Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (21 page)

The news of the catastrophe was received with horror in Constantinople. Poor John Ducas, unable to defend himself from his Palermo prison, proved a convenient scapegoat; but everyone knew that the ultimate responsibility was the Emperor's, and Manuel felt his humiliation bitterly. It was made all the greater the following summer, when a Sicilian fleet of
164
ships, carrying nearly ten thousand men, swooped down on the prosperous island of Euboea, sacking and pillaging all the towns and villages along its coast. From there it continued to Almira on the Gulf of Volos, which received similar treatment; then - if we are to believe Nicetas Choniates — it sped up the Hellespont and through the Marmara to Constantinople, where a hail of silver-tipped arrows was loosed upon the imperial palace.
1

The time had come, it was clear, for a radical change in the Empire's

1 Is Nicctas confusing this raid with that of George of Antioch in 1149, described on p. 103? Possibly, though there is no reason why the exploit should not have been repeated. Where he is almost certainly wrong is in identifying
the palace as that of Blachernae
, which would have been inaccessible unless the Sicilians had la
unched an expedition on terra fi
rma the length of the Land Walls or had sailed up the Golden Horn. Their target is much more likely to have been the old imperial palace on the Marmara.

foreign policy. If Manuel could not recover the lost Italian provinces by force of arms, nor - at least in the long term - could his rival, Frederick Barbarossa; but Frederick, full of energy and ambition, would certainly lead another expedition into the peninsula as soon as he was free to do so, and might even succeed in toppling William from his throne. In such an event, dreaming (as he was known to dream) of uniting the two Empires under a single sceptre - his own - might he not make Byzantium his next objective? The conclusion was plain. William, upstart as he was, was a good deal preferable to Frederick. Some form of agreement with him would have to be reached - though it would have to be a less humiliating one than that which he had imposed upon Pope Adrian who, deserted by his allies, had already been forced to come to terms. The result had been the Treaty of Benevento, signed in June
11
56,
in which the Pope had recognized William's dominion not only over Sicily, Apulia, Calabria and the former Principality of Capua, but also over Naples, Amalfi, Salerno and the whole region of the Marches and the northern Abruzzi. It was addressed to

William, glorious King of Sicily and dearest son in Christ, most brilliant in wealth and achievement among all the Kings and eminent men of the age, the glory of whose name is borne to the uttermost limits of the earth by the firmness of your justice, the peace which you have restored to your subjects, and the fear which your great deeds have instilled into the hearts of all the enemies of Christ's name.

Manuel had no intention of putting his name to any document of this kind; he intended to deal with the King of Sicily from a position of at least relative strength. And so, some time during the summer of
11
57,
he sent a new emissary to Italy: Alexis, the brilliant young son of his Grand Domestic Axuch. Alexis's orders were ostensibly much the same as those given earlier to Michael Palaeologus - to make contact with such rebel barons as were still at liberty, to hire mercenaries for a new campaign along the coast, and generally to stir up as much disaffection as he could; but Manuel had also entrusted him with a second task - to establish secret contact with William and discuss terms for a peace. The two objectives were not as self-contradictory as might appear at first sight: the fiercer the preliminary fighting, the more favourable to Byzantium William's conditions were likely to be.

Alexis discharged both parts of his mission with equal success. Within a month or two of bis arrival he had Robert of Loritello once again ravaging Sicilian territory in the north and another of the leading rebels,

Count Andrew of Rupecanina, driving down through the Capuan lands and seriously threatening Monte Cassino - beneath which, in January
11
58,
the Count even defeated a royalist army in pitched battle. Meanwhile, although Alexis's own support for these operations debarred him from undertaking peace talks in person, he was able to call on the services of the two most distinguished of the Greeks who were still held captive in Palermo, John Ducas and Alexius Bryennius; and through their mediation, some time in the early spring, a secret agreement was concluded. Alexis, having deceived his Apulian supporters into thinking that he was going to fetch more men and supplies, left them in the lurch and slipped away to Constantinople; William, though still understandably suspicious of Byzantine motives, returned all his Greek prisoners and dispatched a diplomatic mission to Manuel under his sometime tutor and close friend, Henry Aristippus.
1
A treaty of peace was duly signed, though its provisions are unknown; and the Norman barons, suddenly bereft of funds, had no course but to abandon their new conquests and seek another, more reliable champion.

1 Henry returned with a valuable present from the Emperor to the King - a Greek manuscript of Ptolemy's
Almagest.
This tremendous work, a synthesis of all the discoveries and conclusions of Greek astronomers since the science was born, was hitherto known in the West only through Arabic translations.

8

Manuel Comnenus — The Later Years

[1158-80]

The People of Antioch were by no means pleased by the arrival of the Emperor. But when they saw that it was not in their power to prevent him they came before him like slaves, having adorned the streets with carpets and covered the pavements with flowers
..
. The Syrians who are gluttons, the Isaurians who are thieves, the Cilicians who are pirates, all were there with the rest. Even the Italian knights, who are so proud, put away their pride in order to be present, on foot, at the triumph.

Nicetas Choniates, 'Manuel Comnenus', III, iii

At the time of the signing of the Sicilian peace treaty, Manuel Comnenus had occupied the throne of Byzantium for fifteen years. No one could have accused him of inactivity. Quite apart from his remarkably successful handling of all the problems - military, diplomatic and administrative - presented by the Second Crusade, he had personally waged war against the Seljuks and the Danishmends in Anatolia, the Cumans in Thrace, the Sicilians at Corfu and the Serbs and Hungarians in the Danubian provinces; and had he not been fully occupied with these last, he would certainly have also been present during the recent campaign in South Italy. The one region to which he had been able to pay relatively little attention was that in which he had begun his reign - Cilicia, and the Crusader states of Outremer; and in the autumn of
11
5 8
he set out from Constantinople at the head of a great army to make good the omission.

He was furious, and with good reason. The first object of his wrath was Thoros, the eldest surviving son of Leo the Rubenid. Thoros had escaped from prison in Constantinople in
1143
and had sought refuge with his cousin, Joscelin II of Edessa, while he collected his three younger brothers and a group of like-minded compatriots; with their help he had soon recaptured his family's castle of Vahka, high in the Taurus mountains. From there, in
1151,
he had swept down on to the Cilician plain, defeating a small Byzantine force and killing the imperial governor at Mamistra. Manuel had immediately sent his cousin Androni-cus with an army against him, but Thoros had taken Andronicus by surprise and put his army to flight. After seven years, this upstart prince was still unpunished.

Far more serious, however, than any number of Armenian adventurers was Reynald of Chatillon, Prince of Antioch. The younger son of a minor French nobleman, Reynald had joined the Second Crusade and then decided to stay on in the East. There he might have lived out his life in well-deserved obscurity but for the death of Raymond of Poitiers, who on
28
June
1149
had allowed himself and his army to be surrounded by the forces of the Emir Nur ed-Din. The consequence was a massacre, after which Raymond's skull, set in a silver case, was sent by Nur ed-Din as a present to the Caliph in Baghdad - there, presumably, to join that of his predecessor Bohemund. Fortunately, the Emir did not follow up his victory with a march on Antioch; it was nevertheless generally agreed that Raymond's widow, the Princess Constance, must find herself another husband as soon as possible. Constance - despite her four children she was still only twenty-one - asked nothing better; but she was difficult to please. She turned down three candidates proposed by her cousin King Baldwin III of Jerusalem - to say nothing of one who had been suggested (at her request) by Manuel Comnenus as her overlord
1
- and it was not until
115 3
that her eye fell on Reynald, whom she married as soon as Baldwin, only too glad to give up his responsibility for Antioch, had given his permission.

She could hardly have made a more disastrous choice. Not only was the new Prince generally considered a parvenu adventurer; from the beginning he proved faithless and utterly irresponsible. Having promised Manuel, in return for his recognition as Prince, to attack Thoros and his brothers, after a single brief battle he allied himself with them; and while they moved, with his full connivance, against the few remaining Byzantine strongholds in Cilicia, he himself prepared an expedition against another, more important imperial posse
ssion, the peaceful and prosper
ous

1 Manuel's choice had been the Caesar John Roger, the widower of his sister Maria. He had presumably thought that the Caesar's Norman blood would recommend him to the Latins of Antioch. Perhaps it did; but Constance refused to consider a man well over twice her age and soon sent him packing.

island of Cyprus. Such an enterprise, however, needed finance; and Reynald now demanded the necessary funds from Aimery, Patriarch of Antioch, who was known to be rich and against whom he bore a grudge for having opposed his marriage. The Patriarch refused; whereupon he was seized, imprisoned and beaten about the head. His wounds were then smeared with honey and he was taken up on to the roof of the citadel, where he was made to spend a whole day in the grilling heat of an Antiochene summer, defenceless against the myriads of ravening insects that descended upon him. That evening, understandably, he paid up; and a few days later, in company with two envoys sent by a furious King Baldwin to demand his immediate release, left for Jerusalem.

In the spring of
11
5 6
Reynald and his ally Thoros had launched their attack on Cyprus. The garrison - under John Comnenus, the Emperor's nephew, and a distinguished general named Michael Branas - fought bravely, but were hopelessly outnumbered. Both were imprisoned, while the Franks and Armenians together abandoned themselves to an orgy of devastation and desecration, of murder, rape and pillage such as the island had never before known. Only after three weeks did Reynald give the order to embark; and all the plunder for which there was no room on the ships was sold back to those from whom it had been stolen. The prisoners too were obliged to ransom themselves; and since by this time there was not sufficient money left on the island, most of the leading citizens and their families - including Comnenus and Branas - were carried off to Antioch and kept incarcerated there until their ransoms could be raised, while several captured Greek priests had their noses cut off and were sent mockingly to Constantinople. The island, we are told, never recovered.

The Emperor marched his army overland to Cilicia with vengeance in his heart. Then, leaving the main force to follow the narrow, rocky road along the coast, he hurried on ahead with five hundred cavalry. His aim was to take the Armenians by surprise, and he succeeded. Two weeks later all the Cilician cities as far as Anazarbus were back in Byzantine hands. There was only one disappointment: Thoros himself, alerted in Tarsus by a passing pilgrim, had managed to gather his family together just in time and to escape to a ruined castle high in the mountains. For weeks the army searched for him, but in vain. Manuel's temper had therefore not greatly improved by the time he drew up his army outside the walls of Mopsuestia.

But if Manuel was angry, Reynald was panic-stricken. It was plain from the reports he had received that the imperial army was far too strong to be resisted; his only hope lay in abject submission. He sent messengers to Manuel with an offer to surrender the citadel to an imperial garrison, and when this was rejected presented himself in sackcloth outside the Emperor's camp. Manuel was in no hurry to receive him. High-ranking envoys were by now arriving from the local potentates and even from the Caliph himself; the Prince of Antioch could wait his turn. When the summons came at last, Reynald and his suite were obliged to walk, barefoot and bareheaded, all through Mopsuestia and out to the camp beyond; they were then led, between ranks formed by the crack regiments of the imperial army, to a great tent in which they found the
basileus
enthroned, surrounded by his court and the foreign envoys. Reynald prostrated himself in the dust at his feet, his followers raising their hands in supplication. For some considerable time Manuel took no notice, unconcernedly continuing his conversation with those around him; when he finally deigned to hear the Prince's submission he made three conditions. The citadel of Antioch must be surrendered to an imperial garrison immediately on demand; the city must provide a contingent for his army; and a Greek Patriarch was to be installed in place of the Latin. Only when Reynald took his oath on all three was he pardoned and dismissed.