Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (2 page)

The Rise of Alexius

[1081]

We have prepared a very fine dish, not without a rich, savoury sauce. If you would like to share in our feast, come as soon as you can and sit with us at this supreme banquet.

Alexius and Isaac Comnenus to the Caesar John Ducas, February 1081.

The Alexiad,
II, 6

On Easter Sunday,
4
April 1081, in the Great Church of St Sophia at Constantinople, the twenty-four-year-old general Alexius Comnenus formally ascended the throne of a sad and shattered Empire. It was now ten years since that Empire had suffered at the hands of the Seljuk Turks, just outside the little garrison town of Manzikert a few miles to the north of Lake Van, the most disastrous defeat in all its history: a defeat which had resulted in the capture of the Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes, the ignominious flight of the once-invincible Byzantine army and the gradual spread of the conquerors across Anatolia until some 30,000 square miles of the imperial heartland had been overrun by Turkoman tribesmen. At a stroke, Byzantium had lost the source of much of its food supply and most of its manpower. Its very survival was now in doubt.

Had Romanus been allowed to continue as
basileus
once his liberty had been restored, he might have done much to redeem the situation. The Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan, preoccupied as he was by the far greater threat to his people presented by the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt, had no real quarrel with the Empire. He and Romanus had got on surprisingly well together, and the treaty which they had concluded as the price of the latter's freedom made no extensive territorial demands. But Romanus was overthrown by a palace revolution in Constantinople and, after a brief and unsuccessful attempt to regain his throne by force, was blinded so brutally that he died soon afterwards; the treaty was abrogated by his pathetic successor Michael VII - cultivated and intelligent, but utterly unfit for the throne - and by Michael's two
eminences grises,
his uncle the Caesar John Ducas and the scholar Michael Psellus; and the way was open for the Seljuks to do as they liked.

In the West, the horizon was equally black. On 16 April 1071 - just four months before Manzikert, but after a siege of nearly three years -the Normans of South Italy under their brilliant brigand of a leader Robert Guiscard had captured Bari. For over five centuries - since the time of Justinian - Bari had been an imperial city. Formerly the capital of a rich and prosperous province, in recent years it had become the Empire's only remaining outpost in the peninsula, the centre of a tiny enclave from which the banners of Byzantium fluttered alone in a turbulent and hostile land. On that day, the Saturday before Palm Sunday, those banners were struck - effectively for the last time. Henceforth, the phrase 'Byzantine Italy' would be a contradiction in terms. The following year had seen a dangerous uprising in Bulgaria, in the course of which a certain Constantine Bodin, son of Prince Michael of Zeta,
1
had been crowned Tsar in the city of Prizren; order had finally been restored - at considerable cost - but revolution was in the air and no one doubted that there would be more trouble before long.

Finally there was the problem of Rome. The Emperor Michael, in another sublime demonstration of political misjudgement, had appealed to Pope Gregory VII after the fall of Bari for help against the Norman menace; he was consequently in a poor position to object when Gregory began openly extending his influence over the eastern shores of the Adriatic - crowning a vassal named Demetrius Zvonimir King of Croatia in 107 5 and bestowing a second - papal - crown on Michael of Zeta two years later. Meanwhile both the Hungarians and the barbarian Pechenegs had gone back to their old tricks, throwing the whole Balkan peninsula back into chaos.

With disasters like these occurring on every side, it was little wonder that various sections of the army should have broken out, not once but several times, in open revolt. The first insurrection had been led by a Norman soldier of fortune named Roussel of Bailleul, who had attempted to set up an independent Norman state in central Anatolia, much as his compatriots had recently done in South Italy. Roussel had been finally brought to heel by Alexius Comnenus, and after a brief spell in prison had subsequently fought at Alexius's side against two more claimants:

1 Zeta (formerly known as Diocl
ea, and a semi-independent principality within the Empire) had rebelled in about 103; and had since refused to recognize Byzantine suzerainty.

Nicephorus Bryennius,
dux
of Durazzo - one of the few officers to have distinguished himself at Manzikert - and an elderly member of the Anatolian military aristocracy named Nicephorus Botaneiates. In November 1077 Bryennius actually reached the walls of Constantinople before being driven back into Thrace; Botaneiates too made preparations for a direct attack on the capital, but in the event it was to prove unnecessary. In March 1078 riots broke out; Michael, totally unable to deal with them, fled for his life and sought refuge in the monastery of the Studium; and on the 24th of the month Botaneiates entered Constantinople in triumph. Faced as he was with a
fait accompli,
Alexius had no choice but to submit to the new Emperor, who granted him the personal rank of
nobilissimus
and the office of Domestic of the Schools, or commander-in-chief, in which capacity he was immediately sent off to deal with Bryennius. A few months later he brought back his second insurgent general captive to Constantinople; but instead of being received with gratitude as he expected, he was barely allowed to enter the city and was immediately ordered back to Anatolia, where another insurrection was already brewing. As for Bryennius, he was thrown into the palace dungeons where, shortly afterwards, his eyes were put out.

Alexius, while obeying his orders, made no secret of his displeasure at the coldness of his reception, the reason for which he perfectly understood. Nicephorus Botaneiates was afraid, as well he might be. The old man - he was already well into his seventies - had already lost control. Over the next two years the Empire slipped further and further into chaos. Revolt followed insurrection; insurrection followed revolt. The Turks advanced relentlessly, until by 1080 Alp Arslan's son Malik-Shah had extended the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum till it covered all Asia Minor from Cilicia to the Hellespont. Meanwhile Nicephorus grew daily more unpopular. Previous usurpers - Nicephorus Phocas for example, or John Tzimisces, or Romanus Diogenes - had all claimed to be the guardians of such of their predecessors' children as they found to be their titular co-Emperors, thus giving themselves some slight semblance of legality; Botaneiates on the other hand had made no attempt to associate
Michael VII’
s four-year-old son Constantine with him on the throne and so remained, in the eyes of all right-thinking Byzantines, morally beyond the pale. Even more insensitively, on the death of his second wife soon after his accession, he had married the ravishing Empress Mary of Alania
1
— more beautiful even, writes Anna Comnena,

1
She was the daughter of Bagrat IV of Georgia, and had married Michael Ducas in 1065.

than the statues of Pheidias - despite the fact that her husband Michael was still alive. True, she had of necessity been cast off when her husband had entered his monastery; but such alliances were understandably frowned on by the clergy, while third marriages of any kind had been condemned by St Basil himself as 'moderated fornication' and carried the penalty for both parties of no less than four years' denial of the Sacrament.
1
In his vain attempts to buy back the support that he had so unnecessarily lost, Nicephorus had virtually emptied the imperial treasury; and inflation, which had already begun under Michael VII,
2
spiralled more dizzily than ever. Without a stronger hand at the helm, there could be no hope for Byzantium.

Meanwhile, as the popularity of Nicephorus declined, so that of Alexius Comnenus steadily grew, until he was generally looked upon in Constantinople and beyond as the only possible saviour of the Empire. He had first seen action under his elder brother Manuel during the expedition against the Seljuk Turks in 1070, when he was fourteen;
3
since then, whether fighting against the Turks or against Byzantine rebels, he had never lost a battle. He had proved himself a superb general, and because he had led them again and again to victory his soldiers loved and trusted him. But Alexius had other qualifications too, just as important in Byzantine eyes. He came from imperial stock, his uncle Isaac Comnenus having briefly occupied the throne some twenty years before; his mother, the immensely ambitious Anna Dalassena, was known to have brought up each of her five sons — of whom Alexius was the third - in the belief that he might one day become Emperor. Moreover his marriage to Irene, granddaughter of the Caesar John Ducas and daughter of that Andronicus Ducas who had so shamefully betraye
d Romanus Diogenes at Manzikert
assured him the support not only of the richest and most

For more about plural marriages, and in particular the
jour
marriages of the Emperor Leo the Wise, see
Byzantium: The
Apogee,
Chapter 8.

He was popularly known as
Parapinaces,
or 'Minus-a-quarter', since the gold
nomi
sma,
after having remained stable for more than five hundred years, was said to have lost a quarter of its value during his reign. (Sec
Byzantium: The Apogee,
p. 359.)

According, that is, to his daughter Anna Comnena
(The Alexiad,
I, i), whose biography of her father is the fullest - and by far the most entertaining - contemporary record that we possess. Zonaras, on the other hand, claims that when Alexius died in 1118 he was seventy; if so, he would have been born in 1048, and by 1070 would already have been twenty-two. Anna's testimony is not always to be trusted, but such early baptisms of fire were not unusual in the Middle Ages and in this case we can probably accept her word. She was, after all, in a far better position to know.

4
See
Byzantium: The Apogee,
pp. 352-3.

influential family in the Empire but of the clergy (whose Patriarch until his death in 1075 was John Xiphilinus, a Ducas protege) and most of the aristocracy as well.

For these very reasons, however, Alexius had enemies at court; it was here above all that he needed a champion, and he found one in the Empress herself. Mary had no love for her new husband, who was after all old enough to be her grandfather. As the former wife of Michael VII, her first loyalty was to the Ducas family, of which Alexius was a member by marriage. Perhaps she knew that (as the contemporary chronicler John Zonaras reports) two of her husband's cronies, a sinister pair of barbarian origin named Borilus and Germanus, were plotting to destroy the young general, and felt it her duty to protect him; possibly too, aware that her husband was considering naming a distant relation as his successor, she was trying to safeguard the interests of her son Constantine. It may even be - and subsequent events were to lend the theory additional weight -that she had fallen in love with Alexius, and saw herself in the role of Theophano to his Tzimisces.
1
Any of these hypotheses may be true, or none of them; we have no means of telling. All we know is that, some time in 1080, Mary of Alania adopted Alexius Comnenus as her son.

Botaneiates seems to have made no protest. A weak man, utterly dominated by his wife, he seems by now to have been quietly sinking into senility. Far from raising any objections, towards the end of the year he rather surprisingly appointed his adoptive son-in-law to lead a new campaign against the Turks, who had recently captured Cyzicus. This was just the opportunity Alexius needed. For some time already he had been convinced that the doddering old Emperor must be removed before it was too late, preferably - since he was reluctant to contemplate assassination - by straightforward military means. The problem had been to rally the necessary troops without arousing suspicions. Now, at a stroke, that problem had been swept away. He immediately gave orders that the army should be summoned to the little village of Tsouroulos, some distance outside the capital on the Adrianople road.

For Borilus and Germanus, Mary's adoption of Alexius and his new appointment could hardly have been more unwelcome. They saw their old enemy in a stronger position than ever, able as a member of the imperial family to go in and out of the palace as he pleased, in daily contact with the Emperor and - more dangerous still - the Empress, whose spies were everywhere and who could keep him informed of all

1 Op. cit., pp. 207-10.

that went on. When they heard of the mobilization of the army they realized that their only chance was to act at once. But Alexius, forewarned, was too quick for them. In the early hours of Quinquagesima Sunday, 14 February 1081, he and his brother Isaac silently made their way to the Palace of Blachernae, where the great Land Walls at their northern end slope down to the Golden Horn, and forced their way into the imperial stables. There they took the horses they needed, hamstrung the rest to prevent their being used for pursuit, and galloped away at top speed. Their first destination was the so-called Cosmidion, the monastery of SS. Cosmas and Damian at the northern end of the Golden Horn, where they alerted Alexius's mother-in-law Maria Traiana Ducas, and, chancing to meet the rich and powerful George Palaeologus, husband of Irene's sister Anna, enlisted his help also.
1
They then hurried on to Tsouroulos, where mobilization was almost complete, and dispatched an appeal to the Caesar John to come to their aid.