Wilhelm I of Champlitte

Coat of arms of the Principality of Achaia under the rule of Wilhelm I of Champlitte.

Wilhelm I of Champlitte († 1209 ) was a participant in the Fourth Crusade and from 1205 to 1209 the first prince of Achaia .

Wilhelm was the third son of Odo von Champlitte , who might have been a son of Count Hugo von Champagne . During the crusade he made the acquaintance of Boniface I of Montferrat and helped to overcome his differences with Baldwin of Flanders , the first Latin emperor . After the conquest of Constantinople and the division of the Byzantine Empire , he took part in the campaign of Boniface of Montferrat to conquer Greece in the autumn of 1204 . In 1205 Wilhelm landed together with Gottfried I von Villehardouin on the west coast of the Morea ( Peloponnese ). They occupied Patras and Andravida , Corinth and Argos . Pope Innocent III appointed him princeps totius Achaie provinciae . In the northwestern part of the Morea, in the area up to the foot of the Taygetos Mountains , he established the Frankish principality of Achaia . Because of his grandfather's origin (from Champagne ), the Greeks called him Campanezis (Καμπανέζης).

When he was in charge of organizing the administration of the principality in 1209, he received the news that his older brother Ludwig had died childless. Wilhelm I distributed the land as a fiefdom among his knights. Then he rushed to France to protect his rights as head of the family. He died on the trip in Apulia . Shortly afterwards, his nephew Hugo von Champlitte, whom Wilhelm had appointed as his deputy in the Morea, also died. Gottfried I von Villehardouin was his successor.

swell

• The Greek text of the Chronicle of Morea

literature

• Chronicle of Morea , anonymous medieval document published by the Principality of Achaia in the early 14th century.
• John H. Finley jr: Corinth in the Middle Ages , in: Speculum 7.4 (1932) 477-499.
• HF Tozer: The Franks in the Peloponnese , in: The Journal of Hellenic Studies 4 (1883) 165-236.

predecessor	Office	successor
-	Prince of Achaia 1205–1209	Gottfried I of Villehardouin