other for mutual support.’^104 What Florence provided was the cash. At
this particular juncture, the city was at the peak of itsfinancial influence
across Latin Christendom as a whole. It was also unusually stable, in part
because of the fact that it could turn, for muscle, to its Angevin ally in the
south. At moments of crisis, indeed, Florence did not scruple to place
itself under Angevin authority. The city had done this as early as the
1260s, and Robert of Naples took on a similar role in 1313–21.^105 Thus,
faced with another disaster only four years later, the Florentine govern-
ment appealed, once again, to King Robert, who instructed his son and
heir, Duke Charles of Calabria, to assume emergency powers there.^106
Charles, in turn, dispatched Walter of Brienne, who preceded him to
Florence at the head of 400 knights. The‘duke of Athens’(as he is always
known in Florentine accounts) arrived in the city on 17 May 1326, and
installed himself and his wife in the reasonably modest confines of the
Palazzo Mozzi. Walter then‘held the fort’until Charles himself arrived to
take over. In truth, the Florentines remembered Walter’s brief period of
rule pretty fondly. In the words of the celebrated chronicler Giovanni
Villani,‘[Walter] knew how to rule wisely, and was a wise and agreeable
lord’.^107 The Angevins, too, seem to have thought that he did a good job.
During the struggles that convulsed central Italy over the course of the
next few years, Walter seems to have been briefly entrusted with Rieti,
just as he had been with Florence.^108
Charles of Calabria’s premature death, in November 1328, can be
interpreted as a great blow to Walter, depriving him of his most powerful
backer within the house of Anjou. It could, perhaps, be seen the other
way around. Charles’s demise freed Walter from the demands of the
duke’s service, allowing him to elevate himself into a leadership role for
his own dearest wish: that is, to recover the duchy of Athens. Walter laid
the groundwork very thoroughly, not least by sending an envoy to scout
out the possibility of making landfall in Argos or Nafplio.^109 In the event,
though, Walter decided to head for the west coast instead, and it is
possible to detect Neapolitan influence in this, For King Robert (as,
indeed, for Philip of Taranto and his wife), Walter’s expedition presented
an opportunity‘to kill two birds with one stone’. Marching through
Greece on his way to fight the Catalans, Walter could secure the
(^104) S. Kelly,The New Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309–1343) and Fourteenth-Century
Kingship(Leiden, 2003), 227.
(^105) For the latter period, seeibid., 227–9.
(^106) See J. M. Najemy,A History of Florence, 1200– 1575 (Oxford, 2008), 122.
(^107) Giovanni Villani,Nuova cronica, ed. G. Porta, 3 vols. (Parma, 1990–1), ii, book 10,
108 ch. 351.
Ibid., ii, book 11, ch. 21.^109 See Luttrell,‘The Latins of Argos and Nauplia’, 36.
164 Hubris and Nemesis (c. 1311–1356)