Having concluded peace with his Byzantine enemies following a successful campaign in Thessaly, Duke Walter de Brienne of Athens wished to dispense with the services of the Catalan Company, which had been instrumental in his victory. Proud and arrogant, he dismissed them without pay, answering their reasonable demands for recompense with threats and curses. Understandably, the Catalans were not prepared to leave it at that, and events ultimately culminated in the decisive battle of Kephissos, or Almyra.
All too aware of the Catalans’ capabilities, Duke Walter mustered a large army against them from all Frankish Greece; the sources differ regarding numbers, but probably there were 2,000-6,400 cavalry, including 700 knights, and some 4-8,000 largely Greek infantry (Muntaner’s claim of 24,000 infantry can be dismissed). Encountering the Catalans on the banks of the Kephissos with their right flank on Lake Kopais, his cavalry were tricked into charging headlong into a carefully prepared marshy plain, where their horses became bogged down. The Catalans, who comprised 3,500 cavalry and 4,000 infantry (the former largely Turks, the latter largely of Almughavars but including some Byzantine prisoners pressed into service because they were good archers), then all but exterminated the Franks — so thoroughly that only a handful of noblemen are known to have escaped with their lives, Duke Walter not being among them. Infantry losses were similarly high — of the 24,000 present according to Muntaner, 20,000 were allegedly killed, which would imply that they suffered five-sixths casualties.
The Catalans’ Turkish auxiliaries, under a certain Chalil, had at first refused to fight, suspecting that the battle might be merely a set-up to enable the Christians to kill them; they only joined in when they actually saw the Catalans start killing the Franks.
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