Episode 324 - Just Another Beylik

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 324.

Just Another Bailic.

Last time, we brought to an end the cycle of civil wars which began with Andronicus III's death in 1341.

Andronicus had been an active and optimistic emperor.

He had shown that a vigorous leader could still achieve things with a fair wind behind him.

Just thirteen years after his death, the Roman Empire no longer really deserves that title.

Constantinople couldn't defend its provinces anymore.

The government were just clinging on to what they had.

In fact, by the end of this episode, it might be reasonable to say that the Romans have left the imperial era for good.

They are no longer even one Christian kingdom amongst others.

Instead, they have moved into a Turkish world and are just trying to maintain their independence within it.

In order to reach this perspective-shattering summit, we need to follow two different paths.

One is the personal story of the Emperor John Palaeologos.

The other will take us through events on the ground in Europe.

Let's begin with John's story.

Palaeologos was born in 1332, making him just nine years old when his father died.

He spent his teenage years at the capital, with the civil war raging around him.

His mother was a great influence on him, and she was not a Roman.

She was Anna of Savoy, a county on the borders of modern France, Italy, and Switzerland.

John was twenty when he was given his first command, and he showed some initiative in outmanoeuvring Matthew Cantacusinos, and then twice escaping his captivity on the island of Tenedos.

Ultimately, though, he owed his position on the throne to the sheer unpopularity of John Cantacusinos.

Repeatedly, people across the Empire had preferred a boy they didn't know to the aristocrat that they did.

Now aged twenty-three, John faced a bleaker situation than any Roman emperor in history.

The first issue he had to deal with was the Turkish occupation of the port town of of Gallipoli.

This was an existential threat to the survival of the state.

Turkish mercenaries had been slaughtering their way across Thrace for the past decade, mostly at the invitation of Roman nobles, but sometimes on their own accord.

Now the Ottomans had seized a port town, one which lay just a couple of miles from the Anatolian shore.

There was nothing to stop a wave of Turks from breaking across Romania.

John asked the obvious question, Should we gather an army and try to fight them?

The man he asked this to was his predecessor, who had more first-hand experience of Turkish warfare than anyone else.

And Cantakuzinos was emphatic in saying no.

It would be a waste of time, because the soldiers we have will be destroyed by the Turks.

He was probably right, but that left John with only only one option to secure the future of his state, and that was to beg others for help.

His options were limited.

The Venetians and Genoese were already trading partners with the Turks, and they weren't going to let principles get in the way of profits.

They would join a crusade that looked like succeeding, but unless one materialised, they would look out for their own interests.

Similarly, the Bulgarians could not be persuaded to join forces with the Empire.

There seemed hope when John arranged for his son Andronicus to marry the daughter of the Tsar.

But when it came to military assistance, the Bulgarians preferred to hide behind the Hemis Mountains and hope that the nomads would go away.

Serbia was the state most capable of crushing the Turks,

but those hopes were dashed with the death of Stefan Dushan in thirteen fifty five.

The huge state he governed disappeared overnight.

His son held together some core territories around Skopje, but the rest of his nobles turned their back on central authority.

Dushan's empire splintered into at least 15 minor principalities.

This brought some very minor benefits to Byzantium, some territory around Thessaloniki was reclaimed, and though Greece remained under foreign rule, its internal politics came to be dominated by the local Roman nobility.

Ultimately, though, the death of Dushan was disastrous for Byzantium.

The Serbs were the only ones capable of standing up to the growing power of the Turks, and with their unity gone, so was the chance of cornering the Ottomans before they could expand.

For Byzantium, then, there remained only one place that could offer the help they needed, the Latin West.

Given John's mother was from Savoy, he was more sympathetic to this option than other emperors would have been.

And given the desperate situation the Empire was in, John had to completely reverse the policy of his great-great-grandfather.

Michael VIII had used all his resources to stop a crusade being launched against Romania.

Now John would use all of his to demand one.

Before he reached that decision, he tried to arrange his defences as best he could.

The Empire now consisted of Constantinople, Thrace, Thessaloniki, a few ports and islands, and half of the Peloponnese.

Some listeners may have forgotten that Michael VIII sent an invasion force to the south of Greece shortly after retaking Constantinople.

Each of the outlying regions needed to keep their tax revenue to pay for their defence, so the money available to the Emperor was derisory.

John was already in debt to the Venetians, who'd supported his bid for the throne, so he couldn't afford to waste a penny at this point, and he therefore decided not to spend anything on the navy, which meant he couldn't really defend the islands of the Aegean.

Reluctantly, he agreed to officially recognise the Genoese occupation of Chios in exchange for a paltry five hundred hyperpira per year.

He also handed over the island of Lesbos to the Genoese noble Francesco Gatilusio.

This turned out reasonably well for everyone.

Francesco married the Emperor's sister, and they settled on the island, smoothing relations with the native population.

And though Francesco was essentially independent, he maintained friendly ties with Constantinople and employed native Romans in his administration.

It was seen as the best way of avoiding the island falling into hostile hands.

Given the financial situation, John also ceased to issue gold hyperpyra.

The Romans continued to mint silver coins for another fifteen years or so, but essentially they no longer had their own currency.

The hyperpyra remained a notional unit of payment, but the actual coins representing it would be foreign, usually Venetian ducats.

One by one, the symbols of imperial prestige were being stripped away.

In late 1355, John wrote to the Pope.

He asked for very modest military support, specifically twenty ships, five hundred knights, and a thousand infantry, who would only serve the Empire for six months.

Presumably, they would be used to retake Gallipoli, since little else could be achieved in that time frame.

In exchange for this aid, the Emperor was offering church union and an extraordinary personal submission.

He would send his five-year-old son Manuel to live at the Curia, where he would be educated and married according to the Pope's wishes, while his oldest son Andronicus would be educated in Latin at Constantinople, along with the next generation of Byzantine nobles.

A papal legate would oversee the union of the churches, and the Emperor would travel to the Curia to submit to the Pope's authority in person.

It was an offer of total submission.

I said the Curia as in the Papal Curia rather than Rome, because the pontiff in question, Innocent VI,

was not in the eternal city.

He resided instead at Avignon, in France, a situation that we so don't have time to get into.

But it may be that this break in normal affairs added to papal confusion over what John was offering.

The Pope replied positively and liked the sound of church union, but he ignored the offer of guardianship over young Manuel and the request for military aid.

Calls for crusades to be formed against the Turks were common during this period, and so Innocent presumably viewed John's offer in that context, just another struggling Aegean power asking for a handout.

Well, with no help coming from that quarter, John looked to the nearest power he felt could offer tangible assistance, the Kingdom of Hungary.

The Hungarians had shown an interest in a crusade against the Turks, and they had a reasonable relationship with Constantinople, so John took the unprecedented step of organising a state visit.

Roman emperors had only previously left the boundaries of their state when they were at the head of an army.

To travel to a foreign court to beg for aid was another deep humiliation for Roman pretensions.

But Palaeologos, to his credit, was willing to put pride aside to try and secure the future of his state.

It was a decade into his reign before he finally set off.

In the winter of 1366 he sailed up the Black Sea coast and down the Danube.

He took with him his two youngest sons, Manuel and Michael, and left his heir Andronicus in charge of Constantinople.

The Pope had been informed about this visit and approved, though he wrote to the Hungarian king expressing his scepticism about Greek sincerity over church union.

Sadly, the six-month visit of the Vasilevs to the Hungarian court doesn't seem to have achieved anything.

The king was in favour of a crusade, but this required papal approval.

The pontiff's position was that the campaign would be approved once the Romans capitulated on all points surrounding church union,

which is kind of fair because a crusade provides sanction for the saving of souls and could not be issued to schismatic Christians.

Of course, the Romans felt that aid should come first, followed by an ecumenical council to iron out the issues between the two sides, and so no agreement was reached.

The two monarchs don't seem to have been on the best of terms.

When John left, he was obliged to leave behind his son Manuel as a hostage.

In a further humiliation, the Emperor made his way to Vidin on the Danube, which was held by the Bulgarians.

The officials there asked the Tsar if they should let the Vasilevs pass, and he said no.

The Bulgarians were constantly at war with Hungary, and so naturally the Tsar suspected that a Roman-Hungarian alliance would not benefit him.

John was therefore stranded at Vidin, unable to return home for the next six months.

By this time, interest in a crusade against the infidel had been stirred up in the west.

Unfortunately for Byzantium, most of the enthusiasm had gone into another attack on Egypt, which achieved little more than sacking Alexandria.

But one man who'd taken the threat of the Turks seriously was Amadeo VI, the Count of Savoy.

As you may have guessed, he was related to the Emperor's mother through his father.

Strangely, he was also a cousin of John's, since his mother was the daughter of Theodore Palaeologos, the son of old Andronicus II from his second marriage, who ended up becoming the Marquess of Monferrat.

That one will be easier to get your head around if you're binging the podcast.

Anyway, fired up by familial responsibility and a genuine desire to go on crusade, Amadeo ended up coming to the Emperor's rescue.

By May 1366 he had assembled 15 ships and about 1500 soldiers to go to Constantinople to fight the Turks.

The Pope gave Amadeo his blessing on the understanding that he pushed the issue of church union.

He sailed for the Aegean, where the local Romans informed him about the situation at Gallipoli.

Amadeo sailed in, caught the Turks napping, and seized the city, a significant triumph and a boon for those at court who favoured a pro-Latin policy.

Amadeo was still viewed with suspicion by some when he approached Constantinople in September, but he was allowed in and informed of the plight of the Emperor, who was still trapped at Vidin.

Questions are asked at this point as to why Andronicus, who was married to the daughter of the Tsar, remember, hadn't done more to secure his father's release.

He now empowered Amadeo to act on his behalf.

The Count of Savoy set out in October and captured the port towns of Mesambria and Sozopolis,

taking them from the Bulgarians and laying siege to Varna further north.

This put enough pressure on the Tsar that he agreed to allow the emperor to move through his lands.

In December, Palaeologos crossed the frontier and joined Amadeo at Sosopolis, where he spent the rest of the winter.

John finally returned to his capital in spring, where he had to formally thank Amadeo for his courageous aid.

This meant arranging discussions on church union and agreeing in principle to go to the West and make the promised personal submission of faith to the pontiff.

As spokesperson for the Orthodox, the Vasilevs chose his father-in-law, as in John Cantacuzinos.

The former emperor, now in his early seventies, remained an articulate spokesperson, and he made the case to the Pope's emissary that an ecumenical council was required to settle all disputes within the church.

The papal envoy agreed with this proposal, but unfortunately he had no authority to do so.

This caused confusion and embarrassment for the emperor as he prepared to travel west, because the patriarch told his bishops to prepare for a general council of the church, and yet when the papacy heard about this, they sent word that no council would take place.

As Antony Caldellis summarizes, quote, there would be no ecumenical council, for Rome already had all the answers, and would be happy to provide instruction for anyone who was still confused.

The Byzantine Synod refused to countenance this, and made it clear that they did not consider any submission made by Palaeologos to be binding on them.

To underline their resistance to papal supremacy, the synod announced that Gregory Palamas was to be declared a saint.

Palamas, you'll recall, had been the chief proponent of hesychasm, the idea that God's energy could be seen by those who engaged in a certain kind of meditative prayer, an idea which the Latin Church had already rejected.

Palamas had only died eight years earlier, and the firm promotion of his teaching and legacy was a direct challenge to any idea that church union would be possible.

In passing, we should note that this was the first time that high-ranking members of the Byzantine Church began to convert to Catholicism.

Some motivated by the collapse of the Empire, but most because the establishment at Constantinople had become dominated by palamists.

For those who do not believe in hesychasm, but wanted to be part of a thriving intellectual community, there was little choice but to go Catholic.

Again, quoting Antony Caldellus.

It was in this gloomy atmosphere that John travelled to Rome in thirteen sixty-nine.

He left Andronicus in charge of the capital, and installed his son Manuel as governor of Thessaloniki.

Notably, he took no clergy with him.

His party sailed to Naples and then made their way overland to Rome, arriving in September.

Pope Urban V had agreed to come to the eternal city to receive his submission.

On october the eighteenth, the Vasilev signed his Declaration of Faith, the same one that Michael VIII had agreed to a century earlier.

Three days later the formal ceremony took place.

The Pope sat on the throne of St.

Peter while the Emperor of the Greeks kissed his hands and feet.

The pontiff then rose, and they celebrated Mass together.

John stayed in Rome for a few months.

The Pope instructed the ambassadors of other Aegean powers to treat him kindly, for he was now a Catholic monarch.

But John quickly understood that he would receive no real aid for his trouble.

Crusading enthusiasm was not what it had been.

The Hungarians weren't interested at the moment.

The king of Cyprus had just been assassinated.

And the Venetians and Genoese continued to insist on bilateral discussions.

Even papal scepticism was revealed when the emperor was required to sign another document confirming that the Roman faith he had signed up to was that of the Roman Church, not the faith of his quote-unquote fellow Romans.

In spring 1370, John sailed to Venice, another first for a Roman Emperor, but he was there to borrow money.

He already owed them interest for the crown jewels which his mother had pawned, in addition to the loans made to him to reach the throne, and since he had no money, the Venetians suggested that he sell them the island of Tenedos.

Tenedos was where John had been exiled to by Cantacusinos.

It sits just off the coast of Anatolia near the Hellespont.

If he sold them the island, they would write off his debts, give him the crown jewels back, and an additional twenty five thousand ducats a tiny sum compared to what the island was worth, but they presented it as a generous offer.

The Emperor wanted more, but the Venetians delayed the negotiations for the rest of the year, knowing full well that John was running out of money simply to cover the expenses of his stay.

Again we wonder why Andronicus at Constantinople was was not able to do more.

In the end, Manuil came from Thessaloniki with ships and money to rescue his father.

No deal was reached over Tenedos, but the Venetians did loan him more money.

The Vasilevs returned to his capital in October 1371, and to lean once again on Professor Caldellus,

he subsequently made no effort to remind his subjects that he had converted to Catholicism, and they, in turn, pretended that he had not.

It took us four episodes to cover the 26 years between Andronicus III taking full control of the Empire to his son doing the same.

Now we've just covered the next 17 years in 20 minutes.

Why?

It's partly due to our sources.

Gregoras and Cantacusinos both end their texts in the 1350s, and the next two major works of history weren't written until after 1453.

So we do know much less about this period.

There is, of course, much less to say in a diminished empire of cities and outposts.

And of course, we know much less because the Turks conquered what was left of Roman territory in rapid fashion.

Very rapid fashion.

We therefore lose access to other kinds of sources.

Seals and coins disappear.

archaeology becomes confused between two different civilizations, and links between Constantinople and its remaining outposts becomes weaker.

So while we know lots of details about John Palaeologos and the various inconveniences he suffered, we know almost nothing about the suffering, shock, and horror experienced by the people of Thrace.

During those seventeen years no Roman army opposed the advance of the Turks from Gallipoli.

Byzantine garrisons hid behind their walls and hoped for the best.

The Ottomans invited their brethren from Anatolia to join them.

Thrace was wide open, a defenseless country waiting to be exploited.

Nomads and settled soldiers alike from various different Beyliks signed up to join the great Raziers which now ranged across the Balkans.

Their first goal was to gather slaves.

A thriving slave trade in Romans had existed for decades now.

Once Turkish fleets were established in the Aegean, Romans became the number one target for export.

They were grabbed from the islands or the coasts, and now Thrace became a gigantic hunting ground.

Poor Romans were sold to the Venetians and Genoese, who were more than happy to help the Turks turn a profit.

Venetian Crete became a major clearing-house, with Romans dispatched to Egypt or to Western Europe.

So many slaves were available during this period that the average price fell as low as fifteen hyperpira, the same price as a mule.

The Romans did complain to the Pope that the role of the Italians and other Latins in this trade was an impediment to church union, and are just offensive in general, but money talks, and the Black Death had created an insatiable demand for more manpower.

With no resistance in Thrace, the Turks began to conquer its major cities.

Didymotichon, the emperor's birthplace, fell in 1361.

Philippopolis, held by the Bulgarians but populated by Romans, surrendered two years later.

And then in 1369, Adrianople, the largest city in Thrace, was captured.

Turkish warbands were now raiding all the way to the Theodosian walls.

People huddled inside and looked out on their homes and farms being ransacked.

Many communities agreed to pay protection money long before the Turks stormed their local stronghold.

Others fled, mostly to coastal towns which could be resupplied by sea.

The Empire was essentially just a collection of port cities now.

Again, the Romans tried to interest the Bulgarians and Serbians to fight for them, and with the fall of Adrianople the message finally got through.

The Turks were now probing the Rhodope mountains looking for fresh victims.

This brought them into contact with the Serb lords of formerly Byzantine Macedonia.

The nearest was Jovan Uglesha, who controlled the territory to the north of Thessaloniki.

The Turks had already penetrated his lands, grazing their animals, demanding protection money from the locals, and probing his defences.

Understandably concerned, Jovan sent word to his fellow nobles that we must all work together, or we will go the way of the Byzantines.

But he soon discovered what Palaeologos already knew, that Balkan unity was impossible.

The Bulgarian Tsar had just died, so no help would come from that direction.

The Romans could offer no practical support, and his fellow Serbs looked out for their own interests,

believing that the mountains and forests would keep the Turks out, not realizing that a new empire was being birthed in their midst.

Jovan could not wait the Turks out.

He had to act now and correctly understood that they must be confronted head-on, that if he waited behind his walls he would simply be starved into submission.

When he made his move in 1371 he only had one ally who would march with him, his brother Vukashin,

who was technically the new Serbian king and controlled a large amount of territory around the capital Skopje.

But given the size that Dushan's kingdom had been, it was a disappointing turnout.

They must have had a decent sized army, a few thousand strong, but it was not enough.

They advanced unopposed into Thrace, with the Turks scattering before them, but the nomads quickly alerted their masters, who amassed their forces on the Maritsa river.

The two sides met about twenty miles west of Adrianople on the twenty sixth of September.

The Serbs fought bravely but were overwhelmed.

The two brothers brothers were killed in the fighting, and their army was annihilated.

Though no Romans were involved, this battle essentially settled the fate of the Empire.

Ultimately, it would lead to the conquest of both Bulgaria and Serbia as well.

A few weeks after the battle, John Palaeologos returned from Rome.

The news of what had happened on the Maritsa would not have surprised him.

He had sat impotently impotently behind the walls of his capital for seventeen years now, watching the Turks' advance.

Five years later, his son would take the ultimate downward step of attending on a foreign ruler, becoming a vassal of the Ottoman Sultan.

To paraphrase one historian, the Byzantine Empire was now just another Beylik.

If 1204 marked the end of something important within the story of the Roman Empire, then 1371 does too.

There was very little that was imperial about the Romans now.

But Robin, I hear you cry, what's going on?

How exactly did the Ottomans go from nobodies in the 1290s to practically masters of the Balkans just 80 years later?

Well,

next time, that's what we will aim to discover.

It's time to chart the rise of the Ottomans.

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