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The public life of John Cantacuzenos was contemporary almost to the year with that of Stephen Dushan. He was associated with Andronicus III in the capacity of grand chancellor and confidential adviser throughout the decade which saw the loss of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Shortly after he had succeeded in deposing his grandfather, Andronicus III was taken with a violent fever. His crime-stained mind could not rid itself of the idea that he was going to die, even after he had become convalescent. He solicited Cantacuzenos to assume the imperial purple. He wanted to abdicate and take monk’s orders. A drink from a miraculous spring gave him a new grip on life.[186] For eleven years he lived on, in every crisis irresolute, in every disaster unkingly, bending always before the stronger will of Cantacuzenos. In 1341, at the early age of forty-five, his worthless life ended. His legacy to the Empress Anna and his child heir was the guardianship of his ‘friend and counsellor, John Cantacuzenos’. The grand chancellor accepted the regency with alacrity.[187]
Three months after the death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzenos crowned himself emperor at Demotika. He put the imperial crown also upon the head of his wife Irene, a Bulgarian princess. Neither in Constantinople nor in Adrianople were the pretensions of Cantacuzenos admitted. The widow of Andronicus, Anna of Savoy, refused to acknowledge the usurper. In Adrianople the inhabitants called in both Bulgarians and Turks to defend them against Cantacuzenos.[188] The Bulgarian Czar took sides secretly against his son-in-law.
The year 1342 saw the Byzantines engaged in another terrible civil war. The self-appointed emperor did not hesitate to go to Pristina and offer to Stephen Dushan Macedonia as far as Serres in exchange for Serbian aid against the Palaeologi.[189]
When the Serbian assistance proved unsatisfactory, Cantacuzenos called in the Turks of Aïdin. Omar, with 83 ships and 29,000 soldiers, came to his aid, but, because of the severe cold, returned to Asia before anything could be accomplished.[190] He came back in the spring of 1343 with 290 vessels and helped Cantacuzenos to enter Salonika. In the fall of this year Cantacuzenos led his Turkish mercenaries into Thrace. Anna appealed in vain to Venice to exercise a pressure upon the Turks and Serbians, so that they would no longer support her rival.[191] In desperation she gave Alexander of Bulgaria nine strongholds in the Rhodope Mountains in exchange for a few thousand soldiers. She resorted also to bribing the Turks in Cantacuzenos’s service, and made overtures to Orkhan.
The crusade of 1344 against the Turks of Aïdin, which resulted in the capture of Smyrna, prevented Cantacuzenos from continuing to receive substantial aid from Omar, who died four years later in an attempt to win back Smyrna.[192] Stephen Dushan, as we have already seen, was laying claim to the Byzantine throne himself. Cantacuzenos could turn only to the Osmanlis.
It was in January 1345 that Cantacuzenos made his infamous proposal to Orkhan. In exchange for six thousand soldiers he was to give his daughter Theodora to the Ottoman emir.[193] Orkhan now turned a deaf ear to the appeals of Anna. This was a better offer. The Osmanlis crossed into Europe. With their help Cantacuzenos got possession of all the coast cities of the Black Sea except Sozopolis, besieged Constantinople, ravaged the neighbourhood of the capital, and won Adrianople.[194]
It was only by threatening to change to the side of the Palaeologi that Orkhan secured the fulfilment of the bargain. In May 1346 Theodora became his bride.[195] A few days later, while Cantacuzenos was besieging the capital with the soldiers for whom he had paid so dearly, the beleaguered city was awakened by an ominous event. The eastern portion of the Church of St. Sophia had fallen.[196]
Throughout the year 1346 Constantinople was invested by Cantacuzenos and his mercenaries. The aristocratic party was almost openly championing the cause of the usurper, while Anna relied upon the democratic party and the Genoese. As for the clergy, they and the bulk of the population were more interested in the ecclesiastical trial of Barlaam for the Bogomile heresy[197] than in the civil war. In February 1347, while the Synod was in the act of condemning Barlaam, and Anna was confined to her bed with a serious illness, partisans of Cantacuzenos left the Golden Gate open. The ‘faithful friend and counsellor’ of Andronicus III entered without opposition. The garrison had been bribed, and prevented the Genoese from coming to the rescue of the empress. She yielded only when the palace of the Blachernae was attacked.
Anna agreed to recognize Cantacuzenos and Irene as co-rulers, and to a union of the families by the betrothal of Helen, daughter of Cantacuzenos, to the young John Palaeologos. John, who was fifteen, protested against marrying the thirteen-year-old Helen. His mother overruled his objections. In May the marriage took place in the church of the Blachernae, as St. Sophia was still in ruins. This ceremony was followed by the coronation of the two emperors, John Cantacuzenos and John Palaeologos, and the three empresses, Anna, Irene, and Helen.[198] Five rulers for the remnant of the Byzantine Empire! At that very moment in France, the Marquis de Montferrat, heir to the Latin emperors of Constantinople, was planning with the Pope to drive out both Cantacuzenos and Palaeologos.[199]
Orkhan was well satisfied with this entering wedge. He was now son-in-law of one emperor and brother-in-law of the other. His wife Theodora was granddaughter of the Bulgarian Czar. He had open to him also a marriage alliance with Stephen Dushan. The gods were first making mad.
Cantacuzenos was compelled immediately to seek aid again of Orkhan. While he had been expending his energies against Constantinople, Stephen Dushan had made great strides in Macedonia. At Scutari, where Orkhan had come to congratulate his father-in-law upon the happy issue of the struggle for the imperial purple, Cantacuzenos asked for six thousand Osmanlis to dislodge the Serbians from the coast cities of Macedonia. Orkhan sent the soldiers willingly. He must, however, have given them secret instructions, for after having taken immense booty they returned to Nicomedia without having captured for Cantacuzenos a single one of the cities held by Stephen.[200]