At the spry age of 30, Ioannes II found himself ascending a throne he had no intention of ever competing for. Under the shadow of his older brother Manual all his life, he had contented himself with a future surrounded by the Army, and had very little interest in politics. Despite this disadvantage, he held the loyalty of the troops he had served with, and was lucky enough to spend the first three years of his reign working alongside his formidable mother, Anna. Luckily, his parents had left him a fairly centralized and stable regime which did not collapse into anarchy in the middle of an Imperial transition, as the medieval Roman system so often did.
Mosiac of Ioannes II from the Hagia Sofia.
After rushing back to the capital in the summer of 1143 for a hastily organized coronation, Ioannes immediately ingratiated himself to the Orthodox Church by doling out a significant pile of gold to fund a church building campaign in various cities throughout the Empire. Immediately after that, he turned his attention east, initiating a diplomatic charm offensive with the Seljuk Turks, who were currently embroiled in one of their many wars against both the Persian remnants and Fatamids in Egypt. Seeing this as an opportunity to secure his eastern border instead of an opportunity to attack the beleaguered Turks, Ioannes instead turned to the west, funding an increase in the Roman merchant fleet to seven galleys. The Basileus rounded out the end of his first year on the throne by dispatching another diplomatic package north to Hungary. His distant cousin Matyas Comnenus had recently died, and Ioannes wanted to make sure that the Empire’s support for the new King Janos I was felt in the cold, dark ‘city’ of Buda.
With things mostly good to go on the home front, the Basileus ordered the Office of Barbarians to begin a concerted effort to infiltrate the various courts of the Italian states, in order to better understand the chaotic political situation beyond the Empire’s western borders. Throughout the spring and summer of 1144, Ioannes’ spies reported back three trends; (1) the growing alliance between the Normans, Papal States, and Carinthia, (2) Savoy had invaded Tuscany and started a general war in northern Italy, and (3) that there was definitely a member of the Imperial family leaking secrets to Naples.
Savoy declared war on Tuscany in May 1144, trying to seize the province of Cremona.
Naturally, Ioannes was mostly concerned about the spy in his own court, and immediately ordered an investigation. Very quickly, it was determined that the leak was a minor member of the Komnenoi clan serving as a provincial governor in Sicily. The offending noble was arrested and sent back to Constantinople, where he was just as quickly convicted and blinded for his trouble, eventually dying in a monastery hospital a few weeks later. Although there were very loud grumblings within the Court about how harsh Ioannes had treated a member of his own extended family, it did send a very clear message – no dissent would be tolerated, especially from those members of the Imperial Family that were trusted with control of government resources out on the frontiers. To ensure Imperial territory in Italy was properly protected, Ioannes finished out the year by ordering an inspection of all military fortifications, just in case the Normans got any ideas. [1]
Blinding was a common punishment in the medieval Roman Empire, even when dealing with family members.
The year 1145 started on a much happier note, with Basilissa Irene giving birth to a baby boy Theodoros in February, delivering further stability to Ioannes’ early reign. [2] Riding high, the Basileus set his eyes on his next target: securing control of Naples. Unfortunately, Rome’s spies had not delivered the news that the small Duchy of Naples was protected by a French guarantee of independence, and when the Empire’s troops attacked in July, they wouldn’t just be facing Naples, but also Croatia, Genoa, and France too. Luckily for the Romans, bad diplomatic preparation was countered by the Imperial Navy, which easily destroyed the 11 French gallies anchored in Naples’ harbor. By July 15th, Ioannes’ troops had easily defeated the small Neapolitan army, and put the city under siege. By the end of the year, contingents of Imperial soldiers had also defeated enemy troops on Corsica and outside Montenegro.
An easy victory, with barely any Roman casualties.
Unfortunately, the war got much tougher for the Romans from here. Despite Naples surrendering in March of 1146, Imperial spies reported that the French were marching to support their Croatian allies with over 40,000 soldiers [3]. Ioannes quickly realized he could not focus only on Italy, and decided he needed to mop up that theater of the war, and fast. With their entire island already occupied by Imperial troops, the Corsicans were the first to surrender; agreeing to pay the Empire war reparations for ten years, cancel their treaties with Genoa and Venice, and recognize the authority of the Patriarch in Constantinople – making them the only outpost of Orthodox Christianity west of Sicily. Shortly after this treaty was signed, the Imperial Navy trapped a Genoese invasion fleet attempting to sneak around Sicily, destroying them and the 10,000 Croation troops they were carrying. With no navy left to protect their shores, a contingent of 12,000 Imperial soldiers landed outside Genoa and immediately put the city under siege.
A bloody affair, but a successful one.
Meanwhile, Ioannes had spent most of the year redeploying the bulk of the Imperial Army into the western Balkans, where they linked up with their Hungarian allies. This proved timely, as the French had already moved through Croatia and east into Hungarian territory. The combined allied armies gave chase, and eventually engaged the French host outside Torental. Although outnumbering the Romans and Hungarians individually, the French army had been reduced to around 30,000 men by attrition, far less than the nearly 50,000 men that met them in the field on 30 November, 1146. The allied troops under the genius Hungarian commander Makarios Grblji smashed the French army in a single day. Simply put, the western feudal infantry was no match for the Hungarians or Romans – especially the thousands of armored kataphraktoi cavalry that made up the core of the Imperial Tagmata. Already into the colder months, both armies retired into winter quarters to plan their next moves.
The year began relatively slowly for both sides, with the French and Imperial armies jockeying for position in the western Balkans rather than engaging in open battle. By late June of 1147, Ioannes received word that the Genoese had surrendered to the small Roman expeditionary force camped outside their walls. Similar to the Corsicans the previous year, Genoa agreed to fork over 10% of their yearly income as war reparations, and cancel all military treaties with Croatia and Carinthia. Perhaps more importantly, both minor Italian states were forced to redirect trade to Constantinople, which was an important first step in the Empire’s eventual reconquest of northern Italy centuries later.
The news of another domino falling in the west boosted the morale of the Imperial troops, who soon cornered their French and Croation enemies outside Zagreb, where the western armies were finally crushed on 30 June. The disciplined Roman cavalry once again carried the day, outflanking the French feudal infantry and leaving the Croation capital city completely undefended. Although Zagreb held out against a siege for seven more months, the Croatians finally surrendered in January 1148, handing over the provinces of Ad Ladios and Dalmatia to the Roman Empire.
Roman General Andronikos Boumbalis led the final cavalry charge that crushed the remnants of the French levies, securing two new provinces for the Roman Empire.
With the Roman Army victorious in the field, there was little fighting left except for minor skirmishes around the Croation countryside. The French soon came to their senses and signed a peace treaty with the Empire, recognizing Ioannes’ annexation of Naples in June of 1148. There was little rest for the Basileus though, as he immediately had to return to southern Italy to deal with border friction instigated by the Normans in Bari and Solerno. By this point, Ioannes had been gone from the capital for over two years on campaign, and spent most of 1149 and 1150 back at court doling out salaries and appointments to various members of the aristocracy in order to assure their support for his western military campaigns. The families of the
dynatoi [4] were more concerned about the eastern frontiers, but the border with the Seljuks and the Fatamids had been mostly quiet, and the loot that Ioannes brought back from his victories in Italy and Croatia were good enough to buy off both the aristocrats and the Church…for now.
All the better, because by October 1150 tensions in southern Italy had exploded – the Empire’s spy networks had figured out that Pope Gregorius XIII had been paying off the Normans to raid Imperial territory south of Naples, with the intention of kicking the Orthodox Romans out of Italy. The Normans had to be taught a lesson, so Ioannes gathered the Central Tagmata and again sailed for Naples. Without warning, the Imperial troops met up with the Calabrian theme’s infantry, and attacked the Norman capital of Salerno. Foolishly, the Pope immediately backed up his Norman allies and declared war on the Empire, calling in his Carinthian allies again. With no interest to fight another war in the Balkans, Ioannes countered by calling in his Hungarian allies once again, promising them Carinthian territory for their troubles. Despite this diplomatic escalation, the war itself was going well. Much of the countryside was still Orthodox and Greek-speaking, so the Imperial troops quickly secured most of Normal territory by November 1051, controlling the provinces of Foggia, Bari, and Salerno and putting the last Norman castle in Abruzzi under siege. Unfortunately, while all this was happening, the Papal army had outflanked Ioannes, and managed to lay siege to Naples themselves.
The military situation in southern Italy in mid-November 1151.
Ioannes soon got word that 9,000 Normans were also headed south to reinforce the Papal army, so he moved quickly. Only leaving behind a small infantry force to continue the siege in Abruzzi, the Romans marched west to relieve Naples, and hoping to crush the Pope and his upstart Norman allies in the hills of southern Italy. The plan worked, and on New Years Eve the Romans beat the westerners handily, leaving about a fourth of the Pope’s army dead in the field.
Once again, the Eastern Roman cavalry proved too much for the westerners to handle.
From this point the war was over, even if the Pope didn’t want to admit it. By the end of May, Abruzzi had surrendered, leaving the Romans in complete control of all Norman territory. The Corinthians (whose Army never even made it into Italy) had successfully fought off Ioannes’ Hungarian allies, but were dealing with a massive noble rebellion, and sued for a white peace. This worked fine for the Hungarians too, as their young king Janos I died about the same time, leaving the Kingdom under a regency for his seven-year-old son. Meanwhile, Pope Gregorius refused Roman peace proposals in June 1152, so small-scale fighting continued. By October, the Imperial troops had seized the city of Ancona, and were marching on Urbino. It took until May of 1153, but the final defeat of the sad remnants of the Papal army in Ancona convinced the Pope to sue for a very humiliating peace, which Ioannes gleefully enforced.
The Battle of Ancona broke the back of the Papal States as a military power in Italy.
With no military forces capable of resisting the Romans, the Pope quickly realized he had gambled poorly. He not only had to recognize complete Imperial control over the Norman territories in south-eastern Italy, but also hand over 32 ducats. Lastly (and worst of all), he recognized the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople’s control of all Christian churches south of Rome. For Ioannes, it was a complete victory – and something his parents with their hatred of all things Latin would have surely approved of. Having spent ten years at almost constant war in the west, the Basileus returned triumphantly to the Imperial capital, sure that he could handle whatever could come next.
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[1] Unlocked the “Byzantine Defenses” era ability, giving +20 fort defense
[2] Up to +3 stability, yay!
[3] Kinda a ridiculous number for medieval France in the 12th century, but they are also overpowered in the Extended Timeline mod…
[4] The powerful military aristocratic families that controlled most of Anatolia, and almost always guilty of planning some kind of rebellion.