HISTORY OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE FROM

A.D. 717 TO 1453

BOOK THIRD

DECLINE AND FALL OF THE BYZANTINE GOVERNMENT

A.D. 1057-1204

 

CHAPTER VIII.

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT MODIFIED BY THE DESTRUCTION OF THE POPULATION IN ASIA MINOR. A.D. 1057-1081

 

Sect. I

Reigns of Isaac I (Comnenus), and of Constantine X (Ducas)

A.D. 1057-1081.

 

The contemporaries of Isaac Comnenus believed that the Byzantine, or, as they called it, the Roman empire, had attained a degree of wealth and power which secured it a permanent superiority over every other government. A review of the vicissitudes it had undergone in the preceding ages, entitled them to look forward with confidence to centuries of future prosperity. But to those who study the causes of decline in the Byzantine government from a modern point of view, the empire presents a very different aspect. To us, it is apparent that the administrative organization of the Byzantine state, and the social and religious feelings of the popular mind, had already undergone a change for the worse. The power of the emperor had become more absolute in the capital, by the neglect of official education and regular promotion among the servants of the state. The arbitrary will of the emperor had taken the place of the usages of the administration, and courtiers now assumed duties which were formerly executed only by well-trained and experienced officials. This increase of arbitrary power did not conduce to augment the energy of the central government in distant provinces: justice was administered with less firmness and equity, and the distant population felt fewer benefits from their connection with the emperor and with Constantinople. The concentration of all executive power in the cabinet of the sovereign, moreover, caused much important business, in which neither the emperor’s personal interest nor authority appeared to be immediately interested, to be greatly neglected; for sovereigns, like private individuals, look with more attention at what relates to their own advantage than at what concerns only the public welfare. The repairs of distant ports, aqueducts, and roads, the improvement of frontier fortifications, and the civil government of unprofitable possessions, were held to absorb more than a due proportion of the funds required to maintain the imperial dignity. The pageants of the palace, of the hippodrome, and of the church, became every year more splendid, for each emperor wished to surpass his predecessors; and in no branch of the imperial duties was it so easy to purchase popular applause. In the meantime, the facilities of provincial intercommunication and the defence of the frontiers were proportionably neglected.

The emperors themselves must be held responsible for the decline of the imperial administration in the Byzantine Empire. The Basilian dynasty, which ruined the political edifice, was an inferior race of men to the Isaurian princes who repaired it. Basil I was ignorant of civil business, and ill fitted by education to appreciate the value of the system of which accident constituted him the head. Leo VI, Constantine VII, and Romanus II never appeared as leaders of the Roman armies. It was therefore not unnatural that these princes, alarmed by the repeated rebellions, seditions, and conspiracies of the great officers of state and commanders-in-chief should feel extremely jealous of the territorial aristocracy, which had secured to themselves the possession of the highest posts in the government of the empire. In order to avoid the danger of intrusting the nobility with official power, these emperors established a board, consisting of their own private secretaries, which controlled the acts of the ministers of state; and they gradually filled the highest offices in the administration, as well as in the court, with persons belonging to their private households. Every other object gave way to the importance of guarding against revolutions and rebellions; and as the nomination of eunuchs to the highest dignities was a considerable security against the frequent attempts to change the emperor, which had proved so destructive to private property and commercial enterprise, it was not unpopular among the wealthy and industrious citizens and agriculturists. As eunuchs were incapable of mounting the throne, their interests generally led them to guard against revolution, and avoid change. Hence it was that they were so frequently entrusted with the command of large armies and important military expeditions; and, what appears to modern ideas a degradation of the empire, was by contemporaries regarded as a wise conservative policy.

The practice of conducting public business through the medium of a cabinet of private secretaries, led to many evils. Councils of the ministers and great officers of state were laid aside, and the authority of established usages and systematic rules was diminished. Each minister and general received his orders directly from the emperor, and communicated with the imperial secretary charged with the correspondence of the particular department to which the affair in question might relate; and, consequently, subserviency to power became the surest means of advancing the fortunes of all public servants. Wealth was attained and ambition was gratified by affected devotion to the person of the emperor, by mean servility to the court favourite, and by active intrigue among the members of the imperial household, much more surely and rapidly than by attention to professional duties or by patriotic services.

This change in the position of the dignitaries of the empire enabled the sovereign to entrust the direction of the government to the stewards of his household. Now, though these men were not trained in the public service, yet their previous duties prevented the practice from producing so great an amount of public inconvenience as to cause general dissatisfaction. It lowered the standard of official attainments, and diminished the influence of personal responsibility and high character, but it led immediately to no actual disorder. We must recollect that many of the great families in the Byzantine Empire at this period possessed households so numerous as often to count their domestic slaves by thousands. Those who maintained such establishments in the capital were proprietors of immense estates in the provinces, and the intendants who managed their affairs were consequently trained to business in a school which afforded them as extensive an experience of government as can now be gained by the individuals who direct the administration of many of the German principalities. This fact affords some explanation of the capacity for government so generally displayed by the aristocracy of the Roman and Byzantine empires, and of the aptitude shown by eunuchs to perform the duties of ministers, and even of generals. Both these classes found their sphere of duty enlarged and not changed, when from nobles they became emperors, or from stewards ministers of state. But this system being opposed to the true basis of society, which requires a free circulation in all its classes, had a tendency to weaken the body politic. The imperfection of our knowledge in relation to the connection between social and political science, often prevents our tracing the decline of states to their real causes, which are probably more frequently moral than political

We have seen that the Basilian dynasty transferred the direction of public affairs from the aristocracy to the stewards of the imperial household. These domestics carried on the work of political change by filling the public offices with their own creatures, and thereby destroying the power of that body of state officials, whose admirable organization had repeatedly saved the empire from falling into anarchy under tyrants, or from being ruined by peculation under aristocratic influence. In this manner the scientific fabric of the imperial power, founded by Augustus, was at last ruined in the East as it had been destroyed in the West. The emperors broke the government to pieces before strangers divided the empire.

The revolution which undermined the systematic administration was already consummated before the rebellion of the aristocracy placed the imperial crown on the head of Isaac Comnenus. No organized body of trained officials any longer existed to resist the egoistical pretensions of the new intruders into ministerial authority. The emperor could now make his household steward prime-minister, and the governor of a province could appoint his butler prefect of the police. The church and the law alone preserved some degree of systematic organization and independent character. It was not in the power of an emperor to make a man a lawyer or a priest with the same ease he could appoint him a chamberlain or a minister of state.

As it was under the later princes of the Basilian period that scientific knowledge ceased to be a requisite for official rank, it is from this period that we must date the decline of every species of information and learning in Byzantine society. The farther we advance in this history we shall see that the house of Comnenus only pursued the course traced out for the imperial government by its predecessors. Basil II was the last emperor of the East who had a really Roman policy, and his views were confined too exclusively to military affairs. Circumstances henceforward directed the progress of events. No future emperor possessed the enlarged views or the political capacity necessary to arrest the social decay that was destroying the Byzantine power, nor did any one aspire at the glory of giving a new organization to the imperial government, in accordance with the new exigencies of society and the altered interests of the various classes of the population. One example will sufficiently explain the manner in which official ignorance and local seclusion operated in destroying the foundations of the internal administration. They rendered the collection of the statistical information, on which the census had been reviewed, extremely difficult. For eleven centuries the Roman census had been accurately compiled; and, from the time of Constantine at least, it had been carefully revised every fifteenth year, in order that necessary reductions and modifications of the most injurious imposts might thus be forcibly obtruded on the attention of the central government. Although the rigid system of dividing the subjects of the emperor into classes or castes ceased after the fall of the Western Empire, and the Byzantine government did not, like the Emperor Augustus, force every man to go up to be taxed into his own city, still the census continued to be framed with great minuteness: every proprietor, every individual inhabitant of the empire, and every species of property, were inscribed in its registers by experienced officials. But when whole provinces were depopulated by the ravages of the Bulgarians and the Saracens, and extensive districts were peopled only by the herdsmen and shepherds of large landed proprietors, like the president Basilios and Eustathios Maleinos, the old system of the census was necessarily relaxed. The great corps of land-surveyors, estimators, and assessors, which for ten centuries had performed its duties with systematic precision, was first diminished, from motives of economy, and then disorganized by being placed under the orders of ignorant and rapacious inspectors, chosen from among the favourites of the court. The consequence was, that this great branch of the Roman imperial constitution was gradually neglected by statesmen who pretended to govern by precedent on conservative principles; and as the census was more and more imperfectly executed, the central government became constantly more ignorant of its real resources.

The insecurity of property in the frontier provinces, and the ignorance resulting from the secluded life of the lower classes on large agricultural estates, reduced the judicial establishments of the empire. As communications became rarer, the business of the courts of law diminished; and, except in the commercial cities, there no longer existed a body of independent lawyers to watch the judges, and restrain the exactions of the fiscal administration and the territorial aristocracy. The judges themselves soon became an inferior class of men, as they were no longer able to procure the voluminous and expensive law-books required to qualify them for pronouncing their decisions with promptitude and equity. Justice consequently was ill administered, and the people in the distant provinces became more inclined to seek protection from the great landed aristocracy of their immediate neighbourhood, than to look, as formerly, to the emperor alone for security and justice. The spell, which had so long, and under so many vicissitudes, connected the people with the central authority, was thus broken.

In this general decline of civilization, while the roads were falling to decay and the population decreasing, it seems strange that the revenues of the Byzantine Empire continued almost undiminished. This circumstance resulted from two causes. The ruin of the power of the caliphs removed a commercial rival in Asia, and the improvement in the condition of the people throughout Europe created additional markets for the commerce of the East and the manufactures of the Byzantine cities; at the same time, the abundant supply of the precious metals, which for about two centuries had aided in sustaining the power of the emperor, still continued. Though it is difficult to trace from what sources this supply flowed, the fact itself is well established.

The army, next to the finances, was the basis on which the emperors rested their power. The depopulation of the agricultural districts, and the high price of labour in the manufacturing and commercial cities, rendered the Byzantine government more dependent on foreign mercenaries in the eleventh and twelfth centuries than it had been in the ninth and tenth. At the same time, the rapid advances which the population of the other European nations was now making in wealth and civilization rendered it more difficult than formerly for the emperors to purchase the military services of the best European warriors. From this period the Byzantine armies begin to be inferior to those of the western nations; their military system was conservative, while that of the western nations was progressive. The Normans were already superior to the Byzantine troops in valour and endurance, and almost their equals in tactics and science: they soon became their superiors in every military accomplishment, science, and virtue.

 

ISAAC I. AD. 1057

 

The reign of Isaac Comnenus, though short, proves that he was a man of no ordinary powers of mind. He saw clearly the downward tendency of Byzantine affairs, and he made a vigorous effort to arrest their descent. His education had afforded him the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the whole fabric of the government, and his natural talents enabled him to profit by the advantages of his position. Hence, although he was placed on the throne as the leader of an aristocratic revolution, his policy was to preserve and not to alter the ancient system of administration. His father, Manuel Comnenus, had been a favourite officer of the Emperor Basil II; and, when he died, that prince had undertaken the guardianship of his two sons, Isaac and John. They received the best education which the age afforded in the monastery of Studion, and Isaac commenced his career of public service in the emperor’s bodyguard. Under the eye of the indefatigable Basil he learned the steady application to business and the active warlike habits of that prince; but with these virtues he acquired also something of the grave, melancholy, and inflexible character of his patron.

The powerful partisans who had raised him to the throne naturally shared the principal dignities of the empire among themselves; but Isaac, in as far as he was able, conferred on them rewards which induced them to quit the capital, and leave him free to direct the central administration without their interference. Katakalon received the office of curopalates, which was also conferred on the emperor’s brother John Comnenus, in whose person it was united with that of megas domestikos, or commander of the forces. The support of the patriarch Michael Keroularios, whose boldness and activity made him an important ally, was purchased by an imprudent augmentation of his political power. The right of nominating the grand economus or chancellor, and the skevophylax or treasurer of the church of St Sophia, had been hitherto vested in the emperor, who now resigned it to the ambitious patriarch.

The dilapidated state of the finances, caused by the extravagant expenditure of Constantine IX (and indeed of most of the emperors who had filled the throne since the death of Basil II, all of whom had wasted immense sums in gifts to their favourites, in courtly splendour, and in ecclesiastical buildings, called for Isaac’s immediate attention, and his first care was to reform the administration of the public revenue. He annulled the grants of the state domains made by the successors of Basil II to private individuals, and resumed the sums affected for the foundation and maintenance of a number of monasteries in which the monks were living together rather like clubs of wealthy bachelors than as holy societies of virtuous cenobites. To each monastery the emperor made an allowance of a pension, fixed according to the number of the monks by which it was tenanted. This reduction of the wealth of men who in many cases had sought retirement to enjoy luxurious ease, very naturally excited much dissatisfaction among the higher classes, to whom the monasteries had been useful by affording the means of providing for near relations in a becoming manner without expense; but John Scylitzes, the best historian of this period, who himself attained the rank of curopalates, approves of the conduct of Isaac in curtailing the incomes of the monks. The emperor also carried his reforms into his own court by diminishing the expenditure of the imperial household, and abolishing many pensions conferred on senators, nobles, and courtiers, as a matter of favour, without their having any duties to perform. Whenever the arbitrary will of individuals can influence government, there is a great difficulty in preventing the unnecessary accumulation of high-paid and useless titled functionaries. Courtiers receive military rank for which they have no qualification, and without any reference to the numbers of the army or navy. The reforms by which Isaac sought to eradicate these abuses offended a considerable body of idle courtiers in the capital, who were enjoying the fruits of severe impositions wrung from the provinces, and he was assailed with murmurs of dissatisfaction. The poor had too many causes of suffering, which the emperor could do nothing to relieve, to have derived any immediate benefit from these reforms, or felt any gratitude to the reformer. Isaac, indeed, adopted his improvements for the purpose of rendering the public establishments of the empire more efficient, and without any view of diminishing the weight of the public burdens. Every report to his disadvantage was eagerly circulated among the ecclesiastics and the courtiers; they were disseminated among the people, and have coloured the views of historians concerning his character and policy. Every Byzantine writer cites as a proof of his unbounded arrogance that he changed the type of the gold coinage of the empire, and impressed on it his own figure, with a drawn sword in his right hand,—thereby, as they pretend, ascribing his elevation to the throne, not to the grace of God, but to his own courage.

The emperor vainly endeavoured to quiet the turbulent and ambitious disposition of the patriarch by bestowing offices of honour and profit on his nephews; the demands of the proud priest grew daily more exorbitant and his language more insolent. When Isaac at length refused his requests, he indignantly exclaimed to his followers, “I made him an emperor, and I can unmake him”. He proclaimed himself the equal of his sovereign by wearing the red boots which the severe ceremonial of the Byzantine court had set apart as one of the distinctive ensigns of the imperial power. This assumption was really equivalent to an act of rebellion against the civil power; and when the patriarch was reproached with his pretensions, he defended his conduct by declaring that there was little or no difference between an emperor and a patriarch, except in so far as the ecclesiastical dignity was more honourable. As such insolence could not be safely tolerated, the emperor determined to depose Michael Keroularios and appoint a new patriarch; but as it appeared dangerous to take any measures openly against the head of the church in the capital, Isaac watched for an opportunity to arrest Michael when he quitted the city to perform an ecclesiastical ceremony without the walls on the feast of the Holy Apostles. The patriarch was then taken into custody by a company of Varangians, and transported to the island of Proconnesus. Preparations were going on to depose him in a synod convoked for the purpose, when his death relieved the emperor from all trouble, and enabled him to name the president Constantinos Leichudes as his successor, who, though a layman, was elected by the metropolitans, the clergy, and the people, in regular form. The high reputation of Leichudes rendered his nomination popular. For a long time he had been the principal minister of the Emperor Constantine IX, and his prudent administration was supposed to have averted many of the evil consequences with which that prince’s vices threatened the empire.

An invasion of the Hungarians and Patzinaks suddenly summoned Isaac to the northern frontier in the summer of 1059. When he reached Triaditza, the Hungarians and the greater part of the Patzinaks retired, and concluded a treaty of peace. Selté alone, one of the four chiefs who had conducted the famous retreat of the Patzinak auxiliaries from Asia Minor across the Bosphorus in 1049, refused to agree to any terms, and carried on the war from the fastnesses he held on the banks of the Danube. He was, however, soon defeated, and his stronghold destroyed; but while the Byzantine army lay encamped near Lobitza, which had been fortified by Selté as a stronghold in the time of Constantine IX, a sudden autumnal storm broke over the camp with fearful violence; men and horses were swept away by the torrents, and the tents were blown down. The emperor sought shelter under a magnificent old oak, where he was leaning against the trunk when a sudden noise behind induced him to withdraw a few paces in astonishment. His wonder was soon increased by a terrific clap of thunder, and the mighty oak against which he had been leaning fell all around, shivered to pieces. The communications of the army were interrupted by the snow for a few days, and the troops were in danger of starvation. This storm having occurred on the 24th of September, which is the feast of St Thekla, the emperor, as soon as he returned to Constantinople, dedicated a chapel in the palace of Blachern to this saint, whose especial protection he believed had saved him from death.

Not long after his return to Constantinople, the emperor was suddenly attacked by a dangerous illness as he was hunting on the shores of the Bosphorus. Michael Psellos, whose treachery had aided him in mounting the throne, records that his malady was an attack of pleurisy; but Scylitzes adopts the opinion generally current among the people, that the disease had a miraculous origin. Isaac was as passionately devoted to the chase as any of his predecessors, or as any Norman king. As he was pursuing a wild boar of monstrous aspect, the grim animal directed its course straight to the sea, and vanished in the waters of the Bosphorus. In disappearing, it shadowed forth “a demoniacal form, and a flash of lightning threw the emperor senseless from his horse”. He was taken up in an alarming state by his attendants, and transported in a boat to the imperial palace. His life was for some time in danger; and believing himself to be on the point of death, he assumed the monastic garb, and selected as his successor Constantine Ducas, the man he deemed best able to restore order in the administration from his financial skill. To enable the empire to profit by the services of the man best suited to its circumstances, Isaac set aside his own brother John; yet he was deceived in his choice. He recovered from his illness; but when restored to health, he showed no regret that he had resigned the throne, and retired into the monastery of Studion, where he had received his education, performing all the duties of the humblest monk, and taking his turn to act as porter at the gate. His wife Catherine, a princess of the Bulgarian royal family, confirmed him in his pious resolutions, and retired also from the world with her daughter Maria. After the death of Isaac, his wife celebrated the anniversary of his decease by an annual religious ceremony, at which she made a liberal distribution of alms. On one occasion she ordered the sum to be doubled, and when it was observed that the liberality was too great for her fortune, she replied, “Perhaps these gifts may be the last I can bestow.” Her presentiment was soon verified, and her last solemn command was that her body should be interred in the cemetery of Studion as a simple nun, without any sign to indicate that she was born a Bulgarian princess and had been a Roman empress.

Constantine X displayed on the throne little of the talent which Isaac I had supposed him to possess. He had appeared an able minister as long as his conduct was directed by an energetic superior, but on the throne he acted as an avaricious pedant. He declared that he valued his learning more than his empire, and his reign must have convinced his subjects that his intellect fitted him for composing orations according to the rules of rhetoric rather than for governing men according to the dictates of justice. Avarice and vanity directed his whole conduct as emperor; naturally sluggish, he hardly thought seriously on any subject but how to increase the receipts of the imperial treasury, and how to display his own eloquence. To satisfy the first, he augmented the weight of taxation by selling the public income to farmers of the revenue, who used every exaction to augment their profits; and to give his people an opportunity of appreciating his eloquence, he sate as a civil judge when he ought to have been performing the duties of a sovereign. Yet even in his judicial capacity he constantly violated the laws, from a blind confidence in his own discernment, which led him to believe that he could measure out equity to individuals in opposition to the general principles of the law.

To save money, he reduced the army, neglected to supply the troops with arms, artillery, and warlike stores, and left the fortifications on the frontiers unrepaired and the garrisons unpaid. Isaac had cleared away an accumulation of brevet officers receiving high pay; Constantine X reinstated many of these in their previous rank, to form a heavy and useless burden on the military establishment of the empire. He also made great promotions among the senators, municipal officers, and heads of corporations in Constantinople, in order to secure a strong body of partisans in the capital. For the same purpose, while he weakened the numerical strength of the army by neglecting to recruit the native legions, he liberally provided for the Varangian guard in the capital, on whose attachment his own personal security depended.

The fate of the population of the Byzantine Empire was now decided by the personal character of the emperor. The avarice of Constantine Ducas caused the ruin of the Christian inhabitants of great part of Asia Minor. The decline of the Byzantine power at this period has been very erroneously attributed to a decided military superiority on the part of the Seljouk Turks, to the great ability of Alp Arslan, and to the rashness of Romanus IV (Diogenes); but the events of the reign of Constantine X prove that it was the consequence of his acts. His avarice caused the loss of the two fortresses which defended the frontiers of the empire in the east and the west, Ani and Belgrade; and he allowed the independent Armenians to be completely subjugated by the Mohammedans without an effort in their favour. These warlike mountaineers had long formed an impregnable barrier against the progress of the Mohammedan powers. The difficulty the great Sultan Alp Arslan met with, in breaking through their country, even though he was aided by intestine discord, fomented by the ecclesiastical intrigues of the Byzantine court, proves that a small imperial army might have repulsed the Seljouk Turks from the fortified cities of Armenia, and secured the independence of the Christian tribes who occupied the labyrinths of the Caucasian and Armenian mountains, thereby preventing the Turks from reaching the Byzantine frontier.

It has been already noticed that the policy of the Byzantine court, under the Basilian dynasty, was hostile to Armenian independence, and it has been mentioned that the destruction of the Armenian kingdom had thrown open the Byzantine possessions in Asia Minor to the invasions of the Seljouk Turks. Constantine X made the Byzantine policy of uniting all Christians under the imperial government and the Greek Church a pretext for gratifying his avarice, by refusing aid to the independent Christians of Iberia and Armenia. He pretended that it would be impolitic to aid those who refused to become vassals of the empire, and criminal to support those who were opposed to the Orthodox Church. Basil II had apparently united the greater part of the Armenian clergy to the Greek Church, but in reality he only destroyed the independence of the nation; and the very circumstances which aided his conquests weakened the defensive power of the imperial government on their newly-acquired frontier.

It is important to observe the precise position of the country peopled by the Armenian race at the time of the Seljouk irruption into Asia Minor, in order to understand how the Byzantine government was so easily deprived of some of the richest and most populous provinces of the empire. The emperors of Constantinople had suffered far greater losses at the periods when Heraclius and Leo III mounted the throne, and yet both these princes restored to the empire no inconsiderable portion of its ancient power and glory; but the blow now inflicted by the Seljouk Turks, or the avarice of Constantine X, proved an immedicable wound. In the year 1016, as has been already noticed, Armenia was first invaded by this new race of conquerors, whose descendants form at the present day the most numerous part of the population of the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor. Sennacherib, the prince of Vaspourakan, ceded his possessions to Basil II, and received in exchange an appanage in Cappadocia, including the cities of Sebaste, Larissa, and Abara. In the year 1022, Basil II forced John, king of Armenia, to make the cession of his dominions after his death, which Constantine IX compelled Gaghik to carry into execution by surrendering Ani in 1045. Gaghik received as an appanage a territory on the frontiers of Cappadocia, including the cities of Bizou, Khorzen, and Lykandos. The power of the kings of Iberia was also curtailed about the same time. They were compelled to cede the southern portion of their dominions to Liparites, an Orpelian prince, who was taken prisoner by the Turks at the battle of Kapetrou, and released by Togroul. Liparites was subsequently murdered by Bagrat, the king of Iberia, and the whole of Georgia and Abasgia were again reunited. Ivané, the son of Liparites, retired into the empire, and received from the Emperor Isaac I an appanage at Archamouni, near Erzeroum.

The Seljouks continued their attacks on Armenia during the reigns of Theodora, Michael VI, and Isaac I, and the ravages they committed drew the serious attention of the Byzantine government to the eastern frontier. At the accession of Constantine X it was evident that the emperor, who was in possession of the greater part of Armenia, must undertake the defence of the whole country, or great part would fall into the hands of the Mohammedans. The principalities of Kars and Lorhi, and the kingdom of Iberia (Georgia), were unable to resist the Turks, if left to their own unassisted resources. The ambition of Ivané, the son of Liparites, opened the passes of the Armenian mountains to the enemies of his country and religion. Dissatisfied with his appanage in the empire, he endeavoured to render himself master of the neighbouring district of Karin, and involved himself in hostilities with the imperial authorities. In order to secure allies capable of protecting him, he connected himself with the Seljouk Turks, and guided the plundering incursions of the Mohammedan armies. In the meantime the Emperor Constantine X, instead of reinforcing his troops in Armenia, and establishing order within his own frontier by seizing Ivané, occupied himself exclusively with the project of effecting a union of the Byzantine and Armenian churches, which he endeavoured to render a profitable undertaking for his treasury. The disorders on the frontier were allowed to increase, as a means of depressing the nobility and clergy hostile to the union, or able to offer some resistance to the fiscal oppression of the Byzantine court. The unjust proceedings of the imperial government and the Greek clergy, in their infatuated zeal for political and ecclesiastical unity, augmented the religious bigotry of the Greek and Armenian people, and sowed the seeds of a deep-rooted national animosity. The calamities of the independent Armenian Christians were regarded as gain to the Orthodox Church, and the emperor fomented civil dissensions among the warriors who formed the strongest barrier of his own provinces against the incursions of the Mohammedans.

In the year 1060, while the affairs of Armenia were in this disturbed state, the armies of Togroul Beg invaded the empire on the Mesopotamian frontier, and laid siege to Edessa. The attack was repulsed by the activity of Vest Katchadour, an Armenian who commanded at Antioch, in Cilicia; but the Seljouks soon renewed their invasion, and a body of their troops advanced as far as Sebaste, which was taken by assault, and plundered for the space of eight days. The following year they surprised the town of Arkni, a frontier fortress of the Mesopotamian theme. The Byzantine general of the district, and a foreign officer named Frangopoulos, with the troops stationed at Edessa, made an attempt to revenge this loss, by attacking the Turkish fortress of Amida, but were defeated in their enterprise.

In the year 1063, Alp Arslan, who had succeeded his uncle Togroul as great sultan, commenced his expeditions against the Christians, by leading his army in person into Iberia and the northern parts of Armenia. He compelled David, the Bagratian prince of Lorhi, to give him a daughter in marriage, and laid waste the kingdom of Iberia in the crudest manner, for it was the policy of the Turks to depopulate the country they desired to subdue. The desolation of the hitherto rich and well-cultivated regions of Iberia, which had been long celebrated for the industry of the inhabitants, the wealth of its numerous towns, and the valour of its warlike population, is to be dated from the destructive ravages of Alp Arslan. The country was compelled to submit to the great sultan; and though the authority of the Turks was never very firmly established, these invaders gradually rendered Iberia, which at the commencement of the eleventh century was the happiest portion of Asia, a scene of poverty and depopulation.

When the spirit of the Georgians was broken, Alp Arslan marched to attack Ani, the capital of Armenia, now garrisoned by a Byzantine force under Bagrat, an Armenian general in the Byzantine service. Ani was situated on a rocky peninsula overhanging the rapid stream of the Rha, the ancient Harpassus. A deep ravine joining the bed of this river protected the city on the west. The base of the triangle on which it stood looked towards the north, and was the only side by which the fortifications could be approached. The ruins of the massive walls that defended the city in this direction still exist to the height of forty feet, attesting the importance of the place, and the wealth and military skill of the Armenian kings who fortified it in the tenth century. The position of Ani was strong, and its fortifications solid, but the army of Alp Arslan was numerous, and well provided with all the warlike machines then used in sieges; the people detested the Byzantine government so much as to be indifferent to their fate, while the spirit of the garrison was depressed by a conviction that the Emperor Constantine would be induced by avarice to abandon them to their own unassisted resources. Ani nevertheless made a gallant defence, and, refusing to capitulate, was taken by storm on the 6th of June, 1064.

After the conquest of Ani, Gaghik, the Bagratian prince of Kara, made the humblest submission to the victor, and was allowed to retain his dominions as a vassal; but he felt his position under the Mohammedans to be so insecure, that he availed himself of the return of Alp Arslan into Persia to cede his territories to the Byzantine emperor, who gave him in exchange the city of Tzamandos with its neighbourhood as an appanage. This transaction removed the last of the Armenian princes from his native country, and was followed by an immense emigration of the people into the provinces of the empire lying to the west and south of their ancient seats. Adom and Abousahl, the sons of Sennacherib, held Sebaste; Gaghik, king of Ani, resided at Bizou; and Gaghik, prince of Kars, now took up his residence at Tzamandos. Whatever might have been the project of the Byzantine court in effecting these strange translocations on the Armenian frontier, they appear to have failed. The duration of these vassal establishments was short and troubled, but from their relics, and from the colonies of Armenian emigrants, a new independent Armenian kingdom arose in Cilicia, which occupied a prominent part in history during the earlier crusades.

During the campaigns of Alp Arslan in Georgia and Armenia, several small armies of Turks invaded the provinces of Mesopotamia, Chaldea, Melitene, and Kaloneia. They plundered the open country, putting all the armed men to the sword, and carrying off the younger inhabitants for the Mohammedan slave-marts. Whenever large bodies of Byzantine troops could be assembled to oppose them, they avoided an engagement, and effected a rapid retreat. The plan by which they expected to render themselves masters of the provinces they invaded, was to exterminate the cultivators of the soil in the extensive plains, in order to leave the country in a fit state to be occupied by their own nomadic tribes. The villages, farm-houses, and plantations were everywhere burned down, and the wells were often filled, in order that all cultivation might be confined to the immediate vicinity of fortified towns. By this policy they soon rendered agricultural property in many extensive districts of Asia Minor so insecure, that whole provinces were left vacant for their occupation before the Seljouk power was able to conquer the cities. So boldly did they pursue these ravages, that Scylitzes records incursions of Seljouk bands even into Galatia, Honorias, and Phrygia during the reign of Constantine X.

About the time the fortress of Ani was irretrievably lost, the equally important city of Belgrade, which served as the bulwark of the western provinces, was allowed to fall into the hands of the Hungarians without an effort on the part of the emperor to save it. Solomon, king of Hungary, seeing the unprotected state of the Byzantine frontier in Europe, made the plundering incursions of some brigands from Bulgaria a pretext for commencing hostilities and laying siege to Belgrade. The garrison defended the place for three months; but when it appeared that the emperor’s avarice would prevent his making any attempt to raise the siege, the place capitulated. Hungarian history boasts of several victories obtained over the imperial troops who attempted to relieve Belgrade, but the Byzantine writers are silent even concerning its capture.

The year after the loss of Ani, the Ouzes or Uzes, a nomad tribe of Turkish origin, whom the Byzantine historians call a more noble and numerous race than the Patzinaks, invaded the European provinces of the empire. This people appears to have first entered the territory of the Patzinaks as friends, and to have lived among them as allies; but in a short time they became engaged in the fiercest hostilities, from the impossibility of fixing any settled frontiers for nomad tribes in the immense plains to the north of the Black Sea. At this period some accidental circumstance impelled an immense body of the Uzes to emigrate, and enabled them to pass through the center of the Patzinak territory to the banks of the Danube, where they soon assembled boats and rafts in sufficient numbers to cross the river. The military force of the invaders amounted to sixty thousand men and two generals, Basilias Apokapes and Nicephorus Botaniates, who commanded the garrisons on the Danube, hastening to oppose their advance, were defeated and taken prisoners. The Uzes then divided their army, in order to extend their plundering incursions over a greater space. One division advanced to the vicinity of Thessalonica, and sent forward parties who extended their ravages even into Greece. But the abundance in which the barbarians revelled during the autumn soon spread disease in their ranks; and the ease with which they had penetrated into every province made them negligent of military precautions. The consequence was that their dispersed bands were everywhere attacked, and they lost all the booty they had collected. When the severity of winter weakened them still farther, the mountaineers of Haemus ventured to harass their main body, which was at last hemmed in on all sides by enemies.

The Emperor Constantine remained an inactive spectator of the ruin of the European provinces, and only availed himself of the reverses of the invaders and the successes of the mountain tribes of his subjects to negotiate with the leaders of the Uzes, and secure their retreat with the smallest expenditure of money. At last, however, the complaints of the people of Constantinople against his avarice and cowardice became so loud as to threaten a revolution, and the emperor felt the necessity of marching out of the capital as if he intended to put himself at the head of an army. After holding a solemn fast, he proceeded to the town of Choirobacchus, on the road to Adrianople, attended only by a guard of one hundred and fifty men. Shortly after his arrival at that place, it was officially announced to him by a courier from the army that the principal body of the Uzes was completely dispersed. One division, which had advanced as far as Tzourla, had been overwhelmed by the Byzantine troops, while those near the Danube had been cut off by the combined attacks of the Bulgarian militia and the Patzinaks. There can be no doubt that the Emperor Constantine X was aware of these circumstances before he quitted the capital; but he affected to receive the intelligence as unexpected, and attributed the successes to his own piety and rigid fasts, not to the discipline of his army, or the valour of his subjects and allies. The heavenly host, hired by prayers instead of byzants, was said to have fought like ordinary mercenaries, and slain the Uzes with the usual weapons. The manner in which they received payment was peculiarly gratifying to the disposition of Constantine X. According to the usual policy of the Byzantine court, which sought to maintain a balance of power not only among the rival nations beyond the frontier, but even among the various races of its own subjects, the survivors of the Uzes were established as colonists on public lands in Macedonia. No fact can establish more strongly the anti-Greek spirit of the Byzantine government at this period than the notices we find of this colony of Turks. They soon adopted the Christian religion, and were treated with great favour by the emperors, for their isolated position rendered them more devoted partisans of the central authority, and of the personal power of the emperors, than native subjects. Some of their leading men were honoured with the rank of senators, and rose to the highest dignities in the state. Their national feelings proved, however, at times stronger than their Christianity or their Roman civilization, so that when a body of these Uzes in the army of Romanus IV was opposed to a kindred tribe of Turks in the army of Alp Arslan, before the battle of Manzikert, they deserted to the sultan, and joined their countrymen.

During the reign of Constantine X a severe earthquake spread desolation round Constantinople, and ruined many districts which lay beyond the reach of hostile invasions. A greater amount of vested capital was destroyed in a few hours than the fiercest barbarians could have annihilated in a whole campaign. The walls of cities, the aqueducts, churches, and public buildings, were thrown down throughout all Thrace and Bithynia. At Cyzicus, an ancient temple of great size and splendour, and of a solidity of construction which seemed to announce eternal duration to those accustomed to the puny architectural efforts of the Byzantine emperors, was destroyed. At Nicaea, the walls of the great church, in which the first council of the Church had assembled, were crumbled to their foundations. Earthquakes continued to be felt with alarming violence for the space of two years, as if to terrify men from repairing the dilapidations of the first terrific shock.

When Constantine X found his end approaching, he conferred the regency of the empire, and the guardianship of his sons, who had already received the imperial crown, on his wife, Eudocia Makremvolitissa; but he exacted from her a written promise not to marry a second husband, and he deposited that document in the hands of the patriarch John Xiphilinos. He also engaged the senate to take an oath that it would never acknowledge any other emperor than his own children. The names of the sons of Constantine X who had received the imperial title were Michael, Andronicus, and Constantine. The last, having been born after his father ascended the throne, was called Porphyrogenitus.

 

Sect. II

Regency of Eudocia, A.D. 1067; Romanus IV Diogenes, A.D. 1068-1071; Michael VII, A.D. 1071-1078; Nicephorus III, A.D. 1078-1081

 

In exacting from the senators an oath to maintain the rights of the young emperors, it was not the intention of Constantine X to confer any additional power on the senate; but the circumstance served as a pretext for every ambitious member of that body to plot for his own advancement, under the pretext that he was performing the duty imposed on him by his oath. Eudocia soon perceived that she was in some danger of losing the regency unless she could secure some powerful aid. Her ambition suggested to her, that by choosing a second husband, whom she could raise to the imperial title, she would be able to retain her position even after the majority and marriage of her eldest son. Policy favoured her views, which were sanctioned by the prudent government of Nicephorus II and John I, when they reigned as guardians and colleagues of the young emperors, Basil II and Constantine VIII. Love determined the selection of Eudocia. Her choice fell on Romanus Diogenes, who had been convicted of treason against her children’s throne, and was then waiting to receive his sentence from Eudocia as regent. His valour and his popularity with the army were great, and when he received a full pardon from the empress-regent, it excited no suspicion that she viewed him with peculiar favour. The Seljouk Turks had overrun all Cappadocia, and the capture of Caesareia rendered it necessary to place the army under the command of an able and enterprising general. But before Eudocia could venture to marry Romanus, it was necessary to destroy the document she had signed, promising never to contract a second marriage. Her written engagement was in the hands of the Patriarch, who held it as a national deposit. It required, therefore, some diplomatic skill to enable the empress to accomplish her object; but she could reckon on the utter absence of any sentiment of patriotism among the Byzantine clergy. The duplicity of the empress was aided by the credulous ambition of the Greek Patriarch, John Xiphilinos, who, though he had formerly quitted high rank to become a recluse on Mount Olympus, now resumed all the vices of Constantinopolitan society. Eudocia understood his character, and by leading him to believe that she intended to select his brother as her husband, she induced him to deliver into her hands the document committed to his custody, and persuaded him to become the proposer of a measure in the senate, by which that body pronounced an opinion in favour of her second marriage. When her plans had completely succeeded, she confounded the Patriarch, and gratified the people and the army, by announcing that she had selected Romanus Diogenes, the bravest general in the empire, to fill the imperial throne, and act as guardian to her sons.

Romanus IV was of a distinguished family of Cappadocia. He was connected by birth with most of the great aristocratic nobles of Asia Minor. His father, Constantine Diogenes, had committed suicide in the reign of Romanus III, and he inherited the courage, generosity, and vehemence of his parent. Though an able and skilful officer, his military talents were obscured by a degree of impetuosity that made him too often neglect the suggestions of prudence in those critical circumstances, when a long train of future events depends on the calmness of a moment’s decisions. Rashness and presumption were the defects both of his private character and public conduct. Though his marriage with Eudocia seated him on the throne, he found his authority in the capital circumscribed by the influence of the officials, who pretended to support the power of his wife as empress-regent, and who were guided in their opposition by John Ducas, the late emperor’s brother, and the natural guardian of the young emperors after the second marriage of their mother. John Ducas also held the rank of Caesar, and his family influence in the senate was very great. 

The Varangian guard likewise viewed the elevation of Romanus IV with great jealousy, on account of his popularity with the native troops, whom he had always favoured. These foreigners had openly expressed their discontent at the marriage of Eudocia, which they declared was injurious to the legal rights of the sons of Constantine X, and their seditious behaviour had been with difficulty suppressed. In this state of things, Romanus IV felt that he could only be the real sovereign of the empire by placing himself at the head of a powerful army in the field, and the state of the war with the Seljouk Turks imperiously demanded the whole attention of the Byzantine government.

In the year 1067 the Turks had extended their ravages over Mesopotamia, Melitene, Syria, Cilicia, and Cappadocia; they had massacred the inhabitants of Caesareia, and plundered the great church of St Basil of the wealth accumulated by many generations of pious votaries. After this campaign, their army wintered on the frontiers of the empire. Romanus now prepared to arrest their future incursions. He looked upon them as little better than hordes of brigands, and thought their light cavalry was ill fitted to contend against a regular army. Confident of superiority on the field of battle, he expected success in the operations of a campaign. The whole disposable forces of the empire were assembled in the Anatolic theme; but the neglected discipline and various tactics of the troops composing the motley army, while they revealed the ruinous effects of the avarice of the late emperor, ought to have cautioned an experienced general to commence his operations by giving unity of action to the body under his command before opposing it to the enemy. Heraclius, and Leo the Isaurian, had re-established the power and restored the glory of the Roman empire with worse materials than the legions of Sclavonians, Armenians, Bulgarians, Franks, and Varangians in the army of Romanus IV. But it required some time and patience to restore the once-celebrated discipline of the Byzantine army, and to make the modifications which were called for by new contingencies in the arms, armour, and tactics of the native soldiers; and the conservative vanity of Roman prejudices uniting with aristocratic pride and a headstrong disposition, rendered the emperor utterly unfit for such a task. He hurried his troops into the field with all their imperfections, and his rashness inflicted a mortal wound on the empire of the East. It is not necessary to follow his operations in detail, nor to mention all the rapid movements of the Seljouk invaders. The ruin of the Byzantine power in Asia, the extermination of the greater part of the Christian population, the unhappy fate of Romanus himself, and the noble behaviour of his conqueror Alp Arslan, immortalized in the pages of Gibbon, have invested this war with romantic interest, and conferred on it a degree of importance to which neither the military skill nor the political wisdom of the rival combatants entitle it.

The Seljouk armies were principally composed of cavalry, intent on plunder. The Roman troops were mercenaries, destitute of loyalty and patriotism. The Seljouk leaders perceived that, as long as the Byzantine provinces in Asia Minor were inhabited by a numerous population of Christians, supported by a regular army and by a line of fortresses commanding the great roads, it would be impossible for nomad tribes to retain possession of any conquests they might contrive to make. Their policy, therefore, was soon directed to two objects: in the first place, to enrich their followers, increase their own fame, and augment the numbers of their troops by rapid inroads for the collection of plunder; in the second, to reduce the open country as quickly as possible to such a state of depopulation as would admit the establishment of permanent nomad encampments, in the midst of uncultivated plains, far within the frontiers of the empire. In the execution of this plan they carried into effect the instincts of their rude nomadic life, as well as their bigoted schemes for the extermination of Christian civilization, which they felt was the most dangerous obstacle to their power. The great Sultan Alp Arslan was well aware that this war of incursions and devastation offered greater prospects of ultimate success than a series of pitched battles with the disciplined mercenaries of the empire. For two years he withdrew from the scene of action, and left to his lieutenants the task of ravaging and depopulating the Christian provinces of Asia Minor.

The first military operations of the Emperor Romanus were attended with some success. Antioch was exposed to the attacks of the Saracens of Aleppo, who were now emboldened, by the assistance of Turkish troops, to attempt the reconquest of the Byzantine province in Syria. The emperor resolved immediately to march to the south-eastern frontier of the empire, to re-establish the supremacy of the imperial arms; but as he was advancing towards Lykandos, it was announced to him that an army of Seljouks had suddenly broken into Pontus and plundered Neocaesareia. Without losing an hour, he selected a chosen body of troops, and by a rapid countermarch through Sebaste and the mountains of Tephrike, overtook the retreating Turks, and compelled them to abandon their plunder and release their prisoners; but their activity secured the escape of the greater part of their troops. The emperor then returned southward, advancing through the passes of Mount Taurus to the north of Germanicia, called then the defiles of Koukousos, and invading the territory of Aleppo, he captured Hierapolis (Membig), which he fortified as an advanced post for the protection of the southern frontier of the empire. After a good deal of severe fighting with the Saracens of Aleppo, he returned by Alexandretta and the Cilician gates to Podandos. Here he learned that, while he had been wasting the strength of his army by a severe and useless inroad into Syria, a fresh horde of Seljouks, finding the eastern frontier ill guarded, passed all the fortresses, and penetrated by a rapid march into the very heart of Asia Minor. They took and plundered Amorium, after which they effected their retreat with such rapidity that Romanus was unable to pursue them, and therefore continued his march to Constantinople, which he reached in January 1069.

The emperor’s second campaign produced no better results than the first. It was deranged by the rebellion of a Norman noble in the Byzantine service, named Crispin, who, moved either by the unbounded insolence and rapacity of the Frank mercenary nobles, or by the necessity of securing the support of his troops, whom the emperor may have neglected to pay with regularity, commenced plundering the country, and robbing the collectors of the revenue. Though Crispin was himself overpowered, and exiled to Abydos, many parties of Frank soldiers continued to infest the Armeniac theme, and commit great disorders. The country round Caesarea was again overrun by the Turks, and the emperor was compelled to employ his army in clearing his native province from their bands. He found the operation so tedious that it exhausted his patience; and in order to bring matters more speedily to a termination, he ordered all his prisoners to be put to death as highway robbers, and refused to spare a Seljouk chief who had fallen into his hands, though he offered to pay an immense ransom for his life. Romanus, having delivered Cappadocia from the invaders, marched forward by Melitene to the Euphrates, and crossed the river at Romanopolis, with the intention of advancing to Akhlat, on the lake of Van. By the capture of this fortress he hoped to protect the Armenian frontier. Instead of sending forward one of his generals to execute this duty, and remaining himself with the main body of the army, to watch over the conduct of the campaign, he placed himself at the head of the troops destined for the siege of Akhlat, and intrusted the command of the forces destined to cover the frontier of Mesopotamia to Philaretos. This general was defeated during his absence, and the Seljouks again spread their ravages far and wide in Cappadocia and Lycaonia. They advanced as far as the district of Iconium, which they plundered in their usual manner, and then rapidly retreated with the spoil they had collected. The advance of the emperor was arrested by the news of their advance on Iconium. He returned to Sebaste, and sent on orders to the Duke of Antioch to secure the passes at Mopsuestia, while he pressed onward to overtake the Turks at Heracleia (Kybistra). The invaders, hemmed in by these hostile armies, were attacked in the mountains of Cilicia by the Armenian inhabitants; but by abandoning the greater part of their booty, and making only a momentary halt at Valtolivadhi, they contrived to gain a march on their pursuers and cross Mount Sarbadik, from whence they escaped to Aleppo.

In the year 1070 the command of the imperial army was intrusted to Manuel Comnenus, nephew of the Emperor Isaac I, and elder brother of the future Emperor Alexius. The general business of the administration, and a particular desire to save Bari from falling into the hands of the Normans, by whom it was closely besieged, detained Romanus IV in the capital. Manuel Comnenus had risen rapidly to the highest military rank, more by means of his aristocratic position than by superior talents, and he was distinguished more by his personal courage than his military experience. The army was regarded in the Byzantine empire at this period as the special occupation of the nobility, and its highest commands were filled either by members of the great families of Ducas, Comnenus, Botaneiates, Bryennius, Melissenos, and Palaeologus, by Armenian princes and nobles, or by captains of foreign mercenaries, like Hervé, Gosselin, Crispin, and Oursel. Such an army required the strong hand of an emperor like Leo III, and the indefatigable activity of a Constantine V, to compel it to respect order, and keep it amenable to discipline.

Manuel Comnenus established his headquarters at Sebaste, in order to watch any parties of Turks who might attempt to invade the empire. He was soon drawn into an engagement by a Turkish general named Chrysoskroul or Khroudj, in which he was defeated and taken prisoner. The Turks then continued their ravages, penetrating as far as Chonae, which they sacked, after plundering the great church of St Michael, and carrying off all the holy plate, rich offerings, and pious dedications accumulated within its walls. The Christians were insulted by seeing this great temple converted into a barracks for the cavalry of the invaders, and terrified by witnessing the destruction of other buildings. Many of the unfortunate inhabitants who attempted to escape slavery by flight, perished, on this occasion, by a singular fate. The rivers in the vicinity of Chonae pour their waters into an immense subterraneous cavern, and it happened that while the wretched fugitives were attempting to escape from the Turks, a sudden inundation swept men, women, and children into this fearful chasm.

At this time Chrysoskroul was revolving projects of rebellion against Alp Arslan, and he soon admitted his prisoner, Manuel Comnenus, to his counsels, for he was anxious to secure some support from the emperor. Manuel persuaded him to visit Constantinople in person, in order to conclude an alliance with the Byzantine Empire, which was soon completed. The news of this act of rebellion called Alp Arslan to the scene of action. Though he had intrusted the conduct of the war to his officers as long as the plunder of the Roman Empire was its principal object, the moment that the aspect of affairs was changed, by the appearance of a rival to his throne, the great sultan hastened to the Byzantine frontier. He besieged and captured Manzikert, and invested Edessa; but, after losing fifty days before its walls, he was compelled to retire into Persia.

Early in the spring of 1071, Romanus marched at the head of a numerous army to recover Manzikert and meet the sultan. Various inauspicious omens are said to have announced the disastrous issue of his enterprise, and the proofs his army gave of insubordination warranted the inference that his military operations were in great danger of proving unsuccessful. The soldiers pillaged the emperor’s subjects wherever a camp was formed; and when an attempt was made to enforce stricter discipline, a whole corps of German mercenaries broke out into a dangerous mutiny, which the emperor had great difficulty in appeasing. The army, however, continued to advance by Sebaste to Theodosiopolis, where the plan of the campaign was finally arranged. Romanus, believing that Alp Arslan would be delayed for some time in Persia on account of the backward state of his preparations, resolved to divide his army in order to gain possession of Akhlat, in which there was a strong Turkish garrison, and which, in the possession of the Byzantine army, would form an excellent base of operations against Persia. Oursel, a Frank chief with a division composed of European mercenaries and Uzes, was sent to besiege Akhlat; while Trachaniotes, with a strong division of Byzantine infantry, was detached to cover the operation. The main body, under the immediate command of the emperor, advanced after this reduction to Manzikert, which was soon retaken. Romanus had hardly taken possession of his conquest before his advanced guard fell in with the skirmishers of the army of Alp Arslan, and in some cavalry engagements which took place the Byzantine troops were severely handled. On the first encounter, Romanus, who was not aware of the sultan’s rapid advance, supposed that only a small force was opposed to the imperial army; but when he became aware that the whole Turkish army was in his vicinity, he dispatched orders to Trachaniotes and Oursel to rejoin the main body. These officers, however, finding themselves unexpectedly in the immediate neighbourhood of a large Turkish force, retreated within the frontiers of Mesopotamia, instead of countermarching to effect a junction with the emperor’s army. It is difficult to say whether they were induced to take this step from military reasons or treasonable motives. In the meantime a body of Uzes, which had remained with the main body of the army, finding themselves opposed to a division in the hostile army of similar language and race, deserted to the Turks.

 

BATTLE OF MANZIKERT, AD. 1071

 

The two armies were now so near that a battle seemed unavoidable; but still Alp Arslan, who would willingly have avoided risking a general engagement with the regular army of Romanus, made an offer to conclude peace on favourable terms. Romanus, however, haughtily rejected the proposal, unless the sultan would consent to retire, and allow the Byzantine army to occupy the ground on which he was then encamped, before concluding the treaty. Alp Arslan knew that no secure peace was ever purchased by disgrace. Romanus allowed visions of vainglory to mislead him from performing the duty he owed to the empire. He thought of rivalling Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, when he ought to have been meditating on the causes which had enabled the Turks to plunder Caesarea, Amorium, Iconium, and Chonae.

Both parties prepared for a desperate contest. Romanus placed himself at the head of his own centre; the right wing of his army was commanded by Alyattes, a Cappadocian general; the left, by Nicephorus Bryennius; and the reserve was led by Andronicus, the son of the Caesar John Ducas, the emperor’s bitterest enemy. The Turkish sultan intrusted the immediate command of the battle to the eunuch Tarang, who acted as his lieutenant-general, reserving to himself the direction of the reserve and the power of performing all the duties of a general, without being called upon to act as a mere soldier. But he felt the importance of this first great battle between the Byzantine and Seljouk armies in deciding the fate of the two empires; and he declared that, unless he proved victorious, the field of battle should be his grave. The strength of the Roman army lay in its legions of regular infantry and heavy-armed cavalry, while that of the Turks reposed principally on the excellence of its light cavalry; hence the difficulty of obtaining a partial advantage was not great, but it required a well-combined system of manoeuvres to secure a complete victory. The object of the regular army ought to have been the capture of the enemy’s camp, while that of the irregular force was concentrated in forcing any portion of their enemy to make a retrograde movement, in the hope of converting the retreat into a total rout. The rash conduct of Romanus, the vigorous caution of Alp Arslan, the treachery of Andronicus Ducas, and the cowardice or incapacity of the Byzantine nobility, combined to give the Turks a complete victory. The battle had lasted all day without either party gaining any decisive advantage, when the imprudence of the emperor, in ordering a part of the centre to return to the camp before transmitting proper orders to the whole army, afforded Andronicus Ducas a pretext for abandoning the field. Romanus, when he perceived his error, vainly endeavoured to repair it by his personal courage. After fighting like a hero, his horse was at last killed under him, and, a wound in the hand having rendered him powerless, he was taken prisoner. The night had already set in, and the emperor was left to sleep on the ground with the other prisoners, if the pain of his wound and the agony of his mind could admit of repose. In the morning he was brought before Alp Arslan, who, hearing that the Emperor of the Romans had fallen into his hands, placed himself on his throne of state, in the great tent set apart for the ceremonies of the grand sultan’s court. As soon as Romanus approached the throne, he was thrown on the ground by the guards, and Alp Arslan, according to the immemorial usage of the Turks, descended from his seat and placed his foot on the neck of his captive, while a shout of triumph rang through the ranks of the various nations of Asia who composed his army. But the Byzantine historians who record this official celebration of his triumph, bear testimony to the mildness and humanity of the conqueror; and add that the emperor was immediately raised from the ground, and received from the grand sultan assurance that he should be treated as a king. That evening Alp Arslan and Romanus supped together, and their conversation is said to have been characterized by the noblest philanthropy on the part of the sultan, and the most daring frankness on that of Romanus. Alp Arslan was really a man of noble sentiments; but at this time his policy led him to gain the goodwill of his prisoner in order to conclude a lasting treaty of peace, for he was eager to pursue other schemes of conquest in the native seats of his race beyond the Oxus. Instead, therefore, of consuming his time in ravaging the empire, and planting his standards on the Asiatic shores of the Bosphorus, he concluded a treaty of peace with Romanus, who engaged to pay him a sum of money large enough to be a suitable ransom for a Roman emperor.

The release of Romanus only overwhelmed the unfortunate emperor with new misfortunes. The aristocracy and people of Constantinople both disliked his government, because it had withdrawn a large part of the public expenditure from the court and the capital, and reduced the salaries of the nobles and the profits of the tradesmen; while the provincial governors and military chiefs were not attached to his person, because he controlled their peculations and oppressions by his presence. Corruption had penetrated so deep into the official society of the Byzantine Empire, that the ruling classes were everywhere bent on converting the public service into a means of gain; and the people, deprived of all power, and even of the capacity of obtaining any political knowledge, were utterly helpless. Romanus had reformed the court, restrained the peculations of the aristocracy, and enforced discipline among the foreign mercenaries; but he was not popular with the people, for he had neither amused them with shows in the hippodrome, nor lightened the burden of their sufferings in the provinces. He was indeed the only man in the empire whose interests and policy were identical with the public welfare, but unfortunately he was deficient in the prudence and judgment necessary to render this fact generally apparent.

The captivity of Romanus had produced a revolution at court. The Empress Eudocia was compelled to take the veil and retire into a monastery, while the Caesar John Ducas became the real sovereign in the name of his nephew, Michael VII. As soon as the news reached Constantinople that the Emperor Romanus had returned into the empire, orders were sent off by the Caesar to prevent his being acknowledged as emperor. He had only been elevated to the throne to act for Michael VII, and that prince was now able to conduct the government. Such was the reasoning of the enemies of Romanus. Both parties collected troops to support their pretensions. A battle was fought at Doceia, in which the army of Romanus was defeated, and that emperor fled to the fort of Tyropoion; but finding that he could not maintain himself there, he gained the mountains of Cilicia, and retired to Adana. He was soon pursued by Andronicus, who had betrayed him at the battle of Manzikert; and the Armenian governor of Antioch, Katchadour, who had advanced to assist him, having been defeated, the garrison of Adana was so dispirited that they compelled Romanus to surrender on receiving assurance of personal safety. Andronicus required that Romanus should resign the empire and retire into a monastery. This treaty was ratified at Constantinople, and the safety of the dethroned sovereign was guaranteed by the Archbishops of Chalcedon, Heracleia, and Coloneia with the most solemn promises. But the Caesar John Ducas seized the opportunity to gratify his implacable hatred, and, in defiance of the engagement of his son and the promises of the bishops, ordered the eyes of Romanus to be put out. Executioners were sent to inflict the sentence, and to carry the unfortunate emperor to the island of Prote, where he was left without an attendant to dress his wounds, which began to putrefy. The dying Romanus bore the tortures inflicted on him with unshaken fortitude, neither uttering a reproach against his enemies nor a lamentation against his fate, praying only that his sufferings might be received as an expiation of his sins. His wife Eudocia was allowed to honour his remains with a sumptuous funeral. It is said that, before quitting Adana, he collected all the money of which he could dispose, and sent it to the sultan as a proof of his good faith. It was accompanied with this message: “As emperor, I promised you a ransom of a million and a half. Dethroned, and about to become dependent on others, I send you all I possess as a proof of my gratitude”.

While Romanus was marching to the defeat which left all Asia Minor at the mercy of the Turks, the Byzantine Empire lost its last hold on Italy. Arghyros, the son of Mel, had been sent by Constantine IX as katapan or viceroy, to arrest the progress of the Normans. He exerted himself with indefatigable energy both in open war and secret intrigue; but the defeat of Pope Leo IX, who fell into the hands of the Normans, rendered all the projects of the Byzantine government vain, and Arghyros repaired in person to Constantinople to solicit additional support. Isaac I, displeased with his conduct, dismissed him from all his employments, and the affairs of Italy were neglected. In the reign of Constantine X, an opportunity presented itself of re-establishing the imperial influence, in consequence of the dissensions of the Normans, but that emperor was too avaricious to take advantage of the circumstances. Robert Guiscard had unjustly seized the heritage of his brother Humphrey, and Abelard, his nephew, fled to Constantinople, attended by Gosselin, a Norman officer of ability and influence. Though the Byzantine officers in Italy received little support from the central government, one of their number, named Maurice, obtained considerable success, and with a corps of Varangians under his command defeated the Normans on several occasions, and regained possession of several towns. But Robert Guiscard, concentrating the whole force of his countrymen, at last captured Otranto, Tarentum, and Brindisi, and laid siege to Bari, the last possession of the Byzantine emperors. The place was attacked in 1068, but was so well defended that the Normans were compelled to convert the siege into a blockade, and Romanus IV determined to make an effort in its favour. In 1070 a fleet was intrusted to Gosselin, with ample supplies for the besieged city; but Gosselin was met by a Norman fleet under the command of Roger, the younger brother of Guiscard, and the future conqueror of Sicily. The Byzantine expedition was defeated, Gosselin was taken prisoner, and the garrison of Bari, hopeless of relief, capitulated on the 15th of April 1071, abandoning for ever the last relics of the authority of the Roman empire of the East in Italy.

 

MICHAEL VII

 

The education of the Emperor Michael VII had been intrusted to Michael Psellus, an able but intriguing pedant, who rendered the young prince a learned grammarian, but, either from natural defects or improper instruction, he turned out a worthless sovereign. Instead of attending to political business, he spent his time in rhetorical exercises or in writing iambics. Feeble, vain, and suspicious, he was easily made the tool of those who flattered his weaknesses. The Archbishop of Side, an able and virtuous prelate, was replaced in the duties of prime-minister by Nicephoritzes, who was recalled from the office of chief judge in Greece to perform the duties of postmaster-general. The emperor being as idle as he was incapable, and the new prime-minister as active as he was unprincipled, Nicephoritzes soon gained the exclusive direction of the weak mind of his sovereign, and established a complete supremacy over the court as well as the public administration. This was done in a great measure by a lavish expenditure of public money; and while he satisfied many claimants on the treasury, he took care to enrich himself.

The Byzantine Empire had now reached a state of society in which wealth was the universal object of pursuit. Every poetic aspiration in the heart of man was dead; honour and fame were the dreams of children. Power itself was an object of ambition, because it was the surest means of attaining wealth, and it is needless to say that under such circumstances rapacity and extortion were vices inherent in official life. The financial difficulties of the government, after the disasters of Romanus IV, must have caused some disorders even under the administration of an honest minister. The imperial revenues were diminished by the incursions of the Turks, which were pushed forward almost with impunity up to the very walls of Nicaea and Nicomedia. The Byzantine practice of filling the provinces with colonies of foreign races, and the lately-adopted usage of settling appendaged chieftains in Asia Minor, now led to several Armenian principalities in Cappadocia and Cilicia assuming an independent position. Yet even under these circumstances the great officers in the capital, the courtiers and the governors of provinces, all insisted on the full payment of their exorbitant salaries, leaving the troops of the line, the fleet, and the public buildings to suffer from the diminished resources of the empire. The court of Constantinople and the shows of the hippodrome were as brilliant as ever; the fortifications, the aqueducts, the roads and the ports of the provincial cities were allowed to fall to ruin. The whole of the money which the minister could draw into the central treasury was devoted to satisfy the rapacious nobility, and keep the turbulent populace of the capital in good-humour. As usually happens when police and cleanliness are neglected for any length of time, famine and plague began to ravage the provinces of Asia Minor which the nomads had plundered. The people, crowded together in the cities, died of starvation, and spread disease. Yet the rapacity and the exigencies of the treasury were so great, that the Emperor Michael availed himself even of these appalling disasters to collect money. Imperial ships were employed to form magazines of grain at Rhaedestum, where a corn-market was established, and the trade in grain became a government monopoly. It is said that the imperial agents took advantage of the public distress to sell the modius of wheat for a byzant, and the popular indignation propagated the report that the measure was reduced to three quarters of its legitimate contents. The emperor, who was held by his subjects to be responsible for this fraud, received from them the nickname of Michael Parapinakes, or Michael the Peck-filcher.

While the people were thus oppressed, the principal military chiefs, both natives and foreigners, began to arrogate to themselves the authority of petty princes. Still, in attributing due importance to the temporary misgovernment of Michael and his minister, we must not neglect the general tendency of all extensive territories in the eleventh century to separate into smaller circles of political action. Centralization in an extensive state, even in the most civilized state of society, requires rapid means of communication. The theories of Roman law and administration, which had long tended to bind the subjects of the Byzantine Empire together, had now lost their influence, and were supplanted by the authority of personal and local power. The same social condition which caused the Byzantine Empire to exhibit a tendency to separation may be traced alike in the history of feudal France and of the Seljouk Empire. 

Rebellions against the vigorous sway of Alp Arslan and Malekshah followed one another as rapidly as against the feeble rule of Michael Parapinakes and Nicephorus Botaniates. The impulse of society was the same in the Byzantine and the Seljouk empires; the results only were modified by the character of the individual sovereigns: the valour of the sultans preserved their thrones, the cowardice of the emperors drove them into monasteries, but both empires were equally broken in pieces.

The oppressive conduct and the weakness of the Byzantine government suggested to the Bulgarians the hope of re-establishing their national independence. The Bulgarian aristocracy was always sure of finding a large body of supporters among the Sclavonian population of Macedonia and Greece, as well as among the Bulgarians of Thrace, who were as anxious to be governed by a prince of their own race as the tribes north of Mount Haemus. On this occasion the rebels sent a deputation to Michael, the sovereign of Servia and Croatia, who appeared to be the only Sclavonian prince powerful enough to protect them, and offered the sovereignty of Bulgaria to his son Constantinos Bodinos. The offer was accepted, and the Servian prince was proclaimed king of the Bulgarians, under the name of Peter, at Prisdiana. The Byzantine army, under the command of Damian Dalassenos, a presumptuous noble, was completely defeated, the camp was taken, and a mercenary chief, named Longibardopoulos, was made prisoner with many other officers of rank. This Lombard chief, who had entered the imperial service rather than submit to the Normans, soon gained the favour of the prince of Servia, whose daughter he married, and whose troops he commanded against the emperor he had lately served. The king of the Bulgarians, after his victory, marched to Naissus, which he occupied, while he sent a division of his army to besiege Kastoria, and rouse the Sclavonians of Greece to take up arms. But the attack on Kastoria was defeated, the Sclavonians remained firm in their allegiance, and the king himself was routed and taken prisoner at Taonion in the month of December 1073. The German and Frank troops in the Byzantine army committed the greatest disorders in the country through which they marched. At Prespa, they destroyed the ancient palace of the kings of Achrida, and they plundered the churches of their plate and ornaments whenever they could enter them.

In Asia, Philaretos, an Armenian, who commanded a division of the army of Romanus IV at the defeat of Manzikert, remained at the head of a considerable body of troops. After the death of Romanus he assumed the title of Emperor, and kept possession of a considerable territory in the neighbourhood of Germanicia, which he governed as an independent prince, until at last he made his peace with the emperor on condition of being appointed Duke of Antioch.

Amidst these scenes of disorder, Nestor, a slave of Constantine X, who had risen to the rank of governor of the towns on the Danube, suddenly rebelled. Placing himself at the head of the garrisons under his orders, which were in a state of mutiny from want of pay, and eager to plunder the Bulgarians because some of their countrymen had rebelled, he obtained the assistance of one of the chiefs of the Patzinaks, and marched straight to Constantinople. The rebels demanded the dismissal of Nicephoritzes, but finding their forces inadequate to attack the capital, they separated into small parties, and spread over the country to collect plunder. Nestor remained with the Patzinaks, and retired with them beyond the Danube.

Every calamity of this unfortunate period sinks into insignificance when compared with the destruction of the greater part of the Greek race by the ravages of the Seljouk Turks in Asia Minor. As soon as the conditions of the treaty with Romanus were repudiated by the government at Constantinople, Alp Arslan resolved to revenge himself for the loss of the stipulated ransom and tribute. Other wars demanded his personal attention, but innumerable hordes were instructed to plunder the Roman Empire; and his son Malekshah intrusted Suleiman, the son of Koutoulmish, with a permanent command over all the Turkish encampments in Asia Minor. Suleiman began to lay the foundations of a lasting dominion by attaching the agricultural population to his government, whether they were freemen or serfs. This class cultivated the lands belonging to the great Byzantine landed proprietors, without any hope of bettering their condition. Suleiman now treated them as proprietors of the land they occupied, on their paying a fixed tribute to the Seljouk Empire, and thus the first foundations of the Turkish administration were laid in the opposing interests of two different classes of the Christian population, and in the adverse interests of landlords and tenants.

The progress of the Turks at last roused the Byzantine government to exertion, and a motley army, composed of a variety of different nations, was brigaded together; the principal object kept in view was to prevent the troops agreeing to elect a new emperor. Isaac Comnenus, an elder brother of Alexius I, was appointed to command this force, but was unable to prevent it becoming a scene of anarchy. The mercenaries plundered the people, and when Isaac attempted to punish the soldiers of Oursel for their misdeeds, that Norman, who claimed an exclusive jurisdiction over his own corps, deserted the camp, and induced all the Franks to join his standard. He took possession of Sebaste, expecting to form an independent Norman principality in Pontus, as Robert Guiscard had done in Italy. In the meantime the army of Isaac Comnenus was defeated at Caesarea, his camp stormed, and himself taken prisoner by the Turks. The state of affairs in Asia Minor became then so alarming, that the Caesar John Ducas, who had hitherto spent the greater part of his time hunting in the forests near the shores of the Bosphorus, found himself compelled to take the command of the army. His first operations were directed against the rebel Oursel. He fixed his headquarters at Dorylaeum, and the Norman encamped near the sources of the Sangarius. The two armies met near the bridge over that river called Zompi, which was one of the great lines of communication between Constantinople and the central provinces of Asia Minor. The desertion of his Frank mercenaries, and the disgraceful retreat of Nicephorus Botaniates with the Asiatic reserve, caused the complete defeat of the Caesar’s army. John Ducas and his son Andronicus were both made prisoners, and the victorious army of mercenaries advanced to the shores of the Bosphorus, and set fire to some of the houses at Chrysopolis (Scutari). Oursel, however, already perceived that the force under his command was insufficient to overthrow the administrative fabric of the empire, even as then degraded, and he resolved to advance his fortunes by acting as general-in-chief for an emperor of his own creation. A similarity in the circumstances of his position taught him to imitate the policy of Ricimer, and he easily persuaded his prisoner, the Caesar John Ducas, to assume the title of Emperor, and aid in dethroning his nephew.

Michael and his minister were now infinitely more alarmed by their own personal danger than they were concerned at the calamities of the subjects of the empire. An alliance was formed with Suleiman, who commanded the forces of his cousin the great sultan; and a formal treaty was concluded between the Byzantine emperor and the Seljouks in Asia Minor, which received the official ratification of Malekshah. The Emperor Michael conferred on Suleiman the government of the provinces of which the Seljouk Turks were then in possession; which was the phrase adopted by Byzantine pride to make a cession of that large portion of Asia Minor already occupied by the Mohammedans, and the Seljouk emir engaged to furnish the emperor with an army of mercenary troops. The precise conditions of the treaty, or the exact extent of territory ceded to the Turks, are not recorded; and indeed the Byzantine writers mention the existence of this important treaty only in a casual way, though it laid the foundation of the independent power of the Seljouk sultans of Roum, of whom Suleiman was the progenitor, and whose dynasty long survived the elder branch of the house of Togrulbeg, who reigned as great sultans in Persia.

This treaty was concluded in the year 1074, and a Turkish army immediately marched, with the rapidity that distinguished their military movements, to Mount Sophon, where Oursel was encamped. The light cavalry soon drew Oursel into an ambuscade, and he was taken prisoner, along with his phantom emperor. The wife of Oursel, however, who was residing at a neighbouring castle, in which he had laid up a considerable treasure, instantly paid the ransom demanded by his captors, and, collecting his Franks, he marched back to his old quarters in the Armeniac theme, in order to recruit his strength. The Emperor Michael gained possession of his uncle’s person by paying the ransom demanded by the Turks, and allowed him to retain his sight on his resigning all his political pretensions, and adopting the monastic life. Alexius Comnenus was now sent to command the Byzantine troops against Oursel, and succeeded in reducing him to such difficulty that he attempted to form an alliance with a Turkish chief named Toutash, who was watching his movements. Alexius had, however, secured the fidelity of the Turk, by promising him a large ransom if he delivered Oursel into his own hands. The Frank leader was at last seized at a conference, and the intriguing Alexius carried him a prisoner to Constantinople, to bargain for wealth and honours for himself.

After the capture of Oursel, the Turks made the treaty with the emperor a pretext for encroaching on the possessions and plundering the wealth of the subjects of the empire; but all open warfare having ceased in Asia Minor, Isaac Comnenus was sent with an army to Antioch, to protect the Byzantine possessions in Syria from the tribes of Seljouks who had conquered Aleppo and Damascus. He was not more fortunate at Antioch than he had been at Caesarea; his army was defeated, his brother-in-law, Constantine Diogenes, the son of Romanus IV, was slain, and he himself wounded and taken prisoner. He was, nevertheless, soon after delivered from captivity by the inhabitants of Antioch, who paid the Turks twenty thousand byzants as his ransom.

 

MICHAEL VII DETHRONED, AD. 1078. REBEL EMPERORS.

 

The weakness of the emperor and the avarice of the minister invited several members of the aristocracy to profit by the general discontent, in order to mount the throne. Two military nobles of distinguished families took up arms in Europe and Asia. Nicephorus Bryennius, who had gained considerable reputation at Dyrrachium, assembled an army composed of Thracian Bulgarians, Macedonian Sclavonians, Italians, Franks, Uzes, and Greeks. With this army he advanced to Constantinople; but he had no feelings in common with the mass of the inhabitants of the empire, and he permitted his troops to plunder and burn the suburbs of the capital. This conduct produced so determined an opposition to his pretensions, that Michael compelled him to raise the siege and retire, under the pretext that the incursions of the Patzinaks rendered his presence necessary to protect the open country of Thrace. The proceedings of Nicephorus Botaneiates in Asia were even more injurious to the public welfare than those of Bryennius. He purchased the support of Suleiman, the sultan of Roum, by ratifying the treaty concluded with Michael, and abandoning an additional Christian population to the power of the Mohammedans, in order to obtain the assistance of a corps of Seljouk cavalry. Yet he was welcomed by the inhabitants of Nicaea as a deliverer with great rejoicings; and before he reached the Bosphorus he received the news that Michael VII had been dethroned by a general insurrection, in which the senate, the clergy, and the people had with one accord taken part. The imperial pedant had retired into the monastery of Studion with his son Constantine, and left the throne vacant for his successor.

The history of the reign of Nicephorus III (Botaneiates) may be comprised in a few words. He was an old idle voluptuary; the palace was a scene of debauchery, and the public administration, intrusted to the direction of two Sclavonian household slaves, fell into utter disorder. The old emperor thought only of enjoying the few years he had to live, rather as a brute than a man; each member of the aristocracy was engaged in plundering the public treasury, or plotting to seize the empire; and the two ministers, whose very language proclaimed their foreign origin, pillaged the provinces by their agents, or left them to be overrun by the Turks or by rebels. The infatuated Nicephorus moreover excited the disgust of his subjects by marrying Maria the ex-empress, though her husband, the dethroned Emperor Michael VII, was still living as Bishop of Ephesus, and residing in the capital; but it was his wasteful expenditure of public money, and his fraudulent conduct in issuing a base coinage to supply his extravagance, which converted the contempt of all ranks into hatred, and caused his ruin.

Nicephorus III reigned three years, and during that period no less than four rebels assumed the imperial title, besides Alexius Comnenus, by whom he was dethroned. Several Armenian princes in Asia Minor attempted to establish their independence; and two Paulician leaders took up arms in Thrace, and committed many cruelties, to revenge themselves for the persecutions they had suffered. The religious bigotry of the Greeks concurred with the disorganization of the government in accelerating the ruin of the empire.

The rebel emperor Bryennius had failed to take Constantinople from political incapacity, not from want of military force. As soon as Nicephorus III was established on the throne, he sent Alexius Comnenus, now the first general of the empire, to attack the rebels with an army composed of Asiatic Christians, Franks, and Turkish cavalry. The two armies were equal in number, and neither exceeded fifteen thousand men. A battle was fought at Kalavrya, near the river Almyros, in which Bryennius was defeated and taken prisoner. He was then deprived of sight.

As soon as the country round Adrianople was pacified Alexius was sent against the second rebel emperor, Basilakes, who had occupied Thessalonica, and was waiting the result of the contest between Bryennius and Botaneiates to fall on the victorious army. The forces under the command of Basilakes consisted of veteran Frank, Sclavonian, Albanian, and Greek soldiers, and his confidence in his own valour and military talents made him look on success as certain. Alexius, however, contrived to entrap him into a night attack on the imperial camp, which was eighteen miles distant from Thessalonica, on the banks of the Vardar. Basilakes was defeated, and when he attempted to defend the citadel of Thessalonica, he was seized by his own soldiers, and delivered to the emperor, by whose orders he was deprived of sight. Constantine Ducas, the brother of the dethroned Michael VII, was proclaimed emperor by the troops in Asia Minor; but his incapacity was soon so evident that his own partisans delivered him to Nicephorus III, who only compelled him to become a monk, and take up his residence in one of the monasteries in the islands of the Propontis. Nicephorus Melissenos was the fourth rebel. He had strongly opposed the election of Botaneiates, and soon took up arms to dethrone him. His high rank, great wealth, ancient family, and extensive family alliances among the aristocracy, rendered him a dangerous political rival. He was utterly destitute of noble ambition or patriotic feelings; and, to gratify his lust of power, was willing to degrade the Greek race, and dismember the empire. In order to secure the assistance of a large body of Turks, he concluded a treaty with their chiefs, by which he engaged to divide the cities and provinces his army should conquer with these enemies of his faith and nation. Suleiman, the sultan of Roum, took advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him to gain possession of Nicaea and plunder Cyzicus. An imperial army was foiled in an attempt to recover possession of Nicaea, which remained in the hands of the Seljouk Turks, until it was restored to the Byzantine Empire by the first crusade.

The troubled state of the empire, and the age of Nicephorus III, rendered the nomination of his successor the great object of court intrigue, and it became known that the old man had selected his nephew Synadenos to be the future emperor. His procrastination in carrying his determination into effect caused his dethronement. The beautiful Empress Maria had expected, by her marriage with the aged Botaneiates, to secure the throne for her child, and the regency for herself, and she was now alarmed at the prospect of descending from the throne she had occupied as the wife of two emperors, and which she had expected to retain as mother of a third. She now sought support from her relations. The marriage of Isaac Comnenus with her cousin Irene, an Alanian princess, and of Alexius, his brother, with Irene, the daughter of Andronicus Ducas, the cousin of her first husband, attached that influential family to her interest. She now drew closer the bonds of union by adopting Alexius as her son. Court intrigues commenced, a conspiracy was formed, and the Sclavonian ministers, Borilas and Germanos, who had risen to power by studying the characters of the aristocracy, saw that the profound dissimulation of Alexius (which his daughter celebrates as political sagacity), joined to his popularity with the troops, rendered him the most dangerous man among the nobility. They proposed to arrest him, and deprive him of sight; but the conspirators were informed of the danger in time to escape to Tzourulos, where Alexius and his friends joined an army assembled to act against Melissenos. The Caesar, John Ducas, who had quitted the monastic habit, George Paleologos, a dashing officer, who married Anna, a younger sister of the wife of Alexius, and several of the ablest officers among the aristocracy, fled to the camp, which was moved to Schiza. As it was necessary to elect an emperor capable of commanding the army, the legitimate claims of Constantine, the son of Michael VII, were set aside, and Alexius was proclaimed emperor by the whole army. The rebels then marched to attack Constantinople; but as the land wall is about four miles long, the besiegers were unable to occupy the whole extent with their lines, and Alexius contented himself with forming his camp on the elevated land which overlooks the Propontis and the city. Romanus IV had constructed a country palace in this sterile and exposed position, which enjoys the advantage of a healthy summer climate, and an abundant supply of water. The spot was called Aretas.

Alexius had no time to lose. Melissenos had already advanced to Damalis, and had opened negotiations for a partition of the empire both with Nicephorus III and the rebels. The imperial ministers urged their master to conclude a treaty with Melissenos, and then fall on the camp of Alexius with an overwhelming force. Procrastination, however, again ruined the affairs of the old emperor. A careful examination of the fortifications of Constantinople, which did not then present its existing aspect of a dilapidated rampart and half-filled ditch, convinced Alexius that there was no hope of taking the place by storm, and that if he entered the city, he must do so by treachery. The most exposed portions of the wall were guarded by native troops and Varangian guards, whose fidelity was proof against seduction; but a tower in the Blachernian quarter, commanding the Charsian gate, had been intrusted to German mercenaries, whose leader, Gilpracht, was bribed to betray his charge. At night, George Paleologos was admitted, and on a given signal the rebel troops took possession of the towers adjoining the gate, and defiled into the streets of Constantinople, which was soon treated as if it had been taken by storm. The army, which hardly recognised any acknowledged leader, dispersed in quest of plunder, and the rebel emperor and his principal partisans were left almost alone in the square called Tauros, exposed to the danger of falling into the hands of the old emperor, had he possessed courage enough to make a vigorous effort in his own defence. The imperial party was still in possession of the palace, which had been converted into a strong citadel by Nicephorus II; while the Varangians and the Chomatian legion, who occupied the city from the forum of Constantine as far as the Milion, stood ranged in order, ready to attack the dispersed bands of the rebels. Alexius was striving to bring forward his best troops, and a battle seemed inevitable. The capital was on the eve of being destroyed by the conflagrations with which each party would cover their operations, when the activity of George Paleologos, who made himself master of the fleet, and the weakness of Nicephorus III, who abandoned his army, and fled to St Sophia’s, terminated the contest, and saved Constantinople from ruin. The old emperor consented to resign his crown, and retire into a monastery. Alexius entered the imperial palace, and the rebel army commenced plundering every quarter of the city. Natives and mercenaries vied with one another in license and rapine. No class of society was sacred from their lust and avarice, and the inmates of monasteries, churches, and palaces were alike plundered and insulted.

This sack of Constantinople by the Sclavonians, Bulgarians, and Greeks in the service of the families of Comnenus, Ducas, and Paleologos, who crept treacherously into the city, was a fit prologue to its sufferings when it was stormed by the Crusaders in 1204. From this disgraceful conquest of Constantinople by Alexius Comnenus, we must date the decay of its wealth and civic supremacy, both as a capital and a commercial city. It was henceforth unable to maintain the proud position among the cities of the earth which it had held from the time that Leo III repulsed the Saracens from its walls. New Rome, like old Rome, was destined to receive its deepest wounds from the dagger of the parricide, not from the sword of the enemy. Even Zonaras, a Byzantine historian, who had held high office under the son and grandson of Alexius, points out with just indignation the calamities which attended the establishment of the family of Comnenus on the imperial throne. The power which was thus established in rapine terminated about a century later in a bloody vengeance inflicted by an infuriated populace on the last emperor of the Comnenian family, Andronicus I. Constantinople was taken on the 1st of April 1081, and Alexius was crowned in St Sophia’s next day.

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII

THE DYNASTY OF COMNENUS

A.D. 1081-1185