Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (23 page)

1 She was the origin of the
Princesse Lointaine,
made famous by the twelfth-century troubadour poet Jaufre Rudel and, more recently, by Edmond Rostand's play of that name. See also Petrarch's
Trionfo d'amort,
Swinburne's
Triumph of Time
and Browning's
Rude/ and the Lady of Tripoli.

warfare against Byzantium for the next four years until Manuel, anxious to free his hands for South Italy, negotiated a treaty of peace in
11
5 6.
Neither party, however, had any delusions about its duration: Geza was determined to build up a strong and independent nation, while Manuel's heart was set on nothing less than the elimination of Hungary as a separate state and its incorporation into his Empire.

Geza's death led to a disputed succession, in which Manuel did not hesitate to intervene. His own candidate was Geza's brother Stephen, to whom he sent money and weapons on a considerable scale; but Stephen was ultimately unsuccessful and the throne passed to his nephew and Geza's son, Stephen III. To him, in
1163,
Manuel sent his ambassador George Palaeologus with an offer: if Stephen would recognize his younger brother Bela as heir to Croatia and Dalmatia, the Emperor would not only give Bela the hand of his daughter Maria but would make him heir to his own imperial throne. Stephen accepted, and Palaeologus escorted the young Prince back to Constantinople, where he was baptized into the Orthodox Church with the Byzantine name of Alexius and granted the title of Despot - one previously used only by the Emperor himself, and henceforth ranking immediately below him, taking precedence over the titles of both
sebastocrator
and Caesar.

All this, one might think, should have marked the end of the Hungarian hostilities; it did nothing of the sort. Already in
1164
Manuel and Bela crossed the Danube, on the dubious grounds that Stephen had not kept to his agreement of the previous year. Further campaigns followed — campaigns notable for the outstanding courage shown by the regiment of Seljuks provided by the Sultan under the terms of his treaty - and the fighting continued until
1167,
when a major victory by the Byzantine army under Manuel's nephew Andronicus Contostephanus
1
left the Emperor in possession of Dalmatia, Bosnia, Sirmium
2
and the greater part of Croatia.

Bela and his betrothed played a major part in the ensuing celebrations. It was noted however that after four years their marriage seemed no nearer; and in
1169
the reason for the delay became clear when the Empress Mary bore her husband a son. Now it was Manuel's turn to go back on his undertakings. Breaking off Bela's engagement to his daughter, he married him instead to his wife's half-sister, Princess Anne of

1He was the son of the Emperor's sister Anna, who had married Stephen Contostephanus.

2The region of what is now northern Croatia and north-western Serbia, south of the Drava and Danube rivers.

Chatillon, simultaneously demoting him to the rank of Caesar. Three years later, he made his son - also named Alexius - co-Emperor. Such displeasure as Bela may have felt was quickly dissipated: the spring of that same year of
1172
saw the death of his brother Ste
phen and - with more than a littl
e help from Manuel - his own accession to the Hungarian throne. Before leaving Constantinople he swore fealty to the
basileus,
promising that he would always pay due regard to the best interests of the Empire. He was to prove as good as his word.

The success of Manuel's Hungarian policy had another happy result for him: it deprived the constantly rebellious Serbs of their most valuable ally. The imperial army had always managed to quell their repeated insurrections, but had never succeeded in stopping them altogether. In
1167
the Grand Zhupan Stephen Nemanja won a notable victory, and for a time it looked as though Manuel had met his match; but the death of Stephen of Hungary and a major campaign in the summer of
1172
led by the Emperor himself put an end to all Nemanja's hopes. Like Reynald of Chatillon, he was obliged to humble himself before his conqueror, and later to take part in Manuel's triumphal entry into Constantinople as a defeated rebel.

Among the nations of the West, the principal sufferer from these developments was Venice. She too had claims over Dalmatia, where in the past she had been only too pleased to make common cause with the Byzantines against Hungarian rapaciousness; and the reaction on the Rialto to the Emperor's cool annexation of the entire coast can well be imagined. Not that the Venetians expected any better from him: for some time now they had been watching with increasing concern while he allowed Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi steadily to consolidate their positions in Constantinople - formerly, so far as foreign merchants were concerned, the exclusive preserve of the Most Serene Republic. Nearer to home, he was treating the city of Ancona - which still maintained a substantial Greek-speaking population - as if it were a Byzantine colony; there were even rumours that he might be planning to claim it for his Empire, with the obvious long-term objective of reviving the old Exarchate.

But Manuel also had a case. The number of Latins permanently resident in Constantinople at this time was probably not less than eighty thousand, all enjoying the special privileges that he and his predecessors, in moments of economic or political weakness, had been forced to grant. Of these, the Venetians were the most numerous, the most favoured and the most objectionable. Nicetas Choniates, chief of the palace secretariat, goes so far as to complain that their colony had become 'so insolent in its wealth and prosperity as to hold the imperial power in scorn'. It was therefore hardly surprising that the Emperor should wish to teach them a lesson; and before long he was given the perfect opportunity to do so. Some time early in
11
7
1
, the new Genoese settlement at Galata — the district of Constantinople on the further side of the Golden Horn - was attacked and largely destroyed. Those responsible for the devastation were never identified; for Manuel, however, here was just the opportunity that he had been looking for. Casting the blame squarely on the Venetians, on
12
March he decreed that all citizens of the Serenissima anywhere on Byzantine soil should be placed under immediate arrest, their ships and property confiscated. A few managed to escape in a Byzantine warship, put at their disposal by a Venetian-born captain in the imperial service; but the majority were less lucky. In the capital alone, ten thousand were seized; and when all the prisons had been filled to bursting, monasteries and convents were requisitioned to accommodate the overspill.

The reaction in Venice when the news reached the Rialto was first incredulity, then fury. The universal belief that the attack on the Genoese had been a pretext deliberately fabricated by the Byzantines was strengthened when the Genoese themselves declared that the Venetians had had nothing to do with it moreover the smoothness and efficiency with which the arrests had been carried out - on the same day throughout the Empire - showed that they must have been carefully planned weeks in advance. It was remembered also that only two years before, to stamp out rumours that he was contemplating an action of this kind, the Emperor had given Venetian ambassadors specific guarantees for the security of their countrymen - guarantees which had actually attracted further Venetian capital to the East and had thus further increased the spoils that he was now enjoying.

The last of the old ties that had bound Venice to Byzantium were forgotten. The Republic was bent on war. A forced loan was ordered, for which every citizen would be liable according to his means;
1
Venetians living abroad - such of them, at least, as were not languishing in Manuel's prisons - were recalled home and pressed into service; and in little over three months Doge Vitale Michiel had succeeded in raising a

1
It was to facilitate the collection of this loan that the city was divided into six districts, or
sestitri,
which still today form the basis of its postal system.

fleet of more than
120
sail which, the following September, he led out of the lagoon against the Empire of the East. Stopping at various points in Istria and Dalmatia to pick up such Venetian subjects as he might find, he continued round the Peloponnese as far as Euboea, where imperial ambassadors were awaiting him. They brought conciliatory messages from their master who, they emphasized, had no wish for war. The Doge had only to send a peace mission to Constantinople; he would then find that all differences could be resolved, on terms that he would not consider unfavourable.

Vitale Michiel accepted. It was the worst mistake of his life. While his emissaries continued their journey to the Bosphorus, he took his fleet on to Chios to await developments. It was there that disaster struck. Plague broke out in the overcrowded ships and spread with terrible speed. By early spring thousands were dead, the survivors so weakened and demoralized as to be unfit for war or anything else. At this point the ambassadors arrived from Constantinople. They had been abominably treated, and their mission had proved a total failure. The Emperor clearly had not the faintest intention of changing his attitude; his only purpose in inviting them had been to gain time while he improved his own defences. Shattered and humiliated, Michiel returned to face a general assembly of his subjects. He would have been better advised to remain in the East. In their eyes he had shown criminal gullibility in falling so completely into a typically Byzantine trap; and now, it appeared, he had brought the plague back to Venice. This last incompetence could not be forgiven. The whole assembly rose against him, while a mob gathered outside calling for his blood. Slipping out of a side door of the palace, the luckless Doge fled to seek asylum in the convent of S. Zaccaria. He never reached it. Before he had gone more than a few hundred yards he was set upon and stabbed to death.

It was to be fourteen years before diplomatic relations were restored between Byzantium and Venice, and thirty-two before the Venetians took their revenge; but only five years after the return of Vitale Michiel and his plague-stricken fleet to the lagoon, the Republic became the centre of attention of all Christendom. On
24
July
1177
Michiel's successor, Sebastiano Ziani, played host to the most important political ceremony of the twelfth century: the formal reconciliation of Pope Alexander III and the Western Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa.

Ever since his ill-fated coronation in the summer of
11
5 5
, Frederick's relations with the Papacy had grown worse and worse. From the outset he had been determined to assert his authority over North Italy; but the vast majority of the cities and towns of Lombardy were just as firmly resolved to break the old feudal fetters in favour of republican self-government, and Pope Adrian supported them. In August
1159,
representatives of Milan, Crema, Brescia and Piacenza had met the Pope at Anagni and, in the presence of envoys from King William of Sicily, had sworn the initial pact that was to become the nucleus of the great Lombard League. The towns promised that they would have no dealings with the common enemy without papal consent, while the Pope undertook to excommunicate the Emperor after the usual period of forty days.

But he never did so. While still at Anagni he was stricken by a sudden angina, and on
1
September he died. His death gave Frederick Barbarossa an opportunity to sow yet more dissension. Recognizing that the next Pope, if freely elected, would continue along the lines set by his predecessor, he deliberately engineered a schism within the papal Curia. Thus it was that, just as Cardinal Roland of Siena - who, as Adrian's chancellor, had been the principal architect of his foreign policy - was being enthroned in St Peter's as Pope Alexander III, his colleague Cardinal Octavian of S. Cecilia suddenly seized the papal mantle and put it on himself. Alexander's supporters snatched it back; but Octavian had taken the precaution of bringing another, into which he somehow managed to struggle - getting it on back to front in the process. He then made a dash for the throne, sat on it, and proclaimed himself Pope Victor IV. It was hardly an edifying performance; but it worked. Frederick's ambassadors in Rome immediately recognized Victor as the rightful Pontiff. Virtually all the rest of Western Europe soon gave its allegiance to Alexander, but the damage was done and the chaotic Italian political scene was further bedevilled, for the next eighteen years, by a disputed papacy. Meanwhile Frederick - who had been finally excommunicated by Alexander in March
1160
- continued to do him all the harm he could, even going so far as to arrange for the 'election' - by two tame schismatic cardinals - of another anti-Pope when Victor died four years later.

To Manuel Comnenus, the quarrel between Barbarossa and the Pope seemed a perfect opportunity to re-establish the supremacy of Byzantium throughout Christendom. Since his rival was clearly unwilling to fulfil the Western Emperor's traditional role as protector, he would assume it himself; this new
rapprochement
might even achieve the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches, in schism now for well over a century. When therefore two high-ranking papal le
gates arrived in Constantinople
early in
1160,
to request the Emperor's support for Alexander against the anti-Pope Victor, he received them warmly; and for the next five years he seems to have maintained secret negotiations with the Pope and the King of France - Louis having to some extent conquered his instinctive mistrust of Byzantium - in the hopes of forming a general alliance of the princes of Europe and the cities and towns of Italy which would eliminate Frederick once and for all.