IV.
The emperor Andronikos was a strange and troubled man. He often acted erratically, his personally changing so dramatically, quite literally night and day, that many historians speculate that he had a severe form of mental illness which was overlooked before he ascended to the throne.
He spent most of his days in prayer, and appeared to be-and, if you subscribe to the belief that he had Multiple Personality Disorder, was-one of the most pious men alive. However, all of this changed when the sun set, whence he seemed to become nearly insane and degenerated into a man ruled by his inner urges, going about drinking, gambling and whoring into the wee hours of the morning. He seemed to know that this was wrong, and it is supposed that his piety was due to guilt over his nocturnal actions. Prior to his coronation, this latter part of him wasn’t well known amongst the lower classes due to his isolation as Crown Prince; however, it quickly became an open secret after he became Basileus.
Now that his personality and mentality have been established, we can go about an exploration of the first four months of his reign, which are generally considered the least terrible of his reign. It is entirely possible that if events had gone even slightly different during this period the Kriti Expedition and the subsequent Second Fall of Konstantinoupoli could have been avoided.
After taking power, Andronikos ordered the anti-Unionists who had been either imprisoned or exiled by his father to be either returned or released. However, there were so many religious prisoners in the capital’s gaols that their wardens were unable to prevent the entirety of their residency from flooding out into the streets; the sudden arrival of these hardened criminals into the already confused mess of the city started a series of violent incidents that quickly expanded into a massive riot that expanded into and consumed the First, Second and Third Hills, bar only the Mangana district which was isolated and concealed by the akropolis. The mobs ransacked the city for the better part of two days, only ending when a force of 2,500 marines under the Megas Doux Licario di Carystus, earmarked for a spring campaign against the Negropontese, entered the city and brutally crushed the mob, scything down everyone in their path.
Although this succeeded in ending the Coronation Riots of 1279, the opinion of the city’s denizens quickly turned against di Carystus and he was tracked down and murdered in Sykae on 3 January 1280. This caused most of the force, bankrolled by di Carystus, to desert and wander away into Thrake, whence they started looting the countryside. Andronikos’ response to the burgeoning crisis is limited by his growing erraticism, and pressure begins to mount from within the court for Andronikos to appoint a mesazon[1] to help manage the situation. Andronikos agrees in mid-January.
However, the court soon divides itself into many factions, each backing a different man for the office. By the end of January, it appeared that the Basileus was leaning heavily towards one of his father’s old generals and political advisors, Khristophoros Tzasimpaxis. This caused several of the minor factions to unite against Tzasimpaxis, most notably those of Mikhaēl Strategopoulos and Konstantinos Khadenos. This combined faction was able to induce Tzasimpaxis into issuing pronoia to the family of those soldiers killed in the Coronation Riots, something only the Basileus or mesazon could do. He was promptly arrested on charges of usurpation, blinded and exiled to Monemvasia. With Tzasimpaxis out of the way, Khadenos was declared mesazon on 6 February, Strategopoulos retaining a free hand in an unofficial power-sharing agreement.
Now that there was a semi-stable hand at the tiller, the immediate crisis soon dissipated. The Thrakoun[2] was raised and soon ran down the deserters, most of whom were summarily executed. However, the stolen goods were not returned to their owners and were instead taken into the Imperial treasury, infuriating most of Thrake.
Khadenos then reached out to Konstantinos Palaiologos, who was camped with a small force in the Khalkidike and mulling over his options. The new mesazon offered him a pronoia over all of Rhomaioi-held Morea and the title of Sebastokrator, which the young prince soon accepted. He was crowned as Sebastokrator Konstantinos I of Morea by the Metropolitan of Thessalonika on 23 February 1280.
Khadenos then turned to Rhomaion’s next most pressing issue; Namely, the massive money and body pit that the Bulgarian Civil War had turned into. In 1277, the peasants of Dobruja had risen against the Tsar and marched on the capital. What should have been a quick and easy battle for the government ended in disaster when Tsar Konstantin fell off his chariot and onto the pointy end of a discarded spear. The Asenists had collapsed and fled south, allowing the peasants to storm the capital and install their leader, Ivaylo the Cabbage-Grower, as Tsar. The Asenites rallied around Ivan, the nephew of Konstantin, who was in exile in Konstantinoupoli. Mikhaēl dispatched an army to put him back on the throne...it was promptly routed and sent running south. Mikhaēl ordered a second army...and then a third....and a fourth...and a fifth. When he died, Mikhaēl had been gathering together a sixth army.
Khadenos ordered the expedition dissolved, summoned Asen back to the capital and convinced Andronikos to tell him that he no longer recognized him as the rightful Tsar of Bulgaria and expel him from the empire. Feelers were sent to Ivaylo regarding peace, which the Tsar seemed inclined to accept. Secret negotiations began in late March, with a peace agreement being worked out that would eventually be signed in July. It would be sealed with the marriage of the Crown Prince Mikhaēl to a future daughter of Ivaylo.
A cease-fire was negotiated with the Serbians, bringing de facto peace to the Empire’s entire northern European frontier. However, the Turkish frontier was almost entirely ignored along with the Frankokratia. The latter would lead to the worst debacle of Andronikos’ reign; The Kriti Expedition of 1280...
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[1] Equivalent to a Prime Minister
[2] The Thrake militia
