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Chapter Twenty Two: An Age of Gold
Chapter Twenty Two: An Age of Gold
"And thus it came to pass, that the Lord God returned to the hands of the Romans all the wealth and glory of the world, after testing our faith in the fires of his wrath"
Isaac the Pamphylian, fourteenth century writer, World Chronicle
The Christmas period of 1281/82 was one of great celebrating in Constantinople, even as the city shivered under continuing snowfall. The Emperor Constantine X was hailed as an heroic figure, whose piety had moved the Virgin Mary to intercede on behalf of God’s chosen people[1] in their hour of need. The Emperor, who celebrated his forty sixth birthday over Christmas was for the first time able to decisively emerge from out of the shadow of powerful relatives, in this case his sister’s husband the Caesar Gregory Maleinos. Maleinos was a tough military man who was widely disliked by the populace of Constantinople for his perceived provincialism and impiety and following the lifting of the siege he finally pushed the Basileus too far in his brisk bullying, being sent from court in January with orders to harass the scattered remnants of the great Jušen army as they moved north into Bulgaria. Wisely, Maleinos made a dignified retreat, much to the disgust of his elder son Constantine.
In the East, meanwhile, Michael Photopoulos was busy carrying out the mirror image of Maleinos’ assignment: in this case pursuing those surviving Jušen who were fleeing the Aegean to the East. The exceptionally harsh winter was followed by an unusually early spring, and Photopoulos was able to make a speedy crossing of the plateau and Taurus into Cilicia to find a Jušen empire reeling from the loss of its great leader. An army that had been assembled to meet him promptly dissolved before Photopoulos’ considerably more motivated men when its Jušen commander, a cousin of the deadĀkǔttǎ, made the not irrational decision to flee to Mesopotamia where an increasingly violent contest to take control of the Khanate was beginning.
In that single summer of 1282, Photopoulos was able to make more gains than previous generals had in centuries. Antioch had been largely left to govern itself by the Jušen, and had shut its gates to one princeling who had turned up at its walls demanding bullion from the churches to buy a mercenary army. The princeling had placed the city under siege, prompting a call for help from the Antiochenes: a call Photopoulos was only too happy to answer. The Jušen force at the gates was briskly routed and the imperial banners raised above the city walls for the first time in fifty years. The good news did not end there. The Jušen governor of Syria, a Christian convert named David, commanded the largest surviving army in the Khanate’s western provinces and shortly after the fall of Antioch was able to defeat both that city’s former attacker and his Cilician counterpart, removing two potential rivals from play. Photopoulos, eager to consolidate his gains, sent an embassy offering David an alliance, which the warlord eagerly accepted. While David marched south to snuff out his Egyptian rival, Photopoulos’ men garrisoned the cities of Syria. Following a triumphant victory in early autumn at the Battle of Gaza, David returned north, and went so far as to marry his sister off to Photopoulos before crossing the Euphrates and marching into Mesopotamia. Photopoulos, meanwhile drew up reinforcements from Anatolia and headed south to Jerusalem and the great prize of Egypt, which he entered in November, just in time to hear the news of David’s defeat and murder. Much ostentatious mourning followed, with Photopoulos going so far as to suggest that David be named a saint and martyr. The cities of Egypt and Syria never returned to Jušen hands.[2]
In comparison with the grand achievements of Michael Photopoulos, Gregory Maleinos’ conquests seem paltry, but that is perhaps unfair to the Caesar, who had the misfortune to be overshadowed by a general who enjoyed an incredible run of good luck. After gathering troops in the shattered ruins of Thessalonica and pledging money out of his own private fortune to restore the city’s churches Maleinos headed north into a Bulgaria that was divided both by civil war within its own imperial family and the continuing presence of several thousand Kievan Jušen intent on salvaging a consolation prize after the Constantinopolitan disaster. It was a difficult situation, and one that Maleinos was determined to bring under control. This he did through three years of methodical campaigning, backing the younger (and anti-Jušen) claimant to the throne Constantine and then smoothly withdrawing support ostensibly on account of the un-Christian murder to which Constantine subjected his elder brother Stephen.[3] For a short while, Maleinos championed the rights of one of their sisters, Maria, who for a brief period in 1284 became Bulgaria’s first and only female monarch, but in the end opted to impose something very close to direct rule, with Maria being shipped back to Constantinople.[4] Though the “Tsarina” never in theory lost her title until her dying day some thirty years later there was little doubt about the real state of affairs. The Bulgarians themselves were certainly not fooled: the years 1288-92 were marked by a savage, Hungarian-backed, uprising that came close to undoing all Maleinos’ work and proved that the empire was not necessarily invincible on all fronts.[5] The surprising thing about the revolt, however, was not that it occurred but that it went on for so long: by the end of the decade tax revenues from the richest province of the Mediterranean[6] were coming full on-stream and Constantine X’s court found itself awash with gold.
The absorption of so much territory in such a short space of time in the 1280s proved to be something of a shock to the system. Constantine X himself, always ignored before, now found that he was being feted as a conquering hero despite never having ventured any further from the Great Palace than Selymbria in Thrace.[7] It is possible to see, almost immediately, the government taking on a distinctly different slant now that the Basileus was entering politics. Now that the need for tough pragmatists like Maleinos was in retreat, Constantine seems to have felt that it was time his Empire enjoyed the fruits of God’s peace and began to pump vast amounts of money into building projects, most notably a grand rebuilding of Thessalonica,[8] as well as patronage of the arts and increased funding for the military. As the state’s business expanded, and with it the amount of money in circulation[9], inflation began to gallop out of control, forcing the Emperor to issue a number of hectoring pieces of legislation to attempt to bring prices back into line. That Constantine himself was perhaps to blame for this was not really understood at the time by the common people, who rather than seeing the Emperor as the author of their misfortune instead saw him as a man deeply interested in the welfare of his subjects. It is perhaps fairest to say that both were true: Constantine was a deeply humane man and if his policies of the 1290s brought some difficulties it was only with the very best of intentions. In any case, the inflation of the decade seemed relatively mild, and enough goodwill remained attached to the Emperor for later writers to look back on his reign as a golden era.
The newly restored territories of the East quickly proved themselves to be a challenge. Egypt, notably, was plagued by revolts of both its Islamic and anti-Chalcedonian Christian populations.[10] Indeed, given Egypt’s vast wealth and centuries of independence from Constantinople it came as a shock to all that Rhomanian rule proved so durable. In part, this was due to Egypt’s own weakness, with an entire generation of fighting men destroyed first in the initial Jušen conquest of 1276 and then by the demands for soldiers demanded by the brief Jušen administration that followed. An anti-Roman revolt in 1284 was suppressed with relative ease, but a far more serious one broke out in 1295, backed by the Great Khan in Baghdad, the first Jušen warlord to establish anything like firm control.[11] This second revolt came very close to succeeding, and it was only the unexpected death of the Jušen Khan which plunged the empire back into civil war and ended any hopes the Egyptians had of reinforcements that saw it beaten back. Nonetheless, Egypt continued to fester: the question of how to rule over such a large block of potential rebels would be one that would remain unanswered for the remainder of Constantine’s reign.
Before concluding this look at the “golden age” of the later thirteenth century it is worth surveying the third unanswered question of the period: that of the Helot movement. The Helots, as may be recalled, had played a crucial role in undermining Roman defences against the Jušen attack of 1281, and this, together with the climate of peace and prosperity that followed might have been expected to seriously undermine the appeal of a movement that preached violently against material wealth.[12] Certainly in some ways, the Helots went into retreat and this was bemoaned by parts of the movement. But from a longer perspective, the peaceful 1280s allowed Helotism to have an internal conversation within itself about the direction of the movement and its beliefs. A literary Helot culture sprang up that took in elements of classical philosophy to sharpen the critique of the Church and Empire, and peace allowed the Helots to put down roots. The lack of appetite on the part of the Emperor Constantine to take the Helot threat seriously also helped them: the Emperor instead tried to conciliate them instead of attempting a root and branch dismantling of the movement that some, notably Gregory Maleinos, urged. The Helots remained quiet for the period, but they would return with a savage vengeance.
Had Constantine X died ten years earlier, in the summer of 1296, he could arguably have saved the Empire from sixty long years of suffering. In 1296, he had undisputed heirs, a united Imperial family, and a state that had recently emerged triumphant from the great Egyptian revolt. But Constantine lingered for another decade, a decade that would set the scene for the half century that would follow and the rise of a figure who would forever after haunt the imagination of all Rhomania.[13] The sad story of Constantine’s last decade will form the basis for the next chapter.
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[1] The idea that the Roman people were God’s elect and the Roman Empire was an imitation of heaven was a very important part of Byzantine self identity.
[2] It remains a source of bafflement within the IE universe as to whether Photopoulos was genuinely loyal to David the Jušen or merely taking advantage of a run of good luck: and similarly whether David was ridiculously naive to trust the Romans or planning on playing a long game. In any case, the point is a moot one: six centuries of “occupation” of “rightfully Roman” provinces was brought to an end in a few months.
[3] Stephen was, by all accounts, dipped into a barrel of honey and then fed to a bear.
[4] These battling Bulgars are the great-grandchildren of the Armenian John of Priene who found himself named Tsar back in 1183 (see Chapter Twelve), through his daughter Maria. Following the end of the War of the Margus, Maria’s son Ivan III was imposed as ruler ahead of his older cousins by his stepfather Stephen IV of Croatia, ruling until 1263.
[5] The energetic young King of Hungary, Álmos I, is wary of a strong Rhomania threatening the hegemony he has built up over the western Balkans through marriage alliance.
[6] To convey Egypt’s wealth it’s worth considering that the province on its own supplied something like a quarter of the budget of the sixteenth century Ottoman Empire IOTL.
[7] In this respect Constantine somewhat resembles Justinian the Great.
[8] Constantine’s activities in Thessalonica may very well have been intended to cover up those of his potentially threatening brother-in-law.
[9] Byzantine courtiers and civil servants (unlike, to some extent, the military) were always paid in gold coin.
[10] At this stage the Muslims had probably a very narrow majority over the Christians.
[11] Between December 1281 and the spring of 1292 the Jušen Khanate of Baghdad saw no less than seventeen claimants. A brief period of peace followed between 1292 and 1295 when one warlord seemed to topple all others, but following his murder another period of savage bloodletting broke out.