourite of the late Duke of Athens; George Ghisi, one of the three great barons of Euboea; and Jean de Maisy, another powerful magnate of that famous island. From Achaia, and from the scattered duchy of the Archipelago, contingents arrived to do battle against the desperate mercenaries of Catalu?a. Already Walter dreamed of not merely routing the company, but of planting his lion banner on the ramparts of Byzantium.

As if he had some presentiment of his coming death, Walter made his will--a curious document still preserved--and then, on March 15, took up his stand on the hill called the Thourion, still surmounted by a mediaeval tower, to survey the field. Before the battle began, the 500 favoured Catalans whom he had retained came to him and told him that they would rather die than fight against their old comrades. The duke bade them do as they pleased; and their defection added a welcome and experienced contingent to the enemy's forces. When they had gone, the duke, impatient for the fray, placed himself at the head of 200 French knights with golden spurs and charged with a shout across the plain. But, when they reached the fatal spot where the grass was greenest, their horses, heavily weighted with their coats of mail, plunged all unsuspecting into the treacherous morass. Some rolled over with their armoured riders in the mire; others, stuck fast in the stiff bog, stood still, in the picturesque phrase of the Byzantine historian, "like equestrian statues," powerless to move. The shouts of "Aragon! Aragon!" from the Catalans increased the panic of the horses; showers of arrows hailed upon the helpless Franks; and the Turkish auxiliaries of the Catalans rushed forward and completed the deadly work. So great was the slaughter that only four Frankish nobles are known to have survived that fatal day--Boniface of Verona, Roger Deslaur, the eldest son of the Duke of Naxos, and Jean de Maisy of Euboea. At one blow the Catalans had destroyed the noble chivalry of Frankish Greece; and the men, whose forefathers had marched with Boniface of Montferrat into Greece a century earlier, lay dead in the fatal Boeotian swamp. Among them was the Duke of Athens, whose head, severed by a Catalan knife, was borne, long afterwards, on a funeral galley to Brindisi and buried in the church of Santa Croce in his Italian county of Lecce.

After nine years' wandering these vagabonds settled down in the promised land, which the most extraordinary fate had bestowed upon them. But they lacked a leader of sufficient social position to preside over their changed destinies. Finding no such man in their own ranks, they offered the post to one of their four noble prisoners, Boniface of Verona, whom Muntaner, his guest at Negroponte, has described as "the wisest and most courteous nobleman that was ever born." Both of these qualities made him disinclined to accept an offer which would have rendered him an object of suspicion to Venice, his neighbour in Euboea, and of loathing to the whole Frankish world. On his refusal the Catalans turned to Roger Deslaur, whom neither ties of blood nor scruples of conscience prevented from becoming their leader. As his reward he received the castle of Salona together with the widow of its fallen lord.

But the victors of the Kephissos soon recognised that they needed some more powerful head than a simple knight of Roussillon, if they were to hold the duchy against the jealous enemies whom their meteoric success had alarmed and excited. Their choice naturally fell upon King Frederick II of Sicily, the master whom they had served in that island ten years earlier, and who had already shown that he was not unwilling to profit by their achievements. Accordingly, in 1312, they invited him to send them one of his children. He gave them as their duke his second son Manfred, in whose name--as the Duke was still too young to come himself--he sent, as governor of Athens, Beranger Esta?ol, a knight of Ampurias. On his arrival Deslaur laid down his office, and we hear of him no more.

The growing power of the Catalans under this daring leader, who had marched across "the black bridge" of Negroponte and had occupied two of the most important castles of the island, so greatly alarmed the Venetians that they persuaded King Frederick II of Sicily to curb the restless ambition of his bastard son, lest a European coalition should be formed against the disturber of Greece. Above all else, the Republic was anxious that a Catalan navy should not be formed at the Piraeus; and it was therefore stipulated, in 1319, that a plank was to be taken out of the hull of each of the Catalan vessels then lying in "the sea of Athens," and that the ships' tackle was to be taken up to "the Castle of Athens" and there deposited. Thus shut out from naval enterprise, Fadrique now extended his dominions by land. The last Duke of Neopatras had died in 1318, and the best part of his duchy soon fell into the hands of the Catalans of Athens, who might claim that they represented the Burgundian dukes, and were therefore entitled to some voice in the government of a land which Guy II had once administered. At Neopatras, the seat of the extinct Greek dynasty of the Angeloi, Fadrique made his second capital, styling himself "Vicar-General of the duchies of Athens and Neopatras." Thenceforth the Sicilian dukes of Athens assumed the double title which figures on their coins and in their documents; and, long after the Catalan duchies had passed away, the Kings of Aragon continued to bear it. This conquest made the Company master of practically all continental Greece; even the Venetian Marquess of Boudonitza paid an annual tribute of four horses to the Catalan vicar-general. Still, however, the faithful family of Foucherolles held the two great fortresses of Argos and Nauplia for the exiled house of Brienne.

Walter was, like his father, a rash general, while his opponents had not forgotten the art of strategy, to which they owed their success. At first the brilliant band of French knights and Tuscan men-at-arms which crossed over with him to Epeiros in 1331 carried all before it. But, when he arrived in the Catalan duchy, he found that the enemy was much too cautious to give his fine cavalry a chance of displaying its prowess on the plains of Boeotia. While the Catalans remained behind the walls of their fortresses, the invaders wasted their energies on the open country. Ere long Walter's small stock of money ran out, and his chances diminished with it. The Greeks rendered him no assistance. It is true that a correspondent of the historian Nikephoros Gregoras wrote that they were "suffering under extreme slavery," and had "exchanged their ancient happiness for boorish ways," while Guillaume Adam said that they were "worse than serfs"; but either their sufferings were insufficient to make them desire a change of masters, or their boorishness was such that it made them indifferent to the advantages of French culture. Early in the following year Walter took ship for Italy, never to return. Summoned by the Florentines to command their forces, he became tyrant of their city, whence he was expelled amidst universal rejoicings eleven years later. His name and arms may still be seen in the Bargello of Florence. Thirteen years afterwards he fell fighting, as Constable of France, against the English at the battle of Poitiers. His sister Isabelle, wife of Walter d'Enghien, succeeded to his estates and his pretensions; some of her descendants continued to bear, till 1381, the empty title of Duke of Athens, while the last fragments of the French duchy--the castles of Nauplia and Argos--remained in the possession of others of her line till, in 1388, they were purchased by Venice.

Accordingly, early in 1380, they directed their steps towards Attica, under the command of Mahiot de Coquerel, chamberlain of the King of Navarre, and Pedro de Superan, surnamed Bordo, or the bastard. These experienced leaders found valuable assistance in the chiefs of the Sicilian party; in the knights of St John who sallied forth from the Morea to pillage the distracted duchy; in the Count of Conversano, who seems to have now made a second attempt to regain his ancestors' heritage; and in the mutual jealousies of Thebes and Athens, fomented by the characteristic desire of the Athenians to be independent of Theban supremacy. In Boeotia, one place after another fell before the adventurers from Navarre; the noble castle of Livadia, which still preserves the memory of its Catalan masters, was betrayed by a Greek from Durazzo; and the capital was surrendered by two Spanish traitors. But the fortress of Salona defied their assaults; and the Akropolis, thanks to the bravery of its governor, Romeo de Bellarbe, and to the loyalty of the ever useful notary, Demetrios Rendi, baffled the machinations of a little band of malcontents. These severe checks broke the force of the soldiers of Navarre; their appearance in Greece had alarmed all the petty potentates of the Morea and the islands; and they withdrew to Boeotia, whence, some two years later, they were finally dislodged. Thence they proceeded to the Morea, where they carved out a principality, nominally for Jacques de Baux, really for themselves.

The people of Athens and Salona, whose loyalty to the crown of Aragon had saved the duchies, were well aware of the value of their services, and were resolved to have their reward. Both communities accordingly presented petitions to King Pedro; and these capitulations, drawn up in the Catalan language, have fortunately been preserved in the archives of Barcelona. Both the Athenian capitulations and those of Salona are largely concerned with personal questions--requests that this or that faithful person should receive privileges, lands, and honours, especially his Majesty's most loyal subject, the Greek, Demetrios Rendi. From the date of the Frankish conquest no member of the conquered race had ever risen to such eminence as this serviceable clerk, who now obtained broad acres, goods, and serfs in both Attica and Boeotia. But there were some clauses in the Athenian petition of a more general character. The Athenians begged the central authorities at Thebes for a continuance of their recently won independence, and for permission to bequeath their property and serfs to the Catholic Church. Both these prayers met with a blank refusal. King Pedro told the petitioners that he intended to treat the duchies as an indivisible whole, and that home-rule for Athens was quite out of the question. He also reminded them that the Catalans were only a small garrison in Greece, and that, if holy Church became possessed of their property, there would be no one left to defend the country. He also observed that there was no hardship in this, for the law of Athens was also that of his kingdoms of Majorca and Valencia. The soundness of his Majesty's statesmanship was obvious in the peculiar conditions of the Catalan state; but this demand shows the influence of the Church, an influence rarely found in the history of Frankish Greece.

Pedro now did his best to repair the ravages of the civil war; he ordered a general amnesty for all the inhabitants of the duchies, and showered rewards on faithful cities and individuals. Livadia, always a privileged town in the Catalan period, not only received a confirmation of its rights, but became the seat of the Order of St George in Greece, an honour due to the fact that the head of the saint was then preserved there. Most important of all for the future history of Greece, the king granted exemption from taxes for two years to all Albanians who would come and settle in the depleted duchies. This was the beginning of that Albanian colonisation of Attica of which so many traces remain in the population and the topography of the present day.

The Catalan Grand Company disappeared from the face of Attica as rapidly as rain from its light soil. Like their Burgundian predecessors, these soldiers of fortune conquered but struck no root in the land. Some took ship for Sicily; some, like Ballester, the last Catalan Archbishop of Athens, are heard of in Catalu?a; while others, among them the two branches of the Fadrique family, lingered on for a time, the one at Salona, the other at AEgina, where we find their connections, the Catalan family of Caopena, ruling till 1451--a fact which explains the boast of a much later Catalan writer, Pe?a y Farel, that his countrymen maintained their "ancient splendour" in Greece till the middle of the fifteenth century. Thither the Catalans conveyed the head of St George, and thence it was removed to the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, when the Venetians succeeded the Caopena as masters of AEgina. Even to-day a noble family in Zante bears the name of Katalianos; and in the island of Santorin are three families of Spanish origin--those of Da Corogna, De Cigalla, and Delenda, to which last the recent Catholic Archbishop of Athens belonged. Besides the castles of Salona, Livadia, and Lamia, and the row of towers between Livadia and Thebes, the Catalans have left a memorial of their stay in Greece in the curious fresco of the Virgin and Child, now in the Christian Archaeological Museum at Athens, which came from the church of the Prophet Elias near the gate of the Agora. Unlike their predecessors, they minted no coins; unlike them, they had no ducal court in their midst to stimulate luxury and refinement. Yet even in the Athens of the Catalans there was some culture. A diligent Athenian priest copied medical works; and we hear of the libraries belonging to the Catholic bishops of Salona and Megara.

The Greeks long remembered with terror the Catalan domination. A Greek girl, in a mediaeval ballad, prays that her seducer may "fall into the hands of the Catalans"; even a generation ago the name of Catalan was used as a term of reproach in Attica and in Euboea, in Akarnania, Messenia, Lakonia, and at Tripolitsa. Yet, as we have seen, the Greeks did not raise a finger to assist a French restoration when they had the chance, while there are several instances of Greeks rendering valuable aid to the Catalans against the men of Navarre. Harsher they may have been than the French, but they probably gained their bad name before they settled down in Attica, and became more staid and more tolerant as they became respectable. In our own time they have found admirers and apologists among their own countrymen, who are justly proud of the fact that the most famous city in the world was for two generations governed by the sons of Catalu?a. And in the history of Athens, where nothing can lack interest, they, too, are entitled to a place.

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