late in the summer. He advanced up the Sakarya east of Nicaea [i.e. in the
direction of Sogut, seat of the proto-Ottoman Turks] and was soon surrounded by the desolation which his western concerns had crowded out of his mind. He was
unable to catch the Turks.” Cf above, 1280-81: “Scythian desert”.
“There were very few people tilling the soil, and it was difficult to provide even the coarsest of bread for the soldiers. A mute witness, samples of the bread, the brown harvest of Michael's hopes blasted, was sent to Constantinople. The
emperor turned back, marched west of Bursa [Gk: Prousa], and [re-]fortified the cities of Achyraous and Ulubad/Lopadion. The latter lay on the western end of Lake Apolyant or Lake Uluabad: west of Prusa/Bursa, about half-way along the highway** from Cyzicus/Erdek [east] to Bursa. Achyraous was further south, halfway to Smyrna. Michael's resolve to protect these cities, far below the plateau, distant from the Sakarya, reveals the collapse of the frontier defences” (so argues Lindner). Cf 1290-93.
(**) From west to east, the old Roman highway ran from Cyzicus [near modern Erdek] past Lake Apolyant [Ulubat Golu] through Lopadion and east to Bursa. The fortress at Lopadion had originally been built in 1130, so we may imagine Michael was restoring it.
4. Sicily: Emperor Michael of Byzantium, aged 58, fomented the massive revolt afterwards known as the "Sicilian Vespers"*, beginning in Palermo on 29-30 March 1282. The rising wrecks Charles' plans for another invasion of the ‘Greek’ (Rhomaioi) empire. Bartusis calls it “the crowning achievement in the long career of a master diplomat” (LBA p.64).
Michael VIII in his memoirs wrote: “The Sicilians, disdaining the rest of Charles' force as despicable, dared to raise arms and free themselves from slavery.
Therefore, if I said that God who granted freedom to them, granted it through us, I should tell the truth” (Vasiliev’s rendering). Runciman, Vespers p. 220, quotes it thus: "Should I dare to claim that I was God's instrument to bring freedom to the Sicilians, then I should only be stating the truth".
(*) ‘Vespers’ means evening prayers. The sobriquet was first used in the late 1400s, alluding to the legendary use of Easter bells to call the insurgents to arms the following day (Easter Tuesday). Alternatively the revolt began as a local riot in Palermo, the first Frenchman being killed only seconds before the bells were sounded for vespers on Easter Monday, 30 March.
Beginning in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Palermo on the NW coast, the Sicilian people rose up against the French. In the course of one night and one morning, 2,000 French men and women are killed; Angevin (French) flags are replaced with those of the late Frederick II [d.1250: the former German king of Sicily]; and heralds are sent to ignite support across Sicily. The revolt first
spreads south to Corleone, then east to Messina. Within a few weeks, Sicily was cleared of all Frenchmen; the island passed to Aragon.
Peter (Pedro) of Aragon landed in Sicily six months later, on 30 August, entered Palermo and then sent envoys to parlay with Charles who had earlier
crossed from Calabria to Messina. Fearing Peter’s popularity with the Sicilians, the Angevin withdraw back to the Italian mainland (Norwich 1996: 251).
Peter of Aragon accepted the throne offered by the Sicilians, and a 20-year war for possession of Sicily followed between the Angevin kings of Naples and the Aragonese kings of Sicily. The Almogávares (Aragonese and Catalan light
infantry) [see 1303-04] formed the most effective element of Peter’s army. Their discipline and ferocity, the force with which they hurled their javelins, and their mobility, made them very formidable to the heavy cavalry of the Angevin armies ( —Wikipedia, 2009, under ‘Almogavars’). Later, - see 1303 – they will also prevail over the Turkish horse-archers in Asia Minor.
Above: Michael VIII Palaeologus. Territorial review
At the end of Michael’s reign, the empire held lands in Europe and Asia: more in the former than in the latter.
In the east Byzantium ruled the north-western fifth of Asia Minor, from Nicomedia in the north to Miletus in the SW. Its European domains comprised Thrace and thence west to Epirus and Albania, where Angevin [French] Naples held a number of ex-Romaic cities; Macedonia and Thessaly; a part of the Peloponnesus (Mistra and Monemvasia); and Constantinople.
Byzantium's European territories were significantly larger than the size of its Asian provinces. The longest land transect was a line across the northern Balkans from the Adriatic coast of Albania to the Black Sea coast NW of Constantinople, with Scopia/Skopje, Philippopolis/Plovdiv and Mesembria as the northernmost imperial possessions.
— Latins: Angevin (French) Naples [until 1282] and various subordinate Latin dukes still held half the Peloponnesus and the middle section of Greece (Patras, Corinth, Athens); and, as noted, Venice held Crete and a few islands in the Aegean. Byzantium ruled only the SE quarter of the Morea.
— Asia Minor was divided one-fifth to four-fifths between
Byzantium/Rhomaniya and the Seljuks of Rum, themselves subject to the
Mongol Il-Khan of Persia, with the Sultan of Iconium ruling as nominal overlord of the various petty Turkish emirs. Cf 1290: The Ottomans will proclaim their independence.
— In the SW, the Turks held most of Caria. The frontier ran along the line Miletus-Tralles-Philadelphia, the middle Meander valley having become a marchland. Cf 1294 – Miletus.
— In Bithynia, Byzantium ruled only a little to the east of Brusa, Nicaea and Nicomedia, i.e. to the lower Sangarios River. Cf above, under 1281: “Scythian desert”.
— Constantinople controlled nearly the whole Aegean. The Latins controlled Crete [Venice]; a few Aegean islands, namely Paros and Naxos [Venice] ; and the Principality of Achaia, i.e. most of the Peloponnesus and to Athens.
— A further "Greek" kingdom continued in coastal NE Asia Minor and in the southern Crimea (Cherson): the tiny “empire” of Trebizond.
In short, the “Empire” was penned in between the Seljuks of Rum, the ghazi emirates [see 1282], Venetian Crete, the Latin principality of the Peloponnesus (Achaea), the Serbs (at Pech and Nish), and the Bulgarians (at Sofia). It consisted
essentially of the wider littoral of the Aegean: northern Greece; the central Balkans from present-day Albania to Thrace; Constantinople; and the north- western fifth of Asia Minor. The population totalled about five million. Changes since Comnenian Times
If we compare the restored empire of Michael Palaeologus in 1290 with that of the Comnenoi 140 years earlier, under John II, we find that the empire is about one-third smaller. The net losses were as follows:
a. The East Mediterranean-southern Asia Minor: Cilicia lost to the Armenians; Cyprus to the Latins; and the Attalian-Carian (Pamphylian) coast to the Turks. The Armenian ruler of Cilicia had first obtained the title “king” in 1199. Then in 1221 the Seljuqs took Alanya, breaking land commerce between Christian (Greek) Asia Minor and Christian (Greco-Armenian) Cilicia.
b. The Aegean: was again almost all Greek; but Crete, Paros and Naxos have been lost to the Venetians.
Venetian rule had been established on Crete, Paros and Naxos in 1204 and 1210, and Constantinople never recovered them.
c. Lower Greece: Various Latin lords controlled most of the Morea and the Thebes-Athens sector.
Latin rule had been first established in Corinth and the Morea in 1205, immediately after the capture of Constantinople by Latin (Franco-Venetian) Crusaders.
d. In the NW: The Serbs have taken Belgrade and the whole Morava valley above Nish from the Bulgarians.
During the 1180s, Belgrade had been fought over by Hungary and Byzantium, while the Serbs encroached in the south.
In 1189 when Barbarossa’s crusade came through, Nish was held by Nemanja’s Serbs. But the Byzantines under Isaac Angelus decisively re-asserted their power in 1191, defeating Nemanja and making the Morava the border between Serbia and Byzantium. Then from 1192 to 1204 there was a four-way contest for the Morava valley between the Serbs, Hungarians, the newly resurgent Bulgarians, and the Byzantines. Various Serb princes were allied with Bulgaria and Hungary. Responding to a Hungarian invasion, in 1203 the Bulgarians invaded the NW domains of Byzantium, attacking Nish and Belgrade.
After 1204, with the fall of Constantinople to the Latins, it was left to Hungary and Bulgaria to fight for Belgrade; the Serbs still had no unitary kingdom.
Bulgaria ruled the Morava valley for most of the 1200s.
An attack on Belgrade by the restored Byzantine empire in 1281 (see above) was unsuccessful.
Then in 1284 Serbia finally obtained official control of Belgrade, which was formally ceded by Hungary.
e. Albania, Macedonia and Thessaly are Greek again: recovered from the Latin Empire during the 1200s.
f. The sub-Danube region - Bulgaria north of the Balkan Range - was controlled by Byzantium in 1143; in 1282 it is Bulgarian again.
The ‘Second Bulgarian Empire’ emerged in 1185-97 by breaking from Byzantine rule. Between the autumn of 1185 and the spring of 1186, the Bulgarians revolted and drove the Greeks out of the whole of northern Bulgaria, with the exception of Varna; and in 1187 and 1190 Byzantine re-invasions were defeated.
Thus in 1282 Scopia/Skopje, Philippopolis/Plovdiv and Mesembria were the northernmost imperial possessions.
g. Northern Asia Minor and the Black Sea coast: The littoral east of Heraclea, including Sinope, has moved from Greek to Turkish rule.
* * *
To recap. The restored "empire" of 1261 was already a middle power. After 1283/85 it would lack a navy, and at best it could field about 10,000 troops - half the size of Alexius’s forces in 1100; and after 1300 fewer than that. From this time all Byzantine field armies will be quite small.
"Abuse of the pronoia system [land titles held nominally in return for military service, or more exactly: diversion of land taxes from the state to the soldiery] (writes Hussey) had its effect on the army which became almost entirely
mercenary and was consequently a heavy expense" (Hussey p.76; cf Treadgold 1997: 749, 819).
The pronoia, usually consisted of the concession of the income from cultivated lands together with the paroikoi [tenants, workers] established on the land in question, and it included not only the taxes but part of the income of the land as well. However, various fiscal rights of the state, unrelated to land, such as for instance customs dues, water rights and fishing rights, were also given as pronoiai. In most cases, the pronoia was granted to an individual, either for a specific period of time or, more often, for life, in return for his military service. — Foundation for the Hellenic World, ‘Economics in the Late Byzantine Period’ online at www.fhw.gr/chronos/10/en/o/oa/oa3a.html, accessed 2009.
In these years, Byzantium’s main opponents were the Serbs in the west and the Turks in the east. The latter, however, were not a unified power but divided into several statelets or beyliks. The Ottomans, under their first emir Osman, 1281- 1326, were at first just one of a half-dozen Turkish ghazi emirates or beyliks in Asia Minor recognising the distant suzerainty of Rum and their overlords the Mongol Ilkhans of Persia.
Son of Michael VIII, Andronicus was aged 24 at accession. First wife: Anna of Hungary, d. 1281. Second wife, marr. 1284: Yolanda-Irene of Montferrat, dau. of the Marquis of Montferrat in "Germanic" Italy, d. 1317. Andronicus's sisters married John Asen III of Bulgaria and John III of Trebizond.
— In their own signatures, the emperors of the Palaeologan dynasty used the following formula: X en Khristoi toi theoi basileus kai autokrator ton Rhomaion ho Palaiologos, ie. "X in Christ the God, sovereign and emperor of the Romans [= Byzantines] the
Palaeologus."
— The gold coin of Byzantium, the hyperpyron, now contained 14 carats; by 1310 this would be reduced to 12.
Andronicus was “a well-educated prince, eloquent, devoted to learning, and very pious, but weak, and susceptible to every influence, especially to that of his second wife, Yolande de Montferrat. He was devoid of any political qualities.” — Diehl in Baynes 1949: p.44.
1282:
The Balkans: Now formally allied with the Angevins, John Doukas of Thessaly again attacks Byzantine Macedonia. Emperor Michael appealed for help from his son-in-law* Nogai, the khan of the Golden Horde [Kipchak Empire], who sent 4,000 troops. But no expedition proceeded against Thessaly because meanwhile Michael died – in December 1282 (LBA p.64). Andronicus acceded to the throne. See 1283.
“With him [Michael VIII] died the last pretence that the union of the churches [West and East] could ever be achieved by force” (Nicol, Lady p.38).
(*) As noted earlier, Michael married two of his illegitimate and adopted
daughters to the ‘Mongol’ kings: Euphrosyne married Nogay, khan of the Golden Horde; and Maria married Abagha, khan of Persia.
2. Sole emperor from 1282, Andronikos II immediately repudiated his father's unpopular Church union with the Papacy, but was unable to resolve the related schism within the Orthodox clergy until 1310. Andronikos was also plagued by economic difficulties, and during his reign the value of the Byzantine hyperpyron depreciated precipitously while the state treasury accumulated more than seven times less revenue (in nominal coins) than it had done previously. —Wikipedia, 2009, ‘Andronicus II’.
At the beginning of his reign, in 1282, Andronicus ruled probably about five million people; by 1312, however, after the loss of almost all of Byzantine Asia Minor, he will rule only around two million. “The empire [will lose] at least half its population in 30 years. This was the real catastrophe”, writes Treadgold, State p. 841.
3. SW Asia Minor, inland in the Meander valley: Possible date of a second
capture, and destruction, of Byzantine Tralles - the future Aydin - by Menteshe’s Turks. Nearby Nyssa [Tk: Sultanhisar], further upstream, also fell (Parry & Cook 1976: 12). Langdon (1992) prefers to date this to late 1283 or early 1284. See below under ca. 1283.
According to Pachymeres, the fortress-town of Tralles had recently [ca 1280] been repopulated or recolonised and re-fortified with as many as “36,000” Greek settlers or re-settlers (3,600 would be more credible). The Turks reduced the town by blockade and starvation, refusing to let the inhabitants surrender until most of them had died (Pachymeres, "De Michaele Palaeologo", VI, 20 and 21, in Patrologica Graeca, CXLIII, 929-34, cited in Vryonis 1971). See 1294.
Lindner: “In 1282 [or earlier] Michael's son Andronicus led a force up the Meander to rebuild and resettle Aydin/Tralles. He planned to create a large and prosperous city, and a friendly estimate of the population of his new foundation endows this "Andronicopolis" with the improbable total of ‘36,000’ [sic]
residents. When Andronicus departed without engaging the Turks in the surrounding countryside, they cut (ca. 1283) the water supply and forced the city's prompt capitulation.” The Turkish leader on this occasion was one Menteshe Bey (Pachymeres VI.21, cited by Hopwood, “Frontiers” p.158). Lower Meander Valley: The Turks destroy, ca. 1283, a “large” army under Andronicus Nestongus at Nyssa, modern Sultanhisar, upstream from Tralles; Nestongus is captured. Following this, the Turks cut off the water supply to the refortified town of Tralles and it was forced to surrender (1283 or 1284)
(Langdon p.10).
This sealed the fate of the lower Meander. See 1293: tribute exacted from Byzantine Miletus.
NW Asia Minor: Failure also marked Michael's own effort in Bithynia. There, frontier garrisons which had not received their wages left their posts. In early 1282 Turks on the lower Sakarya had already repelled Byzantine troops. As noted earlier, Michael's expedition took the field late in the summer. He
advanced up the Sakarya south-east of Nicaea and was soon surrounded by the desolation which his western concerns had crowded out of his mind. He was unable to catch the retreating Turks (Sinor 1996: 16). Cf 1285/86: Bursa.
1283:
1. The west Aegean: The last occasion on which a Byzantine blue-water