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internal disorders at the capital, laid waste the province, and drove out the greater part of the ancient population, 1280-1297. in order to convert the whole country into a land of pasture suitable for the settlement of their nomadic tribes.

Joannes II. enjoyed a reputation among the nations of western Europe totally incommensurate with his real power. The magnificent title of Emperor of Trebizond threw a veil over his weakness, and distance concealed the small extent of his dominions behind the long line of coast that acknowledged his sway. He was invited by pope Nicholas IV. to take part in the crusade for the recovery of Ptolemais, in which his Holiness flattered himself that the emperor of Trebizond would be joined by Argoun, the Mongol khan of Tauris, and all the Christian princes of the East, from Georgia to Armenian Cilicia. The invitation proved of course ineffectual. Joannes was too constantly employed at home watching the movements of domestic faction, and guarding against the inroads of the Turkomans of the great horde of the Black Sheep, to think of aiding the Latin adventurers in Palestine, even had he felt any disposition to listen to papal exhortations.1

SECT. II.-REIGN OF ALEXIOS II. INCREASED COMMERCIAL IMPOR-
TANCE OF TREBIZOND. TRADE OF GENOESE-A.D. 1297-1330.

Alexios II., the eldest son of Joannes II., succeeded his father at the early age of fifteen. He was naturally for some time a mere nominal sovereign, acting under the guidance of the ministers of state who held office at the time of his father's death. His father's will placed him under the guardianship of his maternal uncle, the Byzantine emperor Andronicus II. ; but the courtiers and nobles

1 Wadding, Annales ordinis Minorum, tom. v. p. 254, ad. ann. 1291; Fallmerayer, Geschichte, 157.

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CHAP. III. of Trebizond easily persuaded the young sovereign to assume complete independence, and emancipate himself from all control. Andronicus, on the other hand, was eager to direct his conduct even in his most trifling actions. His first attempt to enforce his authority was ridiculous and irritating, like many of the acts of that most orthodox and most injudicious sovereign. He ordered the young emperor of Trebizond, an independent foreign prince, to marry the daughter of a Byzantine subject, Choumnos, his own favourite minister.1 The idea of this marriage was offensive both to Alexios and the people of Trebizond; so that, when the young emperor married the daughter of an Iberian prince, in contempt of his guardian's commands, the act gained him great popularity in his own dominions.

Andronicus, who was fond of regarding himself as especially the orthodox emperor, conceived that he could always make the Greek church a subservient instrument of his political enterprises. In order to carry into execution his plans concerning the marriage of the daughter of his favourite, he put the whole Eastern church in a state of movement, and treated the question as if it was of equal importance with papal supremacy or the doctrine of the Azymites. He assembled a synod at Constantinople, and demanded that the marriage of his ward, the emperor of Trebizond-or the prince of the Lazes, as the Byzantines in the excess of their pride had the insolence. to term the young Alexios-should be declared null by the Greek church, because it had been contracted by a minor without the sanction of his guardian, the

1 Nikephoras Choumnos was præfect of the Kanikleion, or keeper of the purple ink with which the imperial signature was written something between a lord chancellor and a privy-seal. He was the author of several works that still exist in MS. in the libraries of Europe. Some of his writings have been published by Boissonade in the Anecdota Græca, vols. i. and ii. One consists of consolations to his daughter Irene, who, after being rejected by Alexios of Trebizond, was married to the despot John, the third son of Andronicus. The despot died in 1304, and Irene, left a widow at an early age, took the veil under the name of Eulogia. There is also a discourse of Choumnos on the death of the despot John, addressed to his father the emperor Andronicus II.

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orthodox emperor. The patriarch and clergy, alarmed at the ridiculous position in which they were likely to be 1297-1330. placed, took advantage of the interesting condition of the bride, to refuse gratifying the spleen of Andronicus. At this time Eudocia, the mother of Alexios, was at Constantinople. She had rejected her brother's proposal to form a second marriage with the kral of Servia, and was anxious to return to her son's dominions. By persuading Andronicus that her influence was far more likely to make her son agree to a divorce than the sentence of an ecclesiastical tribunal whose authority he was able to decline, she obtained her brother's permission to return to Trebizond. On arriving at her son's court she found him living happily with his young wife; and, on considering the case in her new position, she approved of his conduct, and confirmed him in his determination to resist the tyrannical pretensions of his uncle.1 Eudocia showed herself as much superior to her brother Andronicus in character, judgment, and virtue, as most of the women of the house of Paleologos were to the men. The difference between the males and females of this imperial family is so marked, that it would form a curious subject of inquiry to ascertain how the system of education of the Byzantine empire, at this period, produced an effect so singular and uniform. The ecclesiastical culture of the Greek clergy may possibly have tended to strengthen the female mind, while it weakened and dogmatised that of the men.

Alexios II. displayed both firmness and energy in his internal administration. He defeated an invasion of the Turkomans in the year 1302. Their army, which had advanced to the neighbourhood of Kerasunt, was routed with great slaughter, and their general Koustaga taken prisoner.

The danger to which the empire was exposed by the insolent pretensions of the Genoese, and their endeavours to secure a monopoly of the whole commerce of the Black 1 Pachymeres, tom. ii. 184, 198, edit. Rom.

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CHAP. III. Sea, was as great as that which threatened it from the Turkomans and Mongols. This bold and enterprising people had already gained possession of the most important part of the commerce carried on between western Europe and the countries within the Bosphorus, both on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azof. These commercial relations had been greatly extended after the expulsion of the Latins from Syria, Palestine, and Constantinople; and the Genoese colonies at Galata and Caffa, joined to the turbulence and activity of the people, rendered them dangerous enemies to a maritime state like Trebizond, which was dependent on foreign trade for a considerable portion of its revenues.

At this time the ruin of the commercial cities of Syria, by the invasions of Khoarasmians and Mongols, the insecurity of the caravan roads throughout the dominions of the Mamlouk sultans, the bull of the Pope, forbidding the Christians to hold any commercial intercourse with the Mohammedans under pain of excommunication, and the impossibility of European merchants passing through Syria and Egypt to purchase Indian commodities, all conspired to drive the trade of eastern Asia through the wide-extended dominions of the grand khan of the Mongols, where security for the passage of caravans could be guaranteed from the frontiers of China and Hindostan to the shores of the Caspian and Black Seas. The grand khans, Mongou and Kublai, had cherished the useful arts; and during their reigns the vigorous administration of Houlakou in Persia, Armenia, and Asia Minor, had allowed merchants to wander in safety with their bales from Caffa, Tana, and Trebizond, to Samarcand, Bokhara, and other entrepôts of Indian and Chinese productions. The importance which this trade suddenly acquired, and the amount of wealth it kept in circulation, may be estimated by observing the effects of the Mongol invasions on the commerce of lands that might be sup

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posed to have lain far beyond the sphere of their direct CHAP. III. influence. Gibbon mentions, that the fear of the Tartars prevented the inhabitants of Sweden and Friesland from sending their ships to the fisheries on the British coast, and thus lowered the price of one article of food in England.1

Akaba, the son and successor of Houlakou, on the vassal throne of the Mongols at Tauris, was a friend of the Christians, and an ally of both the Greek emperors, Michael VIII. of Constantinople, and Joannes II. of Trebizond. On ascending the throne he married Maria, the natural daughter of Michael, though she had been destined to become his father's bride.2 The political interests of the Mongols of Tauris suggested to them the advantages to be derived by constituting themselves the protectors of the commercial intercourse between the Christians of Europe and the idolaters of India. The desperate valour of the Mussulmans of western Asia made even the dreaded Tartars seek every means of diminishing the wealth and financial resources of the restless warriors who ruled at Iconium, Damascus, and Cairo. The approval of this policy by the grand khans created an active intercourse with the Tartar empire, and suggested to the Christians hopes of converting the Mongol sovereigns to the papal church. Frequent embassies of friars were sent to the court of Karakorum, whose narratives supply us with much interesting information concerning the state of central Asia in the thirteenth century.3 The commerce of the farthest East had at this period returned to a route it had followed during the wars of the Romans with the Parthians, and of the Byzantine emperors with the Sassanides and the early caliphs.1

1 Decline and Fall, chap. lxiv. note e., vol. xi. p. 422.

2 Pachymeres, tom. i. 116, edit. Rom.

3 Recueil de Voyages et de Mémoires, publié par la Société de Géographie, Paris, 1839, 4to, ably edited by M. d'Avezac.

4 The importance of the commercial relations of the Romans by this route is attested by several passages of Strabo, lib. xi. c. 2 and 3. For later times, compare Menander, 398, edit. Bonn.-Jornandes de Rebus Geticis, c. ii.

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