Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 222, The Good Helmsman.

Last time we watched Anna's barmond made one last bid for a piece of Byzantium and failed.

Alexius backed him into a corner until the Norman surrendered.

Despite this conclusive victory, the agreement reached between the two men soon became a dead letter.

Barmond never returned to Antioch. He stayed in Apulia and did nothing to help enforce the handover of the city as the treaty stipulated.

After it became clear that the Norman had retired from public life, Alexius sent word to Tancrid, Barmond's nephew, to inform him of the deal that had been struck.

Tancrid refused to accept the treaty and with Byzantine soldiers away in the Balkans he made rapid progress in subduing both Celicia and Laudicia, the Roman strongholds either side of Antioch.

Despite Anna's presentation of Barmond's defeat as a triumph for her father, Alexius' actions make it clear that he did not consider anything less than Antioch's recovery as a real victory.

In response to Tancrid's stonewalling, the Emperor turned to diplomacy and explored every channel possible to find a way to rest Antioch from Norman hands.

Between 1108, when Barmond surrendered and 1113, when plans for Antioch had to be abandoned, Alexius worked hard to form a coalition of support that would allow him to send troops to the Orantes.

The Emperor had to tread carefully though. He knew that his actions were likely to be misinterpreted by the Latins.

So far he'd been blamed for the people's crusade being slaughtered, the first crusaders running out of food, for abandoning the siege of Antioch and for the crusade of 1101 being massacred.

This litany of sins had led men to eagerly stand behind Barmond as he attempted to capture Dereckiom.

Alexius knew that if he tried to retake Antioch without the backing of the Latin world, not only would the mission fail, but it would provoke another assault on Byzantium.

So during the course of that five-year period, Alexius tried to get the Pope, the peasants, and the other crusader states on board for some kind of operation against Antioch.

The peasants, as you know, had sent a fleet to the Levant a few years earlier, one that had attacked Byzantine ports on route.

The peasant archbishop, Dame Byrt, had then been installed as the patriarch of Jerusalem.

Since then, Dame Byrt had fallen out with the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin, and had been exiled from the city.

The peasants were anxious about losing their access to the markets of the Eastern Mediterranean and so responded favorably to Alexius' overtures.

After another brief naval confrontation, the two sides signed a treaty similar to the one Alexius had granted the Venetians decades before.

The agreement made the peasants subordinate to Alex, if the Byzantines, but in exchange, they were granted access to Roman ports at a reduced rate of tax.

The peasants would pay only 4% in customs duties, as opposed to the 10% paid by everyone else except the Venetians who paid none.

...