Excerpt: The Mediterranean World and the Great Plague - Saul Bendayan, AD 2003
The Great Plague of the early 13th century is best known for speeding and abetting the fall of the Roman Empire. However, its effects were felt throughout the Supercontinent, from Eire to Zhongguo, though the Subcontinent and most of Subsahara were spared its effects.
Modern learning has allowed us to narrow down the nature of the Plague and identify it positively as a recurrence of Justinian's Disease.[1] The same type of plague swept through the Mediterannean world from the sixth century and recurred throughout the seventh and eighth before eventually going quiet as contact with the easternmost reaches of the Supercontinent waned.
It is little surprise that the plague returned around the time of the establishment of the Road of Saint Sergius, which manifested about 20 to 30 years before the outbreak as a network of Naiman merchants established contact with the Kipchaks of the Black Olesh. Archaeological evidence suggests that trade had been going on for a decade or two prior to the establishment of the Naiman Khaganate, largely driven by a westward migration of a few early Naiman families shaken loose by the efforts of the Tayang clan - the great Berke Khagan and his arguably greater son, Chaghagan - to unify the demoralized Naimans following their defeats at the hands of the Khitans, then subdue the Uriankhai and proceed to Jeti-su and the Fergana-Transoxiana region to unseat the Karakhanids. It was under them that trade westward to the Black Olesh increased as Naiman Nestorians encountered their Orthodox Cuman brethren and found grounds for a relationship.
Along that link, however, came a venue for disease to spread - and evidence suggests it came from the east and traveled to the Mediterranean through the Naiman Khaganate by way of the Black Olesh.
Several reservoirs of Justinian's Disease exist in the world. Biohistorical consensus has settled on the Great Plague as being that strain of Justinian's Disease resident in several species of steppeland rodent, likely the marmot known to the locals as the tarbagan. These marmots were occasionally hunted by the locals, and indeed, excavations in the region the tarbagan lives have found some of the oldest plague victims known: Four people buried in Nestorian graves in the year 1192, whose remains show evidence of a strain of the pathogen thought to be peculiar to the tarbagan.
While the marmot itself may have been the source of the illness, its probable vector was fleas living on other rodents, particularly black rats endemic to cities and trade lanes at the time, spread by travel along trade routes as human actions carried the rodents from place to place. Direct records from the Black Olesh are hard to come by, but certainly the plague was present in Anatolia by the dawn of the 13th century.
The transmission of the disease through the Black Olesh's network of ports and trade depots created two lines of transmission. One, somewhat slower to spread, transmitted north through the west of Cumania and travelled along the land- and river-based fur trading routes of Rus'. The other and more rapidly-spreading fork preyed on the Black Olesh Kipchaks' favourite trade stops: The Imperial Cities of the Eastern Roman Empire, and from there througout the Mediterranean.
We are assured of the Plague's arrival in Constantinople sometime in 1197 or 1198 through the writings of the merchant Isaac Lampramatias, who writes:
"Now came to the port a vessel of the Koumanoi[2], and it carried a cargo of furs and wheats, but the Koumanoi were turned away, for it was found that they had been stricken by some great affliction, and only the living dead crewed her, and their forms bulged with buboes. And their vessel was cast into the sea and burned, for they were by God truly accursed. And we beheld it as a great torch staining its flame upon the night to consume the damned aboard."
Far from a ship of zombies, it would appear that Constantinople was visited by a ship of Black Olesh Cumans showing the swollen lymph glands diagnostic of Justinian's Disease. The ship may not have been the source of the outbreak. However, by that year, most of the Imperial Cities along the Aegean, along with the Muslim-held cities throughout the Black Sea rim, had been stricken by the plague. It spread from there as traders radiated out from the busy Imperial Cities throughout the Mediterranean. By the end of that year, it was present in the Peloponnese; by 1199, it had spread to Italy, Narbonne, Barshiluna, Cordoba, Alexandria, Tunis, Jerusalem and Aleppo, sweeping through the Mediterranean world.
Yet it was in Constantinople that the Plague was most immediately felt. Though concerted campaigns out of Epirus and Hungary had succeeded in weakening the power of the Patzinaks in Bulgaria, avaricious warlords continued to eye the Queen of Cities. The most prominent among them was Bouchras of Varna, otherwise known as Bughra the Pecheneg.[3] Bouchras had converted to Greek Christianity and embraced Greek and Bulgarian culture, and he had come into the service of the ruling Pecheneg khans in Bulgaria as a general, mainly noted for his success against the Roman remnant. In the years leading up to the Plague, Bouchras had been assembling a fleet of ships and raiding the Imperial Cities with mixed success, suffering a couple of defeats at the hands of the Roman navy but not losing his fleet.
Just as the Plague arrived, Bouchras made his move. Sweeping down the Black Sea coast both by ship and with an army on foot, Bouchras surprised the Romans with their forces in the field to try and retake Nikaea in the east, seizing Selymbria in a short span of time in a land attack before swinging east. The emperor of the day - Michael VI Kamytzes, son of the general-emperor Michael V, who had been chosen to succeed the last of the Apokapes Emperors some years prior - sought to muster a defense and draw forces back to defend the city.
However, as Isaac Lampramatias recounts, the spread of death through Constantinople complicated matters. Bouchras, meanwhile, heard tell of some crisis in Constantinople, but knew little of the details even as his army of Muslim and Christian Patzinaks, Bulgarians, Vlachs and allied Kipchaks arrived to assault Constantinople from the west. Not long thereafter, Bouchras himself arrived with his fleet.
The walls of Constantinople are all but unassailable by land; traditionally, the only hope is to assault the sea walls. The Great Turkmen Mamlakate had attempted conventional land-based sieges in the past, but had failed to breach the Theodosian Walls and had simply left the city alone, shrinking in population but still holding on. An abortive naval invasion by the warlord Alp of Ephesus in the mid-1100s failed due to the inexperience of the Turkmen sailors and the superiority of even the remnant navy of the Late Roman Empire. Bouchras arrived on paper with more ships, many of them crewed by experienced Bulgarian and Greek mariners, built by talented shipwrights. Even then, however, the Roman navy should have enjoyed superiority.
But it would seem that Bouchras encountered little naval resistance; indeed, the poet Mahmud of Pladin, along with the fleet as a soldier, gives a lurid description of Roman ships "shining like water set aflame" without ever launching.
After eight days of siege, weather finally worked in Bouchras' favour on July 4, 1198. Picking up a north wind, Bouchras maneuvered his ships along the Golden Horn and up against the sea walls. Mahmud of Pladin reports that the invaders scaled the walls of the city, overcame the defenders and pushed through to two of the city gates, throwing them open and allowing the assembled land army - mostly mounted Patzinaks, Bulgarians and Kipchaks - to stream into the Queen of Cities.
What they found is detailed by the Patzinak Christian monk, Metiga of Silistra, who was along as part of Bouchras's retinue:
"Where we expected to find a Queen of Cities, we found instead a City of Hell. Where fire and war had not scourged her, some vile curse had. The bodies of the Greeks lay in vast heaps, blighted and bulging with the rot of plague, and with them the scent of the dead suffused all things. The soldiery upon the walls were so few because so many had fallen without a fight; the ships lay still in their berths, for there were no Greeks left to man their oars. And the men with Bouchras wept and crossed themselves, for they wished not such a horror even upon the decadent Greeks, nor upon even their worst enemy."
Scholarly estimates suggest that the Great Plague had already killed a large percentage of the population of Constantinople by the time Bouchras seized the city. Upon reaching the city centre, the Patzinaks found Michael VI himself still there, stricken by the Plague and unable to flee. Bouchras spared his life and ordered him confined to a comfortable room, where he would die of his illness some days later.
Plague or no plague, Bouchras promptly pronounced himself rightful Tsar of Rome. In truth, however, the so-called Empire of Bouchras controlled only a triangle between Constantinople, Varna and Alexandropolis - and while the army Bouchras mustered was mighty, his proclamation of Empire had infuriated both the Patzinak rulers of Bulgaria and Malik Muhammad Arslan in Rasht. While his immediate superiors were Muslims (those in Patzinak Bulgaria forming a ruling class over a majority Christian host), Bouchras made his declaration in the name of the Greek Christian God, and it was seen as an act of defiance by the Christian Patzinaks and Bulgarians towards the Muslims. Almost immediately, Turkmen forces began to move westward, while the Patzinaks struggled to mount a defense, with much of their host given over to Bouchras and their Muslim elements beset by raids from Hungary.
The Plague would similarly complicate matters for Bouchras, spreading rapidly through his own army and continuing to ravage the city. By the outbreak's end, up to 60% of the population of Constantinople would be dead, though many of them died from the conventional causes of war; scholars estimate that 35% to 40% of the population died due to Justinian's Disease.
More to the point, the fall of Constantinople created a crisis in the Greek world. Fleeing to Athens, a second cousin of Michael VI, Andronikos Anemas, proclaimed himself Emperor by right. Months later, a second proclamation came from a general in Thessaloniki who had married Michael's uncle's daughter. The remnants of the Roman Empire gradually fractured as various generals and pretenders asserted their intention to restore the Empire.
Only the Plague, which had begun to sweep the lands of the Patzinaks and Turkmens in earnest, prevented force from being brought to bear upon them. But it also prevented them from truly acting. From then on, military action became a hindrance as able-bodied men were brought low by the deepening spread of the illness.
But word of the fall of Constantinople spread, even as the Plague did. Among the men of Christian Europe, particularly those invested in the fight against the Turkmen and the Patzinak, the news was met with shock: It was seen as a punishment from God, chastising Christendom for its failure to wrest Romania from the hands of the Turkmens. And in some pulpits in Hungary and Epirus, murmurs began to arise that the blame lay with Rome and Germany, still locked in schism, so caught up in their own struggle and their own corruption that preserving the faith had slipped beneath their notice.
[1] The bubonic plague.
[2] The Greek form of "Cumans."
[3] Your boy Tzachas,
@Soverihn.
SUMMARY:
July 4, 1198: The Christian Patzinak warlord Bouchras of Varna successfully besieges Constantinople. He finds the reason the city's defenses were so weak: The bubonic plague has already killed much of the city. Bouchras proclaims himself Emperor and rebels against the Great Turkmen Mamlakate as the Plague continues to spread through the Haemus and the Mediterranean world.
