Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The external policy of Michael VIII

Page 7

But after some friction with the pope, evoked by the union of Lyons, Charles succeeded in seating upon the papal throne one of his best friends, a Frenchman, Martin IV, who supported entirely the policy of the Sicilian king and broke the union with Michael. Then in 1281 a treaty was concluded between Charles, the titulary Latin Emperor, and Venice for the recovery of the Empire of Romania which is under the sway of the Palaeologus (ad recuperationem ejusdem Imperii Romaniae, quod detinetur per Paleologum). A vast coalition formed against Byzantium: the troops of the Latin possessions on the former territory of the Byzantine Empire, the troops of Italy and of Charles' native France, the Venetian fleet, the papal forces, and the armies of the Serbs and Bulgars. The Byzantine Empire seemed to be on the brink of ruin, and Charles of Anjou, the forerunner of Napoleon in the thirteenth century, had world power in his grasp. A Greek author of the fourteenth century, Gregoras, wrote that Charles was dreaming, if he took possession of Constantinople, of the whole monarchy of Julius Caesar and Augustus. Sanudo, a western chronicler of the same time, said that Charles was aspiring to world monarchy (asperava alla monarchia del mondo). It was the most critical moment in Michael's external policy. In 1281 Michael VIII opened negotiations with the Egyptian Sultan Qalaun concerning the military alliance against the common enemy, to wit against Charles of Anjou.

Deliverance to Byzantium came suddenly from the West, from Sicily, where on March 31, 1282 a revolt against French domination burst out; it spread rapidly all over the island and has become known in history as the Sicilian Vespers. Michael VIII had some part in this rebellion. The Sicilian Vespers, one of the most important events in the early history of the political unification of Italy, always brings to mind a work of the famous Italian historian and patriot, Michele Amari, The War of the Sicilian Vespers. This book, written at the beginning of the fifth decade of the nineteenth century, has been edited many times and has formed the basis for scientific study of this problem. Of course, in Amari's lifetime many of the sources were inaccessible, and Amari himself, gradually becoming acquainted with new discoveries in the field, made changes and corrections in the later editions of his book. A new stimulus to the study of this problem was given by the celebration in Sicily, in 1882, of the six hundredth anniversary of the Sicilian Vespers, when a great number of new publications appeared. An enormous mass of fresh and important documents has already been published, and more are still being published from the Angevin archive at Naples and the Vatican at Rome, as well as from the Spanish archives. The Sicilian Vespers, which at first sight seems to be an event of western European history, has its part also in the history of Byzantium.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/external-policy-michael-viii.asp?pg=7