Birthday Greetings #8

Happy birthday to Manuel II Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor from 1391-1425. By the time Manuel ascended to the throne the Byzantine empire was a tattered shred consisting of some territory in the Peloponnese and a bit of land around the capital Constantinople. Matters hadn't really been helped by the long and spectacularly undistinguished reign of his father John V. The idiot managed to get himself captured on no fewer than four occasions including twice in his own capital.

Manuel was the second son but the habit of his elder brother of revolting against their father led to his fall from favour. A great deal of Manuel's time was spent sitting in Constantinople while Ottoman armies besieged it. In 1400, five years into the current siege he rather daringly left Constantinople in the hands of his nephew (who had been in his fathers attempts at revolt up to his neck) and travelled to western Europe hoping to gain military support. He is the only Byzantine emperor to have visited England, being welcomed by King Henry IV with a joust in his honour. The sum total of support he received was a little money and a few hundred men sent by Charles VI of France but in the meantime help had come from a rather unusual quarter. In 1402 the main Ottoman field army was destroyed by the forces of Tamerlaine, the Sword of Islam (the Ottomans were Muslim too but, whatever) and the Sultan, Bayezid was captured and lived out the rest of his life in an iron cage. Bayezid's sons needed what was left of their army for a series of highly enthusiastic civil wars between them and not only was the siege of Constantinople lifted but adroit diplomacy by Manuel's nephew regained some territory around the capital and also the city of Thessalonica.

The next few years were relatively easy ones by Manuel's standards, he recaptured a few islands in the Aegean and built a wall across the isthmus of Corinth to defend what was now the largest (and most productive) remnant of the empire. Things didn't last of course and when he backed the wrong side in another Ottoman civil war he wound up being besieged in Constantinople again, this time by Murad II. Another Byzantine engineered uprising resulted in the siege being lifted but Manuel and his son were forced to pay tribute and become vassals of the Sultan.

Manuel died in 1425 by which time it probably came as something of a relief.