The fatal blow to the Byzantine empire in its established territorial form came in the form of the Fourth Crusade. Preached by Pope Innocent III and with Egypt the objective, the Crusading leaders hired ships and obtained some of the finance for the expedition from the Venetians, to whom they rapidly became heavily indebted. While not opposed to a Crusade, Venice was also interested in consolidating its commercial position in the Adriatic and the eastern Mediterranean, and in return for financial assistance the Crusading leaders agreed first to seize the city of Zara, claimed by Venice. The presence at Venice of Alexios IV Angelos, pretender to the imperial throne, could likewise be used to legitimate a diversion to Constantinople. In 1203, the Crusader army arrived before the walls of the Byzantine capital and within a short time had succeeded in installing Alexios IV as co-emperor, with his blind father, Isaac II, whom his uncle Alexios III had deposed, and who had been brought out of prison after the latter fled the city. Once installed, Alexios IV found it impossible to pay the promised rewards, and found himself increasingly isolated. Early in 1204 he was deposed and murdered by Alexios V Doukas. Although the new emperor strengthened the defences and was able to resist an initial Crusader attack, the city fell on 12 April. The booty taken was immense. The city had amassed a store of precious objects, statues, liturgical and ceremonial vestments and objects since its refoundation by Constantine I, and had never before fallen to violent assault. Now it was mercilessly sacked for three days, during which countless objects were destroyed, while precious metal objects were melted down or stolen. Some of the most spectacular late Roman objects can still be seen in Venice today.
Alexios V fled but was captured shortly afterwards and executed, and Baldwin of Flanders was elected emperor. The empire’s lands were divided among the victors, according to a document known as the Partitio Romaniae, drawn up during 1204, and probably based on imperial tax registers. According to this, the Latin emperor at Constantinople would receive a quarter of the empire, the others three-eighths each. Venice received the provinces and maritime districts it had coveted, while Greece was divided among several rulers: the Principality of Achaia (the Morea) and the Duchy of the Archipelago were subject to the Latin emperor at Constantinople. A kingdom of Thessalonica was established, to whose ruler the lords of Athens and Thebes owed fealty; while the county of Cephalonia (which - along with the islands of Ithaca and Zante - had been under Italian rule since 1194) was nominally subject to Venice, although it was in practice autonomous, and after 1214 recognised the prince of Achaia as overlord. The lord of Euboea (Negroponte) was subject to the authority of both Thessalonica and Venice.
The Byzantine empire continued to exist. Despite the parcelling out of imperial territory, a number of counter-claimants to the imperial throne asserted their position. One branch of the Komnenos-Doukas clan established an independent principality in the western Balkans, with its focus in Epiros in north-western Greece, which lasted almost to the fifteenth century. From the 1240s its ruler was referred to by the title despotes (‘lord’). The dynasty of the Komnenoi governed a more-or-less autonomous region in central and eastern Pontos, where the ‘empire’ of Trebizond now appeared. Members of the Laskaris family continued to exercise effective control over much of Byzantine western Asia Minor, and the empire of Nicaea evolved around that city. Theodore Laskaris was crowned ruler, and as the son-in-law of Alexios III, he had some legitimacy. Apart from these ‘legitimist’ territories, the Bulgarian Tsar Kalojan was in the process of establishing a Bulgarian power to rival that of the Tsar Symeon in the early tenth century, and he actually captured the Latin emperor in 1205 after crushing his army. By the 1230s the Bulgarians were threatening to reduce the Byzantines of Epiros to vassal status.
The Latin empire of Constantinople was not destined to last long. The rulers of Epiros attempted, with help from the German emperor Frederick II, and later with the King of Sicily Manfred, to establish a balance in the Balkans, with the intention of recovering Constantinople. But it was to be from Nicaea that the Byzantine empire was to be re-established. The emperors allied themselves with Genoa, thus balancing Venetian naval power. Throughout the 1240s and 1250s they extended their lands in Europe. With an imperial court and household rooted in that of the emperors before 1204, and with an effective administrative framework inherited from that evolved under the first three
Map 9.3 The Fourth Crusade, the Latin empire and the empire of Nicaea.
Komnenoi, they had a sound logistical and strategic basis from which to operate. By the end of the thirteenth century, parts of central Greece were once again in Byzantine hands: the Byzantine ‘despotate’ of Morea controlled much of central and south-eastern Peloponnese, although the Latin principality of Achaia remained an important power to its north. In Asia Minor, the policy of rapprochement with the Seljuks pursued by the emperors at Nicaea permitted a temporary stabilisation of the frontier. In 1261, taking advantage of the absence of most of the Latin garrison of Constantinople on an expedition, a small Nicaean force was able to gain entry to the city, reclaim it for the empire, and drive out the remaining western troops and Latin civilian population. Constantinople was the capital of the east Roman empire once more.
The ‘empire’ of Nicaea was short-lived, but its strategic position, its sound economic base and its intelligent diplomacy and strategic policies enabled its rulers to re-establish a Byzantine empire. Whether this was in the medium and longer term a wise move is open to debate. The beleaguered position of the refounded empire in international political terms and the impossibility of dealing effectively with western, Balkan and Anatolian threats from such a limited territorial resource base made its very survival questionable.
World History
