John Vataces succeeded, partly by force, partly by persuasion, in inducing the despot of Salonica to abandon the title of emperor and to recognise Nicaea as the true representative of the former empire of Constantine. Vataces thereupon became acknowledged ruler of the kingdom of Salonica from the Aegean to the Adriatic.
Decay of Constantinople.
Meantime the wealth and population of Constantinople were diminishing every day. Its commerce had almost gone. What was left was in the hands of the Venetians. No taxes could be levied on the poverty-stricken population. The Greeks of the country around Constantinople, who had been the food-producers and the source of revenue to the merchants of the capital, fled from the constant harass of war and invasions, now by Latins, now by Bulgarians, and now by Greeks, into Asia Minor, where they could labour in the fields or trade in peace and quietness.
The population in other parts of the country were in like straits. The continual money difficulties among the Latin knights and the Crusaders generally caused a widespread spirit of lawlessness. Necessity compelled them to live on the country they were passing through, and wherever they were under the command of a weak ruler, pillage was common and almost unchecked. Before men thus lawless, poor peasants fled in alarm across the Marmora to be not only among their own people but where life and property were secure.
As illustrating the lawlessness among the Latin nobles, a story told of the Emperor Robert himself is significant. He was engaged to marry the daughter of Vataces, a marriage which promised obvious advantages to the Latin empire. He preferred, however, a lady who was affianced to a knight of Burgundy. Her mother had acquiesced in her throwing over her fiancé in favour of the young emperor. The Burgundian and his friends forced their way into the palace, threw the mother into the sea, and brutally disfigured the face of the girl. The barons approved of the deed, and the king went whining to the pope to condemn the wrong-doers, since he himself was powerless to avenge the insult offered to him.
Under such conditions of lawlessness, capital fled the country. The Latin government had once more to resort to every possible device for raising money, and the ornaments of the churches and other public buildings were sent to the melting-pot or to auction.
While disaster and decay marked the condition of things in Constantinople, Nicaea continued to increase in prosperity. The city itself, in a healthy situation on the beautiful lake of Ascanius, had under the rule of John Vataces already become wealthy. Taxes were light because the revenue was not squandered, and the emperor had carried into the public expenditure the same habits of carefulness which he displayed in the management of his own private estates. It is recorded of him, as an illustration of his thrift, that on presenting the empress with a coronet decked with jewels he explained to her that it had been bought with money exclusively obtained from the sale of eggs produced on his own estates. He paid especial attention to agriculture, and, though distinguished as a warrior, set the example of attending personally to his farm, his flocks and herds, the cultivation of his fields, and the welfare of his labourers. We may excuse his sumptuary laws for the reason that the object was to check the luxury of the nobles and to encourage home manufactures. When he died, in 1254, after a reign of thirty-three years, Nicaea had deservedly obtained the reputation of being the chief city of all Greek-speaking people, whether in Europe or in Asia, the city to which the people lifted up their eyes in confidence of a speedy return to the queen city on the shores of the Bosporus.
Theodore II. of Nicaea, 1254–1258.
The reign of Theodore Lascaris the Second, son of John Vataces, lasted only four years, and though he lacked the ability of his father, and was a sufferer from epilepsy, the empire of Nicaea continued to prosper. His military administration was able and successful. He continued the policy of Vataces in endeavouring to induce or to compel all the Greeks in the Balkan peninsula to come under his rule. It may be fairly said of him that on his death, in 1258, the position of Nicaea was stronger than on his accession.