A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 (9 page)

CHAPTER V

CONFUSION IN THE
EAST

‘Yea
,
though
they have hired among the nations
,
now will I gather them
,
and
they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes.’
HOSEA
VIII, 10

The Battle of Manzikert was the most decisive
disaster in Byzantine history. The Byzantines themselves had no illusions about
it. Again and again their historians refer to that dreadful day. To the later
Crusaders it seemed that the Byzantines had forfeited on the battlefield their
title as the protectors of Christendom. Manzikert justified the intervention of
the West.

The Turks made little immediate use of their
victory. Alp Arslan had achieved his object. His flank was now protected; and
he had removed the danger of a Byzantine-Fatimid alliance. All that he demanded
of the captive Emperor was the evacuation of Armenia and a heavy ransom for his
person. He then marched off to campaign in Transoxiana, where he died in 1072.
Nor did his son and successor, Malik Shah, whose empire was to stretch from the
Mediterranean to the boundaries of China, himself ever march into Asia Minor.
But his Turcoman subjects were on the move. He had no wish to settle them in
the ancient lands of the Caliphate; but the central plains of Anatolia, emptied
and turned into sheep-farms by the Byzantine magnates themselves, were
perfectly suited to them. He gave to his cousin, Suleiman ibn Kutulmish, the
task of conquering the country for the Turkish people.

The Turks enter
Asia Minor

The conquest was made easy by the Byzantines
themselves. The next twenty years of their history were spent in a tangle of
rebellion and intrigue. When the news reached Constantinople of the disaster
and the Emperor’s captivity, his stepson, Michael Ducas, declared himself of
age and took over the government. The arrival of his cousin Andronicus with the
remnants of the army confirmed his position. Michael VII was an intelligent,
cultured youth, who in kindlier times would have been a worthy ruler. But the problems
that faced him required a far greater man. Romanus Diogenes returned from his
captivity to find himself deposed. He attempted to fight for his position but
was easily defeated and taken as a prisoner to Constantinople. There they put
out his eyes so savagely that he died a few days later. Michael could not
afford to let him live; but Romanus’s powerful relatives and the friends that
his gallantry had won him were shocked and angry at the brutality of his end.
Their resentment was soon to find its expression in treachery.

The Turkish invasions of Asia Minor began
seriously in 1073. They were neither concerted nor uniform. Suleiman himself
wished to establish an orderly sultanate that he could govern under the
suzerainty of Malik Shah. But there were lesser Turkish princes, men like
Danishmend, Chaka or Menguchek, whose aim was to capture some town or fortress
from which they could rule as brigand chieftains over whatever population might
be there. Behind them, giving the invasion its full force, were the Turcoman nomads,
travelling lightly armed, with their horses, their tents and their families,
making for the upland prairies. The Christians fled before them, abandoning
their villages to be burnt and their flocks and herds to be rounded up by the
invaders. The Turcomans avoided the cities, but their presence and the
destruction that they caused interrupted communications throughout the country
and forced provincial governors into isolation and enabled the Turkish
chieftains to follow their own desires. They formed the element that would
render impossible any Byzantine attempt at reconquest.

Roussel of
Bailleul

The Emperor Michael had tried to oppose the
Turkish advance. The prudent treachery of Roussel of Bailleul had enabled his
Franco-Norman regiment to survive the disaster at Manzikert. Unreliable though
Roussel had proved himself, Michael was obliged to make use of him. To him he
attached a small native army, under the young Isaac Comnenus, nephew of the
former Emperor. The choice of Isaac was wise. He and his brother Alexius, who
accompanied him, belonged to the family that most bitterly hated the Ducas
clan; but, despite their mother’s urging, they remained loyal to Michael
throughout his reign, and both proved their worth as generals. But Isaac’s loyalty
was cancelled out by the perfidy of Roussel. Before the Byzantine army had met
the Turks, Roussel and his troops threw off their allegiance. Isaac, attacked
both by Turks and Franks and hopelessly outnumbered, was taken prisoner by the
Seldjuks.

Roussel now made his intentions clear. Fired by
the example of his compatriots in southern Italy, he planned himself to found a
Norman state in Anatolia. He had only three thousand men with him; but they
were devoted to him and well equipped and trained. Man to man they could
outfight any Byzantine or Turkish soldier. To the Emperor, Roussel now seemed a
more dangerous enemy than the Turks. Scraping together what troops he could
gather, he sent them out under his uncle, the Caesar John Ducas. Roussel met them
near Amorium and easily routed them, capturing the Caesar. To clothe himself
with a legal excuse he proclaimed his unwilling captive Emperor, and marched on
Constantinople. He reached the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus without
hindrance, burning the suburb of Chrysopolis (Scutari) and camping amid its
ruins. In despair Michael turned to the only power that could help him. An
embassy was sent to the Seldjuk Sultan, Suleiman. Suleiman, with the approval
of his suzerain, Malik Shah, promised assistance in return for the cession of
the east Anatolian provinces that he already occupied. Roussel turned back to
meet him; but his troops were surrounded by the Turks on Mount Sophon in
Cappadocia. He himself with a few men managed to escape and to set himself up
in Amasea, further to the north-east. Michael then sent Alexius Comnenus to
deal with him. Alexius managed to outbid him for the support of the principal
Turkish chieftain in the neighbourhood and induced him to surrender. But so
efficient and popular had his government been that the citizens of Amasea only
gave up their attempts to rescue him on the news of his being blinded. In truth
Alexius could not bring himself so to mutilate him; and such was his charm that
even the Emperor was glad to hear that he had not suffered that indignity.

Roussel disappears from history. But the
episode left its mark on the Byzantines. It taught them that the Normans were
not to be trusted, that their ambition was not bounded by the shores of
southern Italy but they wished to found principalities in the East. It goes far
to explain Byzantine policy twenty years later. In the meantime Normans were
discouraged from entering the imperial service; and even their Scandinavian
cousins were suspect. The Varangian Guard was henceforward recruited from a
people that had suffered from the Normans, the Anglo-Saxons of Britain.

Fear of the Normans and the constant need for
foreign mercenaries prompted Michael to adopt a policy of appeasement towards the
West. The loss of southern Italy was irreparable; nor could he afford to
continue the war there. The ambassador that he sent to make peace with the
Normans, John Italus, an Italian-born philosopher, was considered by many
Byzantines to have betrayed the interests of the Empire. But Michael was satisfied,
and, knowing the desire of the upstart house of Hauteville to make grand
marriage alliances, he suggested that Guiscard’s daughter, Helen, be sent as a
bride for his own infant son Constantine. At the same time he sought and
obtained the cordial friendship of the great Pope Gregory VII. His policy
preserved peace on his western frontier.

But in Anatolia confusion grew worse. The
imperial government lost control; and though a few loyal generals, such as
Isaac Comnenus, now in command of Antioch, maintained the Emperor’s authority,
communications were interrupted and there was no concerted policy. At last, in
1078, Nicephorus Boteniates, governor of the great Anatolic Theme in
west-central Asia Minor, partly from personal ambition and partly from genuine
exasperation at the weakness of Michael’s rule, rose up in revolt. But
Nicephorus was a general without an army. To secure himself the force that he
needed he enrolled large numbers of Turks under his standard and used them to
garrison the towns that he took on his way to the capital: Cyzicus, Nicaea,
Nicomedia, Chalcedon and Chrysopolis. For the first time, Turkish hordes found
themselves inside the great cities of western Anatolia. They might be the
mercenaries of the new Emperor; but he would not find it easy to dislodge them.
Michael made no resistance. When Nicephorus entered the capital he retired into
a monastery. There he found his true vocation. Luckier than most fallen
emperors, within a few years he had risen, entirely on his merits, to an archiepiscopal
throne. His deserted wife, the Caucasian Maria of Alania, the loveliest
princess of her day, wisely offered her hand to the usurper.

The Accession of
Alexius Comnenus

Nicephorus found a rebel’s life easier than a
ruler’s. Other generals followed his example. In the west of the Balkans
Nicephorus Bryennius, the governor of Dyrrhachium, declared himself Emperor and
attracted the soldiers of the European provinces to his standard. Alexius
Comnenus was sent against him with a small force of untrained Greek soldiers
and a few Franks; who, as usual, deserted. It was only through the timely
arrival of some Turkish mercenaries that he was able to defeat Bryennius. No
sooner was this campaign ended than Alexius had to go to Thessaly to crush
another usurper, Basilacius. Meanwhile, the Turkish garrison of Nicaea rose in
revolt. Pope Gregory, on the news of the fall of his ally Michael, had
excommunicated the new Emperor; and Robert Guiscard, encouraged by the Papacy
and himself furious at the rupture of his daughter’s engagement, planned to
cross the Adriatic. In May he landed in full force at Avlona and marched on
Dyrrhachium. Early that same spring the leading general in Asia, Nicephorus
Melissenus, revolted and made an alliance with the Turkish Sultan Suleiman;
thanks to which Suleiman was enabled to march unchallenged into Bithynia, where
the Turkish garrisons left by Boteniates welcomed him. When Melissenus failed
to capture Constantinople Suleiman refused to hand back the cities that he
occupied. Instead, he established himself in Nicaea; and Nicaea, one of the
most venerated cities of Christendom, situated within a hundred miles of
Constantinople itself, became the capital of the Turkish sultanate.

In Constantinople the Emperor Nicephorus threw
away his only chance of survival by quarrelling with the family of the Comneni.
Isaac and Alexius had served him loyally and had hoped to keep his goodwill by
a close friendship with the Empress, whose cousin Isaac had married and whose
lover Alexius was thought to be. But she could not control the court intrigues
that turned Nicephorus against them. For their own safety the brothers were
forced into rebellion; and Alexius, recognized by his family as the abler of
the two, proclaimed himself Emperor. Nicephorus fell as easily as the Emperor
that he had dislodged. On the advice of the Patriarch he retired, weary and
humiliated, to end his days as a monk.

The Emperor
Alexius

Alexius Comnenus was to reign for thirty-seven
years and was to prove the greatest statesman of his time. But in the year 1081
it seemed certain that neither he nor his Empire could survive. He was a young
man, probably not yet thirty years of age, but he had had many years’
experience as a general, usually as a general with inadequate forces, whose
success depended on his wits and his diplomacy. His presence was impressive; he
was not tall, but well-built, with a dignified air. His manner was gracious and
easy, and his self-control was remarkable; but he combined a genuine kindliness
with a cynical readiness to use trickery and terror if the interests of his
country required. He had few assets beyond his personal qualities and the
affection of his troops. His family, with its connections branching through the
Byzantine aristocracy, had undoubtedly helped him into power; and he had
strengthened his position by marrying a lady of the Ducas house. But the
intrigues and jealousies of his relatives, especially the hatred that his
domineering mother bore for his wife and all her clan, only added to his problems.
The court was filled with members of former imperial families or the families
of would-be usurpers, whom Alexius sought to bind to him by marriage alliances.
There was the Empress Maria, desperately jealous of the new Empress, Irene; and
Maria’s son, Constantine Ducas, whom he made his junior colleague and soon
betrothed to his eldest child, Anna; there were the sons of Romanus Diogenes,
one of whom he married to his sister Theodora; there was the son of Nicephorus
Bryennius, who actually married Anna Comnena after the early death of
Constantine Ducas; there was Nicephorus Melissenus, already married to his
sister Eudocia, who yielded his claims to the Empire to his brother-in-law in
return for the tide of Caesar. Over all of them Alexius had to keep a watchful
eye, calming their quarrels and forestalling their treachery. An elaborate
system of titles was created to satisfy their pretensions. The nobility and the
higher civil service were equally unreliable. Alexius continually discovered
conspiracies against his government and was in constant danger of
assassination. Both from policy and from temperament he was gentle in his
punishments; and this clemency and the calm long-sightedness of all his actions
are the more remarkable in view of the personal insecurity in which his whole
life was spent.