ny national records of the exploits
of his countrymen. * Note: Ramon de Montaner, one of the Catalans, who
accompanied Roger de Flor, and who was governor of Gallipoli, has
written, in Spanish, the history of this band of adventurers, to which
he belonged, and from which he separated when it left the Thracian
Chersonese to penetrate into Macedonia and Greece.--G.----The
autobiography of Ramon de Montaner has been published in French by M.
Buchon, in the great collection of Memoires relatifs a l'Histoire de
France. I quote this edition.--M.]

After some ages of oblivion, Greece was awakened to new misfortunes by
the arms of the Latins. In the two hundred and fifty years between the
first and the last conquest of Constantinople, that venerable land
was disputed by a multitude of petty tyrants; without the comforts of
freedom and genius, her ancient cities were again plunged in foreign and
intestine war; and, if servitude be preferable to anarchy, they might
repose with joy under the Turkish yoke. I shall not pursue the obscure
and various dynasties, that rose and fell on the continent or in the
isles; but our silence on the fate of Athens [51] would argue a strange
ingratitude to the first and purest school of liberal science and
amusement. In the partition of the empire, the principality of Athens
and Thebes was assigned to Otho de la Roche, a noble warrior of
Burgundy, [52] with the title of great duke, [53] which the Latins
understood in their own sense, and the Greeks more foolishly derived
from the age of Constantine. [54] Otho followed the standard of the
marquis of Montferrat: the ample state which he acquired by a miracle
of conduct or fortune, [55] was peaceably inherited by his son and two
grandsons, till the family, though not the nation, was changed, by the
marriage of an heiress into the elder branch of the house of Brienne.
The son of that marriage, Walter de Brienne, succeeded to the duchy of
Athens; and, with the aid of some Catalan mercenaries, whom he invested
with fiefs, reduced above thirty castles of the vassal or neighboring
lords. But when he was informed of the approach and ambition of the
great company, he collected a force of seven hundred knights, six
thousand four hundred horse, and eight thousand foot, and boldly met
them on the banks of the River Cephisus in Botia. The Catalans amounted
to no more than three thousand five hundred horse, and four thousand
foot; but the deficiency of numbers wa