There was a policy in all this opulence and hospitality to strangers. Duke Baldwin owed much of his first supremacy in Athens to the presence in Thessaly of a band of free lances. When he arrived, hissing hot with haste, in his new duchy he found that his hold over his dominion was not to be unthreatened nor his rule untroubled. A prince of Epirus here, a prince of Vlachia there, menaced his unsteady empire. Even Duke Baldwin's bull-dog courage recognized that he was not strong enough to compete with his enemies single-handed. But Duke Baldwin was a man of resource, and he saw that there was a valuable alliance at hand. The Catalan Grand Company, having fought its fierce way through Macedonia, had planted itself upon the soil of Thessaly eager for more conquests. The Catalan Grand Company was a remarkable association of rascals, assassins, ragamuffins, blackguards, and admirable captains. It was originally formed in Spain with the avowed purpose of selling the arms and the bodies of the brotherhood to any one needing them and willing to pay the price. The Catalans had gone hither and thither serving this master and that, till at last their baleful star had led them, maugre the teeth of the Byzantine tyrant, to the land of Greece. A new-comer to a throne who is not in the direct line and is not upon the spot when the succession falls due is never too sure of his seat, even if his authority be unchallenged, and Duke Baldwin, with enemies ready to take the field against him, deemed it prudent to enter into negotiations for the services of the Catalan Grand Company. The Catalans, already weary of acting for their own hand, were very ready to take Duke Baldwin's pay and to play Duke Baldwin's game. Their terms were large, but Duke Baldwin's need was keen and Duke Baldwin's tongue was glib. He promised them what they asked with a cheerful spirit, albeit the company asked a good deal. Baldwin agreed to pay each full-armored horseman four gold ounces a month, each light-armed horseman two gold ounces a month, and each foot-soldier one gold ounce a month. When Duke Baldwin made, or rather accepted, these terms, the strength of the Catalan Grand Company totalled three thousand five hundred horsemen and three thousand men on foot, so that Duke Baldwin found himself pledged to a pretty penny. But with Duke Baldwin the present was very emphatically the present. The immediate important thing was to tighten his grip on the pleasant Duchy of Athens, to tweak the noses of Epirus here and Vlachia there, and he genially agreed to the terms of the Catalans, prepared no less genially hereafter to bamboozle them, but in the mean time making what might have been a dubious dominion indubitable with the strength of their support.