History of the Empire of Trebizond Part 2

Author: * Basileos Nestor - 11 Posts on this thread out of 227 Posts sitewide.
Date: Sep 28, 2005 - 20:59

Author's Note: My purpose in writing this history of the Empire of Trebizond has been to provide what was not available to me or for anyone at that matter who became interested in the history and empire of Trebizond. When I first researched it there was little information on this period or the Empire's last years and what accounts I could find were largely a babble of information which oddly and poorly written, so in writing this history I hope to counter these and provide the average person interested in the history of that Empire with the most detailed history of Trebizond on the internet. I still continue to be most thankful to the infallible aid of Aurelian Junius without whom this section would be just as garbled and worthless as the other accounts of this sixty-year period of the the history of Trebizond. And if anyone finds my views on the Empire a bit critical, I only must say that these are my beliefs and am unrepentant, for these are partly building the way for the next part of the history.

The Empire of Trebizond Part 2: Civil War and Decline: 1330-1390

The last part of our history of Trebizond took us from its meteoric beginnings in 1204 to its climax in 1330 under the Emperor Alexios II. In 1204, Alexios and his brother, David, Komnenos with Georgian aid seized the city of Trebizond and founded the Empire of Trebizond. Then David was sent to attack the coastlands of Paphlagonia to seize as much as he could amidst the chaos resulting from the Fourth Crusade. Foolishly, however, David underestimated the strength of his archenemy, the Emperor at Nikaia, Theodore Laskaris, and had his army cut to pieces before Nikomedia. Laskaris followed up his victory with a triumphant march, which quickly dispossessed David of all of his recent conquests in Paphlagonia. At the same time, Alexios was also defeated by the Turkish Sultan at Samsun, thereby leaving Trebizond prostrate as its enemies carved it up. Later, Sinope was seized by the Turks and David was slain there in 1216 leaving Alexios and his Empire subject to the Seljuk Sultan.

In this position, it remained for around fifty years despite the heroic siege of Trebizond in 1225/6 and it short-lived independence 1226-1231. But then quite suddenly in the reign of Manuel I (1238-1263) the Mongols erupted on the scene at the battle of Koussadac in which the Seljuk Sultanate of the Rum was dealt a blow from which it would never recover. Though his troops had served the Sultan at Koussadac, Manuel soon found that the victors were quite willing for him to become their vassal. Meanwhile, at the same time, the conquerors continued on their road to conquest and sacked Baghdad, the capital of the long moribund Abbasid Caliphate in 1256, thereby shifting the poles of world trade entirely. Trade shifted from the Mediterranean route and moved to the Black Sea in which position Trebizond was ideally placed to take advantage of. Immeasurable new wealth now flowed into the city, as it became the "apple of all Asia." The blossom of this new great wealth was the Church of Haghia Sophia in Trebizond. However, all was not well in paradise. For after the death of Manuel in 1263, all of his reconquests were lost including the city of Sinope recaptured 1256/6. The other great threat was the growing noble class in Trebizond-no doubt, that after 1243 they had prospered immeasurably- but now they began to attempt to try to assert themselves as pseudo-feudal nobles throughout their estates in the Empire. The Emperor George tried to restrain them and reconcile them to his own power, but failed miserably when they abandoned him while on campaign against the Turkomans of Mount Tauresion. And thus, it was that the Emperor George was captured and the nobles immeasurably strengthened.

In the place of George, the nobles placed his weak brother John on the throne whose reign would only bring further pain to the Empire of Trebizond. For in the year 1261, Michael VIII Palaiologos had recaptured Constantinople and now, seeing his chance of permanently establishing his own legitimacy as the Emperor of the Romans, demanded that the Emperor John abrogate his title of Emperor of the Romans, which his Empire had so rudely maintained, at least according to Michael. John showed some resistance; since it was the title of ancestors used from the Empire's birth on, but at last weakly yielded and was married to Eudokia, a daughter of Michael. In the place of the sonorous title, the Emperors adopted as a shoddy replacement Emperor of All the East and Perateia ("The Land Beyond the Sea", i.e. the Chersonese territory of the Crimea which was lost later in the coming century.) In effect, the Empire for the first time in its history began its policy of self-debasement in return for survival, which as we shall see would leave it only a survivor in the Muslim East. The Emperor John, also in renouncing his title, renounced part of the respect due to his own person and position. Perhaps with it, the Emperor might still have saved himself from the nobles but without it, they and the people of Trebizond from this point on looked to the Emperor's rival, the Emperor at Constantinople for precedence and authority at the expense of the Emperors of Trebizond.

With John's death, though, the succession of his son Alexios as Alexios II reversed the decline, which he had begun. Though, no great territorial conquests were made, what was left of Trebizond was consolidated and set back onto the road of prosperity. In his hands, the Empire reached its climax, despite all the losses because of the fundamental richness of Trebizond's position in the world and its supreme natural defenses. The Turkomans were repulsed, the Genoese humbled, and his Empire well protected when Alexios II died in 1330 amidst praises for his virtues and ability.

But then, as was prone to happen in Byzantine history, though, the situation changed in the twinkle of the eye. Alexios II was succeeded by his son Andronikos III who then for unknown reasons murdered his two younger brothers George and Manuel, while his other brother Basil and his uncle Michael only escaped this fate by escaping to Constantinople. Luckily, though, he died in 1332 after a reign of little more than a year and a half.

Manuel II was only eight years-old at the time of his accession. It was to his poor misfortune that his father's crimes had deeply shocked the Trapezuntines and had split them into factions, which began their battle for power in his reign. George Finlay in his History of Greece best describes the state of disorder that began:

The crimes of his parent [Andronikos III] utterly depraved a society already deeply stained with vice. No measures were too violent for those who hoped to obtain power and wealth by civil broils or private murders. The chiefs of the different factions incited the population to tumult and goaded them to rebellion, in order to gratify their own ambition. The city was a scene of disorder, and the interior of the palace became the theatre of many an act of bloodshed...as...the ministers of state, the clergy, the nobility, and the leaders of the troops commenced intriguing one against the other, in order to obtain the sole direction of the central government and the command of all the patronage of the court.

And to add to the growing chaos within Trebizond, the Turkomen also decided that the time was ripe for invasion. Unfortunately, as Finlay snickers, the faction leaders were so preparing to attack one another other that the troops they had prepared were now thrown against the Turkomen as each faction tried to gain favor with the valor and skill they used to repulse the Turkomen. Such was their defeat, the Turkomen only managed to reach Asomatos before Trapezuntines full on attacked, forcing them to flee for their lives abandoning their baggage and even their horses. Despite this victory, though, the state society was in could not continue.

Later that year in September, the people had become so disgusted by factional strife that they invited Basil to come from Constantinople and assume the throne. He was accepted as Emperor and poor little Manuel II deposed and because of his age to be prepared to take monastic vows when he was old enough1. The people of Trebizond might have thought that by deposing Manuel and placing Basil on the throne their troubles would be over, they were soon to be shown that they were painfully disillusioned. Basil, instead of ending the faction strife, which had begun in his nephew's reign, actually encouraged it. One of his first acts on his accession had been to permit his supporters to murder the Grand Duke Leka and his son and then to stone the Grand Duchess to death. And if that was not bad enough, he continued to allow all those who had gained power in the previous reign to continue as such. Nobles throughout the Empire began to act as little princes lording over their own estates rapidly reducing the countryside to anarchy, while Basil himself continued apace making himself hated. The Scholarioi, the militia of capital became so disaffected that he had to hire foreign bodyguards to protect his person, who rapidly made themselves and their master hated for their arrogance and corruption. Such was his unpopularity with the people of the city that he was even driven to flee to the city's citadel for his life on one occasion. The reign of Basil, though anarchical, was not completely without its successes. On one occasion when the Turkomen attacked under the Turkish Emir Pariames he managed to repulse the invaders even killing one of the besieger's general's. It also had the success of a marriage alliance with the Emperor of Constantinople, Andronikos III, whose daughter Irene Palaiologina Basil married. However, none of these successes did anything to bolster his terrible unpopularity or solve the mounting dissension in Trebizond. However, it was not the people of the city who finally brought Basil down but his own wife.

After Basil's marriage to Irene Palaiologina, relations between the two rapidly deteriorated. Basil took a mistress also named Irene by whom he fathered four illegitimate children. However, the act of adultery though was not enough for Basil who became determined to divorce Irene Palaiologina and marry his mistress. We know little of the act itself except that the Emperor decreed they be divorced and then forced clergy of Trebizond to acknowledge it by marrying him and his mistress in July 1339. The grounds for divorce remain unclear. The most logical reason, though, is probably on the grounds of consanguinity between the two. John II, Basil's grandfather had married Eudokia Palaiologina, the daughter of Michael VIII, in 1280 making Basil the great-grandson of Michael, while Irene, his wife was the daughter of Andronikos III and thereby also the great-great-granddaughter of Michael, so in a sense the two's marriage was between a second and third cousin, which should have been, if the Orthodox Church maintained it perfectly legitimate grounds for divorce2. For some reason or another though, they did not and the people and Church still continued to look on Basil's marriage with Irene Palaiologina as perfectly legitimate.

Irene, one can imagine must have been furious with her husband for divorcing her. But it ill mattered because she was still accepted as his legitimate wife and for the time she bided her time securing support in Trebizond against her husband, which could not have been too difficult considering his vast unpopularity. By April of the following year, he was dead. Whether it was by the assassin's sword or natural causes is unknown. Most likely, though, she was behind his murder because she was quite ready, once he was out of the way, to ascend the throne as Empress of Trebizond when the time came3. Her exact position, though, remained tedious, as it should when considering the means by which she gained the throne and her own origins. To shore up this position, she made a decision of momentous catastrophe for the future by sending off her dead husband's sons to Constantinople where they could be secured by her father there and to prevent them from being used as a standard for the discontent that was brewing in Trebizond.

For there were some who had no desire to see the rule of their country in hands of a "foreigner"; these mostly included the Trapezuntine nobles who Finlay, with some justification, hints wanted the young boys to rule only so they could feather their own nest. The first round of the civil war began shortly after her accession. The three opposing parties consisted first of Irene, the Amytzantarants, and her Byzantine mercenaries provided courtesy of her father, second of the opposing nobles under the Lord of Tzanich, the captain-general of the Scholarioi and a part of the imperial bodyguard loyal to the memory of their late Emperor, and third of the Grand Duke John who was dug into Limnia4. The war began in the capital itself with Irene and her party encamped in the citadel, while the nobles encamped themselves in the Monastery of St. Eugenios which quickly went from a building of God to a fortress under their quartering. For days, the two enemies took no action against another and just sat leering at one another with minor skirmishes here and there. Finally, though, the Grand Duke at Limnia broke the staring contest by deciding to throw in his lot with Irene and marching off to the capital to join her against the rebels. Then the two with their combined forces attacked the monastic-fortress of St. Eugenios with battering rams and fire bolts. Inevitably, the monastery caught fire due to the bombardment and burned along with all those in it to the ground including the holy relics and images of Saint Eugenios. The civil war had ended; the rebel leaders were either taken prisoner or dead from the fire and by the end of it, the monastery lay in ruins along with the pride of Trebizond, which was now subjected to the foreigner.

The people of Trebizond be comforted that her reign lasted only a year and four months. But in that time, she proved herself little short of a disaster. She herself found the cares of government beyond her and appealed to her father to send her a husband from amongst the Byzantine nobles, who would rule the Empire and help fight off her mounting enemies. Andronikos III died before he could answer his daughter's request, but it little mattered since she soon fell in love with her Grand Domestic and split her court into factions by her unseemly favor of this man. If the dissension in Trebizond was not enough, though, the Turkomen worsened matters by attacking the Empire in 1341. Irene's mercenaries fled from the field without so much as engaging the enemy who then marched up to the walls of the capital itself burning and rampaging as they went leaving such, devastation that a plague swept down over the land because of the amount of unburied bodies. Irene, though, was so thoroughly hated by then that the next round of the brewing civil war swept her off her feet.

After the defeat of the Scholarioi in 1340, the remaining nobles who had escaped the massacre began to stir up trouble again. They realizing, that one of their own would prove as mutually unsatisfying as Irene, decided to find a claimant who could boast the one thing that eluded Irene's government: legitimacy. This was personified by the daughter of Alexios II, Anna, who had taken up monastic vows. Somehow, they convinced her to abandon these and join them in their revolt. Wherever she went, the people joined the revolt and acclaimed her Empress. Irene when she heard of the revolt, in an attempt to stem the momentum it was building, executed all of the nobles and prisoners from the St. Eugenian massacre, but it was of no avail. The Empress's unpopularity by now was so horrible that as soon as Anna arrived at the city walls she was admitted without resistance and acclaimed Empress, while the murdering usurper was deposed.

Anna and her nobles though, were not long to enjoy their new power since not three weeks after her accession, the next aggressor of the Trapezuntine civil war appeared. On July 30 1341, the Empress's uncle Michael sailed into the harbor accompanied by three Byzantine ships, the leader of the Scholarioi Niketas, and picked troops; the husband chosen for the now deposed Irene by the regency of John V. He was by now already fifty-six-years-old at the time and the legitimate male of the imperial family. His niece was deposed and it seemed he would be accepted as the legitimate ruler of Trebizond, but then as always in Byzantine history, in the twinkle of an eye the situation changed. After receiving the traditional oath of allegiance from his nobles and officers the day before his coronation, he awoke on his coronation morning to find himself deposed. What had happened was the nobles behind the elevation of Anna had been angered over losing the spoils of their labors to Michael, who had come from Constantinople to take over the crown and marry Irene, and had that night incited the populace with xenophobia, fear of these Constantinopolitan foreigners. Michael was seized and deposed being sent off to Oinaion in exile, while Anna was restored as Empress. And as for the usurper Irene, she was sent off to Constantinople from whence she should never have come.

After Michael's deposition, the nobles behind his downfall took control of the imperial government. Anna played only the part of the puppet and legitimization of their rule, which rapidly deteriorated into an oligarchy. Niketas, still the leader of the Scholarioi faction, decided to cast his own dice in the situation and sailed to Constantinople where Michael's twenty-year-old son, John resided. There he convinced the young man to return home with him, and seize back the throne from the Lazian nobles' government. Without any Constantinopolitan help and only five ships, three of them being Genoese they returned to the city in September of 1342. They docked in eastern suburb and a fierce struggle broke out between the two factions in the streets of Trebizond itself. At the end of it, John was victorious and the Empress Anna strangled immediately, while almost all of her nobles were murdered.

John was victorious and was crowned in the Church of the "Golden Headed Virgin." He though, was to prove himself a weak and feckless ruler who only helped aggravate the civil troubles of Trebizond. He favored the young nobility of the Lazians that had just been deposed, and indulged himself in his own ostentatious world of self-indulgence and luxury, which alienated those who had placed him on the throne. John III did not even bother to show any concern over his own father who was still being held captive at Limnia5 by the Grand Duke John. Finally, Niketas, who was more responsible than anyone for the treacherous young man's enthronement, lost patience with his feckless sovereign and marched to Limnia where he released Michael from captivity and then marched back with him to depose Michael's son. There he was proclaimed Emperor, while John was banished to the monastery of St. Sabas. The date was May 1344.

For four years now, the Trapezuntine civil war had raged up and down Trebizond between the two parties, the Scholarioi and the Amytzantarants each alternately holding power while the country was bled red by their ravages. Nobles all throughout the Empire were now acting outside of imperial control, occasionally engaging in one party's strife or another, while at the same time the Turkomen took the opportunity to pillage and ravage the Empire. Michael began his reign with blood, which had characterized the changes of power thus. The nobles, his son had supported, were executed with the support of Niketas and the Scholarioi, who were then assimilated into power with Niketas even becoming the Grand Duke. Niketas and his ministers, however, had no desire to continue the civil war which if they took no punitive action could continue with further losses to themselves. In short, to institutionalize their power they attempted to provide Trebizond with its first constitution. This constitution though ran nothing like ours in modern times, instead it attempted to strip the Emperor of his effective authority and vest that power in the hands of the few, his officials. How they compelled Michael to sign this document, which was tantamount to making him a prisoner of his own palace and which relinquished his power to the oligarchial constitution of Niketas, is unknown, but Trebizond's constitutional experiment was to prove short-lived. The Emperor Michael himself had been completely unwilling, but forced to sign the document, but the greatest opposition to this oligarchy came, surprisingly, from the people of Trebizond. They were infuriated to see the Emperor stripped of his effective authority and that power placed in the hands of the few, most of whom were part of the aristocracy that oppressed them. To them, the Emperor was still the only pure stream of righteousness through whom only pure justice could flow and a challenge to whose very existence was anathema. No wonder they reacted as they did; the people of Trebizond and the Lazes rose up in revolt and declared themselves in favor of the Emperor. Michael, seizing the opportunity, then reinstated his authority and deposed Niketas and his government, who were then arrested and imprisoned while Michael, determined thanks to the adversity, which he had suffered, decided to break the power of the individual parties of the civil war. His first step to doing such was by sending off his son John to Adrianople where he was to be kept prisoner as to prevent a further focus for the discontented within Trebizond6. For now, Michael's throne was secure.

Michael did not long enjoy this security for as soon as he was established as Emperor he was to find himself painfully unequal to the task of imperial government. Though, he may have had a significant victory over the Turkomen who attacked his Empire in 1347 under the Emir of Erzerum, Michael also suffered from a severe stroke of bad luck. That same year when the Turkomen attacked his Empire, it was struck by the Black Death, which carried off many of Trebizond's citizens further aggravating the condition of the people. And if only to make matters worse, the Genoese saw the time was ripe to take advantage of Trebizond's weakened state by seizing the second city of the Empire, Kerasunt, while launching an expedition against the Empire from Caffa at the same time. It only consisted of two ships, but quickly made a mess in Trebizond's weakened state. The Trapezuntine fleet sent out against it, which consisted only of one large ship, a galley, and several smaller boats, were destroyed along with their commanders, the Grand Duke and Michael Tzanichites. And in revenge for these losses, the people of Trebizond responded by killing any Westerner, they could get their hands on in the capital, while seizing their property. The Genoese responded to these atrocities by returning stronger yet to make the Empire pay. In Trebizond itself, matters were fast deteriorating; Michael was deathly sick being left prostrate on deathbed, while the Trapezuntines themselves were at each other's throats. Somehow, though, peace was made with the Genoese, but it did not come cheap. The fortress of Leontokastron was surrendered to them7, while they restored Kerasunt to the Empire. From this point on the Empire of Trebizond's commercial capacity was lessened as the Genoese came to more and more command the lucrative Black Sea trade. Poor old Michael, though, by now was sixty-four-years-old and totally incapable of action. Strife inevitably renewed and the country sank once again into anarchy, which he could only stand by and watch. At last though, the end to his rule came. Michael was deposed on December 13, 1349 and one can imagine felt nothing but relief to be at last freed from his tottering empire8.

Michael was succeeded by Alexios III, Basil's illegitimate (or legitimate if we choose) son by Irene of Trebizond, who had been sent off by the usurper Irene to Constantinople when he was only four-years-old in 1340. His real name was John but as a sign of the desperation of the times, he took the name of Alexios, the name of his deceased brother who had accompanied him but died prematurely, because of its better connotation with the people of Trebizond. Alexios was only twelve at the time of his accession and had been placed on the throne with Byzantine aid because John VI Kantakouzenos, after securing his own throne after civil war, wanted to secure his position further by displacing Michael, who was an instrument of the regency Kantakouzenos had displaced. To seal this alliance, two years later Alexios was married to John's daughter Theodora in the newly rebuilt Church of St. Eugenios. For the time, Alexios was accepted as Emperor because of his youth, which proved acceptable to the nobles of the realm who sought to use Alexios' regency for their own ends.

The civil war was predictably not over. It would take a mature Emperor both capable and willing to take action against his rebellious nobles to so this; Alexios was still young and therefore still quite vulnerable. Limnia, Tzanicha, Kerasunt, and Kenchrina were all still in the hands of the nobles who continued to remain independent of imperial control. Many actually used their extortionate taxes to attack one another and one incident in Alexios' reign illustrates how tenable his position was. The Doranites actually drove Alexios from his own capital and forced him to take refuge in Tripolis, before the people of the capital, always resentful of the aristocracy, put an end to their momentary rule. The first city to be recaptured from the anarchy was Limnia, which was taken by an army led by Alexios' mother, Irene of Trebizond and Michael Panaretos. Work continued apace for the next few years as Alexios regained Kenchrina and Tzanicha and had also begun to show he was a leader endowed with enough ability to end the self-destructive conflict. It was this very notion that drove Niketas, the kingmaker, who had been released after the Doranite intrigue and restored to power, to leave the capital for Kerasunt where he and his men could recruit and make a fresh attempt to stoke the civil war's flame, which was rapidly being put out by the Emperor Alexios. From here in the spring of 1355, he and his fleet sailed on the capital, but there they realized that the young Emperor was now too established to be touched and the civil war by this move capped off. The Emperor's effective authority had been reestablished over his ministers and to some the degree his nobles.

The bloody civil war's end was now not far in sight, but there was still work to be done. Niketas was pursued after his defeat by Alexios III, who chased him all the way back to Kerasunt where after a single engagement the city surrendered to the Emperor. Niketas himself, though, refused to give up and had made his way to Kenchrina, which he had captured from the imperial forces, where he prepared to make his stand. Alexios III continued the pursuit but found that the city was too difficult to take, but it ill mattered now that the Emperor's authority had been restored; the rebels would fall eventually. And so, for the time Alexios concentrated on absorbing the surrounding area where his general John Kabasites recovered the districts of Sorogaina and Cheriana, while an attempt that year to retake the throne by Michael was easily defeated9. This great year finally ended with the seizure of Kenchrina by the grand general Michael Sampson and the Grand Domestic Mezomates. The civil war was finally at an end, Alexios III was just nineteen.

The Trapezuntine civil war had raged off and on now for nearly fifteen years. It had begun with the murderous succession of Irene Palaiologina and ended with the seizure of Kenchrina in 1355 from the eunuch Niketas who had off and on made and broke Emperors and Empresses at an immeasurable cost to the people of the Trapezuntine Empire. The country had been bled red by the nobles and ministers of the state who had used the resulting anarchy to feather their own nest. It had also been manipulated by the Emperors at Constantinople who had used the destructive war for their own ends in their own conflict. But now, their destructive strife had come to an end, but at what price? For just as the civil war had unraveled the Emperor's authority and the countryside, it had also unraveled Trebizond's identity. In appearances, it might appear to remain Byzantine, but in reality, it had changed forever. Trebizond had morphed into a feudal-Oriental system of government. Previous Emperors had ruled through law rather than force, but that had changed too. Law was no longer a part of the state as it had once been since the Emperor came to rely more on force10 rather than the right of law. The distribution of power amongst the nobles had also crystallized. Only very rarely will one find an average man ever acceding to any position of true power, since the Emperor had now come to rely on nobles rather than the common man. Control of state positions themselves remained beyond becoming hereditary as in Western Europe, but the nobles inevitably protested when any position of power went to a common man. Alexios' nobles also had undergone a significant change; they had changed from men of wealth to that of the feudal lord who the Emperor always had difficulty controlling. Provinces and territories came to be partly under their directions despite the Emperor's protest, but this process was already now long under way and the civil war is not completely responsible for the changes, only aggravating them. And with transformations from the old to the new, the Emperors of Trebizond lost part of another part of their dignity and along with them their country and people fell to the level of those around them.

One of the civil war's greatest blunders had been to allow the Turkomen to advance even further into the Trapezuntine countryside, penetrating the Pontic Alps. At first, they had been fought back, but after a while, as the country descended into such anarchy that they easily made their trespasses at will. Districts and cities were lost to them, but Alexios after defeating his own subjects who had been at least partly responsible for these losses, began a systematic set of marriage alliances to protect his subjects and Empire from the Turkoman onslaught. His sisters Maria and Theodora were both married to Koutlobeg the chieftain of the White Sheep and the Emir of Chalybia respectively, while his daughters whether by their will or not were married to the Emir of Limnia, the Emir of Arsinga, Suleiman, son of the Emir of Chalybia, and finally to Kara Youlouk son of Koutlobeg. Alexios married his off his children and daughters with such little care that many Byzantines were shocked by his willingness to give his daughters to Muslim princes in order to give his country protection without returning it territories. In this respect, Alexios also diminished part of his country's dignity.

When Alexios did take the field, on the other hand, against those he believed he could beat with mixed results. One of his campaigns against the Turkomans ended in disaster when after the fall of Kenchrina in 1355, Alexios ventured without plan of operations ravaging and plundering as he went into the districts of Cheriana and Sorogaina, which had only recently been partly subdued by John Kabasites. Panaretos exclaims that the adventure must have been inspired by the devil himself. Suddenly, as Alexios and his army were marching, a small body of Turkoman cavalry attacked with catastrophic results. Alexios was taken by surprise and his army fled pell-mell back to Trebizond with Alexios at head of it while nearly four hundred were lost including Alexios' fine general Kabasites, not to mention all of the plunder and baggage accumulated. Needless to say, the battle was considered a disaster and it would be a while before Alexios dared to take action against the Turkomen. When he did though, it was with a fury. The Emir of Bayburt was killed, while the Emir of Arsinga was beaten from Golacha. Ultimately, though, many territories were lost in Alexios reign. The district of Limnia11 was lost to its Emir thereby separating the territories of Oinaion and Kerasunt from each other, while Golacha and Matzouka were eventually lost. Other territories also lost were those of Sebinkarahissar, which fell to Kilj Arslan in a series of campaigns in 1368, 1369, 1373, and 1374. Overall, Alexios generally was more of a diplomat with the Turkomen rather than a soldier.

One aspect of life in which Alexios could be sure of its success was religious endowments and construction. Many churches and monasteries all throughout the Empire were repaired in his reign after deteriorating in the previous. Alexios though, did restrain himself only to renovations, he also built many churches. The Church of St. Eugenios was rebuilt after being destroyed by fire in the civil war in extravagant style, while he also built the monastery of St. Phokas in Kordyle and of Soumelas. His greatest endowment, though, was the monastery of St. Dionysios on Mount Athos, of which his magnificent charter still survives12.

In 1380, there lived one Megollo Lercari in Trebizond who was a Genoese merchant that often stayed in Trebizond and was on good terms with Alexios III been admitted to the imperial court. But then, Andronikos, a favorite of Alexios became jealous of Lercari for Alexios' favor of him. One day this feeling culminated while the two were playing chess when Andronikos slapped the man whose fury was such that he had to be restrained by those around him from killing the man then and there. Failing to obtain a reprieve from Alexios, he found his anger with the man too great to be forgotten and returned sulkingly to Genoa to plot his revenge. Later that year, he retuned to Trebizond this time with two galleys and exaction in his mind. He ravaged the coasts of Empire with his men taking many prisoners to whom he showed no mercy cutting off their ears and noses and then sending the prisoners back to shore. Obviously, Alexios could not stand by and watch this mutilation of his subjects and in response sent out five ships to fight these pirates. Lercari, though he was outnumbered, had Genoese seamanship on his side. He and his ships used feigned flight to divide the Trapezuntine ships up and then strike capturing them all. Finally, though as Lercari was mutilating these prisoners, as usual, an old man stepped forward and begged Lercari to spare his sons and kill their father since it was not by their own will they had joined the disastrous fleet. Lercari was truly touched by this display and finally gave in. The three were spared and sent to shore, though not before Lercari charged them with the unenvious task of delivering the urns of preserved ears and noses to Alexios III along with a letter from Lercari. The letter demanded that Alexios surrender up Andronikos to his Lercari or further ears and noses would follow. Alexios only sighed, "It is enough" and so as to spare his subjects from further mutilations by the vengeful Genoese and delivered up Andronikos. As Andronikos knelt before Lercari knew that, he had his revenge over the weeping, pleading man. But not before he had exclaimed that, "Genoese are not wont to vent their anger on women," and that there were other Genoese more powerful than himself before sparing the contemptible man because it would do more for his honor. A new commercial treaty was also drawn up along the lines that the Genoese were no longer to be what they considered oppressed, an embassy was to be built in Caffa at the Emperor's expense, and Alexios was to provide a furnace, magazine, and bath for every Genoese citizen in the Empire. He also had to grant them something of a free zone within the Empire. This anecdote is something of a lesson for the haughty and proud Trapezuntines that they should remember there are those more powerful than themselves in the world. How much better it would have been had Alexios just granted the reprieve; for this incident did little merit to his name and does not inspire confidence.

The Emperor Alexios III died in 1390 after a long forty-one year reign leaving his Empire still independent and prosperous. His reign had begun in the midst of the Trapezuntine civil war when the situation was seemingly desperate with the Emperor's effective authority destroyed, but gradually and surely, Alexios III had restored the Emperor to the center of the imperial government. With this restoration, though, the Empire was changed forever. Force rather than law came to be the means of imperial rule as Trebizond fell to the level of those around it. The Emperor also became more of feudal king holding vassalage over his own subjects and the Turkomen, but perhaps this process was already to far along to be stopped by Alexios. For at the time of Alexios III's death the Empire had been reduced to a shallow coastal strip no deeper the forty miles, extending from Batoumi, the Georgian border, to Kerasunt with the interior of the country being given up to the feudalistic nobles and Turkomen, while the territory of Oinaion extending to the Thermodon River was under the rule of Melissenos. In short, Alexios died with his Empire thoroughly given up to a Trapezuntine feudalism as the Empire sank to the level of those around it. Another of Alexios' means of propagating his Empire had been his marriage alliances with foreign princes, mostly Muslim who offered him a means of survival rather than integrity. These alliances also did little for Alexios in his own subjects' eyes. For these Muslim princes, though blood may be thicker than water so the saying goes, felt no natural loyalty for the Emperor who was to them an infidel, and would attack the Empire anyway infuriating the Emperor's subjects even more. But in the end, the driving principle behind Alexios' policy was shortsighted survival tactics, which preserved his Empire but robbed it of its strength because it came to rely on these alliances for power rather than on its own inner spirit, thereby ensuring its decline. And all too often, had Alexios realized it, these princes would all too easily betray him in favor of their co-religionists and then this survivor robbed of its strength would fall.

1.Manuel, predictably, did not last long in the court of Basil. In a few months, he was dead having been murdered from an intrigue of the grand duke. We may shed a few tears for this young boy who was completely unresponsible for the actions of his reign committed in his name.

2. Ever since the end of the twelfth century it had become more common for the Byzantines to marry outside the Empire and thereby join the European circle of in-bred monarchs, though not at this time.

3. This is an indication of three things of Trebizond's state at the time: first Basil's immense unpopularity, two the rights of women in Byzantium, and three that the Trapezuntines looked to Constantinople for precedence.

4. The city of Limnia was twenty-five miles west of Trebizond.

5. He had been moved from Oinaion to there later on.

6. John did not end his days there though. In the reign of Alexios III some years later, he tried to seize the throne of Trebizond only to be thwarted. He ended his days in Sinope where he died leaving a son.

7. Alexios II had built this fortress after his war with the Genoese thirty years prior to restrain them from taking over the economic transactions as they did at Constantinople where they enjoyed tax-free trade.

8. Michael was compelled to join the monastery of St. Sabas from whence he was later sent off to Constantinople.

9. The seventy-year-old had been sent to retake the crown by John V, but had failed miserably because he was too distinguished in Trebizond to create a revolt and had to return to Constantinople.

10. Examples of this notion are found throughout documents of the time. This is Finlay's idea but it does make some sense when one considers how the Emperor Alexios says in bull from Sumelas "They were coming after them like wild-beastly savages (note: exact translation is imprecise).

11.The district of Limnia and the city are not one in the same. This district was between the cities of Oinaion and Kerasunt which separated the Empire from its territories extending to the Thermodon River.

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