December. Prosperity of Nicene empire.John Vataces, in consequence of these rumours and as a precaution, allied himself with the Bulgarians. The armies of the two states attacked Constantinople. The Venetians saved the city by arriving in time to make it necessary to raise the siege. Then the Bulgarians made friends with the Latins and allowed a band of Comans (or Tur-comans) who had been driven over the Danube by the Mongols to pass through Bulgaria and take service with the Latins. The emperor of Nicaea could, however, play a similar game, and he induced a band of the same race, who formed excellent light cavalry, to settle on the banks of the Meander and in Phrygia.
John Vataces succeeded, partly by force, partly by persuasion, in inducing the despot of Salonica to abandon the title of emperor and to recognise Nicaea as the true representative of the former empire of Constantine. Vataces thereupon became acknowledged ruler of the kingdom of Salonica from the Aegean to the Adriatic.
Decay of Constantinople.Meantime the wealth and population of Constantinople were diminishing every day. Its commerce had almost gone. What was left was in the hands of the Venetians. No taxes could be levied on the poverty-stricken population. The Greeks of the country around Constantinople, who had been the food-producers and the source of revenue to the merchants of the capital, fled from the constant harass of war and invasions, now by Latins, now by Bulgarians, and now by Greeks, into Asia Minor, where they could labour in the fields or trade in peace and quietness.
The population in other parts of the country were in like straits. The continual money difficulties among the Latin knights and the Crusaders generally caused a widespread spirit of lawlessness. Necessity compelled them to live on the country they were passing through, and wherever they were under the command of a weak ruler, pillage was common and almost unchecked. Before men thus lawless, poor peasants fled in alarm across the Marmora to be not only among their own people but where life and property were secure.
