Michael VIII Palaiologos
Michael VIII Palaiologos or Palaeologus reigned as Byzantine emperor from 1261 until his death in 1282, and previously as the co-emperor of the Empire of Nicaea from 1259 to 1261. Michael VIII was the founder of the Palaiologan dynasty that would rule the Byzantine Empire until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. He recovered Constantinople from the Latin Empire in 1261 and transformed the Empire of Nicaea into a restored Byzantine Empire. His reign saw considerable recovery of Byzantine power, including the enlargement of the Byzantine army and navy. It also included the reconstruction of the city of Constantinople, and the increase of its population. His re-establishment of the University of Constantinople contributed to the Palaeologan Renaissance, a cultural flowering between the 13th and 15th centuries.
It was also at this time that the focus of the Byzantine military shifted to the Balkans, against the Bulgarians, leaving the Anatolian frontier neglected. His successors could not compensate for this change of focus, and both the Arsenite schism and two civil wars which occurred from 1321–1328 and 1341–1347 undermined further efforts toward territorial consolidation and recovery, draining the empire's strength, economy, and resources. Regular conflict between Byzantine successor states such as Trebizond, Epirus, Bulgaria and Serbia resulted in permanent fragmentation of former Byzantine territory and opportunity for increasingly successful conquests of expansive territories by post-Seljuk Anatolian beyliks, most notably that of Osman, later called the Ottoman Empire.
Early life
Michael VIII Palaiologos was the son of the megas domestikos Andronikos Doukas Komnenos Palaiologos by Theodora Angelina Palaiologina, the granddaughter of Emperor Alexios III Angelos and Euphrosyne Doukaina Kamaterina. According to Deno John Geanakoplos, Michael's ancestry could be traced back to all three imperial houses that ruled the empire in the centuries before the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade. His mother does not appear to have played a significant role in his early life; at least for a time, he was brought up by his elder sister Martha, the wife of megas domestikos Nikephoros Tarchaneiotes, although she was only ten years older than he.Rise to power
Michael rose to distinction at an early age, serving as the governor of the Thracian towns of Melnik and Serres under the command of his father Andronikos. However, in the autumn of 1253, Michael was accused before the Emperor John III Vatatzes of plotting against the throne. The only way Michael was allowed to prove his innocence was through trial by ordeal, holding a red-hot iron. When the Emperor ordered him to take hold of the red-hot metal, the young Michael answered "with the astuteness that was to characterize his later career as Emperor": if the Metropolitan Phokas of Philadelphia, who evidently supported this proposal, could take the iron from the altar with his own hands and place it in Michael's, he would gladly receive it in faith that the truth would be revealed.Although Michael avoided punishment, and afterwards was married to the Emperor's grandniece and appointed megas konostaulos of the Latin mercenaries in the employment of the emperors of Nicaea, he was still mistrusted. Following the death of John Vatatzes, Michael crossed the Sangarios River with a few close friends and took service with the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum. From late 1256 to 1258, he served as commander of the Christian mercenaries fighting for Sultan Kaykaus II; in that later year the Emperor Theodore II Doukas Laskaris recalled Michael, and after both exchanged oaths of loyalty and guarantees of safety, Michael returned to the service of the Emperor.
A few days after the death of Emperor Theodore Laskaris in 1258, Michael Palaiologos instigated a coup against the influential bureaucrat George Mouzalon, seizing from him the guardianship of the eight-year-old Emperor John IV Doukas Laskaris. Michael was invested with the titles of megas doux and, on 13 November 1258, of despotes. On 1 January 1259, Michael was formally proclaimed emperor, most likely without John IV, in Nymphaion.
Constantinople
In 1259, Michael VIII defeated the alliance of William of Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, and Michael II Komnenos Doukas of Epirus at the Battle of Pelagonia. According to Geanakoplos, "In the period immediately preceding the Nicene reconquest of Constantinople in 1261 no event was of greater importance than Michael Palaeologus' victory at Pelagonia." This not only neutralized, for the immediate time, the possibility of an attack from enemies on his Western borders, but also improved Michael's legitimacy by showing him as a competent leader.Despite this brilliant victory, only one event could remove the stigma of usurper completely from the eyes of his subjectsrecovery of Constantinople itself. In 1260 Michael personally led an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city. Rumors of reinforcements for the beleaguered city forced Michael to sign a one-year truce with the Latin Emperor Baldwin II that August. Realizing that he needed a navy to effectively besiege Constantinople, Michael concluded the Treaty of Nymphaeum with Genoa in March of the following year. Genoese help proved to be unneeded when Michael VIII's general Alexios Strategopoulos captured Constantinople from Baldwin II through treachery on 25 July 1261.
News of the captured city first reached Michael's sister Eulogia Palaiologina, who awoke her brother at dawn. He was not convinced until a messenger arrived from Strategopoulos bearing the crown and sword Baldwin had abandoned in his flight from his palace. Michael VIII entered the city on 15 August and had himself crowned emperor. Once in control of Constantinople, Michael abolished all Latin customs and reinstated most Byzantine ceremonies and institutions as they had existed before the Fourth Crusade. He repopulated the capital, building its population from when he took power to by the end of his reign, and restored damaged churches, monasteries, and public buildings. He was acutely aware of the danger posed by the possibility that the Latin West, particularly his neighbors in Italy, would unite against him and attempt the restoration of Latin rule in Constantinople.
John IV had remained at Nicaea, largely eclipsed by Michael. According to Akropolites, the public had never really viewed John as emperor - his name was virtually stricken from government business after the death of his father Theodore II, and he had not featured in Michael’s coronation ceremony as co-ruler. In December 1261, Michael VIII took the final step of having John blinded and relegated to a monastery, rendering him permanently ineligible for the throne. Michael quickly married off John's sisters to two Italians and a Bulgarian noble, so their descendants could not threaten his own children's claim to the imperial succession. Michael tried to keep the blinding of John a secret, keeping up a pretense that the boy’s formal coronation had merely been postponed. Eventually the news leaked out, and Patriarch Arsenios Autoreianos excommunicated Michael VIII. This ban was not lifted until six years later on the appointment of patriarch Joseph I.
Diplomacy and conquest
In the words of Geanaklopos, "With the fall of Constantinople, the papacy suffered not only a loss of political prestige but severe damage to its spiritual authority as well. For the Greeks had now effectively reasserted their right to a church divorced from Rome. Thus it became the task of each of the six successive popes of Michael's reign to accomplish the return of the schismatics to the Roman fold." Michael was aware of the immense influence the Curia had in the West, so he immediately dispatched an embassy to Pope Urban IV consisting of two envoys; upon reaching Italy, the men were seized and one was flayed alive, while the other succeeded in escaping back to friendlier territories.File:Metropolis of Mystras, inside, imperial eagle.JPG|thumb|left|Imperial eagle in Mystras. In 1263 the Latins ceded Mystras as ransom for William II of Villehardouin, and Michael VIII Palaeologus made the city the seat of the new Despotate of Morea, ruled by his relatives.
Michael also approached Manfred of Sicily to achieve some kind of accord. In the summer of 1262, Michael offered to divorce his wife Theodora and marry Manfred's sister Anna. This offer failed spectacularly: not only did Anna reject his proposal, Theodora turned to Patriarch Arsenios for help. The Patriarch confronted the emperor and pressured him to abandon his plans. Michael yielded and sent Anna back to her brother with gifts. This gesture helped to secure the release of his general Alexios Strategopoulos.
It was around this time that Michael was presented with a dangerous distraction: ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kaykāwūs, who had been deposed as Sultan of the Seljuk Turks by a coalition led by the Pervane Mu‘in al-Din Suleyman, arrived seeking help from his old friend. But as Claude Cahen notes, he "was to be cruelly disappointed." Michael favored the Mongols of Iran, who supported ʿIzz ad-Dīn's enemy the Pervane, against those of Russia. Further, he could not risk a war on his Asian frontier while Western Europe, infinitely more dangerous, was opposed to him. Cahen believes that either ʿIzz ad-Dīn became an embarrassment, or perhaps the former Sultan "indulged in too open of criticism"; in either case, ʿIzz ad-Dīn was imprisoned. Mongol troops from Russia eventually freed him, and carried him off to the Crimea where he lived out his life.
A series of military setbacks followed. In 1263 Michael sent men, including Seljuk mercenaries, to Morea with the goal of conquering the Principality of Achaea, but this expedition failed in a surprise rout at Prinitza. Later that year a mixed fleet of 48 imperial and Genoese ships was defeated by a smaller Venetian force at the Battle of Settepozzi. The following year, the imperial forces in Morea were again defeated at Makryplagi after the Seljuk mercenaries, who had not been paid, changed sides. The nadir of Michael's disasters came in the spring of 1265, when an army of Tatars and Bulgars under Nogai Khan ravaging Thrace ambushed Michael Palaeologos when he was returning to Constantinople accompanied by only a few troops. Deserted by even his own officers, who fled to save their own lives, Michael was able to escape by crossing the Ganos Mountains and reaching the Marmora coast, where he happened upon two Latin ships. He quickly boarded the vessels, and two days later safely arrived at Constantinople. "Thus did Michael survive one of the narrowest escapes of his career," notes Geanakoplos.
The military advantages Michael enjoyed after capturing Constantinople had evaporated, but he would demonstrate his diplomatic skills to successfully recover from these drawbacks. After Settepozzi, Michael VIII dismissed the 60 Genoese galleys that he had hired earlier and began a rapprochement with Venice. Michael secretly negotiated a treaty with the Venetians to grant terms similar to those in the case of Nymphaeum, but Doge Raniero Zeno failed to ratify the agreement. He also signed a treaty in 1263 with the Egyptian Mamluk sultan Baibars and Berke, the Mongol Khan of Kipchak Khanate.