[1282-1301 A.D.]
Andronicus II ascended the throne at the age of twenty-four, having been born about the time his father received the imperial crown at Nicæa. He had most of the defects of his father’s character, without his personal dignity and military talents. In youth he was destitute of vigour, in old age of prudence. His administration was marked by the same habits of cunning and falsehood which had distinguished his father’s conduct; and the consequence was that, towards the end of his long reign, he was as generally despised as his father had been hated. In his private character he was arbitrary, peevish, and religious; in his public administration despotic, fond of meddling, industrious, and inconsequent.
Andronicus, eager to efface the stain of his own sinful compliance with the union of the churches, allowed the body of his father to be deprived of the usual funeral honours and public prayers. The empress, Michael’s widow, was compelled to abjure the union, and to approve of the indignities to his memory, before her own name was inserted in the public prayers for the imperial family. The patriarch Veccus was forced to resign, and his predecessor Joseph was reinstated on the patriarchal throne.
The bigotry of Andronicus induced him to sanction the establishment of a tribunal consisting chiefly of monks, which was empowered to fix the penance to be performed by those who desired to obtain absolution from a general sentence of excommunication, launched against all who had communicated with the Latin church. As nearly the whole population of the empire had fallen under this sentence of excommunication, the power of the tribunal was unlimited. The rich were mulcted according to the sensibility of their conscience and the malice of their enemies, while ecclesiastics obnoxious to the bigots were suspended from the exercise of their functions.[87]
During the earlier years of the reign of Andronicus the power of the Turks excited no alarm. The garrisons in the frontier fortresses were reduced, the number of the legions was diminished, and many of the ships kept ready for service by Michael VIII were laid up in the arsenal. Andronicus required all the money he could divert from the military and naval services for the court and the church. The officers could only gain advancement by becoming courtiers; the soldiers could only avoid neglect by becoming monks. The army of Andronicus consisted principally of Alans, Gasmuls, Turks, Turkopuls, and refugee Cretans. The Alans received double the pay of the best native troops. The armies with which the emperors of Nicæa had defeated the Turkish Sultans, the Latin emperors, the kings of Bulgaria, and the French knights of Achaia and Athens were now disbanded and neglected. The state maxim of imperial Rome that no man who paid the land tax should be allowed to bear arms, was again revived, and mercenaries and Turks plundered the Greek Empire, as the Goths and Huns had plundered the Roman.
A Twelfth Century Catapult
The Greek Empire of Constantinople, at the accession of Andronicus II, embraced the whole coast of Asia Minor, from the mouth of the Sangarius to the Rhodian Peræa; but the nomad tribes who lived under the Seljuk dominion were daily pushing their incursions further and further into the Greek territories. In the year 1296, the regular army of the empire continued to maintain a decided superiority in the field over any force the Turks could bring into action; but the carelessness of the emperor, who left the troops in Asia without pay, caused this neglected army to break out into rebellion. The Turkish mercenaries in its ranks plundered the Greek landlords; the Cretans sold their services to the highest bidder. Alexius Philanthropenus, who had successfully resisted the Seljuk tribes, was proclaimed emperor by his rebellious troops, but allowed himself to be taken prisoner, and was deprived of sight. His successor, Joannes Tarchaniotes vainly attempted to reform the abuses, which rendered the army more oppressive to the emperor’s subjects than dangerous to his enemies. The anarchy that prevailed in the civil, military, and ecclesiastical administration, rendered him powerless, and he was compelled to abandon the undertaking.
In the year 1301, Michael, the eldest son of Andronicus, who had received the imperial title from his father in 1295, took the command of the army in Asia; and about the same time a body of veteran warriors entered the imperial service, who, under an able general, would have secured victory to the Greeks. Andronicus allowed a colony of Alans to settle in his dominion, and about eight thousand, who had served in the Tatar wars beyond the Danube, were enrolled in the Byzantine service. After a short term of service, they mutinied, deserted the camp and marched to the Hellespont, plundering the Greek inhabitants of the country they passed through. The young emperor then broke up his own camp, and, abandoning his headquarters at Magnesia on the Hermus, retired to Pergamus, leaving the Turkish tribes to extend their plundering expeditions as far as Adramyttium, Lampsacus, and Cyzicus.