The Battle of Halmyros was fought on 15 March 1311. It was fought between the forces of the Frankish Duchy of Athens and its vassals under Walter of Brienne against the mercenaries of the Catalan Company. Walter and almost the entire knighthood of his realm fell in the field. As a result of the battle, the Catalans took over the leaderless Duchies of Athens; they ruled that part of Greece until the 1380s.
About Battle of Halmyros in brief
The Battle of Halmyros was fought on 15 March 1311. It was fought between the forces of the Frankish Duchy of Athens and its vassals under Walter of Brienne against the mercenaries of the Catalan Company. The Catalans were considerably outnumbered and weakened by the reluctance of their Turkish auxiliaries to fight. Walter and almost the entire knighthood of his realm fell in the field. As a result of the battle, the Catalans took over the leaderless Duchies of Athens; they ruled that part of Greece until the 1380s. Following the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, much of Greece came under the rule of Frankish Crusader principalities. The most notable of them were the Kingdom of Thessalonica, the Principality of Achaea, and the Duchys of Athens, with its capital at Thebes. The Company’s 8,000 men in Thessaly caused concern to its Greek ruler, John II Doukas. Having just exploited the death of Guy II to repudiate the overlordship of the Dukes of Athens,. John turned to Byzantium and the other Greek principality, the Despotate of Epirus, for aid. Defeated by the Greeks, the Greeks agreed to pass peacefully through the Frankian principalities of southern Greece. In 1309, the last leader of the Company, Bernat de Rocafort, had envisaged the restoration of the Kingdom. of Thesaly with himself at its head, and had even entered into negotiations for a marriage alliance with Guy II.
After that, the Company was ruled by a committee of four, assisted by a twelve-member council. After the Company’s death in 1307, the Greek ruler John II turned to the Byzantine Empire for aid, and agreed to let them pass through the region. But the Company refused to pay them and were forced to retreat. They captured the town of Domokos and plundered some thirty fortresses. The company was forced to turn back, with two months’ advance in advance, with payment of two ounces of gold for every heavy cavalry, one for every infantryman, and two for every light cavalry, and one for two light cavalry. The Turks re-joined the Company and the Frankist army was routed; Walter and the entire Knighthood fell inThe battle was fought in southern Thessalia, in what is now known as the Cephissus or Battle of Orchomenos. It is the only battle of the 13th century known to have taken place in Greece. The battle was won by the Catalan Company, who had been hired by the new Duke of Athens to attack the ruler of neighbouring Thessally. It took place in a marshy terrain, which they further inundated. The Catalan Company were veterans of the War of the Sicilian Vespers, originally hired by Byzantine Empire against the Turks in Asia Minor. In 1311, the battle took place at Hal myros in southern Greece, and was known by earlier scholars as the Battle of the Cephenos.
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This page is based on the article Battle of Halmyros published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 06, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
