Part 83: The Short Peace
Part LXXXIII: The Short Peace
Andronikos was utterly humiliated by his capture and subsequent peace agreement. Almost immediately upon his return to Antioch the surviving soldiers deserted, returning to either their Danube bases, or simply going home. His officials shunned him, and he knew they whispered behind his back that maybe the Emperor should abdicate in favor of his eldest son, who while still a minor also hadn’t had his name blackened by the failed campaign.
The defeat immediately brought consequences in domestic strife as well, as just six months later a large Jewish revolt broke out in Palaestina. Jews had begun concentrating in the region over the past century since the Thessalonika Council stripped them of any protected status, and now with their numbers at a high unseen since Hadrian, and Roman power seemingly on the decline they thought to break away. But the revolt was a dismal failure. Egyptian troops were brought in rapidly, and Jerusalem itself held out against the rebels.
Inside of a year the fighting was over, and Jews were once again expelled from their ancestral homeland, and would never return. Most fled north to Anatolia, or West to Africa, as the European kingdoms were little more accomadating, and the Turks actively blocked any attempts to cross the border. Those who did leave the Empire thus mostly went south, either to Arabia or to Markuria, which remained less hostile than the Thessalonikans were.
The ease with which the revolt was put down did a little to ease Andronikos’s disgrace, but he returned to the palace at Chalcedon an almost broken man, shutting himself away for days at a time and seeing no one. He fasted, prayed, and performed penance which included flogging himself to purge whatever sin he was being punished for. To say that the household was not healthy would be an understatement. His two sons saw their father rarely, and grew up distant from one another. The older boy, who will one day grow up to be Nikephoros II, threw himself into his religious studies, believing like his father that some great sin of the family had led to the military defeats.
The younger, the future Golden Prince, saw things differently. As he aged he saw little in his father’s failure other than stupidity and pride. He had believed he could never be beaten, and therefore had been with an almost contemptuous ease. It was a mistake the prince would not forget. In 1206, at the age of 14 the Prince enrolled himself in the Tagmata, quickly earning himself a reputation as an excellent rider, and mastering the use of bow, lance, sword, and mace. He rose through the ranks quickly, thanks both to his excellent education, natural ability, and nepotism, becoming a centurion at the age of 17, technically an illegal appointment, but no one much cared.
Before that however, the Empire itself was not in less than great shape. The annual tribute required to be paid to the Turks was straining the state budget, draining money away from infrastructure and other important projects. It likely wouldn’t have had Andronikos been able to reduce spending in less essential areas, but he felt trapped by his humiliation. Public games not only weren’t reduced, they were increased, to try and build a measure of popularity with the people which had been so badly lost.
Additionally, he had to increase both the pay offered to his men, and also the annual bonuses as he feared the effects of the defeat would encourage mutiny among both the officers and men. This was an increase the state could ill afford while all other expenses were also increasing. And the increased annual military spending had to be matched by the raising of nearly fifty thousand new soldiers, to replace those lost in Syria. Training and equipping these men was yet another drain on Imperial funds.
This was when Andronikos began auctioning off land owned by the Emperor, and worked by his clients, to wealthy men looking to expand their holdings. While these sails brought short-term cash they also decreased overall tax revenues, as the new landlords were more effective at tax dodges than the old clients had been.
Revenue fell below ten million nomismata in 1203, and would continue to decline for the remainder of the decade.
Thus was the fundamental and fatal flaw of the entire Imperial system revealed. While times were good a weak Emperor could do little harm, now when times were bad a weak Emperor could wreak havoc even without meaning to. Andronikos’s policies in all these areas were abject failures, and all worsened the situation the state now found itself in. He simply did not have the confidence to assert any good policies, out of fear that he would once again fail utterly and be humiliated, and was left with only ineffective ones that did far more harm than good.
But it was in 1211 that revealed how bad the situation really was. As was common the Cumans raided south that year, but with the Danube defenses still not wholly up to their old strength they were able to break through the outer defenses and ravage Moesia for the first time in over a decade. Andronikos however imagined nomad horsemen around every corner and could not be convinced to send aid to the region. Instead he wanted to negotiate a truce with the Cumans, and pay them a tribute to leave the Roman border alone. His negotiators were dispatched, but the Golden Prince wasn’t having it. Against orders, and the law, he led five thousand men of the Tagmata north, and met the Cumans alongside local Moesians near the river. In the ensuing battle the Prince successfully defeated the Cumans, and killed a khan in single combat, if the accounts are to be believed.
He extracted concessions from them and nomads returned across the border with none of their treasure. Andronikos was furious at his son’s disobedience, but once again his weak indecisiveness reared its head. He was unwilling to risk mutiny among the Tagmata, against himself or his heir, by killing his youngest child. Nikephoros for his part viewed his brother’s success with elation, believing that his prayer and self-sacrifice had done the job. This did not impress his younger sibling.
However, 1211 also brought happier tidings when the Princess Sophia married a Syrian magnate. The marriage was a happy one on both sides, and Sophia would bear an eventual six children, though only the youngest would survive her. The next year Prince Nikephoros himself married a Greek girl, and she would soon bear him a son, Romanos, named for a relative the crown prince was very fond of.
As the year wore on however the Golden Prince began agitating for a return to war with the Turks, but his father refused to consider it. But war was still brewing once again, this time in Arabia.
You will recall that by now the Second Caliphate had begun to establish itself in the old Kingdom of Hejaz, as well as Arabia Felix after the successful war of independence against Markuria. This kingdom sought to ally itself with the Romans as their predecessor in the region had done, an alliance which was signed by Manuel III shortly before his death. The powerful kingdom now looked toward expansion into the rest of the peninsula, and particularly against the peoples on the eastern coast, who were allied with the Turks.
These two sides had erupted into open fighting when the Turks and Romans began their own war in the 1190s, and that war was still ongoing almost two decades later. The Caliph was on the advance however and had taken much of the southeastern coast of the peninsula, threatening to extinguish Turk allies in the region entirely. As it had been the fighting in the south that allowed the Turks to fight without worrying about their own southern flank this was deeply discouraging to Soloman, who began sending additional money and supplies to his Arab allies in 1207.
In response to the sudden reversal the Caliph appealed to Constantinople for aid, and it was duly sent. Yet another drain on the Imperial treasury. By 1211 however the situation had grown untenable for the Turk allies, and Solomon officially entered the war that same year, marching an army down to drive the Caliph’s armies back. This was a blatant violation of the treaty between the Romans and the Turks, and the Caliph appealed to Constnantinople for war. Andronikos refused, but his message was intercepted by high ranking commanders, among them his younger son, and it was destroyed. Instead a new message was sent to Solomon, ordering him to stand down his army, or face renewed war.
Solomon balked at the Roman command, demanding to know what a state which paid tribute to the Turkic Emperor was doing trying to issue him commands. He declared that if the Romans wished to once against feel his wrath then they could test him, and he was wrest all of the East from their hands.
Not even waiting for a response Solomon ordered an invasion of Syria in 1212. The war was, once again, on.
