The Immortal Emperor

by Donald M Nicol

  The pope had outlined his proposals in October 1439. The moment seemed propitious. Constantine was in touch with Rome and knew what was afoot. He knew too that, though the Turks had invaded and conquered most of Serbia, the Serbian Despot George Brankovic, to whom he was related, had taken refuge in Hungary; and it was from Hungary that the counter-offensive against the Turks was to be launched. It was to be led by King Ladislas, the Polish King of Hungary, and his brilliant commanderin-chief John Hunyadi. As a crusade against the impious infidel it was to be organised by the pope's legate Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini. The pope, the Venetians and the Duke of Burgundy were to provide a fleet which would meet the army when it reached the Black Sea. By June 1443 all was ready. The crusade set out from Hungary in July. Constantine was aware of these preparations and he was eager to take the chance that they offered for offensive action against the common enemy. He could contemplate the theoretical proposals of Cardinal Bessarion at a later date.

  Bessarion offered him a long-term view of the future of the Morea. Secure behind its well-defended wall it could become a safe haven for immigrants from elsewhere and for refugees, who would add to its available manpower for the army, for agriculture and for industry. He emphasised the necessity for creating and maintaining a professional army. Like Plethon, he advocated that its population should be divided into two classes, the soldiery and the workers. Most of Bessarion's ideas were indeed derived from Plethon. Both men rightly observed that the mineral resources of the Morea had barely been tapped; that the produce of its fields could be multiplied by more systematic farming; that the export of goods vital to the native population should be controlled; and that the import of unnecessary luxuries should cease. It was in many ways a backward province. In the circumstances of a reunited Christendom its people could learn much from the western world. Bessarion proposed that young men from Greece be sent to study in Italy to acquire the culture which would make them the nucleus of an educated elite, refined by the humanities but also proficient in the sciences of engineering, mining, metallurgy, arms manufacture and shipbuilding. The acquired skills of such students would fit them to exploit the natural resources of the Morea, the timber from the almost virgin forests, the metal from the mines, to the point where the country might become almost self-sufficient. He offered his own services in Italy as an educational agency. He saw no shame in Greeks learning from the west. They would only be retrieving some of their patrimony. For the Latins had acquired their wisdom and their technical skill from the Greeks in the first place.

  Bessarion did not envisage such an authoritarian and illiberal regime as Plethon. Both men, however, had lived long in the Morea. They knew that a peculiar difficulty confronting any would-be reformer was the character of its people. Constantine's father, the Emperor Manuel II, had deplored the evidently incurable passion of their landlords and local archons for bearing arms and fighting among themselves.' Bessarion thought that they were sunk in luxury and lethargy. But it would have taken a very tyrannical monarch of ancient Spartan mould to unite the warring factions of feudal landlords who had had a free hand for so long. For all Bessarion's recommendations, Mistra remained the administrative and cultural capital of the Despotate. But it was never the focal point of a unified or centralised government. Constantine ensured a measure of loyalty to himself by appointing men whom he could trust as governors of the larger towns. George Sphrantzes, who had earlier been the first Greek governor of Patras, became responsible for Mistra and its neighbourhood. Patras was governed by Alexios Laskaris; Corinth by John Cantacuzene; Vitylo (Oitylon) on the promontory of Tainaron by John Palaiologos; and as general administrator of the whole of the Despotate Constantine nominated Sophianos Eudaimonoioannes, who came of a well-known and influential Peloponnesian family.' The local feudal aristocracy had for long resented having their freedom restricted by governors imposed upon them from Constantinople. Constantine tried to attract their loyalty by granting them privileges and parcels of land as fiefs. Three documents survive recording such grants of landed estates or confirming those made by previous Despots. They take the form of argyroboulla or silver bulls, as distinct from the chrysoboulla or golden bulls which only an emperor could issue.10 Two of them are signed by Constantine as Despot and Porphyrogenitus. He seems also to have tried to inspire some local patriotism and competitive spirit into the younger generation by staging athletic games at which races were run for prizes. He might have done better to follow Bessarion's advice by shipping some of the young men to Italy to discover that there was a wider world beyond the confines of the Morea and to learn some useful arts and crafts.

  Constantine's own ambition for the future of the Despotate of the Morea did not square with Bessarion's view of the role that it might play in the counter-offensive against the Turks. He was a man of action more than an administrator; and in the summer of 1444, as soon as the work on the Hexamilion wall was finished, he went into action not against the Turks but against his Latin neighbours to the north of the Isthmus. He was no doubt encouraged by the news from the western Christian world. The pope's crusade had set out from Hungary down the Danube towards the Black Sea in 1443. Its progress had alarmed the Sultan Murad, who had other problems to deal with in the east. He begged for a truce. It was arranged at Szegedin in June 1444. Constantine was well informed about the circumstances, for in July he sent George Sphrantzes to confer with the leaders of the crusade, Ladislas of Hungary and Cardinal Cesarini. He was also in touch with the Venetian admiral Alvise Loredano, whose fleet was stationed at Modon in 1444. The truce of Szegedin lasted no more than a few months. Cardinal Cesarini, on the Pope's authority, absolved the crusaders from the oaths that they had sworn to the Sultan, and Ladislas and his army moved on to their objective. Cesarini knew of Constantine's intentions, that he was ready to strike at the Turks from the Morea.'1

  Bessarion had urged Constantine to close the gates of Hellenism against the barbarians at the Hexamilion wall. He had not recommended extending the frontiers of the Despotate of the Morea to the north of that wall by crossing the Isthmus and invading his neighbours' lands, especially as his neighbours were fellow Christians united with him by the union of Florence. His excuse might be that they were, like himself, vassals of the Turks and that to relieve them of their property would embarrass the common enemy while he was on the defensive in other parts of eastern Europe. A few months after he heard that the pope's crusade was on the move, Constantine invaded Attica. The Duchy of Athens and Thebes, set up by the Franks after the Fourth Crusade, had seen a variety of foreign rulers. In the early fifteenth century it was held by the Florentine merchant family of Acciajuoli, albeit under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Sultan. Constantine had earlier thought to annex their territory. In 1435, when the Duke Antonio Acciajuoli died without heir, his widow had appealed to Constantine for help; and he had sent Sphrantzes to take over the Duchy. The Turks, however, had moved in quickly, occupied Thebes and forestalled Constantine's imperialist venture. In 1444 he believed that the moment had come to try again. The Duchy was now ruled by Nerio II Acciajuoli, still as a vassal of the Sultan. The Turks were busy elsewhere. Nerio was unprepared for an invasion. Constantine and his army marched into Attica and forced Nerio to surrender Athens and Thebes and to pay to him the tribute which he had been paying to the Sultan. The capture of Athens seemed particularly glorious. One of Constantine's counsellors and flatterers was moved to compare him with Themistocles.'Q The pope's crusade got no further than Varna on the Black Sea coast. There it was annihilated by the Turks under the personal command of the Sultan Murad. King Ladislas was killed and Cardinal Cesarini too was among the innumerable dead.

  Varna was a long way from the Morea and the news did not deter Constantine. His foray across the isthmus had been remarkably successful. He was enjoying himself. He had also found a new ally in the western world. Philip V, Duke of Burgundy, was an ardent supporter of war against the infidel. He had offered to supply ships for the crusade of Varna. He was eager to hel
p the cause in Greece and he had been in friendly contact with Constantine's brother Theodore. In 1445 a company of 300 soldiers from Burgundy arrived in the Morea. Constantine welcomed them and at once took them with his own men to raid central Greece, through Boiotia, Phokis and as far north as the Pindos mountains in Thessaly, where the Vlachs and Albanians happily hailed him as their lord. The Venetian governor of Vitrinitza on the coast had to abandon his post.13 At the same time Constantine's own governor at Vostitza (Aigion), Constantine Cantacuzene, crossed over the Gulf of Corinth with a band of infantry and cavalry and drove the Turks out of several places in western Phokis. His greatest prize was the town of Loidoriki, whose inhabitants were so excited that they changed its name to Cantacuzinopolis. When Pope Eugenius heard of Cantacuzene's prowess, he interpreted it as a manifestation of zeal for the union of the churches and created him a Palatine Count of the Lateran.14

  The Christians of the reunited church, however, were far from united among themselves, even in common cause against the infidel. Constantine's triumphs in central Greece were not universally admired. The Venetians were furious at the eviction of their governor from Vitrinitza. In April 1445 they instructed their captain in Naupaktos along the coast to protest most vigorously to Constantine and to demand the return of their colony as well as some prisoners of war whom he had taken.15 The King of Aragon and Naples, Alfonso V (1415-58), who was dreaming of reviving his ancestral domains in Italy and Greece, called to mind that he had a hereditary claim to the Duchy of Athens and Thebes which had once been held by the Catalans. He wrote a stiff letter to Constantine to put the record straight and sent an ambassador to take possession of the said Duchy.16 What ensued is not told. A few months later, however, an envoy from the Morea was to be found at Alfonso's court enquiring about a possible marriage between Constantine and a daughter of the King of Portugal." The Florentine Duke of Athens, on the other hand, who had been forced to do homage to Constantine, complained to his former lord and master, the Sultan Murad and appealed to him to help restore the status quo. The Sultan, fresh from his victory over the combined forces of western Christendom, in which many of his Christian vassals had taken part, regarded the Despot Constantine as a rebellious nuisance, a petty thorn in the side of his European empire. He would be glad to put a stop to the Despot's dreams of further conquest.

  In the winter of 1446 Murad took command of an army said to have numbered 5o,00o or 6o,ooo men. He led them through central Greece down to the Morea. With him went the aggrieved Duke of Athens and Thebes, Nerio Acciajuoli. One of the Sultan's generals took a detachment to Loidoriki and Galaxidi and extinguished the ephemeral glory of Cantacuzinopolis, reducing Phokis to a vassal province of the Turks. Constantine hurried back to his Despotate. He and his brother Thomas took their stand at the Hexamilion wall which they had rebuilt with such optimism. The Turkish army reached the wall on a7 November. After fierce fighting, Constantine sent a messenger to the Sultan to propose terms of peace. He was George Chalkokondyles, father of the later historian Laonikos. Murad had not come to negotiate. He threw the messenger into prison and demanded that the wall be dismantled without delay. Constantine refused. The Sultan gave him a few days to change his mind and then ordered his men to take up their stations along the whole length of the wall.

  In the normal course of medieval warfare the Hexamilion wall could perhaps have been held. The times were not normal. The Sultan had with him some of the new weapons of heavy artillery in the form of long cannons. These too he positioned along the length of the wall to batter it down. He also had siege engines and scaling ladders. The Turkish guns made sure that the defenders would not dare show themselves on their battlements. A vivid account of the assault and defence is given by Chalkokondyles, who must have heard it from his father. After five days of fighting Murad signalled the final attack with a flurry of trumpets. His crack troops, the janissaries, were the first to scale the already crumbling wall; and on io December the Hexamilion was no more than a heap of ruins, its defenders killed or captured. The Despots Constantine and Thomas barely managed to escape the massacre. Three hundred men who had fled and taken refuge on a hill-top called Oxy near Kenchreai were tricked into surrender and slaughtered to a man. The pine trees were drenched in blood. The oracle had proved false."'

  The Sultan then divided his army. Turahan Beg commanded one division with orders to march south towards Mistra and the lands of the Despot Constantine. Murad himself led the rest along the north coast of the Morea. The town of Sikyon was made to surrender and burnt to the ground. Its people were taken as prisoners to Vostitza. The Sultan marched on to Patras. Most of the city's inhabitants had fled across the water to take refuge with the Venetians in Naupaktos. About 4,000 men remained in the castle on the hill and they held out against repeated assaults by the Turks. It was of little consequence. The Sultan had come only to chastise the Greeks and to strike terror into them; and this he had done with great success. The time to complete the conquest and occupation of their country would come when he was ready. He left Patras and marched to Clarentza, where he was rejoined by Turahan and his troops. They had failed to reach Mistra. It was the wrong season of the year to try to take an army over the mountains. The Sultan and his men withdrew the way they had come, leaving the Morea devastated and depopulated. Contemporary Greek and Venetian sources agree that the number of Christian prisoners taken was 6o,ooo.19 After the event there were those who blamed the destruction of the Hexamilion wall on the treachery of the Albanians in Constantine's army. Others distributed the charge of treachery more generally among all the people of the Morea, for whose security the wall had been built. Treachery there may have been. The Albanians were seldom reliable. The Greeks of the Morea had often been condemned for their indolence and lack of spirit. Yet for all the rhetoric of Plethon and Bessarion, the Hexamilion was probably indefensible against a determined and disciplined army; and it was bound to fall sooner or later beneath the pounding of artillery.

  Constantine's sideshow in the great and tragic drama of the alliance of Christian powers against the infidel had ended in humiliation. He had fought on after the larger disaster at Varna. But the Christian powers had been too shattered to support him. Only Philip of Burgundy had sent him help. The Venetians, who had warships stationed at Modon, might have gone to his aid. But they could not forget how he had attacked their possessions in Greece. In February 1446 their Mediterranean fleet had received orders to sail for home. Putting business before heroics, they renewed their truce with the Turkish Sultan. A tale was later put about that Constantine agreed to marry a daughter of the Doge of Venice, Francesco Foscari (1429-57), feeling that this might give him some hold over the Venetian establishments in the Morea.20 There is surely no truth in it. Venetian sources for the period are abundant. None mentions such a proposal; and Francesco Foscari was astute enough to see through any Greek ruse to undermine Venetian control in Greece. He distrusted the Greeks. He was more interested in keeping on good terms with the Sultan to ensure that Venetian markets in Constantinople were not closed in the event, by now almost daily expected, that the Turks captured the city. Constantine and his brother Thomas were in no position to ask the Sultan for a truce. They were obliged to accept him as their lord and to pay him a yearly tribute for the privilege of salvaging the wreck of their lands and possessions; and they had to swear that never again would they rebuild the ruins of the Hexamilion wall.

  The help that never came, or came too late, was a melancholy theme of Constantine's life. It may have brought some comfort to him in his hour of crisis to receive a letter full of praise and flattery from the Commune of Florence, where his brother the Emperor John had become a well-known and respected figure at the time of the council in 1439. The government, the citizens and the merchants of Florence declared themselves to be always at the service of the Despot Constantine. It was a strange gesture, for they must have known that he had recently dispossessed the last Florentine Duke of Athens. The letter is dated 3 May 1446. It w
as an empty promise and it came almost too late. The Turks broke through into the Morea in December of the same year.21

  In the last year of his reign as Despot at Mistra, Constantine was visited by the Italian humanist and antiquarian Ciriaco of Ancona.22 Ciriaco was an indefatigable traveller and recorder of his journeys. They had led him once before to the Morea in 1437, when he had been entertained by Constantine's brother, the Despot Theodore II. He returned ten years later, coming south by land through Corinth and Leondari, where he met the Despot Thomas. At the end of July 1447 he reached the foothills of Mount Taygetos and arrived at Mistra, where he was welcomed by Constantine, whom he described as `Constantine by name Dragas of the royal house of Palaiologos, the ruling Despot'. At the court of Mistra he met the then elderly George Gemistos Plethon, 'the most learned doctor among the Greeks', whom he had met on his previous visit. He also met Nicholas, alias Laonikos, Chalkokondyles, the future historian and son of George Chalkokondyles, whom he had known in Athens and who had been imprisoned by the Sultan the year before. The young Laonikos kindly took Ciriaco to revisit the ruins and monuments of ancient Sparta in the plain below Mistra. For it was the vestiges of ancient Greece that he had come to see and record, not the buildings of what was to him the modern city of Mistra. Early in October he continued his journey down to Messenia in search of Nestor's palace at Pylos. He crossed by sea from Coron to the fortress of Vitylo on the promontory of Tainaron, where he met John Palaiologos, Constantine's governor in that district. From the harbour of Gythion he returned over the hills to Mistra, where he spent the winter of 1447-8. There, in February 1448, he composed an account of the ancient Roman Calendar for the Despot Constantine, describing him as `Constantine Palaiologos Porphyrogenitus and most excellent emperor (basilea) of Lakedaimonia'.23 In March Ciriaco was in Nauplion and by April in Corinth, where he was received by John Cantacuzene, Constantine's friend and governor of the city, whom he had met before at Patras.