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Post-1453 Byzantines: Could they have held the city?

The Byzantine agricultural system did use water-powered mills to aid bread-making and water-powered 'lifts' to raise water out of natural or artificial rivers and direct it into irrigation-channels, further developing Roman ideas; this was common across the pre-Islamic conquest Middle East and to some degree then survived in Asia Minor, but I'm not an expert on this and economic history books would give more info.

Some Byzantine emperors made an active effort to revive the 'yeomen' small farmer classes by legislation as the wealthier aristocrats used their economic clout to buy up land from struggling farmers and create harsher tenancies and serf -run estates. After the severe winter and famine of 928 forced a lot of small farmers in marginal land in inland Asia Minor to sell up and/or get into debt the self-made, ex-lower-class admiral turned emperor Romanus Lecapenus (r 919-44, d 948) had all sales of land since 927 cancelled in 934 to stop a flood of forced sales by debt-ridden farmers and enable the farmers to get their land back. After another prolonged burst of forced sales in 995-6 the even more drastic Basil II (the 'Bulgar-Slayer) had all aristocratic purchases of land for the past 75 years, ie since 921, cancelled. He also cancelled all sales or grants of Imperial estates, that were usually given to courtiers or aristocrats for political services , for the past 1000 years, and seized the estates of some super-wealthy nobles for redistribution and made a point of the ex-owners being reduced to peasant status. It was not done from a 'socialist' economic or political theory so much as to help the poorer farmers and crush rich and potentially rebellious aristocrats in the aftermath of a wave of aristo-led revolts in the provinces in the past 3 decades and Basil's main interest was rebuilding the army under his sole leadership, but its use of state power to try to break up the leadership of a 'dangerous' class and create a new class loyal to the Leader was semi-Stalinist. These are the main legislative Byz attacks on the great landed class - and interestingly Basil, very like Louis XIV in France in the 1660s (with rich ex-finance minister Fouquet), was apparently pushed to act after a boastful rich aristo showed off his huge wealth to the Emperor at a reception at his mansion and Basil was alarmed that this man was as rich as he was so he beggared him.

The creation of a new class of small farmers to boost the army and the defence frontier and to establish a secure link of 'Emperor-people' as allies against potentially disruptive or decentralising provincial landowners in the Nicaean state seems to be more a case of necessity and improvisation than an anti-landowner grudge; but it did follow the emperors' defeat of several local aristo autonomists who tried to break away from the state after the sack of the capital in 1204 so there may be a political element too. And the Lascaris/ Vatatzes dynasty were 'service' court nobles not long-standing landed ones in origin; John III created a stir by showing off a new crown that he had purchased out of the profits of selling eggs from the Imperial poultry-farms, which was seen as very non-noble in its priorities!
 
Interesting stuff to read about.

John III created a stir by showing off a new crown that he had purchased out of the profits of selling eggs from the Imperial poultry-farms, which was seen as very non-noble in its priorities!

Do you have a cite for this? I saw it in Norwich and wanted to look it up, but his books are so poorly footnoted (good writer, not so much a good historian) that I couldn't really follow it up at all.
 
The 'crown of eggs' story comes from the late C13th historian Nicephorus Gregoras' 'Historia Romana' (ed Bekker, Berlin edition ?1844 - very little of the Nicaean empire sources have had modern translations and I originally got the story from an English history of the empire which quoted a lot of NG in summaries, 'The Lascarids of Nicaea: An Empire In Exile' by Alice Gardiner, pub 1912). My records cite this as from book 1, chapter 43. The crown was apparently a present from the Emperor's wife Irene to him, which he showed off to his courtiers as an object lesson in prudent financial management.
 
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