At Rostislav's funeral, Andronika Komneno's appearance was very eye-catching. Although the protagonist of this funeral was Rostislav, to be honest, in practice he was not
main character.
It is very rare for so many princes in the Christian world to gather together. For these monarchs and nobles, this funeral actually provides them with a platform for communication.
At Rostislav's funeral, countless political deals were concluded, and countless marriages were concluded. On the stage, there was a sad funeral for the European grandfather, but behind the stage, there were various activities with different agendas.
Because there were so many princes attending the funeral, a series of political events that occurred in almost all of Europe in the following decades were considered to have been achieved at this funeral, so there were many studies on it in later generations.
However, Andronikos, the monarch of the Eastern Empire who was supposed to be the center of the conspiracy whirlpool, actually did not participate in any of these bad things. He was one of the few people who truly mourned the death of Rosti.
After the funeral, the Ecumenical Patriarch who came from Constantinople consecrated Rostislav as a saint. The Catholic envoys present also expressed their approval. After all, as a man who lived a full 107 years and joined Europe
His status as a grandfather makes him more than enough to become a saint.
The Patriarch later distributed Rostislav's corpse in water. This is a Christian tradition. The water soaked in the saint's body is considered to have miraculous effects, and Rostislav, as a saint with so many legends,
, his corpse was soaked in water and immediately everyone rushed to drink it.
After Rostislav's funeral, Andronikos returned to Constantinople, and his rule began.
The Roman Empire that Andronikos I took over was currently experiencing many problems. Although John II left behind a stable empire and a abundant treasury, this still could not cover up the icebergs beneath the water.
But if you want to give yourself such a sacred aura, you can't just improve people's lives. Andronikos needs military exploits, or big military exploits, but this is exactly what Andronikos wants.
, he wanted to revive the Roman Empire more than anyone else, and his next series of actions allowed him to complete his ideas.
In the final analysis, this is the divine right of kings, but Andronikos played a new trick based on his predecessors. This new trick will be an important way for Andronikos to realize his political ideals.
The defeated Andronikos thought about the reasons for everything, and finally came to the conclusion that there was a traitor! There must be a traitor! And who are the traitors? Of course they are the nobles!
Andronikos returned to Constantinople. He announced that the nobles had betrayed him, and then began to mobilize the masses to attack the nobles. The nobles of the Eastern Empire were extremely shocked by all this. Although they did not like the emperor, they did not
As for betraying the emperor because of this?
The battle broke out outside the city of Rome. Before the battle began, Andronikos hung the corpses of Catholics on the road where the Catholic army was passing. His original intention was to scare them, but in the end, the Catholic army was unwilling to fight.
It became even more intense, which made them firmly believe that precisely because of everything in front of them, they could not resurrect the monster named Rome.
The first is the seriousness of land annexation. Since the Komnenos family actually uses their own family’s private property to govern the empire and act as the largest land annexer, others naturally follow suit and start annexing crazily, not to mention the Komnenos family.
In order to reward meritorious people, the Ning family also allocated a lot of land.
But the empire has been angered by Andronika, and the pressure of years of war has actually made the people miserable. If it weren't for Andronika's powerful prestige and aura of deification, the people would have rebelled long ago.
While carrying out various reforms, Andronikos did not mind using superstitious means to increase his legitimacy. He made use of the prophecies that Manuel obtained from the seers: Alexios I pioneered
How long can the dynasty rule? The response given is "αιμα" (word), whose first three letters list the first letters of the names of the emperors of the Komnenos dynasty in order, Alexius I, John
II, Manuel I, the last "α" letter will belong to the emperor after Manuel, namely Andronikos.
In 1156, Andronikos launched the conquest of the Kingdom of Sicily. On the battlefield in southern Italy, the monarch of the Eastern Empire showed his unparalleled military capabilities. Even when the Kingdom of Sicily received a large amount of aid from the Catholic world,
He still conquered the country and casually snatched Croatia from the Kingdom of Hungary.
The "Discussion of Ancient Political Forms" will therefore be regarded as a banned book after the Age of Blood. Church scholars call it "It must be something written by Satan. Just one look at it will lead to corruption and bring endless disasters."
"
After the recapture of Rome, the imperial army marched northward, and Italian states continued to surrender. Andronikos did not even go to Italy in person, because in his opinion there was only rotten fish and shrimp left there. Just when everyone thought that regaining Italy was just a matter of
When it came to time, things changed.
But at the same time, there is also a folk explanation for this αίμα. The first letter of Alexios is A, the first letter of John is I, the first letter of Manuel is M, and the first letter of Andronikos is also
A, AIMA together means "blood". Although historians believe that this is just a historical invention of later generations, it does predict the rule of Andronikos and the chaos and killings that will follow after his death.
Therefore, this statement is still accepted by people today.
The battle lasted from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. When the sun was finally going down, the Catholic army withdrew from the battlefield, and the Orthodox army was unable to continue fighting. The battlefield was a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, with more than 50,000 corpses, not to mention the
The number of wounded is uncountable.
After the incident was a little over, Andronikos used the forcibly collected noble wealth and heavy noble taxes to organize a new army. As this army arrived in Italy, the total number of the imperial army reached 100,000, and
They faced approximately the same number of Catholic troops.
But now the emperor told everyone that they were living so hard because of the nobility, and the war was not going well because of the nobility, and the flame was directly ignited.
In 1175, Andronikos held an unprecedented grand celebration ceremony in Constantinople, because after such a long and bitter battle, the imperial army finally invaded Rome and the heart of the Roman Empire was recovered!
With Andronika forcibly announcing the merger of the Eastern and Western churches, Andronika's prestige once again reached its peak, but what no one expected was that this was the beginning of a change in the form.
But now, the disadvantages of this have also emerged. Large, bloated and corrupt have become synonymous with the imperial bureaucracy. Although it is okay to continue to drive broken cars in an era when everyone is driving, but Andro
Nika couldn't stand it.
Just when the entire Latin world was fearful of the outcome of the Battle of Rome, they discovered that the armies of the Eastern Empire began to retreat, and the tyrant of Constantinople returned to his country.
This is the army that Andronikos obtained in exchange for using violence to forcibly gather wealth. If this fails, Andronikos's only choice is to retreat to Constantinople and try again to see if he can keep what he already has.
territory.
The Catholic world did not lose its ability to resist due to the fall of Rome. On the contrary, the Catholic monarchs who had retained their reservations all clearly realized that the "tyrant of Constantinople" really intended to be the "Reviver of the World"
"!
This caused great unrest in the Catholic world. People recalled the rumors about the power of the Roman Empire, coupled with the evil rumors of Andronica. The nobles, towns, and peasants were all worried about "Constantine".
"The Tyrant of the Castle" was filled with fear.
Secondly, there was the chaos and corruption of the imperial official system. When the Komnenos family took over the empire, the entire empire had already lost its eastern half, and the western half was also dilapidated by the war. Emperor Komnenos was completely in the spirit of still being able to use it.
The idea of just continuing to use it drove this state machine, and it did help the emperors a lot.
But we are still far from that moment. Let us continue to discuss Andronikos's rule. The internal reforms and the reconquest of the Syrian kingdom took Andronikos almost eight years, until 1154, and then
After the Kingdom of Syria once again perished, the Latins in Syria were either expelled or massacred, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem was defeated by Andronikos, and even once the army came to the city, all this came to an end.
In 1170, Andronikos landed in Spain with 30,000 people. The Eastern Empire army directly defeated the two most powerful Taifa on the peninsula. With their defeat, the Ibis who originally belonged to them
The Taifa of Leah all defected to the imperial army one after another. They were constantly retreating under the pressure of the Catholic kings in the north. The two powerful Taifa who were defeated before could not stop this trend at all, so now there are stronger ones coming,
Moreover, this strong man didn't care much about their Muslim identity, so the Taifa surrendered under the Imperial Legion one after another. In this way, the Empire owned half of Spain in less than a year.
A new Catholic coalition was organized, and they decided to prevent the resurrection of the monster called Rome. Under such circumstances, Andronikos' army continued to suffer defeats.
While carrying out vigorous reforms, Andronikos did an important event that made the era after his death known as the Age of Blood. He published the pamphlet Rostislav gave him, "Ancient Political Formations"
discuss".
In other parts of the empire, many nobles were also affected, but the losses were not as serious as those in Constantinople. Moreover, these attacks soon turned qualitative, targeting not only the nobles, but also "all the rich."
", and the definition of this rich person is very subtle.
News of the failure reached Constantinople, and the entire capital was in an uproar. Andronikos immediately went to Italy to gather forces. However, he continued to suffer defeat, and was forced back to Rome not long after.
The emperor found that there was only one choice before him, which was to retreat. He was very reluctant to retreat because he had a strong feeling in his heart that if he left, everything would be over, but the form was in front of him.
Faced with these problems, Andronikos adopted the method of serious illness and strong medicine. On the one hand, he strongly curbed and even attacked the land annexation of the nobles, forcing them to vomit out all the land they had recently annexed, and at the same time, he overhauled the bureaucracy.
Reform and blood change, on the other hand, he struck hard at opponents and separatist forces, and the Syrian kingdom that became independent under Manuel's stupid policies became an important target of his attack.
The so-called divine power refers to illusory things. In the political and economic ideology of the imperial subjects, mentioning divine power will immediately produce a spiritual reflection. For example, when subjects receive rewards from the emperor, they will be mentioned in the preface of the reward certificate.
Divine power, and explain that this divine power can play an important role in managing daily affairs.
In the Eastern Empire, due to this series of miraculous achievements, Andronikos was regarded as a person favored by God, and the theory of the Silent Sect was also generally accepted. It is no exaggeration to say that Andronikos is now
The gods of the people of the empire, the true gods.
In 1183, more than 200,000 troops began fighting outside the city of Rome. The emperor and the Pope were both present. This would be a bloody day, and it would also be a day that decided the fate of Christendom.
At the same time, he abolished the economic privileges of the Latins and expelled the Latins from Constantinople, which brought his popularity to a peak in the empire.
After vigorous reforms, the empire glowed with unprecedented vitality. The people generally felt that their burdens were lighter and their lives had become better. However, the powerful people, including the church, felt very uncomfortable. They were cruelly punished by Andronikos.
A large piece of meat was dug out, but they did not have the courage to resist, because those who resisted were quickly suppressed.
What happened in Constantinople was the climax of this incident. The top dignitaries of the empire, such as the Dukas family, became the main targets of the attack. Many top dignitaries were dragged to the streets and killed like dead pigs.
Many wealthy businessmen were also wiped out.
Andronikos was considered victorious, but then he discovered that his army could not advance at all. The huge casualties, or the continuous battles over the years, made the soldiers unable to hold on.
This great work is quietism (Rustislav language). Its essence is that the essence of religion is the embodiment of divine energy. God transmits divine energy to the world through thought-"Logos", which is accepted by the world and affects people.
In daily life, God's thought - "Logos" is embodied by endowing people with divine energy, prompting God's will to act on people. As a result, the phenomenon of worshiping a certain person as a god appears.
There is indeed nothing wrong with what the Comnenus family did back then, but now times have changed. These nobles who are like Leviathans devouring the land have actually become a destabilizing factor for the empire, and they are constantly running on people.
The resulting bankruptcy of yeoman farmers will also have a great impact on the rule of the empire.
These achievements are so brilliant that they remind people of the distant era of Justinian, but Andronikos still leads people more to Aurelian and to think of the "restorer of the world."
As a child who was brought up by Rostislav, Andronika has one thing that Rostislav really wants to do, that is, he wants to do some social practice and see if society can move towards a better place under different forms.
, but unlike Rostislav who knew what would be released when opening the box, Andronika was a newborn calf who was not afraid of tigers.
And it was also during these eight years that Andronikos combined what he learned from Rostislav and worked with several respected monks to create a big job.
In 1168, in North Africa, the Eastern Empire army first took over the occupied areas left by the Normans. Then Andronika rushed all the way to the east, taking the eastern coastline into his bag. They did not stop until Algiers.
advance, and most of the former empire's province of Carthage has been recovered.
As a result, Northern Italy became a battlefield. The Catholic world could not sit back and watch the Eastern Empire take over Italy, so the Holy Roman Emperor and the consuls of Northern Italy put aside their disputes and went to fight the "tyrant of Constantinople" together.
, as for the Italian city-states headed by Venice, their interests have been harmed and they have long been engaged in fighting with the emperor. France, England, and Northern Europe also have volunteers from places like France, England, and Northern Europe.
Finally, there is Andronika's opposition. Manuel still has some invisible supporters throughout the empire, and there are also separatist forces that are ready to move because of the independence of the Kingdom of Syria.
In 1162, Andronikos began a large-scale offensive. The number of troops he mobilized directly exceeded 80,000, and his target was Rome.
In Northern Italy, due to the equal amount of troops invested by both sides on the battlefield, it was a stalemate for a time. Both sides built a network of fortresses, and there were constant battles between ships at sea. Andronikos was not someone who could sit idle.
After ensuring that there were no problems on the front line, he began to take action in other areas.
The Catholic and Orthodox worlds went into full-scale war. However, the other two powerful Orthodox countries, Rus' and Georgia, responded slowly to this. They did not want to participate in distant wars, and at most allowed some mercenaries and volunteers to participate in the war.
And just when everyone thought Andronika would stop temporarily, the monarch's next operation made everyone feel fear.
He even took the initiative to send an envoy to express peace, but what he wanted was not much, but the existing empire territory and the nominal surrender of the Catholic world. No one thought much about it. Just surrender, at least there would be no need to fight. Everyone
With this agreement, the war was finally over.
Three years later, in 1186, the tyrant of Constantinople died, and his era ended.
But no one in the empire expected that after his death, the empire would become worse and worse, leading to the bloody era of blood...