Ildefonso Arenas

The chronicle of an invincible army

Young Guillem de Tous leaves behind his lands and family to enlist in the Almogavar army, where he is trained in the use of weapons and in customs that are ahead of their time. As a result of his audacity, he soon becomes aide-de-camp to Captain Ramon Muntaner. From this vantage point, he is a firsthand witness to one of the Young Guillem de Tous leaves behind his lands and family to enlist in the Almogavar army, where he is trained in the use of weapons and in customs that are ahead of their time. As a result of his audacity, he soon becomes aide-de-camp to Captain Ramon Muntaner. From this vantage point, he is a firsthand witness to one of the most astonishing epic tales of the Early Middle Ages.

Guillem de Tous becomes one of the five thousand Almogavar mercenaries who, after disembarking in Constantinople, wage n e a rly ten years of uninterrupted wars, destroying Anatolia, Thracia, Macedonia and Thessaly and defeating armies four or five times their size. Contrary to their enemies' belief, the Almogavar are not an insignificant band of mercenaries bent on murder, rape and plunder, but an army chasing a dream: a state of their own in which to settle down. This utopia will come true in Athens, where the Catalan flag will fly for nearly a century.

This book, which is based on historical events and does not contradict a single one, accurately reflects the unlikely, extraordinary political and military events that took place during the first eight years of that prodigious Catalan feat.