Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The external policy of Michael VIII

Page 10

Eastern policy of Michael VIII. The Emperors of Nicaea and, after the restoration of Constantinople, Michael VIII, turned their main forces to the West for the recovery of the Balkan peninsula, and to the exhausting struggle with Charles of Anjou, which practically decided the destiny of the restored Empire. The eastern border was somewhat neglected, and the Byzantine government seems sometimes to have forgotten the threatening danger there. A Byzantine historian of the fifteenth century, George Phrantzes, wrote: Under Michael Palaeologus, because of the wars in Europe against the Italians, the Roman Empire has been exposed to dangers in Asia from the Turks. Of course, the Turkish danger to Byzantium had begun much earlier; but this observation of the historian well emphasizes a distinct feature of the eastern policy under Michael VIII. It was fortunate for the Empire that in the thirteenth century the Turks themselves were living through a troubled epoch owing to the military successes of the Mongols.

In the thirties and forties of the thirteenth century the threatening danger of the Mongol invasion appeared from the East. The Seljuq Sultanate of Rum or Iconium, bordering on the eastern part of the Empire of Nicaea, had been defeated by the Mongols. In the second half of the thirteenth century, at the time of Michael VIII, the last Seljucids were the mere deputies of the Mongols of Persia, whose dominions extended from India to the Mediterranean, and at whose head stood Hulagu, acknowledging the khan of the eastern Mongols as his overlord. In 1258 Hulagu took Bagdad, where the last Abbasid caliph suffered a violent death. After that he invaded and devastated Syria, Mesopotamia, and the surrounding lands, and meditated a march on Jerusalem and then probably a campaign against Egypt. But the news of the death of the Mongol Great Khan Mangu forced him to give up his aggressive plans in the south. The Mongol dynasty established in Persia was, in the last decades of the thirteenth century, an ally of the Christians against the Muhammedans. As a recent historian said, Hulagu led the Nestorian (i.e., Christian) Turks of Central Asia on a real Yellow Crusade (Croisade Jaune) against Islam. Finally, in 1260, the Mongol army was crushed by the Egyptian Mamluks, at Ain-Jalut. Another very powerful Mongol state was at that time established in the north, in Russia. This was the Golden or Kipchak Horde with its capital at Sarai, on the lower Volga. Realizing the great importance of this new Mongol factor in the international life of his epoch, Michael Palaeologus tried to make use of it several times in his external policy.

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