Roger de flor

Roger de Flor (Brindisi, c. 1267-Adrianópolis, 1305) was an Italian Knight Templar and mercenary warlord at the service of the Crown of Aragon. He served as one of the captains of the Almogavars and was also known as Roger von Blume and Rutger Blume .

Biography

Childhood and youth

Roger was the son of a falconry officer of Emperor Frederick II named Ricardo and a bourgeois from Brindisi, where he was born. When the family was ruined, his mother entrusted him to a Knight of the Order of the Temple and there he was Brother Sergeant in command of the ship Halcón .

He participated in the last crusade to the Holy Land, where he distinguished himself in the defense of San Juan de Acre (1291). However, the Templars accused him of having appropriated treasures of the order in the confusion in which the eviction of the city took place, for which he was expelled from the order. Taking advantage of his military experience, he became a mercenary, entering the service of King Federico II of Sicily (son of Pedro III the Great of Aragon).

The Almogávares

Federico put Roger de Flor in command of the companies of almogávares, mercenaries who had been employed by the Crown of Aragon in the conquest of Valencia and Majorca, and later to consolidate their domains in Sicily against the claims of the House of Anjou. He participated in the defense of Messina in 1302, demonstrating the skills of a true leader.

After the Peace of Caltabellota (1302) between Charles II of Anjou and Frederick of Sicily, in 1302 he placed himself at the service of the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II Palaiologos to help him against the Ottoman danger, commanding an expedition of 4,000 Almogavars, 1,500 cavalry soldiers and 39 ships sent by Federico (the Great Catalan Company). He paraded under the command of the Almogavars, who held him in high esteem, before the Byzantine emperor in the city of Constantinople. Commanding the Almogavars, he annihilated the Genoese in Constantinople, an act that the emperor appreciated. Fed up with his tutelage, he went to Anatolia and took the cities of Philadelphia, Magnesia and Ephesus, repelling the Turks as far as Cilicia and the Taurus (1304), always outnumbered in battles.

Roger de Flor in Constantinopleby José Moreno Carbonero (1888). The work shows the mercenary of the Crown of Aragon parading against Andronic II Paleologist to help him against the Ottoman danger.

During the spring of 1304, a battle also took place between the Almogavars and Scythian invaders from the north of the Black Sea (Alans), who were defeated. In reward for his services to the Empire, Andronicus granted him the title of megaduke (commander of the fleet) and the hand of Maria, his niece and daughter of the Tsar of Bulgaria. Previous battles had been short and had caused the greatest number of casualties, especially in the withdrawal of the Turks from the battlefield. They were less intense compared to the one that occurred near the Cilician Gates. Roger de Flor and 8,000 Almogavars defeated a Turkish Army made up of 30,000 soldiers, mostly Janissaries, causing 18,000 casualties to the enemy. After this great victory, the Turks thought twice about attacking the Byzantine Empire again for several years, and Roger was proclaimed Caesar of the Empire, granting him in fief the Byzantine territories in Asia Minor, with the exception of the cities. In the battle, Berenguer de Entenza stood out, who had supported Roger with 1000 Almogavars. He was granted the title of megaduke at Roger's request.

Strategically, the position of Roger de Flor and Berenguer de Entenza in Byzantium favored the Rex Bellator project of Ramon Llull, who proposed in his Liber de Fine the southern route (Almería-Granada-Norte of Africa-Egypt) to continue the Crusade with the advantage of the kings of the Crown of Aragon in case they had managed to lead the united military orders.

However, the situation of the Almogavars in the Empire was not comfortable. On the one hand, they apparently committed excesses with the local Greek population. On the other hand, it seems that Roger de Flor's ambition was great and he wanted to establish himself as sovereign of the conquered territories. Finally, his growing ambition and influence aroused the hostility of Emperor Michael IX, son of Andronicus II and associated with the imperial government. Thus, he had him assassinated in Adrianópolis during a banquet along with more than a hundred Almogávar chiefs on April 5, 1305, and later attacked the Almogávar troops. However, not only could they not finish them off, but the survivors, under the command of Berenguer de Entenza, counterattacked and razed everything they found in their path in Thrace and Macedonia (facts known as Catalan revenge). Finally, a duchy (Athens and Neopatria) nominally dependent on the Crown of Aragon was created.

The figure of Roger de Flor reached contemporaries thanks to the Muntaner Chronicle, inspiring the work Tirante el Blanco, by Joanot Martorell. One of the units of the BRIPAC (Paratrooper Brigade) of the Spanish Army bears his name.