No More Learning



## p. 481 (#523) ############################################

The Franks in Asia Minor
481
colony of Pegae, where they were sure of a welcome, they occupied the
now important town of Panderma, and on 6 December met the army of
Lascaris beneath the walls of Poimanenón, a strong castle to the south-
east. Despite the inequality of numbers, the superior prowess of the
armoured Frankish knights decided the fate of the battle; the Greeks
fled, and the neighbouring city of Lopadium, now the village of Ulubad,
but then one of the fairest towns in the country and the bulwark of
Prusa, opened its gates to the clemency of the victors. Prusa, however,
protected by its strong natural position and its high walls, resisted their
attack, and the abandonment of the siege encouraged the native popu-
lation to revolt against their rule, which, though admittedly humane,
was still that of a foreign race and an alien creed. A second detachment
of Franks, under the Latin Emperor's brother, Henry, now accepted the
invitation of the Armenians who dwelt in the Troad, and who probably
belonged to the Latin faith, to renew the exploits of the Trojan war,
one of the few classical memories known to the crusaders. Crossing the
Dardanelles to Abydos, Henry traversed the passes of Ida, and estab-
lished his headquarters at Adramyttium. Thither a second Greek army,
under the command of Theodore's brother Constantine, marched to
attack him. But this second pitched battle, fought on 19 March 1205,
was even more disastrous to the Greeks than the first; they lost many
men and much booty, and the people of the country began to pay
tribute to the invaders. A third attempt, this time by the “mad”
tyrant of Philadelphia, was defeated by the personal courage of Henry
and the irresistible rush of the French cavalry. This success
completed by the occupation of Nicomedia by a third detachment of
Franks under Macaire de Ste. Menehould, the Lord High Steward. Five
brief months had sufficed for the conquest of the entire rich province of
Opsicium and more beside; the whole of north-west Asia Minor from
Adramyttium to Nicomedia recognised the Latin Empire ; Nicaea and
Prusa alone held out for Lascaris.
At this moment, however, the Greeks of Asia were saved by the
nation which they are wont to consider as their greatest enemy in
Europe. Their fellow-countrymen in Thrace had summoned Kalojan,
the Bulgarian Tsar, against the Franks, and Baldwin felt compelled to
recall his brother and the other French leaders from Asia Minor to his
aid against this new foe. Henry and the other two detachments
hastened to obey his command; of all their conquests they retained
only Pegae, as a military and naval base on the Hellespont; and with
them the Armenian colony of the Troad crossed over into Europe, for
fear of reprisals from the Greeks. Thus abruptly ended the first
attempt of the Franks to conquer Asia Minor. The first and last
French Duke of Nicaea fell in a Bulgarian ambuscade before Philippo-
polis, without ever having set foot in his Asiatic duchy?
1 Epistolarum Innocentii III, Lib. viii. 131. Cf. also supra, Chapter xiv, p. 424.
was
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XVI.
31


## p. 482 (#524) ############################################

482
Theodore I proclaimed Emperor
Lascaris availed himself of the departure of the Franks to occupy
the places which they had evacuated, and his perseverance seemed to
warrant the assumption of the imperial title. It was necessary, how-
ever, first to elect a Patriarch; for the Ecumenical throne was vacant.
But Nicaea had by this time become the home of all that was most
learned in the ecclesiastical world of Greece, so that the election of a
Patriarch caused no difficulty. The newly-elected Patriarch hastened
to crown Theodore Emperor, and the historian Nicetas composed an
address which the monarch was to deliver on this occasion, enforcing the
obedience of his subjects and setting forth the reunion of all the Greeks
under his sceptre and the recapture of Constantinople as the objects of
his reign. Thus, in the spring of 1206, two years after his flight from
the fallen city, Theodore Lascaris was crowned at Nicaea? .
No sooner was he invested with the imperial dignity, than he began to
carry out the programme which Nicetas had traced for him. A politic
truce with Henry, now Latin Emperor and fully occupied in Europe,
set him free to turn his undivided attention to his Greek rivals.
“Mad Theodore," Sábbas, and Mavrozómes were driven from their
respective possessions; the two former vanished from history; the third,
as the father-in-law of so influential a potentate as Kai-Khusrū, with
whom Lascaris wished to remain at peace, received back a strip of terri-
tory, including Chonae, the birthplace of Nicetas himself. The next
blow was dealt at the Empire of Trebizond. Alexius had offended the
Seljūq Sultan, who besieged his capital”; David, taking advantage of the
evacuation of Nicomedia by the French, had sent his young general,
Synadenós, to occupy that city. But this inexperienced strategist was
surprised by the abler Lascaris, who led his troops through a difficult
mountain
pass
and even wielded the axe himself to remove the trees
from his path. Such energy was bound to be successful; Synadenós was
taken prisoner; David was forced to restrict the Trapezuntine frontier
to Heraclea, and even from there the Emperor of Nicaea threatened to
drive him farther eastward. At this, in self-preservation, David called
in the Franks to his aid.
The Franks had been ready to ally themselves with the sole remaining
Greek rival of Lascaris, for they complained that he had broken his
truce with them, and they were anxious to prevent the growth of a
Greek naval power, of which he had laid the foundations under the
guidance of a Calabrian corsair? Accordingly, towards the end of 1206,
Henry sent Pierre de Bracheuil and Payen d'Orléans for the second
time to Asia Minor, with the promise that Bracheuil should have Pegae
and Cyzicus with the island of Marmora as a fief, while Thierri de Loos,
1 After March 20, the date of the Patriarch's election. Kállistos apud Migne,
P. G. cxlvii. 465.
Recueil des historiens des Croisades. Historiens Orientaux, 11. pt i. 101.
3 Μιχαήλ Ακομινάτου τα σωζόμενα, ΙΙ. 159.


## p. 483 (#525) ############################################

Second Frankish Invasion
483
the Seneschal of the Latin Empire, was invested with Nicomedia.
This second Frankish invasion repeated on a smaller scale the achieve-
ments of the first. From Pegae as a base Bracheuil occupied and re-
fortified the peninsula of Cyzicus, and the Seneschal, sailing direct from
Constantinople to Nicomedia, speedily converted its beautiful minster
of the Divine Wisdom into his castle. Two other French nobles,
Macaire de Ste. Menehould and Guillaume de Sains, established them-
selves at Hereke to the north of the Gulf of Izmid and at Gemlik, or
Civitot, as the crusaders called it, the port of Nicaea and Prusa, thus
cutting off both those cities from the sea. Thus hemmed in by the
Franks, Lascaris sent envoys to the Bulgarian Tsar, urging him to
attack Constantinople. Once again Kalojan created a welcome diversion
in Thrace, and once again it was necessary to recall the French to
Europe. Only small garrisons were left to hold the Frankish quadri-
lateral.
Theodore at once proceeded to attack these isolated fortresses. So
fierce was the fighting at Civitot, that only five of its brave defenders
remained unwounded when Henry arrived in haste from Constantinople
to its relief, and such was its condition that he decided to withdraw the
garrison and abandon it. Cyzicus was so closely invested by land and
sea that a second expedition was required to raise the siege ; Thierri de
Loos was captured outside the walls of Nicomedia, and its fortified
minster would have been taken, had not Henry returned to save it.
Then a truce for two years was concluded; the Greeks released their
prisoners, the French evacuated Cyzicus and Nicomedia, and their
fortifications were destroyed. Pegae seems already to have fallen; only
Hereke remained Frankish.
The truce, though equally beneficial to both parties, was soon
broken. David, ever on the watch for an opportunity of attacking the
rival Emperor of the East, wrote to Constantinople, begging that he
might be included among the subjects, and that his land might be
considered a part, of the Latin Empire. Thus sure of Henry's support,
he crossed the Sangarius, invaded the dominions of Lascaris with a
body of Frankish auxiliaries, and at first carried all before him. But
Theodore's general, Andronicus Gídos, suddenly fell upon the Franks
at a moment when they were isolated in the “Rough Passes” of
Nicomedia ; scarcely a man survived to tell the tale. Assistance sent
by Henry merely postponed the fall of Heraclea, which was annexed
with Amastris to the Empire of Nicaea. The only important Frankish
success was the recovery of Pegae by its feudal lord, Pierre de Bracheuil.
No wonder that Lascaris complained to the Pope of such breaches
of the truce, begged his Holiness to induce the Franks to conclude
a permanent peace with him, making the sea the boundary between him
and them, and threatened, if these terms were refused, to join the Bul-
garians against them. Innocent III replied bidding him render homage
CH. XVI.
31-2


## p. 484 (#526) ############################################

484
Defeat and death of Kai-Khusrū I
war.
to the Emperor Henry and obedience to the Holy Father, whose legate
might then intervene on his behalf at Constantinople. Theodore's
response was an attempt to recapture the imperial city, an enterprise
in which he was aided by the French lord of Pegae, turned traitor to his
lawful sovereign? . Thus early were the Latins divided against them-
selves, and even men of good family entered the service of the Greeks.
A new enemy,
and one of his own household, now arose to disturb
the career of Lascaris and the peace of Asia Minor. The fugitive
Emperor Alexius III, after wandering about Europe, arrived at the
court of Kai-Khusrū, whom, years before, he had sheltered, baptised, and
adopted at Constantinople. The dethroned monarch begged the Sultan
to obtain for him, as the rightful Emperor of the Greeks, the crown
which his son-in-law had usurped. Thinking that his guest might prove
a serviceable instrument of his own designs, the ambitious Sultan, who
had not forgotten that his predecessors had once ruled at Nicaea, sent
an ultimatum to Theodore, offering him the alternative of instant
abdication or Theodore's reply was to march against him to
Antioch on the Maeander, whither he had advanced with Alexius. The
battle was at first unfavourable to Lascaris; 800 Latin mercenaries, who,
despite the Papal excommunication, accompanied him, were annihilated,
and the Sultan struck him a tremendous blow on the head, which caused
him to fall from his horse. For a moment the Emperor seemed at the
mercy of his opponent; but with great presence of mind he drew his
sword, and severed the hind legs of the mare which the Sultan rode.
Kai-Khusrū fell ; in an instant his head was cut off, and stuck on a spear
in full sight of his army? Deprived of their leader, the Seljüqs were
glad to make peace; the victor took Alexius with him to Nicaea,
blinded himn (according to one accounts), and placed him in the
monastery of Hyakinthos, where he died. So dramatic a triumph
inspired the imagination, or rather the rhetoric, of the two chief living
men of letters. Nicetas composed a panegyric of the victor who had
routed the hitherto invincible Turks, and his brother, the ex-Metro-
politan of Athens, sent a letter of congratulation from his exile in Ceos,
in which he compared Lascaris to Hercules and Basil “the Bulgar-slayer.
Lascaris himself issued a manifesto to the Greek world, promising that,
if all his countrymen would but help him, he would“ soon free the land
from the Latin dogs”; and they offered their aid if he would attack
Constantinople.
The news had, however, a very different effect upon the Latin
Emperor. His comment on the victory was that “the victor had been
ܪ܂
2
1 Buchon, Recherches et Matériaux, 11. 211.
Acropolita (17) says that the Sultan was beheaded by an unknown hand;
Nicetas (Megawin Bißlco0vxn, 1. 132), in a rhetorical passage, and Abū 'l-Fidā
(Historiens Orientaux, 1. 86), attribute his death to the Emperor.
3 Sathas, Μεσαιωνική Βιβλιοθήκη, VΙΙ. 457.


## p. 485 (#527) ############################################

Third Frankish Invasion
485
vanquished,” for he reckoned the loss of the Latin mercenaries as more
than counterbalancing the defeat of the Turks. He knew, however,
that the Greeks were flushed with their success and meditated an assault
upon the imperial city, so he resolved to wait no longer, but attack
them first. Accordingly he crossed to Pegae, now the sole possession
of the Franks in Asia Minor, and held since Bracheuil's treachery
by Henri de Grangerin', whereupon Lascaris took to the mountains.
The murmurs of his own subjects, whose property was thus exposed to
the raids of the Frankish cavalry, forced the Greek Emperor, however, to
give battle. The two armies met at the river Rhyndakos on 15 October
1211, and although the Greek host was greatly superior in numbers and
was aided by a fresh band of Latin renegades, the victory rested with
Henry, who, according to the account which he has left us of this
campaign, did not lose a single man. At this the Greeks right up to
the Seljūq frontier submitted to the victor, whose kindness to the
vanquished was proverbial. A few castles alone held out for Theodore,
and Henry announced from Pergamus to all his friends his triumph over
the four enemies of his empire, of whom Lascaris was the first and fore-
most. Ere long his standards had reached as far south as Nymphaeum
near Smyrna, as far east as Poimanenón and Lentianá near Prusa. But
it was easier to overrun Asia Minor than to hold it, for the Franks were
but a handful of men, and Henry appealed in vain for military colonists
from the west. He therefore came to terms with his adversary: he was
to retain the Troad and north-west Asia Minor as far as Lopadium ; to
the east of that, and from Adramyttium southward to Smyrna, lay the
dominions of Lascaris; a neutral uninhabited zone was left between the
two Empires and a strong frontier guard prevented emigration from one
to the other. Even this restricted Frankish territory was perforce
entrusted to the charge of a Greek garrison under a Greek commander.
Theodore had made what proved to be a durable peace with the
Franks, broken only by a raid of the Duke of Naxos which he avenged
by the capture of his enemy; but the new Seljūq Sultan, Kai-Kā’ūs 1,
had not forgotten the death of his father. In 1214 or 1215, a fortunate
raid delivered the Greek Emperor into his hand ; his first impulse was to
kill his prisoner, but he contented himself with a ransom and the
cession of several castles and towns. Such sudden reverses of fortune
were characteristic of this period of Greek history. Kai-Kā'ús continued
his career of conquest, took Sinope from the Empire of Trebizond, slew
David, who commanded there, and compelled the Emperor Alexius to pay
tribute and to render him military service? .
For several years Theodore remained at peace with the Latin
Emperor, while the hand of his own sister secured him the friendship of
the Duke of Naxos. He had meanwhile been left a widower; and, after
i Recueil des historiens des Croisades. Lois, 11. 470.
2 Ibid. , Historiens Orientaux, 1. 87; Papadopoulos-Keraméus, Fontes, 131.
. XVI.


## p. 486 (#528) ############################################

486
Theodore's death. His character
an unfortunate alliance with an Armenian princess, he married the
daughter of the Latin Empress Yolande, Maria de Courtenay, a politic
match which might give him a claim to her brother's throne. In fact,
during the interregnum which elapsed before the arrival of the
Emperor Robert at Constantinople in 1221, he planned a second attack
upon that city. His plan was frustrated by a counter-attack; he made
peace with his brother-in-law, and was only prevented by death from
strengthening their relationship and therewith his own claims by giving
the hand of his daughter Eudocia to Robert. He died in 1222, and was
laid beside his first wife and her father Alexius III in the monastery of
Hyakinthos at Nicaea. He had living one son by his Armenian
consort, but as this child was only eight years old, he bequeathed his
empire to the second husband of his eldest daughter-John Ducas
Vatatzes.
The Greeks, as their historians acknowledged, owed a great debt to
Theodore Lascaris as the re-founder of the fallen empire. In the face of
great difficulties he obtained recognition as the leader of Hellenism in
Asia, and even the Franks admired his courage and his military skill.
He was generous to his friends, and if he once, as was said, flayed an
enemy alive, the man was a double-dyed traitor and a disgrace to French
chivalry. As a diplomatist, he shewed the audacity which the times
demanded, and availed himself of those opportunities for playing off one
race against another which the Eastern question has always afforded ;
while he displayed the talent of a constructive statesman in making his
new capital the centre of all that was best in the Greek world. From
Euboea and Thrace, as well as from Byzantium, the local aristocracy
flocked to his court; he and his family were addressed by the begging-
letter writers of the Bosphorus; he sheltered the historian Nicetas, who
repaid him by three panegyrics, and he tried to attract the historian's
brother from his lonely island. Under his auspices, Nicaea became a
learned city, where rhetoric and poetry could be studied, while at
Smyrna Demetrius Karykes, called “ the chief of philosophers,” gave
lectures on logic. But the patriotism and common-sense of the
sovereign made him discourage those nice theological discussions which
were the delight of Byzantine divines, and which might have been
expected to find a congenial atmosphere in the city which had witnessed
two great Councils of the Church. Theodore was, however, fully alive to
the value of the hierarchy as a national and political force. He had
established the Patriarchate in his capital, and he supported the efforts
of the Patriarch for the Union of the Churches at a synod to be held
there. But this scheme failed ; both the Greeks of Epirus and the
Greeks of Trebizond declined to acknowledge the authority of the
Patriarch of Nicaea, whose actual jurisdiction was further restricted by
1 Blemmýdes, 4.


## p. 487 (#529) ############################################

John III Vatatzes succeeds
487
the creation of an autocephalous Serbian Church and of two Latin
bishoprics, one at Nicomedia, the other at Troy'.
During the later and more peaceful years of his reign, Theodore
encouraged trade with the Venetians, to whom he granted freedom from
customs dues throughout his empire, and for this a proper system of
coinage was required. Five issues of gold coins bear his image and
superscription, while inscriptions on towers at Prusa, at Nicaea, and at
Bender-Eregli still preserve his name and serve as an example of the
many buildings which he erected.
In the same year as Theodore, died his rival, the first Emperor of
Trebizond. Cut off by the Turkish occupation of Sinope from all hope of
expansion to the west, he seems to have turned his attention to the
northern coast of the Black Sea, and to have made the Crimea tributary
to Trebizond. His Asiatic Empire now extended no farther westward
than Oenaeum and the river Thermodon, while Savastopoli 18 hours
beyond Trebizond was its eastern boundary? But his capital was
deemed impregnable, alike by nature and art. Its mild climate, its
vineyards and oliveyards, its excellent water, and its abundant supply of
wood combined to make it, in the phrase of an enthusiastic panegyrist,
“ the apple of the eye of all Asia. ” It had long been under the special
protection of St Eugenius, whose monastery, and that of “the Golden-
headed Virgin,” were already features of the city.
John III Vatatzes, the second Emperor of Nicaea, was not long
allowed to occupy the throne unopposed. Two of Theodore's brothers
could not brook the succession of this Thracian nobleman, who, if he
belonged to a good family and had held high office at Court, was only
connected by marriage with the founder of the Empire. By money and
promises they raised a Frankish force at Constantinople, and returned at
its head to Asia Minor. Vatatzes met them near Poimanenón, the scene
of the battle twenty years before, and by his personal courage won a
decisive victory. Four neighbouring Frankish fortresses fell into his
hands, and in 1225 the Latin Emperor was glad to obtain peace by the
cession of Pegae, The Franks, in the words of one of their own
chroniclers, lost “nearly all the land which had been won beyond the
Hellespont”; they abandoned the Troad, and retained nothing but the
territory near Constantinople and Nicomedia. Well might the enthusi-
astic Patriarch bid them begone to their own countryEven beyond
the coasts of Asia Minor the long arm of the Greek Emperor smote
them. His fleet not only watched the Dardanelles from the former
factory of the Quirini at Lampsacus and intercepted vessels coming from
the west to Constantinople, but captured the four islands of Lesbos,
Chios, Samos, and Icaria, which had been assigned to the Latin
1 VV, 11. 275; Epistolarum Innocentii III, Lib. xiv. 90.
2 Papadopoulos-Keraméus, Fontes, 117-8.
3 Revue des études grecques, vii. 76.
CH. XVI.


## p. 488 (#530) ############################################

488
Conspirucies against Vatatzes
Empire by the partition treaty. An expedition in 1233 against Leo
Gabalâs, the “ Lord of Rhodes and the Cyclades,” who bore the proud
title of “ Caesar," and asserted his independence of the Greek Emperor,
failed, however, to take his famous fortress. Another naval under-
taking in aid of the Cretans, who had risen against Venice, was equally
unsuccessful. The Emperor's troops did, indeed, capture several Cretan
fortresses, and a detachment of them held out for some years in the
island. But the expedition cost him nearly the whole of his fleet,
shipwrecked in a storm off the island of Cerigo.
Vatatzes had defeated the Franks; but he still had enemies to fear
within his own court. The capture of the late sovereign's brothers at the
battle of Poimanenón, and the loss of their eyesight as the penalty of
their treason, had rendered them harmless ; but a fresh conspiracy,
organised by his first cousin Nestóngos and several other magnates, was
discovered at the very moment when he was fighting against his
country's foes.
The Emperor's clemency towards the principal con-
spirator, who was merely imprisoned and then allowed to escape,
surprised his contemporaries. But from that moment he surrounded
himself with guards, and listened to the prayers of his wife that he
would be careful of a life so valuable to his country. It was probably
about this time that he moved the capital to Nymphaeum, his favourite
winter residence, which thenceforth continued to be the seat of govern-
ment till the recapture of Constantinople, while the fertile plain near
Clazomenae was chosen as the imperial villeggiatura in spring. Nicaea
remained, however, the seat of the Patriarch, and it was there that the
Emperors were crowned.
The election of the old warrior John of Brienne as Latin Emperor
inspired the Franks with the hope of recovering the territory which they
had lost in Asia Minor by the last peace. One of the conditions of his
election was that he should have “the Duchy of Nicomedia," and that
“the Kingdom of Nicaea with all its appurtenances and all the land that
the Latins ever possessed beyond the Hellespont, comprising the Duchy
of Neokastra,"2 should become the domain of Baldwin II. John waited
patiently till he had made adequate preparations for the re-conquest of
these hypothetical “kingdoms" and "duchies” and till a favourable
moment for attack should arrive. The exhaustion of the Greek forces
after their unsuccessful expedition against Rhodes in 1233 seemed to be
a suitable opportunity, and the Latin Emperor landed at Lampsacus.
But Vatatzes, though his forces were diminished in numbers, proved
himself so clever a strategist that he compelled his adversaries to hug
the shore where their fleet was constantly at hand. One important suc-
cess, the recapture of Pegae, was the sole result of this long-planned
1 Blemmýdes, 61-2; Schlumberger, Numismatique de l'Orient latin, 215;
Pl. viii. 17, 18.
2 Fontes Rerum Austriacarum, Abt. 11. xiii. 265.
יל


## p. 489 (#531) ############################################

Greco-Bulgarian Alliance
489
campaign? .
John returned to Constantinople, nor did the Franks
re-attempt the invasion of Asia Minor. Henceforth it was not they but
the rejuvenated Greek Empire which could take the offensive, and it
became the object of Vatatzes to carry out the aspirations of his
predecessor and drive them from their diminished dominions alike in
Europe and in Asia.
With this policy in view, he sought an alliance with the hereditary
enemy of his race, the Bulgarian Tsar, John Asên II, whose signal
victory over the victorious Greeks of Epirus on the field of Klokotinitza
had made him the dominant factor in Balkan politics. The engagement
of their children, both still in the schoolroom, seemed to guarantee their
co-operation against the Franks, and Vatatzes celebrated the capture of
the Venetian colony of Gallipoli and the betrothal of his son Theodore
in rapid succession. Thrace was soon almost entirely freed from the
Latins, and the Empire of Nicaea for the first time extended into
Europe, where the river Maritza became the frontier between the Greek
and the Slavonic states. The allies even laid siege to Constantinople
“with infinite thousands of armed men," till the approaching winter of
1235 compelled them to return to their homes. In the following year
they renewed the siege by land and sea, but this time the united forces
of the Latins repulsed their attack. Had they been successful, the
Greeks and the Bulgarians would have quarrelled over the possession of
the city which both coveted. As it was, the unnatural alliance grew
weaker as one ally realised what he had had to sacrifice and the other
what he had assisted to restore. The Greek Emperor could not but
regret that the price which he had to pay for the Bulgarian's aid was the
recognition of the independence of the Church of Trnovo and its
separation from the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch. The
Bulgarian Tsar could not fail to perceive that he had exchanged a weak
and tottering neighbour for a vigorous and powerful prince, and that on
the ruins of the alien Latin Empire he was reinstating a national
dynasty which would bar the way to Byzantium and the Aegean.
Personal and theological influences further combined to break up the
alliance. Asên's consort, a Hungarian princess, was connected with the
reigning family of Constantinople; while Pope Gregory IX, who had
hopes of converting the Bulgarian Tsar to the Roman faith, denounced
Vatatzes as “the enemy of God and the Church," and received from him
a haughty letter, in which the Greek ruler claimed to be the real
Emperor as the heir of Constantine, and plainly told the Pontiff that, if
he had yielded to superior force, he had not relinquished his rights, but
would never desist from besieging Constantinople.
1 BZ. , xiv. 219; Recueil des historiens des Croisades. Historiens Occidentaux, II.
382.
2 Les Registres de Grégoire IX, 11. 217.
3 Ibid. 11. 512, 659–60, 672–3; ’Adnvalov, 1. 369–78 ; BZ. xvi. 141-2.
CA. XVI.


## p. 490 (#532) ############################################

490
Triple League against Vatatzes
.
Asên accordingly resolved to abandon his ally; he obtained possession
of his daughter on the pretext of a father's natural longing to see her,
and then demonstrated his paternal affection by chastising the damsel
when she lamented her enforced separation from her youthful husband
and his kind parents. The appearance of a new factor in Balkan politics
at this moment facilitated the formation of a triple alliance against the
Greek Emperor. The Cumans, a horde of savages from the Caspian,
driven from their home by the Mongol invasion, had crossed the Danube
and penetrated as far south as Thrace. With them and with the
Bulgarians the Franks of Constantinople formed a league against
Vatatzes, for all three races had a common interest in driving him from
his newly-won possessions on Thracian soil. Their first effort was the
siege of Tzurulum, the modern Chorlu, between the present railway
and the Sea of Marmora, then an important fortress and the key of the
Greek position in Europe. The place was defended by one of those
generals who are better known for their good luck than for their good
strategy. On the present occasion the commander's reputation was once
more verified; in the midst of the siege the news reached Asên that his
wife, one of his children, and the newly-created Patriarch were dead.
This triple calamity dissolved the triple alliance; the pious Bulgarian
saw in his affliction the judgment of Heaven for his breach of faith ; he
sent his daughter back to the court of Vatatzes, and made peace with
the Greeks. The Franks and the Cumans, however, only waited for
reinforcements to renew the attack; at this second attempt Chorlu fell,
and its commander, a better but a less fortunate soldier than his
predecessor, was taken a prisoner to Constantinople. So important did
the capture of this fortress seem to the Latin Emperor that he wrote a
letter to King Henry III of England, setting forth the political results
of its submission? . It was some compensation for this loss that Vatatzes
captured two of the fortresses (Gebseh and Tusla, now stations on the
Anatolian railway) which the Franks still possessed between Nicomedia
and Constantinople. The Greek frontier was thus little more than
twenty miles from the imperial city. But the defeat of the Greek navy,
manned by raw sailors and commanded by an inexperienced Armenian,
prevented a further advance? .
Before renewing his attack upon the Latin Empire, Vatatzes resolved
to realise the dream of his predecessor and reunite all the Greeks under
one sceptre. The Emperors of Nicaea had viewed with suspicion the growth
of an independent Greek principality in Epirus under the despots of the
house of Angelus; and, when the despotat of Epirus became the Empire
of Salonica, this assumption of the imperial title bitterly offended the
only true “Emperor of the Romans” at Nicaea. Theological controversies
between the ecclesiastical authorities of the two rival Greek states further
1 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, iv. 54.
2 BZ. xiv. 220.


## p. 491 (#533) ############################################

First attack on Salonica
491
envenomed their relations, and the resentment of the Nicene divines was
doubtless all the deeper because the logic and the learning of the Epirote
party were superior to their own. Accordingly, the Asiatic Greeks had
viewed with equanimity the capture of the Emperor of Salonica by the
Bulgarians at the battle of Klokotinitza. But although Theodore
Angelus was a prisoner and blinded, his brother Manuel continued to
rule at Salonica, with the permission of the Bulgarian Tsar, till the latter,
smitten with the charms of his blind captive's daughter, made her his
wife and set her father free to plot against Manuel. The plot succeeded ;
incapacitated by the loss of his sight from reigning himself, Theodore
placed his son John on the imperial throne of Salonica, while Manuel
sought an asylum at the court of Vatatzes, thus providing his diplomatic
host with an excuse for intervention in the affairs of the sister-state. He
had no difficulty in pleading his cause, for Vatatzes had long had a casus
belli against the Empire of Salonica. In 1225 Theodore had cheated
him out of the good city of Hadrianople, which he had sent his officers,
at the invitation of the inhabitants, to occupy in his name.
He now
avenged himself by furnishing Theodore's exiled brother with the means
of taking a large part of Thessaly. But Manuel had no sooner achieved
this object than he threw over his benefactor and made his peace with
Theodore. Thus the first move failed ; Salonica had outwitted Nicaea.
Vatatzes, however, could afford to wait.
In 1241 the favourable moment seemed to have arrived. The great
Bulgarian Tsar had died, leaving a child as his successor; Manuel had
died also; while the Emperor John of Salonica, whom nature had intended
for a monk rather than a sovereign, relied upon the advice of his old
blind father. A truce with the Latin Empire left Vatatzes at liberty to
devote his whole energies to his long-cherished design? He first enticed
old Theodore to his court, and flattered the childish vanity of that ex-
perienced ruler by calling him “uncle” and giving him a seat at his own
table. When all was ready, in the spring of 1242, he crossed over into
Europe and began the first fratricidal war between the two Greek Empires
of Nicaea and Salonica. Aided by a body of Cuman mercenaries whom
he had attracted to his service, he marched along the coast so as not to
violate Bulgarian territory, and met with no resistance till he arrived
within about eight stades of his rival's capital. The size and strength of
Salonica rendered difficult the use of siege-engines; and, while Vatatzes
was still ravaging the neighbourhood, the news arrived that the dreaded
Mongols had defeated the Seljūgs of Iconium and were threatening his
Asiatic dominions. Keeping the fatal secret to himself, he made the
best terms he could with the Emperor John through the medium of old
Theodore. His vanity was perforce contented with the degradation of his
rival to the rank of a Despot, who no longer outraged the Byzantine
protocol by wearing the imperial emblems.
1 Albricus in M. G. H. Script. xxIII. 950.
CH. XVI.


## p. 492 (#534) ############################################

492
Reconquest of Macedonia from the Bulgarians
The Mongol peril and internal affairs kept Vatatzes occupied in Asia
during the next few years, for he had pledged himself to aid the new
Seljūq Sultan, Kai-Khusrū II, against this common enemy of both. But,
as soon as the Mongols abandoned their attack on Iconium for other
enterprises, he bethought himself once more of his European possessions.
John of Salonica was now dead, and his brother, the Despot Demetrius,
who had received his title from the Emperor of Nicaea, was a man of loose
and vicious habits, which rendered him unpopular. It was therefore
obvious that his position was insecure and that Vatatzes only needed a
plausible excuse for the annexation of Salonica. His western frontier had
now advanced from the Maritza to a place called Zichna near Seres, and
only a small strip of Bulgarian territory served as a buffer-state between
the two Greek Empires. A coincidence enabled him in the same year to
conquer this Slavonic outpost of Salonica and Salonica itself.
In the autumn of 1246 he was returning from a tour of inspection in
his European dominions. On the banks of the Maritza he received the
news that the young Bulgarian Tsar Kaliman was dead, and that his still
younger brother, Michael Asên, had succeeded him. The temptation to
attack the Bulgarians at such a moment was great, for Greek rulers have
ever been haunted by the vision of Basil“ the Bulgar-slayer. ” Accordingly
Vatatzes returned at once to Philippi, and there on the historic battle-field
summoned a council of war to consider the question. Some argued against
the proposal, on the ground that the army was weak and that the citadel
of Seres, the first Bulgarian fortress, was a strong natural position ;
but Andronicus Palaeologus, father of the future Emperor, whose advice
was all the weightier because he held the post of commander-in-chief, .
urged a forward policy. The governor of Seres speedily capitulated;
the citizens of Melnik responded to an appeal to their Greek origin, while
the Bulgarian party was reminded that a Bulgarian princess was the wife
of the future Greek Emperor. Other places followed their example; the
conquests which John Asên II had made at the expense of the Empire
of Salonica sixteen years before were restored to the Empire of Nicaea;
a treaty of peace was signed with Bulgaria which made the Maritza
the northern, as it had once been the western, boundary of Vatatzes;
while Köstendil in the modern kingdom of Bulgaria and Skoplje in
Serbian Macedonia owned his sway. The days of Basil “ the Bulgar-
slayer " seemed to have returned. A patriotic historian could truly boast
that “ the western frontier of Nicaea marched with that of Serbia. ”ı
At this moment the discontent at Salonica had reached a climax.
The frivolous despot had trampled on the ancient customs and privileges
of that city, and a body of leading citizens sent one of their number to
Vatatzes' camp at Melnik, praying for a renewal of their charter. The
Emperor gladly consented, and resolved to see for himself how matters
stood. He ordered Demetrius to present himself before his lawful
Acropolita, 11. 18.


## p. 493 (#535) ############################################

Annexation of Salonica
493
suzerain and render the homage due. The foolish youth was persuaded
by the conspirators to refuse. A second refusal sealed his fate. The
troops of Vatatzes, aided by treachery, entered the city, and thus in
December 1246 the last shadow of the short-lived Empire of Salonica ceased
to exist. Its last ruler was imprisoned in an Asiatic dungeon; his dominions
were annexed to those of his conqueror. Still, however, Vatatzes had not
united all the free Greeks beneath his sceptre. Michael II, a bold scion
of the house of Angelus, had established himself in Corfù and Epirus and
extended his sway as far east as Monastir, while old blind Theodore still
exercised his ruling passion for power by the waters of Vodená and on
the lake of Ostrovo. For the present, however, the Emperor deemed it
wiser to content himself with the organisation of his new and vast pos-
sessions. Each of the captured cities received an imperial message ;
the future Emperor, Michael Palaeologus, was appointed governor of
Seres and Melnik, and his father governor-general of the European pro-
vinces of the Nicene Empire with residence at Salonica.
Elated with these bloodless triumphs over Bulgarians and Greeks,
Vatatzes returned to Europe in the following spring for the purpose of
recovering the fortress of Chorlu from the Franks, an undertaking
which the growing weakness of the Latin Empire seemed to facilitate.
The governor was Anseau de Cayeux, ex-Regent of the Empire, whose wife
was sister-in-law of the Greek sovereign. Thinking that the latter would
never besiege a place which contained his wife's sister, Anseau left the
castle almost undefended. But Vatatzes was not the man to allow his
private relationships to interfere with his public policy; he prosecuted
the siege, recaptured Chorlu, and cut off the communications of Con-
stantinople with the west by land. But this exploit nearly cost him his
life; he rashly approached the walls to parley with the garrison, and was
only saved as by a miracle from the well-aimed bolt of a Frankish
bowman. He did not press further the advantages which he had gained.
Probably the fear of the Mongols restrained him from continuing his
campaign against Constantinople, for in 1248 we find two Mongol envoys
at the Papal court. Innocent IV received them cordially, and did not
scruple to suggest that their master should attack the schismatic Vatatzes.
But the Mongol emissaries rejoined, with delicate irony, that they could
not advise this policy, because they disliked to encourage “the mutual
hatred of Christians. ”i Having given the Holy Father this lesson in
Christianity, the infidels returned to their own savage country. The
reluctance of the Mongols to invade his dominions seems to have
reassured Vatatzes, for in 1249 he was once more preparing for an
attempt upon Constantinople, with the assistance of his vassal, John
Gabalās, the new ruler of Rhodes, when a sudden revolution in the
fortunes of that island caused the postponement of his plans for the
annexation of what little still remained of the Latin Empire.
1 Matthew Paris, Iistoria Minor, . 38-9; Chronica Majora, v. 38.
cross-
CH, XVI.


## p. 494 (#536) ############################################

494
Recovery of Rhodes. Defeat of Michael II
וי
We saw how Vatatzes had failed, sixteen years before, in his expedition
against Leo Gabalâs, the independent “Lord of Rhodes and the
Cyclades. " Gabalâs had, however, thought it prudent, after that invasion,
to become “the man of Venice," the most powerful maritime state of
that day, and had promised to assist the Venetian authorities in Crete
against Vatatzes during the Cretan insurrection. Soon, however, he
seems to have recognised the suzerainty of Nicaea, retaining the title of
“Caesar" but adding that of “servant of the Emperor" on his coins,
and perhaps receiving as his reward the post of Lord High Admiral'.
His brother and successor dropped the Caesarean style and described
himself as simple “Lord of Rhodes," who, if he were bound to help
his suzerain, looked to him for protection. While the two were at
Nicomedia, the news arrived that the Genoese, who coveted Rhodes as
a commercial centre, had surprised the citadel by a night attack.
Vatatzes at once sent one of his best officers to recover the place. But
the Genoese received valuable assistance from a body of the famous
Frankish cavalry of the Morea, left by Prince William of Achaia on his
way through the island. Reinforcements were necessary before the
French knights could be annihilated, the Genoese garrison reduced to
surrender, and the imperial suzerainty restored.
The last campaign of Vatatzes was directed against his still existing
Greek rivals in Europe. Michael II, the crafty Despot of Epirus, had
thought it prudent to remain on good terms with the conqueror of
Salonica, who was since 1246 his neighbour in Macedonia. He made
a treaty with him and even affianced his eldest son and heir, Nicephorus,
to the Emperor's grand-daughter Maria. But, before the wedding had
taken place, the restless despot, instigated by his uncle, the old in-
triguer Theodore, invaded the Nicene territory in Europe and thus
forced Vatatzes to take up arms for the preservation of his recent
conquests. The despot had shown little diplomatic skill in his choice
of opportunity, for his rival had nothing to fear from either the
Musulmans in Asia or the Bulgarians in Europe. Vatatzes carried all
before him. Old Theodore fled from his possessions at Vodená and
Ostrovo; one distinguished personage after another deserted the despot's
standard, and the latter was compelled to send the Metropolitan of
Lepanto to sue for peace. The Nicene envoys, of whom the historian
Acropolita was one, met Michael II at Larissa, the ancient Thessalian
city, then an important political, ecclesiastical, and even learned? centre.
There peace was signed ; Michael ceded the three Macedonian lakes of
Castoria, Prespa, and Ochrida, as well as the historic fortress of Kroja
in Albania, to the victor; and the historian returned to his master with
the despot's eldest son and the aged schemer Theodore as his prisoners.
1 Schlumberger, Numismatique de l'Orient latin, 216 ; Pl. viii. 19-20; Miklosich
and Müller, Acta et Diplomata Graeca Medii Aevi, iv. 254.
2 Blemmýdes, 36.


## p. 495 (#537) ############################################

Second marriuge of Vatatzes
495
Theodore vanishes from history in the dungeons of Vatatzes. For half
a century he had disturbed the peace of the Balkan peninsula; he had
experienced every change of fortune; he had made and lost an empire;
he had been the victor and the captive of an Emperor. Now at last
he was at rest.
Meanwhile, the domestic life of the Emperor had been less fortunate
than his campaigns against Franks, Bulgarians, and Epirote Greeks.
On the death of his first wife, Irene, for whose loss the courtly Acropolita',
turned poet for the occasion, had expressed the fear that he would never
be comforted, Vatatzes had married in 1244 Constance of Hohenstaufen,
daughter of the Emperor Frederick II and sister of the luckless Manfred.
The union, despite the great discrepancy of age between the two parties,
promised considerable political advantages. Both the Emperors hated
the Papacy, and while Greek troops were sent to aid Frederick in his
struggle against Rome, Frederick asserted the rights of “the most
Orthodox Greeks” to Constantinople. Vatatzes, as we learn from his
own son’, was dazzled by the brilliance of a match which made him the
son-in-law of the most famous and versatile monarch of the thirteenth
century, while the scholars and theologians of Nicaea would not have
been Greeks if they had not admired the abilities of a ruler who, if a
Frank by birth, yet wrote letters in their beautiful language in praise
of their historic Church. The wedding was celebrated at Prusa with all
the pomp of a military Empire, a court poet composed a nuptial ode,
and Constance took the Greek name of Anna, the more closely to
identify herself with her husband's people. On the other hand, the
Pope was furious at the marriage, and one of the counts of the indict-
ment drawn up against Frederick II at the Council of Lyons was that
he had given his daughter to the excommunicated heretic Vatatzes.
Unfortunately, the young Empress had brought with her from the
West a dangerous rival to her own charms in the person of an attractive
young Italian marchioness, who was one of her maids of honour. The
languishing eyes and the graceful manners of the lady-in-waiting
captivated the heart of the susceptible sovereign, and his infatuation
for his mistress reached such a pitch that he allowed her to wear the
purple buskins of an Empress and gave her a more numerous suite than
that of his lawful consort. The ceremonious court of Nymphaeum was
scandalised at this double breach of morals and etiquette. Its indigna-
tion found vent in the bitter lampoons of Nicephorus Blemmýdes, the
Abbot of St Gregory near Ephesus, whose autobiography is one of the
most vivid pieces of Byzantine literature. Blemmýdes hated the
favourite for her abandoned life and her Italian nationality, for women
and foreigners were his pet aversions. Resolved to brave the patriotic
6.
2 “Satire du Précepteur” (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale), MS. sup. gr. , xxxvII.
f. 56 vº.
1
II.
CH. XVI.


## p. 496 (#538) ############################################

496
Career of Constance of Hohenstaufen
moralist, she forced her way into his church, in all the pomp of the
imperial emblems, at the moment of the consecration. The abbot
instantly ordered the service to cease and bade the shameless hussy quit
the holy place which she defiled by her presence. Stunned by his rebuke,
she burst into tears, while one of her escort attempted to draw his sword
to slay the bold monk at the altar. But the weapon stuck in the scabbard;
the accident was, of course, ascribed to the black arts of the abbot;
and Blemmýdes was accused of lèse-majesté and magic by the infuriated
woman and her baffled cavalier. The accused defended himself in a
violent encyclical"; and the Emperor, from qualms of conscience or
motives of policy, refused to punish so just a man, who had only spoken
the truth, and whose influence was so great with the Puritans and the
Chauvinists of the Empire. From this moment the marchioness dis-
appears from the chronicles of the Nicene court; possibly she married
an Italian and returned to Italy and respectability? For a time the
legitimate Empress gained influence over her husband; she doubtless
read with pleasure the rhetorical funeral oration which her stepson, the
future Emperor Theodore, composed on the death of her father in 1250;
she welcomed her uncle Galvano Lancia and her other relatives, when
they were exiled by Frederick's successor; and a special mission under
the direction of Berthold of Hohenburg was required to procure their
removal from a court at which they had so powerful a protectresss.
The death of Vatatzes and the accession of her step-son deprived her
of her power; but she was still young and attractive, and when
Michael Palaeologus usurped the throne, he sought her first as his
mistress, then, when she scorned the liaison with one who had been her
subject, as his wife, although he was already married. Defeated in this
object, he sent the ex-Empress back to her brother Manfred; but the
latter's fall at Benevento placed her at the mercy of Charles of Anjou.
The Angevin conqueror allowed her to seek an asylum at the court of
Aragon, where her nephew Peter III granted her and her daughter an
annuity. At last, entering a convent, she renounced her claims to the
Greek Empire to James II, and died at a great age in the city of
Valencia. There, in the little church of St John-of-the-Hospital a wooden
coffin still bears the simple epitaph: “Here lies the lady Constance,
august Empress of Greece. "" Even in the strange romance of medieval
Greek history there are few stranger pages than the varied career of this
unhappy exile, a sacrifice to politics and the sport of chance.
The connexion between Vatatzes and the great enemy of the Papacy
in Western Europe did not prevent the astute Emperor from endeavour-
1 MPG. , cxlii. 605-9.
2 Les Registres d'Alexandre IV, 1. 88.
3 N. de Jamsilla apud Muratori, RR. II. SS.