Catalan Company

If you know what the Company was then could you help me finding answer to this question - As for the Catalan Company, might it have been successful at attacking, besiegeing and conquering Constantinople??? Some sources say it might have been and some say it might have been not.

PS! Does someone know where to get the poem's English or SPanian or French version???

 

And is it Catalonian or Catalan???

Nice, thanks, a short book more to read. I have read a book where Ramon Muntaner described aswell the Company and its actions but it was much shorter.

Originally posted by rider If you know what the Company was then could you help me finding answer to this question - As for the Catalan Company, might it have been successful at attacking, besiegeing and conquering Constantinople??? Some sources say it might have been and some say it might have been not. PS! Does someone know where to get the poem's English or SPanian or French version??? And is it Catalonian or Catalan???

No! But they took several cities in Greece but I cannot recall. They were fierce and even the Turks feared them.
A good source is Steven Runciman and John Julius Norwhich.

Just as Drunt Ba'adur has already stated, the Catalan Company would have needed much more in terms of manpower and probably technology.  I have read some about them and as fas as I know, the Company was composed mostly of heavy infantry and some heavy shock cavalry.  Their overall number was not large enough to lay siege to as big a city as Constantinople.  Plus, I don't think they had any sophisticated siege weapons that they lugged around with them; their primary purpose as designated by the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaeologus was to garrison certain cities and to augment the ailing Byzantine army of the time, which was devoid of any native heavy cavalry.  They were recruited by Andronicus especially for their shock value against the encroaching Turks -- even the Turks were horrified at the Catalans' merciless brutality!

Some books you might check out:

John M. Sharp, ed. The Catalan Chronicle of Francisco de Moncada. Frances Hernandez, trans. El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1975.

Kenneth M. Setton. The Catalan Domination of Athens, 1311-1388. Medi�val Academy of America, no. 50. Cambridge, MA: Medi�val Academy of America, 1948.

Alfonso Lowe. The Catalan Vengeance. Boston: Routledge and K. Paul, 1972.

Angeliki E. Laiou. Constantinople and the Latins: The Foreign Policy of Andronicus II, 1282-1328. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

Originally posted by rider The cities they conquered were Galilea and wasn't it Thessaloniki (and maybe Edirne)?

�Galilea? �Isn't Galilea in Israel? Maybe you were trying to say Galipoli (which was the 'capital' of catalan company while they were serving byzantines...
Edirne(Adrianopolis) was never taken as far as I know and nor Thessalonika (it was sieged)

Catalan company was extremely good in outdoor battles(mountains, attacking an enemy camp, plane...) but while a siege... it was different because they were lacking weapons and experience in those type of battles.

major cities where difficult to be taken


Edited by Drunt Ba'adur