Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (25 page)

And poorer too. Manuel's diplomacy was based, even more than that of most of his fellow-princes, on subsidies, sweeteners and bribes. He was extravagant in his own tastes and insanely generous not only to his friends but to virtually everyone with whom he came in contact. Finally, the scale and frequency of his campaigns drained his Empire dry, both of money and of men. He had continued his father's policy of settling war prisoners in various regions and making them liable for military service, thereby reviving the old system of smallholder-soldiers on which the Empire had relied in former centuries; but such measures remained quite inadequate to meet his demands. As a result he was obliged to hire ever-increasing numbers of mercenaries, who lived off the local populations - taking, as Nicetas Choniates tells us, 'not only their money but even the very shirts off their backs'.

All this is more than enough to account for Manuel's unpopularity in the provinces of the Empire; but even in Constantinople he seems to have had few real friends. The trouble here was, once again, the attraction that he always felt for Western Eu
rope: its art, its customs, its
institutions. His subjects were disgusted by the way Western visitors always received a warmer welcome than those from the East, and in particular by his preference for Western architects whenever there was a new house or palace to be built. They were shocked by the informality of his manners - by the light-hearted way, for example, in which he would enter a Western-style tournament (surely bad enough in itself) and compete on equal terms with Frankish knights. Finally, they resented the constant implication that they were old-fashioned, sticking to outdated concepts and outmoded traditions. They were glad to see him go.

Fortunately for him, he went just in time, leaving his successors to reap the wild wind. He also missed the Third Crusade, the spectre of which - for he had known that it must come - had haunted him through the last years of his life. For that, admittedly, he cannot be blamed; but of the other misfortunes that were to descend upon Byzantium, many -perhaps most - were of his making. He left behind him a heavy heritage: one that would have defeated better men by far than those who were, alas, to succeed him.

9

Andronicus the Terrible

[1180-85]

In the life of this prince, so brilliant and yet so corrupt, at once an abominable tyrant and a superb statesman, one who could have saved the Empire but only precipitated its ruin, we find combined, as in a magnificent summary, all the essential characteristics, all the contrasts of Byzantine society: that strange mixture of good and evil - cruel, atrocious and decadent, yet also capable of grandeur, energy and effort; a society which, during so many centuries, in all the troublous times of its history, always succeeded in finding within itself the necessary resources for life and for survival, not without glory.

Charles Diehl,
Figures Byzantines,
Vol. II

Alexius II Comnenus was an unimpressive child. Nicetas Choniates tells us that 'this young prince was so puffed up with vanity and pride, so destitute of inner light and ability as to be incapable of the simplest task . . . He passed his entire life at play or the chase, and contracted several habits of pronounced viciousness.' Meanwhile his mother, Mary of Antioch, governed as Regent in his stead. As the first Latin ever to rule in Constantinople, she started off at a grave disadvantage. To the Byzantines, her husband's passion for all things Western had been quite bad enough; they now feared - and with good reason - still further extensions to the Italian and Frankish merchants of their trading rights and privileges; and they were more worried still when Mary took as her chief adviser another character of extreme pro-Western sympathies -Manuel's nephew, the
protosebastus
Alexius, uncle of the Queen of Jerusalem. Before long it was generally believed that her adviser was also her lover, though from Nicetas's description it is not easy to see what the Empress — whose beauty was famous throughout Christendom - saw in him:

He was accustomed to spend the greater part of the day in bed, keeping the curtains drawn lest he should ever see the sunlight . . . Whenever the sun appeared he would seek the darkness, just as wild beasts do; also he took much pleasure in rubbing his decaying teeth, putting in new ones in the place of those that had fallen out through old age.

As dissatisfaction grew, various conspiracies began to be hatched; notably one by Mary's stepdaughter Maria. The plot was discovered; with her husband Rainier of Montferrat and her other associates, Maria barely had time to flee to St Sophia and barricade herself in. But the Empress Regent was not prepared to respect any rights of sanctuary. The imperial guard was dispatched with orders to seize the conspirators, and the Great Church was saved from desecration only through the mediation of the Patriarch himself. This incident deeply shocked the Byzantines, and the subsequent exile of His Beatitude to a monastery for his part in the affair made the regime more unpopular than ever. Such was the state of public indignation against her that Mary never dared to punish her stepdaughter. Nor, later, did she lift a finger when the people of Constantinople marched
en masse
to the Patriarch's monastery and carried him on their shoulders back to the capital. The whole affair could hardly have been handled more ineptly.

This first
coup
had failed; but there followed a threat from another of the Emperor's relatives - a man this time, and one of a very different calibre. Andronicus Comnenus, the Emperor's first cousin - he was the son of the
sebastocrator
Isaac - was a phenomenon. In 1182 he was already sixty-four years old, but looked nearer forty. Over six feet tall and in magnificent physical condition, he had preserved the good looks, the intellect, the conversational charm and wit, the elegance and the sheer panache that, together with the fame of his almost legendary exploits in the bed and on the battlefield, had won him an unrivalled reputation. The list of his conquests seemed endless, that of the scandals in which he had been involved very little shorter. Three in particular had roused Manuel to fury. The first was when Andronicus carried on a flagrant affair with his own cousin - and the Emperor's niece - the Princess Eudocia Comnena, effectively answering criticism by pointing out that 'subjects should always follow their master's example, and two pieces from the same factory normally prove equally acceptable' - a clear allusion to Manuel's association with Eudocia's sister Theodora, for whom he was well known to cherish an affection that went well beyond the avuncular. Some years later, Andronicus had deserted his military command in Cilicia with the deliberate intention of seducing the lovely Philippa of Antioch. Once again he must have known that there would be serious repercussions: Philippa was the sister not only of the reigning prince, Bohemund III, but of Manuel's own wife, the Empress Mary. This, however, as far as Andronicus was concerned, merely lent additional spice to the game. Though he was then forty-eight and his quarry just twenty, his serenades beneath her window proved irresistible. Within a few days he had added yet another name to his list.

The conquest once made, Andronicus did not remain long to enjoy it. Manuel, outraged, ordered his immediate recall; Bohemund also made it clear that he had no intention of tolerating such a scandal. Possibly, too, the young Princess's charms may have proved disappointing. In any case Andronicus left hurriedly for Palestine to put himself at the disposal of King Amalric of Jerusalem; and there, at Acre, he met for the first time another of his cousins - Queen Theodora, the twenty-one-year-old widow of Amalric's predecessor, King Baldwin III. She became the love of his life. Soon afterwards, when Andronicus moved to his new fief of Beirut - recently given him by Amalric as a reward for his services -Theodora joined him. Consanguinity forbade their marriage, but the two lived there together in open sin until Beirut in its turn grew too hot for them.

After a long spell of wandering through the Muslim East, Andronicus and Theodora finally settled down at Colonea, just beyond the eastern frontier of the Empire, subsisting happily on such money as they had been able to bring with them, supplemented by the proceeds of a little mild brigandage; but their idyll was brought to an end when Theodora and their two small sons were captured by the Duke of Trebizond and sent back to Constantinople. Andronicus, agonized by their loss, hurried back to the capital and immediately gave himself up, flinging himself histrionically at the Emperor's feet and promising anything if only his mistress and his children could be returned to him. Manuel showed his usual generosity; Theodora was, after all, his niece. Clearly a menage at once so irregular and so prominent could not be allowed in Constantinople; but the couple were given a pleasant castle on the Black Sea coast where they might live in moderately honourable exile - and, it was hoped, peaceful retirement.

Alas, it was not to be. Andronicus had always had his eye on the imperial crown and when, after Manuel's death, reports reached him of the growing dissatisfaction with the Empress Regent he needed little persuading that his opportunity had come at last. Unlike Mary of Antioch - 'the foreigner', as her subjects scornfully called her - he was a true Comnenus.

He had energy, ability and determination; more important still at such a moment, his romantic past lent him a popular appeal unmatched in the Empire. In August
1182
he marched on the capital. The old magic was as strong as ever. The troops sent out to block his advance refused to fight; their general, Andronicus Angelus, surrendered and joined him
1
-an example soon afterwards followed by the admiral commanding the imperial fleet in the Bosphorus. As he progressed, the people flocked from their houses to cheer him on his way; soon the road was lined with his supporters. Even before he crossed the straits, rebellion had broken out in Constantinople, and with it exploded all the pent-up xenophobia that the events of the previous two years had done so much to increase. What followed was the massacre of virtually every Latin in the city: women and children, the old and infirm, even the sick from the hospitals, as the whole quarter in which they lived was burnt to the ground. The
protosebastos
was found cowering in the palace, too frightened even to try to escape; he was thrown into the dungeons and later, on Andronicus's orders, blinded;
2
the young Emperor and his mother were taken to the imperial villa of the Philopation, there to await their cousin's pleasure.

Their fate was worse than either of them could have feared. Andronicus's triumph had brought out the other side of his character - a degree of cruelty and brutality that few had even suspected, unredeemed by a shred of compassion, scruple or moral sense. Though all-powerful, he was not yet Emperor; and so, methodically and in cold blood, he set about eliminating everyone who stood between himself and the throne. Princess Maria and her husband were the first to go; their deaths were sudden and mysterious, but no one doubted poison. Then it was the turn of the Empress herself. Her thirteen-year-old son was forced to sign her death warrant with his own hand, and she was strangled in her cell. In September
1183
Andronicus was crowned co-Emperor; two months later the boy Alexius met his own death by the bowstring and his body was flung into the Bosphorus. 'Thus,' wrote Nicetas, 'in the imperial garden, all the trees were felled.' Only one more formality remained. For the last three and a half years of his short life, Alexius had been married

1
It was typical of Andronicus Comncnus that he should
have had a joke ready when Ange
lu
s came over to his colours. 'See
,' he is said to have remarked, 'it is just as the Gospel says: /
shall send my Angel, who shall prepare the way before thee.'
The Gospel in fact says no such thing; but Andronicus was not a man to quibble over niceties of that kind.

2
Though not before he had recovered his nerve and lodged a formal complaint that his English guards - presumably Varangians - were not allowing him enough sleep.

to Agnes of France, now re-baptized in the more seemly Byzantine name of Anna. Scarcely was her husband disposed of when the new Emperor, now sixty-four, had married the twelve-year-old Empress -and, if at least one modern authority is to be believed,
1
consummated the marriage.

No reign could have begun less auspiciously; in one way, however, Andronicus did more good to the Empire than Manuel had ever done. He attacked all administrative abuses, wherever he found them and in whatever form. The tragedy was that as he gradually eliminated corruption from the government machine, so he himself grew more and more corrupted by the exercise of his power. Violence and brute force seemed to be his only weapons; his legitimate campaign against the military aristocracy rapidly deteriorated into a succession of bloodbaths and indiscriminate slaughter. According to one report,

he left the vines of Brusa weighed down, not with grapes but with the corpses of those whom he had hanged; and he forbade any man to cut them down for burial, for he wished them to dry in the sun and then to sway and flutter as the wind took them, like the scarecrows that are hung in the orchards to frighten the birds.

Before long, however, it was Andronicus himself who had cause for fear. His popularity was gone: the saviour of the Empire was revealed a monster. Once again the air was thick with revolt and sedition; conspiracies sprang up, hydra-headed, in capital and provinces alike. Traitors were everywhere. Those who fell into the hands of the Emperor were tortured to death, often in his presence, occasionally by his own hand; but many others escaped to the West, where they could be sure of a ready welcome - for the West, as Andronicus was well aware, had not forgotten the massacre of
1182
and there also the storm-clouds were gathering. As early as
1181
King Bela III of Hungary - who had previously been kept in check only by his personal friendship with Manuel - had seized back Dalmatia, much of Croatia and the district of Sirmium, won by the Emperor at such cost only a few years before. In
1183,
in alliance with the Serbian Grand Zhupan Stephen Nemanja, he invaded the Empire: Belgrade, Branichevo, Nish and Sardica were all