Episode 294 - The Rise and Fall of Epirus

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Hello everyone and welcome to the History of Byzantium, episode 294

The Rise and Fall of Epirus.

We are now out of our Vantage Point period and back to the regular narrative, but we don't yet have a single state to follow.

Over the next few episodes, we will be flitting between the leaders of Epirus, Constantinople, and Nicaea, before eventually our perspective will narrow to just one of them.

We've also jumped around in time during our vantage point episodes, so let's quickly get everyone up to the same year in the chronology.

As you know, the Latins elected Baldwin of Flanders as their emperor after the sack, but he was dragged off to Bulgaria after the Battle of Adrianople.

So the Crusaders chose his brother Henry to be his replacement.

Henry is widely regarded as the best Latin emperor of Constantinople.

He was a good warrior and commander, he incorporated many Byzantines into his administration, and he even married a Bulgarian bride, well below his perceived station, to try and gain peace for his realm.

During his decade on the throne he managed to improve the Latin situation considerably.

He defeated the Bulgarians outside Philippopolis and retook that city.

Then he forged peace with Caloyan's successor, which would hold for the rest of his reign.

He protected the rights of Boniface's son at Thessaloniki, and as we heard a few episodes ago, he took advantage of Theodore Lascaris' pyrrhic victory over the Seljuks to seize lands in Anatolia.

Henry's proactive competence encouraged his rivals to make peace with him.

Lascaris responded to defeat by exploring the possibility of one day merging their two states.

Theodore had done sterling work to bring western Anatolia under his control, but not only were the Latins now on his turf, but he knew that Venetian sea power would be hard to overcome in any battle for Constantinople.

If you can't beat them, join them.

Lascaris began correspondence with the Pope over the possibility of some kind of union.

He made a deal with the Venetians to respect one another's merchant shipping, and he married Henry's niece Maria.

Theodore seems to have been proposing an agreement similar to the one that Alexius Comninos had in mind when Bohemond took Antioch.

Why don't we merge our families and establish peaceful relations?

Then one day one of our descendants will inherit the whole shebang.

This was a reasonable course of action.

Constantinople would be difficult to recapture, and even if it was taken, what would be the response in Western Europe?

Quite possibly to call another crusade to come and take the city back.

Better then to to agree church union with the Pope and allow your grandson or great-grandson to reunite the empire with as little friction as possible.

However, when these manoeuvres became public, they were heavily criticised.

Compromise with the hated Latins was not popular at Nicaea or in Epirus.

In fact, in the West, this was fodder for the elites to discredit Lascaris.

No true Vasilefs should be making such concessions.

Negotiations did not get very far at this stage, and the need for compromise seemed much less necessary when the Emperor Henry died.

Even before his death, the true weakness of Latin rule was becoming clear.

The Westerners were thin on the ground and getting thinner, and when new mercenaries arrived in the east, they quickly discovered that both Epirus and Nicaea could pay them more than their Catholic brethren.

It was the the men of Epirus who would first expose just how feeble the Latin hold on power was.

As you know, Michael Dukas, who had founded the Epirate state, died under mysterious circumstances in twelve fifteen.

His brother Theodorus took charge of the family business, and showed himself to be a vigorous and aggressive character.

He began campaigns to bring more territory under his sway, expanding his control of Thessaly and encroaching on territory which belonged to Thessaloniki.

The Emperor Henry marched out to the Empire's second city in 1216, but died en route.

And from this point on, the Latin position began to unravel.

With no suitable candidate at Constantinople, the Western barons asked Peter of Courtenay.

to become their new emperor.

Peter was the husband of Yolanda, Henry's sister.

He was back in France, and so the hope was he would bring some reinforcements with him.

This he did.

Peter went to Rome in 1217 and was crowned by the Pope.

He then linked up with a Venetian fleet so that they could attack Dirachium.

You'll recall that the Epirates had lifted the port city from the Italians, breaking an agreement which they'd signed just a couple of years earlier, a classic tactic of the Ducas family during this period.

Well, they seem to have gone one better on this occasion.

Peter and the Venetians landed outside Dyrrhachium and tried to capture the city, but eventually the new emperor Peter left the siege and began the overland march to Constantinople,

at which point his army was routed and he was captured by Theodorus Dukas.

However, there is a suggestion in our sources that there was deception involved, that instead of a pitched battle, Theodorus turned up to pledge his fealty to the new Vasilevs, then double-crossed him, drove off his army, and took him prisoner.

If that is what happened, it's pretty funny.

The Latins have no leg to stand on when it comes to breaking oaths, and so if Theodorus really did turn the tables on them and throw their new emperor in chains, well, I'm suppressing a smile.

Whatever the exact sequence of events, the results were unmistakable.

The Latins were utterly undermined by this loss, Peter died in captivity and his army dispersed.

The forces of Epirus then swept across the region, capturing town after town after fortress town.

Between 1217 and 1223, the Epirates completed their conquest of Thessaly and drove towards Thessaloniki.

A string of targets fell, their Bulgarian or Latin garrisons, lacking any support, melted away in the face of Roman aggression.

Grabina, Castoria, Prelep, Scopjia, Veria, Servia, Moglena, and Strumica all fell, and when the Romans took Ceres, Thessalonica was doomed.

The Epirates now held all the city's supporting fortresses.

In 1223 the city was formally invested.

The Latins inside had little hope.

They were small in number and divided.

The former Empress Margaret and her surviving son from Boniface abandoned Thessalonica and headed back to Hungary.

The new Latin Emperor was Robert of Courtenay, Peter's son.

He sent an army to try and retake Seres, but as they began to engage, they received the terrible news that their brothers in Anatolia had just been defeated by the forces of Nicaea.

Anxious at the possible threat to Constantinople itself, they retreated in disarray.

This was a huge mistake, as the cavalry at Seres decided to chase after them, leading to a bloody rout.

Without any official coordination, Byzantine forces in east and west had dealt a devastating double blow to the Latin position.

Thessaloniki was on its own.

The next year, its Latin leadership surrendered in exchange for their lives.

Theodorus Komninos Dukas marched in to much acclaim.

Theodorus's state now included all of northern Greece, and little lay in his way on the road to Constantinople.

He had every reason to have himself declared Vasilevs, and was hailed as such by his men, but he delayed a formal coronation, perhaps dreaming of the Achia Sophia.

The Pope, now finally twigging that you couldn't trust a Dukas, had Theodorus excommunicated.

He openly preached a crusade against the Romans as enemies of the faith.

There was no popular enthusiasm for such a venture, but he did find a willing accomplice in William, the Marquess of Montferrat.

This was Boniface's son by his first wife, who reluctantly agreed to lead a force to retake Thessaloniki.

In another episode that perhaps I shouldn't find funny, William's army landed at Halmiros in Greece, but succumbed immediately to dysentery and achieved nothing.

The road was now clear, and Dukas's army marched into Thrace.

They easily captured Christopolis, Mausinopolis, and Didymotichon.

They were even invited to garrison Adrianople, whose population were keen to be restored to Roman rule.

When he arrived at Bisia, about ninety miles from Constantinople, he paused.

Though the Latins couldn't oppose his march, he doubted his ability to actually take the city.

He had no navy, and so the city couldn't be starved into submission, and he knew the Latins would defend the Theo Docean walls with gusto.

There was also the possibility that the Bulgarians, still formerly allies of the Latins, would march to their aid.

So Theodorus withdrew back to Thessalonica.

He spent the next year year organizing his new kingdom and finally had himself crowned Emperor in 1227.

We now have two men claiming to be the Roman Emperor, a situation which caused considerable anxiety amongst the Orthodox clergy.

For example, the Bishop of Thessalonica refused to crown Theodorus.

He was trying to be loyal to the chain of command and felt that only a patriarch could crown a Vasilefs, and the Patriarch, as far as he was concerned, lived in Nicaea.

Not everyone felt this way, and the Bishop of Ohrid stepped up to crown Dukas.

But the clergy of East and West began a long correspondence with one another about how to resolve the crisis.

There were people on both sides who simply condemned the other as false, but many of these men had grown up before twelve oh four and yearned to work together and to restore unity to both the Church and the Empire.

Theodorus gave his brothers the rank of despotes and appointed one to govern Epirus and the other Thessaly.

He then forged ahead with plans to capture all of Thrace.

Despite being at peace with Bulgaria, he invaded their territory in twelve thirty.

It was a big gamble, but presumably he felt he could never reach the Bosphorus until they had been cowed.

Unfortunately, the new Tsar, Ivan Arsen, crushed the Romans near Philippopolis.

We have no description of the battle.

Perhaps the Cumans played a leading role once more.

What we do know is that Dukas was captured by the enemy, and his army scattered to the winds.

In the aftermath, the Bulgarians swept south.

They lifted Philippopolis and Adrianople from Roman hands, and then moved west, taking Ceres, Prelep, and Ohrid, along with many of the fortresses which Dukas had annexed on his way to Thessaloniki.

Such was the vacuum of political authority that few garrisons were willing to stand and fight.

They knew that no relief force was coming to their aid.

Like Roman and Latin control before them, these acquisitions were not firmly in Bulgarian hands, but for now it put an end to the thought that Epirus would be the state which ended this contest and took Constantinople.

Dukas was blinded to put an end to his pretensions, though we're not done with him yet.

It's worth saying that the armies fighting these battles were probably only a few thousand strong.

That's all you needed to capture vast swathes of territory in this new world.

As you know, the Romans discouraged the build-up of private military power.

They wanted everything centralized.

So when that central authority and central field army disappear, this is what happens.

Huge tracts of farmland were wide open to attack.

Their local fortresses defended by just a hundred men with no fixed loyalty.

With a motivated army, Epirus was able to sweep through hundreds of miles of territory.

But one bad defeat, and it all crumbled away.

Back in Greece, the Epirate state divided up into its constituent parts.

Epirus itself was ruled by Michael II Dukas, son of the state's founder.

Theodorus was eventually released by the Bulgarians and returned to Thessalonica to rule with his son John, while his brother Manuel controlled Thessaly.

Family squabbles saw these territories change hands and people rise and fall from favour, but essentially the southwest Balkans, referred to as Epirus in the scholarship and some maps, had become a family-run, decentralized kingdom.

Its constituent parts proved to be durable regional lordships, with members of the Komninos Dukas clan as its ruling class.

Meanwhile, the Latins still controlled the area around Athens, the Peloponnese, and the islands of the Western Aegean,

but essentially just held them.

They could offer no practical help to Constantinople beyond a bit of state service and a trickle of revenue.

The Latin emperors now held no more than the capital itself and a slither of land either side.

They were utterly dependent on Western Europe for reinforcements and only held on thanks to Venetian support and the rivalry between Epirus, Nicaea and the Bulgarians.

Each of these powers wanted Constantinople and would actively block the others from getting there first.

These squabbles would keep the Latins in the city for another forty years.

years.

Had one power become dominant and applied the right pressure, the remnants of the Fourth Crusade would have been ejected from New Rome just 25 years after the sack.

Back in Constantinople, Robert of Courtney was driven from his throne by a conspiracy and then died trying to make a comeback.

This chaos left his 11-year-old brother Baldwin II as emperor.

A regent was needed, and the Latins chose John of Brienne, the king of Jerusalem.

John was in Italy at the time, which tells you all you need to know about how Outramir has been faring during this period.

Anyway, it will be John of Brienne who mans the Theodosian walls next week when the forces of Nicaea attempt to retake Constantinople for the Roman Empire.

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