AFTER the truce was concluded the Emperor Henri returned to Constantinople, and immediately announced his project of going to Adrianople with as large a force as he had at his command. He assembled his army at Selymbria; but so much time had already passed that this did not take place till the beginning of July, a week or so after Saint John the Baptist’s Day. The Emperor set off and after several days’ march arrived at Adrianople, where he pitched his camp in the meadows outside the city. The people of Adrianople, who had greatly longed for his coming, came out to meet him in procession, and welcomed him with great enthusiasm. The Greeks from all the country round about had also gathered there to greet him.
The Emperor remained only one day encamped outside Adrianople, just long enough time to see what damage Johanitza’s petraries and his sappers had done to walls and towers of the city. This proved to be pretty extensive. The next day he started off again and marched towards Johanitza’s country, taking four days on the way. On the fifth day he came to the foot of the Wallachian mountains, where there was a town called Eului, which Johanitza had newly re-peopled. As soon as the inhabitants saw the French army coming they fled from the town, and took refuge in the mountains.
The Emperor and his army encamped before the town. Foraging parties set out to scour the land, and secured a great number of oxen, cows, and buffaloes, as well as other beasts. Some of the people from Adrianople had brought their carts along with them, and since they were poor and in need of food, they loaded these vehicles with wheat and other grain. The army stayed there three days; and every day foraging parties scoured the countryside in search of booty. But the land in those parts was very mountainous and there were many deep defiles, so that the army lost a number of its foragers because they were too venturesome and did not look where they were going.
In the end, the Emperor Henri placed his brother Eustache, his nephew Thierry de Flandre, Gautier d’Escornai, and Jean Bliaud each in charge of a company, and sent them, under the command of Anseau de Cayeux, to keep guard over the foragers. One day these four companies, in the course of their duty, got into very rough and mountainous country; and when the foragers had finished scouring the land and wished to return to camp they found the defiles very strongly guarded by the Wallachians of that region who had gathered there. These attacked the French doing much damage both to men and horses. Our men were hard put to it to escape defeat; so much so indeed that the knights were driven to dismount and fight on foot. None the less, by God’s grace, they managed to return to camp, though not without suffering heavy losses.
The next day the Emperor Henri and his army left Eului, and went back by the way they had come, till after several days’ march they arrived at Adrianople, where they stored the corn and other provisions they had brought back with them. The Emperor spent the next fortnight in the meadow outside the city.
About that time, the Marquis de Montferrat, who was at Serrès which he had rebuilt and fortified, made raids on all the country round as far as Mosynopolis, and gradually brought the whole of the land under his rule. When this was done he sent messengers to the Emperor Henri to say he would like to have a talk with him, and would meet him beside the river that runs below Ipsala. The two men had had no chance of speaking face to face since the French conquest of the empire; for so many enemies lay between them that it had been impossible for them to meet. So when the Emperor and his council heard that the marquis was at Mosynopolis they were delighted; and the Emperor sent back word by the messengers that he would come to meet the marquis on the day he had fixed.
The Emperor Henri started on his way, leaving Conon de Béthune with a hundred knights at Adrianople to guard the surrounding country. On the appointed day he and his men arrived at the place of meeting, which was in a pleasant meadow near the city of Ipsala. The Emperor approached the place from one side, the marquis from the other, and both expressed the greatest joy at meeting. Nor was this surprising, since they had not seen each other for such a long time. The marquis asked for news of his daughter the Empress Agnès, and was delighted when the Emperor told him she was expecting a baby. Then the marquis did homage to the Emperor Henri and became his man, to hold his lands from him, as he had held them from the late Emperor his brother. The marquis subsequently offered Geoffroy de Villehardouin, Marshal of Romania and Champagne, the choice of two cities: Mosynopolis, with all its dependencies, or Serrès – whichever he preferred – to hold as his own. So the Marshal became the marquis’s vassal, but without prejudice to the allegiance he owed to the Emperor of Constantinople.
The marquis and the Emperor spent two very happy days together in the field below Ipsala. They said to each other that, as God had permitted them to meet again, so they might together face their enemies and harass them once more. They made an agreement to meet at the end of the summer, in the month of October, with all their forces, in the meadow outside Adrianople, and make war on the King of Wallachia. So they parted from each other, both very happy and in the best of spirits. The marquis went back to Mosynopolis, and the Emperor Henri returned to Constantinople.
The marquis had not been five days in his city before he rode out, on the advice of Greeks in the district, to make an expedition to the mountain of Mosynopolis, which was a long day’s journey away. After he had ridden through the land and was turning homewards, the Bulgarians gathered together, and observing that he had only a small force with him, came in from all the country round and attacked his rear-guard. The moment the marquis heard his men raise a cry of alarm, he leapt on his horse, all unarmed as he was, with only a lance in his hand. When he reached the place where the Bulgarians were at grips with the rear-guard, he charged right in amongst them, and drove them back a good way.
As he flew after them, the marquis was fatally wounded in the thick of the arm, below the shoulder, and began to lose blood. When his men saw what had happened, their courage began to ebb, they lost heart and started to give way. Those who were nearest to the marquis held him up; he was losing so much blood that he began to faint. Realizing that they could expect no further help from their leader, his men gave way to panic and began to desert him. So, by an unlucky chance, they were defeated. Those who remained with the marquis – and they were very few – were killed. The Bulgarians cut off the marquis’s head and sent it to Johanitza. That was one of the greatest joys the King of Wallachia had ever experienced.
Alas! what a tragic disaster, for the Emperor Henri, and for all die men in the Empire, French and Venetians alike, to lose such a man by such an unfortunate accident – a man who was one of the noblest and most large-hearted of all the barons, and one of the finest knights in all the world! This sad event occurred in the year of our Lord 1207.