The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (40 page)

[989
-1025]

His cruelty inflicted a cool and exquisite vengeance on the fifteen thousand captives who had been guilty of the defence of their country. They were deprived of sight, but to one of each hundred a single eye was left, that he might conduct his blind century to the presence of their king. Their king is said to have expired of grief and horror; the nation was awed by this terrible example; the Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs bequeathed to their children the advice of patience and the duty of revenge.

Edward Gibbon,
The
Decline
and
Fall
of
the Roman
Empire,
Chapter LV

In the sixty-five-year reign of Basil II, the year
989
marks the watershed. Though still only thirty-one, he had held the title of Emperor for twenty-nine years. Of those years, the first sixteen - covering the period of his minority - had been overshadowed by the two military adventurers who had successively seized the throne, Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces. The next nine had seen him the puppet - albeit a most unwilling one - of his great-uncle. The last four had been chiefly notable for his defeat and humiliation by Tsar Samuel at Trajan's Gate; for a major rebellion which had been contained only with outside help and which might still have been threatening him but for the sudden death of its leader; and, most recently, for his own submission to a piece of shameless blackmail on the part of the Prince of Kiev. It was not a distinguished record.

But by the end of
989
his luck had changed. The year itself had provided more than its share of disasters. After one of the cruellest winters in living memory, during which the sea itself was frozen, there had been the struggle with Bardas Phocas, and another with Bardas Scleras; within days of the Russian capture of Cherson had come news
of the fall to the Bulgars of Berrhoea (the modern Verria), a strategic fortress town guarding the approaches to Thessalonica; while serious disturbances had broken out in Antioch. The significance of the aurora borealis on 7 April, and of the brilliant comet which illuminated the sky for three weeks during July and August, was variously interpreted; but there could be no two minds about the calamitous earthquake which on the night of 25 October destroyed or damaged over forty churches in the capital alone - including St Sophia itself, whose central dome was split right across and had to be completely redesigned,
1
while part of the eastern apse simply subsided into a pile of rubble. A more unmistakable manifestation of the divine wrath could scarcely be imagined: yet the year was to close with the Empire enjoying internal peace for the first time since the death of John Tzimisces in 976 and its Emperor, with his defeats and disappointments behind him, standing at last on the threshold of glory.

Now that he had no longer anything to fear from the Anatolian barons, he was free to concentrate on the great task that was to occupy him for the next three decades: the annihilation of the Bulgar Empire. It was, however, typical of his farsightedness that he should first turn his attention to a small piece of unfinished business concerning David, Prince of the region of Upper Tao in Georgia. In 978 David, as a loyal vassal of the Empire, had been awarded temporary possession of a large area of imperial territory to the north of Lake Van. Since then, however, he had rather spoilt his record by supporting the rebellious Bardas Phocas - an error of judgement which he must bitterly have regretted when, in the autumn of 989, an imperial army marched eastward with obviously punitive intent. Fortunately for him the commanding general, a certain John of Chaldia, had authority from the Emperor to offer terms: David might keep the ceded territory for his lifetime and would be additionally awarded the title of
curopalates,
provided that
all
his lands - including his own birthplace and patrimony - reverted on his death to the imperial crown. With the army sharpening its swords only a mile or two away, the prince had little choice but to agree; and Basil considerably extended his eastern frontiers without the loss of a single life.

Unfortunately, as he well knew, diplomacy of this kind would have

1
The new design, by an Armenian named Trdat, was to collapse in its turn in
1346.
(See
Byzantium: The Early Centuries,
p.
2ojn.)
Another casualty of the earthquake was the
Aqueduct of Valens, the subsequent repair of which put it back into working order, enabling it to bring fresh water to the city for the first time in several hundred years.

littl
e impact on Tsar Samuel; and in the early spring of 991 he set off with his army for Thessalonica, where he strengthened the defences, prostrated himself before the altar of the city's patron St Demetrius,
1
and tracked down to a remote monastery a living local saint named Photius, who had been present at his baptism - after the ceremony he had actually carried him in his arms back to the Palace - and who now promised to pray for him nightly during the coming campaign.
2
This was to continue for the next four years, during which Basil never once relaxed his pressure. Gone were the days when warfare was restricted to the summer months; the new imperial army, trained and toughened by the Emperor in person and now in superb physical condition, showed itself as impervious to-the January snows as to the August sun. Many cities — including Berrhoea — were recaptured. Some were garrisoned; others, less lucky, were razed to the ground.

There were, however, no dramatic advances, no great victories. Trajan's Gate had taught Basil a lesson he would never forget. Success for him
depended above all else on faultl
ess organization. The army must act as a single, perfectly coordinated body. Psellus tells us how at first sight of the enemy he would draw up his troops 'like a solid tower', establishing unbreakable lines of communication between himself and the cavalry, the cavalry and the heavy infantry, the heavy infantry and the light. When battle began, he would absolutely forbid any soldier to br
eak ranks or advance independentl
y in front of the line. Heroics of any kind were not simply discouraged, but punished with instant dismissal -or, on occasion, worse. His men complained openly about their master's endless inspections, and the attention he paid to every minute detail of their weapons and equipment; but they gave him their confidence and their trust because they knew that he left nothing to chance, that he never undertook an operation until he was certain of victory and that he valued their lives as he did his own.

In such circumstances progress might be sure; but it was also undeniably slow, and it comes as little surprise to find that when the Emperor was summoned urgently to Syria early in
995
he had achieved relatively

1
St Demetrius was, with St Theodore Stratilates, St Theodore of Tyre and St George, one of that great quartet (or possibly trio, since the two Theodores may have been one and the same) of warrior saints who protected Byzantine armies in battle.

2
There is a theory that Photius may have left his monastery and accompanied Basil throughout his four-year campaign, much as St Athanasius had accompanied Nicephorus Phocas; but on this point - as on so many others - our sadly inadequate sources are dumb.

little. Despite the reconquered towns, the situation was still very much as it had been fifteen years before, with the Bulgar Tsar as strong and determined as ever and the threat to Byzantium not a jot diminished. Samuel too had moved with caution, adopting the traditional Bulgar tactic of keeping to the mountains and avoiding pitched battles. He possessed, he knew, one great advantage over his enemy: he was on home ground. Over a prolonged campaign Basil might well gain the upper hand; but sooner or later he would be called away, quite possibly with a fair proportion of his army, leaving the remainder under the command of lesser men; and Samuel's turn would come. He would keep his powder dry, and play a waiting game.

When he had the choice, Basil preferred to move slowly and with caution; but he was also capable of astonishing speed when the occasion demanded, as he showed during his whirlwind Syrian expedition of 995. The crisis had been precipitated by the designs of the Egyptian Fatimid Caliph Aziz on the city of Aleppo, a Byzantine protectorate since the days of Nicephorus Phocas. Already in 994 its Emir had appealed to the Emperor, who had sent reinforcements to Antioch with instructions to the local governor, Michael Bourtzes - he who had recaptured the city for the Empire in 969 - to intervene; but Bourtzes was, alas, no longer the dashing young general he had been a quarter of a century before and was certainly no match for the Fatimid commander Manjutekin, who on 15 September had virtually destroyed his army on the banks of the Orontes.

The Emir, now desperate, dispatched a second appeal, stressing that Antioch itself was now in grave danger; and this time Basil recognized the emergency for what it was — one in which he could trust no one but himself. Hurrying back to the capital with as many troops as he dared, he collected all available reserves until he could boast a new army of some 40,000 men.
1
There remained, however, the problem of getting them to Syria. For such a force, with full arms, armour and equipment, the 600 miles across Anatolia would represent a good three months' march. By the time it arrived, in all probability, both Antioch and Aleppo would be lost. Every day counted. What was to be done?

Basil's solution, simple as it was, seems to have been unprecedented in

1
Once again our sources are miserably thin and uninformative. The Byzantine chroniclers tell us next to nothing; we are left with the Jews and the Arabs, of whom Yahya (who gives this figure) seems to be usually the most reliable.

all Byzantine history. He mounted his entire army. Every soldier was provided with two mules, one to ride and one for his equipment, serving also as a reserve. Even then, some travelled faster than others; but the Emperor, himself riding at the head of the column, could not wait for stragglers. Towards the end of April
995,
he drew up the first 1
7
,000 of his troops beneath the walls of Aleppo. They had taken just sixteen days - but they arrived not a day too soon. The city was already under heavy siege; a week more and it would have fallen, with much of northern Syria, into Fatimid hands. Now it was saved. Caught unawares and hopelessly outnumbered, Manjutekin fled back to Damascus. A few days later the Emperor himself headed south, sacking Emesa and sowing a trail of devastation as far as Tripoli. Returning, he established a strong garrison in Tortosa (Tartus) and in place of Bourtzes — whom he put under house arrest - appointed a new and younger Governor of Antioch with instructions to emphasize his supremacy in the region by annual shows of strength. Then he started back to his capital.

Even on his breakneck outward journey, Basil had had time to observe the countryside through which he rode; he drew his own conclusions, and during his more leisurely return his first impressions were confirmed. This was, so far as we can tell, his first visit to Asia since he had accompanied his stepfather Nicephorus Phocas to Cilicia as a child; and he was amazed at the size and splendour of the estates built up by the Anatolian 'powerful' on what was legally either imperial property or, more probably, that of the local village communes. Several of them - including old Eustathius Maleinus, in whose territory Bardas Phocas had raised the standard of revolt in
986
- made the mistake of attempting to assure him of their loyalty by receiving him in a style that he himself could hardly have equalled: mindless displays of wealth which, given his own hatred of empty ostentation, invariably aroused his fury. It was a sombre, pensive Emperor who returned that autumn to Constantinople.

On 1 January
996
there was promulgated over the Emperor's seal an edict the very title of which must have struck horror into the hearts of those Anatolian noblemen who had so recently tried to impress him: 'New Constitution,' it read, 'of the pious Emperor Basil the Young, by which are Condemned those Rich Men who Amass their Wealth at the Expense of the Poor', going on to make specific reference to a similar -though far less stringent - decree of Romanus Lecapenus in
955.
In that decree Romanus had stipulated a forty-year period of grace, during which claims could be made for the restitution of unjustly expropriated property; the trouble, as Basil well knew, was that any rich landowner could easily suppress such claims, by bribery, blackmail or a combination of the two; and he did not hesitate to name the guilty: