The Campaigns in Macedonia and Asia Minor, and the Crossing of the Bosporus
In the aftermath of the pyrrhic victory at Adrianople, Emperor John, filled with a spirit of conquest, moved into Macedonia where he linked up with the Roman armies from Greece, who had scored a minor victory over the fleeing Mohammedan armies in Epirus. The battles in Greece, mostly skirmishes, were particularly brutal and quick-hitting. One Roman column, detached from the main body of the army, completely disappeared from the official Roman history of the war – it is presumed that these 500 or so men were butchered in a massacre somewhere in the Epirote foothills.
Although the growing number of casualties on the Roman side should have been alarming, the Roman war effort was largely unaffected by the delaying tactics of the Turks. In fact, the Mohammedan commanders had to put down a series of Christian revolts in Servia, where the Servians had risen up with news of the Roman victory at Adrianople and word from Vienna that the Austrian hauptarmee had gathered its forces and were preparing to disembark for the lower Balkans sometime in the fall (in reality, the slow decision of Austria delayed their involvement until the following spring, 1500). Erstwhile, the war in Asia Minor – predictably, was going poorly.
The Komnenoi had rallied a respectable 3,000 soldiers and had scored a minor victory over a small Mohammedan army of equal size in the Trebizond foothills. However, the news of Adrianople and the union of the Roman main armies in Macedon had inflated the expectations of the Roman army in Trebizond. Michael had organized his army in such a manner that it could be easily isolated. Rather than moving west and possibly crossing over the Bosporus, he made the idiotic decision to stay and fight in Trebizond. When he received news of a Mohammedan army, about 7,000 strong – moving towards his capital, he foolishly marched east to meet this superior force. Placing too much emphasis on his own skill and knowledge of the terrain, he must have figured his smaller army could use the mountain passes to their advantage. He was wrong.
The resulting battle of Baiburt was an unmitigated disaster for the Romans in the east. Michael’s army completely disintegrated in the face of the enemy, causing few casualties at the loss of the entire detachment in Asia Minor. Duke Michael himself was captured, and was only sparred thanks to his title and standing in the Imperial Court. His men, were less than fortunate. The utter erosion of the Romans in Trebizond created a fear and panic in Roman Asia Minor. People fled into the hills as the Turks and their allies laid siege to the ‘great’ city. News of the defeat travelled slowly, but in October when John learned of the reversal in Asia Minor – his aides requested the Roman army shift its attention to the east.
I have been told by my peers, nobles and advisers. that a swift campaign to the east would be desirable. They have informed me that it is probable, with the enemy scattered, and the promises of the Latins to come to our aid no later than Christmas [this was not true, as I already mentioned above] that a crossing of the Bosporus by me would bolster the morale of the subjects in the east and be a symbolic victory – I would be the first Roman since Andronikus [III] to cross over into the heart of the enemy’s land, our historic lands that rightfully belong to the throne of Augustus. The Mohammedans must know that this is the move we will need to make to win the war, and I doubt that they would allow such a crossing without to oppose us shortly thereafter.
However, John was more enamored with the fighting in Macedon. Having suffered a minor setback in Bulgaria, where he lost about 1,500 men compared to less than 500 Turks while pursuing the fleeing enemy after Adrianople, he had abandoned all notions of destroying the isolated Mohammedan army in Europe and desperately marched to unify the Imperial army in Macedon. Having now taken the city of Monastir from the Turks, and theoretically bring about a near unification of mainland Greece under Palaiogoi control once more – a victory worthy of the highest praise if not the for fact of the diminished strength of the Turks who had the majority of their army in Asia Minor and not in Europe, nonetheless was the main focus of attention for Emperor John. He wrote in his diary, “I have unified Greece, I am the savior of the Greek peoples.”
Not short of his own righteous view of himself, John entertained little thought of crossing back into Asia Minor and laying siege to Nicaea as some of his nobles suggested. Rather, John would embark on a year and half long campaign, along with the Austrians who finally arrived in the spring of 1500 – to push the Turks out of Europe. With the Hungarians also aiding in the fight – the Christian armies, in a rare showing of solidarity, would direct their unified attentions to achieve the dream that the Crusaders who set out for Varna wished to accomplish.
The Austrians seized the Balkans with the help of the Servian rebels, who nonetheless, did not wish to trade one tyrant for another. The Hungarians and Romans pushed into Bulgaria after the Roman victory in Greece, and together, forced the destruction of the 7,000 Turks hiding in the Bulgarian hills and mountains by 1501. The Campaigns of 1500-1501 marked an important symbolic turning point in Roman foreign policy. While the Turks would still pose a threat, the Romans were now about to begin their final stretch of history as principle players in European affairs until the flames of Constantinople were extinguished. In fact, Emperor John had a clear understanding that the new developments in Greece and Southern Italy prompted an anti-Roman alliance among Venice and France and several other small Italian states, principally the Kingdom of Naples, who feared that growing Roman power in the east was just as undesirable as the rise of the Turks, now stymied with the brief re-emergence of Byzantium.
While the Romans and their Latin allies were driving the Mohammedans out of Europe, the Mohammedans were driving the Romans out of Asia Minor. This was a repetitive characteristic in the later Roman-Turkish wars. The Romans would emerge victorious in the west, while the Turks and their Mohammedan allies would emerge victorious in the east. John, in the aftermath of this war, understood the need to strengthen the Roman position in Asia Minor and to have an effective fighting force stationed there at all times. The fall of Trebizond and the Komnenoi Despotate in Asia gave the Turks diplomatic leverage over the upstart Romans and their Latin allies in the west.
No decisive victory could ever be won if the Romans continuously lost Asia Minor and their prize in the east – Trebizond. As a result, in 1502, the now 19 year old emperor, having grown up in the war – marched the Roman Army east. He achieved the great symbolic victory of not only expelling the Turks from Europe (not truly however as we will see), but also by becoming the first Roman emperor in over 150 years to cross the Bosporus. The crossing was memorialized by artists and historians, including several Latins who were present with the army.
A religious manuscript depicting the blessing of the troops by a clergyman, possibly the Patriarch himself, before the men depart across the Bosporus for Asia Minor.
One Austrian artist, accompanying the Roman army, noted: Watching the young king of the Greeks lead his dispirited and tired army across the great Bosporus was nothing short of an ecstatic moment for all observers who understood the importance of this event. The Greeks finally had their great victory, the symbolic victory that they had long wanted against their Mohammedan rivals. Johann [John] had led the forces over the sea with such great skill and daunting courage that several of us [Austrians] were curious to know if he had ambitions of either proclaiming himself emperor or dismantling our institution [referring to the Holy Roman Empire]...yet, in the dead of night, with the Virgin Mother watching overhead as the moon shone brightly, the Greeks embarked across the Bosporus -- a glorious sight for any and all to have seen.
The crossing of the Bosporus won praise and admiration across the kings and palaces of Europe. Yet, it was also a cause of alarm among the Doges of Venice, who saw the feat as signaling the non-immutable truth of Roman power in the eastern Mediterranean as being something that would stay for centuries to come (as we know, and will find out, it wasn’t). Either way, John’s crossing of the Bosporus would bring about the final conclusion of yet another Turkish War. Before agreeing to peace, he had waited to receive news of his expedition he had sent to the Island of Rhodes. When he received news of its capture, he confidently laid out the terms of peace.
Like before, war exhaustion and the loss of Asia Minor weighed against the Roman and Latin gains in Europe. Nonetheless: Rhodes, Monastir, and the unification of Greece (minus Adrianople/Edirne) were the dictates of the peace that the Turks would eventually agree to. The victory over the Turks signaled a shift in John’s thinking. Not only was the emperor of Rome, he believed himself to be the inheritor and rightful ruler of the world. He would soon embark on building the ‘universal empire’ of Justinian’s dream. He would focus his attentions in Asia Minor and invade Kurdistan to add to the Roman territories in the east. Furthermore, upon his successful conquests, he would use the newfound wealth and prestige to reform the Roman state and administration in its most cloudy days.
If John had any doubts of his nature, the war had eroded it. In fact, he even wrote, “God has surely blessed me; otherwise, I would not have achieved victory.” Perhaps, his youthful age also added to his incredulity and pompous attitude created in the aftermath of the war. He also wrote, “How can such a young man have achieved so much in so little time if not from the favor of God Himself?” For those around him however, especially the Roman nobility, this new emperor was different than the prior emperors. He was the first emperor since Michael VIII to have grand schemes and ambitions beyond the petty state of “just surviving.” For some, as we will see in the second half of this second volume, would set out to destroy the emperor and all that he worked for – inevitably setting the stage for the final collapse of the empire. Therefore, in an odd irony, John’s greatest victories and his attempts to reform the empire which should have preserved the empire for generations to come, also set the empire and concurrent revivalist society on the path to its eventual demise, as overconfidence crept into the empire's thinking despite a general realization, at least under John, that serious political and centralizing reforms were needed to preserve the continuity of imperial institutions and her very existence.
A Greek Renaissance painting depicting Emperor John X, center, as the war god Ares. Flanked to his left is the goddess Athena and to his right, the goddess Hecate, the former patron of the city of Constantinople before its Christianization under Constantine and Theodosius of a bygone era. (note the crescent moon and star in the upper corners of the painting).
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So, despite winning lots of battles/wars, making reforms, all that jazz, the Empire will still fall?
