Episode 320 - The Last Hurrah

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 320, The LAST HURRAH

Previously on the History of Byzantium, Constantinople was sacked by the forces of the Fourth Crusade in twelve oh four AD.

The lands of the Roman Empire were divided between the Latin conquerors and various Roman aristocrats.

The Bulgarians and Serbians also nibbled at the frontiers.

The Roman state founded at Nicaea would emerge as the strongest of the successor kingdoms, and they would annex a significant swathe of territory before retaking Constantinople in 1261.

The emperor who achieved that feat, Michael VIII Palaeologos, was faced with a dilemma.

His new capital was a great asset, but it was also a target.

The crusading movement made various attempts to regain the city, and Michael spent a great deal of money to stop them.

Palaeologos also found that imperial imperial authority was not what it had once been.

In the century since the death of Manuil Komninos many people had tasted independence from Roman tax collectors, and they had enjoyed that feeling.

Michael's son, Andronicus II, inherited a complex situation, and things only got worse from there.

The Mongol attacks on the Middle East set off a chain reaction which led to the collapse of Roman Anatolia.

Byzantium had lost its largest, richest, most loyal region.

Andronicus II was eventually forced into retirement by his grandson, Andronicus III,

who now inherited a smaller, more vulnerable Roman Empire, but, as he would show, one which was not beaten yet.

Andronicus III Palaeologus was born in 1297, around the time that things in Anatolia were turning really sour.

He was the eldest son of Michael the Ninth, a rare figure in Byzantine history, an emperor who was crowned, and has a number next to his name, but never reigned.

Michael was not an inspiring figure.

He led the European army with little success, and essentially retired from public life shortly before his death in thirteen twenty.

By then the twenty three year old Andronicus was causing everyone a bit of concern.

A gambler and womanizer, Andronicus liked to party hard, culminating in the nasty incident where his bodyguards killed his brother, mistaking him for a love rival.

This tragic scene saw the elderly emperor Andronicus II

raise serious questions about his grandson's suitability for the throne,

discussions which prompted the younger Andronicus to take up arms against the Vasilevs.

A power-sharing arrangement was agreed to avoid bloodshed, but this collapsed five years later.

On the 23rd of May, 1328, Andronicus III broke into Constantinople, stormed the palace, and relieved his grandfather of the burdens of office.

Now aged 31, Andronicus brought much-needed youth and vigour to the throne.

He had grown up watching the Romans do little as the Turks and Catalans ran amok, and he was determined to change that.

He was a popular commander who liked being in the field, sharing hardships with his men, and he adopted a very informal manner, as Latin lords tended to, and delighted in hunting and jousting.

He quickly delegated the dull tasks of administration to his subordinates.

His right-hand man and best friend, John Cantacusinos, was made megas domesticos, head of the armed forces, but he also acted as a sort of prime minister, devising strategy and giving orders to others.

Theodorus Cynadinos was put in charge of the capital, while Alexius Apocorcos was given the treasury.

These men had all supported Andronicus' rebellion, and now reaped the rewards, including the opportunity to grant Pronoia lands to their supporters.

The emperor seems to have left most of the day-to-day decisions to Cantacusinos, but he was keen to lighten the tax burden and improve justice where he could.

The Bulgarians attempted to take advantage of the change in regime and were quickly shut down.

The Emperor led his forces to the border and drove them away, then captured one of their forts and offered peace terms, which were eventually accepted.

This allowed Andronicus to lead a campaign that he had wanted to undertake for some time, to travel to Anatolia and fight the Ottomans.

The Bithynian town of Prussa had fallen to them in 1326, giving them a defendable base from which to reduce the remaining Roman outposts.

Palaeologos wanted to confront them back then, but his grandfather refused.

Now he could make his move.

He crossed to Asia in May 1329 with 2,000 men and sought out the Turkish army.

They were camped at Pelakanon, near the Gulf of Nicomedia.

Their commander, Orhan, apparently had a much larger force, but remained in the hills, only skirmishing with the Romans, refusing to come down and fight in the plain.

This was a problem, because the Byzantines couldn't really go anywhere.

If they marched up the hill, they'd be at a huge disadvantage, and they couldn't advance towards Nicaea with the Turks at their back.

Reluctantly, the Emperor ordered his men to return to the coast to be ferried back to Constantinople.

When he saw them leaving, Orhan sent his troops down to attack.

Andronicus was wounded in the exchange.

Rumours rapidly spread that it was a fatal blow, and the retreat turned into a panicked rout.

The Turks killed many Romans as Cantacusinos tried to restore order.

The army made it home in more or less one piece, but Andronicus could see the writing on the wall, and so could everyone else.

There was no good military solution to the Turkish advance.

Nicaea surrendered to Ohan in 1331, and Nicomedia would do the same six years later.

The Ottomans would prove to be kind conquerors at this stage, offering generous terms to the Romans of those cities and quickly winning adherents from the local population.

This encouraged the emperor to make a treaty with them.

He would pay 12,000 gold coins a year for peace, allowing the few ports on the coast the Romans still held to remain unmolested.

Paying tribute to the Turks was not a good look, but Palaeolokos and Cantacusinos had a strategy in mind.

Soon after their defeat at Pelicanon, they assembled a fleet and retook the island of Chios.

You may recall that Chios had been lifted from the Empire by the Zachariah family, the Genoese merchants who Michael VIII had leased the town of Phokia to.

Phokia, on the coast of Anatolia, was rich in alum, while Chios was famous for its mastic, apparently generating over a hundred thousand gold coins a year in revenue.

In impressive fashion, the emperor and his domestic had converted some merchant vessels into troop transports, allied themselves with the Latin Duke of Naxos, who lent them some ships, and were therefore able to land on the island and swiftly restore imperial control.

Andronicus then crossed to Asia and led his troops inland, entering Phokia to be recognized as its lord and master.

He left these Genoese in place, but having thoroughly reasserted his rights.

While he was there he invited the local Turkish emirs to come and meet him, and he signed some kind of agreement.

Turkish piracy was becoming a problem in the region, and already the Venetians and Genoese were talking of a Christian alliance against the Muslims.

But the Byzantines, well aware of what Latin alliances were capable of, wanted to keep their options open.

By retaking Chios, which sits very close to the coast of Asia, they were able to stand tall and open negotiations with the Turks.

No one was happy about the loss of Anatolia, but the Romans were always open to making new friends.

Perhaps they could turn this to their advantage, using the Turks against the Latins, and vice versa.

Six years later, the Latins made their move.

In 1335, the Genoese lord of Phocia allied himself with the Duchy of Naxos, the Hospitalas on the island of Rhodes, and the Genoese to seize the Roman island of Lesbos, just to the north of Chios.

The Latins gambled that the Romans were too supine to do anything about it, and justified this move as being for the defence of Christian sea lanes.

But Andronicus responded in impressive fashion.

He quickly readied a fleet and before sailing demolished some of the Genoese fortifications around Galata.

Remember, this is the colony at Constantinople, just over the Golden Horn.

The Genoese had put up walls, essentially creating a small independent city right next to the Roman capital.

The Vasilevs was warning them that they only lived there at his pleasure.

The Imperial fleet sailed for Lesbos and blockaded Mytilene, its capital.

They also landed troops in Asia and marched on Phocia again.

The small Roman army was reinforced by Turkish troops sent by their new allies.

Both Latin strongholds surrendered the following year.

Phocia remained in Genoese hands to avoid an escalation of the conflict, but it was an admirable demonstration of the Emperor's resolve.

While there, Andronicus signed a new agreement with the Emir of Aiden, Omor.

Again, paying tribute for peace, Omor controlled the port at Smyrna, which allowed his men to lead piratical raids across the Aegean, some on the Romans desperately wanted on side.

By all accounts, the Emir and Cantacusinos became genuinely friendly during this summit, whining and dining each other for days, according to historian Donald Nicoll.

This would prove to be a fateful meeting.

Back in Europe, another dangerous frenemy was on the move.

The Serbians had been growing in strength for some time, and they were eyeing Byzantine Macedonia.

They'd been keenly involved in Roman politics for the last few years.

You may recall that it was an attempt by one of Andronicus II's nephews to ally himself with the Serbians that prompted the final showdown between grandfather and grandson.

A similar scenario played out now, with another relative and governor of Thessaloniki turning traitor.

This was Sergianus Palaiologos, an inveterate turncoat.

Dissatisfied with the honours given him by the new regime, he began scheming.

When he was found out, he fled to the new Serbian king, Stefan Dushan, and offered to lead his troops on a major campaign into Byzantine territory.

This was a very significant attack.

Sergianis knew the Byzantine defences and troop dispositions, and with his guidance the Serbians took Ochrid, Prelep, and Strumica, along with their supporting fortresses.

The Emperor gathered an army and marched out to meet the invasion in thirteen thirty four, but one of his officers, who knew Sergianis well, offered to go ahead, win the traitor's confidence, and arrest him.

In the end he assassinated Sergianis, and Dushan agreed to meet Andronicus to talk peace.

He returned a couple of the forts he'd taken in exchange for cash, but he kept the rest.

The alliance the two men made held for now,

as did Roman agreements with the Bulgarians after another skirmish.

But the three Balkan kingdoms were now clearly equals, who were each willing to invade the other in times of vulnerability.

Once more the Romans found themselves surrounded by opponents, all of whom had less congested borders than their own.

Andronicus was undaunted, though.

He spent the next few years finally reincorporating Epirus and Thessaly into the Empire.

Not that that was necessarily the plan.

The Emperor was actually in the field trying to get a handle on raiders coming from different directions.

There were still groups of Turks loose in Thrace left over from their alliance with the Catalans, and these were soon joined by small bands of Mongols who had arrived via their political domination of Bulgaria.

Then to top it off, Albanian tribes in the West Balkans began migrating south into Roman territory.

Between these land-based pirates and the more traditional kind in the Aegean, we should note that the Roman world remained in a certain amount of chaos, left over from the Catalan storm.

Anyway, you may remember that both Epirus and Thessaly, the western and eastern halves of northern Greece, had accepted a degree of imperial control around 1320.

The northern third of each territory was being run by men sent from Constantinople, and now an opportunity presented itself to settle things for good.

In 1333, the semi-independent governor of northern Thessaly died, and the ruler of southern Epirus, Giovanni Orsini, sent troops across the Pindus Mountains to try and take advantage of the situation.

Using this as a pretext, Andronicus marched in to restore order.

In doing so, he brought an end to the independence of the various Roman aristocrats who ruled from Larissa down to Attica.

This meant the Empire now had a land border with the Catalans in Athens.

Two years later, Giovanni Orsini, the ruler of Epirus, died, apparently poisoned by his Byzantine wife.

His son was still a child, and again Andronicus pounced.

He was nearby fighting Albanians, using Turkish mercenaries, on loan from the Emir Omur.

With the Turks parked to the north as a threat, the Emperor marched down into Epirus, handing out grants and honours to the locals to soothe the transition back to imperial rule.

He appointed Sinodinos, a loyal friend, to govern Arta.

That was not the end of the story, though.

As the name Orsini may remind you, some in Epirus were in league with Italian powers off the coast.

This party abducted Orsini's son, Nicephorus, and sent him to Taranto to plot his return.

In 1339, with help from the other Latin lords of the region, they plunged Epirus into rebellion.

The next year, the Emperor and Cantacusinos besieged the rebel strongholds one by one and emerged victorious.

The sources sources revealed that the loyalties of the local Romans were divided.

While some accepted their historical allegiance to Constantinople, since the days of Caesar Augustus, as Cantacusinos put it in a speech, the other side clearly felt their loyalties were to the Komninos Dukas Angulos clan who'd founded their state 130 years earlier.

Cantacusinos managed the situation carefully, avoiding bloodshed wherever possible and using diplomacy to bring the sieges to a peaceful end.

He married his daughter to young Nicephorus to assure him of his place in the hierarchy.

He installed his cousin John Angelos as the new governor at Arta, and returned the loyal Synodinos, who'd been imprisoned by the rebels, to Thessaloniki.

The despotate of Epirus was finally over, after more than a century, as a separatist Roman polity.

Despotate, by the way, is the Latin name for it.

The Epirates never did define a name for their state, except for the brief moment when they declared their own emperor back in the 1220s.

The recovery of Western Greece was an impressive achievement, demonstrating the emperor's clemency to his fellow Byzantines, and for a brief moment the Roman world was more or less reunited.

I've put up a map at the website which shows the solid block of Roman territory running from Constantinople all the way to the Adriatic.

Unfortunately, Andronicus had to leave the region early through illness, and he would then die suddenly the following year on the 15th of June, 1341.

He was about 44 years old and had been sole emperor for 13 years.

Sadly, his reign was the last hurrah for the Romans, the last time a Vasilevs would be out in the field retaking territory for the Empire.

His time in power had shown that a proactive leader could still achieve things despite the straitened circumstances his people found themselves in.

But as ever in Byzantine history, it was civil war which would begin the process of tearing down what was left and ushering in the final chapter in the Roman story.

Normally in these circumstances we would just accept that Andronicus died from a sudden and unspecified illness in his forties not a surprise in the mediaeval world.

But we actually have two histories covering Palaeologus's reign, both written by men who knew him well, and both record quite a lot about his medical history.

They imply that his death may have been sudden, but it was not a surprise.

One of our historians is John Cantacusinos, the emperor's closest associate.

He records that back in 1321, so around the time of his first rebellion against his grandfather, Andronicus suffered from a forty day fever with a chill.

He then had a nosebleed for the next twelve days, followed by an on again, off again fever for the next year.

Our other writer is Nicephorus Gregoras,

a court intellectual who says that in 1329 the emperor nearly died from an illness.

After suffering from severe pain in the head and delirium, Andronicus adopted a monk's habit and waited for death.

For two days he lay motionless, breathing faintly, but on the third day he woke and slowly returned to normal.

Finally, in 1340, Cantacuzinos tells us that disease spread through the troops who were besieging the Epirate capital Arta.

Men were suffering from diarrhea, fever, and headaches, including the emperor.

His spleen was badly affected, as it had been during earlier bouts of sickness.

He made a slow return to Constantinople, aware that death might be approaching.

Again he fell into a coma.

Again he emerged from it after three days.

But then he fell asleep, never to wake again.

Rarely do we have such detailed information about a medieval person's health, and so two academics published a paper in 1997 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine concluding that the emperor suffered from malaria.

All the symptoms conform to serious bouts of malarial infection, probably from multiple strains of the disease.

We know malaria was a continual problem in the eastern Mediterranean throughout pre-modern history, but the clincher appears to be that it was endemic in the Evros region of Greece all the way up to the Second World War.

This is the most eastern part of Greece to-day, which was part of Thrace in the Byzantine era, specifically the region in which Didymotichon was located, the fortress town which has become more important in our narrative since 1204,

and which was Andronicus's headquarters and favourite hunting ground throughout his time in power.

Cantakusinos also complained of intermittent fevers, and though it can be dangerous to assume too much about the health of ancient people, this one seems pretty conclusive.

Andronicus left behind a nine-year-old son in the form of John Palaeologos, and as ever in Byzantium, the Regency Council, which formed to protect his interests, soon fell out.

Next time, we enter one of the most damaging civil wars in Roman history.

Thank you all for your patience during these gaps between seasons of the podcast.

This season of narrative will take us all the way through to 1453.

If you are looking to relive earlier eras of the podcast, please check out the Empire Builders YouTube channel.

They are doing a fantastic job of bringing this podcast to visual life.

And the first series they've created animates my coverage of the First Crusade.

Check them out on youtube empire hyphen builders or follow the links on my website or in the episode description

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