https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_F...dez_de_Heredia
The Navarese Company.
The Knights of St John were no strangers in the Morea. Like the Templars and the Teutonic Knights, they had received four fiefs there at the time of the Conquest, and the possessions of the Templars had passed to them on the dissolution of that order in 131 2. On the roll of 1364, we find two castles belonging to them ; a little earlier, Innocent VI. had suggested that they should move from Rhodes, which had been their headquarters since 1309, to the Peloponnese, and defend it against the Turks. Their grand-master at this time was Juan Fernandez de Heredia, a noble and adventurous Spaniard, who had won the favour of Innocent VI., had become " the right arm of the Avignon papacy," had fought against the Black Prince at Poitiers, and had lately escorted Gregory XI. to Rome, when that pontiff, in obedience to St Catherine of Siena, ended the "Babylonish captivity" and returned to the widowed city. The barons, notably the Venetian Archbishop of Patras, welcomed the advent of so distinguished a soldier, who seemed a heaven-sent defender of their threatened land. A new and vigorous race of invaders had now appeared to contest the country with the remnant of the Franks. Since the collapse of the Despotat of Epiros, and the establishment of two Albanian chieftains on its ruins, the north of Achaia had been menaced by an Albanian immigration, as well as by Turkish raids. The very year after the Knights had acquired the principality, one of those chieftains, Ghin (or John) Boua Spata, who had already seized the possessions of the rival clan of Liosa at Arta upon the death of its chief by the plague, and had thus united iEtolia and Akarnania in his own person, captured Lepanto, and thus destroyed the last vestige of Angevin rule on the continent of Greece. For over eighty years the French lilies had waved over the triple fortifications of that celebrated castle ; it had been part of the dowry which Philip of Taranto had received in 1294 with the unhappy Thamar ;
now it had gone, and an Albanian chieftain held one of the keys of the Corinthian Gulf. Heredia judged that this insult must be avenged ; he crossed the gulf, and recaptured Lepanto. But his imprisonment by the Black Prince after the battle of Poitiers had not taught him prudence ; he marched rashly into the heart of the enemy's country, intending to take Arta, was defeated by the Albanians, and brought as a prisoner to Spata. The chieftain was "a man of thought and action, in all things distinguished, and of striking beauty " ; but, with all these qualities, he lacked generosity, and, without hesitation, he sold his noble captive to the Turks. In spite of the efforts of the Knights, assisted by the money of the Archbishop of Patras, to retain the important position of Lepanto, it fell again into the possession of the redoubtable Spata.
Source:
"The Latins in the Levant, a history of Frankish Greece (1204-1566)"
Originally Posted by Laberia
Being yourself the copy\paste King of TA makes it even more hysterically funny to see you complaining.
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