Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (43 page)

They found Michael Palaeologus in a state of considerable anxiety. Tempers were still running high over the issue of ecclesiastical unity, by whose opponents he had not been forgiven; many of them, he feared, might see in the Angevin expedition a means of getting rid of him once and for all. Nor did he have much confidence in the Venetians, who had returned to the city after the treaty of 1277 and whose numbers continued to increase, despite the Republic's abrogation of the agreement two years later. If Berat were to fall, Charles would be in Thessalonica in a matter of weeks; and what then would be the prospects for Constantinople? Entrusting his nephew Michael Tarchaneiotes - son of his sister Maria - with the command of all the finest troops he could muster, the Emperor ordered a night-long vigil throughout the city. For that night at least, Church unity was forgotten: it was the old Byzantine liturgy that echoed from a thousand churches as the people prayed for the salvation of their Empire.

The siege continued throughout the winter, while Charles sent a constant flow of messages to his commander, encouraging him to ever greater efforts and even, in December, commanding him to take the town by storm. But Berat's superb defensive position made such a task virtually impossible to fulfil; Sully could only ravage the surrounding countryside and hope to starve the Greek garrison into surrender. Meanwhile the garrison put up a stout defence, an
d was at last rewarded in March
1281 by the sight of the relief army approaching over the horizon. Still more welcome - since by this time they were seriously short of food -were the rafts loaded with provisions which, under cover of darkness, began to float down the Asounes river — now the Lium - into the city. Meanwhile Tarchaneiotes, who had been instructed by the Emperor to avoid pitched battles, dug his army in among the surrounding hills and awaited his opportunity.

It was not long in coming. A day or two later, Sully - who was easily recognizable by his flaming red hair - decided to make a personal reconnaissance of the Greek positions and had just ridden out of his camp, accompanied by an escort of twenty-five men, when his horse was suddenly shot from under him and he found himself surrounded by a band of Turkish mercenaries. Some of the escort escaped, and galloped back to the camp with the news; whereupon the Angevin army believing their leader dead, panicked and took to their heels, the Greeks -including those from the garrison within the town - following them in hot pursuit. The Latin cavalry, heavily armed as always, were well protected from the imperial archers; but their huge, slow horses were brought down one after the other, and by evening the greater part of the Angevin army, including nearly all its commanders, was in Byzantine hands. The prisoners, including Sully himself, were brought back to Constantinople and forced to participate in an imperial triumph through the streets of the city.

Michael Palaeologus later had a fresco of the victory painted on the wall of his palace, and no wonder: it was the greatest that he had scored over the Latins since Pelagonia and the recovery of Constantinople. As a direct result of it, moreover, he now found himself in control of the whole interior of Albania and northern Epirus as far south as Ioannina. To Charles of Anjou, on the other hand, the events of those few fateful hours brought utter humiliation before friends and enemies alike, the complete loss of two years' hard work - to say nothing of vast expenditure - on his expeditionary force and the indefinite postponement of his long-held dream of an empire in the East.

But though the dream might be postponed, it was by no means abandoned. The disaster at Berat seems if anything to have strengthened Charles's determination to destroy Michael Palaeologus. Despite his losses his situation was by no means hopeless, and had been greatly improved by the election to the papal throne in February 1281, six months after the death of Pope Nich
olas, of the Frenchman Simon de
Brie.
1
Simon, who took the name of Martin IV, had served at the court of St Louis; later, as papal legate, he had been instrumental in preparing Charles's candidature for the throne of Sicily. A fervent patriot who deeply distrusted all Italians, he was totally devoted to the French royal house and made no secret of his readiness to submit the Papacy to the interests of France. Charles could henceforth pursue his expansionist policies without fear of any trouble from Rome.

The first object of these policies was Venice. Since Berat there could no longer be any question of sending another land expedition against Constantinople. Any new army would have to go by sea, and that would in turn be possible only with the help of the Venetian fleet. Recent attempts by Charles to woo the Serenissima had always come to nothing, owing to the Veneto-Byzantine treaty of 1277; but the intervening four years had brought a significant change in the Venetian attitude. On the Rialto the treaty was quickly seen to be almost worthless. Venice's trade had steadily decreased, her merchants had been treated as second-class citizens, their rights under the treaty ignored. Worst of all from their point of view, the Genoese were thriving, and enjoying to the full the privileges which were being withheld from the Venetians. In 1279 the Doge had abrogated the treaty, since when Venice's relations with the Empire had deteriorated still further; and by 1281 she was ready to make her volte-face. The treaty that was signed on 3 July at Orvieto by Charles, the Latin 'Emperor' Philip of Courtenay and the accredited representatives of the Republic provided for a sea-borne expedition against Constantinople, in which all three sovereigns - Charles (or his eldest son), Philip and Doge Giovanni Dandolo - would participate in person, to set out in the spring of 1283. A Venetian fleet of at least forty armed galleys would leave the lagoon not later than 1 April, to make contact with the transports to be provided by Charles and Philip at Brindisi a fortnight later.

Pope Martin was not a signatory to the treaty; but the fact that it was signed in the papal palace at Orvieto is proof enough that it had his enthusiastic support. Moreover, just three months later on 18 October, the Pope suddenly - and apparently spontaneously - pronounced sentence of excommunication on the Byzantine Emperor:

We declare that Michael Palaeologus, who is called Emperor of the Greeks, has

1
Charles had not been exclusively responsible for the choice of Simon as Pope. By that time the Orsini family had made themselves so unpopular in Viterbo that the mob had burst into the conclave and carried off the two Orsini cardinals until the election was over.

incurred excommunication as supporter of the Greek schismatics and consequent heretics .
..
We absolutely forbid all individual kings, princes, dukes, marquises, counts, barons and all others of whatever eminence, condition or status, all cities, fortresses and other places from contracting with this Michael Palaeologus any alliance or association of any sort or nature that may be proposed while he is excommunicate .
..
Furthermore his lands shall undergo ecclesiastical interdict, and he shall be deprived of all property that he holds from any churches whatever, and he shall suffer other spiritual penalties as we think best; and any such alliances contracted
...
we declare to be null and void.

Twice in the following year this sentence was to be renewed; but for Michael the first was enough. No
basileus
had ever done so much as he had for the Papacy. He and his son had twice sworn fidelity to the Church of Rome and had accepted every single item of its Creed, the
filioque
not excepted. He had done his utmost to persuade his own ecclesiastics to do likewise - risking civil war and even his own throne in the process - and had even achieved a fair measure of success. And now, instead of rewarding him, that same Latin Church had put him under its ban, in one irresponsible moment undoing the work of twenty years - not only on his part but on that of at least six previous Popes -and leaving him alone to face his enemies. Surprisingly, he did not even now renounce the union: he still considered himself bound by his oath, and there was always the possibility that Martin's successor might revoke the ban. But he ordered the Pope's name struck from the diptychs - the lists of those whose names were regularly remembered during public prayers — and simultaneously suspended all the measures that he had previously taken to impose the Latin rite on his subjects. Meanwhile he made every effort to restore good relations with the Greek Church. It looked as though he would be needing its support more than ever in the trials to come.

Charles of Anjou was now the most powerful sovereign in Europe. Quite apart from his own Kingdoms of Sicily (which included all South Italy) and Albania, he was ruler of Achaia, Provence, Forcalquier, Anjou and Maine, overlord of Tunis and Senator of Rome. The King of France was his nephew, the King of Hungary and the titular Emperor of Constantinople his sons-in-law. In the diplomatic field, too, he had taken every possible precaution. He had treaties of alliance with Serbia, Bulgaria, the Greek Princes of Epirus and - most important of all because of her naval supremacy in the Mediterranean - the Republic of Venice. The Pope was his puppet, who had moreover obligingly elevated what was essentially to be a war of conquest to the status of a Crusade.

He had learnt his lesson from the reverse of the previous year, and was now preparing a naval expedition on a far grander scale than anything that he had hitherto contemplated. To achieve this he had imposed crippling taxes throughout the Regno, with an additional tithe for the Crusade which brought many of his subjects to the brink of destitution. The money raised allowed him comfortably to exceed the levels foreseen in the Orvieto treaty: he was now building three hundred ships in Naples, Provence and his Adriatic ports, while another hundred had been ordered from Sicily - a fleet massive enough to carry some twenty-seven thousand mounted knights, to say nothing of siege machinery, sledge-hammers, axes, ropes, cauldrons for boiling pitch, several thousand iron stakes and mattocks, and all the other equipment necessary for the success of the most ambitious campaign of his career.

Against him stood Michael Palaeologus, the Republic of Genoa and a newcomer to this story, King Peter III of Aragon. Peter, whose wife Constance was the daughter of King Manfred, believed himself to be the legitimate heir of the Hohenstaufen and naturally detested the Angevins, whom he considered usurpers of a Kingdom that was rightfully his. Ever since his succession in 1276 he and his brilliant Italian Chancellor John of Procida had been working for Charles's overthrow. An Aragonese envoy had twice secretly visited Michael in Constantinople, continuing on each occasion to Sicily with generous quantities of Byzantine gold which he had used to fan the flames of discontent;
1
and by the end of 1280 Peter was making little attempt to conceal his aggressive intentions. He and Michael might be prompted by very different motives, but in their attitude to Charles of Anjou they were as one.

Peter of Aragon and John of Procida did their work well. Charles had never been unpopular in South Italy, where he had proved on the whole an able and conscientious ruler; but in Sicily he had always been hated, and the crippling taxation that he had imposed in recent years, in a cause for which his Sicilian subjects had little sympathy - many of them indeed, being of Greek origin, strongly favoured the Byzantines - made the island a fertile field for subversion. By Easter 1282, with the King's vast armada lying at anchor in the harbour at Messina while his bailiffs

1
According to Sicilian legend - and of course Verdi's opera
Les Vipres Sicilienne
s,
in which John plays a major part in the consequent rising - this envoy was in fact John of Procida himself; but John was already in his late sixties, and throughout the period of his reported travels his signature appears regularly on Aragoncsc documents. Sir Steven Runciman
(
The Sicilian Vespers,
pp.
208
-9)
suggests that the secret envoy may have been one of his sons.

toured the farms and homesteads, requis
itioning - without compensation
-
grain, fodder, hor
ses and even whole herds of cattl
e and pigs to sustain the army on its long journey, and-Angevin feeling was near flash-point.

The fatal spark was lit on Easter Monday, 30 March, outside the church of Santo Spirito, which stands to this day in Palermo. The usual crowd thronged the square, enjoying the spring sunshine and waiting for the bell that was to call them for the evening Mass. Suddenly a group of Angevin soldiers appeared, o
bviously drunk; and one of them
-
a sergeant named Drouet - began importuning a young Sicilian woman. Unfortunately for him, her husband was standing nearby, and when he saw what was happening he fell upon Drouet in true Sicilian style and stabbed him to death. The other soldiers dashed forward to avenge him - and found themselves surrounded. They too were quickly dispatched. And so, as the church bells pealed out for vespers, the people of Palermo ran through the city, calling on their fellow-citizens to rise against their oppressor.
'Moranu li Franchiski!'
they cried in their heavy Sicilian dialect. 'Death to the French!' Nor did they call in vain. All night long the massacre continued. Dominican and Franciscan friars were dragged from their convents and told to say the word
ciciri —
unpronounceable, it was maintained, by any but Italians. Those who failed were cut down where they stood. The victims, men and women, amounted to well over two thousand. By the following morning not a Frenchman was left alive in Palermo.