Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (15 page)

Silence followed. Hitherto the Emperor had treated Antioch as an honoured ally; now he was dictating terms as to a conquered enemy. Faced with the prospect of the long-term occupation of their city, the Franks were momentarily speechless. At last Joscelin spoke, requesting time for Raymond and his advisers to consider what they had just heard. Then, slipping out of the palace unobserved, he told his men to go through the streets telling all the Latin population that the Emperor had ordered their immediate expulsion and encouraging them to attack their Greek fellow-citizens. Within the hour the rioting had begun; Joscelin then rode back at full gallop to the palace, where he flung himself breathlessly at John's feet. He had, he claimed, narrowly escaped death at the hands of a furious mob, which had broken down the doors of his house, accused him of betraying the city to the Greeks and threatened to kill him.

After over two months in the company of the Count of Edessa, the Emperor was well aware of the duplicity of his nature; but by this time the tumult outside was clearly audible to those in the palace. He was anxious at all costs to prevent a massacre of Greeks by Latins and vice versa; he was also conscious that his entire army - apart from a few members of his personal guard - was encamped a mile or more away across the Orontes, leaving him dangerously exposed in an increasingly hostile city. In these radically changed circumstances there could clearly be no question of any early resumption of the Syrian campaign. He told Raymond and Joscelin that for the moment he would be satisfied with the renewal of their oaths; he had decided to return to Constantinople. Then he rejoined his army, and a day or two later left for home.

Good news awaited him on his arrival. His brother Isaac and Isaac's son John, who had been intriguing for the past eight years with the Muslim princes, had given themselves up. Whether they had genuinely repented of their past behaviour, or whether the Emperor's recent successes in the East and the consequent increase in his popularity had simply convinced them that their ambitions were doomed to failure, we can only guess; but they received a full pardon - which was a good deal more than they expected or deserved.

The story of John's last campaigns can be quickly told. In
1139
and
1140
he was fully occupied with the son of his old enemy Ghazi, the Danishmend Emir Mohammed. His task was complicated by the fact that Constantine Gabras, Duke of Trebizond, had rebelled against his authority and formed an alliance with the Danishmends. In
1139
all went well: the Emperor marched his army eastwards through Bithynia and Paphlagonia and along the southern coast of the Black Sea, his enemies steadily retreating before him. Before the end of the year the treacherous Duke had made his submission, after which John turned southward against the Danishmend stronghold of Neocaesarea. Here for the first time his good fortune failed him. A natural fortress magnificently defended by Mohammed's garrison, it proved effectively impregnable; the savage and mountainous terrain made communications difficult, and Byzantine casualties were high. For the Emperor, the greatest humiliation of all came when his own nephew and namesake, the son of his brother Isaac who had so recently sought his forgiveness for past disloyalty, defected to the enemy, embracing simultaneously the creed of Islam and the daughter of the Seljuk Sultan Mas'ud.
1
Towards the end of
1140
he raised the siege - during which, incidentally, his youngest son Manuel showed great heroism in dealing with a sudden sortie by the defenders
2
- and returned to Constantinople, intending to resume operations the following year; by then, however, Mohammed was dead; and the usual squabble between his heirs enabled John to change his plans and concentrate his energies once again on the situation in Syria.

In the three years since his departure, during which Zengi had been fully occupied in his attempt to capture Damascus, the Latin princes could have achieved much. Instead, they had missed every opportunity. Not only had they made no further progress against the Saracens; they had failed even to preserve John's earlier conquests, nearly all of which had been retaken and were back in Muslim hands. This did not imply that a further Syrian expedition would be useless; what it did mean was that no trust could be placed in the rulers of Antioch or Edessa. The

1
Much later, the Ottoman Sultans were to claim descent from this couple.

2
There is some doubt over Manuel's precise age at this time. In Book I of the
Epitome
of John Cinnamus, it is given as eighteen; in Book III - quoting his mother - as 'barely sixteen'. But mothers have been known to miscalculate, or Irene may even have been recalling an earlier skirmish.

Emperor made his preparations; and in the spring of
1142
he set off, once again with his four sons, on his last journey to the East.

They took the road to Attaleia on the south coast, whose land communications were once again under threat. The first weeks were spent driving back the Turkoman nomads and their Seljuk masters and strengthening the frontier defences where necessary; it was high summer by the time they reached Attaleia - and there tragedy struck. John's eldest son Alexius, the recognized heir to the Empire, fell ill; within a few days he was dead. The Emperor, who had loved him dearly, ordered his second and third sons, Andronicus and Isaac, to escort their brother's body by sea back to Constantinople; and on the voyage Andronicus -infected, presumably, by the same virus — died in his turn. This double blow left John heartbroken; but he pressed on by forced marches through Cilicia and then on yet further east, until in mid-September he arrived unexpectedly at Turbessel - now Tell el-Bashir - the second capital of the county of Edessa where Joscelin, taken by surprise, immediately offered him his little daughter Isabella as hostage. The
2
5
th of the month found him at the immense Templar castle of Baghras, from which he sent a message to Raymond demanding the immediate surrender of the city of Antioch — repeating his earlier promise to compensate him from his future conquests.

This was the moment that Raymond had long dreaded. He was incapable of stirring up an immediate riot as Joscelin had done four years before, his incompetence having made him so unpopular that the majority of his native Christian subjects would have been only too happy to welcome the Emperor in his stead. His one chance was to play for time. He replied with elaborate courtesy that he must consult his vassals, which he immediately did; and the vassals refused. Raymond, they pointed out, ruled only as the husband of the city's heiress. He had no right to dispose of her property, and even if she were to signify her consent it would be invalid without their own, which they would in no circumstances give. Any attempt to surrender Antioch would result in the immediate dethronement of both Raymond and his wife.

When this reply was brought to the Emperor at Baghras, he saw that it meant war. But winter was coming, the army was tired and he decided to postpone the offensive until the spring. He allowed his men a week or two to pillage the Frankish estates in the neighbourhood - just to give Raymond and his friends a taste of what was coming to them - and then returned to Cilicia, where there were still a few Danishmend outposts to be dealt with and where he could spend the winter making proper preparations for a campaign that promised to be the most decisive of his life.

Alas, those preparations were in vain. In March
1143,
when all was ready, the Emperor set off on a brief hunting expedition in the Taurus, in the course of which an arrow accidentally wounded him in the hand. The wound seemed slight, and at first he ignored it; but it soon became seriously infected, and septicaemia set in. Before long it was clear to him that he was dying. He had faced death too often in his life to fear it now: quietly competent as ever, he began to make provision for the succession. Of his two surviving sons the elder, Isaac, was still in Constantinople; the younger, Manuel, was at his side. Both had their partisans, to whose arguments he listened with close attention; but the final decision, he reminded them all, was his alone.

On Easter Sunday,
4
April, the dying Emperor received holy communion. Next he gave orders that the doors of his chamber should be opened to all in the camp, and that anyone with a request should be allowed to speak to him freely; he was determined that there should be no unfinished business left behind when he died. The following day -during which the whole camp was flooded by driving rain - the doors were opened again, and he distributed his last presents — including food from the imperial table - to those who had served him most faithfully. Then and only then did he call a council to announce his successor. Both his sons, he said, were fine young men - strong, intelligent, full of spirit. Isaac, however, was prone to anger, while Manuel possessed, with all the qualities of his brother, a singular gentleness which enabled him to listen carefully to advice and follow the dictates of reason. It was therefore Manuel - the youngest of his children - who should succeed him. Turning to his son, who knelt at his bedside, he somehow summoned up the strength first to take the imperial diadem and lower it on to the young man's head, then to drape the purple robe across his shoulders.

The Emperor lived on, growing progressively weaker, for three more days. Then, on
8
April
1143,
he sent for a holy monk from Pamphylia to hear his confession and perform the last rites. His death, which followed almost at once, was pious, efficient and well-ordered, just as his life had been; and indeed no Emperor had ever worked harder, or sacrificed himself more consistently, for the good of his Empire. To be sure, he died a disappointed man: had just a few more years of life been granted to him, he would almost certainly have extended Byzantine power deep into Syria - perhaps even into Palestine
— and might indeed have gone a
long way towards undoing the fearful damage sustained at Manzikert. Dying as he did at only fifty-three, John Comnenus was obliged to leave his work in the East unfinished; yet he could take comfort in the knowledge that the Empire he was passing on to his son Manuel was stronger, more extensive and infinitely more respected than it had been at any time in the seventy-two years since the great defeat. And there was another consolation too: Manuel himself - who would, he was convinced, prove a worthy successor.

6

The Second Crusade

[1
143-9]

You have commanded, and I have obeyed
...
I have declared and spoken; and now they [the Crusaders] are multiplied, beyond number. Cities and castles are deserted, and seven women together may scarcely find one man to lay hold on, so many widows are there whose husbands are still living.

St Bernard
of Clairvaux to Pope Eugenius II
I,
1146

Manuel Comnenus had been proclaimed
basili
us
by his father, before any number of witnesses; but his succession was by no means assured. Emperors, he was well aware, were made in Constantinople: he was still in the wilds of Cilicia, impossibly placed to deal with any rival claimants to the throne. Clearly there could be no question of pursuing the war against Antioch; he must get back to the capital as soon as possible to consolidate his position. On the other hand, he had his filial duties to perform. First there was the funeral service to be arranged, and a monastery to be founded on the spot where John had died; the body must then be carried overland to Mopsuestia, and thence down the river Pyramus to the open sea, whence it would be taken by ship to the Bosphorus for burial in his own foundation of the Pantocrator. Manuel therefore decided to send Axuch ahead of him to Constantinople, with the title of Regent and instructions to put under immediate arrest the most dangerous of possible contenders: his elder brother Isaac, passed over by his father but already installed in the Great Palace and thus with instant access to the treasure and the imperial regalia.

Axuch id his work well, travelling so fast that he reached the capital even before the news of the Emperor's death. He seized the protesting Isaac and locked him up in the Pantocrator; for good measure, he also ordered the arrest of that other Isaac, John's brother, exiled at the Pontic Heraclea. The only other possible source of trouble was the Patriarchate, on which Manuel had to rely for his cor
onation. As it
happened, the chair was vacant - the previous incumbent of the office having died a short time before and his successor having not yet been appointed. In order to ensure that his master would have the support of every possible candidate, the Grand Domestic therefore summoned all the senior churchmen to the palace and presented them with an impressive diploma, its silken ribbons sealed in scarlet wax, by which the new
basileus
undertook to pay annually to the clergy of St Sophia two hundred pieces of silver. They accepted it with every show of gratitude, assuring him that there would be no difficulties over the coronation. Little did they know how cheap they were selling themselves; concealed in his robe Axuch had another, similar document for use as necessary, offering two hundred pieces not of silver but of gold.

Thanks to his speed and efficiency there were no disturbances in the capital — and only one conspiracy. Its leader was the Caesar John Roger, a son-in-law of the late Emperor who had been given his title in recognition of his marriage to Manuel's sister Maria. He seems to have been a Norman, one of the number of barons from South Italy who, having unsuccessfully rebelled against the King of Sicily in the years following his accession in
1130,
had been expelled from their lands and had sought refuge in Constantinople; and it was from them, not surprisingly, that he drew his support. Fortunately Axuch was informed of the plot at an early stage, by the Princess Maria herself; and within hours her husband too was under arrest.