Quick question, do you know the origin of blinding as a punishment? They sure did a lot of it.
My understanding (and I am NOT an expert; if I’m wrong Mississippienne can correct me, if I’m right I can save her some typing, which is the least I can do) is that like a lot of odd stuff the Byzantines did, it was due to religion. (A lot of the other odd stuff they did seems to have been due to chariot racing. And I thought Philly sports fans were obsessive.)
The logic ran like this:
–The emperor is the head of the Church, as well as the temporal ruler.
–He must, therefore, be technically qualified for the priesthood. (Note that leading a holy life is a qualification for SAINTHOOD, not priesthood.)
–Blind men can’t be priests. (Something in Leviticus.)
–Blinding someone therefore disqualified him for emperor and eliminated him as a political threat, without killing him. Since the Commandment says “Thou shalt not kill” but not “Thou shalt not maim, blind or mutilate”, it was therefore more righteous than killing the opposition.
Blinding wasn’t the only disqualifying mutilation–cutting off the nose, for example, also apparently qualified–so I can’t guess why it became the favorite. Possibly it was the most effective deterrent to aspiring emperors–more effective even than castration, since eunuchs in Byzantium, even if they couldn’t be emperors, could still be influential.
If this interests you, “H.N Turtletaub” (pen name of Harry Turtledove, noted SF writer and holder of a PhD in Byzantine history) wrote a novel, “Justinian”, about the life of Justinian II (note this was not THE Justinian, the one with the Code and the Plague and Theodora), which includes graphic descriptions of two methods of blinding. There is also a nose-lopping, several rapes and lots of ordinary killing; the title character is one loathsome piece of work. Fun for those who like their historical fiction served raw with extra gore.
I’m pretty dumb at this historical stuff, but does “Greek Fire” enter at some point?
Basically, yeah, **ryobserver **is on the money – the emperor was supposed to be physically perfect, or at least whole, and major disabilities/mutilations generally rendered you ineligible for the throne. Justinian II regained his throne despite having been mutilated (his nose was slit) but he had balls of titanium. I’m not even kidding; the guy was not a just ruler, or even a benevolent dictator, but he was a major league badass. Isaakios II would actually flout this rule for a time, but I’m getting there.
Byzantine law was all about ‘eye for an eye’. The laws of the emperor Leo VI gave the following penalties for various offenses:
Adultery: nose cut off
Involuntary homicide, sacriligeous behavior, counterfeiters: arm cut off
Homosexuality: penis cut off
Etc. etc.
Because I know that y’all are probably a little befuddled by this cast of thousands (half of whom are named Alexios), I thought I’d do a quick ‘Dramatis Personae’ to help bring y’all up to date on who’s alive and who’s at large as of Alexios Branas’ spring 1187 revolt against Isaakios II. By this point, almost all the senior Komnenoi had been purged during the reign of Andronikos I, and then Andronikos I’s descendants had been purged and exiled when Isaakios II took power. Other than a few widowed aunties, what you see below is what remained of the once bountiful Komnenoi dynasty.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
(as of spring 1187)
ISAAKIOS II ANGELOS, Byzantine Emperor, aged about thirty,
His second wife, MARGIT OF HUNGARY, aged about eleven
His young children by his first wife: ALEXIOS 1, EUPHROSYNE and IRENE
His brothers:
KONSTANTINOS ANGELOS, sebastokrator, status: blinded
THEODOROS ANGELOS, status: blinded
ALEXIOS ANGELOS, his wife EUPHROSYNE DOUKAINA KAMATERINA, and their daughters: IRENE, ANNA, and EUDOKIA
IOANNES ANGELOS, and his son ANDRONIKOS and daughter THEODORA
His sisters:
THEODORA, married to CONRAD OF MONTFERRAT
IRENE, married to IOANNES KANTAKOUZENOS
IOANNES ANGELOS, uncle of the emperor, status: at large
His children:
ISAAKIOS, married to EUDOKIA BRANAINA, daughter of Alexios Branas
ALEXIOS, status: blinded
THEODOROS, MANUEL, KONSTANTINOS, and ANNA, all young children
MIKHAEL, his illegitimate son
ISAAKIOS ANGELOS, uncle of the emperor
His children: KONSTANTINOS and an unnamed daughter, status: at large
MARIA ANGELINA, aunt of the emperor, married to KONSTANTINOS KAMYTZES
Their children: MANUEL and an unnamed daughter, status: at large
ANDRONIKOS I, status: deceased
His widow, AGNES OF FRANCE
His sons by his first wife, MANUEL and IOANNES KOMNENOS, status: deceased
Manuel’s sons, ALEXIOS and DAVID, status: exiles in Georgia 2
ALEXIOS KOMNENOS, caesar, illegitimate son of Manuel I, status: blinded
ALEXIOS KOMNENOS, son of Ioannes Komnenos (himself nephew of Manuel I), cupbearer to Manuel I, status: blinded and imprisoned
His sister MARIA, widow of King Amaury of Jerusalem and wife of Balian d’Ibelin
Their uncle ALEXIOS KOMNENOS (son of Andronikos Komnenos), lover of Empress Maria, status: deceased.
ANDRONIKOS KONTOSTEPHANOS, megas dux, nephew of Manuel I 3 and his four sons, status: all blinded
IOANNES KOMNENOS AXOUCH, son of Alexios Axouch and Maria Komnene (herself niece of Manuel I), status: at large
ALEXIOS BRANAS, pansebastos, status: in open revolt
His wife, ANNA VATATZAINA 5, niece of Manuel I
Their children: EUDOKIA (wife of Isaakios Komnenos Angelos) and THEODOROS
ANDRONIKOS KOMNENOS BRYENNIOS, great-grandson of Alexios I 4, governor of Thessaloniki, status: at large
- Whom I will call Alexakos from now on, to distinguish him from his uncle, who is also named Alexios Angelos. Alexakos is simply a nickname for Alexios.
- Alexios and David’s mother was the daughter of King Giorgi III of Georgia, and they were raised at the court of their famous aunt, Queen Tamar.
- His mother Anna Komnene was Manuel’s sister. He and his sons were blinded on the orders of Andronikos I.
- He was a grandson of Anna Komnene, who wrote The Alexiad
- A daughter of Theodoros Vatatzes and Eudokia Komnene, herself the daughter of Isaakios II. Her sister was Manuel’s mistress, Theodora.
SOURCES:
Laio, Angeliki. Mariage, amour et parenté à Byzance aux XIe-XIIIe siècles, Volume 4, 1992
Nicol, Donald. The Byzantine family of Kantakouzenos (Cantacuzenus) ca. 1100-1460: a genealogical and prosopographical study, 1968
Polemis, Demetrios. The Doukai: a contribution to Byzantine prosopography, 1968
Oops! I can’t believe I left out Isaakios of Cyprus! Mea culpa.
ISAAKIOS KOMNENOS DOUKAS, tyrant of Cyprus, status: at large and in charge
His first wife, daughter of Toros II of Armenian Cilicia, status: deceased [by Isaakios’ own hand?]
His second wife, an illegitimate daughter of King William I of Sicily
His daughter, presumably by the first wife, known only by the name the Western European chroniclers gave her, BEATRICE
His unnamed son, presumably by his first wife died between 1187 and 1191 [murdered by Isaakios, according to Benedict of Peterborough]
Alexios Branas, a wizened military veteran “short in stature”, but gifted with intelligence and cunning, as Niketas Choniates tells us, had commandeered the army Isaakios II had sent him to fight the rebellious Vlakhs and Bulgars. He now marched on Constantinople, determined to liberate Constantinople from Isaakios II and liberate Isaakios II from his life.
Isaakios II cunningly responded by having a full-on panic attack. He surrounded himself with “the monks who go barefoot and crouch on the ground and… those who live on pillars, suspended above the earth”, and prayed ardently for salvation from his foes. “Signs from God”, sunspots and meteors seen in the skies, further terrified Isaakios II and his populace.
Conrad of Montferrat, who had only just married Isaakios’ sister Theodora, was forced to confront him and talk him into fortifying the city and raising another army to take on Branas. With Conrad dragging him around by his shirt collar, Isaakios tore his ransacked palace apart looking for money to fund an army. He found some silver vessels in the treasury, dug spare change from between his couch cushions, and got a loan from his cousin Manuel Kamytzes, and so was able to outfit his soldiers with weapons and helmets and crap.
Now, Manuel Kamytzes hated Branas’ guts for reasons that Choniates doesn’t really explain. His mother was Isaakios II’s aunt Maria Angelina, and his father had been Konstantinos Kamytzes, former governor of Cyprus, who’s “wretched and horrible and unnatural” deeds while governor brought plagues and famines to that island, according to the sainted Neophytos the Recluse. The Kamytzai clan was something of a johnny-come-lately to the Byzantine aristocracy; like the Axouch family, it had been founded by a Turk who defected to Byzantium during the reign of Alexios I and became Hellenized.
Isaakios and Manuel’s uncle, the the *sebastokrator *Ioannes Angelos Doukas, was sweating bullets. His son had just married Alexios Branas’ daughter right before Branas’ revolt, and he knew his nephew was watching him suspiciously for any sign that he secretly supported Branas. He publically placed himself and all members of his immediate family under a dreadful curse if any of them should consider defecting and joining Branas.
As Branas’ forces approached the city, Isaakios II responded. The city gates were thrown open, and Isaakios’ troops poured forth, led by three commanders: Manuel Kamytzes, Conrad of Montferrat, and Isaakios II himself. Conrad’s forces attacked first, slamming into Branas’ army with heavy cavalry. Branas’ troops broke and ran, and as he tried to rally them, Branas charged at Conrad himself. His weapon glanced harmlessly off Conrad’s shoulder, and this brought him in close enough for Conrad to knock Branas off his horse.
Branas begged for his life, but Conrad replied, “Do not be afraid! Nothing more unpleasant will happen than your head being cut off.” And this was done.
Konstantinos Stethatos, the astrologer who had prophesied that Branas would enter the city in triumph, was also killed in the battle. Choniates points out that perhaps his prediction was not in error, as Branas’ severed head was paraded through Constantinople on a pike, and therefore might be said to have entered the city in a triumph.
Isaakios II celebrated his victory with a grand banquet and threw open the palace doors so the common people could approach and partake. During the banquet Branas’ head was brought to him, and Isaakios II merrily kicked it about like a ball.
After Alexios Branas’ defeat, the joy of the common people turned into all-out chaos. The mob descended upon the peasantry outside the city gates, who were believed to have allied themselves with Branas. Their homes were torched with Greek fire, and those who escaped were murdered, assaulted, or pursued nearly unto death by the mob. Isaakios II sent nobles to calm the rampaging mob, but even as the attacks on the peasants died down, a new riot erupted, this time against the Latins. The Byzantines attacked the Latins “like a rushing torrent”, only to find the Latins ready for them. Barricading the streets leading to their neighborhoods, the Latins donned their coats of mail and stood ready for the onslaught.
The drunken rabble of Constantinople smashed against the barricades, were speared or pierced with arrows, and finally driven back. Isaakios II and his nobles interceded once again, and calmed down the mob.
Despite his victory over Branas, it’s not like Isaakios II could breathe easy. There was still the little problem of the ferocious, rebellious, howling Vlakh and Bulgar barbarians – remember them? The ones Alexios Branas had been sent to defeat in the first damn place? Yeah, they didn’t disappear or anything. They were still out there. Immediately after defeating Alexios Branas, Isaakios II marched out to take them on. He wanted Conrad of Montferrat to accompany him, but Conrad was tired of Byzantine politics, or his wife Theodora, or perhaps he sought glory elsewhere, for he set sail for the Crusader States instead 1.
The Byzantine army plowed their way into hostile territory, taking on the combined Vlakh-Bulgar-Kuman forces several times, but unable to make much progress due to the enemy’s fast-moving, manueverable light cavalry. While attempting to retreat, Isaakios’ army was ambushed on a narrow mountain pass and he narrowly escaped with his life.
The Vlakhs, Bulgars, and Cumans ran wild all that winter, but the following spring, in 1188, the Byzantines were back again. This time, Isaakios managed to capture Asen’s wife and his younger brother Kaloyan and carry them both back to Constantinople as hostages.
Shortly thereafter, the German army of the Emperor Friedrich I Barbarossa began to make its way into Byzantine territory as it headed to join the Third Crusade. Barbarossa, so-called because of his red beard, was a man past sixty. He had visited Constantinople in 1147 in the company of his uncle, Emperor Konrad III, as they embarked on the Second Crusade. His army was reputedly huge, and reports of it terrified Saladin and the other Muslim lords of the Crusaders States.
According to Ibn al-Athir, Isaakios II sent word to Saladin, assuring him that he would not allow Barbarossa pass through his lands. Whatever the truth of this, Isaakios II had resolved to cause Barbarossa as much grief as possible. The reason for this was a prophecy of Dositheos.
A priest named Dositheos was one of Isaakios II’s oldest and dearest friends. He had prophesied many years before that one day Isaakios II would come to power, and as luck or fate would have it, he turned out to right, and Isaakios held him in awe for it. Dositheos was the best sort of friend, because he told Isaakios everything he wanted to hear. He prophecied that Barbarossa did not truly intend to march onto Palestine, but that he planned to conquer Constantinople itself. Isaakios resolved to thwart, starve, and weaken Barbarossa’s army by any means necessary. Niketas describes Isaakios brandishing arrows, intending to shoot Germans himself when they approached Constantinople.
Isaakios II sent his uncle, Alexios Angelos, as his ambassador to Barbarossa, only to lead the German army into an ambush. The Germans were harassed by Greek attackers all the way through Bulgaria to Sofia, which they found empty and forlorn. Isaakios II had emptied Sofia of its market and people, leaving the Germans with nothing to buy, and had blocked the roads with fallen trees and rocks. Undaunted, the German army plowed on.
Sensing an opportunity, Asen and Kaloyan’s brother Teodor, now called himself Kalopeter (“handsome Peter”) sent a courteous letter to Barbarossa, requesting an alliance. Barbarossa politely refused. He still wanted to deal with Isaakios as a host, not as an enemy. The Germans arrived at Philippopolis, which had also been emptied of all its inhabitants, goods, and food. There a pompous letter arrived from Isaakios, refusing to allow the Germans to move through his lands and also, bizarrely, predicting that Barbarossa would die before Easter. Word also arrived that the German envoys had been captured and thrown into prison. Infuriated, the Germans pillaged towns, villages, and castles, wrecking such destruction that Isaakios quickly offered to make nice.
The Germans didn’t trust him, and continued breaking shit and punching faces, all while Isaakios was nigh powerless to stop them. They even burnt Philippopolis and a couple of other cities to the ground, purely out of revenge for their treatment. So Isaakios sent some valuable hostages as a show of good faith 2 and agreed to allow the Germans safe passage through Greek territory, as if they hadn’t been making their way through just fine.
Notes:
- Conrad arrived in Tyre and delivered that city from Saladin’s forces, eventually becoming a major player in the Crusader States and marrying Queen Isabelle of Jerusalem. He was stabbed to death by an assassin in 1192, possibly on the orders of Richard the Lionhearted.
- These hostages included his cousin Mikhael, the illegitimate son of Ioannes Angelos Doukas; Mikhael, the son of Alexios Angelos the ambassador; and Alexios, son of Manuel Kamytzes.
SOURCES:
Galatariotou, Catia. The Making of a Saint: The Life, Times and Sanctification of Neophytos the Recluse, 2004.
Loud, Graham. The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, 2010.
King William II of Sicily died in 1189, leaving a sucession crisis. His only son had died in the cradle, and all his brothers and uncles were dead, too. His only legitimate heiress was his aunt Constance, wife of Heinrich VI of Germany (himself the son of Barbarossa). The Sicilian nobles didn’t want to be ruled by a woman or her German husband, so they illegally elected Tancredo, Constance’s illegitimate nephew, to be their king.
Tancredo was crowned king, stuffed William II’s widow Joan of England into a tower, and called up the Byzantines wanting an alliance. So in 1191, Isaakios II’s daughter Irene embarked for Sicily and was married to Tancredo’s son and heir, Roger. She never saw her father again, but she would see her brother some years later.
Now I would like to address the sad fate of Alexios Komnenos, the illegitimate son of Manuel I and Theodora Vatatzaina. According to Niketas, Alexios was “tall and manly and extremely intelligent… with strong arms topped by broad shoulders”, and showed so much promise that Andronikos I “was more attached to [Alexios] than to his own sons”, to the point of considering making Alexios his heir. But Andronikos turned on Alexios, and had him blinded and condemned him to exile. Isaakios II recalled him and gave him the status of kaisar.
By this time, Isaakios’ empire was wracked by rebellion. There were the rampaging Vlakhs and Bulgars, the destruction left in the wake of the German army, and pretenders to the throne both great and small. Isaakios Komnenos, Andronikos I’s nephew, escaped from prison and incited a mob, only to be captured and publically tortured. But perhaps the greatest threat came from the false-Alexios.
The false-Alexios (or, as I like to call him, Fauxlexios) was a young man who appeared at the court of Kılıç Arslan. The hoary old half-crippled sultan was still alive and kicking, having long outlived several Byzantine emperors. Kılıç Arslan was so impressed by Fauxlexios’ resemblance to Manuel I that he believed his claims to be Alexios II, somehow miraculously revived from the dead. Soon enough, Fauxlexios had assembled a marauding army several thousand strong and was laying waste to cities, pressing on towards Constantinople to establish his ‘rightful’ claim to the throne. He burnt crops and allowed his Turkish warriors to profane and destroy altars and holy icons in the churches they came across.
Isaakios II and the other notables at the imperial court of course knew that Alexios II had been dead and gone for years. The emperor’s brother, Alexios Angelos, was sent to deal with this problem, but Fauxlexios came to a bad end all on his own. After a long night of drinking, Fauxlexios passed out with his sword laying beside him. A priest snuck up and slit his throat with his own sword while Fauxlexios was too piss-drunk to stop him.
When Fauxlexios’ severed head was brought to Alexios Angelos, Alexios Angelos was so struck by his resemblance to the real Alexios II that he lifted the head by its golden hair and said, “It was not altogether out of ignorance that cities followed this man.”
Isaakios’ paranoia made him lash out at those around him that he perceived to be a threat. He accused Alexios Komnenos *kaisar *of conspiring against him with Andronikos Komnenos Bryennios 1. Bryennios was blinded, but as Alexios *kaisar *was already blind, Isaakios had him forcibly shaved and tonsured as a monk.
Meanwhile, the Bulgars still needed seeing to, so Isaakios sent his cousin, Konstantinos Angelos 2, and Konstantinos’ brother-in-law, Basileios Vatatzes, “a man of humble origin” despite his grand Vatatzes name, to take care of things in spring 1193. Konstantinos Angelos proved to be a fearsome general with a talent for turning Bulgar and Vlakh screamers into grade-A ground chuck.
It wasn’t long before Konstantinos Angelos started getting tired of sleeping on his shield, eating crappy food, and fucking hairy barbarian women while his cousin Isaakios II lived it up in Constantinople, where “he delighted in ribaldries and lewd songs and consorted with laughter-stirring dwarfs.” Konstantinos traded in his general’s cloak for a purple-dyed imperial one, and prepared to march on Constantinople and proclaim himself emperor. He didn’t make it as far as Andrianople before his brother-in-law Basileios Vatatzes captured him and turned him over to Isaakios II.
Konstantinos Angelos had an ending about as brutal as you could expect. Getting rid of him was the biggest favor Isaakios II could’ve done for the Bulgars and Vlakhs, in particular their leaders Asen (now going by Ivan) and Teodor (now going by Kalopeter). Ivan Asen and Teodor-Kalopeter facetiously prayed “that the Angeloi dynasty be given a reign of many years”. Their troops continued sacking and burning and beseiging Byzantine cities left and right, held in check no longer by Konstantinos Angelos.
Isaakios II’s next chess move was to send his generals Basileios Vatatzes and Alexios Gidos against Ivan Asen and Teodor-Kalopeter. Their armies smashed into one another near Arcadiopolis, and it was a sad, sad sight. Gidos bungled about and barely fled with his life. Basileios Vatatzes died fighting alongside his men 3. The battle was such a disaster that Isaakios II had to go to his father-in-law, King Béla III of Hungary, hat in hand, and ask for help. He managed to get enough money and mercenaries to raise another force and march onwards to confront the Bulgars and Vlakhs, once and for all.
- He was the grandson of Anna Komnene, author of The Alexiad.
- Son of Isaakios II’s uncle, also named Isaakios Angelos.
- His Angelina wife had recently given birth to a son, Ioannes.
SOURCES:
Stephenson, Paul. Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier: a political study of the Northern Balkans, 900-1204, 2000
By spring 1195, things had come to a breaking point. Constantinople was wracked with revolt after revolt as pretenders strove to clamber over the bodies of most of their relatives to seize the imperial throne. Bulgars, Vlakhs, Kumans, and Serbs all rampaged across the borders, headbutting and pantsing anyone in their way. The German army had carved a bloody, burning path through the empire. Isaakios II, for his part, was absolutely certain that he had been ordained emperor by God Almighty, and he hung on the every word of his priest and astrologer, Dositheos, who purported to fortell the future by means of consulting “demons who inspire dreams, the shapes of future events and certain apparitions from Solomonic books”. Dositheos was despised, even moreso after Isaakios II tried to make him patriarch 1.
Isaakios II and his father-in-law, King Béla III of Hungary, had come up with a plan to drive Ivan Asen and Teodor-Kalopeter and all their peeps out of Byzantine territory and back into the backwater craphole from whence they came. Isaakios II set out with his new army, accompanied by his brother, Alexios Angelos, planning to attack from the south while Béla attacked from the north, catching the Bulgar-Vlakhs in a vice. Reaching Kypsela, Isaakios II decided to pause and go on a hunting trip. Alexios Angelos stayed behind, saying he needed to get his chill on.
Alexios Angelos had long desired his brother’s crown. Many had attempted to warn Isaakios II about his brother’s plotting, but Isaakios “dismissed these reports as so much nonsense”. From one perspective, that was really dumb of him, but from another, I can understand him being in denial about every single last blood relative of his wanting his head on a fucking stick. Alexios was outwardly affectionate, masking his true intentions. For some time, Alexios and his wife, Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamaterina, had been plotting with “perverse and weak-minded men” 2 to seize the throne.
Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamaterina came from an interesting family. Her father, Andronikos Doukas Kamateros, had been an important theologian under Manuel I, and his brother, Ioannes Kamateros, was Manuel’s favorite drinking companion, “of all men the most gluttonous and hardest drinker” with a strange passion for green beans. Euphrosyne’s brothers, Ioannes and Basileios Doukas Kamateros, had both paid the price for meddling in Byzantine politics. Ioannes had participated in Maria Porphyrogenita’s rebellion against her stepmother back in 1181, and been imprisoned for it, being freed by Isaakios II. Basileios had rebelled against Andronikos I and been blinded.
Anyway, Alexios Angelos waited until his brother had left to go kill critters, then gathered together his cronies and had them proclaim him emperor. When Isaakios came riding back and heard the proclamations, he at first tried to rally his servants to charge the camp and kill Alexios, but when they balked, he was forced to flee on horseback. It’s so hard to find good help.
The newly-proclaimed Alexios III had his brother pursued, and shortly Isaakios II was captured, blinded, and shackled. The war was called on account of revolution, and Alexios III turned around and marched back to Constantinople in triumph. Meanwhile, the Bulgars, Vlakhs, and Kumans were probably standing around, scratching their heads, wondering where their battle had gone.
As Alexios III made his way to Constantinople, his wife Euphrosyne was already holding court like an empress. The courtiers crowded around her, placing “their heads under her feet as footstools”, as Euphrosyne “beguiled them with her fair words”. A riot erupted in the city streets as a cabal of “artisans and other rabble” gathered around a nobleman named Alexios Kontostephanos, a “stargazer who had long been lying in wait for the throne”, but Euphrosyne quickly had the mob dispersed and Kontostephanos thrown into prison. Also imprisoned was Isaakios II’s son, Alexios, whom I shall call Alexakos to differentiate him from his uncle 4. He was shortly joined by his father, the blinded and wretched Isaakios II, a few days later when Alexios III arrived in Constantinople.
After his coronation, Alexios III went to mount his Arabian stallion, only to tumble into the dirt and break his crown. He climbed back up onto his horse, but when the common people saw him riding about wearing his broken crown, they whispered that it was a bad omen.
Both middle-aged, Alexios and Euphrosyne were the parents of three grown daughters: Irene, the wife of Andronikos Kontostephanos 3; Eudokia, wife of Stefan Nemanjić of Serbia; and “the rose-colored beauty” Anna, wife of an Isaakios Komnenos. Eudokia and her husband lived in faraway Serbia, but the two other sons-in-law rode beside Alexios III in his parade following his coronation.
Since the problem of the Bulgars and Vlakhs still hadn’t miraculously evaporated, Alexios III chose to open negotiations with Ivan Asen. This showed an astounding lack of insight on his part, as you cannot negotiate with someone who wants to jack all your shit. All attempts to turn Ivan Asen and Teodor-Kalopeter one against the other also failed, as, unlike the Angeloi, those barbarians comprehended the virtue of filial loyalty. Perhaps it was during this calamitous period that Ivan Asen and Teodor-Kalopeter’s brother Kaloyan 5 escaped from Constantinople and made his way back home. By the fall of 1195 the Bulgars and Vlakhs had overrun Byzantine territory and made their way to Thessaloniki.
Alexios III sent his son-in-law, Isaakios Komnenos 6 to deal with this. Some Kumans ambushed him on the Struma river, where Isaakios Komnenos’ soldiers bravely abandoned him to be kicked in the nuts, taken prisoner, and dragged before Ivan Asen. A Greek priest, who had been taken prisoner by the Bulgars and Vlakhs, pleaded with Ivan Asen for the life of the prince. Ivan Asen threw back his head, belly-laughed, and was like, “Yo, I kill Greeks, not free them.” The priest replied with a statement that could be summarized as, You live by the sword, you die by the sword. So Isaakios Komnenos lived out the last few weeks of his life in chains.
The priest’s words were eerily prophetic (that, or being a bloodthirsty barbarian warlord is bad for your life expectancy). Ivan Asen, upon returning home to Bulgaria, immediately got embroiled in a domestic dispute. His wife’s sister was doing the magic freak dance with one of Ivan Asen’s most promising warriors, Ivanko. For whatever reason, Ivan Asen was pissed as hell that Ivanko, “tall in stature, very shrewd, in the prime of his physical vigor”, was boning his sister-in-law like there was no tomorrow. When Ivan Asen demanded to speak with him, Ivanko showed up with his sword hidden in his robe. Ivan Asen got up in his face, so Ivanko pulled out his sword and killed him until he was dead from it.
Having taken the direct route to political advancement, Ivanko declared himself the new ruler of the Bulgarians. That lasted about five minutes before Teodor-Kalopeter and Kaloyan showed up to avenge their brother’s death. Ivanko managed to flee to Constantinople, seeking refuge with Alexios III, who welcomed him warmly. Ivanko lied and claimed that he had killed Ivan Asen on the request of Isaakios Komnenos, the emperor’s son-in-law who had died in Bulgarian custody. Alexios III was so touched that he married Ivanko to his own granddaughter, Theodora, the toddler daughter of the aforementioned Isaakios Komnenos and Anna Angelina. Ivanko, understandably not that thrilled with his four-year-old ‘wife’, was more interested in her mother. “Why do you give me a suckling lamb when I am in need of a full-grown goat?” Ivanko asked the emperor.
Meantime, ambassadors from the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich VI arrived in Constantinople. Friedrich I Barbarossa had died on Crusade, and his eldest son Heinrich succeeded him. Heinrich VI wanted Alexios III to know that if he didn’t cut him a big fat welfare check, he was coming to kick his ass. In an attempt to dazzle the German ambassadors, Alexios III and his courtiers appeared before them clad in all their finery. The ambassadors informed him curtly that “The time has now come to take off effeminate garments and brooches and put on iron instead of gold.” Alexios III was so freaked out that he resorted to ransacking his ancestor’s tombs looking for treasures to pay off the Germans.
Heinrich VI also claimed the kingdom of Sicily by right of his wife, Constance, the aunt of King William II. Constance’s illegitimate nephew Tancredo had claimed Sicily for his own, but he died in 1193 along with his son and co-ruler, Roger. Roger had been married to Irene Angelina, the daughter of Isaakios II. In a few short years this girl had gone from being a minor relation to the Byzantine emperor, to being elevated to a princess, to marrying the co-king of Sicily, to being a teenaged widow who’s father was blinded and left to rot in prison. When Heinrich VI came to establish his rule over Sicily, he discovered little Irene, “the rose without a thorn” according to the contemporary poet, Walther von der Vogelweide, and had her married to his younger brother, Philipp of Swabia.
The same sudden event completely changed the fortunes of both Irene and her wicked uncle Alexios III. Heinrich VI keeled over dead, whether from disease or poisoning, who can say for sure. His death got Alexios III off the hook, left his widow Constance to rule Sicily on her own 7, and allowed Philipp of Swabia to step up and be crowned Holy Roman Emperor with Irene as his empress.
In Bulgaria, Teodor-Kalopeter died that year, 1197, at the hands of some of his countrymen. The youngest brother, Kaloyan, was left to lead the Bulgarians. In the midst of all this, a newcomer, Dobromir Chrysos, struck out on his own. Dobromir Chrysos was “a Vlakh and short in stature” who had originally fought for the Byzantine empire, but abandoned his former masters and fought on his own behalf (to be fair, with all the coups going on, he may not have known *who *to fight for anymore). He holed himself up in the fortress of Srumica, where Alexios III beseiged him for a couple of months before getting bored and wandering off.
1198 brought a new pope: Innocent III. Born Lothari de Segni, this new pope was passionate about protecting the Holy Land from the Saracens. By August, he had issued a papal bull calling for a new Crusade, and made overtures to Alexios III that went nowhere.
The stage was being set.
Notes:
- It didn’t help that Dositheos was of Venetian descent, despite being rabidly anti-Latin personally.
- Among them Theodoros Branas, the son of the pretender Alexios Branas, who had been killed by Conrad of Montferrat for beseiging the city.
- Probably not the same Andronikos Kontostephanos who’d been blinded years before by Andronikos I. He would’ve been much older than her, although I suppose it’s not impossible that Irene was his second or even third wife. More likely her husband was a cousin of his with the same name.
- Alexakos is just a nickname for Alexios. Isaakios II’s other two sons, Manuel and Kaloioannes, by his barely teenaged wife Margit of Hungary, were just babies and Alexios III didn’t seem to worry much about them.
- Also called Ioannitsa, but for simplicity’s sake I’ll stick to just the one name.
- This Isaakios is of uncertain paternity. He was married to Alexios III’s daughter Anna, and with her had a very young daughter named Theodora.
- Constance and Heinrich’s young son, Friedrich, would grow to be amongst the most fascinating of all medieval personages. Right how he’s three years old.
I’m hanging onto your every word! 
I know that by this point we’ve seen a lot of soap opera twists: betrayals! Pirates! Secret lovers! Princesses locked up in towers! Beheadings! Skin-of-the-teeth escapes! But trust me, it’s somehow gonna be EVEN CRAZIER.
First of all, as 1198 rolled around, the marriage of Alexios III’s daughter Eudokia was crumbling into sad ruins. She had been married to Stefan Nemanjić, the heir of the kingdom of Serbia, for several years, and had given him a few young children. Eudokia was fed up with her husband, and accused him of being drunk from morning until night and fucking anything that would hold still long enough. Stefan Nemanjić fired back by calling her a jizz-hungry cockslut, stripped her of her royal robes, and threw her out of the castle in her undergarments. Eudokia managed to take refuge at the court of her brother-in-law, Vukan, who was sympathetic to her and sent her back safely to Constantinople and the arms of her family.
Her parents had recently weathered a storm in their marriage. Although it was Alexios III who wore the crown, it was clearly Euphrosyne who ruled, and everyone knew it. Soon, the courtiers gossiped she had taken a lover, a young Vatatzes whom Niketas deigns to identify beyond his surname, and rumors flew that she planned to get rid of her husband and put this young stud on the throne. When Alexios III learned of this, he straightaway sent his bodyguard, Bastralites, to dismember this Vatatzes “like a fatted calf”. Bastralites brought this young man’s head back to the emperor in a sack, and Alexios III amused himself by kicking the head about like a ball and addressing it “in terms wholly unfit to be included in this history”.
Finding himself unable to defeat Dobromir Chrysos, Alexios III decided to pacify this brigand the only way he knew how: send him one of his female relatives to bang. To that end, Alexios III selected Manuel Kamytzes’ daughter and forced her to divorce her husband. He then sent this poor woman to Dobromir Chrysos, who became furious at his wedding when his Kamytzaina wife refused to get as drunk as him.
As for Ivanko, he’d been given a small army and an outpost in ‘exotic’ (ie lawless) Philippopolis, where he’d proven successful in beating the crap out of raiders. The fact that he was a former Vlakh raider himself and therefore knew all their tricks probably helped a lot. Perhaps he was plotting against Alexios III, or perhaps some influential people were jealous of his rise to power, for Alexios III was warned not to trust him. Manuel Kamytzes was dispatched to deal with him. Ivanko laid a trap for the Greek army: he placed a herd of cattle and a group of captives in the Byzantines’ path, and just as planned, the Byzantines pounced on them. While busy with their booty, Ivanko’s men lept in ambush, kicking their asses far and wide, and capturing Manuel Kamytzes himself. Ivanko sent Kamytzes to Kaloyan, now ruling Bulgaria, as a peace-offering.
Ivanko began ravaging Byzantine lands, taking city after city. He captured so much wealth, wine, and captives that Niketas tells us that for amusement, he would get drunk and watch Byzantine captives be torn limb-from-limb in front of him. This was the man Alexios III had entrusted with his granddaughter, Theodora.
Alexios III requested a meeting. Ivanko, stupidly, didn’t ask to exchange hostages, and simply showed up, at which point he was arrested and executed by Alexios’ guards. His widow, Theodora, who had not even reached double digits, was returned to Constantinople and her nursery.
Meanwhile, in faraway France, a pair of twenty-something nobles named Thibaut III, count of Champagne and Louis I, count of Blois, deeply felt the pope’s call for a Crusade. Thibaut and Louis were double-first cousins 1, of the very highest birth, and inheritors of a great Crusading legacy. Their mutual grandparents, Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine, had been leaders of the Second Crusade. Their mutual uncles, Richard I of England (who had recently died) and Philippe II of France had gone on the Third Crusade together. Louis’ father had died at the Seige of Acre in 1191. Thibaut’s elder brother, Henri, had been king of Jerusalem for a time before dying in 1197 in a most bizarre manner 2. Thibaut hosted a tournament at his castle at Ecry, and there, amidst the pageantry and high spirits, he and Louis announced their intention to take the cross and lead armies to liberate the Holy Land.
Many other notable young men were inspired to take the cross as well. Among them were Count Hugh de St. Pol, a veteran Crusader; Count Geoffrey of Perche and his brother Etienne; and Simon de Montfort, a handsome and fanatically religious young man 3. But by far the most important was Baldwin, count of Flanders and Hainaut. Twenty-eight years old, incredibly powerful, very religious, Baldwin was the husband of Thibaut’s sister, Marie, and passionately devoted to her. He was joined by his brothers, Hendrik (Henry) and Eustace.
- Their fathers, Henri I of Champagne and Thibaut V of Blois, respectively, were brothers who had married a pair of sisters: Marie and Alix of France, daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine and King Louis VII of France. Marie of Champagne (Thibaut III’s mother) was known to be a sophisticated patron of the arts, while her sister Alix (Louis’ mother) was disliked by her half-brother, Richard the Lionhearted, for reasons that are unclear.
- Henri had a dwarf jester known as Scarlet. One day, while standing on the balcony of his palace in the Galilee, Henri absentmindedly stepped backwards and fell back against the railing. Scarlet grabbed his leg and was pulled over with him. The thing was Henri might’ve survived the fall had not the dwarf landed on him.
- He would later oversee the slaughter of heretics during the Albigensian Crusade. He was the father of the Simon de Montfort who died at Evesham.
SOURCES:
Van Antwerp-Fine, John. The Late Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Late Twelfth Century to the Ottoman Conquest, 1994
Kaloyan, the last surviving brother of Ivan Asen and Teodor-Kalopeter, was all a-fire to kill the hell out of some Greeks. Having spent his youth as a “guest” at Isaakios II’s court, he had by hook or crook escaped and returned to his homeland only to see his brothers die horribly. Basically, the world was a giant bitch to Kaloyan and he determined to be a bastard right back. He sent some of his Bulgar and Vlakh berserkers to tear apart several Byzantine cities, and “driven by bloodthirsty demons”, he buried his captives alive in pits.
Long ago, the Byzantine emperor Basileios II had adopted the title Boulgaroktonos, Bulgar-slayer. Kaloyan adapted this into Romanoktonos, Roman-slayer. The Greeks warped his name into Skyloyan, Dog John.
Oh how the tables had turned! Manuel Kamytzes had once lived in Constantinople’s grand palaces, dined at fabulous banquets, been the cousin and trusted general of two emperors, commanded armies. Now he moldered in chains at the tender mercy of Kaloyan. He sent letters to Alexios III, begging to be ransomed, but Alexios was like, “Haha, sorry cuz! Guess you’re shit out of luck! XOXO.”
In desperation, Kamytzes even sent a letter to his new son-in-law, Dobromir Chrysos. Believing that if he ransomed Kamytzes that Alexios III would pay him back, Dobromir Chrysos paid up and so Kamytzes was released and allowed to join his daughter and her barbarian warlord husband in their luxurious fort on the borderlands of Fuck All. To the surprise of no one but Dobromir Chrysos, Alexios III refused to hand over a red cent. Dobromir Chrysos was pissed as hell, and you can imagine how betrayed Manuel Kamytzes felt. They joined forces to get some good old-fashioned revenge.
Several towns crumpled before them like a house of cards. Alexios’ empire was truly rotting to the core. Sensing an opportunity, a bureaucrat named Ioannes Spyridonakis decided to rebel, as well. This squinty-eyed Cypriote had been a craftsman by trade who had attached himself to Alexios III as his attendant, and was entrusted with the guardianship of several fortified cities. This dual rebellion of malcontents sent Alexios III spiraling into a hydochondriacal fit, jumping about and thrashing his legs “as though held fast by the throat”.
Fortunately, more able men stepped up. One was Alexios Palaiologos, the emperor’s son-in-law, and a distant imperial relative. In 1199, he had divorced his lawful wife, a beautiful women from a noble family, to marry Alexios III’s daughter Irene. They had a baby daughter named Theodora 1. The valiant Alexios Palaiologos speedily dealt with Spyridonakis, and “that worthless scoundrel among men” fled to Bulgaria.
To deal with Dobromir Chrysos, Alexios III once again resorted to auctioning off his little granddaughter, Theodora Komnene. Enchanted by the idea of being the emperor’s grandson-in-law rather than just the emperor’s cousin-in-law-once-removed, Dobromir Chrysos dumped his Kamytzaina wife and eagerly married poor Theodora. Niketas Choniates remains disappointingly silent on whether the prepubescent Theodora got roaring drunk at her wedding feast alongside her much older husband. Having lost the support of his erstwhile son-in-law, Manuel Kamytzes split for parts unknown.
Alexakos, the teenaged son of the former emperor Isaakios II, could’ve commiserated with Kaloyan and Manuel Kamytzes on the bizarre whims of fate. At his birth, few could’ve imagined a future for him grander than being a minor Byzantine noble with a thin smattering of imperial blood in his veins, but then, with his father’s sudden accession to the throne, he found himself heir to the empire. His pampered life at Isaakios II’s decadent court came crashing down when his uncle Alexios III had his father blinded and cast Alexakos himself into prison.
Alexios III unexpectedly released Alexakos from prison in 1201. Because he allowed Alexakos his freedom and his sight, my suspicion is that Alexios III was keeping his nephew around as a back-up heir in case one or all of his sons-in-law didn’t work out. As for Isaakios II, the miserable blind ex-emperor was kept in comfortable retirement on a beachfront property and allowed to have guests. Alexakos went to visit his father and together they hatched a scheme. They sent letters to Isaakios II’s daughter (and Alexakos’ sister) Irene, who was by then the empress of Philipp of Swabia, the ruler of Germany, telling the whole pitiful story and beseeching her help in getting REAL ULTIMATE REVENGE.
Alexakos was then taken along when his uncle Alexios III set out to confront Dobromir Chrysos and Manuel Kamytzes, and now Stage 2 of his plan went into effect. Alexakos snuck off and boarded a Pisan ship. He clipped his hair and wore Italian-style clothes, and when his uncle’s soldiers came and searched the ship, he mingled with the throng of sailors and they walked right past him, not recognizing him. He arrived in Sicily and there he was “homeless and without a country and wandered about like the planets, taking with him no more than his body”. His sister Irene got in contact with him and sent a considerable bodyguard to escort him to Germany. There brother and sister had a tearful reunion.
Meanwhile, the would-be Crusaders had a problem. They had lots and lots of people taking the cross, vowing to go to the Holy Land and kick Saracen ass. What they didn’t have was a way to get all these righteous, violent, Jesus-freaks to the Holy Land. From past experience with the other Crusades, the overland route was a disaster. Not only did you have to make your way past several mountains and through Byzantine territory, you then had to plow through a shit-ton of angry Turks and Saracens in Anatolia, Syria, Egypt, etc. before you even got to Jerusalem. The Crusading leaders agreed this was balls, so they decided to load everyone on ships and float them there, instead.
So the Crusaders sent their envoys, which included the chronicler Geoffrey de Villehardouin, to Venice to meet with the doge, Enrico Dandolo. They were welcomed by the doge, who wore a grand robe and sat under a parasol. Dandolo was by this time very old, very blind, and ready to begin the next stage of his life as a Bond villain. He was probably rubbing his hands together in glee when the envoys told him what they needed. All he had to do was get them some ships, and he’d have a 250,000 man army in his power.
The Fourth Crusade hit a pothole when Thibaut III of Champagne keeled over dead on May 24, 1201 2. What happened is that when his envoys returned from Venice, telling him that the Venetians had agreed to supply ships to transport the army, Thibaut was so thrilled that he rose from his sickbed and mounted his horse. This exertion worsened his condition, and he died.
Without him, the Crusade lacked a major leader. Bonifazio of Montferrat, now the marquis presiding over a sophisticated troubadour court, was intrigued by the Crusader’s envoys, who had passed through his lands on their way to and from Venice. Bonifazio was the last survivor of his father’s large and famous clutch of sons. His elder brother, William Longsword, had married Sibylla, the sister of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, only to die in the prime of his life; Renier, the husband of Maria Porphyrogenita, had been poisoned by Andronikos I; and Conrad, the husband of Queen Isabella of Jerusalem, stabbed to death by an assassin in 1192 3. Bonifazio himself was a “worthy and valiant” knight, according to Villehardouin, who knew him personally and admired him. He was offered command of the Crusade and accepted; but as Queller and Madden put it, this was purely symbolic; “No more than Agamemnon could command Achilles before the walls of Troy could Boniface command Baldwin of Flanders before the walls of Constantinople”.
Bonifazio then went to spend Christmas with his cousin, Philipp of Swabia. There he met Philipp, Philipp’s sweet-tempered wife, Irene, their baby daughters Beatrix, Kunigunde, and Maria, and a most interesting newcomer: Alexakos Angelos.
- Mother of the future emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos.
- His widow, Blanche of Navarre, delivered a son a few days later, on May 30: the future Thibaut IV of Champagne.
- Conrad’s pregnant widow, Isabella of Jerusalem, remarried to Henri of Champagne, the same fellow who fell off his balcony and died in 1197. Isabella was the half-sister of Sibylla who was married to Conrad’s brother William. And just to make it even weirder, Sibylla’s second husband was Guy de Lusignan, who’s brother Amalric de Lusignan married – you guessed it! – Isabella in 1198.
SOURCES:
Queller, Donald and Madden, Thomas. The Fourth Crusade: the conquest of Constantinople, 1201-1204, 1999.
Vasiliev, A.A. The Historical Significance of the Mosaic of Saint Demetrius at Sassoferrato, 1950.
Villehardouin, Geoffrey. Memoirs Or Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the Conquest of Constantinople.
Walter, Christopher. The warrior saints in Byzantine art and tradition, 2003.
10% of our Biochemistry exam consisted of this “map of biochemical reactions” we had to draw, use as a cheatsheet and deliver along with the exam.
I’m thinking of making something like that to try and track all these Eudoxias and Alex-somethings…
Tell me about it! It’s made all the more confusing because Byzantine Greeks of this period didn’t have fixed surnames; you might go by your father’s name, or your mother’s if it was more exalted, or even a string of surnames from each of your grandparents, if you wanted to show off your ancestry. Thusly you have people who are really Angeloi who called themselves Komnenoi, and those who were really Kamateroi who called themselves Doukai, and so on and so forth. In fact, you’ll soon meet a man who went by the name of Doukas, despite being a nobody, although he made himself a somebody. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back in Constantinople, calamity followed rebellion followed scandal. As Choniates tells us, the empress Euphrosyne became obsessed with fortune-telling and in her “mad delusions and excessive zeal” she had many statues beheaded and had the snout of a bronze boar that stood in the Hippodrome cut off. She even tried to have the back of the famous statue of Herakles lashed for some obscure occultish purpose.
Constantonople had often hosted exiles, and a new one arrived. Keyhüsrev was a son of Kılıç Arslan, the old Selcuk sultan of Konya. According to the Tarikh-i-al-i-Saljuq, his mother was “the sister of the wife of Kaloyan”; as Kaloyan was married to a Kuman princess, this suggests that Keyhüsrev was half-Kuman. In 1187, Kılıç Arslan was ready to retire, so he decided to divide his lands between his nine sons, his brother, and his nephew. This worked out about as well as you might expect. Continual warfare between the various brothers led to Keyhüsrev fleeing Konya to Syria. There he sought refuge at the court of az-Zahir Ghazi, the son of Saladin, but because az-Zahir “disdained” him, as Ibn al-Athir informs us, Keyhüsrev packed up and went to Constantinople.
Alexios III welcomed Keyhüsrev like the son he’d never had. Ibn Bibi, who was sort of the official court biographer for three Selcuk sultans 1, tells us that Alexios III took Keyhüsrev into his own house and “gave him abundant gifts and countless riches: beautiful horses, golden brocade garments, Byzantine brocade, purses full of gold coins, well-built Kuman slaves, virginal maidservants with blossoming cheeks… That night until daybreak they occupied themselves with pleasures and delights and enjoyed lute and wine until dawn… And that day they remained there, neither living nor dead, because of the pleasantries of the table, so that they were spilling wine from their cups.”
According to Georgios Akropolites, Alexios III even adopted him and had Keyhüsrev baptized an Orthodox Christian. The baptism didn’t “take”, but it’s the thought that counts. Keyhüsrev also married an Imperial cousin, the daughter of Manuel Mavrozomes 2.
It seemed nearly every month another pretender was trying to topple Alexios III from his throne. Ioannes Axouch 3, who Niketas tells us was “potbellied and shaped like a barrel”, walked into the Hagia Sophia, placed a small crown on his head, and proclaimed himself emperor. In no time at all curious mouth-breathing onlookers flocked to him. Alexios III sent his henchmen to beat Ioannes’ followers about their faces and necks until they fled in terror. They then killed Ioannes Axouch “as if he were a fatted beast”, carrying his severed head to Alexios III, who had it mounted so that the public could look upon it.
On another occasion, a floor in the palace collapsed for no reason, sending the emperor’s bed falling into a great chasm; Alexios III himself was unharmed, but his son-in-law Alexios Palaiologos was badly injured by the debris, and a eunuch was killed when he tumbled into the chasm. Alexios Palaiologos died soon afterward, although whether from his injuries I do not know, but I think it likely.
In faraway Germany, Alexakos Angelos was pleading his case to Bonifazio of Montferrat and Philipp of Swabia. Irene Angelina, begged her husband Philipp and Bonifazio to help her brother and their desperate, pathetic, blinded papa back in Constantinople. Bonifazio decided he needed to consult with the pope, so he and Alexakos set out soon after Christmas 1201 to Rome.
The scheme Bonifazio, Philipp, and Alexakos had come up with was to divert the Crusading army to Constantinople. In 900 years, Constantinople had never been taken by an invading force, but it had surrendered itself many times to a rival emperor. Alexakos was confident that all he had to do was show his face and the common people would rise up on his behalf. This, he felt, was guaranteed on account of Alexios III’s dumbassery. Pope Innocent III didn’t like this idea. He didn’t want the Fourth Crusade getting stalled out at Constantinople.
Things weren’t looking too good for the Fourth Crusade. They were supposed to lberate the Christian kingdoms of the Holy Land, but as it turned out, their Christian brothers weren’t exactly jumping for joy at the thought of them showing up. The Christian lords were afraid that these newcomers meant to replace them, while the common people were enjoying a truce with the Muslims. When the Crusader envoy, Renaud de Dampierre, arrived in the Holy Land, he begged King Amalric 4 to break the truce. Amalric basically told him to stick his thumb up his ass and get the fuck out of his face. Renaud de Dampierre flounced off and decided to go help the prince of Antioch fight King Levon II of Armenia, only to get captured by the emir of Lattakia and held captive for 35 years 5.
Meantime, the Venetians had busily prepared hundreds of ships for the massive Crusading army that was expected to show up any day now. What actually showed up was a far cry from the 250,000 that had been estimated. At most, 18,000 arrived in Venice in spring 1202. This was nowhere near enough to pay the massive debt owed to Venice for constructing the ships. Villehardouin says that the Crusader leaders gathered what money they could, but that amounted to less than half their debt. Furthermore, a substantial number of would-be Crusaders were actually women, the sick, the weak, and the elderly. The papal legate, Pietro Capuano, actually had to command them to go home.
The Venetians housed the Crusading army on the island of St. Nicholas, but almost immediately the army began to starve and sicken. Many died, others deserted and returned home. Chaos threatened to break out. By October 1202, Enrico Dandolo knew he had to get the Crusader army off his front lawn before they began devouring everything in sight. He offered to postpone the debt the Crusaders owed Venice if they would load up in their ships and go capture the wealthy city of Zara, which lay nearby on the Dalmation coast. The Crusaders were resistant to this, but by this point they had little option. Their numbers had whittled down to about 12,000, and they could neither pay their debt and embark for the Holy Land, nor stay on St. Nicholas and starve.
The Venetians had for a long time claimed Zara for one of their own cities, but lately Zara had been two-timing Venice with Hungary. Enrico Dandolo steered his army of Crusaders directly to their doorstep in November 1202 to get some unholy retribution. The pope sent a letter forbidding the Crusaders to sack Zara, but they had given their word to the Venetians and were in desperate need of supplies, anyway.
Innocent III was furious when he heard that Zara had been sacked. This Crusade was turning into total balls-out buffoonery. Alexakos then made a counter-offer: in return for restoring him to his rightful throne, he pledged to not only cough up money to pay the Crusading debt owed to Venice, but to bring the Greek Orthodox Church under the authority of Rome. Suddenly, if was as if the whole world were within Innocent III’s grasp. He could salvage the Crusade. The debt could be paid. The church could be reunited. And for what? Just to march the boy to the gates of Constantinople? And surely once Alexakos had his throne, he would be grateful to the pope who’d put him there…
Bonifazio and Alexakos set out to rendezvous with the Crusader army. The soldiers, already heartsore at having sacked and devoured Zara, weren’t eager to go all the way to Constantinople to help this callow boy, but their leaders convinced them. Alexakos had promised a shit-ton of money to pay off the Venetians. Soon, soon, they would be in the Holy Land.
As the Crusading army beared down on him in May 1203, Alexios III finally roused himself to action. Belatedly he had the remaining naval ships repaired, only twenty in number, which had been left to rot and get worm-eaten.
- Keyhüsrev, his son Keykubad, and his grandson Keyhüsrev II. Although Choniates is dismissive of Keyhüsrev, Ibn Bibi’s account seems to reflect Keyhüsrev’s viewpoint on this time period.
- Mavrozomes’ mother was an illegitimate daughter of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos.
- Son of Maria Komnene (daughter of Manuel I’s eldest brother) and Alexios Axouch. His father had been exiled by Manuel I back in the 1160s.
- This was Amalric de Lusigan, husband of Queen Isabella of Jerusalem. His brother was Guy de Lusignan who was portrayed (terribly) in that Kingdom of Heaven movie.
- Bizarrely, the handful of his men who escaped capture or death limped on to meet up with other Crusaders and wound up fighting *with *Levon II *against *the prince of Antioch.
SOURCES:
Iz al-Din Ibn al-Athir. The Chronicle of Ibn Al-Athir for the Crusading Period from Al-Kamil Fi’l-Ta’rikh.
Bell, Gregory. “Unintended Interruption: The Interruption of the Fourth Crusade at Venice and its Consequences”, Journal of Medieval Military History, Volume 6, 2008.
Folda, Jaroslav. Crusader art in the Holy Land: from the Third Crusade to the fall of Acre, 1187-1291, 2005.
Oh, that does not bode well, does it? The part about the ships. Hasty repairs, ugh.
In June 1204, the Crusaders entered Byzantine territory, and encountering little resistance, pushed their way right up to the city walls of Constantinople itself. Their camp was so near the walls behind the Blachernai palace that Niketas tells us that the Greek defenders manning the wall could almost talk to the Crusaders camped out below.
Immediately, it became obvious that the Byzantines weren’t going to give up without a fight. The Crusaders built catapults and lobbed stones at the palace. Robert de Clari relates how even the “horseboys and cooks” went into battle armed and “fitted out with quilts and saddle cloths and copper pots and maces and pestles, and they were so ugly and hideous that the common foot soldiers of the emperor [Alexios III], who were in front of the walls, had great fear and terror when they saw them.”
Enrico Dandolo himself lept from his galley and led the charge of the Venetians, holding aloft the standard of St. Mark, despite being as blind as Stevie Wonder.
The Crusaders took a battering ram to the city walls, while others swarmed over the walls on ladders and tore through the Greeks there, also lighting a massive fire that consumed a chunk of the city. Alexios III, who until now had been holed up in the palace, was forced to march out with his best troops, accompanied by his kinsmen. Niketas tells us that “had the emperor’s troops moved in one body against the enemy” that they might’ve delivered the city, but instead Alexios III broke and ran back to the palace. There he gathered together everything he could carry, taking with him his daughter Irene but abandoning his wife and other daughters, and snuck out of the city under cover of night.
The courtiers went into a panic when they discovered their own emperor had abandoned them. Not knowing what else to do, they brought out the ex-emperor Isaakios II and placed him on his former throne. Alexios III’s wife, Euphrosyne Kamaterina, was thrown into prison, along with her relatives.
Isaakios sent messages to the Crusaders, but they brushed him off. He asked for his son Alexakos; they refused, unless he agreed to honor the covenants that Alexakos had sworn to. Envoys were sent into Constantinople to meet with Isaakios II. Villehardouin tells us they went to the imperial court to find Isaakios II “so richly clad that you would seek in vain throughout the world for a man more richly appareled than he”, with his beautiful empress, Margit of Hungary, by his side. It was decided that Alexakos would rule beside him as co-emperor, for the Crusaders didn’t trust that the Greeks would keep their word otherwise. The nobles who had been loyal to Alexios III switched sides to Isaakios II and Alexakos. Many prisoners were freed, including a courtier who called himself Alexios Doukas, better known as Mourtzouphlos for his bushy eyebrows.
The Crusader lords asked after Agnes, the widow of Alexios II and Andronikos I, for by birth she was a French princess, the sister of King Philippe Auguste of France. Lo and behold, Agnes, who had twice been an empress and twice been widowed before she was thirteen-years-old, lived in the palace. She met with the Crusader lord reluctantly, Robert de Clari tells us, “she was very cold to them and very angry with them for having come and crowned [Alexios IV].” She refused to speak in her native tongue, explaining that she had forgotten all her French and had to speak through an interpreter. Agnes had married Theodoros Branas, the son of the dead rebel Alexios Branas, and they had a daughter.
Another amazing person the Crusader lords met was a king “who’s skin was all black, and who had a cross in the middle of his forehead made with a hot iron”. Alexakos knew him, and introduced him to the Crusader lords as the king of Nubia. They gazed upon him with wonder.
Alexakos set out from the city to visit the rest of the empire and receive fealty from the other cities; with him went many of the Crusader lords, notably Bonifazio and Hendrik of Flanders. Baldwin of Flanders and Louis of Blois remained behind at Constantinople with Isaakios II. The Crusader lords were restless and sick of being wined and dined. They wanted Isaakios II to deliver on the money that Alexakos had promised them. The problem was after several disastrous reigns, and now Alexios III looting the treasury for everything he could carry, there was precious little left to pay them off with. Isaakios II resorted to raiding the churches and monasteries, having the icons of Christ hacked up with axes and cast into fires to be melted down into gold and silver.
In August, a force of mercenary Flemings, Pisans, and Venetians attacked the Saracan quarter of the city, intending to plunder their mosques. The Saracens fought back, and the Greeks came to their aid, scattering the would-be plunderers. Angered, these men retreated and lit a fire in retaliation that would scorch most of the city into ashes. The fire roared across Constantinople, burning down part of the Hippodrome. Embers even caught a passing ship on fire.
The mob vented their fury on the Latins who lived within their city. These foreigners, from various lands, fled with their families and joined the Crusading army outside the city walls. When Alexakos returned from his journey, Villehardouin claims he became pompous and forgot “those who had done so much for him”, and refused to come visit the Crusader lords in their camps. Isaakios II was himself becoming insane with jealousy over his son usurping more and more power from him. Tensions flared all around. The Greeks were pissed at the Crusaders having forced Alexakos on them as co-emperor, and they gave chilly receptions to those who entered the city to adore holy relics or gawk at the magnificence of Constantinople. Robert of Clari, a knight who wrote a chronicle of his time on the Fourth Crusade, tells us of the many marvels found in Constantinople, helpfully informing us that the bronze statues found in the Hippodrome once could move and talk, but did so no longer 1.
Tired of the delays, Bonifazio and the envoys went to meet with Alexakos, who dismissed them arrogantly, saying he wasn’t going to pay a dime, that he wasn’t afraid of them, and that he was ready for them to get gone. Enrico Dandolo was mad as hell when he heard this. He confronted Alexios, with dialogue memorably supplied by Robert de Clari:
DANDOLO: Don’t you mean to keep your agreement with us?
ALEXAKOS: No, I won’t do anything more than what I’ve done.
DANDOLO: Wicked boy, we pulled you out of shit, and will return you to shit. Be warned that I will seek to do you all the harm in my power from this moment on.
In the midst of all this we find several young persons stranded in the palace of Blachernai: the sisters Eudokia and Anna Angelina, and their men. Anna and Eudokia had left behind by their father Alexios III and sister Irene. Eudokia’s lover, Alexios Doukas 2 aka Mourtzouphlos, felt not a shred of gratitude to Alexakos for rescuing him from the chokey. Anna’s husband Theodoros Laskaris, “a daring youth and fierce warrior”, who’s brother Konstantinos 3 was injured during the battles with the Crusaders. Theodoros had been heir-apparent to Alexios III after Irene’s husband Alexios Palailogos’ unexpected death. The Laskaris brothers were of somewhat obscure origins; their surname derives from the Persian laskar, warrior.
A riot broke out in January, as the populace gathered together and proclaimed a reluctant young nobleman, Nikolaos Kannavos, their emperor in opposition to Isaakios II and Alexakos. Kannavos’ supporters also destroyed an ancient statue of Athena that faced west, believing this statue had beckoned the Crusaders into their city. Mourtzouphlos, who desired the throne for himself, had Kannavos arrested and thrown into prison. He then turned on Alexakos. Niketas tells us he twice tried to poison Alexakos, but when Alexakos’ strong constitution overcame the poison, Mourtzouphlos snuck into his room in the dark of night and strangled him.
Isaakios II died under mysterious circumstances soon after. Robert de Clari claims he was strangled, too; Villehardouin says the shock of his son dying made him fall ill, and then he died.
Thrilled with his coup, Mourtzouphlos quickly had himself crowned emperor as Alexios V. The Crusaders had mixed feelings when they learned of the death of Alexakos. Some cursed Alexakos as a liar, while Robert de Clari says others pitied him, “for it weighed on them that he had been killed in this way”.
Mourtzouphlos strutted about in his imperial boots, and sent a letter to the Crusaders, demanding that they get the hell out. The Crusader lords replied with contempt. “He who treacherously murdered his lord by night sends this word to us?” Robert de Clari has them say. They sent warning that they would not abandon Constantinople until Alexakos’ murder had been avenged and they had got all the riches they had come for.
- It’s amazing his leg didn’t pop off, as much as his Byzantine tour guide was pulling it.
- He doesn’t seem to have been a scion of any important family, and it’s unknown how (or if) he was related to the imperial Doukai.
- Who Villehardouin hails as “among the best of the Greeks”.
SOURCES:
McNeal, Edgar. The conquest of Constantinople by Robert de Clari, 2005.
Kinoshita, Sharon. Medieval boundaries: rethinking difference in Old French literature, 2006.
Geoffrey de Villehardouin.* Memoirs Or Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the Conquest of Constantinople*.
Now that he was emperor, Mourtzouphlos set himself up in the palace with his lover, Eudokia Angelina, as his empress. Their ‘marriage’ was of dubious legality, as she was still technically married to the king of Serbia, and for that matter Mourtzouphlos seems to have been married too, as Niketas tells us his father-in-law was the envoy and courtier Eumathios Philokales 1. I like to think of Eudokia Angelina as the Stephanie McMahon of this saga 2 and Mourtzouphlos as the Triple H. Certainly he cut an impressive figure, with his hoarse, deep voice and crazed bravery in combat – when the Angeloi emperors had cringed behind their palace walls, Mourtzouphlos took to the streets himself, bronze mace in hand, beating back the raiding Crusaders.
In the Crusader camp, things were getting tight. Hendrik of Flanders, Baldwin’s younger brother, decided to personally lead a raiding party to the city of Philea in search of booty. After gorging themselves on wine and good times, he and his posse tried to return back to camp. Mourtzouphlos laid an ambush for them. Hendrik was a valiant fighter, or maybe it was that even half-drunk his soldiers were more than a match for the best of Mourtzouphlos’ troops, for Mourtzouphlos and his men had the hell beat out of them and had to retreat.
The Crusader lords closed rank, put their heads together, and schemed up a plan to take Constantinople, get revenge for Alexakos, and moidalize Mourtzouphlos. By this point, it was early spring 1204, and the Crusaders were sick and tired of living in tents in the mire and muck outside the walls of Constantinople. They decided that they would capture the city, then six Crusader lords and six Venetian lords would elect an emperor of their own from amongst their ranks.
Enrico Dandolo went to meet with Mourtzouphlos and tried talking him into coughing up the money. When Mourtzouphlos was like, “Hell no”, phase one of the Crusader’s plan went into effect. The knights who had accompanied Dandolo into the city suddenly charged Mourtzouphlos, who barely escaped them. Meanwhile, the Crusader warships sailed into the harbor and right up to the city walls. The Crusaders onboard set tall scaling ladders onto the walls and clambered up. The fighting was ferocious, but the Greeks pushed the invaders back.
The Crusaders fell back for a couple of days, but then attacked with renewed vigor. This time, their soldiers poured over the walls, slamming into the remnants of the Byzantine army, and Crusader knights made landfall and rode their horses straight into the red tents where Mourtzouphlos was camped out. He broke and ran back to his palace, as his people looked on with horror as yet another emperor abandoned them to fight on alone. That night, Baldwin of Flanders camped in Mourtzouphlos’ red tents, while his brother Hendrik camped out in front of the Blachernai palace. Some of Bonifazio’s followers, fearful that the Greeks should attack them in the night, set some of the nearby houses on fire, and that fire blazed for a day and a half, devouring more houses in Constantinople “than there are houses in any three of the greatest cities in the kingdom of France”, according to Villehardouin.
In the midst of all this panic, Mourtzouphlos called his people to him and pledged to attack the Crusaders as they slept. As his loyal followers busied themselves preparing for all-out mayhem, Mourtzouphlos quickly packed up whatever he could carry, and then he and Eudokia snuck out of the city under cover of night and fire. They took Eudokia’s mother, the former empress Euphrosyne, with them. Panic broke out; some hurridly hailed Konstantinos Laskaris as the new emperor, but he was unable to rally enough people to his cause. Even the ancient Varangian guard, which had served the Byzantine emperors for centuries, refused to fight. Konstantinos and his brother Theodoros, along with Theodoros’ wife Anna Angelina, fled to the docks and took a ship out of the city.
Dawn. The Crusaders awoke and prepared to give battle, unaware that Mourtzouphlos had fled. When Bonifazio of Montferrat approached the palace of Boukoleon, envoys met with him and agreed to surrender on condition he would spare the lives of everyone inside. He found a palace full of women, including Agnes of France, Alexios III and Andronikos I’s widow, and Margit of Hungary, Isaakios II’s widow, both of whom had been left behind when Mourtzouphlos fled the city. Margit was especially lovely, still a young woman with two little boys 3, and Bonifazio took to her right away. Blachernai palace likewise surrendered to Hendrik of Flanders without a fight, and almost immediately it dawned on all the Crusaders that Constantinople was leaderless, defenseless, and ripe for the picking.
To say all hell broke loose is an understatement. The Crusaders were hungry, filthy, frustrated, and pissed as hell. They descended on Constantinople like the wrath of God. They kicked down doors, looted homes, churches, palaces. Nuns were raped in their convents. Sacred chalices were stripped of their jewels and used as drinking cups. The church of the Holy Apostles, the resting place of Constantine the Great himself, was ransacked. The imperial tombs were destroyed, and even the corpse of Justinian was desecrated. Ancient statues were broken and smelted down. The Crusaders tore the very clothes from the common people’s backs. Horses were adorned with hats and veils taken from Greek women. The Crusaders smashed the altar of the Hagia Sophia, and set up a whore to sing and dance on the patriarch’s throne.
Niketas Choniates survived the sack and his account is particularly detailed. He and his friends sought refuge at the home of a Venetian named Dominic who had long lived in Constantinople. Dominic owned a helmet and armor, which he donned, and when the Crusaders broke into his home, he pretended to be among their number, and claimed his own house as his ‘spoils’. As they were beseiged by more and more invaders, Dominic despaired of fighting them all off, and decided to lead his little group away. He tied his friends by their hands and led them behind him, as though they were slaves. Small children were carried on their parents’ shoulders, and Niketas’ wife trudged behind, heavily pregnant. As they made their way towards one of the gates leading out of the city, they were accosted by Crusaders who searched them, looking for any money or treasures they might have hidden under their clothes. The women dirtied their faces, trying to make themselves as unappealing as possible.
One Crusader drug a girl from their group, intending to rape her. Her father ran after her, but was thrown aside into a gutter. He begged for someone to save his daughter, so Niketas chased after the would-be rapist. He cried out to the other Crusaders for help, imploring them to help protect the girl as they would their own daughters and sisters. Rallying some of the other Crusaders, Niketas confronted the rapist, who was reluctant to give the girl up until they threatened to hang him. The girl was returned to her father and the rest of their group. Niketas and his friends escaped Constantinople and made their way to Thrace, where the locals scorned the refugees and made merry at their sorry sight.
After three solid days of looting, the Crusaders assembled their treasures and counted it all up. Robert de Clari was rapturous at what he saw. “Not since the world was made was there ever seen or won so great a treasure or so noble or so rich, not in the time of Alexander and not in the time of Charlemagne, nor before nor after.” The spoils of the rape of Constantinople were divided between the soldiers, after the Venetians had their share, of course.
Just as they planned, the Crusader lords and the Venetians got together and voted on who should be the new emperor over the sacked and devastated city. Really, everyone knew that the choice came down between Baldwin of Flanders and Bonifazio of Montferrat. Niketas claims that Enrico Dandolo would’ve put himself forward as a candidate for the throne, had not his blindness rendered him ineligible.
Bonifazio had taken up with the widowed empress Margit almost immediately after meeting her, and some of the Greeks already hailed him as emperor in the streets. But Enrico Dandolo supported Baldwin of Flanders, the most respected and powerful Crusader lord. His reasons for this, Niketas says, were two-fold; Dandolo wanted a relatively unambitious emperor in Constantinople, and also Bonifazio was allied with the Genoese, one of Venice’s rivals. Dandolo swayed the Venetian electors in Baldwin’s favor, and it was Baldwin who was elected and crowned emperor on May 16, 1204.
Bonifazio went to Baldwin and requested for his own the lands surrounding Thessaloniki, which lay near the lands of Margit’s brother, King Imre of Hungary. To this, Emperor Baldwin agreed.
Among the Greeks who joined Bonifazio’s service when he became lord of Thessaloniki was Mikhael Doukas, who confusingly was really an Angelos 4, but preferred to go by the more prestigious names of Doukas and Komnenos, and sometimes smushed em together into Komnenodoukas. When he was a boy, he had been among the hostages sent to Friedrich Barbarossa by Isaakios II. Mikhael was illegitimate, which was unfortunate, for he had the sort of courage and tenacity of which great emperors are made. He stayed in Bonifazio’s service just long enough to gather a group of loyal followers, then lit out for Epiros, a wild and mountainous land that had been the homeland of Alexander the Great’s snake-worshipping mother long ago. Epiros was among the lands given to the Venetians, but they controlled the coasts. The rugged interior was ruled by Mikhael and became a haven for Greek refugees fleeing Constantinople.
As for Mourtzouphlos and Eudokia Angelina, they made their way to the town of Mosynopolis, where they met up with – of all people – Eudokia’s daddy, Alexios IV. Now, Alexios IV despised his ‘son-in-law’ Mourtzouphlos, who had worn his crown and banged his daughter, but he expertly played the part of host. He invited Mourtzouphlos and Eudokia to the bath house with him, and while they luxuriated in the steam, his servants burst in, restrained Mourtzouphlos, and gouged out his eyes. Georgios Akropolites tells us that Eudokia, when she saw what her father had done to her beloved, “showered abuse” on Alexios IV.
Mourtzouphlos wandered around the town in misery as a vagabond. Alexios IV split, taking Eudokia and Euphrosyne with him, leaving Mourtzouphlos behind for the Crusaders to find. They dragged Mourtzouphlos back to Constantinople and threw him from the tall Tauros column to his death.
Alexios IV had escaped Constantinople with few followers and only whatever treasures he could carry with him. The Selcuk prince Keyhüsrev had left with him. He followed Alexios IV about on his endless wanderings, trying to stay one step ahead of the Crusaders who wanted to get their hands on Alexios IV and do to him what they’d done to Mourtzouphlos. But one day, a Selcuk agent approached Keyhüsrev in secret, telling him that his brother, Rükneddin, who had exiled him in the first place, had recently died. Keyhüsrev, “dressed in pitiful rags” as Akropolites tells us, returned to his Selcuk lands and became sultan again. His father-in-law, Manuel Mavrozomes, and his brother-in-law, Amir Ioannes Mavrozomes, decided to throw their lot in with him.
- Surely related to (perhaps a grandson of) Eumathios Philokales who was one of Alexios I’s best generals. Niketas calls this later Philokales a “feeble shadow” of a man.
- With Alexios IV as Vince, natch.
- Manuel and Kaloiannes, Margit’s sons with Isaakios II.
- He was an illegitimate son of Ioannes Angelos, the uncle of emperors Isaakios II and Alexios IV.
SOURCES:
Macrides, Ruth. George Akropolites: The History, 2007.
Yildiz, Sara Nur. “Manuel Komnenos Mavrozomes and His Descendants at the Seljuk Court: the Formation of a Christian Seljuk-Komnenian Elite” (Crossroads between Latin Europe and the Near East: Corollaries of the Frankish Presence in the Eastern Mediterranean), 2011.
It’s back!
Yes indeedy, it is! But are you enjoying it? I’m loving researching for this series, but I don’t want to be talking to a room full of chirping crickets.
Also – oops! I realized I referred to Alexios III as Alexios IV all last post! I’m sorry, guys. In my defense, I made it through a fuckton of Alexioses before screwing up the numeral. Alexios IV, aka Alexakos, was killed by Mourtzouphlos. Alexios III is Alexakos’ uncle, and the daddy of Eudokia Angelina. Mea culpa!
LOL there is also a lot of that going on in Russian history as well =)
So when you are done with Byzantia, want to take a whack at eddas?