Τα θηριώδη εγκλήματα των Καταλανών εναντίον των Ελλήνων

[Antigeist]

Τα εγκλήματα των Τούρκων οι Έλληνες δεν τα ξέχασαν ποτέ. Τι κρίμα που ξέχασαν τα εγκλήματα των Καταλανών που φάνηκαν θηριωδέστεροι ακόμα και από τους Μογγόλους και έκαναν τόση μεγαλή ζημιά στο Βυζαντινό κρατός. Παραθέτω την τραγική όσο και φρικτή αυτή ιστορία μέσα από τις σελίδες του διαπρεπούς βυζαντινολόγου Donald M. Nicol. Να τα βλέπουν αυτά όλες οι "σοβαρές" βερσιόν του παπακλεομένη εδώ μέσα που κλαίνε επειδή ο σημερινός κόσμος δεν παίρνει σοβαρά τη θρησκεία για να καταλάβουν τι μπορούσαν να κάνουν Χριστιανοί σε Χριστιανούς. Ένας ανόητος είπε κάποτε "Από τότε που πέθανε ο θεός όλα επιτρέπονται". Ορθά του απαντήθηκε "όσο ζούσε ο θεός και τι δεν είχε επιτρέψει!"

Andronikos had had few contacts with the western world since 1282, but the Venetians and the Genoese had spread the word around that the Byzantine Empire was in desperate trouble. The news reached the leader of the Catalan Company, a band of professional soldiers, in Sicily. They had been fighting for some years on the side of Frederick III, the Aragonese king of Sicily, against Charles II of Anjou. When that struggle was decided in favour of Frederick in 1302 the Catalans were paid off and began to look for some other theatre of war. Their commander, Roger de Flor, offered his services to the Emperor Andronikos. Roger had had a colourful career: thrown out of the Order of Knights Templars for embezzlement and misconduct, he had taken to piracy and formed his own company of knights. The mixed band of Spanish mercenaries, known as the Catalan Grand Company, which he now commanded had a well-earned reputation as fighting men. Pachymeres knew them as ‘men who died hard in battle and were ready to gamble with their lives’.11 They might not be so numerous as the Alans, but they would surely be more efficient and better disciplined. Once again Andronikos gave thanks to heaven for what seemed like a miracle and accepted the offer without hesitation.

Roger de Flor was a hard bargainer, but the Emperor gladly agreed to all his conditions. The Catalans were to be paid double the amount normally paid to mercenaries in Byzantine service and for four months in advance. Roger was to marry the Emperor’s niece, Maria, and to be honoured with the title ôf Grand Duke. In September 1303 he arrived at Constantinople bysea, bringing his Company to the number of about 6500 and all their wives and children. Some of the ships were his own, some were supplied by Genoa. Roger married Maria and was for a time the favoured guest of the grateful Emperor. But Andronikos was anxious that the Catalans should leave the capital without too much delay. They were a restless lot. Within a few days of their arrival they became involved in murderous street fighting with the Genoese, who were expecting to be paid for the hire of their ships. The Emperor persuaded them to move over to Kyzikos for the winter. There too they spent their time plundering and looting.
The Byzantines were soon made aware that there was a fatal difference between the Catalan Company and the mercenary troops that they had employed before. The Alans, like other foreigners who had been enlisted in the past, had fought under the command of Byzantine officers. The Latin mercenaries had their special commander, the Grand Constable, but he was not a westerner. The Alans may have despised their Byzantine officers, but they had to obey their orders. The Catalans on the other hand took their orders only from their leader Roger, and they fought as a separate unit. The Emperor, who was their employer, might suggest plans of campaign, but the conduct of those campaigns was in their own hands, and any marginal profits that they might make in the way of loot, whether at the expense of Greeks or Turks, were fair gain. Ramon Muntaner, the Spanish chronicler who was with the Company and recorded their exploits, presents them as misunderstood heroes constantly being deceived by the wily Greeks. The Byzantine historians, who had to live with the consequences of those exploits, take a different view and have therefore been accused of prejudice. It is true that the Catalans performed some remarkable feats of arms against the Turks and showed what could still be done in the way of reconquest by a small but efficient army. But their victories were limited to one area of Asia Minor and they did not stay long enough to make them of permanent value.
They drove back the Turks from Kyzikos early in 1304. But they caused so much damage to the city that even Roger de Flor felt bound to pay the inhabitants an indemnity; and fighting broke out when the Alan mercenaries discovered that the Catalans were being paid at a higher rate than themselves. The Alans, numbering about 500, refused to take orders from Roger and deserted. They roamed the district pillaging on their own account. The Catalans moved on to Pegai, but their reputation had gone before them. Michael IX, who was quartered there, would not let thementer the city. In April they marched on down to Philadelphia which was then blockaded and cut off by the Turks. The Turks were routed and Roger and his men entered the city in triumph.
The relief of Philadelphia was almost the only practical service that the Catalans rendered to the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor. Roger made no attempt to follow up his victory by marching south to the Meander valley. The town of Tripolis had just been taken by the Turks. The towns of Nyssa and Tralles were already in their control. But the Catalans left them to their fate. From Philadelphia Roger led his men west again to Magnesia on the Hermos river and thence down to the coast to Ephesos, where he could make contact with his fleet whose sailors had already occupied the islands of Chios, Lesbos and Lemnos. The Catalans were later to boast of a long march that they made from Ephesos along the south coast of Asia Minor, driving all before them up to the borders of the kingdom of Armenia. The Turks fled from them in terror. But such heroics had no lasting consequences. Ephesos was captured by one of the Turkish emirs almost as soon as the Catalans had left it, in October 1304. Roger de Flor conceived it to be his duty, and perhaps it was, to punish all Byzantine officers and troops guilty of indiscipline or dereliction of duty wherever he found them. But some of his victims were priests and monks, and others were imperial officials whose principal crime was their wealth. Attaliotes, the Byzantine officer who had made himself master of Magnesia, at first came to terms with Roger when the Catalans came his way, and so saved himself and his city.
It was at Magnesia that Roger stored the booty that his men accumulated on their forays, and he began to think of using it as a base from which to establish and govern an independent Spanish principality in Asia Minor. But on one occasion, when coming back with more plunder, he found the gates of the city closed. The thought of losing so great an amount of treasure was almost more than the Catalans could bear. They laid siege to Magnesia, until the Emperor in Constantinople, hearing that matters had got out of hand, issued orders for them to return. For a while the orders were ignored; but the winter was coming on, and eventually the Catalans left Magnesia and marched up to Lampsakos on the Hellespont. They spent the winter of 1304 at Gallipoli. Word of their successful exploits and of the wealth they had amassed had meanwhile reached the west. King Frederick of Sicily had already seen that the Catalan Company might be the spearhead of an imperialist enterprise in the east over which he could exert some control. James II of Aragon, on the other hand, acting on information fromRoger de Flor, appointed his own agent, Berenguar d’Entença, to go to Constantinople with what were called reinforcements for the Catalan Company. When Berenguar arrived Andronikos signed a contract with him, and Roger de Flor ceded to him his own title of Grand Duke.'
The Emperor had intended that some of the Catalans should be diverted to Thrace. For, as if to compound the sum of his troubles, the Bulgarians had crossed the northern frontier and attacked the city of Adrianople. But Michael IX, who had been sent there with an army in 1304, had done better against the Bulgarians than against the Turks. Michael disliked the Catalans and declared that he had no need of them in any case. They were rapidly becoming more of an embarrasment than a help. They refused to go back to Asia before they had been paid and compensated for the plunder that they had lost at Magnesia, and the Emperor was at his wits’ end to find the money to satisfy their demands. When Michael IX had needed soldiers to fight the Bulgarians he had been forced to have a great quantity of his own gold and silver plate converted into coin with which to pay them. Roger de Flor demanded the sum of 300,000 hyperpyra and then complained that the Emperor had nothing to offer him but base metal. He was right, for the Byzantine gold coinage had just been further devalued. Berenguar, on the other hand, quickly sized up the situation after a stormy interview with the Emperor and sailed away. To show the Greeks what he thought of them he threw his Grand Duke’s bonnet into the sea as he went. He tried to engage the Genoese to join him in war against the Emperor, but they declined. There was a skirmish between the Catalan and the Genoese navies at the end of May 1305. All but one of Berenguar’s ships were sunk and he himself was taken prisoner.
The loss of their fleet made things more difficult for the Catalans. But the Genoese reported to the Emperor that plans were being laid in the west for yet another Spanish expedition to Constantinople. Frederick of Sicily was said to have appointed his brother Ferdinand of Majorca as commander-in-chief of a great Spanish armada which was destined to set up a kingdom in the east. Meanwhile the Catalan Company had dug in at Gallipoli and refused to budge until every penny of their arrears had been paid. The Emperor tried to flatter Roger by giving him the title of Caesar. He paid him another instalment and made a new contract with him in February 1305. Roger then agreed to take his men back to Asia in the spring, but before leaving he expressed a wish to pay his respects to Michael IX, whomhe had never met. Perhaps now that he held the rank of Caesar he felt that etiquette required him to make the acquaintance of the co-Emperor. Michael was in camp near Adrianople. He was surprised and cross, though he received his unwelcome guest with formal courtesy. But the Alans who were in camp with him had no time for good manners towards the Catalans. One of their leaders, whose son had been murdered by Roger’s men at Kyzikos, took his personal revenge by stabbing Roger in the back. His colleagues then massacred the 300 Catalans whom Roger had brought with him as an escort.'
From that moment any semblance of control that the Emperor might have had over the Catalan Company vanished. The Catalans laid the blame for the murder of their leader not on the Alans but on the Byzantines. They ran beserk over the whole coast of Thrace, pillaging, destroying, and slaughtering. They killed or enslaved all the inhabitants of the peninsula of Gallipoli and declared it to be Spanish soil. The soldiers elected as their new commander Berenguar de Rocafort. His seal of office advertised the rule of ‘the army of the Franks over the kingdom of Macedonia’. The flag of St Peter flew from the walls of Gallipoli; and the Catalan army carried the banners of the kingdoms of Sicily and Aragon. Rocafort attracted a growing number of Turkish warriors to venture across the Hellespont as mercenaries. The Bulgarians offered him their help as allies; and the Genoese of Galata were almost tempted to join in. For two and a half years Gallipoli was the capital of a hostile Catalan state on the very doorstep of Constantinople. Michael IX, who was given the task of containing their activities in Thrace, was utterly defeated in two battles in June 1305. In the second encounter, fought at Apros near Raidestos, he lost nearly all his army and only just escaped with his own life. He retired to shut himself up in Didymoteichon. The Catalans inflicted a terrible vengeance on the town of Raidestos: men, women and children were massacred. When they had made it empty of inhabitants they moved in to use it as their new headquarters. It was nearer to Constantinople and better placed for raiding the interior of the country. Ramon Muntaner, the chronicler of the enterprise, was appointed commander of Gallipoli, which the Catalans used as a slave market for the sale of their prisoners.'
The Genoese captain Andrea Morisco did valiant service for the Emperor by patrolling the Hellespont with his ships, intercepting the passage of the Turks to Gallipoli and bringing supplies to the beleagueredports on the Sea of Marmora. The Emperor rewarded him with the rank of admiral. But before long Morisco was captured, and the Catalans were then able to bring over another 2000 Turkish soldiers. The Emperor appealed to the Genoese government to come to his rescue with a fleet, and in the spring of 1306 19 Genoese ships arrived at Constantinople. But they were cargo ships making for the Black Sea, and their captains demanded the sum of 300,000 gold coins for their services. This was much more than the Emperor could afford. He allowed most of them to go on their way, retaining only four ships to patrol the straits.
The Catalans were in no mood to negotiate a settlement. Success had gone to their heads and their demands were ever more exorbitant. As a counsel of despair the Emperor ordered that all the country between Selymbria and Constantinople should be evacuated and the crops destroyed. Refugees were now streaming into the capital from all sides, those from Thrace adding their numbers to those from Asia Minor, for all the rich land between the lower reaches of the Marica river and the suburbs of Constantinople had been turned into desert. The Thracian cities higher up the valley, however, especially Didymoteichon and Adrianople, were too well fortified and guarded for the Catalans to be able to penetrate their defences. They made one attempt to besiege Adrianople and destroyed the vineyards and farms around its walls. But the city itself held out against them.
Unable to make any further headway either to the north or to the east the Catalans began to feel that they had, in the most literal sense, exhausted the possibilities of Thrace. They must move on if only to survive. As their provisions and their prospects shrank disagreement broke out amongst them. They split into three bands, one under Rocafort, another under Berenguar d’Entença who had been released by the Genoese, and a third under Fernand Ximenes de Arenos, who had recently arrived with reinforcements. But in the summer of 1308 Ferdinand of Majorca arrived at Gallipoli to take overall command of the Company by order of Frederick III of Sicily. Rocafort refused to recognize him as leader; but it was Ferdinand who brought them all to agree that they should now move west in search of new territory and new plunder. They crossed the Marica river and set out along the road to Thessalonica. There were about 6000 Spaniards and some 3000 Turks, marching in two divisions and living off the land. They had no purpose but to enrich themselves and to carve out a kingdom in the empire which they had been engaged to protect.18
Their leaders continued to squabble. Berenguar d’Entença was murderedby Rocafort. Ximenes de Arenos, fearing the same fate, deserted and surrendered to the commander of the Byzantine garrison in one of the towns on their route. He was taken to Constantinople where the Emperor was glad to have his services and in due course found a princess for him to marry and created him Grand Duke. Ferdinand of Majorca then abandoned the Company and went back to his master in Sicily, taking with him Ramon Muntaner. Rocafort, left in sole command, led the rest of them westwards into Macedonia. They fought their way through the passes of Christoupolis or Kavalla, crossed the peninsula of Chalkidike and occupied Kassandria, the ancient Potidaia, to the south of Thessalonica. There they spent the winter of 1308.
It was at this point that the historian George Pachymeres laid down his pen. He had traced the history of his time over the space of half a century, from the moment of the birth of the Emperor Andronikos II in 12 5 9 up to the year 1308. He was himself 66 years of age. He had been born in the Empire of Nicaea; he had lived through and recorded the glorious restoration of the Empire in Constantinople in 1261 and the restoration of Orthodoxy in 1283. He had seen many changes in his lifetime, but they had not all been for the better, and the future seemed unpromising. The final pages of his history, however, show a guarded optimism: the news from the east, he writes, is slightly better; the Catalans have left Thrace and crossed the Marica river; some say they are making for home, others that they plan to attack Mount Athos. Their leaders have quarrelled among themselves. Some have reached Kassandria, others have set out for Thessaly. May these matters go as God wills them to go, and may God will them to go in accordance with our highest hopes and with the trust in him of our Emperor.’5
The subsequent adventures of the Catalan Company are linked more with the history of Greece than with that of the Byzantine Empire. From Kassandria they plundered the monasteries of Athos and made several attacks on the neighbourhood of Thessalonica. Rocafort had dreams of reviving the Latin kingdom of Thessalonica and looked forward to the capture of so wealthy a city. But it was too well garrisoned and fortified. As time went on the Catalans found it increasingly difficult to maintain their position at Kassandria. Their retreat back to Thrace was cut off by a Byzantine army. Rocafort lost the confidence of his men, who appointed another leader, and in the spring of 1309 most of them decided to make a dash for Thessaly. Some of the Turks left the Company at the border of Macedonia, but the rest (about 9000 all told) entered the plain of Thessaly by way of the Vale of Tempe.The ruler of Thessaly was then John II Doukas. He had succeeded his father Constantine in 1303. But he was only a young man and he had not inherited the spirit of defiance that had inspired his father and grandfather. He had recently come to terms with Andronikos II and married one of the Emperor’s daughters. In 1309 therefore Thessaly was the ally if not the subject of Constantinople. The alliance stood John II in good stead when the Catalans crossed his northern frontier and began to devastate his land. He appealed to the Emperor for help and a Byzantine general, Chandrenos, was ordered to march south from Thessalonica. Between them the Byzantine and Thessalian armies obliged the Catalans to move on, and they agreed to withdraw south into Boeotia. John of Thessaly willingly supplied them with guides to show them the way and paid their expenses, and in the spring of 1310 they set off by way of Lamia.
In the meantime, however, the French Duke of Athens and Thebes, Walter of Brienne, had opened negotiations with the Catalans on his own account. He had made their acquaintance earlier in his career, and he hoped that he might now be able to employ them to conquer Thessaly for himself. He sent an intermediary to meet their leader near Lamia and gave them two months’ pay in advance. As a result the Catalans turned back and overran Thessaly once again, capturing some 30 towns and castles. John II was forced to come to terms with them and with the Duke of Athens. But Walter of Brienne, like the Byzantine Emperor before him, found that it was easier to hire the Catalans than it was to dismiss them. They had served their purpose for him, but they now refused to go, and his attempt to disarm some of them by force led to war. The Catalans won a decisive victory over the French in a battle near Halmyros in Thessaly in March
1311. Walter and many of his knights were killed. The Catalans then marched south to conquer Thebes and Athens. The French Duchy, which had been set up there after the Fourth Crusade, passed into Catalan control, and what the Catalan Company had been unable to achieve at Magnesia, at Gallipoli, and at Kassandria, it finally achieved at Athens by establishing a principality of its own. The Catalan Duchy of Athens lasted for almost 80 years thereafter, until 1388.
When the Catalans moved west from Thrace they left behind them what the Byzantine historians, in their pedantically archaic manner, were wont to call ‘a Scythian desert’. They used the word Scythian to mean Mongol. The Catalans had been every bit as destructive as the Mongols. Their contribution to the ruin of the Byzantine Empire which they had been hired to save was indeed far greater than that of the Mongols. In some ways it was nearly as great as that of the Turks. It has been argued that the Emperor Andronikos should never have undertaken to employ them when he knew that he could barely afford to pay the rates that they demanded for their services. But if they had fulfilled the early promise of their victory at Philadelphia in 1304 and returned to the attack in the following year it is possible that the revenue of the Empire might have been increased. They could not reasonably complain of the Empire’s poverty when they were busily impoverishing it by helping themselves to its riches. As it was, the Emperor strained every nerve to find the means to pay them.
It has been estimated that the Catalans received from the imperial treasury a total sum of 1,000,000 hyperpyra which, at the time, was rather more than the average annual income of the whole Empire. It was the demands of the Catalans which led to the further debasement of the gold coinage in 1304, when the gold content of the hyperpyron was reduced to only 50 percent. It was to satisfy them that the Emperor was forced to impose even more taxation on his over-burdened people. In the eastern provinces there was little left to tax. But in the western districts of Thrace and Macedonia one-third of all the estates and properties held in pronoia were appropriated by the state. It is not clear how this measure was put into practice, but it is certain that many who had formerly enjoyed exemption were now liable to payment of tax on their property; and it is a measure of the Emperor’s need and determination that the regulations applied even to the great monasteries of Mount Athos. But this was not enough. In 1304 an entirely new form of levy was introduced. It was called the sitokrithon or wheat and barley tax. Every farmworker was bound to pay a portion of his produce in kind according to the acreage of his land. The collection of this tax must have produced problems of its own. But the proceeds were to be sold on the open market to realize gold and silver with which to pay the Catalans.
Control of the open market was another matter. The influx of refugees into Constantinople, not only from Asia Minor but also from the parts of Thrace that had been occupied by the Catalans or deliberately devastated, produced a desperate shortage of food in the capital. Devaluation of the currency led to inflated prices for what food there was. There were quick profits to be made by unscrupulous dealers, Greeks as well as Italians.

[Giorgos 574]

Ο Νακρατζας είχε γραψει ότι το επώνυμο Λούης είναι καταλανικό (δε θα ισχυει)

[Maspoli]

Βαθμολογώ θετικά το νήμα.

[Κόκκορας]

ερασιτεχνες!

[karadeniz1]

οι εαμοβουλγαροι κομουνιστες απτο 41-49 εκαναν πολυ χειροτερα εγκληματα εναντιον του ελληνικου λαου απολλους τους βαρβαρους κατακτητες μαζι (γερμανους φραγκους περσες αραβες τουρκους ισλαμιστες μπουλγκάρ τουρκαλμπάν και λοιπα βαρβαρα κτηνη...

[Νταρνάκας]

Α βουληθείς να μ' αρνηθείς και να μ' αλησμονήσεις
εις την Τουρκιά στα σίδερα πολλά ν' αγανακτήσεις
σε τούρκικα σπαθιά βρεθείς, σε Κατελάνου χέρια
τα κριάτα σου να κόφτουσι με δίκοπα μαχαίρια

[Νταρνάκας]

Ελληνικές παρομίες για τους Κατελάνους:
https://chronographiae.wordpress.com/20 ... %B1%CE%BB/

[Maspoli]

Συγχαρητήρια σε όλους για το λιθαράκι που συνεισφέρουν για έρθει στο φως αυτή η θαμμένη ιστορική αλήθεια.

[Ένοπλος σοσιαλμπαχαλάκης]

Στηρίζουμε Καταλανούς, εννοείται.

[Cavaliere]

Καλά κάνω εγώ και δεν τους χωνεύω.

[Νταρνάκας]

Καλά κάνω εγώ και δεν τους χωνεύω.

Παρομοίως. Βλέπω Μπάρτσα και μου γυρίζουν τ' άντερα μόνο και μόνο γι' αυτόν τον λόγο
ΔΕΝ ΞΕΧΝΩ

[Vini Vici]

Άρα στηρίζουμε ανεξάρτητη Καταλονία ή όχι?

[Τζιτζιμιτζιχότζιρας]

Πραγματικά πόσο δύσκολο ήταν άραγες να δημιουργηθεί ένας κάποιος αξιομαχος βυζαντινός στρατός τότες;...Ο Ανδρόνικος ο Γ έκανε μια προσπάθεια ανασυγκρότησης αλλα ναυάγησε. Ήταν αραγες η δομή του κράτους , η ενδοια, κοινωνικοί λόγοι ;

[Μαυροβασίλης]

στηρίζομε πούτσα ξύλο και καράτε φρανκικό

να αναγνωρίσομε, ωστόσο, πως τιμούν τα πατρώα:
οι πρόγονοί των της εταιρείας ήσαν περίφημοι βρώμοι

[Νταρνάκας]

Άρα στηρίζουμε ανεξάρτητη Καταλονία ή όχι?

Μόνο αν μας αποζημιώσουν για τα αίσχη τους αυτά.