David Komnenos

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David Komnenos (c. 1184 - 1212), joint ruler of Trebizond, was the second son of Manuel Komnenos (born 1145) and of Rusudan, daughter of George III of Georgia. He was a grandson of the Emperor Andronikos I. Andronikos was dethroned and killed in 1185; his son Manuel was blinded and may well have died; at any rate he disappears from the historical record. He left two children, the Caesars Alexios and David. Their mother Rusundan fled either to Georgia or to the southern coast of the Black Sea.

In April 1204, with the aid of Georgian contingent Alexios then twenty two and David captured the city of Trebizond. While Alexios settled down in Trebizond to establish the empire earning himself the sneer of being "a proverbial Hylas, called after and not seen^[1]", David continued on as the "herald and forerunner" of his brother seizing the cities of Kerasunt, Oinaion, Limnia, Samsun, Sinope, Kotiora, Amastris, and Pontic Heracleia. Without a doubt his march was aided by his family's popularity in the region since they had originally sprung from the city of Kastamonu and also by the news of the fall of Constantinople to the Latins^[2].

David first started to cause trouble for the emperor of Nikaia around 1206 when he sent his young general surnamed Synadenos to seize the city of Nikomedia. However because Laskaris led his troops through a rough pass, he caught Synadenos unawares and seized this lad of a general and scattered his forces to the wind. Because of the defeat, in the words of Laskaris's panegyrist Niketas Choniates, he forcibly 'persuaded' David to venture no further than Pontic Herakleia. A while after, after the failed Seljuk attempt on Attalia, Laskaris attacked David in Pontic Herakleia and according to Choniates would have taken the city and forced David to fly from there, had not the Latins laid siege to Nicomedia. Because of this, Laskaris backed off, and marched off to attack them there, but found no encounter since the Latins unwilling to hazard an encounter had retreated in the night back to Byzantium ^[3].

For their temporary aid, David rewarded them with shiploads of corn and hams and also asked the Latin Emperor of Constantinople to include him as his subject in his treaties and correspondence with Laskaris, and to treat his land as Latin territory. David preferred a nominal Latin suzerainty to annexation by the Nicene emperor. Having thus secured his position, he crossed the Sangarios with a body of about 300 Frankish auxiliaries, ravaged the villages subject to Laskaris, and took hostages from Plousias. David withdrew, but the Franks, incautiously advancing into the hilly country, were suddenly surprised by Andronikos Gidos, a general of Laskaris, in the Rough Passes of Nicomedia, and scarcely a man of them was left to tell the tale^[4].

In 1208, Laskaris was back at it again laying siege to the Herakleia. However, this time David called for aid sending a messenger to the Latin emperor Henry of Courtenay begging him to help and warning him that if he did not help him, he would suffer a serious defeat. Leaving his marshal in Adrianople to finish rebuilding the city, Henry then set off against Laskaris, who when he heard that Henry's army was upon him turned head over heels and fled back to Nicaea stopping only there to give thanks to God for his deliverance. Henry's army might have seized more land beyond the Arm of Saint George, had not an abominably cold winter swept in preventing his troops from advancing any further^[5].

Finally however, Laskaris did succeed in prevailing over David. In a battle with the Laskaris he was cast down and the cities of Herakleia, Amastris, Neokastron, and Kotiora were taken from him^[6]. What exactly happened to him in the course of this battle is unknown because had Laskaris captured him, it would probably have drawn some pompous comments from the historians of the Nicaean empire. It seems likely that he might have fled to the Latin emperor, but what ever the case, he himself never saw his brother the emperor Alexios again. On December 12, 1212, David died a monk on Mount Athos under the monkish name Daniel^[7], not as Fallmerayer supposed at Sinope in 1214.