Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03 (24 page)

But the results of these negotiations proved disappointing; and in
1166
Manuel decided to take the bull by the horns and to put to Pope Alexander a firm proposition. He would make a series of important concessions on theological and liturgical matters with the object of ending the schism, and would provide subsidies on a scale which would enable the Pope to buy not only Rome but the whole of Italy if he wanted to; in return, Alexander would award him the imperial crown, thus restoring the old unity of the Empire. The offer was well-timed: the Pope's principal champion, William of Sicily, had died on
7
May and his son and namesake was still a minor. Alexander would have to look elsewhere for support, and Constantinople was the obvious place. Soon afterwards two more cardinals were on their way to the Bosphorus to find out exactly what the Emperor had in mind.

It was, however, no use: the Churches were by now too far apart for any agreement to be possible. We know nothing of the discussions. John Cinnamus tells us that the Pope's first condidon was that Manuel should remove his residence to Rome; if so, he must certainly have refused - such a suggestion could not be seriously contemplated. The cardinals returned, with the outstanding problems no nearer solution than before. A year or so later Manuel tried again, but with no greater success. What he had underestimated was the depth of his own unpopularity in the West where, particularly since the Second Crusade, he was generally believed to harbour sinister designs on Syria and the Holy Land, including the elimination of the Frankish princes and the reintro-duction of the Eastern rite. He also failed to understand that in the eyes of Alexander he was demanding far too much for himself. The Pope's need for support in no way lessened his claim to supremacy: whether there were two Empires or one, the Vicar of Christ on Earth would always come first.

The first five years of the
1170s
saw Manuel Comnenus at the pinnacle of his career. In the East, he had imposed his suzerainty over the Crusader states of Outremer, consolidated it with a dynastic marriage and brought the Seljuk Sultan to heel. In the West, he had seen his friend - some would have said his creature - Bela III become King of Hungary and had made huge territorial gains at Hungarian expense; he had humbled the Serbian Grand Zhupan, Stephen Nemanja; and he had broken the power of Venice within his Empire, to his own enormous profit. His only major failure had been his attempt to reconquer South Italy; with that single exception, he could hardly have played his hand better.

But the East and the West were well over a thousand miles apart; Manuel could not be everywhere at once, and after his treaty with Kilij Arslan he had turned his back on Asia Minor for more than a decade. During that time the Seljuk Sultan had not been idle. True, he had avoided any hostile act against the Empire. Gradually, however, he had managed to eliminate one after the other of his principal Muslim rivals until only Nur ed-Din himself was left; and in
1173
word reached Constantinople that the Sultan was intriguing with the Atabeg of Mosul and the two were on the point of forming a military alliance. (Did the Emperor but know it, Kilij Arslan was also in touch with Frederick Barbarossa.) Manuel crossed at once into Asia and at Philadelphia - the modern Ala§ehir — confronted the Sultan, who blandly explained that Nur ed-Din had not forgiven him his Christian alliance and that he had had no choice but to respect his wishes. Byzantium, he assured Manuel, had nothing to fear; meanwhile he was only too happy to renew the earlier treaties.

For the moment, danger had been averted; but on
15
May
1174
the mighty Atabeg of Mosul died in his turn, leaving the Danishmends -whom he had long protected and championed - defenceless against Seljuk strength. Kilij Arslan unhesitatingly annexed their territories, and two refugee Danishmend princes appealed to Constantinople. The next two years were taken up with diplomatic negotiations - the Sultan prevaricating and procrastinating, always reiterating his desire for peace and still more treaties - and minor skirmishes, during which Manuel worked hard to strengthen his frontier fortresses; then, in the summer of
1176,
the Emperor marched on Iconium, travelling through Laodicea (near the modern Denizli) and the valley of the upper Meander until he reached the mountainous region near the Seljuk frontier. Here he was met by envoys from the Sultan, with a final offer of peace on generous terms. Most of his senior officers favoured its acceptance, pointing out the hazards of a long journey with heavy equipment — for they had brought their siege engines with
them - through the mountains in
which the Seljuks occupied all the strategic high places. Unfortunately the army also contained a number of young noblemen eager for their first experience of battle. They pressed hard for a continuation of the campaign, and the Emperor foolishly heeded them.

Just beyond the ruined fortress of Myriocephalum, Manuel's route led through the long pass of Tzybritze, so narrow that when they entered it on
17
September the imperial troops and their baggage were strung out over a distance of some ten miles. Until that moment the Turks had restricted their activities to minor harassment by small bands of irregulars; now they struck, sweeping down on the army from the mountains to each side and deliberately concentrating their fire on the beasts of burden, whose dead bodies quickly rendered the road impassable. Baldwin of Antioch, brother of the Emperor's new wife, charged with his cavalry regiment up the hill and into the thick of the enemy; he and all his men were killed. Had Manuel shown something of the same spirit, the day might have been saved; but at this of all moments his courage deserted him. In a hasty council of war he horrified his senior officers by suddenly announcing his intention of taking flight. The commanding general Andronicus Contostephanus made a strong protest, his words being echoed by a common soldier who, having overheard the discussion, bitterly reproached the Emperor for wishing to abandon an army whose loss was due entirely to his own imprudence. Manuel reluctantly agreed to remain; but his reputation was badly injured and was never fully to recover.

As dawn broke the Seljuks resumed the attack, and for some time it looked as though a general massacre was inevitable. Then there was a sudden lull; and a Turkish emissary arrived at the imperial camp, leading a finely caparisoned horse which, he said, was a present from his master. The Sultan, he reported, had no desire for further bloodshed; if the Emperor would agree to destroy the fortifications of Dorylaeum and Sublaeum - two fortresses which he had strengthened only a year or two before - he for his part would be happy to conclude a treaty of peace. Hardly able to believe his good fortune, Manuel accepted; and the two armies withdrew.
1

Nicetas Choniates tells us that on the homeward journey the Emperor

1 Michael the Syrian suggests that the Sultan also insisted on the payment of a considerable sum of money - something a good deal easier to believe than Manuel's own testimony, in a letter written to Henry II of England, to the effect that Kilij Arslan also offered to return his Christian captives and to assist the Empire agains
t all its enemies (Roger of Hove
den,
Annals,
ad
1176).

had wished to follow an alternative route, but that his guides insisted on taking him back past the scene of the battle so that he could see for himself the full extent of the slaughter. It was a painful journey, with the remnants of the army still under intermittent attack from armed bands of Seljuk Turks who, cheated of what they considered their legitimate spoils by the unexpected peace, had quite simply refused to recognize it. When at last he reached Sublaeum, Manuel ordered the razing of the fortifications as he had promised. A few days later at Philadelphia he sent messengers to the capital with a full report of the disaster, comparing it to that of Manzikert - except, he pointed out, that he himself had not been captured like his predecessor Romanus, and that Kilij Arslan had agreed to make peace.

The question remains: why had the Sultan done so? He had been given a matchless opportunity to destroy the effective military power of the Byzantine Empire; why had he not taken it? We shall never know. Perhaps he was unaware of the extent of his victory. He himself had probably sustained quite heavy losses, and may have been less certain than Manuel of the battle's final outcome. Perhaps, too, he felt that he might well be in need of the Empire's diplomatic - and even military -support in the future. In any case, the dismantling of the two fortresses, enabling as it would his subjects to spread themselves without let or hindrance through the Sangarius and Meander valleys, would in itself be no small reward; nor could it be doubted that Myriocephalum had destroyed Manuel's hopes of reimposing his rule across Asia Minor. He was to make one or two more defensive and retaliatory sorties on a small scale; but never again would he lead a major campaign in the East. In future, it would be all that his shattered army could do to man the frontier.

This is not to say that there was no more serious fighting. It soon became plain that once back in Constantinople the Emperor, despite his solemn undertaking, had no intention of touching the fortifications of Dorylaeum, and in
1177
or thereabouts - the chronology is not entirely clear - the furious Kilij Arslan led his army deep into imperial territory and ravaged the whole Meander valley, sacking Tralles and Pisidian Antioch. But this operation, and others that were to follow, was in the nature of a raid rather than a permanent invasion and made no ultimate difference to the map of Anatolia.

What, ultimately, did Manuel Comnenus achieve in the East? Where the Saracens were concerned, absolutely nothing - owing to a single cardinal mistake. Trusting too much to the
peace treaty signed with Kilij
Arslan in
1162,
he had left him for the next eleven years to his own devices. This
detente -
assisted by the immense amount of gold and silver given to the Sultan during his twelve weeks in Constantinople - had allowed him to eliminate his Muslim rivals and establish himself as the only important force to be reckoned with in Eastern Anatolia. Thus Manuel, through a combination of wild generosity and a curious lack of political foresight, had succeeded only in replacing a number of small and mutually hostile rulers with a single determined one - by whom he was finally defeated.

In the spring of
1178
Philip, Count of Flanders, passed through Constantinople on his way back from the Holy Land. The Emperor received him with his usual generous hospitality, presented to him his little son Alexius and suggested that on his return to France the Count might like to sound out King Louis on the possibility of a marriage between the young Prince and one of the King's daughters. Philip agreed, and in due course Louis consented in his turn. So it came about that at Easter
1179
the Princess Agnes of France - Louis's daughter by his third wife Alix of Champagne - set out for Constantinople and a new life in the East; and on Sunday,
2
March
1180,
in the Triclinium of the Great Palace, the Patriarch Theodosius celebrated her marriage to Alexius and laid the imperial diadem on her head. She was nine years old, her husband ten.

It was Manuel's last diplomatic success. Within a matter of weeks he fell seriously ill. Weakening both in mind and body - he had never been the same after Myriocephalum - he now gave himself up more and more to the attentions of his court astrologers, who comforted him by prophesying that he would live another fourteen years, during which time he would lead his armies to victory after victory. Such was his trust in them that until his very last days he refused to make any arrangements for the regency during Alexius's minority. Meanwhile the astrologers, in an attempt to divert attention from the inaccuracy of their previous predictions, spoke darkly of coming earthquakes and other natural cataclysms; and the Emperor, panic-stricken, ordered the excavation of deep subterranean shelters and even the demolition of certain parts of the palace.

The earthquakes failed to occur; but by mid-September Manuel could no longer doubt the approach of death. He spoke tearfully of his son, and of the difficulties that he would have to face on his succession; but he was no longer capable of planning any effective dispensations. At last he bowed to the entreaties of the Patriarch and made a formal renunciation of the astrologers and his belief in them; then he sighed deeply, took his pulse and asked for an ordinary monk's habit. His imperial insignia were removed, he struggled as best he could into the rough homespun, and shortly afterwards, on
24
September, aged about sixty, he died. He was buried in the church of the Pantocrator, near the entrance. Many years before, he had carried on his own shoulders from the Boucoleon port to the Grea
t Palace the heavy stone, recentl
y brought from Ephesus, on which Christ's body was said to have been laid after its deposition from the cross. This stone was now placed upon his tomb.

It is impossible not to feel sorry for Manuel. Of the five Comnenus Emperors, he was the most brilliant, the most imaginative; and these very qualities were perhaps his undoing. His father and grandfather had worked slowly and patiently to minimize the damage done by Manzikert, proceeding cautiously and step by step. Manuel's quicksilver mind saw possibilities everywhere; and once seen they were immediately pursued. Had he concentrated, as he should have done, on the situation in the East and the threat posed by Kilij Arslan, he might have re-established Byzantine power throughout Anatolia. But he remained fascinated by the West, and allowed his attention to be taken up in turn by Italy and Hungary, Serbia and Venice, the Western Emperor and the Pope. He gained many victories, military and diplomatic, but he consolidated none of them; by the time he died, nearly all his achievements had proved temporary and he left the Empire in a worse state than he found it.