Walter VI, Count of Brienne
Walter VI. of Brienne (c. 1304; † September 19, 1356 at Maupertuis ) was Count of Brienne, Conversano and Lecce, titular of Athens, and shortly before his death, Constable of France of King John II He was the son of Walter V.. of Brienne, Duke of Athens, and Jeanne de Chatillon († 1354 ), daughter of the Earl of Porcien.
As the grandson of Hugh of Brienne († 1296 ), he was the heir to extensive lands around the Mediterranean. With his father's death at the Battle of Halmyros on March 15, 1311 he inherited the county of Brienne and the claim to the Duchy of Athens, which had been overrun but down to Argos and Nauplia by the Catalan Company. Walter VI. spent a large part of his life with a fruitless battle for the legacy of the family of his grandmother until he went into the 1340s in Italy and Argos and Nauplia left deputies. The Duchy of Athens was not the first loss in his family: Walter's grandfather had been excluded from the succession to the kingdom of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Cyprus, his great- great-grandfather had a husband of sister of King William III. Claims to the Kingdom of Sicily raised - left of them were the County of Lecce and the claim to the Principality of Taranto.
His mother Johanna had done during his minority a fierce fight against the Catalans, with little military success and strong financial losses. In order to improve its position, Walter married in December 1325 Margaret of Naples, a niece of Robert of Anjou, King of Naples, and daughter of Philip I of Taranto. During this time, Florence Roberts asked for support to protect the interests of Guelph in Italy, and chose Robert's son Charles for a 10- year term ( 1326-1336 ) to the Lord of the city. Walter was nominated for several months of the year 1326 to Charles deputy.
In 1329 he received the support of Robert of Naples and Pope John XXII. , Which proclaimed a crusade for the reconquest of Athens. However, the price for support was that he had to proceed first as a representative of the Latin Empire against the Despotate of Epirus. 1331 Walter sailed to the east, Arta conquered and forced the despots John Orsini to recognize the suzerainty of Naples. His attempts to recapture, Athens and Boeotia, but were of a Venetian alliance with the Catalans and their refusal to face up to the battle, defeated. His only son, Walter, died during the campaign of an illness. 1332 he returned to Naples.
End of the decade, Walter took care of his possessions in France. In 1339 he was the representative of the king in the thiérache. After his wife died in 1340, he returned in 1342 but returned to Italy as the ruling Florentine merchants called him to rule the city. Since 1339 Florence was in an economic crisis, which was triggered by the huge debts that had the one the English at the Florentine banks, and which had for other received the city itself for the nearby city of Lucca by her Veronese Lord Mastino II della Scala to purchase. The Florentine nobility looked around for a foreign Lord for who should be able to create the seemingly impossible solution to the financial problems, and believed to have found him in Walter of Brienne. Although the ruling class Walter had asked for a time-limited government, he was appointed by the lower class, who had been dissatisfied with Walters predecessors, to Signore for life.
Walter VI. however, ruled despotically, ignoring the interests of the merchants who had brought him, or defied them even. The " Duke of Athens" enacted harsh economic cuts, introduced with the estimo and prestanze new taxes, and deferred the repayment of debts to the rich urban citizens. These initiatives have had the Florentines against him, and after ten months of Walter of Brienne was overthrown by a conspiracy. Not only was he forced to abandon his post, but had to be lucky to get away to escape with his life.
In 1344 he married Johanna, daughter of Raoul I de Brienne, Count of Eu and Constable of France. By her he had two daughters, Joanna, and Mary, who both died young. 1356 he was appointed by the French King John II to Constable of France, as he fell in the battle of Maupertuis on September 19, 1356. His title, and was inherited by his sister Isabella and their sons. Isabella III. survived her brother by four years, she died in 1360 (her husband Walter of Enghien ( Gauthier d' Enghien ) had already died in 1345 ). For several years she was Countess of Lecce and Brienne etc and Titularherzogin of Athens. While still alive, they shared their possessions on their numerous children.
The " Duke of Athens" that occurs as one of the nine lovers of the daughter of the Sultan of Babylon in the seventh story of the second day of the Decameron is - although historically certainly not correct - a satirical allusion to Walter VI. and his brief unforgettable dictatorship in Florence less than ten years before writing the book.