Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (47 page)

Why did he do so? According to the chronicler Ramon Muntaner — who was with him on the campaign - messengers had arrived from the Emperor, recalling him to the West. By now Roger de Flor had long passed the stage at which imperial orders were to be unquestioningly obeyed. What concerned him was the fact that the expedition was taking him further and further out of touch: if there were a crisis in Constantinople, he must be in a position to take advantage of it. Besides, he had left vast quantities of treasure at Magnesia and was beginning to worry about its safety. And what about pay, for himself and his men? Despite their behaviour and their overbearing attitude to the Byzantines, they were still technically mercenaries and the Emperor now owed them nearly a year's wages. Finally, unprincipled adventurer as he was, Roger never liked unnecessary risks: again and again during this period of his career we find him taking the side of caution, restraining his more impulsive followers from their daredevil plans. On the high Anatolian plateau across which they would have to march, he explained, the onset of winter was only a few weeks away. They must retrace their steps while it was still safe to do so.

And so they did - but only to find that in their absence a Greek knight named Attaliotes had seized Magnesia, and with it all their accumulated treasure. At once they put the town under siege; but before it could be taken another, more urgent message reached them from the Emperor: that Theodore Svetoslav, the usurper who had driven the Mongols from Bulgaria and united most of it - including the Byzantine ports on the Black Sea - under his rule, had
invaded Thrace and was already
threatening Constantinople. Alone, Andronicus could do nothing; only with Catalan assistance could he hope to save his capital. Here was an appeal that could not be ignored: Roger immediately saw that Theodore presented a dangerous new comp
lication, and that if not effecti
vely dealt with he might prove a grave obstacle to his own long-term plans. Magnesia — which was stoutly defended — must be left till later. Marching through the Troad to the Hellespont, he led his men across the straits and pitched his camp in Gallipoli.

At this point the precise chronology becomes uncertain: Greek and Spanish sources give conflicting - and extremely one-sided - accounts of what took place, and it is impossible to reconcile them altogether. It seems, however, that some time during the winter of
1304—5
word came from the co-Emperor Michael that the services of Roger de Flor and his men would not after all be necessary; and soon afterwards Roger learned that Michael had promulgated an edict to the Byzantine forces that the Grand Duke was no longer to be obeyed. No explanation was offered, no indication of how the Bulgar crisis had been settled so suddenly and with such apparent ease. Could it have been - one cannot help wondering - that there had in fact been no Bulgar crisis at all, that the whole thing had been nothing more than a fabrication designed to bring Roger and his men back from the East to where the Byzantines could keep a proper eye on them?

However that may be, it was fortunate for Roger de Flor that he should have been within reach of Constantinople when, early in
1305,
a fleet of nine Spanish galleys appeared in the Golden Horn, commanded by a certain Berenguer d'Entenca, an old comrade-in-arms from the Sicilian campaign whom James II of Aragon had now appointed his special envoy to the Emperor. The purpose of Berenguer's visit, apart from the bringing of reinforcements - which had not been asked for, though they were none the less welcome for that - remains something of a mystery: the rumour, assiduously spread by the Genoese, that he was connected with a secret conspiracy to restore the Latin Empire was not to be borne out by subsequent events, while Gregoras's claim that he had been invited by Andronicus in the hopes of playing him off against Roger seems little short of absurd. At all events the envoy was received with every honour and was soon afterwards himself awarded the title of
megas dux,
Roger being simultaneously promoted to the rank of Caesar.

This latter honour was admittedly in some degree deserved: the Catalan Company had fought at least three decisive battles against the Turks in Anatolia, to say nothing of innumerable minor skirmishes from which they had almost always emerged victorious. But it was also intended as a palliative. Michael doubtless realized that his action at the time of the Bulgar scare had antagonized Roger both dangerously and unnecessarily. Moreover the Company had by now been a full year without pay, and its two commanders, in their heated negotiations with the Emperor, were adopting an increasingly threatening tone. Unfortunately there was little - as usual - that Andronicus could do. The imperial coffers were empty. Recently he had been obliged to debase the coinage yet again: the gold content of the
hyperpyron
- the name, ironically enough, meant 'highly refined' - was now down to less than twenty per cent, and Roger angrily refused to be fobbed off with what he understandably described as base metal. Berenguer d'Entenga showed his indignation more forcibly still: he returned the gold and silver dinner service on which his meals had been provided - although, if Pachymeres is to be believed, not before he had put them to the most ignoble uses -boarded his flagship and set sail for the Company's camp at Gallipoli. As he left Blachernae, he ostentatiously hurled his ducal regalia overboard in full sight of the palace.

At last agreement was reached - though only after Andronicus had granted Roger's demand for the whole of Byzantine Anatolia in fief; and in the spring of 1305 the Catalans began their return to Asia. Before leaving for his new domains, however, Roger decided to make a formal visit to Michael IX, whom he had never met and who was then at Adrianople. The co-Emperor, he knew, had no love for himself and his men, whom he mistrusted even more than did his father; Roger's real purpose may well have been to try to improve relations between them, or at least to reach some sort of understanding - as he had so signally failed to achieve with Andronicus.
1
His pregnant wife Maria and her mother both implored him not to venture among his openly avowed enemies, but he ignored them both and on 23 March 1305 set off, with an escort of three hundred cavalry and a thousand infantry, for Michael's headquarters.

Roger was received in Adrianople with full honours and remained there over a week - a clear enough sign, surely, that he saw this as something more than a courtesy visit. Was Michael deliberately playing

1
Of the several theories that have been put forward as to Roger's real reason for his visit to Michael IX, the most interesting is that of Alfonso Lowe, in
The Catalan Vengeance,
who speculates that he was deliberately lured to his death by Andronicus and Michael together, on the pretext of discussing the elimination of Theodore Svetoslav and his replacement by the rightful ruler of Bulgaria, Roger's own brother-in-law. But it is only speculation; we shall never know.

for time, so as to summon enough reinforcements to deal with the Catalans as necessary? Perhaps he was. All we can say for certain is that on 5 April, the eve of his departure for Gallipoli, Roger de Flor was assassinated. Pachymeres - who was over a hundred miles away in Constantinople - identifies the assassin as George Gircon, the Alan chieftain whose son had been killed by the Catalans at Cyzicus and who had long nurtured a particular hatred for their leader; he goes on to report that the murder took place on the threshold of the private apartments of the co-Empress, Rita-Maria of Armenia, though precisely what Roger was doing there he does not explain. Western sources on the other hand - which may in the circumstances be more reliable - while also attributing the crime to Gircon, claim that the scene was a farewell banquet, given by Michael in his honour. Towards the end of the feast the latter withdrew according to normal custom, leaving his guests to continue their drinking at their leisure; then, suddenly, the doors were flung open and a fully-armed company of Alan mercenaries burst into the hall. The Catalans - surrounded, outnumbered and almost certainly drunk - stood no chance. Roger was killed with the rest.

No longer was there any question of an alliance between the Greeks and the Catalan Company. Henceforth it was open war.

As soon as the news reached the Catalan camp at Gallipoli, the move to Asia stopped; those who had already crossed the straits were summoned back, and the peninsula on which the town stood was declared Spanish territory. The Company then drove across Thrace taking, as it marched, a terrible vengeance. It had of course been seriously depleted at Adrianople; but an active programme of recruitment had attracted companies of Turks and Bulgars and before long it was as numerous as ever. Michael IX, now seriously alarmed by a turn of events for which he had been at least partially responsible, did his utmost to halt its advance; but his army was smashed by the Catalans near the castle of Aprus near Rhaedestum (Tekirdag) and he himself, after fighting with conspicuous courage, narrowly escaped with his life.

The province of Thrace, lying as it did across the direct road to Constantinople from the West, had suffered much hardship over the centuries. It had been ravaged by Avars and Huns, by Gepids and Bulgars, by Scythians and Slavs and Christian Crusaders. But the Catalans were the worst. So savage were their massacres, so unspeakable their atrocities, that it sometimes seemed as though they were determined to leave no single Thracian alive. Farms and villages - sometimes whole towns were abandoned, as thousands of panic-stricken
refugees streamed into Constanti
nople, leaving their cornfields ablaze behind them. Adrianople and Didymotichum remained impregnable, but their garrisons no longer dared to take any initiative. Once one of the richest and most fertile territories of the Byzantine Empire, Thrace was now a desert.

But deserts are little more rewarding to their conquerors than to their inhabitants, and in the summer of 1308 the Catalans turned west towards Thessalonica. They failed to capture the city, but they destroyed several smaller towns and plundered and pillaged the monasteries of Mount Athos before descending first into Thessaly and then, in 1310, yet further south into Boeotia where they took service with Walter of Brienne, the French Duke of Athens and Thebes. Walter had long had his eye on Thessaly, and with Catalan help he effortlessly brought the young and ailing John II Ducas
1
to his knees. Before long, however, Walter discovered in his turn that the Catalans were dangerous employees, easier to hire than to dismiss. On 15 March 1311 they annihilated his army on the banks of the Cephissus river; he himself was killed, together with most of his knights. The victors then advanced to Athens, where they set up their own Duchy. It was to last another seventy-seven years.

And so the Catalans pass out of our story. In less than a single decade they had inflicted almost as much damage on the Byzantine Empire as the Turks had done in a century. And they had been paid by the Emperor to do it. In order to find their wages, Andronicus Palaeologus had been obliged to debase his coinage and to impose still heavier taxes on his already desperate subjects. The damage they had done in Thrace was to take generations to repair; the flood of refugees they had driven from their homes was to create near-famine in Constantinople. Had they kept to the terms of their agreement with Andronicus, concentrating on pushing back the Turks and renouncing all territorial ambitions for themselves, they might have turned back the Islamic tide and the whole future history of the Levant might have been changed. Alas, they did not; instead, almost exacdy a century after the Fourth Crusade, they dealt the Empire that they had come to save yet another paralysing blow, from which it would not recover.

1
Grandson of John I Ducas through his son Constantino.

17

The Two Andronici

[1307-41]

The Devil has still the same inclination to injure men that he has had since the beginning of the world; and although he does not always do them all the harm he intends, yet he succeeds in doing them a great part of it.

Andronicus II, to his grandson Andronicus III after the capture of Constantinople

Although the first decade of the fourteenth century was overshadowed, as far as Byzantium was concerned, by the Company of Catalans, this was by no means the only problem with which the unfortunate Andronicus Palaeologus was called upon to deal. To the west, Theodore Svetoslav continued to threaten - at least until 1307, when Andronicus conceded to him the Black Sea ports that he had already occupied, together with the hand in marriage of Michael IX's daughter Theodora. Then Charles IPs son Philip of Taranto joined forces with the Catholic Albanians and captured Durazzo. Meanwhile another Western European prince had entered the fray: Charles of Valois, brother of the French King Philip the Fair. In 1301 he had married Catharine of Courtenay, granddaughter of the Emperor Baldwin; now he in his turn was determined to restore the Latin Empire. To that end he had enlisted the help of Pope Clement V - who had obligingly pronounced sentence of anathema on Andronicus — as well as concluding agreements with Venice, with Miliutin of Serbia (by this time somewhat disenchanted with his father-in-law) and even, in 1308, with the Catalan Company. In that same year, however, his wife died; the right of succession passed to their daughter Catharine of Valois and Charles found himself without a claim after all - particularly after Philip of Taranto, having divorced his first wife Thamar, married Catharine in 1313. But although his machinations eventually came to nothing, during the first years of the century he too had caused the Emperor considerable anxiety.