Andronikos II Palaiologos


Andronikos II Palaiologos, Latinized as Andronicus II Palaeologus, reigned as Byzantine emperor from 1282 to 1328. His reign marked the beginning of the recently restored empire's final decline. The Turks conquered most of Byzantium's remaining Anatolian territories, and Andronikos spent the last years of his reign fighting his own grandson in the First Palaiologan Civil War. The war ended in Andronikos' forced abdication in 1328, after which he retired to a monastery for the remainder of his life.

Life

Early life

Andronikos was born on 25 March 1259, at Nicaea. He was the eldest surviving son of Michael VIII Palaiologos and Theodora Palaiologina, grandniece of John III Doukas Vatatzes.
Andronikos was acclaimed co-emperor sometime after his father Michael VIII recovered Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261, but he was not crowned until 8 November 1272. During their joint rule, he was compelled to support his father's unpopular Church union with the Papacy. Made sole emperor by Michael's death in 1282, Andronikos immediately repudiated the union, but was unable to resolve the related schism within the Orthodox clergy until 1310.

Military campaigns

In 1283, the first military action of Andronikos II's reign occurred, against the town of Demetrias in Thessaly. At the time, Thessaly was ruled by John Doukas, and this campaign was one of many Byzantine attempts to reclaim the region. The protovestiarios Michael Tarchaneiotes led a force to the town where they were met by the fleet under the command of Alexios Raoul and the megas stratopedarches John Synadenos. The siege was successful, but an epidemic spread which killed Michael Tarchaneiotes and much of the force. The remaining army had no choice but to abandon the town and withdraw from Thessaly.
Upon his accession to the throne, Andronikos II faced numerous challenges on every front. Financially, his father's policies were unsustainable, and in 1285 he was forced to dismantle the imperial fleet. This action increased the Empire's maritime dependence on the Genoa, which was obliged to aid the Empire in accordance with the Treaty of Nymphaeum. In an effort to improve the treasury's position, Andronikos II devalued the Byzantine hyperpyron, while the state treasury accumulated less than one seventh the revenue that it had previously. Seeking to increase revenue, Andronikos II raised taxes and reduced tax exemptions, exacerbating the economy's already precarious state.
In 1291, Charles II, son of Charles of Anjou, entered into an alliance with the Despot of Epirus Nikephoros I Komnenos Doukas. This alliance reawakened Byzantine fears which had been dormant since the Sicilian Vespers. A Byzantine army was dispatched to Epirus, and in 1292 besieged Ioannina. Simultaneously, a Genoese fleet accompanied by Byzantine soldiers approached the capital of the Despotate, Arta. The army at Ioannina retreated north at the approach of the prince of Achaia, Florent of Hainault. The fleet departed after some raiding in the area. Like the campaign in Thessaly, the war further stretched imperial resources with little to show for it.
As a result of its alliance with Genoa, the empire was drawn into a pointless war with Venice between 1296 and 1302. While the Genoese settled with the Venetians in 1299, Andronikos II continued the war in hopes of gaining something from it. By the end of the war in 1302, virtually nothing was changed except the loss of resources desperately needed on other fronts.

Asia Minor

Andronikos II Palaiologos sought to resolve some of the problems facing the Byzantine Empire through diplomacy. After the death of his first wife, Anne of Hungary, he married Yolanda of Montferrat, putting an end to the Montferrat claim to the Kingdom of Thessalonica.
Andronikos II also attempted to marry off his son and co-emperor Michael IX Palaiologos to the Latin Empress Catherine I of Courtenay, thus seeking to eliminate Western agitation for a restoration of the Latin Empire. Another marriage alliance attempted to resolve the potential conflict with Serbia in Macedonia, as Andronikos II married off his five-year-old daughter Simonis to King Stefan Milutin in 1298.
Image:Andronikos II and Michael IX basilikon.jpg|thumb|left|Silver basilikon depicting Andronikos II and Michael IX
In spite of the resolution of problems in Europe, Andronikos II was faced with the collapse of the Byzantine frontier in Asia Minor, despite the successful, but short, governorships of Alexios Philanthropenos and John Tarchaneiotes. The military victories of Philanthropenos and Tarchaneiotes against the Turks were largely dependent on a considerable contingent of Cretan escapees, or exiles from Venetian-occupied Crete, headed by Hortatzis, whom Michael VIII had repatriated to Byzantium through a treaty agreement with the Venetians ratified in 1277. Andronikos II had resettled those Cretans in the region of Meander river, the southeastern Asia Minor frontier of Byzantium with the Turks.
File:Entrada de Roger de Flor en Constantinopla.jpg|thumb|The Catalan Company led by Roger de Flor entering Constantinople by José Moreno Carbonero.
After the failure of the co-emperor Michael IX to stem the Turkish advance in Asia Minor in 1302 and the disastrous Battle of Bapheus, the Byzantine government hired the Catalan Company of Almogavars led by Roger de Flor to clear Byzantine Asia Minor of the enemy. In spite of some successes, the Catalans were unable to secure lasting gains. Being more ruthless and savage than the enemy they intended to subdue, they quarrelled with Michael IX and eventually turned on their Byzantine employers after the murder of Roger de Flor in 1305. Together with a party of willing Turks they devastated Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly on their road to Latin occupied southern Greece. There they conquered the Duchy of Athens and Thebes. The Empire's problems were exploited by Theodore Svetoslav of Bulgaria, who defeated Michael IX and conquered much of northeastern Thrace in. The conflict ended with yet another dynastic marriage, between Michael IX's daughter Theodora and the Bulgarian emperor.
Meanwhile, the Anatolian beyliks continued to penetrate Byzantine territory. Prusa fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1326, and by the end of Andronikos II's reign much of Bithynia was in the hands of Osman I and his son and heir Orhan. Karasids conquered Mysia-region with Paleokastron after 1296, Germiyan conquered Simav in 1328, Saruhan captured Magnesia in 1313, and Aydinids captured Smyrna in 1310.

Military policy

The military policy of Andronikos II was fundamentally shaped by the financial constraints of the empire he inherited from Michael VIII. The treasury was empty, and the grand designs of Michael were simply no longer achievable. Nonetheless, Andronikos attempted to continue his father's military policies to the best of his abilities.

Serbia

The Serbian frontier of the empire was said to have been embroiled in intermittent war for over a decade since 1282. Andronikos sent an army there in 1298, though its inability to fight a "guerrilla war" made the Emperor sign a peace with Serbia in the following year, sending his five-year-old daughter Simonis as a bride to Stefan Milutin.

Alexios Philanthropenos

The empire's Anatolian holdings, under attack since the 1260s, became the foremost concern of Andronikos; his attention would shift largely away from the west and towards the east. Andronikos frequently toured Anatolia to raise the population's morale and restored many fortresses there, yet this could not stem the massive flows of refugees coming into the empire's European holdings. In 1293, Alexios Philanthropenos was appointed to command and govern all armies in Anatolia, barring the Ionian coast. He was an effective general, scoring a series of victories in 1294 and 1295 against the Meander Valley Turks. It was said that so many prisoners were taken as to lower the price of a Turkish slave beneath even that of a sheep. Other Turks surrendered and formed a part of Philanthropenos's army. The victories of Alexios Philanthropenos, in comparison to the central government's otherwise ineffective handling of the Turkish threat combined with high taxation, meant that Alexios became regarded as the foremost leader, with particular loyalty stemming from his Cretan soldiers. The soldiers from Crete received a salary, but being "settled" in Anatolia probably also held land. It is not known, though, on what conditions they would have received this land. Reluctantly, amid massive popular support, Philanthropenos, in late 1295, accepted the challenge towards Andronikos II. Frightened, Andronikos offered Philanthropenos to become Caesar, though Alexios acted too slowly, and soon his support waned. Libadarios, the Governor of Neokastra and a loyalist of Andronikos, bribed the Cretans to blind and capture Alexios. The Cretans would never be heard of again— though John VI mentions a mysterious village in Thrace said to have been settled by an "army from Crete" before he arrived on the political scene in 1320.

John Tarchaneiotes

Following Philanthropenos, John Tarchaneiotes, a first cousin of Andronikos and an Arsenite, was sent to Anatolia. John was a general, but he was meant not to achieve quick victories but reform the military and economy of the region. It is said that many soldiers had lost their Pronoia holdings, while others had increased theirs through bribery of their superiors and stopped serving as soldiers. John sought to end this corruption and would reassess property holdings around the Meander Valley—a process known as exisosis. John's reforms in Anatolia were marked by success, revitalizing the army and even constructing a small fleet. However, he faced opposition from the large landowners of Anatolia— the primary targets of his policies— as well as the Church, which condemned his support of the deposed Patriarch Arsenios. The enmity faced by Tarchaneiotes boiled over when a small number of Pronoia soldiers accused him of rebellion before the anti-Arsenite bishop of Philadelphia. With these treason charges pending in around 1300, Tarchaneiotes fled to Thessaloniki and joined Andronikos II there. Tarchaneiotes's reforms would be swiftly abandoned under the combined pressure of high clerical and landowner opposition.