Episode 321 - The Worst Civil War, Part 1

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Hallo, everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 321

THE WORST CIVIL WAR

Andronicus the Third Palaeologus died on the fifteenth of june, thirteen forty one.

There seems to be some doubt about exactly how many children he had, but he definitely had had two legitimate sons, the eldest of whom, John, was nine years old, and had not yet been crowned emperor.

It was that all too familiar story for the Romans, a child emperor in need of a regent, several viable candidates hovering around the throne, and it all ends in civil war.

So who were the candidates this time?

Well, the obvious man to be regent was the emperor's best friend, the head of the army and virtual prime minister, John Cantacusinos, a man in his late 40s, competent and extremely wealthy.

But there's also the Empress, Anna of Savoy.

You may recall that Andronicus II had married his grandson to a Latin bride to help forge connections with the West.

The 35-year-old Anna was understandably anxious to protect her son's rights and suspicious of the powerful Cantacusinos.

Then we have the patriarch John Calicas, the only man who'd actually been appointed regent during Andronicus' reign.

This had happened seven years earlier, when the emperor and Cantacusinos had marched off to war with Serbia.

Understandably, Andronicus had made the patriarch swear to look after his son in the event that he did not return.

Finally, there was Alexius Apokorcos, a man from outside the aristocracy who may have grown wealthy as a tax collector.

He'd become chief imperial secretary, and was then put in charge of both the treasury and the fleet the latter, possibly, because he could help pay for it, from his own pocket.

The emperor died in mid summer, which meant the empire's enemies could begin probing the borders as soon as they heard the news.

Cantacousinos moved into the palace and took charge of affairs.

He placed the emperor's sons under guard, then wrote to all the provincial governors to assure them that everything was in hand.

Soon they began writing back, telling him that the Serbians, Bulgarians, and Albanians were all on the move.

Oh, and what's that off the coast of Thrace?

Turkish pirates?

Great.

Cantakuzinos left the capital and headed to Didimotichon in Thrace, where his army gathered.

While he was there, John reorganized the local Pronoia arrangements, presumably taking grants away from men he didn't trust and reassigning them to his own supporters.

This was not simply a cynical manoeuvre.

John had been head of the army for the past 15 years.

This reorganization was intended to make the army stronger, but it's a detail that we need to be aware of.

After persuading the Turks and Bulgarians to back off, news reached him that a conspiracy was forming back at the capital.

It was alleged that Apokorcos had tried to kidnap the young prince John Palaeologos.

Cantacusinos returned to the capital and had Apocorcos cornered when the Empress intervened.

She asked John to forget the affair and to restore Alexios to his former position.

John relented, but the atmosphere at the capital was tense.

Clearly the Empress did not trust Cantacusinos and was using Apocorcos as a counterweight.

Quite what the kidnap story was all about, we can't be sure.

At this stage, no one had yet been appointed officially as regent.

So Cantakuzinos made a proposal.

Young John Palaeolokos should be crowned emperor and be married to one of his daughters.

He hoped that this would sew up the regency.

He was not threatening to become emperor himself, but by becoming the father-in-law to the young Vasilevs, he would then naturally assume the role of regent, and they could all be one big, happy family.

What do you think?

No answer came before Cantakuzinos had to leave the capital again.

More foreign troubles were brewing.

By the time he reached Didimotichon in October, he had been declared a public enemy.

Anna, Calicas, and Apokorcos had formed a new triumvirate.

The patriarch declared himself the official regent, while Apokorcos took over the government.

All of Cantacuzinos' friends and family at the capital were arrested, and crowds looted their homes.

New letters were dispatched to all provincial governors telling them to shut their gates to the rebel general.

In response, Cantacuzinos was hailed as emperor by his army at Didymotichon.

Four months after Andronicus' death, his nearest and dearest were about to draw swords and try to kill one another.

Now, so far, this is all fairly predictable, right?

We know how this one plays out.

Cantakuzinos marches on the capital.

He doesn't have the strength to break into the city, but he has about two weeks to make something happen.

He will try to bribe or blackmail his way in, and he will hope that the people will riot in his favour.

If they do, then he will kill Apokorkos, depose the patriarch, pack Anna off to a convent, and assume control of the empire.

If they don't, then it won't take long for his army to lose faith in him, someone's head will turn, John will be blinded and handed over to Apokorcos.

That's how Byzantine civil wars go short, sharp, decisive.

At least that's how they used to go.

With the Empire a much smaller, poorer place, things take a different turn, a far worse turn.

Cantacuzinos would later admit that this civil war

destroyed almost everything, reducing the once mighty monarchy of the Romans into a pale shadow of its former self.

Before we get into this sorry tale, it's worth just asking who was to blame.

It's a tricky one because our main source for what happened is that most neutral of observers, John Cantacuzinos.

Spoiler warning for what's coming, but Cantacuzinos used his retirement to pen his memoirs, in which he takes us through every decision he made at this time, and how ultimately he was blameless, and it was that utter scumbag Alexius Apocorcos who was responsible.

Our other historian, Nikephoros Gorigoras, doesn't always agree with John, but he is from the same upper class background and agrees that Apocorcos was beyond the pale.

Apocorcos was not an aristocrat, and so his high position was resented by many nobles.

Cantacusinos was certainly no monster.

He really was Andronicus' closest friend, and I've no doubt he would have protected his son.

But at the same time, John would certainly have taken power away from the other three regents, and with sons of his own, there's no guarantee he would have allowed John Palaeologos to assume real power.

Cantacusinos' powerful position within the state made it highly unlikely that he would have accepted someone else being regent.

So for the Empress and Apocorcos, it really was now or never.

If they saw John as a threat, then they had to move against him, which they did.

It might have been better for everyone if Cantacusinos had been more ruthless, if he just seized power when his friend died.

He probably didn't do that for fear of provoking resentment resentment and civil war.

Ironically, his softly, softly approach led to just that.

The next question is why was this civil war so ruinous?

You would think that with a smaller empire these conflicts would do less damage, but actually the reverse was true.

In the past, the great families of Byzantium had thrown their weight behind a usurper, confident that defeat would not ruin them.

Despite the high high-stakes nature of imperial politics, the Roman elite were pretty tolerant of one another.

A usurper would march on the capital and fail.

He would lose his eyes or be killed, maybe his lieutenants might too, but that was generally it.

His army wasn't punished, his wider family were not targeted for retribution.

They wouldn't be given political office or a command in the army for a while, but

they'd only lost out politically, not personally.

They would not usually lose their property, nor be ostracized from the aristocracy.

In other words, rich rebels remained rich.

The game of civil war was played to gain access to the corridors of power, but failure did not mean poverty or banishment.

Now,

in an impoverished empire, the stakes were actually much higher.

When Cantacusinos met with his army in Thrace, his first order of business was to rearrange the pro-Noia holdings.

In other words, with the emperor gone, he could stop supporting certain families that he didn't care for or were no longer politically useful and reward those who were.

Pro-Noia land and the tax exemptions that went with it were the golden gift which Constantinople could still bestow.

Cantacuzinos held in his hands the ability to ruin great families.

When the regency turned on him, John's enemies rushed to seize his estates across the empire.

According to John, he lost over a hundred thousand animals, along with the many acres of land which they sat on.

These perverse incentives meant that this civil war was not short, sharp, and decisive.

Instead, it dragged on for years, neither side willing to compromise.

And with the Roman army reduced in size, it wasn't able to intimidate anymore.

The 2,000 men John led couldn't force towns to capitulate.

This encouraged defenders to actually stay and fight, where in the past they would have given in quickly.

To force the issue, both sides turned to foreign powers who had the manpower they needed.

But these actors saw Roman weakness and tried to seize pieces of the empire for themselves.

Given the regency had the capital locked down, that his army was relatively small, and that winter was coming, Cantakusinos did not march on Constantinople.

Instead, he headed for Adrianople, the largest town in Thrace, to secure its resources for his cause.

According to John, the nobility of Adrianople declared for him, but the urban rabble did not, rioting in favour of the new regency.

This class conflict would play out in towns across the empire, the ignorant masses swallowing the propaganda coming from the capital and overwhelming their sensible bettors.

This portrait is, of course, an oversimplified creation of Cantacusinos' pen.

There is truth in what he says, as one of the richest people in the empire, he was no friend of the common man.

The towns of Thrace were full of people, with resentments against him and his class.

Many were refugees from Anatolia or from Catalan raids.

But the aristocracy were not united in support of Cantacusinos.

Those in his client network and extended family obviously were, but many others were against him.

John could argue with some justification that he was in the right, that Andronicus' son was only on the throne because of his support, that he'd been running the government and the army for the past two decades, and that he'd had Anna and John's names acclaimed before his own when he declared himself emperor.

He was asserting his right to run the government on behalf of the dynasty, not to supplant it.

But ultimately none of that mattered.

When he stood before the gates of Adrianople he was a rebel general, and it was his word against that of Constantinople, where the legitimate Palaeologan Emperor sat.

As Antony Caldellus says, the populace was within its right to reject his bid for the throne.

After some violence on the streets, that's what the people of Adrianople did.

Cantacuzinos turned around and headed back to Didimotichon, where he spent the winter.

Several other Thracian towns followed Adrianople's example.

Bursts of violence saw Cantacusinist supporters ejected and loyalist governments installed.

Constantinople warmly supported these moves, making Cantacusinism a sort of political slogan to tar their enemies with.

The patriarch had John formally excommunicated, while in November young John Palaiolokos was crowned emperor.

So far, Cantacusinos survived because the army was in his pocket, but he wouldn't be able to pay them if he held no lands.

When spring 1342 dawned, John had to act quickly.

Leaving some troops behind, he made for Thessaloniki.

The Empire's second city was being held by Theodore Synodinos, one of John's oldest friends.

Theodore had written to John indicating that he would hand the city over to him if he appeared in person.

In other words, Cynodinos was not confident that he would survive if he declared this openly.

So he needed Cantacusinos to be outside the walls with his army when he did.

But as Theodore had feared, when news reached the city that Cantacusinos was on his way, a faction within the city overthrew the governor and shut the gates.

John's supporters were either killed or kicked out, and their houses looted.

Quick digression on Thessalonica.

The faction who took charge called themselves the Zealots.

Their leader was one Michael Palaeologos.

We don't know how distantly he was related to the imperial regime, but that name makes clear where his loyalties lay.

He doesn't appear to have been acting alone, though.

He represented a group of leading men who had connections to the sailors and dock workers of the city.

Much of Thessalonica's wealth came through its port, and so the men who ran it would always have a voice in city politics.

Alexius Apokorkos sent ships of his own to the city to support this movement, and his representative was his son John, who now became the nominal governor.

In practice, though, he shared power with Michael Palaeolokos, unable to rule without the support of the zealot faction.

Because they came to power on the back of urban rioting, and because Cantacusinos claims that they were a low-born cartel, some twentieth century scholars excitedly claimed that the zealots were social revolutionaries.

A close reading of the sources does not support this claim.

The government continued to function as we would expect, with a ruling council, law courts, and public assemblies when needed.

The city's bishop continued to take on diplomatic work sent by the regency.

It's just that power was now dominated by a sort of political party in the shape of the zealots.

It is unusual in Byzantine history for a group of leading men to put their differences aside to protect their common interests, but these were unusual times.

Thessalonica was a large, wealthy city within an impoverished empire surrounded by hostile powers.

Firm government was needed, and since the emperor wasn't providing it, a space opened up for something new.

We did see something similar in Constantinople during the chaos leading up to the Fourth Crusade.

With the Angaloi failing to deliver strong government, various mob bosses and tycoons were able to dominate the streets of New Rome.

As for the name the Zealots, it could be as simple as their zealous support for the Regency, though there is a hint in the sources that this name was used for those who resisted church union a generation before, and perhaps the name was being revived for this new cause.

Back to Cantokusinos.

He was in a terrible position.

He held only one city, and it seemed like everyone who mattered was siding with Constantinople.

Some of the troops he'd left behind in Thrace even defected to the regency.

The writing was surely on the wall.

At any other period of history John would have been done for.

Constantinople would have recruited an army to take him down, and his own men would have abandoned him.

But, as we discussed, the corps of the army stuck with him, their financial future seemingly linked to his fate.

It would have been better for everyone if Cantacusinos had fallen on his sword at this point, but beyond the obvious desire not to do that, John had to consider the fate of his entire kinship network if he did so.

His own mother had, by this point, died in the prison which Apocaus had thrown her in.

Would everyone he cherished be ruined by his failure?

That's the best I can do as an emotional defence of John's position.

Up to this point, I think he is a somewhat sympathetic figure.

He had been running the government for a long time, and I imagine that the late Andronicus would have been happy for him to continue in that role.

But from this point on, John's actions become increasingly reprehensible.

Treasonous was the term Antony Caldellus used when ranking Cantacusinos as the worst emperor in Byzantine history.

Standing outside the gates of Thessalonica, John could see only one route to a safe haven where he could find aid.

He ordered his men to march for Serbia.

The Serbs had come a long way since the days of Manuel Komninos.

Back then, Roman armies swatted the Serbs aside every time they stepped out of line.

But the fall of Manuil's family had been the starting gun on Serb expansion.

Their monarchs had slowly subdued their fellow Serbs and other Slavs in the region.

They took the town of Skopje from the flailing Romans and made it their capital, and they ended up borrowing a lot from Byzantium to establish their credentials as a respectable state.

Constantinople's ceremonies and court costumes, its literature and its liturgy liturgy were all imitated and adapted.

The Serbs remained firmly orthodox while making sure that old Rome was suitably mollified.

Recognition for the status of the Krull, the Serbian king, was sought from the pontiff rather than the increasingly marginalised Byzantines.

The Serbs also developed their own Pronoia system to help their monarchs maintain a loyal army, though in practice their society was organized in a similar manner to that of the Bulgarians, with leading noblemen owing allegiance to the king, but ultimately wielding significant power themselves.

Stefan Dushan, the current king, had come to power after a bloody civil war, and was under pressure from his nobility to expand the state to fulfil their ambitions.

It had been a century of expansion for the Serbs.

They had pushed north to the Danube, east into Bulgaria, and west to the Adriatic.

They now dominated the western Balkans, and the obvious direction to continue their growth was south into Byzantium.

As we've seen in the narrative, the Serb kings have offered assistance to the Palaeologi or to Byzantine rebels in exchange for concessions along the border.

In our last episode they lifted Orid, Prelep, and Strumica from Roman hands.

This left the Serbs looming over the rest of Byzantine Macedonia.

Their border fortresses were now barely a week's march from Thessaloniki itself.

Stefan Dushan had met Cantacusinos a few years earlier, and the two were on friendly terms.

After a warm welcome, the Kral made his position transparent.

He was happy to furnish John with an army to win the throne, but while Cantacuzinos marched east, Dushan was going to march south.

He wanted all of Byzantine Macedonia in exchange for his help, Thessaloniki excluded.

I'm tempted to say that John must have been wringing his hands, contemplating deeply the sacrifice he was being asked to make,

but he would surely have known that this would be the price when he took his first step towards Skopje.

Again, the best I can say for Cantacuzinos is that he was a man of his age.

We've seen the fortresses of Macedonia change hands repeatedly since 1204,

and so John's calculation must have been that one day the Romans would be in a strong enough position to retake them.

For all their incredible progress, the Serbs were still a traditional Balkan power, liable to collapse into civil war and chaos at least once a generation.

Even so, it was a huge risk.

He was agreeing to cede an entire province just for the chance to regain the the throne.

In his memoirs, Cantacusinos says he refused these terms, wouldn't even consider them.

And yet, Duchan is about to sponsor his efforts to march east with incredible patience, suggesting that actually John agreed to all the terms.

And really, what other choice did he have, if he was going to continue the war?

For those still sympathetic to John, I should point out that he also wrote letters to his great friend Omor of Ayden.

The master of Smyrna was asked to bring an army from Anatolia to aid John's cause.

Cantakusinos was well aware that both his allies would murder and enslave his fellow countrymen as part of their operations.

I think the final nail in the coffin of John's reputation is that he will eventually be defeated and forced from power, and when that happens, he will be given a kind monastic retirement, which suggests that had he asked for one now, he could have received it.

He could have abandoned his political career and moved to Mount Athos, a dignified retirement to spare his people further bloodshed.

But he didn't.

Towards the end of summer 1342, John set out with his Serbian allies and made for Ceres, a great fortress town about fifty miles northeast of Thessaloniki.

The campaign was a disaster.

The city refused to open its gates to him, and his troops fell ill.

Hundreds died, and he was forced to flee back to Serbia with only about five hundred Romans.

John set out again some time afterwards, but this time his Serbian allies deserted, and he had to retreat ignominiously.

Cantakuzinos was trying to reach Didimotichon, where his wife Irene had been left in charge.

The Regency government had sent an army to blockade the town, and things were getting desperate.

With few options open to her, Irene had decided to make contact with the Bulgarian Tsar, Ivan Alexander, trying to interest him in the rebels' cause.

But sensing a golden opportunity, the Bulgarians invaded and besieged Didymotichon themselves.

One of the keys to Serbian expansion during this period was their friendly relations with the Bulgarians,

forged partially by a crushing victory which the Serbs had won over the Bulgarians in 1330.

Ivan Alexander now wrote to Stefan Dushan suggesting that he kill Cantakuzinos and the two Slavic powers divide the Roman Empire between them.

The Regency government in Constantinople also wrote to the Kral, offering him money to throw John down the nearest well.

But of course Dushan had no interest in changing course.

Things were going splendidly as far as he was concerned.

While John was failing to make any progress east, the Serbians were surging south.

Dushan led his main army into Roman Macedonia and captured Edessa and Castoria.

He then took various Albanian strongholds to the west, including more port towns on the Adriatic.

This caused panic down in Greece, as there was nothing to stop the Serbs moving into Epirus and Thessaly.

From this lowest of low points, things actually began began to turn in Cantakusinos' favour.

The cities of Greece began writing to the rebel, begging for his protection from the Serbs, while Dushan confirmed that despite three failures, he would furnish John with yet another army in the spring.

Finally, with winter approaching, word came from Omur of Aiden.

The master of Smyrna crossed the Aegean in autumn and landed troops in Europe.

They marched north and drove the Bulgarians away from Didymotichon before returning home as winter set in.

By surrendering Roman territory and inviting foreign predators onto its soil, Cantacuzinos had found a way to stay in the fight.

Good news for those who depended on his favor, but terrible news for everyone else.

Next time, the worst civil war, as Cantacuzinos himself described it, will come to its bitter conclusion.

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