Walter VI. (Brienne)

Bust in the Battle Gallery of the Palace of Versailles

Walter VI. von Brienne (* around 1304; † September 19, 1356 at Maupertuis ) was Count of Brienne , Conversano and Lecce , titular duke of Athens , and shortly before his death the Constable of France of King John II.

Life

He was the son of Walter V of Brienne , Duke of Athens, and Jeanne de Chatillon († 1354), daughter of the Count of Porcien . As the grandson of Hugo von Brienne († 1296), he was the heir to extensive lands around the Mediterranean. With the death of his father in the Battle of Halmyros on March 15, 1311, he inherited the county of Brienne and the claim to the Duchy of Athens, which, however, had been overrun by the Catalan company except for Argos and Nauplia . Walter VI. spent much of his life in a fruitless struggle for the inheritance of his grandmother's family until he went to Italy in the 1340s and left Argos and Nauplia to proxy. The Duchy of Athens was not the first loss in his family: Walter's grandfather had been excluded from the succession in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Cyprus , his great-great-grandfather had as the husband of the sister of King William III. Claims raised to the Kingdom of Sicily - of which the County of Lecce and the claim to the Principality of Taranto remained .

His mother Johanna had fought a fierce battle against the Catalans when he was a minor, with little military success and severe financial losses. To improve his position, Walter married Margaret of Naples, a niece of Robert of Anjou , King of Naples , and daughter of Philip I of Taranto, in December 1325 . During this time Florence asked for Robert's support to protect the Guelph interests in Italy, and elected Robert's son Karl for a 10-year term (1326-1336) to be lord of the city. Walter was appointed Charles' deputy for a few months in 1326.

In 1329 he received support from Robert of Naples and Pope John XXII. who proclaimed a crusade to recapture Athens . However, the price for the support was that he first had to act as a representative of the Latin Empire against the despotate of Epirus . In 1331 Walter sailed east, conquered Arta and forced the despot Johannes Orsini to recognize the sovereignty of Naples. However, his attempts to retake Athens and Boeotia were thwarted by a Venetian alliance with the Catalans and their refusal to submit to battle. His only son, Walter, died of an illness during the campaign. In 1332 he returned to Naples.

At the end of the decade, Walter took care of his property in France. In 1339 he was the king's deputy in the Thiérache . However, after his wife died in 1340, he returned to Italy in 1342 when the ruling Florentine merchants called him to rule the city. Since 1339, Florence was in an economic crisis that had been triggered by the immense debts that the English had with the Florentine banks on the one hand, and which the city itself had borrowed in return for the nearby city of Lucca from its Veronese master on the other Mastino II della Scala . The Florentine nobility looked around for a foreign gentleman who should be able to create the seemingly impossible solution to their financial problems and believed they had found him in Walter von Brienne. Although the ruling class had asked Walter for a temporary government, he was made Signor for life by the lower classes, who had been dissatisfied with Walter's predecessors.

The Porta del Duca di Atene in Palazzo Vecchio , Florence, which Walter von Brienne had built in order to be able to escape from his apartment, and through which he also escaped.

Walter VI. but ruled despotic, ignoring or even resisting the interests of the merchants who had brought him. The "Duke of Athens" imposed severe economic cuts, introduced new taxes with the estimo and prestanze , and postponed the repayment of the city's forced loans to wealthy citizens. These measures turned the Florentines against him, and after ten months Walter von Brienne was overthrown by a conspiracy. Not only was he forced to resign, but he was glad to escape with his life on the run.

In 1344 he married Johanna, daughter of Raoul I. de Brienne , Count of Eu and Connétable of France . From her he had two daughters, Johanna and Maria, who both died young.

In 1356 he was appointed Constable of France by the French King John II. He had his brother-in-law Raoul II. De Brienne executed six years earlier in the same office without a trial.

Walter died on September 19, 1356 at the Battle of Maupertuis . His sister Isabella and her sons inherited his titles and claims . Isabella III. survived her brother by four years, she died in 1360 (her husband Walter von Enghien (Gauthier d'Enghien) had died in 1345). For some years she was Countess of Lecce and Brienne etc. and titular duchess of Athens. While she was still alive, she divided her property among her numerous children.

Entrance into literature

The "Duke of Athens", who appears in the seventh story of the second day of the Decameron as one of the nine lovers of the daughter of the Sultan of Babylon, is - although historically certainly incorrect - a satirical allusion to Walter VI. and his brief dictatorship in Florence less than ten years before the book was written.

literature

• Ernesto Sestan:  Brienne, Gualtieri di. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 14:  Branchi-Buffetti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1972, pp. 237-251.
• Ferdinand Schevill: The History of Florence from the Founding of the City through the Renaissance . Harcourt Brace, New York 1936. pp. 217-225.

Web links

• Biography at Decameron Web , Brown University

Footnotes

predecessor	Office	successor
Walter V.	Count of Brienne, Lecce and Conversano 1311–1356	Isabella
Jacob of La Marche	Connétable of France 1356	Robert de Fiennes