By the time the Palaiologoi took power, Italian merchants had come to dominate the trade by sea whilst Turkic incursions prevented any success from trade across roads. Michael VIII Palaiologos strove to restore the capital's greatness, but the resources of the empire were inadequate. In 1282, Michael VIII was forced to drain the treasury to pay the enormous bribe of "hyperpyra" to King Peter III of Aragon to invade the Kingdom of Sicily. Constantinople became once more, as in the seventh and eighth centuries, a ruralized network of scattered nuclei; in the final decades before the fall, the population numbered people. Gradually, the state also lost its influence on the modalities of trade and the price mechanisms, and its control over the outflow of precious metals and, according to some scholars, even over the minting of coins. By 1303, the empire's annual revenue dropped to less than 1,800,000 "hyperpyra", under Andronikos II Palaiologos. In 1321, only with extreme effort was Andonikos II able to raise revenues to 1,000,000 "hyperpyra".