The Late Byzantine Army

Arms and Society, 124-1453

Mark C. Bartusis

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780812216202
• eBook ISBN: 9781512821314
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The late Byzantine period was a time characterized by both civil strife and foreign invasion, framed by two cataclysmic events: the fall of Constantinople to the western Europeans in 1204 and again to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Mark C. Bartusis here opens an extraordinary window on the Byzantine Empire during its last centuries by providing the first comprehensive treatment of the dying empire's military.Although the Byzantine army was highly visible, it was increasingly ineffective in preventing the incursion of western European crusaders into the Aegean, the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe, and the slow decline and eventual fall of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire. Using all the available Greek, western European, Slavic, and Turkish sources, Bartusis describes the evolution of the army both as an institution and as an instrument of imperial policy. He considers the army's size, organization, administration, and the varieties of soldiers, and he examines Byzantine feudalism and the army's impact on society and the economy.In its extensive use of soldier companies composed of foreign mercenaries, the Byzantine army had many parallels with those of western Europe; in the final analysis, Bartusis contends, the death of Byzantium was attributable more to a shrinking fiscal base than to any lack of creative military thinking on the part of its leaders.

Part I

The Army as Instrument of Policy

1. The Nicaean Period (1204–61)

After the Fourth Crusade Constantinople became the capital of a Latin Empire with Baldwin of Flanders as emperor and feudal overlord of all. As its share of the spoils, Venice received three-eighths of the city plus such valuable commercial properties as Negroponte, Gallipoli, the Aegean islands, and later Crete. In Macedonia Boniface of Montferrat carved out the Latin kingdom of Thessaloniki. In the south what became known as the Duchy of Athens and Thebes was granted by Boniface as a fief to the Burgundian Otto de la Roche. Venice had originally been assigned the Peloponnesos, but when it declined to take possession of it, William of Champlitte and Geoffrey Villehardouin with the support of Boniface conquered the area and established the French Principality of Achaia or of the Morea.

At first the attitude of the Byzantine population toward the Latin Conquest was universal shock and despair. Subsequently, some simply accepted it as divine retribution for their sins. Others resisted the invaders, but most either were defeated or surrendered when the Latins agreed not to dispossess them of their property. These people learned to tolerate and even collaborate with their new masters. But a few, in isolated areas, were able to survive and continued the armed struggle against the Latins.

On the Black Sea coast, the so-called Empire of Trebizond which had been founded by members of the Komnenos family shortly before 1204 struggled on independently with only marginal contact with the rest of Byzantine civilization. Around Arta in western Greece and modern Albania, Michael Doukas (1204–15) organized the separatist state that modern historians call the Despotate of Epiros, which soon extended from Naupaktos in the south to Dyrrachion in the north. Since Epiros produced no historians of its own, what is known of its internal history is provided by other Byzantine and Latin sources. Little can be said of Michael I’s army or even his campaigns. Apparently he hired Latin mercenaries.¹ Last but hardly least was the state organized in western Asia Minor by the despot Theodore Laskaris (1204–22), a son-in-law of Emperor Alexios III Angelos (1195–1203) who had fled to Asia Minor and organized local resistance from his base at Prousa.

The conquests of the Latins in the area of Constantinople progressed quickly. During 1204 Thrace and most of Macedonia, including Thessaloniki, were seized by the crusaders, and after Theodore Laskaris was defeated at Poimanenon, most of the towns of Bithynia fell into Latin hands. But the fortunes of the Latins quickly reversed as the tsar of Bulgaria became involved in affairs to his south. In early 1205 the Greek population of Thrace rebelled against Latin authority, encouraging Tsar Kalojan’s military intervention. In April at the battle of Adrianople the Latin army was annihilated. Emperor Baldwin was captured and never seen again. To counter the Bulgarians, the Latins were forced to withdraw from Asia Minor, allowing Theodore Laskaris to bring under control various independent Byzantine leaders, often by force. The next year the new Latin emperor Henry of Flanders invaded Asia Minor but again Bulgarian incursions forced him to return to Thrace. In 1207 Boniface of Montferrat was killed while battling the Bulgarians, and that same year Emperor Henry concluded a two-year peace with Theodore Laskaris. By 1206 Theodore was styling himself Emperor of the Romans and, to make the title official, he assembled a synod of bishops at Nicaea in 1208 and chose a patriarch whose first act was to crown him emperor.

In 1211, allied with the Seljuk sultan Kaj-Khusrau I and the emperor of Trebizond, the Latin emperor began a new offensive against Theodore. He managed to advance into Nicaean territory as far as Nymphaion, but once Theodore defeated the Seljuks at the battle of Antioch on the Meander, it was clear that the Latin Empire was not strong enough to destroy the Nicaean state. After another series of victories and defeats a new treaty was concluded in 1214 defining the frontiers between Nicaea and the Latin Empire. This freed Theodore to campaign in Paphlagonia against the Greeks of Trebizond who had been allied with the Latin emperor. He seized all the territory of Trebizond west of the town of Sinope. The Seljuks then took Sinope, and the Greeks of Trebizond became isolated vassals of the Turks.²

Meanwhile, Michael Doukas was consolidating his power base and establishing the principality of Epiros. Taking advantage of the decade of disorder in Bulgaria following the death of Kalojan in 1207, he moved into Macedonia and with the help of a few independent Bulgarian rulers laid siege to Thessaloniki several times. But it was through the efforts of his brother Theodore Doukas (1215–30) that the Epirote state made its bid as the true successor of the old Byzantine Empire. Beginning in 1215 this remarkable general seized most of Macedonia, then Serres in 1221, and finally Thessaloniki in 1224. The Latin kingdom of Thessaloniki founded by Boniface of Montferrat ceased to exist. Shortly afterward Theodore was proclaimed emperor and later crowned. His possessions extended from the Adriatic to the Aegean, and included Epiros, Thessaly, and most of Macedonia. Constantinople itself was within his reach. His armies in fact approached the city, but in 1230 at the height of his power he was defeated and captured by the Bulgarians at the battle of Klokotnica on the Marica between Philippopolis and Adrianople. His Empire of Thessaloniki now broke into three parts: Epiros, Thessaly, and Thessaloniki, with Thrace and Macedonia snatched up by Bulgaria.

Theodore Doukas’ defeat opened the door for the Nicaean rulers. Theodore I Laskaris died in 1222 and was succeeded by his son-in-law John Vatatzes, the greatest of the Nicaean emperors. In 1224 Vatatzes defeated the Latins at Poimanenon, the scene of Theodore I’s defeat twenty years earlier, and the next year concluded a treaty with the Latins in which the latter abandoned almost all of their possessions in Asia Minor. That same year he responded to the news that the people of Adrianople wished to deliver their city to him by making his first excursion into Europe, conquering much of Thrace without significant opposition. Twenty years after the Latin Conquest, over half of the territory captured by the crusaders was lost. The Latin possessions in the Aegean area were now more or less limited to Constantinople, southern Greece, and a number of islands.

The goal of the foreign policies of both Epiros and Nicaea was the reconquest of Constantinople, since whichever state held the old capital would be indisputably legitimized as the successor of the old Empire. By 1234, after concluding an alliance with John Asen of Bulgaria, Vatatzes was in a position to make his own attempt at retaking the city. Strange bedfellows he and Asen were, since the tsar also desired Constantinople as the capital of a Byzantino-Bulgarian empire, an old Bulgarian dream. But for the moment Asen regarded the Nicaean state as less of a threat than Epiros and the alliance as an avenue toward acquiring Constantinople himself. According to the agreement Vatatzes was allowed to occupy the Gallipoli peninsula and southern Thrace up to the Marica River.³ During the next two years the two leaders made a couple of unsuccessful joint assaults upon Constantinople, but the alliance broke down when Bulgaria realized it was fundamentally antithetical to its interests to help the Nicaean state, and soon the two states were again embroiled in hostilities.

One of the reasons for the failure of the Nicaean-Bulgarian assaults on Constantinople was that Vatatzes’ fleet was inadequate to prevent the Venetians from resupplying the city. Nicaean blockades were either penetrated or driven off. The mixed results of Vatatzes’ various naval expeditions contrast dramatically with his remarkable successes on land. In 1230 he provided aid to some Greeks who rebelled against the Venetians in Crete, but in 1233 thirty galleys were wrecked while on expedition there and the next year another attempt to conquer the island failed. In 1233 he unsuccessfully tried to retake Rhodes, and in 1241 a Nicaean fleet was defeated on the Sea of Marmara by a smaller Latin force. Acquiring an effective fleet was a top priority, but this was one area where Vatatzes’ efforts were unfruitful.⁴

In contrast, throughout the 1240s Vatatzes was able to profit from the misfortunes of his neighbors with a series of major conquests in Europe. Exploiting the internal quarrels between the members of Theodore Doukas’ family, Vatatzes led an expedition to Thessaloniki in 1242. Although he was not able to take the city, he secured his hold over the Aegean coast as far as the Strymon River.⁵ On hearing the news that the Mongols had invaded Seljuk territory he returned to Asia, and after a major Seljuk defeat in 1243 at the hands of the Mongols, a treaty was concluded between Nicaea and the enervated Seljuk state. Later, in 1246, after the death of Tsar Koloman, Vatatzes seized Bulgarian territories in Macedonia, in the course of which he captured Thessaloniki from Theodore Doukas’ son, the despot Demetrios. For the first time the states of Epiros and of Nicaea now had a common border. The final struggle to decide which of the two states in exile was the true heir to the Byzantine imperial tradition would soon begin.

Vatatzes is known for a number of successful military policies aimed at creating an effective campaign army and, just as importantly, at securing the Nicaean frontier in Asia Minor so that this army would be free to campaign in Europe. Vatatzes and his immediate successors enjoyed a remarkably stable Anatolian frontier, a crescent-shaped swath of land from the Black Sea to the southern Aegean, formed in the east by the upper branches of the Sangarios River and in the south by the Meander valley. Its stability was due to the amiable relations Vatatzes established between Nicaea and the Seljuks of Ikonion, a product of skillful diplomacy as well as military preparedness exemplified by the chain of fortifications he built along the Meander valley.⁶

Further, to minimize the depredations of marauding Turkoman and splinter Seljuk bands over which the Seljuk sultans had little control, the Nicaean emperors endeavored to keep the civilian population inhabiting the mountainous frontiers at the fringes of the Nicaean state from abandoning their homes. These highlanders performed a vital and quite hazardous function for the Nicaean state by acting as a buffer between the Turkish marauders and the valleys of the Nicaean Empire. The historian Pachymeres writes that the emperors, in order to maintain the eastern frontier, “turned to the mountains, securing [them] with many strong settlers from all over.” Somewhat later, faced with increasing Turkish pressure, they “did not leave those living on the mountains [pros tois oresin] uncared for, who, not having an incentive to remain, were prepared to emigrate if anywhere enemies should attack somehow. . . . But they granted tax exemptions to all, pronoiai to the more illustrious among them, and imperial letters to those with an enterprising spirit.” The policy of granting these men various benefits, including tax exemption, and to a special few, grants of pronoia, was designed to foster continued occupation of the border areas because the Nicaean emperors knew that continued occupation would include localized defense of their own lands and occasional sorties into Turkish territory for booty.

In the sense that these duties were performed by the highlanders as a matter of personal survival even before they received special privileges, they did not technically become “soldiers,” which is why the historian Pachymeres, our only source for these developments, does not in fact call them such. He simply says that Nicaean policy affected “all” of those inhabiting the border areas, not a certain subset of the population who became “soldiers.” After receiving their tax exemption and other benefits they performed no additional service and their only obligation to the state was to remain on their lands. The Nicaean highlanders were essentially a localized militia composed of the able inhabitants of the frontier zones who, without much organization or discipline, defended their lands and harassed their opposite numbers in Turkish territory as best they saw fit. In this they performed a function well worth the exempted tax revenue, gifts, and pronoiai given them. As a result their economic condition improved and they were persuaded to remain, and their activities allowed Nicaean commanders to direct their military resources elsewhere.⁷

John Vatatzes was also quite skillful at adapting to unforeseen circumstances. Around 1239 a large group of Cumans—a Turkic people of the steppes—fleeing before the Mongols, crossed the Danube and invaded Thrace. There they pillaged and attacked the towns that had only recently come under Nicaean control until around 1242 when Vatatzes, responding to the situation, “with gifts and diplomacy made them over from a very savage to an obedient people” and succeeded in settling most of them in Anatolia throughout the Meander valley and the region east of Philadelphia. In an encomium to his father, Theodore II Laskaris refers to this episode: “Having removed the Scyth [sc., Cuman] from the wes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Transliteration, Pronunciation, and Dates
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: The Setting, the Questions, and the Sources
• Part One. The Army as Instrument of Policy
• Part Two. The Army as Institution
• Conclusion: Soldiers, Army, Society
• Appendix: A List of Soldiers
• Glossary
• Lists of Rulers
• Bibliography of Works Cited
• Index