Page 142

 142 A HISTORY OF THE CRUSADES III 
support of his energetic mother, Marie of Bourbon. Hugh had been cheated
of the throne of Cyprus, to which he was rightfully entitled by the custom
of primogeniture, by his uncle, the crusading Peter I (1359-1369). 1 Marie
and her son now sought compensation for this loss in the principality of
Achaea. To take effective possession of the land they sent mercenary forces
to the peninsula sometime in the first half of 1366.2 In the meantime, according
to the Aragonese version of the Chronicle of the Morea, the feudality of
Achaea, including archbishop Angelo of Patras, had declared itself for Philip
of Taranto. However, a certain William of Talay, captain of Port-de Jonc
(Navarino), one of the castles in Marie's Peloponnesian dower, refused to
surrender this strategic place to Philip's bailie, Simon del Poggio of Perugia,
and in fact imprisoned the latter when he came to treat with him. He also
appealed for aid to the despot, Manuel Cantacuzenus, and Guy of Enghien,
baron of Argos and Nauplia.3 Cantacuzenus and Guy sent troops to the plain
of Elis, where they did considerable damage. 
 At this juncture, with the loyalist forces under archbishop Angelo besieging
Port-de-Jonc, there appeared a deus ex machina in the person of Amadeo VI
of Savoy. The "Green Count" was on his way to Constantinople to rescue his
cousin, emperor John V, from Bulgarian harassment. He landed at Modon on
July 17, 1366, and two days later at Coron.4 His mediation, promptly offered
and accepted, brought the civil war to an end, at least temporarily. Angelo
raised the siege of Port-de-Jonc, and William of Talay released Simon del
Poggio. But the Bourbon-Lusignan forces remained in the southwestern Morea.
At the beginning of 1369 the Venetian govern ment wrote to Hugh to urge the
dismissal of the faithless Talay, who 
1. See below, pp. 351—352. 
 2. No doubt the payments which Peter I de Lusignan made to Marie on her
dower and to Hugh in satisfaction of his claims to Cyprus were largely used
up to finance the campaign in the Morea. Cf. Louis de Mas Latrie, Histoire
de l'ile de Chypre, II, 253, and Leontius Machaeras's Chronicle (ed. and
trans. R. M. Dawkins [2 vols., Oxford, 1932]), pars. 105—108. In 1365
Marie and Hugh sent their seneschal Gurello Caracciolo to Frederick III of
Sicily to seek aid (Hopf, in Ersch and Gruber, LXXXVI [1868; repr. 1960,
II], 5, and note 47, citing the Palermitan archives). 
 3. The despoina, Isabel (or "Maria"), was a Lusignan, second cousin of Marie
of Bour bon's first husband (Hugh's father), Guy of Galilee; see S. Binon,
"Guy d'Arménie et Guy de Chypre: Isabelle de Lusignan a la cour de
Mistra," Mélanges Emile Boisacq (Brussels, 1937—1938), pp. 124—1
42. 
 4. The dates appear in the records of disbursements by Amadeo while on the
crusade, published by F. Bollati di Saint-Pierre, Illustrazioni della spedizione
in Oriente di Amedeo VI (Il Conte Verde) (Biblioteca storica italiana . .
. della R. Deputazione di storia patria, V [i.e. VI]; Turin, 1900), p. 43,
nos. 105, 106, and cf. p. 44, no. 115, for payment to "Guillelmo de Taley,
capitaneo castri de Jout. . ." (obviously William of Talay at Port-de Jonc).
On Amadeo's crusade see above, pp. 18—19, 74—77.