Eastern Europe and Byzantium: Fragmenting Realms

The importance of governmental and bureaucratic institutions such as those developed in England and France is made especially clear by comparing the experience of regions where they were not established. In eastern Europe, the characteristic pattern was for states to form under the leadership of one great ruler and then to fragment under his successor. For example, King Béla III of Hungary (r. 1172–1196) built up a state that looked superficially like a western European kingdom. He married a French princess, sent his officials to Paris to be educated, and built his palace in the French Romanesque style. The annual income from his estates, tolls, dues, and taxes equaled that of the richest western monarchs. But Béla did not set up enduring governmental institutions, and in the decades that followed his death, wars between his sons splintered his monarchical holdings, and aristocratic supporters divided the wealth.

Rus underwent a similar process. Although twelfth-century Kiev was politically fragmented, autocratic princes to the north constructed Vladimir (also known as Suzdalia), the nucleus of the later Muscovite state. Within the clearly defined borders of this principality, well-to-do towns prospered and monasteries and churches flourished; one chronicler wrote that “all lands trembled at the name [of its ruler].” Yet early in the thirteenth century this nascent state began to crumble as princely claimants fought one another for power, much as Béla’s sons had done in Hungary. Soon Rus would be conquered by the Mongols (See “The Mongol Takeover” in Chapter 12)

Although the Byzantine Empire was already a consolidated bureaucratic state, after the mid-twelfth century it gradually began to show weaknesses. Traders from the west—the Venetians especially—dominated its commerce. The Byzantine emperors who ruled during the last half of the twelfth century downgraded the old civil servants, elevated imperial relatives to high offices, and favored the military elite, who nevertheless rarely came to the aid of the emperor. As Byzantine rule grew more personal and European rule became more bureaucratic, the two gradually became more alike.

The Byzantine Empire might well have continued like this for a long time. Instead, its heart was knocked out by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204). At the instigation of Venice, the crusaders made a detour to Constantinople on their way to the Holy Land, capturing the city in 1204. Although one of the crusade leaders was named “emperor” and ruled in Constantinople and its surrounding territory, the Byzantine Empire itself continued to exist, though disunited and weak. It retook Constantinople in 1261, but it never regained the power that it had had in the eleventh century.