The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (56 page)

It could perhaps be argued that the decision of Andronicus to mount the ex-Emperor on a mule and to parade him in his degradation the 500-odd miles from Adana to Cotiaeum - the modern Kiitahya - was not actually harmful, though it seems a curious interpretation of the terms of his undertaking. In the light of what happened afterwards, however, the question seems academic. Referring to the archbishops, Scylitzes writes:

Although they wished to help him, they were weak and impotent when cruel and harsh men took him and pitilessly, mercilessly, put out his eyes. Carried forth on a cheap beast of burden like a decaying corpse, his eyes gouged out and his face and head alive with worms, he lived on a few days in pain with a foul stench all about him until he gave up the ghost, being buried on the island of Proti where he had built a monastery.

He was given a rich burial by his wife, the Empress Eudocia, leaving memories of trials and misfortunes too terrible to be told. But in all his

1
Nicephorus Bryennius records that she was made the victim of a show trial, in which forged letters were produced to implicate her in a conspiracy to restore Romanus. Her action in suddenly producing from the folds of her gown an icon of Christ, and bidding those prese
nt behold the true judge of the
proceedings, was applauded as a splendid theatrical gesture - but cut, we are told, no ice.

misfortunes he uttered no curse or blasphemy, continuing always to give thanks to God and bearing courageously whatever befell him.

Michael Psellus, who always dete
sted Romanus and never loses an o
pportunity to denigrate him, predictably attempts to justify the blinding:

I am reluctant to describe a deed that should never have taken place; and yet, if I may alter my words slightly
[sic],
it was a deed that should unquestionably have taken place. On the one hand the scruples of religion, allied to a natural unwillingness to inflict pain, would forbid it; on the other, the political situation and the sudden changes of both parties made it absolutely necessary .
..
since the more enthusiastic element in the imperial council
1
feared that Diogenes might succeed in his conspiracies and once again cause the Emperor embarrassment.

Nor was that his last insult. A few days before his death in the summer of 1072, Romanus received a letter from his old enemy. It was couched in the friendliest terms, and congratulated him on his good fortune in losing his eyes - a sure sign that the Almighty had found him worthy of a higher light. As he lay in his final agony, the thought must have given him profound comfort.

The battle of Manzikert was the greatest disaster suffered by the Empire of Byzantium in the seven and a half centuries of its existence. The humiliation was bad enough, the performance of the imperial army having been characterized by a combination of treachery, panic and ignominious flight; the fate of the Emperor, too, was unparalleled since the capture of Valerian by the Persian King Shapur I in
ad
260
, before Constantinople was even thought of. The real tragedy, however, lay not in the battle itself but in its appalling epilogue. Had Romanus Diogenes been permitted to retain his throne, all would have been well: he would have observed the terms of the treaty he had made with his captors, and Alp Arslan - who (let it never be forgotten) had no intention of making outright war on the Empire, far less of conquering it - would have resumed his expedition against Fatimid Egypt. Even had Romanus been succeeded by an Emperor worthy of the name, the damage could easily have been contained: a Nicephorus Phocas or a John Tzimisces - let alone a Basil II — would have restored the status quo in a matter of months, and the Seljuks did not begin any systematic move into Anatolia

1
I.e., Caesar John Ducas. Psellus goes on to say that he gave the order for the blinding without consulting the Emperor Michael.

until the summer of 1073 - two years after the battle. By then they can hardly be blamed for doing so. Michael VII's refusal to accept the obligations of the treaty signed with Romanus gave them a legitimate motive for their action, while the chaos that reigned within the Empire and the collapse of the old defensive system based on military holdings ensured that they met with no resistance.

Thus it came about that tens of thousands of Turkoman tribesmen swarmed into Anatolia from the north-east, and that by 1080 or thereabouts the Seljuk Sultan Malik-Shah
1
controlled a broad tongue of territory covering perhaps 30,000 square miles and extending deep into the heartland: an area which, in recognition of its former history as part of the Roman Empire, he named the Sultanate of Rum. The Empire still retained western Asia Minor and its former Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts; but it had lost, at a single stroke, the source of a considerable portion of its grain and more than half its manpower. And it had done so not because of the superior fighting power of the Seljuk Turks, but as the result of its own inefficiency and short-sightedness. The battle through which it had suffered that loss had been directed against an unwilling enemy; it need never have been fought and could easily have been won. Even after defeat, its long-term consequences might have been avoided by judicious diplomacy. But those in power in Constantinople, led by Caesar John Ducas and inspired by the odious Michael Psellus, systematically refused to take the steps that were so obviously necessary. Blinkered by their own smug intellectualism and obsessive personal ambition, they made every mistake, threw away every opportunity offered to them. In doing so they martyred a courageous and upright man who, though no genius, was worth more than all of them put together and could, with their loyalty and support, have saved the situation; and they dealt the Byzantine Empire a blow from which it would never recover.

The reign of Michael VII continued as disastrously as it had begun. The

year after Manzikert saw a serious uprising in Bulgaria as a result of

which a certain Constantine Bodin, son of Prince Michael of Zeta,
2
had

·

been crowned Tsar in the city of Prizren
. Thanks largely to the efforts
of Nicephorus Bryennius the Empire eventually managed to reimpose control, but at a heavy cost; it was clear that further outbreaks could not be long delayed. Meanwhile Rome was steadily extending its influence beyond the Adriatic, in the lands over which Basil II had formerly claimed suzerainty. In 1075 the legates of Pope Gregory VII crowned a vassal named Demetrius Zvonimir King of Croatia, and in 1077 there came a further blow for Byzantium when Michael of Zeta also received a papal coronation. As the imperial hold weakened, the Pechenegs and Hungarians became increasingly troublesome. Thus, within half a century of Basil's death, his whole magnificent achievement in the Balkans was already crumbling away.

At home the situation was very little better. Inflation was rising, to the point where a gold
nomisma
would no longer buy a whole measure of wheat, but only three-quarters. Before long the Emperor became known as Michael Parapinaces, or 'Minus-a-quarter', a nickname which stuck with him until his death. Weak and feckless as always, he also allowed himself to fall under the influence of a sinister new arrival on the political scene, the eunuch Nicephoritzes, who took over the effective government of the Empire, cast aside Psellus and the Caesar John and rapidly became the same sort of power in the capital that John the Orphanotrophus had been forty years before. Determined still further to strengthen the centralized bureaucracy of the State, he went further than any of his predecessors by turning the corn trade into a government monopoly, building a vast official granary at the port of Rhaedestum on the Ma
rmara at which all corn shipped
to the capital was to be stored until resale. The attempt, predictably enough, proved yet another disaster. The landed proprietors in those areas of Anatolia still in imperial control sustained heavy losses, while the urban consumers found that Nicephoritzes was less interested in ensuring adequate supplies than in increasing state revenues by screwing up the price of bread. This in turn led to a general increase in prices and a further twist of the inflationary spiral.

Then there were the military insurrections. The first of these was inspired by the leader of the Norman mercenaries, a soldier of fortune named Roussel of Bailleul. His fighting record was not unblemished, since he had been involved with Joseph Tarchaniotes in the mysterious events at Khelat; somehow, however, he had charmed his way back into imperial favour - it sometimes seemed that anyone who had betrayed Romanus Diogenes was by definition a friend of his successor - and had later been sent with a mixed force of Norman and Frankish cavalry against Seljuk marauders in Anatolia. Once deep in Turkish-controlled territory he had yet again betrayed his trust and, with 300 loyal followers, had set up a self-declared independent Norman state on the south Italian pattern. Had Michael VII and his advisers thought for a moment, they would surely have realized that, compared with the Turkish tide that threatened t
o engulf them, Roussel was littl
e more than a mild irritant; instead, so determined were they to liquidate him that they turned to the Seljuks for aid, offering them in return the formal cession of territories that they already held and thus immeasurably strengthening their hold on Asia Minor. Even then Roussel managed to escape; only when an army was sent out from Constantinople under the command of the ablest of the Empire's younger generals, Alexius Comnenus, was he hunted down and brought back in chains to the capital.

But Alexius Comnenus could not be everywhere at once and, owing to the neglect of the army during the previous half-century, experienced generals were in short supply; thus it was that, a year or two later, when the Empire was faced with two new and far more serious insurrections, one in the East and one in the West, Roussel was suddenly released from his captivity and found himself fighting at Alexius's side against the two new pretenders to the imperial throne. The first of these was Nicephorus Bryennius who, having fought with distinction at Manzikert, had been installed as Governor
{dux)
of Dyrrachium, where he had been principally responsible for putting down the Slav revolt of 1072. No longer prepared to accept the incompetence of Michael Parapinaces and his government - and having learnt that the eunuch Nicephoritzes had listed him for assassination - he raised the standard of revolt in November 1077 and marched to his native city of Adrianople, where he was acclaimed
basile
us.
A week later he and his army were beneath the walls of Constantinople.

His insurrection might well have succeeded had it not been for another, almost simultaneous, rising in the East. Its leader was the
strategos
of the Anatolikon Theme, Nicephorus Botaneiates. He has made one previous, passing appearance in this story as a prospective husband for the Empress Eudocia, before the arrival of Romanus Diogenes banished the idea from her mind. Presumably because he had doubts about his loyalty, Romanus had deliberately excluded Botaneiates from
the Manzikert expedition; the general had returned to his extensive estates in Anatolia, where he had received his present appointment soon after Michael's accession; but now he too - probably, like Bryennius, for the highest motives - took up arms against the Emperor.

Of the two rival claimants, Bryennius was first in the field; Botaneiates was, however, of far nobler birth, being a kinsman of the Phocas and thus a member of the old military aristocracy; he was also the stronger, particularly since he had managed to suborn the Seljuk forces hired by Michael to oppose him. Neither made a direct attack on Constantinople, knowing full well from secret contacts within the capital that popular discontent over rising prices would soon bring matters to a head -which, in March 1078, it did. Riots broke out in every corner of the city. Many government buildings were burnt to the ground, among them Nicephoritzes's new granary. The eunuch himself was seized by the mob and tortured to death. The miserable Michael, lucky to escape with his life, quickly abdicated and withdrew to the Studium, and on 24 March Nicephorus Botaneiates entered Constantinople in triumph. His rival Bryennius was captured and blinded.

It was an inauspicious start to the new reign. Botaneiates had been a competent general, but he knew nothing of politics or statesmanship; besides, he was getting old — he was already well into his seventies — and his bid for the throne, successful as it had been, had used up much of his remaining strength. Utterly incapable of coping with the crisis he had inherited, he could do little but preside, helpless, over the further disintegration of the Empire, during which one revolt followed another and the State drifted further and further into anarchy. The old party of the civil bureaucracy had collapsed with the murder of Nicephoritzes, and with it the authority of the Senate; all that was left to the Byzantines was to pray that of the several military commanders now struggling for power, one might establish himself above the rest; and that that man might prove himself a leader capable of putting an end to the chaos.

Three years later - in the nick of time - their prayer was answered; and answered more completely than anyone could have dared to hope. The pathetic old Botaneiates abdicated in his turn in favour of an aristocratic young general who, coming to the throne on Easter Day 1081, was to reign for the next thirty-seven years, giving the Empire the stability that it so desperately needed and governing it with a firm and steady hand. That general was Alexius Comnenus, nephew of Isaac I and father of the celebrated Anna Comnena, who was to make him the subject of one of the most wholly enjoyable of all medieval biographies. Not even Alexius could undo the damage done by the battle of Manzikert; that, alas, was past repair. But he could, and did, restore to Byzantium its reputation and its good name among nations, thus preparing it to play its part in the great drama that was to begin to unfold even before the end of that turbulent century: the Crusades.