Principality of Achaea

The Principality of Achaea, or the Principality of Morea, was one of the vassal states set up in Greece after the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople, and it became the dominant power in the land for two centuries. It was founded in 1205 by William of Champlitte and Geoffrey I of Villehardouin, who undertook to conquer the Peloponnese for Boniface of Montferrat, king of Thessalonica. With no more than a hundred knights and five hundred foot soldiers they took Achaea and Elis, and after the decisive battle of the Olive Grove of Koundouros they were masters of the Morea; the forts that held out, such as Araklovon, fell by 1213, and Monemvasia alone resisted until 1248. Champlitte left for France to claim an inheritance and died on the way in 1209, and Villehardouin ruled until 1219. Achaea was a small state, no bigger than the Peloponnese, but a wealthy one, exporting wine, raisins, wax, honey, oil and silk, and it was run as a Frankish feudal holding with its capital at Andravida. It was a vassal first of the Latin Empire, then of the kingdom of Thessalonica until Epirus took that city in 1224, after which Achaea stood for generations as the strongest Latin state in Greece.