1297, Pt.3
Eparkhos
Banned
Sounds good! It's short, snappy, and besides, you did mention early on that this TL is written in the style of the Alexiad itself, so the title works.
Same here, should continue with your title @Eparkhos .
*evil chuckles* I have not even begun....oh god i have a bad feeling
1297, Pt.3
MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE CAPITAL, things were going badly. Really, really badly.
As you might imagine from his previous behavior, Geōrgios Tágaris was a greedy bastard, and while he would certainly toe the line set by the basileus he was also going ‘above-and-beyond’ in his duties by seizing the estates and wealth of the upper nobility, the prime criterion for receiving a nighttime visit from the kryptandroi (effectively secret police) being having too much money or having pissed off Tágaris in the past. This spawned a massive current of discontent running through the ranks of the pronoia, but given that Aléxios had come to the throne over a trail of their fallen social equals few of the pronoiai were willing to directly ask him to stop.
However, after the emperor (and more importantly, the soldiers he had camped outside of the land walls) departed for the west to deal with the Latins in the March of 1297 and left Grēgórios in charge of the city, a group of provincial noblemen decided that this could be the very opportunity they had been desiring and assembled in the capital in late-April. The lion’s share were from Thrákē and Makedonía, but there were several from Bithynía or even further afield. The group created a unified petition, requesting that Tágaris be sacked and the lands which had been seized be returned to their owners. All in all, the demands weren’t especially extreme.
On 30 April, the large crowd of several hundred pronoiai and their retainers gathered in the Strategión, opposite of the Palace of Votaneiátēs (I don’t recall if I mentioned this earlier, but the Imperial residence was moved to the Palace of Votaneiátēs in 1295 because it was cheaper and easier to maintain than Blakhérnai). Unsure of how to proceed, three of the noblemen politely knocked on the front gate and asked to speak with Grēgórios. The sevastos took one look at the giant mob gathered outside and bolted for the tunnels under the palace, only to find that they had been flooded out by heavy rains the previous week. Unable to run, Grēgórios reluctantly strode out to the gate.
He asked what the pronoiai wanted. They began shouting that they wanted Tágaris sacked and their lands returned. However, as Grēgórios’ response was given the chant began to mutate. They were no longer just calling for the Protokrypteros’ exile, they now wanted him blinded, or even dead. Grēgórios shouted that he would have him sacked and blinded, but he couldn’t order him executed. A spear was shoved through the gate at him and Grēgórios turned and fled. The noblemen then began to hack at the gate with axes and hammers, and after a few minutes it gave. The crowd surged forward, spilling out onto the grounds of the palace complex.
It is important to understand that the Palace of Votaneiátēs was unique among Rhōman palace in that it was not a single massive building with several wings, but instead consisted of several buildings (more specifically, five residences, two for servants, two churches, a guards barracks and a feast/meeting hall) arranged around the edges of a raised, walled platform with an open yard and trees that formed the center of the complex. Mental picture formed? Great.
As the baying mob charged after him Grēgórios ran for his life and began darting through the buildings. The mob spread out through the complex and began breaking into and looting the nearer buildings. However, a more determined group kept after the sevastos, who by now had been locked out of his own building by the panicking servants. After failing to get the door open he scrambled up one of the nearby trees and tried to break open a second-story window with a rock. Unfortunately for him, before he could get in the branch collapsed and dropped him straight into the mob, where he was promptly hacked apart.
Meanwhile, at the far end of the complex the Imperial tutor, Stéphanos Rangabé, had realized what was going down and rushed his wards out through a side gate. Rangabé, the princes and two guards made their way through the chaotic city, out of the Second Military Gate, and then on to the Trivoúnalíon, where the Eleutheroi were being trained. Rangabé tried to convince Namejs to retake the palace and expel the usurpers, but the elder man balked at the prospect of street fighting and instead ordered his men north-east. While this may seem like a blunder because most of the rebelling nobility were from the region, it in fact made the direction more appealing because there would be no one there to defend it.
Back in the palace complex, the more level-headed of the rioters seized and then closed off the women’s quarter. The basilissa was captured and imprisoned, as was Eirénē Libádaria and her son (At this point, while the official story was that it was Nikēphóros’ child; However, most people believed that he had been conceived before her marriage to the emperor was annulled) Sávvas. As this was a noble rebellion, very few of the noblewomen were assaulted (records in regards to the middle and lower classes are nonexistent, but you can probably guess), and the building was put under relatives light guard. The rebels soon finished stripping the palace complex of most of her valuables, and then turned their attention to securing the regime’s other prominent figures.
Aléxios Kyparissiōtēs, the protovestarios, was warned by a friend amongst the rebels and took to his heels, escaping into the crowds in Galata before he could be blinded, as did the protoexodromonos. The other asēkrētonoi were not so lucky, with the hated protokhartoularios Khristóphoros Lapardás being scourged with lead-tipped whips before blinded, and the protopapias Pavlos Notarãs tonsured himself rather than suffering Lapardás’ fate. However, the worst of the mob’s fury was reserved for Tágaris, who had been blissfully unaware of the ongoing events in his home on the Mángana. The luckless Anatolian was dragged from his study and tied to the back of a cart, which then pulled him through the notoriously filthy (it smelled so strongly of rotten fish that it was nicknamed the Psarígana, or fish oil district) streets of the district while he was pelted with stones and beaten with cudgels. When the macabre procession reached the Gate of Saint Barbara at the end of the district, Tágaris was shoved into a weighted sack with three cats and thrown into the Golden Horn.
The only high-ranking member of the Philanthrōpēnós regime to remain free and in the capital, was ironically enough, a member of the Philanthrōpēnós family. Nikēphóros was a notorious drunk, and the night before the gates to the palace were beaten down he had been getting drunk off his ass in the red-light district of Xerólophōs. He spent the entirety of 30 April face-down in a gutter outside of a tavern, being missed entirely by the search parties. Upon being sobered up by a group of loyalists he was quickly shuffled out of the city and fled to Pontoērákleia in Anatolia.
For the rest of 30 April the chaos continued across the city, but by dawn the next day the pronoiai had realized that they needed a functioning government to have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the inevitable civil war. The rebels met in the only slightly burned palace grounds. After several hours of deliberation, the charismatic and somewhat experienced general Léōn Maurokatakalōn was elected as emperor. Only a few hours later Maurokatakalōn was crowned as emperor Léōn VII in a hurried ceremony in the Agía Sophía, making him only the second emperor to make the questionable decision of usurping the throne while the previous emperor had an army in the provinces.
Léōn leapt into action. He extracted a promise from all the pronoiai present to return to their estates and raise their paroikoi in arms to join him. He then sent a courier to the Eleutheroi, requesting a parly, and then another one to the Isfendiyarid beylik in Anatolia. Namejs agreed to negotiations, and a few miles north of the city the two leaders met in the clearing. While the Eleutheroi were hypothetically loyal to Aléxios, in reality this manifested (at least among the officer corps) as loyalty to the throne, who held the power to free them. As such, Namejs was more than willing to defect over to Léōn, but only for the right price. Their tenure was to be shortened to ten years, and their pay increased. The princes were to be turned over to the usurper the next day. However, Namejs instead hedged his bets and sent the princes on to Mesēmvría, so that even if Aléxios somehow won he could always say that he had remained loyal for the whole time and was only going along with it to save his own head. Needless to say, when the leader of the Eleutheroi then claimed the next day that they had escaped, Léōn was irritated and sent what little cavalry he had after them. Ultimately, the princes managed to escape and seemingly vanished into the wilds.
Over the rest of the month the various pronoiai brought up their levies and gathered on the plains west of the city. A deal was struck with the Isfendiyards, where in exchange for Pontoērákleia the Turks would supply 2,000 horsemen to counter Aléxios’ advantage in cavalry. By the time he marched west in early June, Léōn had eight allagia of infantry (most of extremely poor quality that were barely worth the supplies they needed), six allagia of pronoiai cavalry and four allagia of Turkish horse, a host far greater than any the former basileus could hope to assemble….