Hello everyone and welcome to the history of Byzantium, episode 323.

At least things can't get any worse.

Last time, we brought to an end one of the most disastrous civil wars in Byzantine history.

John Cantacuzinos allowed the empire's enemies free reign over its people in exchange for victory.

Macedonia was in Serbian hands.

Thessaloniki was in revolt under the zealot government, and Thrace was in ruins.

Though he had proved to be the most resourceful man in Byzantium, Cantacusinos had won very

little love for his conduct during the civil war. His use of Turkish mercenaries to terrorize

ordinary Romans underlined the feeling that some already had,

that the emperor had contempt for his subjects.

John entered Constantinople in February 1347, and he got to work immediately.

He had the patriarch deposed and appointed loyalists to key positions.

He married his daughter to John Palialogos, and he wrote to Stefan Duchan, the Serbian Emperor,

letting him know that war was coming. Cantacusinos also had himself re-crowned as emperor, but it was a humbling ceremony.

He had imitation crown jewels placed on his head because the real ones were in Venetian hands,

and he couldn't afford to redeem them.

The service was conducted in the Church of the Virgin at Flacchannai because the dome of the Haja Sophia had collapsed the previous year,

and the banquet which followed was served on clay plates, as opposed to the gold or silver service,

which had always marked the palace out as a place of ultimate sophistication.

The treasury was truly empty.

If Cantacuzinos wanted a fresh start after the horrors of civil war, then he definitely had it.

He was basically starting from scratch, and given he'd claimed for so long that he was the right man to run the state, well, he now had a

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