Birthday Greetings# 26

Happy birthday to Manuel Komnenos, Byzantine emperor.  Manuel was the third emperor of the Komnenian dynasty and benefited from the activities of his two predecessors.  His grandfather Alexios had held the disintegrating empire together largely through force of will and his son John built on this foundation to reestablish the empire as a great power.  Unfortunately John died while in the prime of life.  He scratched his hand with a poisoned arrow and despite (or perhaps because of) the best efforts of his doctors he died a few days later.  Before dying John gathered such of his advisers who were to hand and asked them which of his sons should succeed to the imperial purple.  The advisers hemmed and hawed for a bit and pointed out that each of the young men was, of course, a paragon; never seen such a high quality collection of imperial heirs; proud to serve under either one of them; honestly, its a shame there has to be a winner but if I have to, gun to my head, I'd say Manuel seems a little, well, nicer.

With that endorsement ringing in his ears Manuel sent his most trusted servant to Constantinople.  John had been inconsiderate enough to die in the wilds of Cilicia and Manuel was stuck there conducting the funeral rites.  However emperors were crowned in Constantinople and Manuel was well aware that until the diadem was actually on his head he still ran the risk of winding up in a dungeon with his eyes gouged out.  Fortunately the servant did his work well, locking Manuel's brother up in a monastery and by his arguments persuading the government and ecclesiastical hierarchy that Manuel was the best choice.  His strongest argument was the two hundred weight of silver which Manuel had authorised him to hand over to the church authorities to smooth the path.

The result was that when Manuel returned from Cilicia he was acclaimed emperor and nobody had to have anything gouged out at all.  Manuel then settled down to rule his empire.  Manuel is best known for his foreign policy which at first glance seems to have consisted of conquering the same regions over and over again.  Byzantium was kind of stuck in between some of the most intractable problems of the day.  The Seljuk sultan of Rum (a territory that had once been part of the empire) was always looking to extend his authority across the rest of Asia Minor, the Crusader nations were irritating the local Muslims by their sheer presence (and a good deal of remarkably stupid policies) and in the Balkans the Serbs, Hungarians and Croatians were alternately planning to throw off the imperial yoke, conquer imperial territories or just make a thorough nuisance of themselves depending on their circumstances and the opportunities that presented themselves.  To cap this off some idiot declared a Second Crusade and King Roger of Sicily thought this was an excellent opportunity to launch pirate raids on the empire.

Manuel handled all this lot with a fair amount of skill and some success although in doing so he built up troubles for later, less talented emperors to deal with.  He took the war to the Seljuk Turks and recaptured some territory from them (although not as much as he hoped).  He ferried the crusading armies across the Bosporus and gave helpful advice about marching along the coast which was under Byzantine control.  The Germans ignored him, were ambushed by the Turks and wiped out but the French contingent more or less survived.  A series of campaigns recalled the Croatians to their allegiance, persuaded the Serbs to pull their head in and even made the Hungarians at least pretend to be friendly.  The issue with Sicily was a bit more difficult.  Manuel cut a deal with the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad (who was about the only survivor of the German portion of the crusade) and both empires decided to deal with Sicily together.  Things didn't go too well since Conrad had problems at home and Roger persuaded the Hungarians to have another go at Byzantium.  When Roger died Manuel sent an army and a huge amount of gold to capture Apulia but despite early successes the whole scheme collapsed.

Possibly the worst problem that Manuel had, however, was family.  Specifically his cousin Andronicus who was a combination of talent, ruthlessness, treachery, lechery and sheer instability.  As a governor in the Balkans he plotted with the Hungarians to murder Manuel.  Imprisoned, he escaped was recaptured and imprisoned again.  Six years later he escaped again and lived the life of a freebooter.  Somehow he wangled his way back into imperial favour distinguishing himself in wars against the Hungarians.  Made governor of Cilicia he deserted his post to seduce the emperors sister in law.  Not content with this he went on and made the widow of the King of Jerusalem his mistress.  With an infuriated emperor hot on their tails the happy couple fled from court to court finding sanctuary anywhere somebody really wanted to piss off Manuel.  Eventually Manuel captured his mistress and their children and Andronicus appeared at the capital in tears with a chain round his neck to beg forgiveness.  Manuel was not quite that stupid and had him exiled.  Andronicus went but he would be back.

In between sorting out the political problems caused by his relatives and expanding imperial power in the Balkans Manuel naturally got caught up in religious controversy.  This was pretty much demanded of all Byzantine emperors, you couldn't really claim to be ruler unless you had managed to make a bad religious situation worse.  Manuel wanted to reconcile the orthodox faith with the catholic church and the pope.  So far so good, at least in theory everybody wanted that.  However what Manuel really wanted was the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium was the true Roman empire and to have two in the world was a little ridiculous.  To square that particular circle Manuel planned to unite both crowns in himself but to do that he had to kiss up to the pope.  That meant doctrinal concessions and his populace (to say nothing of his church) were having none of it.  Things weren't helped by a schism in the catholic church which made it difficult to know which pope to kiss up to.

Towards the end of his life Manuel fought the greatest battle of his reign.  It was the greatest because of its consequences.  Throughout his life Manuel had been on the offensive against the Seljuk Turks with a reasonable degree of success and now he decided to cut out the problem once and for all by marching on the Seljuk capital of Iconium with the largest force he could raise.  Unfortunately he blundered into an ambush and his army was smashed up.  The battle of Myriocephalon was the biggest defeat the empire had suffered for almost a century and it ended Manuel's dreams of reconquering Asia Minor.  There would be more battles with the Turks, victories as well as defeats but never again could Manuel hope to defeat the Seljuks completely.

As his days became obviously numbered Manuel got a little silly, dabbled in astrology and got involved in a couple more religious controversies just for fun.  Eventually he died leaving an eleven year old son as the new emperor.  This emperor, Alexios, was naturally guided by his mother and her favourites which turned out to be rather unpopular.  Fortunately dear old uncle Andronicus was waiting in the wings.