A Storm of the West: Demetrios the Mountain Lord
A Storm of the West: Demetrios the Mountain Lord
On paper Demetrios’ land holdings might’ve looked impressively large, but these were not the lush and highly prosperous and populous and manured Thracian plain. This was in the heart of Rhomania’s wild east, the rough and wide frontier zone where Rhomania faded into Persia and Greater Asia. Much of the area’s population was composed of pastoral nomads, miners, and woodsmen. Agricultural villages existed here and there in zones where it could be sustained, but these were poor and primitive compared to villages to the west. Pigeon droppings were the main fertilizer, making it possible for the inhabitants to scratch a subsistence out of thin hillside soils.
The Kephalate of Iberia in general though wasn’t as isolated and underdeveloped as much of the rest of the wild east. The capital, Theodosiopolis, had a population of thirteen thousand, small by Aegean standards but huge for the region. A major military base and fortification guarding eastern Anatolia, it was also an important trade hub covering commerce with Tbilisi and Tabriz.
That said, the extent should not be exaggerated. Due to the ruggedness of the terrain, which both contributed to and exacerbated the limited and underdeveloped road network save for the main highway connecting Theodosiopolis to points west and north, trade outside these specific and few channels was fleeting and small-scale. It was present, but by the peddler. Except for those near Theodosiopolis, any sort of commerce involving bulk goods like grain was completely impracticable. Trade was in animal products that could move on the hoof, or on high-value items preferably of low bulk such as silk thread from Persia.
Ethnicity and language were an interlocking weave of Greek, Turkish, Armenian, Georgian, and Kurdish threads, with the odd Russian and Helvetian strand added to make the pattern more complicated. Except for the Armenians who followed their own church, the people were all Orthodox by this point, although the folk Christianity of the hills would’ve looked suspicious to theologians closer to the major cities of the Empire. A good example would be the pilgrimage sites that historically began as turbes of Sufi saints.
Demetrios’ estate was in the south of the theme, which was more rugged, poorer, and underdeveloped than the northern reaches around Theodosiopolis. The town of Chauzizion was really an oversized village, lacking even a bookshop and having only a single kaffos oikos. The town could swell to three times its normal size when it hosted its regular trade fair, but the goods on offer, woolen thread, eggs, beans, cookware, and the like were decidedly plebeian to one used to the markets of Constantinople.
But Demetrios does not seem to have minded. On arrival he roamed over his land, exploring it from mountaintop to field, and his first major deed as landlord was to pay for several donkeys for his tenant farmers. The only payment he demanded was an invitation to their harvest feasts, which he enjoyed immensely. Given his age, it is unsurprising that he had an eye for the women. According to his autobiography, while he wished the peasants had more opportunity and ability to wash themselves, he said he preferred many of “the strongly built farm girls of Iberia to many of the painted ladies of the City; the former are much better at wrestling in the hay”.
Given the power disparity at play, there are questions about how consensual these liaisons were. But there appears to have been no consequences to saying no. According to local tradition, the tallest of his tenants’ daughters rejected his flirtation with the response that she preferred men who could look her in the eye. Her father still received a donkey which the family had been promised beforehand.
But the young prince grew quickly bored of being a landlord. Roaming and hunting over this rough landscape helped some, but not enough. In this country, brigands were a constant problem, albeit usually a low-level one. For something to do, Demetrios and a few retainers began dressing up as peddlers and traveling along the donkey tracks as bait to lure in brigands where he could surprise and take them down. These little operations marked his first experience of combat, but Demetrios made it clear he did not intend for it to be his last. He never took Timur’s sword with him on these missions, saying that steel was meant to drink greater blood than what he could offer it at this point.
These operations gradually grew in size over the next few years, culminating in one episode in early 1657. With the approval and support of the Kastrophylax of Iberia, Demetrios led a unit of over 250 men, a mix of his retainers, local volunteers, and militia units, that tracked down, surrounded, and captured a particular large, capable, and notorious band of robbers. While there had been no fighting, the young man’s ability in organizing, leading, and sustaining a diverse group of men in rugged terrain during winter was still noticed.
During this time, Demetrios’ band of retainers had been growing. The key figure was Andronikos Karamanlis, a distant cousin of the Grand Karaman. Andronikos was officially the commander of Demetrios’ bodyguard but had also been responsible for teaching the boy how to handle the horse, sword, and bow. Through Andronikos’ contacts back home in Isauria, several more Karamanlis joined Demetrios’ service. These numbered no more than twenty, mostly other distant cousins with no prospects in the highlands, but were prominent in Demetrios’ growing band.
Other than this, Demetrios acted as the benevolent enlightened landlord, helping to fund and organize some development projects such as the cultivation of maize and the breeding of more farm animals. (These noticeably did not include the introduction of potatoes; Demetrios here shared the common distaste for the tuber.) These were hard times. Harvests were bad and irregular all across the Empire. Eastern Anatolia was particularly vulnerable given the low productivity of its agriculture and extremely limited feasibility of importing foodstuffs from elsewhere.
Taxes were never liked, but they weighed especially heavily in these times of dearth. Demetrios’ tenants were, by the standards of the area, fairly well off. Given their landlord, no tax collector was going to mess with them, but their friends and relatives elsewhere were not so lucky. In spring 1657, some of Demetrios’ tenants complained to him on behalf of relations in free (as in the villagers owned their own land) villages nearby.
The complaints here focused less on the concept of tax collecting in general, but on the corruption of the Dioiketes, the administrator responsible for tax collection in the southern half of Iberia. Aside from what was owed in the taxes, he had been demanding extra. These came not only in the form of additional payments, but also lots of ‘support’, in terms of food, lodging, and other supplies for him and his officials. Aside from the obvious injustice, given the thin margins on which people were surviving, this could tip many over the edge.
Complaints had been made up the chain of bureaucracy, but these were the wild and poor fringes of the Empire. Things moved slowly even at the best of times. And with the straitened circumstances everywhere, petitions for relief and complaints about corruption were many. This one ended up in a very large pile, with the usual fate that befalls such things. The Dioiketes did get the expected tax revenue on time, which meant investigation was not a high priority for his superiors.
Demetrios, in contrast to those superiors, was nearby and did not share their priorities. Angered by what he had heard, he and many of his retainers stormed down to the official’s townhouse in Chauzizion, where the Dioiketes was. The prince stormed into his office, accusing him of his crimes and demanding restitution. When the Dioiketes refused, noting the prince’s lack of jurisdiction in the matter, Demetrios punched him in the face. Demetrios’ men bound the official and then ransacked the property, carting off everything of value which Demetrios then distributed to the peasants the official had defrauded.
This incident, because of who had been involved, did not get bogged down on the paper trail, but news quickly reached the White Palace. Given the open attack on an Imperial official, it couldn’t be ignored. Herakleios, inclined to believe the worst, considered this an open attack on his authority by his impertinent little brother. He suspected Demetrios of plotting rebellion; why else would he be making contacts with the Grand Karaman and building a private army? His theft of the Sword of Timur had also been discovered, and while no demands had been made for its return, this act in this new context also seemed troubling.
Another aspect that told against Demetrios was the behavior of his favorite dog, who had been trained to urinate whenever it heard Herakleios’ name. The dog’s name, by the way, was ‘Cat’. The prince’s favorite horse was named ‘Camel’. Because Demetrios was one of those people.
Some have wondered whether Herakleios’ concerns had any basis in fact or were just jealous paranoid fantasies. Certainly, some of the war hawks looked at Demetrios as far more personally attractive, a true son of Odysseus, compared to the Basileus, while still likely to be sympathetic to their goals. Whether or not they would’ve done anything to operate on those desires is unknown; Herakleios certainly seemed easier to control.
Demetrios, for his part, certainly displayed no open ambition, but then it would’ve been foolish for him to do so. However, he did remark that “to overthrow my brother would be rude. To inherit from my brother because of his impotence would be weak. And besides, to rule over a realm without elephants would be boring."
On this subject, Herakleios was willing to put pressure on his aunt. Demetrios was ordered to return to Constantinople promptly, an order which deeply disturbed the prince. “Once I return, I will be a beautiful bird forced into a cage and shorn of its tail feathers.” And that was if his brother didn’t arrange an accident for him; Demetrios considered his brother to be willing to do such a thing if he was ever back in the capital.
So Demetrios moved, but not to Constantinople. He packed up as much of his moveable wealth as he could; it was said four camels were needed to convey his personal library. With that and a band of followers numbering a few hundred, a mix of soldiers, servants, and followers from his tenant population willing to go with him, he rode away. There does not seem to have been any contingency plan in place for if Demetrios rejected the summons, so he and his followers faced no difficulty, other than the usual strains of travel, as they marched to the Persian frontier.
Shahanshah Iskandar the Younger welcomed his ‘nephew’ with surprised but open arms, supplying his men for their continued journey to Hamadan. Roman protests, now considerably more alarmed than they had been before, were ignored. Iskandar kept himself well informed of what went on in the Roman capital, and much of his goodwill had been burned away by war hawk rhetoric. He trusted Athena, who he’d known personally given his long time with Odysseus, but was gravely concerned that she was not taking the war hawks seriously enough. The Shah thus wanted insurance to guard against Roman attack, and the younger brother of the Emperor seemed like quite the policy.
But there was also no need to be completely undiplomatic. Iskandar made it clear he had no intention of forcing his nephew to return to Rhomania if he had no wish to do so, but keeping him around Hamadan was viewed as unnecessarily provocative. To conciliate Roman concerns, Demetrios only spent three weeks at the Persian capital before moving out to his new station, again on the fringes of empire, Kabul.
