the golden horde and the black sea 243
this aside, the grand coalition was in the best of shape when the treaty
was signed, and was ready to begin hostilities when hülegü unexpectedly
struck a counterblow which broke the alliance: under pressure from the
Ilkhan, Byzantium defected.
though his allies were taken by surprise, Michael VIII palaiologos’
defection was rooted in a political double game that he had been playing
ever since he returned to constantinople, or even the year before: at one
and the same time, or at any rate within the space of a very few months,
the emperor had reached bilateral agreements with Baybars, Berke, ‛Izz
al-Dīn, the Genoese and also with their implacable enemy, hülegü.398
Michael VIII’s volte-face took place in the context of his first major for-
eign policy review, when he was trying to reach an understanding with
Western forces hostile to the Byzantine restoration, chief among them
Venice and the papacy. his initiatives in this direction dealt a blow to his
recently-made allies, especially to Genoa, threatened with the loss of the
advantages it had secured at Nymphaion in 1261. Genoa reacted with the
conspiracy of its podestà in constantinople, Guglielmo Guercio, who in
1264 plotted to depose the emperor and surrender the city to the Latins
under Manfred of Sicily.399
Given this political context, it is unsurprising that the Ilkhan did not
need to exert excessive pressure on Byzantium to get what he wanted.400
however nimbly he played the great powers off against each other,
Michael VIII could not avoid the inevitable, given Byzantium’s weakness
and its position at a major geopolitical faultline. the earthquake came
after the cairo ‘conference’ of 1263 had ended, and indeed as a direct
result. When Sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Baybars learnt in July 1264 that his
envoys to the khan at Sarai, who had left cairo a year before, had been
held in constantinople, he flew into a rage.401
398 cf. Dölger, Regesten, III, p. 40, Schmid, Beziehungen, p. 126, and chapter 3.3.1.
399 cf. papacostea, “crise,” pp. 340–341 (for the political context, passim), Dölger, Rege-
sten, III, pp. 48–49, caro, Genua, I, p. 169, Geanakoplos, Emperor, pp. 175–180.
400 hülegü had attempted a similar strategem in 1262, when he sent ambassadors to
the West to call crusading forces to war against their common enemy, the Mamluk sul-
tan; unlike his success in constantinople, this attempt was a failure, and his envoys were
captured by King Manfred, who was on friendly terms with Sultan Baybars (cf. papacostea,
“crise,” p. 347; nevertheless it was only the first in a long series of such attempts, continued
by his successors (see chapter 3.1, pp. 77 ff.).
401 Ibn ‛abd al-Ẓāhir/tiesenhausen, Sbornik, I, p. 52, and al-Mufaḍḍal, ibid., p. 178, say
that the ambassadors were bringing unusually rich gifts, including exotic animals; they were
returning from the Golden horde along with Berke’s envoys, whose fate is unrecorded.