s compensated by stratagem and
order. They formed round their camp an artificial inundation; the duke
and his knights advanced without fear or precaution on the verdant
meadow; their horses plunged into the bog; and he was cut in pieces,
with the greatest part of the French cavalry. His family and nation were
expelled; and his son Walter de Brienne, the titular duke of Athens, the
tyrant of Florence, and the constable of France, lost his life in the
field of Poitiers Attica and Botia were the rewards of the victorious
Catalans; they married the widows and daughters of the slain; and during
fourteen years, the great company was the terror of the Grecian states.
Their factions drove them to acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of
Arragon; and during the remainder of the fourteenth century, Athens, as
a government or an appanage, was successively bestowed by the kings of
Sicily. After the French and Catalans, the third dynasty was that of
the Accaioli, a family, plebeian at Florence, potent at Naples, and
sovereign in Greece. Athens, which they embellished with new buildings,
became the capital of a state, that extended over Thebes, Argos,
Corinth, Delphi, and a part of Thessaly; and their reign was finally
determined by Mahomet the Second, who strangled the last duke, and
educated his sons in the discipline and religion of the seraglio.

[Footnote 51: See the laborious history of Ducange, whose accurate table
of the French dynasties recapitulates the thirty-five passages, in which
he mentions the dukes of Athens.]

[Footnote 52: He is twice mentioned by Villehardouin with honor, (No.
151, 235;) and under the first passage, Ducange observes all that can be
known of his person and family.]

[Footnote 53: From these Latin princes of the xivth century, Boccace,
Chaucer. and Shakspeare, have borrowed their Theseus _duke_ of Athens.
An ignorant age transfers its own language and manners to the most
distant times.]

[Footnote 54: The same Constantine gave to Sicily a king, to Russia the
_magnus dapifer_ of the empire, to Thebes the _primicerius_; and these
absurd fables are properly lashed by Ducange, (ad Nicephor. Greg. l.
vii. c. 5.) By the Latins, the lord of Thebes was styled, by corruption,
the Megas Kurios, or Grand Sire!]

[Footnote 55: _Quodam miraculo_, says Alberic. He was probably received
by Michael Choniates, the archbishop who had defended Athens against the
tyrant Leo Sgurus, (Nicetas urbs capta, p. 805,