Episode 297 - The Rise and Rise of Nicaea

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 297.

The Rise and Rise of Nicaea.

Two episodes ago, we watched on as the Roman-Bulgarian siege of Constantinople failed to capture its target.

The situation in the Balkans had reached a stalemate.

The Latins were too weak to do anything significant, but could not easily be thrown out of New Rome, while neither Nicaea nor Bulgaria was strong enough to force the issue.

It was the arrival of the Mongols in Europe that changed this dynamic and paved the way for Nicaea to dominate both east and west.

In 1237, just after Ivan Arsen had abandoned the siege of Constantinople, a large tribe of Cumans crossed the Danube and began rampaging through his lands.

The Cumans didn't attempt to take over the Bulgarian state or establish a new base camp.

Instead, they broke up into smaller bands and after raiding around for a while, they accepted offers to submit to the settled powers of the region.

Some went over to the Bulgarians, some to the Latins.

A group of 10,000 were taken in by Nicaea.

They were given lands in the Meander Valley in exchange for providing military service for the Romans.

Why would these Cumans so quickly accept this new life?

Because they believed that any of these options were better than what awaited them back on the steppe.

The Cumans brought with them news of a frightening people who were marching on Europe.

As we heard last week, the Mongols were the greatest of all the steppe confederations which the grasslands of Asia ever created.

After successfully conquering northern China and dominating the center of the steppe during the 1220s, they expanded into the Middle East in the 1230s.

As they moved into Europe, the Rus were the first Christian power to feel their wrath.

The Rus were repeatedly hammered, with Kiev sacked in 1240 and tens of thousands of captives sold into slavery.

This sent shockwaves through Europe and Byzantium.

The Archbishop of Kiev had received his ordination at Nicaea.

These were Christian people being annihilated by a swarming band of heathens.

Rumours spread of the horrifying aftermath of Mongol attacks, that they were cannibals, that they had the heads of dogs, that they represented some harbinger of apocalyptic doom.

By twelve forty-one the Mongols were in Hungary and crushed the army of King Bela IV.

Bela fled to Croatia and one column of Mongols chased him down the Dalmatian coast before returning north through Serbia and Bulgaria.

Apparently they clashed swords with the Latins en route, and the Bulgarians offered submission to avoid further attacks.

Only the death of the great Khan Ogadai, a son of Genghis Khan, in December that year brought a halt to proceedings.

This astonishing show of force scared everyone.

A few years later, over at Nicaea, a rumour circulated that the Mongols were at the gates and people lost their minds, hiding in fresh graves or in crawl spaces desperate to avoid the terrible fate of the nomads' victims.

No one seemed able to stop them, and no one knew when they would come back.

If anyone at Nicaea thought the Bosphorus would save them from calamity, then those illusions were shattered two years later.

In the summer of 1243, the Mongols invaded Anatolia and defeated the forces of the Seljuk Sultanate in battle.

The Seljuks became their vassals, and Mongol troops would eventually move onto the Anatolian plateau.

An assault on Nicaea was just a short ride away.

The Emperor John Vatatsis watched the unfolding horror with grim interest.

He knew that militarily his forces could not stand against the Mongols, and yet he didn't rush to offer his submission.

Not only would this have been beneath the dignity of a Roman Emperor, but other Christian leaders were disappearing behind the Mongol curtain.

Various Armenian princes and the Roman Emperor of Trebizond were being forced to trek all the way to the Mongol capital to bow before the Great Khan, and some were being kept as guests for years before being allowed to head home.

Vitatsis sent ambassadors to try and establish friendly relations while avoiding any commitments.

He hoped that his enemies would provide the buffer he needed to maintain his independence.

After the humbling of the Seljuks, Vitatsis met with Kai Khusro II and established a mutual support pact.

Rather than take advantage of his fallen rival, the Vasilevs was keen to ensure that the Seljuks remained between him and the Mongols.

Vitatsis spent the rest of the 1240s pursuing his goals with one eye on the horizon.

In the end, the Mongols didn't return to threaten him, but he could never be sure of that.

Abandoning thoughts of taking Constantinople directly, Vitazes focused instead on expanding his foothold in Europe.

He'd captured the town of Gallipoli just across the Hellespont in order to besiege New Rome, and now it provided a handy bridgehead to move troops west.

In twelve forty one, Vitazes made peace overtures to the Latins and Bulgarians, and then led his army to Thessalonica.

The city was still in the hands of John Dukas, the son of Theodorus Theodorus Dukas, the man who had taken the state of Epirus to such great heights.

The Nicene wanted the city to acknowledge their master as the true emperor.

Vitatsis set up siege works and applied pressure for forty days.

At that point John Dukas agreed to submit to the Vasilevs in exchange for maintaining his position as governor of the region.

This was the same summer that the Mongols moved into Anatolia, so Vitatsis quickly agreed terms and then raced home to monitor news from the plateau.

John stayed quiet for several years to make sure that the Nicene state was safe from attack before he returned to Europe.

The opportunity to make further gains came in 1246.

The Bulgarians were now paying tribute to the Mongols and in a vulnerable state.

Ivan Arsen was dead, then his successor passed, leaving a seven-year-old on the throne.

Vatatsis pounced.

The Nicene army drove towards Adrianople, and the local garrisons melted away.

With the biggest town in Thrace back in Roman hands, the Vasilevs turned west and moved into the Rhodope Mountains.

He descended on Melnik and Ceres, key fortresses guarding the approaches to Thessalonica, and took them.

He received the submission of the peninsula of Halkidiki, where Mount Athos is located, then pushed north towards Skopje and the surrounding forts.

This lightning campaign was aided by the local Byzantine aristocracy.

Many of their key men had fled to Nicaea years before, but now returned as Vitats'

generals.

They were able to make contact with their family networks and persuade them that John was the real deal, a true Roman emperor returning for good.

These fantastic successes were capped by the full absorption of Thessalonica itself.

In the intervening years, John Dukas had died, and his son Demetrius had managed to alienate some of his supporters, and they now turned to Vitazes.

When he received word from them, he marched swiftly to the gates and demanded that Demetrius come out to kneel before him.

Demetrius feared a trap and hesitated, at which point his enemies opened a gate to the Nicene, who peacefully occupied the city.

Demetrius was sent to Anatolia to live in comfortable exile, a signal from Vitazes that he was happy to absorb the nobles of Epirus into his empire.

He then installed Andronicus Palaeologos, one of his leading generals, as governor of Thessaloniki.

This again played into local sympathies since the Palaeologi had long been associated with the Empire's second city.

Andronicus appointed his son, the future Emperor Michael, to be the commander of Melnik and Ceres.

As Vitatsis marched home, he sent word to Bulgaria that he would be happy to sign a peace treaty based on the new status quo.

Quite the flex, given he'd just lifted a significant chunk of territory from them, and the new regime in Trinovo had little choice but to accept the deal.

Vitatsis returned home, astonished at what he'd achieved.

The next spring he was back on the warpath, though, well aware that these new acquisitions needed shoring up.

He captured more Thracian forts from the Latins, further hemming them in to Constantinople, and then he opened negotiations with Michael II of Epirus, the son of the founder of that state.

Michael still ruled from Arta, and now controlled towns like Ochrid, which ran up against the new Nicene borders.

In order to secure peace along this frontier, Vitatsis offered a marriage alliance.

His granddaughter would marry Michael's son.

In exchange Michael would acknowledge John as the Vasilefs, and the Vasilefs would in turn recognize Michael as his man in Epirus.

This was agreed in 1248 with the marriage to take place in a few years time.

But as you should know by now, agreements with the men of Epirus rarely hold for long.

Four years later, in twelve fifty two, Dukas's men attacked a string of border forts.

The Nicene garrisons were not stout enough to resist, and within a few months, an Epirate army was approaching Thessalonica.

But if Michael was testing for weakness, he didn't find the right spot.

Vitatses gathered his army and marched straight for them.

Dukas fled for the mountains of Albania, leaving his border garrisons to be methodically picked off.

The Emperor stayed in the area for over a year, suborning Michael's men and even negotiating with the Albanian tribes to see if they would give up their patron.

Dukas eventually capitulated.

The peace he signed was a humiliation.

Nicaea absorbed all the border towns, including Orid, Edessa, and Castoria.

The approaches to Durachium were now in the Emperor's hands.

Michael returned to Arta, left only in control of western Greece, and his son went home with Vitazes as a hostage.

Within a decade, John had doubled the size of the Nicene Empire.

Almost running the length of the Via Ignatia itself, the Emperor controlled lands from near the Adriatic coast all the way to the Black Sea, a belt of Roman territory which now separated the Serbs and Bulgarians to the north from the Latins to the south.

The centre of Greece, in the form of Epirus and Thessaly, remained nominally independent, but they knew what would happen if they messed with Nicene territory.

These lands were not as yet smoothly reincorporated into the imperial system, as we'll talk about later, but it represented an impressive achievement.

As Antony Caldellus says, apart from Constantinople, southern Greece, and Crete, Vitazis had reassembled most regions that were demographically Roman.

During this period, Vitazes was recognized internationally as the biggest player within the Roman world.

This status allowed him to form a surprising alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II.

The two men bonded over their mutual antipathy towards the papacy.

The German emperors had entered another toxic phase of their relationship with Rome, and Frederick admired the set-up in Nicaea, where the emperor ruled and the patriarch stayed largely out of secular affairs.

Vitazi's dispatched lavish gifts and eventually sent Roman troops to fight in Italy on Frederick's behalf.

That might seem an extravagant expense given Nicaea was still trying to regain Constantinople, but that was the point of the alliance from Vitazzi's point of view.

Frederick was locked in endless disputes with the Pope and other Italian states.

By providing military support to the Germans, Frederick became a powerful pro-Nicene voice, preventing crusades from passing through his lands and ultimately speaking up for John's right to reoccupy New Rome.

This was also classic carrot and stick diplomacy.

By supporting the papacy's great rival, Vitazis put pressure on the pontiff to negotiate with Nicaea.

What the Vasilevs really wanted was papal recognition, to stop calling the Romans schismatics, to stop sending crusades against them, and to acknowledge their rights to Constantinople.

Parallel diplomacy took place throughout the 1240s.

When Vitatsi's wife died, he agreed to marry one of Frederick's illegitimate daughters, but he also opened negotiations with Rome over church union.

These negotiations did actually advance significantly, but both the Pope and the Emperor died before they could be completed.

Vitazis was, to all intents and purposes, the recognized Roman Emperor again.

The impoverished regime of Baldwin II, the Latin Emperor, had to come to Vitazis to ask for money to repair the capital's churches.

The Vasilevs was more than happy to send men and money in to maintain the buildings, advertising his patronage to the people of New Rome.

In spring 1254, Vitazes suddenly fell ill and began to suffer seizures.

He would never fully recover.

His son Theodore took control of the government while tending to his father.

Vitazis died that November at the age of 62.

He had been hailed as Roman Emperor for thirty-three years.

Vitazis was unquestionably a fine ruler.

He built on the work of his predecessor, Theodor Lascaris, ensuring that Western Anatolia remained a centralized tax-paying Roman state.

He used those resources to build a fleet, reincorporate many Aegean islands, and retake Thessalonica.

By forging ties with Western Europe and avoiding the Mongols, he ensured that Nicaea would dominate the lands of Byzantium and that Constantinople remained isolated.

He was buried in a monastery that he'd founded near Magnesia, and within a few decades a cult developed around his memory.

He was eventually canonized.

This was an extraordinary honour, since no other emperor since Constantine the Great had attained sainthood.

How can we explain this?

Vitatses was most likely a usurper, who was certainly no saint in his private life.

After the death of his first wife, he had a string of poorly concealed affairs.

But he did rule for a very long time, a time which saw Western Anatolia bask in peace and prosperity while war raged all around them.

John had a reputation for mercy, and was fondly remembered, particularly by the people of Magnesia, a formerly obscure part of the Roman world which he'd brought imperial wealth and influence to.

It's also worth saying that after his death rifts would develop within Roman society that would cause tremendous ill feeling.

The reign of John the Merciful soon came to be viewed by some as a lost golden age.

Antony Caldelles ranked Vitazis at number four on his list of the ten greatest emperors, and it's certainly true that John rarely seems to have put a foot wrong.

But I wouldn't rank him that highly for various reasons.

This is no knock on him, but he did benefit significantly from the work of others.

Theodolas Garis had done the truly hard work of forging the Nicene state and facing down the Turks, while the arrival of the Mongols silenced the Seljuks and Bulgarians for the remainder of Vatatsi's reign.

And though swathes of European territory were back in the imperial fold, that did not mean that they were functioning provinces yet.

A lot of towns surrendered on terms, which we can't entirely reconstruct.

This was an era where urban centres changed hands often, and this usually involved guaranteeing the rights and privileges of the civilian elites.

This presumably meant allowing them to continue to collect certain revenues and exploit the land in ways that could not easily be yanked away without causing resentment.

Similarly, local garrisons couldn't really be trusted yet.

They had gone over to the Latins, the Epirates, and the Bulgarians repeatedly during the past half century, and Nicaea could only spare so many of its own men to occupy key citadels.

Attempts to reintroduce the pre-1204 system of administration had to proceed slowly and carefully.

People had become accustomed to the lax regimes which had been the norm for the past five decades.

Western Anatolia, by contrast, had been brought to heal much earlier in that process, and so were used to central authority having the final say.

These potential problems were illustrated by an incident that happened the year before Vatazis died.

As I mentioned earlier, it was Andronicus Palaeologos who was installed as the first Nicene governor of Thessaloniki.

He died soon afterwards, but his son Michael remained in the area.

Whispers soon reached the Emperor that Michael was involved in some kind of conspiracy.

The young general seems to have been discussing a marriage alliance, possibly with the Bulgarians, possibly with Epirus, one which would see Michael cede territory to his new partner in exchange for recognition of him as emperor.

In other words, Michael would seize the European provinces and rule them from Thessaloniki.

Whatever was being discussed, it could not be proven.

Michael was arrested on suspicion of treason and eventually moved to Bithynia, where he continued to serve in an official capacity so as not to upset his family network.

This murky conspiracy demonstrated the significant challenges facing the Nicene state as it moved into Europe.

The politics of this region had been so fragmented during the past half century that it was hard to trust anyone.

The opportunities for collusion with neighbouring powers were ever present, and appointing Romans whose families had histories in the Balkans was a double-edged sword.

All of which to say that John Vitazis was clearly a brilliant emperor, but he left behind a very complicated legacy for his son and successor Theodore, which we will get into next week.

To be fair to John, though, I can't fault him for his succession planning.

He had groomed his son properly for the toughest of roles.

Each time Vitazis campaigned in the Balkans, he'd left his son in charge of affairs back in Anatolia.

Theodore was intelligent, motivated, and conscientious.

He He already had children of his own, and at thirty-three years old, was the ideal age to ascend to the throne.

Next time, we will follow Theodore as he tries to bring the European provinces into line.

And as you may have guessed, we haven't heard the last of Michael Palaeolokos either.

In the meantime, Royfield Brown, from podcasts such as Ten American Presidents and How Jamaica Conquered the World, is now exploring the realities of living with a parent who has dementia in his podcast In Glen Steps.

Find it wherever you get your podcasts.

Popsicles, sprinklers, a cool breeze.

Talk about refreshing.

You know what else is refreshing this summer?

A brand new phone with Verizon.

Yep, get a new phone on any plan with Select Phone Trade-In and MyPlan.

And lock down a low price for three years on any plan with MyPlan.

This is a deal for everyone, whether you're a new or existing customer.

Swing by Verizon today for our best phone deals.

Three-year price guarantee applies to then-current base monthly rate only.

Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers.

Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

It was the new Game Day Scratchers from the California Lottery.

Play is 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.