“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
-The Gospel of Matthew; Chapter 7, Verses 24 and 25.
[Transcript of a Podcast, 15 Byzantine Rulers]
“....What happens next? The war is won, but obviously the job’s not done yet. And this is where I think it gets really interesting. Because Alex has totally eliminated his opponents and is basically left in absolute control. Sure, the empress is regent for a few years until her death by plague but he’s still in charge of most day to day things. There’s no one group that can really stop him, and he knows that. The nobility just got a brutal mauling and the guy’s at the height of his popularity!”
“(Laughs) He rebuilds is what’s next. Then he starts changing things: the economy, the navy, important things. There’s a huge amount of fallout from the war and so many questions being ask of what’s going to happen, but first everybody agrees that the empire has to rebuild. And that isn’t exactly true. Alex can’t just shape the entire country in his own image no questions asked, he’ gotta play by the rules. Remember, he really wants to focus on what he wants; commerce, the economy and the navy, but at the same he needs to make sure that no one can undermine that. From inside and outside. And that means making sure he remains popular and the country stays stronger. So he can’t focus on what he wants just yet.”
“Ok so what does he do?”
“Like I said, he rebuilds and tries to keep the peace. I can’t underestimate just how important this is. It is of the utmost priority. The countryside has been damaged by the war, especially in Macedonia. But at the same time, he reforms. Land is parceled out. Tax rates are changed. The Bureaucracy is reformed. Peasants are encouraged to rebuild the dilapidated cloth industry, which had been in steep decline the last century. But its really that first part that’s the most important, I’d say. Because in the aftermath of the civil war, the imperial state just ended up with the largest increase of land under direct government control in decades. That means they can give out that land to their supporters in small, controllable plots rather than huge estates. So we see the big landed estates of the traitors being cut up and given to his supporters under a modified version of the old Pronoia system. Also helps in keeping the army he made around.”
“Now, what’s this about reform? How deep do the changes go? What’s the imperial policy to the defectors and old nobles?”
“Oh yeah. Alright, so the initial set of reforms basically deal with the bureaucratic and fiscal policy of the empire. Now this did begin during the war but as it continued until after the end of the war I’m including it within the set of reforms that were commonly characterize the Apokaukan reforms. The bureaucracy is given a bit of an overhaul. And by that I mean purge. Much of the old guard with ties to the old establishment is fired, exiled, murdered- whatever is needed to get them out of power. Then, they get replaced by more loyal elements. This is not only with officials, but also to governors and officers in the army. The only exception is Thessalonica, but we’ll get back to that later.
Second is the money situation. Being close to bankruptcy is something the empire has had to deal with on-off for the past century, and one that Alex, as a businessman, is not happy with it at all. How does he try to fix this? First he tries to get more trading going on. Second, he makes more taxpayers by basically giving away land. Giving out land does well to endear the people to the new boss, but that won’t last long if they don’t solve this one huge problem: The Tax Rate. Under the old government, taxes on the lower class were huge. So huge they drove many people to poverty and serfdom. Obviously, that’s not exactly popular, so Alex has to lower the tax rate to a more manageable level. This is, by all accounts a huge reduction in what they paid. Not exactly good for the budget. Thankfully, and this is where the leftover nobles and defectors come in. Alexius is able to raise taxes on what’s left of the big landowners and the nobles and really squeeze them in an attempt to make up the difference. He closes the legal loopholes, most of their financial privileges and tax exemptions and what not. They don’t like it, but he’s at the top of his game now and so they can’t really do anything about it. But most are thankful they still get to keep their lands. Despite all this, its unfortunately, that’s not enough to make up the difference. This isn’t a real reform.”
“Wait. But what about taxing the Church? Taxing them was usually how many people raised money in this time period. Also, why isn’t this enough? The state is taxing more people than it did a decade ago and more efficiently too. We know that small plots of land are easier to tax than big landowners”
“See, the thing is, he can’t do that. The Church, or rather the Patriarch was a supporter of him and his policies, interestingly enough. He can’t alienate that big of a support base. They helped out, and in return, he’s gotta do them a favor. That means not taxing them, restricting their influence in government, things like that. Second, its not enough because Alex isn’t just interested in making things more fair. He wants Rome to be able to compete with Venice, with Genoa, with all the other merchant powers. And that means building up a huge fleet. Only problem is a navy is really expensive. But he’s spending all his money on repairs and reforms and fortifications and what not, there’s not much, if any left over.”
“And how do they deal with that?”
(Laughs) “They don’t really. The Romans just pretty much wait and see for opportunities, quietly saving up money and fortifying until they can find an opportunity to expand their trading, little by little building up their navy and trying to defend against raids from Turkish pirates. Fortunately, they do get a few pretty soon. Grain prices start rising after the Golden Horde closes its ports to foreign merchants in 1343, so the Italians, particularly Venice are forced to buy more of their grain in the empire. Then the Aydinids, their old allies turned enemies, had really annoyed the wrong people with their raids on Christian shipping in the Aegean. It got to the point where eventually the Pope called a crusade to deal with them. Which really speaks more about how cheap crusades were than anything else, but this did elition a coalition of Christian mercenaries to attack the main Aydinid port of Smyrna. The coalition forces smash the Aydinid navy and take the city, denying them naval access for the better part of a year. This is where the Romans get their opening.”
“Mhm”
“Right. Let me explain; while the Crusaders did take the city, they were never able to advance much further and take over the Beylik. At the same time, the Aydinids weren’t strong enough to push them out. That’s when the Romans come in and offer to help them out. Around 1346 or so- the records kinda sketchy- the Romans send out a message offering their support to capture the city of Smyrna and return it to the Bey in exchange for 2 things: A renewal of the old alliance during the reign of Andronikos III, an opening of Smyrna to Roman trade with similar trading quarters like the Italians merchants and tax exemptions for Roman merchants. Umar Bey, the current emir, accepts readily. And so in a few months the city is retaken and the Aydinids now have sea access once more while the Romans leave with a fancy new trade port.”
“That’s amazing. But can we back this up a bit; since you mentioned the importance of the navy, this raises another set of questions: What happened to the armed forces? What’s the navy doing in all this? And the army of the Civil War? Where’s that gone?”
“Couple of things. First off, they get downsized. Now this may seem weird, considering how useful having a large army was in the civil war, but you have to remember, that army was a bloated mess. And an expensive one. So it gets streamlined into a more manageable size. The extra lands are used to help re-institute pronoia and give the empire a steady supply of militia troops. These were mostly set in the border to defend and stall enemies until the main force of professional troops comes in. Nothing too radical per se, standard Early Palaiologoi doctrine. What really changes is the composition. Most of the new officers aren’t nobles with connections in the government, they’re recruited from the lowest classes that served well and were promoted on the basis of merit. As well, the mercenary forces that so categorized Andronicus were paid, disbanded and sent home. Alex hated, hated, hated mercenaries.”
That’s weird, didn’t he use them as well?
“He did in the war, but from his writings he seems to have a huge distaste of using mercenaries, considering them both absurdly expensive and disloyal. It was more efficient to just use militia in his opinion. With that said we do see mercernary use continue, just on a smaller scale. Now, continuing on with the army changes, there’s a bit of a change in army equipment, mostly some standardization, things like more crossbows being used. Now, on to the navy. This is where the things really change. Its upgraded, expanded and just improved overall. By around 1350, there’s a new shiny new fleet of around 35 to 40 warships. Compare this with the 20 or so in 1340. Interestingly enough, much of this is being paid out of pocket by Alexios himself. At one point he spends something like 50,000 hyperpyra on new ships. And it was a wise investment if I say so. Led to the reconquest of reconquest of Naxos and other Aegean islands in the near future. Also paid for itself pretty quickly during the joint raiding operations with the Aydinids and later the Saruhans. Unfortunately, this really annoyed Venice, Genoa and the Latin Crusader states in Greece, but you can’t win them all. Aside from raids, the navy was used to project power, which is why you start seeing things like interferences in Trebizond affairs and deals with Georgia and the Golden Horde.
Alright, last question and this goes back to the peasants: What did the government do with the Zealots of Thessalonica and other radical movements? I mean they were large enough to possibly be considered a threat and were insanely influential. The governments got to have reacted to this somehow.”
“This may seem weird, but not much actually- at least in the first decade or two. And there’s two main theories as to why. The first one is, they are too busy essentially. Basically, as the regime was for the most part too busy reorganizing the state, bureaucracy and the military to pay attention to what is for the most part is just peasants organizing in councils at the municipal level, forming militias to defend the border and occasionally pooling their resources together. It didn’t really hurt anything, and as most of them the radicals were willing to work with the government and pay their taxes, so there was a ‘live and let live’ attitude going around. It does make sense though. As I’ve implied this was a state that in the aftermath of a brutal civil war was organized around Alexious Apokaukos and his aids. Most of the people who would be against this, have been made -for the time being- politically irrelevant; the new people in charge are far more sympathetic to the lowest classes and their position, and in fact you sometimes could see the new government actually help out the peasants just to undermine the status of local aristocrats even more. But even that’s an insane amount of work. Trying to have each and every little group that forms loyal or sidelined was too much for the demands of the state, and they just ignored it until it was too big to ignore.
The second theory -and one that I lean towards too more, but both sides have their merits-, is that the government went along with it because it couldn’t do anything to stop it. Fresh from a civil war and busy trying to recover from a decades long decline, that doesn’t leave a lot of resources to impose Constantinople’s will outside of the bare minimum. And that would just make the empire look even more weak, potentially leading to more invaders coming in and ruining the progress that’s been made so far. Along with that, the army itself is probably stretched thin and made up of people who might just side with the peasants if said peasants get too popular. Due to all of the above, the imperial government took the path of least resistance and let things be. And there’s a huge piece of evidence that supports this view: Thessalonica itself, with the Zealots and their council being in charge for a very long time after being re-instituted in the empire. I mean, the nominal governor, John Apokaukos, was basically a figurehead at worst, a liason at best. Thessalonica did what it wanted and there was almost nothing the government could do to stop it.
Professor, thank you for your time.
Happy to be of service. It was great being here.