Episode 308 - The Fall of Anatolia

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Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 308,

The Fall of Anatolia

Andronicus II Palaeologos was born in 1259, a few months after his father had become emperor at Nicaea.

He was acclaimed as the junior Vasilevs in the Achia Sophia two years later.

Andronicus grew up in Constantinople and as a teenager was ordered to put his signature to the Union of Lyon.

He spent the next few years coming to terms with the rancor which this policy unleashed.

When his father died, he was only 23 years old and pretty inexperienced.

As we saw last week, he received a difficult inheritance.

He had to spend large parts of his reign mollifying his family's enemies, and his treasury told him immediately that he would struggle to meet his payroll unless he debased the gold currency further.

As Andronicus surveyed his realm in 1281, he was aware that he was facing a very difficult challenge,

but he couldn't actually see how existential a threat Byzantium faced.

Movements were underway in Anatolia which were beyond his comprehension.

In 1281, Western Anatolia remained the most prosperous part of the Roman Empire, but just 21 years later, the entire region was effectively lost.

Just as we had to dedicate an entire episode to the story of church union, we're going to have to step outside of our usual narrative formula in order to do justice to this momentous event.

As you know, Anatolia had been divided between the Seljuks and the Romans for a long time now.

The two settled states controlled all the towns and cities, while Turkic nomads roamed across the plateau.

The nomads were divided into dozens of tribes who forged different relationships with their settled neighbours depending on their their needs and location.

Some had written contracts with the Byzantines about which valleys they could and couldn't graze their herds in.

Some served regularly in the Seljuk army, while others avoided administrators as much as possible and moved towards distant fields.

What upset this equilibrium was the arrival of the Mongols.

As we heard in our conversation with Nicholas Morton, the Mongols smashed the Seljuks in twelve forty three and began to move their men onto the plateau.

Mongol strength lay in its nomadic armies, and so for the Mongols to dominate the lands of the former Caliphate, they needed vast areas for their troops to graze their animals.

The Anatolian plateau proved to be an ideal location to park some troops while they subdued the powers of Syria and Iraq.

The Mongols therefore hobbled the Seljuk Sultanate, keeping the Sultans in power but weakening their authority so that they couldn't challenge their overlords.

This had dramatic consequences for those nomads who didn't want to be consumed by the Mongol dragon.

They had to choose between fighting, fleeing, or submitting.

And it wasn't just the Turks already present who had to make these decisions.

Mongol armies, as you know, aren't made up of just men from Mongolia.

They would recruit from the people they defeated and draft them into their armies.

This meant that once they reached Anatolia, steppe tribes, whose origins lay a thousand miles away, had been pushed forward by the conquerors.

Some of these tribes now tried to break away from central control, occupying lands abandoned by Seljuk allies.

Amidst this chaos, tribes began to form into larger confederations in an attempt to protect themselves from the Seljuk and Mongol states.

When these new groups became strong enough to resist central control, there was war.

And these battles were usually taking place along the Byzantine border, because these lands, on the western plateau, were the furthest away from the Mongol bases in the east, and therefore the obvious location for these confederations to form.

Each round of fighting saw some tribes make a break for it over the mountains and into Roman territory.

The Romans were far less intimidating than the Mongols.

Their armies were obviously less impressive, but the Christians did not practice exemplary punishments very often.

And even if a tribe was defeated, the Byzantine authorities were likely to offer them a deal, to settle them on spare land in exchange for military service.

In the past, this had been a potential advantage for the Romans, but not for much longer.

The size of the confederations forming in response to Mongol pressure were becoming too big to handle, and increasingly tribes were crossing from multiple locations simultaneously.

Bringing their women and children with them, they were driving Romans from their land and staying put.

This

was causing serious problems.

The Roman defenders of Anatolia came in three forms.

The central field army, the regular troops living in the provinces, and the Akretai.

Akretai means inhabitants of the mountains.

These were smallholding soldiers living along the frontier who were exempt from taxation if they served in the army.

Turkic raids had been dealt with for a century by this system.

The Akretai might skirmish with small raiding parties, but once things got serious they would retreat to the nearest town to link up with garrison troops.

This small army could then track, ambush, or attack the nomads.

Usually the tribes were just illegally grazing their animals, or on a smash and grab run.

Either way, standard practice was to track them and harass them until they left.

Only if a raid got out of control would you call in the central field army, which was more than a match for any normal group of raiders.

The problem being created in this new era was that the Turks were settling on the lands of the Akretae.

They were driving Romans out of the borderlands in order to graze their flocks, and then they would raid the lands beyond them.

If the Akretae didn't have lands to support them, then they would move elsewhere, or require a cash salary to fight creating headaches and extra expense for the government with the turks now loose on imperial territory ordinary people began to abandon their farms a tribe might live in one region for five years before the romans could drive them out this overturned the local landowning arrangements Some people abandoned their homes for good, others sold up to richer families who could defend themselves.

This created havoc for a military system based on pronoia, the grant of certain lands in exchange for military service.

Abandoned fields or disputed claims to pronoia meant men didn't turn up to serve, or rich landowners sent what they owed but no more, while other plots lay fallow.

The Romans needed an unyielding defence to deal with the influx of nomads, but to administer lands that were being constantly disrupted and abandoned was a task which most medieval states would struggle with, and the Byzantines were no exception.

This is the scenario which began to unfold during the reign of Michael VIII.

He managed to keep something of a lid on it, but it spiralled out of control during his son's reign and eventually consumed the entire region.

By the end of Andronicus' time in power, Anatolia was lost.

The Turks had come to dominate almost all of what would one day become Turkey.

There are historians who criticise Andronicus for his lethargy, or blame the inevitable civil wars which Roman collapse always brings, but reading up on this period, I don't really see a way this could have turned out differently.

It's possible that an unyielding defence would have prevented total Turkish penetration, and that over time the nomads would have decided that permanent settlement wasn't worth the trouble.

But when I imagine that scenario, it seems inevitable that the Romans would have had to divert resources from Europe in order to achieve this, which would have invited attack from the half a dozen enemies who lived there.

There was no way the Romans could allow this now that they had to protect Constantinople itself.

Historians at the time and ever since have pondered whether the Nicene Empire would have been better off staying at home and defending its borders, but it's a nonsensical hypothesis.

The Niceneans could not have anticipated the problems which the arrival of the Mongols would present, nor would they have been wise to restrict themselves to Anatolia while their opponents in Europe grew stronger.

Nor would they necessarily have fared any better without the resources of Europe to support their efforts.

And why expand into Europe if you aren't going to capture Constantinople?

I could go on.

The fall of Anatolia was just one of those contingent events.

There was no grand plan on the part of the various Turkic tribes to drive the Romans out.

They just kept pressing for more land, and the Christians kept retreating.

Ultimately, the Roman state was not designed to deal with enemies who migrated into their territory and stayed.

The Romans recruited central field armies, which were good at defeating opponents who gathered in one place for a showdown.

Enemies who move onto Roman land and avoid battle are like microbes infecting the body.

They drain the provinces of people and revenue, the very things which the Roman body relied on in order to collect tax and pay its army.

We saw this after Manzikurd.

We saw this centuries earlier as the Slavs poured into the Balkans.

And before that, we saw it with the German tribes along the Rhine and Danube frontiers.

I think that's not a bad analogy for what took place during Andronicus' reign.

You'll recall that the Goths, Franks, Vandals, etc.

formed into confederations and crossed into Roman lands under pressure from the Huns.

The Romans just couldn't deal with so many invaders at once, and the state eventually collapsed.

Here, the Mongols have replaced the Huns, and the Turks are the new Germans.

Multiple tribes crossing the border simultaneously broke the Roman system of administration and defence.

And once that happens, medieval states can disappear very quickly.

In reality, the Empire of Nicaea was lucky that it had conquered Constantinople since the Bosphorus saved them from being swept away entirely.

I know it's a story few of you want to hear, but let's get into the details.

Shortly after capturing Constantinople, Michael Palaiologos received word that the Turks were raiding the Meander Valley in force.

This was the most fertile region in western Anatolia, in the center of the peninsula.

It was key to the defence of the whole region, and troops were sent to chase off the attack.

But the tribes returned in twelve sixty three in serious numbers.

Michael sent his brother John to hold the line.

John stayed for four years, keeping the Turks out, but also conducting a cadastral survey of the whole region.

This meant making sure that all those who held Pro Noa land had their house in order, that they had enough land to support the troops they were meant to supply, and that they were co operating with the authorities.

John's reforms were successful for a time, but as the threat from Charles of Anjou ramped up, Michael couldn't spare more troops to defend Anatolia.

For the next 13 years, Byzantine Asia came under sustained pressure from the nomads.

By the time Michael could turn his attention back to the east, Turkic tribes had broken through in three areas.

In the very south, the coastline opposite Rhodes, in the very north, in Paphlagonia, and along the Meander Valley itself in the centre.

In the north and south, Turkic tribes had driven the Roman Akreti from their homes, and the nomads were spending their summers in the highlands before descending into the plains in winter.

In many places, the Romans still held the towns, but the countryside was no longer safe.

While along the Meander Valley, the Turks had captured two key fortress towns in Trales and Antioch on the Meander.

Michael returned in 1280 with his army and drove groups of Turks out of the territory around Nicaea.

He returned the following year and stayed in the north repairing forts, while Andronicus got his first taste of command further south.

The junior emperor chased Turks out of the Meander Valley and rebuilt the defences of Trales.

If the Roman army was present, then the Turks would scatter, but as you know, the army could not be there all the time.

After Michael's death, Andronicus was busy dealing with his church and securing his position.

He did return in 1283 and campaigned in 1284 as well, but his priority was repairing forts, hoping that they would provide a refuge for the people and that the Turkish storm would pass.

He did not return for six years,

six years in which the nomads who were already in the Roman provinces could embed themselves in their new pastures and invite more of their brethren to join them.

Could Andronicus have been more attentive?

Perhaps, but as we talked about last week, he was spending a lot of time healing the rifts in the church and the aristocracy, and as we'll discuss next week, he had to fight wars in Europe, in the Aegean, and deal with a budget deficit which was eating away at the currency.

The Vasilevs returned to Anatolia in 1290 and stayed for three years.

Despite fighting bands of Turks and driving them away from the coast, the Emperor found that the nomads had penetrated everywhere.

The Romans still held the towns, but the countryside was a war zone.

Trales had fallen again, allowing the Turks to pass through the Meander Valley at will.

Tax collection was impossible in some places.

Soldiers' salaries were in arrears, and corrupt officials were found profiteering.

Another problem was that Anatolia remained the heartland of opposition to the reigning dynasty.

It was the home base of the Lascarid regime, with many looking back fondly on their time in power.

It was also the home of the Arsenites, who, as we talked about last time, were not fully reincorporated into the church until 1310.

So as Andronicus spent time in Asia, he felt his position was insecure.

He ended up arresting his younger brother, along with another senior general, for allegedly conspiring against him.

The Emperor returned to Constantinople in 1293, having failed to achieve anything significant.

No new cadastral survey had been conducted despite all the chaos.

What the Emperor did do was appoint an overall commander for the region.

The man given this challenging brief was his nephew, Alexius Philanthropinos,

who turned out to be an excellent appointment.

The following spring, Alexius defeated a group of Turks who were approaching Bithynia and then marched south towards Philadelphia.

Over the next two years he repeatedly defeated the Turks he encountered and captured the town of Miletos, which had fallen years before.

The Turks he was encountering were tribes moving around the Roman provinces with their families in tow.

They had fled from Mongol armies and were looking for somewhere safe to live.

After defeating one group, they begged for a peace treaty with the Roman state.

When Alexius bested another, they offered to join the Roman army.

Philanthropinos was just what the situation needed, a successful military leader who could absorb some of these tribes into the Roman army.

Inevitably,

this led to civil war.

Andronicus was alarmed by his general's success.

With Lascarid, Arsenite, and Turkic backing, Alexius could become a serious rival.

In 1295, Philanthropinos declared himself emperor and went into open rebellion.

Our sources claim that Andronicus forced his hand, that the Vasilefs demanded he send more spoils from his victories to Constantinople, more than was normally expected, which if the general had done, would have seen him overthrown by his own army, since he would have had to deny them the loot they expected.

Whatever the truth, Philanthropinos was hailed emperor and began making plans to march on the capital.

Many people in Anatolia wanted an emperor who was closer to home and who would serve their interests.

But soon afterwards, another general, loyal to Andronicus, bribed Alexius' bodyguards to blind him.

The rebellion had ended swiftly, but the victorious army also disbanded.

It was entirely typical of Roman history that a major crisis would prompt a civil war, and that the result only benefited the Empire's enemies.

The Emperor sent a leading arsenite, John Tarkaniotes, to take over at Nicaea in the hopes that he would gain a favourable reception.

But John had to undertake the long-delayed cadastral survey to reorganise the defence of the provinces, which was resented by the locals.

Those who could had gobbled up land in Anatolia and organized defences themselves.

They did not want an outsider rearranging everything.

John was eventually accused of treason and impiety, and had to return to Constantinople to clear his name.

Roman infighting was adding to the anarchy.

It was at this juncture that the Seljuk state state finally collapsed, releasing the tribes from its grasp and prompting a frenzied civil war.

The plateau was awash with blood, and a series of Turkic tribes crossed the border and entered imperial lands in the spring of 1300.

They crashed into those tribes already present, either fighting them for control of Roman land or joining them, creating stronger confederacies.

Andronicus knew he had to respond, but fearful of another rebellion, he turned to a new source of manpower which had recently become available.

About fifteen thousand Alans had just arrived at Constantinople.

These were Iranian-speaking Christians from north of the Black Sea.

They had also fled from the exactions of the Mongols, in their case, the Golden Horde.

Andronicus decided to settle them in Thrace, but send their menfolk to Anatolia to serve in the army.

Two Roman forces were equipped by the beleaguered population of Anatolia.

One travelled south under Michael IX, the emperor's son, while the other stayed in Bithynia to guard Nicaea.

Michael made his way to Magnesia, but given his youth, he relied on the advice of his generals.

When they scouted the Turkish warbands ahead, they decided that their green army would not fare well.

Much to Michael's dismay, he agreed to withdraw to Pergamum without a fight.

The local Roman population despaired at this, and thousands abandoned their homes and followed the Vasilevs north.

Magnesia had been the stronghold of John Vitats.

If the emperors weren't going to defend it, then the locals knew what their fate would be.

Meanwhile, back at Nicaea, the governor marched out with two thousand Alans

to suffer a famous defeat.

On the 27th of July 1302, at the Battle of Baphias, he was beaten by the forces of Osman, the legendary founder of the Ottoman dynasty.

These invasions pushed the Turks further into Roman lands, though it wasn't certain at the time, Roman Anatolia was all but lost.

The Alans returned to their families, leaving many of the locals defenseless.

Thousands abandoned their homes and fled for the Aegean Islands or for Constantinople.

The Turks moved freely across the country.

In the Meander Valley, only the city of Philadelphia held out.

The south was gone, and in the north, the Roman cities like Nicaea, Nicomedia, and Prusa became like islands in a Turkish sea.

Given the scale of the emergency, Andronicus suggested that all imperial, church, and monastic lands be handed over to soldiers so that people would stay and fight for their property.

But it was too late.

Turkish penetration of the countryside made this reform impossible to implement.

Several Roman officers and bishops in Anatolia took matters into their own hands, forming militias to defend their territory, paying for repairs out of their own pockets.

But without coordination with an imperial army, they could do little but fend off nomadic attacks.

The Turks had by now organized themselves into Beyliks,

emirates or lordships where a number of tribes agreed to recognize a single leader.

The major Beyliks at this stage were those of Germian, Mentesche, Aydin, and Osman.

They slowly took over the whole region, incorporating forts, towns and fleets into their new states.

Many locals would end up converting to Islam in order to maintain their property and status.

We are not done with this story.

The Romans will attempt a counter-attack, but you all know how this ends.

One of the contemporary historians of this period, George Pachymerius, offered his explanation for what went wrong in Anatolia.

He argued that the Nicene state had been highly functional and united, but once the Romans took back Constantinople, they were distracted by new concerns.

They neglected, overtaxed, and mismanaged Anatolia, which was left to fall to the Turks.

It's an analysis which has gained wide acceptance, and we heard echoes of it in listener questions a few episodes ago.

But as I argued earlier, this is too simplistic.

Turkic tribes weren't settling on Roman land during the heyday of the Nicene Empire.

We don't know how John Vitatsis would have handled this situation.

At its height, the Nicene field army seemed to be only about 6,000 men strong.

Could 6,000 men defend the entire region from multiple tribes?

I doubt it.

As with the tribes who conquered the plateau in the wake of Manzikert, this was a fluid situation which overwhelmed the Roman state before it had time to adapt to the new reality.

And Constantinople now has far fewer resources than it did then.

It's only natural to blame administrators and administration, but fundamentally the Romans were ill suited to this kind of warfare.

The Latin West would have actually fared much better against this type of invasion, because individual Latin lords fighting from their castles would have contested the land more firmly.

The Romans, by contrast,

desiring to centralize things, would always pull troops back to a new centre and start again, thus surrendering the land, essentially, to invaders who had migrated in.

For those who want more discussion of the issues at play here, I recommend re-listening to episode 200 of this podcast.

In it, I reviewed the work of Professor Mark Wittow, who argued that in a contest between a force who fight for every scrap of land and one that is reliant on a salary to motivate them, the former tend to prevail.

The Romans were better than anyone at organizing and equipping a central field army.

If they had time and space and other provinces to draw on, then they could have gone on fighting in Anatolia.

But the European provinces were vulnerable.

Surrounded on every side by Latins, Epirates, Bulgarians, and Serbs, it was impossible to drain their resources to fight in Asia without endangering their survival.

Next time, we will bring the narrative back into something like its normal shape.

You've already heard about Andronicus' issues with his church and people.

Now you know about the collapse of Roman Anatolia.

I'm sure it will cheer you up no end to hear that the new emperor must also deal with a severe financial crisis and the loss of his fleet.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new game day scratches from the California lottery.

Players, everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

Hey, a little play makes your day, and today it made the game.

That's all for now.

Coach, one more question.

Play the new Los Angeles Chargers, San Francisco 49ers, and Los Angeles Rams Scratchers from the California Lottery.

A little play can make your day.

Please play responsibly.

Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim.