The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (3 page)

Unpopular as he was, Nicephorus had never been so openly reviled by his subjects in the streets of his capital as when the news of the massacre reached Constantinople on the Thursday before Easter. He had proved, they grumbled, not only rapacious and grasping but a woefully incompetent leader in the field. Of the two campaigns that he had launched against Krum one had been still-born, abandoned before a single arrow had been loosed, while the other had ended in an annihilating defeat. This time, however, their Emperor gave them no cause for complaint. His blood, too, was up. Leaving the capital at once with the army, by dint of forced marches he had reached the Bulgar capital, Pliska, by Easter Sunday - finding it, to his delight, virtually undefended. His men fell on it like locusts - burning, pillaging, reducing the Khan's wooden palace to ashes: Passing on to Serdica, he paused to rebuild the fortress; then, well pleased with his achievement, he returned in triumph to Constantinople.

But Krum was not defeated, and Nicephorus knew it. All the next year was spent in preparing what he was determined would be his last great offensive against the Bulgar Khan - an offensive that would eliminate him and his loathsome tribe as effectively as Krum himself had eliminated the Avars less than a decade before. Since the death of Harun the eastern frontier had been quiet, the Caliph's sons being too busy quarrelling among themselves to pay any attention to Byzantium. The armies of the Asian Themes were accordingly summoned to join their European colleagues; and in May 811 an immense host marched out through the Golden Gate, the Emperor himself and his son Stauracius at its head.

To begin with, all went well. Before so massive a force the Bulgars could only retreat. Once again Pliska was devastated, Nicephorus — who, if we are to believe Theophanes, seems to have suffered some sort of breakdown — sparing neither women nor children: there is a terrible story of babies being hurled into threshing machines. The palace of the Khan, so recently rebuilt, was razed a second time to the ground. Desperate now, Krum sued for peace; but the Emperor was determined to finish the work that he had begun and marched on in search of the Bulgar army, which had fled into the mountains.

He was soon to regret his inflexibility. On Thursday,
24
July, still in pursuit of his prey, he led the bulk of his army through a rocky defile -probably the Pass of Verbitza, some thirty miles south of the modern Turgovishte in Bulgaria
1
- without first having ordered an adequate reconnaissance. The Bulgars, who had been secretly watching the invaders' every move, saw their chance: under cover of night they blockaded the gorge at each end with heavy wooden palisades. As dawn broke, Nicephorus realized that he had been drawn into a trap. Escape was impossible
; he and his men were doomed. All
that day they awaited the attack; but the Bulgars, still working on their fortifications, were in no hurry. Only in the early morning of Saturday the 26th did they strike.

The ensuing massacre continued all night and for much of the next day. The majority of the army was cut to pieces; of the remainder, many were burnt to death when the Bulgars fired the palisades, while others were crushed by artificially-induced landslides. A few managed to escape, , chiefly cavalry; but these, hotly pursued by the Bulgar horsemen, plunged in their panic headlong into a nearby river in which many were

1 The exact site of the battle is still disputed; but the Pass of Verbitza - which was locally known as the 'Greek Hollow' until well into the present century - seems the most likely candidate. The question is more fully discussed by Sir Steven Runciman,
A History of the First Bulgarian Empire
p.
J7n.

drowned. Among the handful of survivors was the Emperor's son-in-law, Michael Rhangabe. His son Stauracius was less fortunate: paralysed by an appalling wound in the neck which had severed his spinal cord, he was carried back to Constantinople where he was to die, still in unspeakable agony, six months later.

As for Nicephorus himself, his body was retrieved where it fell and carried triumphantly back to the Bulgar camp. There the head was cut off, impaled on a stake and exposed for several days to public mockery. And even then the indignity was not complete: Krum had the skull mounted in silver, and for the rest of his life used it as his drinking cup.

On the Bosphorus, the news of the Emperor's death was received with horror. The Byzantines had to cast their minds back over more than four centuries to recall a comparable disaster: the last of their Emperors to have been killed in battle was Valens, at Adrianople in 378. Though they had never liked Nicephorus, they were acutely conscious of the humiliation that he - and they - had suffered at the hands of the Bulgar Khan. They knew, too, that although he had left the Empire financially sound, from the military point of view its situation could hardly have been worse. What was now needed above all was another strong leader, capable of rebuilding the army and of negotiating, from a position of at least some strength, with Charlemagne - whose demands for the recognition of his imperial claims were growing ever more insistent. Nothing of the kind, clearly, could be hoped for from the pitiable figure of Stauracius, whom his father had made co-Emperor as early as 805 but who now lay bedridden, paralysed and in constant pain, and for whom a merciful death could not be long delayed. Since he was childless, the obvious course was for him to abdicate in favour of the only other male member of the family of Nicephorus — the husband of his daughter Procopia, Michael Rhangabe, whose almost miraculous escape from the fatal battle suggested to many that he must enjoy some special divine favour. For reasons which are unclear Stauracius detested him, and made a feeble attempt to name as his successor his wife Theophano;
1
but he was in no condition to enforce a plan which, in the circumstances then

1 Theophano was an Athenian, whose apparent (though probably only distant) kinship with Irene had not debarred her from being placed on a short list, drawn up by command of Nicephorus, of dazzlingly beautiful virgins who might be possible brides for his son. She herself, we are given to understand, did not prove entirely satisfactory on either count; she was eventually selected only because Nicephorus decided to keep both her rivals for himself.

prevailing, might well have been catastrophic. Accordingly on 2 October 811, without the dying Emperor's consent or even his knowledge, Michael was crowned and acclaimed as
basileus -
the first in Byzantine history to bear a name that was neither Greek nor Roman, but Hebrew. Stauracius, meanwhile, was tonsured and hastily dispatched to a monastery, where three months later the death he had so longed for came to him at last.

The Emperor Michael I was now in the prime of his manhood. His round face, we are told, was framed by curls of thick black hair and a full beard. It soon became clear, however, that such gifts as heaven had been pleased to bestow upon him included neither intelligence nor firmness of character. He proved weak-willed and easily led, a natural puppet who would allow himself to be manipulated by anyone who managed to seize the strings; and since he was also profoundly religious, it was hardly surprising that the principal manipulators during his brief reign should have been the two leading churchmen of the day: Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople and Theodore, Abbot of the Studium. Nicephorus had been appointed by his imperial namesake to succeed Patriarch Tarasius on the latter's death in 806. Like Tarasius, he had been up to that time a civil servant and a layman: his enthronement in the patriarchal chair had occurred exactly a week after his first receiving the tonsure.
1
A man of considerable ability and utter integrity, he was also the author of one of the few trustworthy sources for the period of history extending from the reign of Heraclius to that of Constantine V; we can only regret that he did not continue it into his own day. But although he proved a devout churchman and a staunch supporter of the holy images, he was from the moment of his appointment looked on by the extremist monastic party - led by Theodore of the Studium - with hatred and mistrust.

The reason for this attitude is not far to seek: Theodore and his followers understandably considered Nicephorus an impostor: a tool of the Emperor who was an ecclesiastic only in name and whose very ordination had made a mockery of one of the most solemn sacraments of the Church. They had taken precisely the same view of his predecessor Tarasius - a view for which they had found ample confirmation when in 795 Tarasius had permitted the young Constantine VI to pack off his wife, Mary of Amnia, to a nunnery and go through a form of marriage

1 In the Orthodox Church, bishops were - and still are - always chosen from the monasteries rather than from the parish priesthood.

with one of the ladies of his court, Theodote. Their anger at such conduct - despite the mildly embarrassing fact that the lady in question was a cousin of Abbot Theodore's — had been to some extent appeased when the celebrant at the marriage ceremony, an unfortunate cleric by the name of Joseph, was subsequently excommunicated; but a decade later, in 806, the Emperor had called a synod which rehabilitated him. The decision was endorsed by the new Patriarch and the whole affair blew up again, Theodore being sent away - for the second time - into exile.

For as long as the Emperor Nicephorus lived, there could be no hope of reconciliation between the moderates and the extremists. Constantine VI was long since in his grave, and insofar as the question of his marriage was not by this time entirely academic it is probably safe to say that the
basileus
disapproved of it almost as much as Theodore himself; but that was not the point. The vital necessity, so far as the Emperor was concerned, was to establish the principle that - if he desired it and a synod of the Church decreed it - dispensation could be granted, even on a matter of canon law. And to attain that object, what became known as the Moechian dispute
(moech
eia
being the Greek word for adultery) provided a test case as valid as any other.

But now Nicephorus was dead too, and his gutless son-in-law was as unable as he was unwilling to prolong the quarrel. The Patriarch himself felt much the same way, and in any case realized that in the new circumstances prevailing the two factions must be reconciled. Having made it a condition of Michael's coronation that he should sign an undertaking to uphold the Orthodox faith and to grant to monks and clergy alike immunity from corporal punishment or physical constraint, he encouraged the Emperor to recall Abbot Theodore and his fellow-exiles, and even to reimpose the sentence of excommunication on poor Joseph. In doing so, he may have obtained rather more than he bargained for: Theodore, who was for all his bigotry a man of formidable energy and personal magnetism, quickly acquired immense influence over the Emperor - who consulted him on everything, whether or not Church affairs were involved, and invariably followed his advice.

There has been something of a fashion among more recent historians to credit Michael I - and through him Theodore of the Studium - with the dramatic reversal in the Byzantine attitude towards the West that took place about this time. Nicephorus I had for most of his reign simply ignored Charlemagne's imperial claims - a policy which had not been rewarded with any striking success, having resulted in a somewhat desultory naval war with the Franks and having led, indirectly, to the defection of the young Republic of Venice.
1
What easier explanation could there be for the sudden change of heart in Constantinople than the fact that, after the disaster of 811, the Empire was no longer capable of pursuing the war, and that the death of the ever-inflexible Nicephorus enabled his easy-going successor to open peace negotiations?

None: but for the fact that imperial ambassadors are known to have passed through Venice on their way to Charlemagne's court at Aachen in the late autumn of 8io, and that agreement was almost certainly reached on all major issues some time in the spring of 811 - several weeks, at the very least, before the annihilation of the Byzantine army. True, it was another year before new envoys — now representing Michael - went to acclaim Charlemagne as Emperor, and another three before the treaty was finally ratified; but there can be no doubt that the initial olive branch, such as it was, was extended by Nicephorus; and to him, more than to his successor or to Theodore, must be given the credit for the ensuing peace. It was not to be known as the
Pax Niceph
ori
for nothing.

Perhaps, on reflection, he had found himself wondering whether an Emperor of the West was, after all, such a very bad idea. Constantinople might be the New Rome, the heir to Roman civilization, law and traditions; but Constantinople was by now Greek through and through. It had nothing - not even language, not even religion - in common with the new Europe that was beginning to emerge beyond the Adriatic; nor did it any longer wield any effective power in those regions. It was Aachen, not Byzantium, that had re-established the
Pax Romaaa
in the West. The Roman Empire must remain indivisible, of that there could be no question; but would two Emperors necessarily divide it? So long as they remained on good terms with each other might they not, on the contrary, give it new strength?

Charlemagne, for his part, was prepared to offer excellent terms. He would relinquish all claims to Venice and to the entire province of Venetia, together with the cities of Istria and the Dalmatian coast; all he

1
Although Venice had been effectively autonomous since
72
7,
she had heretofore remained politically as well as culturally within the Byzantine sphere of influence; it had certainly caused a
friss
on
of dismay in Greek hearts when, on Christmas Day 805, Doge Obelerio degli Antenori did homage to Charlemagne as Emperor of the West, returning to the lagoons with a Frankish bride -the first
dogares
sa
known to history.

asked in return was the recognition of his imperial status and, in particular, the right to style himself
basileus
in official documents. In theory this meant that he would henceforth be the equal of the Byzantine Emperor, and that he and his heirs would enjoy the acknowledged right of succession to the throne of Constantinople; though whether such an interpretation was ever wholly accepted by the Byzantines even intellectually - they certainly never accepted it emotionally - is open to doubt.
1

In the event, it hardly mattered. Charlemagne's Empire was to disintegrate within a few years of his death; not for a century and more - until the appearance of Otto the Great - would it regain its former stature, and neither then nor at any later time would there be any serious question of the succession of the Western Emperor as of right to the Byzantine throne. But the
Pax Niceph
ori
is no less important for that. It marked the acceptance, for the first time, of two simultaneous Roman Emperors: Emperors who were not sharing - even theoretically - a single throne for reasons of administrative convenience, according to the system attempted (with almost invariably disastrous results) by Diocletian and his successors, but who were genuinely independent of each other, each pursuing his own policies but at the same time fully recognizing and respecting the claims and titles of his counterpart. And, in doing so, it created the mould in which later medieval Europe was to be formed.

The dying Stauracius had been right in opposing the succession of Michael Rhangabe. Had it not been for the peace with Charlemagne over which he was fortunate enough to preside, the reign of that hapless monarch would have been one of almost unmitigated catastrophe. Again in marked contrast to his predecessor, he and his wife Procopia - whose coronation had taken place a mere ten days after his own - were almost insanely prodigal with money, lavishing huge sums on churches and monasteries and, it sometimes seemed, on anyone who asked for it. In one department only did Michael refuse to loosen his purse-strings — or indeed to take any interest at all: that which was concerned with the defence of his Empire.

And seldom had the Empire needed it more. In the spring of 812 Krum, encouraged by his triumph of the previous year, had seized Develtus, a fortified Byzantine town on the Black Sea commanding the

1 It is worth noting, too, that they were careful never to call Charlemagne Emperor
of the R
oma
ns
— a style which they reserved for their own ruler and were indeed to use with increasing frequency from this time forward.

coast road to the south, and forcibly carried off all its inhabitants -including the bishop - to his own territory. In June Michael set out to confront him; but the newly-recruited army, untried and virtually untrained, mutinied almost at once and he was obliged to return. Inevitably, the news of his withdrawal spread quickly through Thrace and Macedonia whose populations, realizing that they were now at Krum's mercy, fled in terror. Several of the smaller frontier fortresses were completely abandoned; abandoned too, in a large measure, were the important strong-points of Anchialus and Beroc - now the Bulgarian towns of Pomorie and Stara Zagora — whose defences had been only recently repaired by Irene. The infecti
on spread even as far as Philip
popolis (Plovdiv), the chief city of western Thrace.