Battle of Halmyros
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The Battle of Halmyros
Almyros
Almyros is a town and a municipality of the peripheral unit of Magnesia, periphery of Thessaly, Greece. It lies in the center of prosperous fertile plain known as 'Krokio Pedio', which is crossed by torrents, and produces wheat, tobacco, and other crops. Almyros is an important agricultural and...

, of Orchomenos, or of the Cephissus was fought on 15 March 1311 between the Frankish Greek forces of Walter V of Brienne
Walter V of Brienne
Gautier or Walter V of Brienne was born in Brienne-le-Château, Aube, Champagne, France. He was the son of Hugh de Candie des Brienne, known as Hugh of Brienne, Count of Brienne and Lecce, and Isabella de la Roche, daughter of Guy I of la Roche, Duke of Athens...

 and the mercenaries of the Catalan Company
Catalan Company
The Catalan Company of the East , officially the Magnas Societas Catalanorum, sometimes called the Grand Company and widely known as the Catalan Company, was a free company of mercenaries founded by Roger de Flor in the early 14th-century...

, resulting in a devastating victory for the Catalans.

Background

Walter V had hired the Company to defend his Duchy of Athens
Duchy of Athens
The Duchy of Athens was one of the Crusader States set up in Greece after the conquest of the Byzantine Empire during the Fourth Crusade, encompassing the regions of Attica and Boeotia, and surviving until its conquest by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century....

 from the neighboring Greek states the Despotate of Epirus
Despotate of Epirus
The Despotate or Principality of Epirus was one of the Byzantine Greek successor states of the Byzantine Empire that emerged in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. It claimed to be the legitimate successor of the Byzantine Empire, along with the Empire of Nicaea, and the Empire of Trebizond...

, the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

, and the Vlach
Vlachs
Vlach is a blanket term covering several modern Latin peoples descending from the Latinised population in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. English variations on the name include: Walla, Wlachs, Wallachs, Vlahs, Olahs or Ulahs...

-inhabited entity called Great Wallachia
Great Wallachia
Great Wallachia , also Thessaly Wallachia, was a medieval state of the Aromanians , which included the region of Thessaly in Greece, the southern and central ranges of Pindus and extending over part of Macedonia.Anna Komnene in the second half of the eleventh century was the first author to write...

. This they did with great success, but Walter attempted to discharge them, picking a moiety of the company and paying them lavishly to remain in his service, while ordering the expulsion of the rest without their pay. When the Company resisted, Walter assembled the feudal host of Frankish Greece, with reinforcements sent from Naples
Kingdom of Naples
The Kingdom of Naples, comprising the southern part of the Italian peninsula, was the remainder of the old Kingdom of Sicily after secession of the island of Sicily as a result of the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282. Known to contemporaries as the Kingdom of Sicily, it is dubbed Kingdom of...

, assembling 700 Frankish knights and native Greek horsemen, a large number of infantry, mostly native Greeks (set at 24,000 by Muntaner
Ramon Muntaner
Ramon Muntaner was a Catalan soldier and writer who wrote the Crònica, a chronicle of his life, including his adventures as a commander in the Catalan Company...

), as well as the 200 horsemen and 300 footmen he had selected from the Catalan Company.

Battle

The Company assumed a defensive position on the plain of Orchomenus, near the River Cephissus
Cephissus (Boeotia)
The northern Cephissus river or Cephisus rises at Lilaea in Phocis and flows by Delphi through Boeotia and eventually issues into Lake Copais which is therefore also called the Cephisian Lake...

. Their Turkish auxiliaries took up a separate position nearby, thinking the quarrel was a pretext arranged by the Company and the Duke of Athens to exterminate them. To protect their position, the Catalans broke dikes and dug trenches, diverting water from the Cephissus to flood the fields lying in front of them.

On the eve of battle, the Catalans in the Duke's service, stricken by conscience, took leave of him and rejoined the Company. This circumstance little disturbed the Duke, who still outnumbered the company, and had at his command the chivalry of the Frankish states in Greece, considered the flower of the French-speaking world. The Duke, with his banner in the vanguard, opened the battle with a cavalry charge against the Catalans, followed by the infantry. In the morass covering the Catalan front, the cavalry soon became hopelessly mired, the Duke and his banner falling in a rain of javelin
Javelin
A Javelin is a light spear intended for throwing. It is commonly known from the modern athletic discipline, the Javelin throw.Javelin may also refer to:-Aviation:* ATG Javelin, an American-Israeli civil jet aircraft, under development...

s from the almogàvers. As the lightly equipped Catalans advanced to cut down the wallowing knights, the Turkish auxiliaries descended from their camp upon the Athenian army, panicking and routing what remained of it.

According to Muntaner, only two of the seven hundred knights survived the battle, Roger Deslaur
Roger Deslaur
Roger Deslaur or Desllor, an almogàver from Roussillon in the service of Walter V of Brienne, Duke of Athens, was one of the few knights to survive the bloody Battle of Halmyros on 15 March 1311...

 and Boniface of Verona
Boniface of Verona
Boniface of Verona was an Lombard Crusader in Latin Greece during the early fourteenth century. From 1296 he was, in right of his wife, Agnes of Cicone, the Lord of Karystos, a triarch of Negroponte, and a great lord in the Duchy of Athens, owning thirteen castles there as a gift from Duke Guy...

. However, Nicholas Sanudo
Nicholas I Sanudo
Nicholas I Sanudo was the fifth Duke of the Archipelago from 1323 to his death. He was the son and successor of William I....

, later Duke of the Archipelago, also escaped, and a few others, like Antoine le Flamenc
Antoine le Flamenc
Anthony was the Frankish baron of Karditsa . He was married to Isabella Pallavicini and co-ruled the March of Bodonitsa with her from 1278 to 1286, when she died...

, were probably ransomed. Muntaner claims that 20,000 of the infantry were killed, and all of the native horse.

Aftermath

Halmyros is sometimes compared to the Battle of Agincourt
Battle of Agincourt
The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 , near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France...

 where light, missile-armed troops were able to defeat heavily encumbered opponents hindered by adverse terrain. The paralyzing charge into the bogs and the slaughter that followed resulted in the near annihilation of the nobility of the Principality of Achaea
Principality of Achaea
The Principality of Achaea or of the Morea was one of the three vassal states of the Latin Empire which replaced the Byzantine Empire after the capture of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. It became a vassal of the Kingdom of Thessalonica, along with the Duchy of Athens, until Thessalonica...

 and its vassal states. The Catalan Company proceeded to occupy the Duchy of Athens, which they placed under the protection of a prince of the House of Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...

 and ruled until 1379. This tremendous smash also ended the golden age of Frankish chivalry in the Duchy of Athens. The remaining Latin states would now be largely dependent on external powers such as Naples and Venice
Republic of Venice
The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...

for support.

Primary sources

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