Roger de Flor

Roger de Flor (1266-1305)

Ruggero da Fiore or Roger de Flor (* 1266 in Brindisi , † April 30, 1305 in Adrianople ; actually Rutger von Blum , also Roger Florus ) was an Italian adventurer and mercenary of German origin who fought in Italy and for the Byzantine Empire .

Life

Roger was the second son of the German falconer Richard von Blum, who had been in the service of Emperor Friedrich II and who had died in the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268 .

Knights Templar

At the age of eight, Roger was sent onto a galley owned by the Templars . He entered the order and became the commander of one of their ships. After the siege of Acre by the Egyptian Mamelukes in 1291 , he was charged as a thief and apostate and demoted, after which he fled to Genoa and began a career as a pirate .

Sicily

The battle for Sicily between the Spanish kings of Aragón and the French kings of Naples led him to enter the service of King Frederick II of Sicily , who elevated him to the rank of Vice Admiral. After the peace of Caltabellotta and the end of the war in 1302, Frederick tried to free his island from the mercenary troops , the Catalan Almogàvers , which he could no longer pay, which led Roger to collect them under his leadership , and to seek new adventures in the east in the fight against the Rum Seljuks , who oppressed the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantium

The Emperor Andronikos II accepted his offer, and in September 1303 Roger entered Constantinople with his fleet and his mercenaries, who were united in the so-called Catalan Company . He was accepted into the imperial family , married to a granddaughter of the emperor and made Megas Doux and commander in chief of the army and navy .

After a few weeks of dispersal, with intrigues and bloody quarrels against the Genoese , Roger and his men were sent to Asia , where, after a few successful battles with the Rum Seljuks, they went to winter quarters in Kyzikos .

In May 1304 they fielded again and managed to recapture Philadelphia from the Rum Seljuks. Roger, who was more interested in his interests than those of the emperor, decided to found his own principality in the east. He sent his treasures to Magnesia , where however the Byzantine people rose against him, killed his men and confiscated the valuables. Roger began a siege of the city, but his attacks were repelled and he was forced to withdraw.

When he was called back to the Byzantine emperor, he quartered his troops in Gallipoli and other cities and went to Constantinople himself to demand payment for himself and his men. Dissatisfied with the small amount the emperor gave him, he had the country plundered, sparked intrigues with and against the emperor, and at the same time received reinforcements from all parts of southern Europe. Roger was now appointed Caesar , shortly afterwards by the young Emperor Michael IX. Paleologus , who did not dare to attack the proud and reinforced force, was invited to Adrianople . There, on April 30, 1305, the emperor succeeded in murdering Roger and the Catalan cavalrymen accompanying him.

Contrary to what the emperor had hoped, he did not succeed in crushing the Catalan company after losing its leader. Roger's remaining men entrenched themselves in the city of Gallipoli, where they massacred the civilian population and where they withstood a siege by the Byzantines and their Venetian allies in 1306 . In 1307 they destroyed the city, moved on and devastated large parts of Thrace and Macedonia by 1311 . The city of Thebes was completely destroyed. In 1311 they seized the Duchy of Athens .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See article Gallipoli In: Encyclopædia Britannica. Volume 11. Cambridge University Press, 1910, p. 420.

literature

• Christian Vogel: Roger de Flor - Life story of a Templar pirate: Views of the Mediterranean world. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-643-11902-5 .
• Ernest Marcos Hierro: Almogàvers. La història, L'esfera dels llibres. Barcelona 2005.
• Francisco de Moncada: Expedición de los catalanes y aragoneses contra turcos y griegos. 17th century / English translation by Frances Hernández: The Catalan chronicle of Francisco de Moncada. Texas Western Press, El Paso 1975, ISBN 978-0874040364 .
• Franz Dölger:  Flor, Roger de. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 252 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• The Almogavares, Roger de Flor and the war for Sicily on kriegsreisen.de