Chapter V: A Centennial Celebration
For four years, the Byzantine state was, for all intents and purposes, without an emperor. Like Isaac III before him, Constantine remained sequestered in his grand palace, brooding and contemplating alone in what was becoming a Batatzian tradition. But unlike his great predecessor, Constantine could enjoy some respite from the plague of a troubled mind, namely Raymonde Capet, the beautiful and enchanting sister to the young King Alain of France. Married in 1300, Raymonde had become closer to the Emperor than anyone else in the realm. Naturally, such proximity had its advantages: the throne’s voluminous wealth at her eager fingertips and Constantine’s ready ear. Though an outsider who was only barely fluent in Greek and Orthodox only by expediency, the Empress had by 1302 made herself one of the most influential members of the imperial court.
By a slow process of cajoling Constantine with her mental and physical capabilities, Raymonde achieved the impossible: stirring him from his seclusion. Though still visibly haggard from the rigours of the past and appearing awkward and uncomfortable in court or in the streets of the capital, Constantine was much more like his old self once again. Part of this may have had to do with the momentous historical implications of 1302: it was the centennial of the end of the Megas Batatzes’s minority. To most Greeks and loyal Byzantine subjects, 1202 had marked the end of the ruinous decline and decay of the post-Manzikert period and the start of the meteoric rise to preeminent world power, master of the eastern Mediterranean, conqueror of Rome, savior of Jerusalem, lord of Mecca, subduer of the Saracens, and overlord of the East.
What better way to celebrate and commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of Isaac’s assumption of the Throne than yet another military triumph? Or so Raymonde said. Indeed, it was at the Empress’s insistence that Constantine at last agreed that an expedition would be undertaken to finally lay low the Venetian menace for good. Along with historical enmity, the Emperor certainly considered the fact that the city-state retained control of the island of Corfu and the last Greek settlement not under the imperial banner. It was an opportunity to take advantage of Byzantium’s undisputable hegemony in Mediterranean affairs and not only ensure its continuation, but further confirm the sea as a Byzantine lake.
Nor would it likely be a difficult task to accomplish. The Italian republic had fallen far since its heyday as a commercial empire with trading interests stretching from Iberia to Outremer and beyond. In the mid-thirteenth century, with the armies of the Megas crushing one Muslim power after another, many of the once-mighty Arab and Turkish nobility had taken flight rather than weather the inevitable assimilation and conversion efforts. Some had fled to Egypt and Arabia, others to Iberia. Others had not managed to make it that far. One such noble family, the Yousifs, in command of a small flotilla of ships, was forced to turn north to the city of Venice in the face of a squadron of marauding Greek warships. Armed with a small fortune and the political savvy to play the innumerable factions off one another, the Yousif dynasty seized power, maintaining their hold for almost a half century, despite numerous revolts and conspiracies to oust the Muslim Doges.
The war began on May 6, with Venice’s military and financial assets utterly exhausted from almost a decade of constant instability under the generally inept Doge Zayed Yousif. In spite of Raymonde’s prompting, Constantine declined to lead the war in person, delegating command of the armies to be raised for the war. To Manuel Karaionatan was given the the main Italian force gathered at Rome. The secondary expedition to the Venetian base at Corfu was charged to Alexios Achaios, which held a special significance as being the last Greek territory to be liberated by Byzantium. Karaionatan marched north through the obliging Italian duchies fearful of suffering the Emperor’s wrath for noncompliance, and arrived with his army at the city on October 18. It was clear how far Venice had fallen under the Yousifs; the walls were in a state of disrepair, and the city could barely muster a force to defend the length of the walls, let alone sally and attempt to repulse the Byzantines. The siege itself barely lasted three months. On January 19, 1303, Venice surrendered. Corfu had already surrendered without a fight in early December, and in just seven months the fighting was essentially over before it had begun. Ever persistent, Zayed had escaped Venice and taken refuge in Zeta, the last Venetian outpost, which fell on April 5. With that, peace was declared and the Venetian republic that had stood for six centuries was swept away.
