2023-08-24 14:23:25
History corroborates it: mercenaries are the epidemic that remains, which settles at the bottom of the glass, when peace leaves soldiers jobless and the need for bread tightens. Examples number in the dozens and go far beyond the Wagner Group led by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin. In these parts we have had our own soldiers of fortune: the men of the Great Company of almogávares led by the brave Roger de Flor. Tough guys with a life that “very few would endure”, according to the fourteenth-century historian Bernat Desclot, but who extended their tentacles from the Crown of Aragon to Greece and Anatolia.
mysterious origins
His beginnings, however, navigate between reality and myth; a sad litany that is repeated with so many other events of that primitive Spain. “As happens on most occasions with other episodes in history, we cannot clearly state when the figure of the Almogávar warrior emerges,” he explained to ABC. David Barreras Martinezauthor of ‘The Albigensian Crusade and the Aragonese Empire’ (Nowtilus). In Madrid for vacation, the disseminator of medieval themes makes a stop for which we thank him to reveal the secrets of these combatants: «What we can affirm is that they have their origin in the skirmishes that small groups of light infantry carried out in enemy territory during the reconquest”.
They were, in short, the prototype of the Hispanic guerrilla; the one that became famous centuries later in the war of independence. “They sought to cause the greatest possible damage, be it moral, psychological, economic or military, to the Muslims in small skirmishes,” he says. Scholars agree that they made their appearance in the 12th century as irregular light infantry and gained lightning-fast notoriety for their efficiency—arriving, looting, and leaving within a few moons. However, the irregular advance of the Reconquista left them without a border with Islam and forced them to reorient their lives as mercenaries for the Crown of Aragon. And there they were very well received with open arms.
According to the author of ‘The Albigensian Crusade and the Aragonese Empire’, the Almogávares «gained importance with Peter II of Aragon, especially in Las Navas de Tolosa». And, from there, they served as light infantry and scouts in the armies of her Majesty. «They participated with Jaime I in the Reconquest of Mallorca, Valencia and Murcia. But also with the son of the latter, Pedro III, in the conquest of Sicily, “adds Barreras. At that time he was forging the Crown of Aragon, his particular Mediterranean Empire, and he did it with his help. It is true that they do not appear much in the chronicles of James I the Conqueror, but not for lack of importance in battles.
combat system
According to the historical disseminator Fernando Martínez Laínez in his popular ‘The Spanish soldier: a vision of Spain through its combatants’, the Almogávares were agile, extremely light, hardened in all kinds of fatigue, fast in their march, firm in the fight, despisers of their own lives and ruthless lords of others. They used short or speared spears, spears, swords, a long double-edged knife and darts that they threw from their horses to finish off any enemy that dared to confront them. Finally, he defines them as fighters who had no mercy and did not back down.
Laínez agrees with the medieval chroniclers, for whom the Almogavars were “people of great fatigue, who do not know how to live in towns” and who are only happy in combat. Desclot was the one who best described them. In his words, they did not live “only from the profession of arms” and could go two days without eating -or eating herbs- if necessary: ”They wear a short shirt, both in winter and in summer, leather leggings very narrow… Each one is armed with a sword, some darts, without shield or armor. On their backs they carry a leather satchel in which they put provisions for two or three days. They are strong men, mountain people, Catalans and Aragonese».
He forgot to say that, over the years, there were also Valencians, Mallorcans, Navarrese and even Castilians. Although the bulk were those Aragonese and Catalans who had become experts in open combat. What he did outline is that two of them were worth killing five enemy knights and that, despite the fact that they used horsemen on the battlefield, they preferred to fight on foot. A maxim that the 14th century chronicler Ramón Muntaner also picked up: “And when they went to wound, a large part of our Almogavars got off their horses because they felt safer on foot than on horseback.”
Although what most surprised the chronicler Francisco de Moncada, from the 17th century, were the rituals that the Almogavars repeated over and over again before the battle. When they were going to face the enemy, they took out some “stones” from the bag -pieces of flint, in the words of the historian Ángel Boya- and “produced sparks with their weapons that would frighten their adversaries”. As if that were not enough, they did it to the cry of ‘Wake up iron!’ (Wake up, iron!); a curious way to encourage their weapons to rise.
for half the world
When the Crown of Aragon put an end to its Mediterranean expansion, the Almogavars became soldiers of fortune, and the one who hired them was Andronicus II Palaiologos. Its objective? Stop the Ottoman expansion in Anatolia. The captain of the ship Rodrigo Fuenzalida recounts in a dossier on the subject that, back in 1303, these warriors offered Roger de Flor to be the head of the expeditionary force that would go to support the Emperor of Constantinople, and that he accepted without hesitation. «He sailed from Messina with 18 galleys […] with a disputed number of men on board, between 4,500 and 8,000, to reach their destination in January”, reveals the expert.
The chronicles say that when the Genoese saw them, they made fun of their clothing; to them they were just peasant brutes who barely knew how to use swords. They didn’t know how wrong they were. Over the next two years they racked up victory after victory against the Turks. In exchange, the emperor gave Roger de Flor a ducat and the hand of his niece. In fact, it is said that Andrónico preferred to reduce the salaries of his employees rather than get rid of the Almogavars. At the same time, the darkest legend of the Great Company narrates that they were ruthless with the natives of those lands.
Out of envy, out of the presumed barbarism -note the presumed-, out of indiscipline or out of their condition as foreigners, the reality is that the successor of Andronicus, Michael IX PaleologusHe wanted to remove them. And he did it the hard way and in a very dirty way: sending assassins to end the life of Roger de Flor and his acolytes. The boss called the mercenary leader to Andrinópolis with the excuse of commissioning a new expedition, but the only thing that awaited him was a salad of stab wounds. That, and the bitterness of knowing that a thousand of his companions were leaving with him for the other world.
But the history of the Company did not end with Roger de Flor. The remaining soldiers became strongholds in Thrace and Macedonia and started the so-called ‘Catalan Revenge’ against the Byzantines. Gallipoli was their stronghold, and from there they began a campaign of punishment similar to those skirmishes their predecessors had carried out centuries before. According to the historian Henry Royston Loyn, in those days they settled in the duchy of Athens, which meant the end of their wandering life and the foundation of a state that lasted until 1388. From there, they did the same with Neopatria and the south of Thessaly. His was indeed a feat of conquest; one that the Wagners wanted to replicate… without success.
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