1311
Catalan Company crushes Franks at Halmyros
A band of Catalan mercenaries who had drifted east after the War of the Sicilian Vespers ambushed the chivalry of the Duchy of Athens in a Thessalian marsh, luring the Frankish knights into flooded fields where their heavy horses foundered. The Frankish duke and most of his knights perished. The Catalans simply took over Athens and ran it for seventy years.
Alauddin Khalji builds Siri Fort in Delhi
Shaken by the Mongol siege of 1303, the sultan raised an entire new fortified city beside the old qutb complex, garrisoned by the largest standing army India had yet seen. Siri's markets operated under state-fixed prices, its grain stores could feed a siege for years. It was Delhi remade as a war machine.
Council of Vienne convened
Clement V opened an ecumenical council in the Rhone valley to deal with Templars, Beguines, and the Holy Land. Under Philip IV's pressure the assembled bishops suppressed the Temple without formally condemning it, sidestepping a heresy verdict that the evidence could not support. They also condemned the mystical errors attributed to Marguerite Porete, already burned the year before.
Catalan company raids the Aegean
After Halmyros the Catalan mercenary company established themselves in central Greece, raiding Byzantine and Frankish territories alike, marrying locally, and ruling Athens and Thebes as a distinct Iberian colony for three generations. They administered their domains under Aragonese law and answered nominally to the king of Sicily. Their Catalan charters survive as a strange Mediterranean curiosity.