Episode 310 - The Catalan Company

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 310,

the Catalan Company.

Last time we eased ourselves back into narrative normality as we surveyed the wreckage from Andronicus Palaeologus' first 20 years in power.

It was grim listening as the Vasilevs scuttled his fleet only to see the Venetians twice sail up the Golden Horn and Turkish tribes advanced across Anatolia.

With his tax receipts dwindling, the Emperor did the only sensible thing.

He promised to pay a foreign army far more than he could afford to fight for him.

Yes, Andronicus accepted the offer from Roger de Flore to take back Western Anatolia for the Empire.

You can understand why he did it.

The Romans were desperate not to abandon their heartlands, and having failed to tackle the Turks themselves, why not let the Latins have a go at it?

One answer to that question was obvious to everyone, including the Emperor, I'm sure.

But if the Turks could be pushed, well, out of Bithynia at least, it might be possible to re-establish some form of imperial rule.

And who knows, maybe the nomads could then be co-opted and turned against one another, and maybe, just maybe, the tide could eventually be turned.

I guess we can't blame Andronicus for dreaming.

Roger de Flore's new Catalan Grand Company began to muster in Constantinople in the autumn of 1303.

They brought some boats of their own, but had to buy extra passage on Genoese ships to get all of their number to the Bosphorus.

In a sign of things to come, the Spaniards began to quarrel with the Italians over the price of their transport.

The conflict ended with several Genoese officials and one Roman killed in the street.

Roger was given the rank of Megastux, Grand Duke, and married to the Emperor's niece, but this attempt to include him in the court system failed to buy the Vasilevs much loyalty.

The company was paid a huge sum in advance and was shipped over to Kisikos on the Asian side of the Sea of Marmara in the winter of 1303,

where they were promptly accused of abusing and raping local women.

Spending the winter with them were units of Alan soldiers, and when they learnt that the Catalans were being paid far more than they were, a brawl erupted, which turned into street fighting.

Around 300 Alans were killed, including the son of their commander, George.

Several hundred other Alans then deserted, as they had done the previous year.

The upshot was that when Roger left Kisikos in spring 1304, he only had a token force of Romans and Alans with him.

Roman officers were meant to be on hand to guide operations, but it became clear that the Spaniards only took orders from Roger.

The Catalans smashed the first group of Turks they came across and the next and the next.

Our historian Pachymerius calls them men who died hard in battle and were ready to gamble with their lives.

But these victories came at a price.

Already the pay the Catalans demanded was in arrears, and so Roger allowed his men to take what they wanted from the native population.

The Spaniards headed south and by April had reached the city of Philadelphia, the only Roman town still being defended in the Meander Valley.

The Turks who were besieging it were driven off, and Roger and his men entered the city to jubilant cheers.

But at this point it was clear that the Catalans were operating without oversight.

Andronicus was not sending more money, and so Roger decided to interpret his command as he wished.

This meant brutalizing the local population, even torturing monks to reveal where their gold was hidden.

Roger was going to get his money any way he knew how.

He led his men to Magnesia and then down the coast to Ephesus, which he captured.

He linked up with his small fleet there and occupied the nearby islands of Chios, Lesbos, and Lemnos.

The Spanish toured around, extracting wealth from the populace to pay their own salaries.

Now you could say that Roger was merely taking what was his.

If the Romans wouldn't pay what they owed, then he had every right to get the money another way.

Perhaps.

But he wasn't taking over the local tax system and trying to administer it fairly.

He was terrorizing people into paying protection money.

And he wasn't offering them any protection.

Most of the towns he captured were simply abandoned to the Turks as the Latins moved on to the next target.

His men were openly talking of taking over the area and ruling it for themselves.

Roger was using Magnesia as his treasury, as the Lascarids had, but the local population, appalled by the actions of these outsiders, locked the gates when they left.

Furious at this, Roger returned, set up siege works, and prepared to sack the town.

With winter approaching, Andronicus ordered him to sail back to Europe to fight against the Bulgarians.

Running out of time, Roger reluctantly agreed, left Magnesia and his treasure behind, and sailed for Gallipoli, where he spent the winter.

Both sides were pretending that the Catalans had acted lawfully.

Andronicus tried to negotiate at this point, and only pay for the services of those Catalans who he could afford, but Roger refused.

It was all of them, or none of them.

And Roger wanted both his back pay and compensation for the loot locked up at Magnesia.

This was all causing huge problems in Thrace.

Andronicus had had to increase taxes to pay for these mercenaries, including a tax on holders of Pronoia,

as in those providing troops to the Roman army were being charged extra to fund the Catalans.

Needless to say this caused massive resentment.

The Bulgarians were indeed causing trouble on the borders, and so the regular Roman army was mustered and was demanding food and money.

Michael, the emperor's son, who was in charge of this force, had to melt down some of his personal wealth in order to pay them.

With so many refugees from Anatolia to feed as well, things were becoming desperate.

And yet the situation got worse in spring 1305 when more Catalans arrived under the command of Berenjard d'Estanca.

Not only was Berenjard a violent and single-minded commander, but he had come east on the advice of King James II of Aragon, who, having heard about Roger's exploits, was interested in creating some kind of Latin Empire for himself.

Andronicus knew all this, his Genoese advisors keeping him well informed of events in the West, but to avoid a confrontation, he agreed to put Berenjar on the overstretched payroll.

The Emperor raised what he could by debasing his coinage further and sent it to Roger, who mocked it as nothing but base metal.

Berenger tried to interest the Genoese in a joint attack on the Romans, but the Italians sank his ships in response.

Despite this, Andronicus offered to make Roger into a Caesar and somehow pay him more money if he would return to Anatolia.

At this point, the Emperor seems to have just wanted to get the Catalans away from Constantinople and probably offered Roger the chance to keep and rule any territory he could, Nicaea accepted.

This was agreed in February 1305, but before leaving, the new Caesar agreed to go and spend time with the other Vasilefs, as in the Emperor Michael, still camped out near Adrianople with his army.

Michael did not approve of his father's choices and wanted the Catalans disbanded.

He also had a large number of Alans serving under him who hated the Spaniards.

Soon after he arrived, Roger was stabbed to death, apparently by George, the commander whose son had died at Catalan hands the year before.

The Alans then massacred the 300 Latins who'd escorted Roger to Adrianople.

Uh-oh.

The Spaniards reacted with fury.

They took over the town and then marched out killing or enslaving the inhabitants of the entire Gallipoli Peninsula, turning it into a mini Spanish kingdom complete with flags and banners celebrating their Sicilian and Aragonese liege lords.

Overnight a new Latin Empire had sprung up just a hundred and sixty miles from Constantinople itself.

Berenjard de Stanca took charge of the army and began to raid the countryside.

The Emperor Michael marched out to meet him and was quickly defeated in June.

He reformed his army and fought them again soon afterwards, but this time half his army abandoned him.

The Alans deserted, as they always did, while the Turks in Byzantine service defected to the Catalan banner.

Michael's remaining men were slaughtered, and the junior Emperor was lucky to escape with his life.

These Turks used the remaining Catalan ships to make contact with their brethren over in Anatolia and persuaded another 2,000 nomads to join in the fun.

Andronicus sent a Genoese captain to stop them, but he was captured by the enemy and the nomads landed safely in Europe.

The Catalan coalition were then able to capture the city of Rhydestos, the main grain hub of Thrace, and use it as their new base, while Gallipoli became their slave market, where they sold Roman peasants to passing Latin ships.

As worst-case scenarios go, this was surely beyond what any of Andronicus' advisors could have imagined.

The next two years were a living nightmare.

The Alan soldiers raided on their own account, the Catalans acted as land-based Thracian pirates, and the Bulgarians invaded the empire, retaking Masembria and Anchialos, the towns on the Black Sea coast which Michael VIII had won back for the Empire.

This further hampered the grain supply, and with travel between Thessaloniki and Constantinople all but impossible, famine was spreading throughout the provinces.

In response, anti-Latin riots broke out at the capital.

People targeted Catholic homes and businesses, including the Genoese, who were the Romans' only ally.

The emperor himself was abused and responded with speeches justifying his decisions and demanding oaths of loyalty from the people.

Andronicus began to rebuild his fleet and sent troops out to guard Thracian farmers, but he also had to beg his aristocracy to donate money to the army, a first in Roman history and an utter humiliation for the government.

The only good news was that Adrianople and Diddy Meticion held out against attempts to besiege them.

The towns of Thrace were now choked with refugees who awaited the emperor's relief effort.

With no army to oppose the Catalans, Palaeologus responded with brutal pragmatism.

As spring thirteen oh seven dawned, he sent word to his people that he wanted them to stay away from their fields, to leave the landscape barren in order to starve the Spaniards out.

This desperate measure drove many to poverty and starvation, but was ultimately effective.

The Catalans had to abandon Thrace and moved west to the Cassandra Peninsula.

They spent the next two years terrorizing the Romans there, including the monks of Mount Athos.

Andronicus and his patriarch badgered the rich and the Genoese to give food to the poor and acknowledged Bulgaria's conquests in exchange for shipments of grain.

Though this removed the immediate threat to Constantinople, a greater one was brewing in the West.

Charles of Valois, the brother of the King of France, had picked up the mantle dropped by Charles of Anjou.

He had married the granddaughter of Baldwin II, inheriting the title of Emperor of Constantinople.

With the Catalans running amok, the time seemed right to build a coalition that could repeat the work of the Fourth Crusade.

Most worryingly for Byzantium, several of its own officials, prominent men, wrote to Charles to encourage him in this endeavor, in the hopes that he would bring the soldiers needed to drive the Turks out of Western Anatolia.

The same year that Andronicus was starving his own people to thwart the Catalans, Pope Clement V approved the plan for another assault on New Rome.

He excommunicated Andronicus, and the Venetians gladly signed up to ferry any new crusade that formed, breaking their treaty with the Romans.

Had this plan come together, the Empire would have been extinguished.

With no fleet, the Romans were practically defenseless, and with Anatolia gone, there was nowhere for the Byzantine elite to retreat to.

Fortunately for Andronicus, the plan never materialized.

Charles got stuck in the quagmire of Italian politics and lost interest.

Meanwhile, the Roman army occupied the mountain passes to prevent the Catalans from returning to Thrace.

So after spending two years in Macedonia, the Catalans moved on to Thessaloniki.

They tried to besiege the city over the winter of 1308-09, but the local population were resolute.

Finally, in spring 1309, the Spaniards gave up and migrated south into Thessaly, terrorizing the Romans there.

They soon passed on to take up service with the Latin Duke of Athens.

Inevitably, they ended up betraying him and taking over his duchy.

They would rule Athens for the next 77 years and continue to prey on neighboring states.

Back in Byzantium, feeling began to return to a numb polity.

Anatolia was doomed by this utter catastrophe.

The resources left to the Empire were meagre.

The only advantage to Andronicus was that it allowed him to force pay cuts onto his clergy and officials.

The treasury finally began to replenish, with the worst of the ravages over.

The Empire's travails were not quite over, though.

The Turks, who'd switched sides, now broke away from the Catalans and made their way back to Thrace.

When they defeated the Emperor Michael in battle, the Romans had to ask the Serbs for help.

Remember that Andronicus's daughter was now their queen.

Two thousand cavalrymen were sent, and with Roman support, they cornered the Turks and wiped them out.

In the Aegean, Latin forces continued to capture Roman islands.

Remember that Michael VIII had leased the town of Phocia and its alum-rich hills to a pair of Genoese brothers, the same brothers who'd helped negotiate the agreements which led to the Sicilian Vespers.

Well, the Zachariah brothers continued to hold the town despite the Turkish penetration of the countryside, and in 1305, Benedetto Zachariah led his men to the nearby island of Chios and took control of the government.

The Zachariah explained that if they hadn't done this the island would have fallen to the Turks.

Thus they were doing the Emperor a favour.

Andronicus agreed to recognise the Zachariah family as his representatives there, but realistically, this was a very polite bit of extortion.

Without a fleet, there was nothing the Emperor could do about it.

Still, I'm sure these Genoese merchants were acting in the interests of the people of Chios, and not in the interests of monopolising the mastic trade, given that mastic, an aromatic resin used in medicine and chewing gum, was grown only on Chios.

Similarly, the Knights Hospitala, the crusading order, having been ejected from the Holy Land, turned up on the island of Rhodes in 1306.

They asked Andronicus to hand over the island so that they could use it as a base to fight the Turks.

The Emperor refused.

But after four years of fighting the locals, the Latins gained control of the island.

Again, Andronicus had no response.

One of the emperor's most trusted administrators described Romania as being like an amputee.

We are vulnerable and liable to perish easily from any small blow.

With a repeat of the Fourth Crusade off the table, the Venetians agreed to a new peace treaty in 1310.

With the first appearance of Turkish-manned ships in the Aegean, it was clearly time to have some kind of stability in the region.

Meanwhile, the Genoese had rebuilt their concession at Galata, and they asked the Emperor's permission to build a circuit wall to protect themselves from the Venetians.

Palaeologos agreed.

They were the Romans' only reliable ally.

How could he refuse?

And yet he just allowed a foreign power to build a fortified town within Constantinople itself.

Thirteen ten was also the year in which the final holdouts amongst the Arsenites came in from the cold.

The service of reunion was held on the 14th of September, the one where the corpse of Arsenios was sat on the patriarchal throne.

That means all our narrative strands have come together, and Andronicus can sort of be allowed to rest for now.

Hiring the Catalans was a huge mistake.

Many people at the time warned him about the likelihood of disobedience and the impossibility of paying them what they asked.

It's more the failure of strategy that bothers me.

The Turks were everywhere, not as occupying garrisons, but as permanent residents.

They had moved into Western Anatolia.

To defeat them and restore Roman control would take more than one army.

It would require state-building on an incredible scale.

It needed a general of immense skill and competence to both defeat the Turks, but also turn them on one another, recruiting, rewarding, resettling them.

This was a job for a Belisarius, an ultra-competent, ultra-loyal Roman figure.

In other words, someone who didn't exist at this time.

Only Andronicus himself could have taken on.

this challenge.

Not that he was likely to succeed, but delegating it to anyone was a mistake at this point, and especially to a known criminal.

It was now fifty years since Constantinople had been retaken, a half century in which the Nicene had threatened to re-establish Roman authority only to see it violently collapse.

The rise of the Turkic Beyliks had utterly disrupted the Nicene project, and there seemed no prospect of a counter-attack.

Roman geography had been turned inside out.

The Anatolian state, which had occupied the European provinces, was now a European state with a few bases left in Asia.

Up to the time he hired the Catalans, I was sympathetic to Andronicus.

His father gave him a very difficult inheritance, and the Turks had made it impossible.

But by hiring the Catalans, Palaeologos managed to recreate most of the horrors of the past century.

He'd unleashed a Latin army on his own people and recreated the coalition which his father had worked so hard to untangle.

If a crusade had formed, there's a good chance that Andronicus would have been the last and worst Roman emperor of all time.

It's hard to believe that Andronicus and those officials who wrote to Charles of Valois had so quickly forgotten the damage the Latins had done to Byzantium.

Surely only men born since Constantinople had been retaken could think that the Latins would offer any help at all.

And yet we have to offer them some empathy.

Many families had been utterly ruined by the loss of Anatolia.

Various minor military uprisings, quickly put down, took place amongst the Asian soldiers now being rehoused in Thrace.

They were desperate for someone to fight on their behalf.

In spite of himself, then, Andronicus had kept what remained of the European provinces, and was able to plan ahead as the ruler of a humbled, landlocked empire.

Next time, the Romans return to what they do best: civil war.

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