Chapter VIII: Glory and Decline of the Empire (2)

The people on both sides, who understood little of the points contested by the clergy, adopted the simple rule, that it was their duty to hate the members of the other church; and the Greeks, having their nationality condensed in their ecclesiastical establishment, far exceeded the Western nations in ecclesiastical bigotry, for the people in the western nations of Europe were often not very friendly to papal pretensions. The extreme bigotry of the Greeks soon tended to make the people of the Byzantine Empire averse to all intercourse with the Latins, as equals, and they assumed a superiority over nations rapidly advancing in activity, wealth, power, and intelligence, merely because they deemed them heretics. The separation of the two churches proved, consequently, more injurious to the Greeks, in their stationary condition of society, than to the Western Christians, who were eagerly pressing forward in many paths of social improvement.

[Sidenote: [1053-1056 A.D.]]

The empress Zoe died in the year 1050, at the age of seventy. Constantine X survived to the year 1054. When the emperor felt his end approaching, he ordered himself, according to the superstitious fashion of the time, to be transported to the monastery of Mangana, which he had constructed. His ministers, and especially his prime-minister, Joannes the logothetes, and president of the senate, urged him to name Nicephorus Bryennius, who commanded the Macedonian troops, his successor. The forms of the imperial constitution rendered it necessary that the sovereign should be crowned in Constantinople, and a courier was despatched to summon Bryennius to the capital. But as soon as Theodora heard of this attempt of her brother-in-law to deprive her of the throne she had been compelled to cede to him, she hastened to the imperial palace, convoked the senate, ordered the guards to be drawn out, and, presenting herself as the lawful empress, was proclaimed sovereign of the empire with universal acclamations. The news of this event embittered the last moments of the dying voluptuary, who hated Theodora for the respect her conduct inspired.[e]

In her name, and by the influence of four eunuchs, the Eastern world was peaceably governed about nineteen months; and as they wished to prolong their dominion, they persuaded the aged princess to nominate for her successor Michael VI. The surname of Stratioticus declares his military profession; but the crazy and decrepit veteran could only see with the eyes and execute with the hands of his ministers. Whilst he ascended the throne, Theodora sank into the grave--the last of the Macedonian or Basilian dynasty. We have hastily reviewed, and gladly dismiss, this shameful and destructive period of twenty-eight years, in which the Greeks, degraded below the common level of servitude, were transferred like a herd of cattle by the choice or caprice of two impotent females.

THE COMNENI

From this night of slavery, a ray of freedom, or at least of spirit, begins to emerge; the Greeks either preserved or revived the use of surnames, which perpetuate the fame of hereditary virtue; and we now discern the rise, succession, and alliance, of the last dynasties of Constantinople and Trebizond. The Comneni, who upheld for a while the fate of the sinking empire, assumed the honour of a Roman origin; but the family had long since been transported from Italy to Asia. Their patrimonial estate was situate in the district of Castamona, in the neighbourhood of the Euxine; and one of their chiefs, who had already entered the paths of ambition, revisited with affection, perhaps with regret, the modest though honourable dwelling of his fathers.

[Sidenote: [1057-1059 A.D.]]

The first of their line was the illustrious Manuel, who, in the reign of the second Basil, contributed by war and treaty to appease the troubles of the East: he left, in a tender age, two sons, Isaac and Joannes, whom, with the consciousness of desert, he bequeathed to the gratitude and favour of his sovereign. The noble youths were carefully trained in the learning of the monastery, the arts of the palace, and the exercises of the camp; and from the domestic service of the guards, they were rapidly promoted to the command of provinces and armies. Their fraternal union doubled the force and reputation of the Comneni, and their ancient nobility was illustrated by the marriage of the two brothers with a captive princess of Bulgaria, and the daughter of a patrician, who had obtained the name of Charon from the number of enemies whom he had sent to the infernal shades. The soldiers had served with reluctant loyalty a series of effeminate masters; the elevation of Michael VI was a personal insult to the more deserving generals; and their discontent was inflamed by the parsimony of the emperor and the insolence of the eunuchs. They secretly assembled in the sanctuary of St. Sophia, and the votes of the military synod would have been unanimous in favour of the old and valiant Catacalon, if the patriotism or modesty of the veteran had not suggested the importance of birth as well as merit in the choice of a sovereign. Isaac Comnenus was approved by general consent, and the associates separated without delay to meet in the plains of Phrygia at the head of their respective squadrons and detachments.

The cause of Michael was defended in a single battle by the mercenaries of the imperial guard, who were aliens to the public interest, and animated only by a principle of honour and gratitude. After their defeat, the fears of the emperor solicited a treaty, which was almost accepted by the moderation of the Comnenian. But the former was betrayed by his ambassadors, and the latter was prevented by his friends. The solitary Michael submitted to the voice of the people; the patriarch annulled their oath of allegiance; and as he shaved the head of the royal monk, congratulated his beneficial exchange of temporal royalty for the kingdom of heaven; an exchange, however, which the priest, on his own account, would probably have declined.

[Sidenote: [1059-1067 A.D.]]

By the hands of the same patriarch, Isaac Comnenus was solemnly crowned; the sword, which he inscribed on his coins, might be an offensive symbol, if it implied his title by conquest; but this sword would have been drawn against the foreign and domestic enemies of the state.[74] The decline of his health and vigour suspended the operation of active virtue;[75] and the prospect of approaching death determined him to interpose some moments between life and eternity. But instead of leaving the empire as the marriage portion of his daughter, his reason and inclination concurred in the preference of his brother Joannes, a soldier, a patriot, and the father of five sons, the future pillars of an hereditary succession. His first modest reluctance might be the natural dictates of discretion and tenderness, but his obstinate and successful perseverance, however it may dazzle with the show of virtue, must be censured as a criminal desertion of his duty, and a rare offence against his family and country. The purple which he had refused was accepted by Constantine Ducas, a friend of the Comnenian house, and whose noble birth was adorned with the experience and reputation of civil policy. In the monastic habit, Isaac recovered his health, and survived two years his voluntary abdication. At the command of his abbot, he observed the rule of St. Basil, and executed the most servile offices of the convent; but his latent vanity was gratified by the frequent and respectful visits of the reigning monarch, who revered in his person a benefactor and a saint.

If Constantine XI were indeed the subject most worthy of empire, we must pity the debasement of the age and nation in which he was chosen. In the labour of puerile declamations he sought, without obtaining, the crown of eloquence, more precious, in his opinion, than that of Rome; and, in the subordinate functions of a judge, he forgot the duties of a sovereign and a warrior. Ducas was anxious only to secure, even at the expense of the republic, the power and prosperity of his children. His three sons, Michael VII, Andronicus I, and Constantine XII, were invested, at a tender age, with the equal title of Augustus; and the succession was speedily opened by their father’s death. His widow, Eudocia, was entrusted with the administration.

Before the end of seven months, the wants of Eudocia, or those of the state, called aloud for the male virtues of a soldier; and her heart had already chosen Romanus Diogenes, whom she raised from the scaffold to the throne. The discovery of a treasonable attempt had exposed him to the severity of the laws; his beauty and valour absolved him in the eyes of the empress, and Romanus, from a mild exile, was recalled on the second day to the command of the oriental armies. Her royal choice was yet unknown to the public, and the promise which would have betrayed her falsehood and levity was stolen by a dexterous emissary from the ambition of the patriarch. Xiphilin at first alleged the sanctity of oaths and the sacred nature of a trust; but a whisper that his brother was the future emperor relaxed his scruples, and forced him to confess that the public safety was the supreme law. He resigned the important paper; and when his hopes were confounded by the nomination of Romanus, he could no longer regain his security, retract his declarations, nor oppose the second nuptials of the empress. Yet a murmur was heard in the palace; and the barbarian guards had raised their battle-axes in the cause of the house of Ducas, till the young princes were soothed by the tears of their mother and the assurances of the fidelity of their guardian, who filled the throne with dignity and honour.

ROMANUS IN THE FIELD (1067-1071)

[Sidenote: [1067-1070 A.D.]]

The false or genuine magnanimity of Mahmud the Ghaznavide was not imitated by Alp Arslan; and he attacked without scruple the Greek empress Eudocia and her children.[76] His alarming progress compelled her to give herself and her sceptre to the hand of a soldier; and Romanus Diogenes had been invested with the imperial purple. His patriotism, and perhaps his pride, urged him from Constantinople within two months after his accession; and the next campaign he most scandalously took the field during the holy festival of Easter. In the palace, Diogenes was no more than the husband of Eudocia; in the camp he was the emperor of the Romans, and he sustained that character with feeble resources and invincible courage. By his spirit and success, the soldiers were taught to act, the subjects to hope, and the enemies to fear. The Turks had penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; but the sultan himself had resigned to his emirs the prosecution of the war; and their numerous detachments were scattered over Asia in the security of conquest. Laden with spoil and careless of discipline, they were separately surprised and defeated by the Greeks; the activity of the emperor seemed to multiply his presence; and while they heard of his expedition to Antioch, the enemy felt his sword on the hills of Trebizond.

In three laborious campaigns[77] the Turks were driven beyond the Euphrates; in the fourth and last, Romanus undertook the deliverance of Armenia. The desolation of the land obliged him to transport a supply of two months’ provisions; and he marched forwards to the siege of Manzicert, an important fortress in the midway between the modern cities of Erzerum and Van. His army amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand men. The troops of Constantinople were reinforced by the disorderly multitudes of Phrygia and Cappadocia; but the real strength was composed of the subjects and allies of Europe, the legions of Macedonia, and the squadrons of Bulgaria; the Uzi, a Moldavian horde, who were themselves of the Turkish race, and above all, the mercenary and adventurous bands of French and Normans. Their lances were commanded by the valiant Ursel of Baliol, the kinsman or father of the Scottish kings, and were allowed to excel in the exercise of arms, or, according to the Greek style, in the practice of the Pyrrhic dance.

[Sidenote: [1071 A.D.]]

On the report of this bold invasion, which threatened his hereditary dominions, Alp Arslan flew to the scene of action at the head of forty thousand horse. His rapid and skilful evolutions distressed and dismayed the superior numbers of the Greeks; and in the defeat of Basilacius, one of their principal generals, he displayed the first example of his valour and clemency. The imprudence of the emperor had separated his forces after the reduction of Manzicert. It was in vain that he attempted to recall the mercenary Franks; they refused to obey his summons; he disdained to await their return; the desertion of the Uzi filled his mind with anxiety and suspicion; and against the most salutary advice he rushed forwards to speedy and decisive action.

Had he listened to the fair proposals of the sultan, Romanus might have secured a retreat, perhaps a peace; but in these overtures he supposed the fear or weakness of the enemy, and his answer was conceived in the tone of insult and defiance. “If the barbarian wishes for peace, let him evacuate the ground which he occupies for the encampment of the Romans, and surrender his city and palace of Rei as a pledge of his sincerity.” Alp Arslan smiled at the vanity of the demand, but he wept the death of so many faithful Moslems; and, after a devout prayer, proclaimed a free permission to all who were desirous of retiring from the field. With his own hands he tied up his horse’s tail, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and scimitar, clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body with musk, and declared that if he were vanquished, that spot should be the place of his burial.

The sultan himself had affected to cast away his missile weapons; but his hopes of victory were placed in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry, whose squadrons were loosely distributed in the form of a crescent. Instead of the successive lines and reserves of the Grecian tactics, Romanus led his army in a single and solid phalanx, and pressed with vigour and impatience the artful and yielding resistance of the barbarians. In this desultory and fruitless combat he wasted the greater part of a summer’s day, till prudence and fatigue compelled him to return to his camp. But a retreat is always perilous in the face of an active foe; and no sooner had the standard been turned to the rear, than the phalanx was broken by the base cowardice, or the baser jealousy, of Andronicus, a rival prince, who disgraced his birth and the purple of the cæsars. The Turkish squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on this moment of confusion and lassitude; and the horns of their formidable crescent was closed in the rear of the Greeks. In the destruction of the army and pillage of the camp, it would be needless to mention the number of slain or captives. The Byzantine writers deplore the loss of an inestimable pearl; they forget to mention that in this fatal day the Asiatic provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.

As long as a hope survived, Romanus attempted to rally and save the relics of his army. When the centre, the imperial station, was left naked on all sides and encompassed by the victorious Turks, he still, with desperate courage, maintained the fight till the close of day, at the head of the brave and faithful subjects who adhered to his standard. They fell around him; his horse was slain; the emperor was wounded; yet he stood alone and intrepid, till he was oppressed and bound by the strength of multitudes. The glory of this illustrious prize was disputed by a slave and a soldier; a slave who had seen him on the throne of Constantinople, and a soldier whose extreme deformity had been excused on the promise of some signal service. Despoiled of his arms, his jewels, and his purple, Romanus spent a dreary and perilous night on the field of battle, amidst a disorderly crowd of the meaner barbarians.

CAPTIVITY OF THE EMPEROR

In the morning the royal captive was presented to Alp Arslan, who doubted of his fortune, till the identity of the person was ascertained by the report of his ambassadors, and by the more pathetic evidence of Basilacius, who embraced with tears the feet of his unhappy sovereign. The successor of Constantine, in a plebeian habit, was led into the Turkish divan, and commanded to kiss the ground before the lord of Asia. He reluctantly obeyed; and Alp Arslan, starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the neck of the Roman emperor. But the fact is doubtful; and if, in this moment of insolence, the sultan complied with a national custom, the rest of his conduct has extorted the praise of his bigoted foes, and may afford a lesson to the most civilised ages. He instantly raised the royal captive from the ground; and thrice clasping his hand with tender sympathy, assured him that his life and dignity should be inviolate in the hands of a prince who had learned to respect the majesty of his equals and the vicissitudes of fortune. From the divan, Romanus was conducted to an adjacent tent, where he was served with pomp and reverence by the officers of the sultan, who, twice each day, seated him in the place of honour at his own table. In a free and familiar conversation of eight days, not a word, not a look, of insult escaped from the conqueror; but he severely censured the unworthy subjects who had deserted their valiant prince in the hour of danger, and gently admonished his antagonist of some errors which he had committed in the management of the war. In the preliminaries of negotiation, Alp Arslan asked him what treatment he expected to receive, and the calm indifference of the emperor displays the freedom of his mind. “If you are cruel,” he said, “you will take my life; if you listen to pride, you will drag me at your chariot wheels; if you consult your interest you will accept a ransom, and restore me to my country.” “And what,” continued the sultan, “would have been your own behaviour, had fortune smiled on your arms?” The reply of the Greek betrays a sentiment which prudence, and even gratitude, should have taught him to suppress. “Had I vanquished,” he fiercely said, “I would have inflicted on thy body many a stripe.”

The Turkish conqueror smiled at the insolence of his captive; observed that the Christian law inculcated the love of enemies and forgiveness of injuries; and nobly declared that he would not imitate an example which he condemned. After mature deliberation, Alp Arslan dictated the terms of liberty and peace--a ransom of a million, an annual tribute of 360,000 pieces of gold, the marriage of the royal children, and the deliverance of all the Moslems who were in the power of the Greeks. Romanus, with a sigh, subscribed this treaty, so disgraceful to the majesty of the empire; he was immediately invested with a Turkish robe of honour; his nobles and patricians were restored to their sovereign; and the sultan, after a courteous embrace, dismissed him with rich presents and a military guard. No sooner did he reach the confines of the empire, than he was informed that the palace and provinces had disclaimed their allegiance to a captive; a sum of two hundred thousand pieces was painfully collected; and the fallen monarch transmitted this part of his ransom, with a sad confession of his impotence and disgrace.

In the treaty of peace, it does not appear that Alp Arslan extorted any province or city from the captive emperor; and his revenge was satisfied with the trophies of his victory and the spoils of Anatolia, from Antioch to the Black Sea. The fairest part of Asia was subject to his laws; twelve hundred princes, or the sons of princes, stood before his throne; and two hundred thousand soldiers marched under his banners. The sultan disdained to pursue the fugitive Greeks; but he meditated the more glorious conquest of Turkestan, the original seat of the house of Seljuk.

[While the Turks were getting control of Asia Minor the Byzantine Empire lost its last hold on Italy. Robert Guiscard had taken, one after another, the cities of the empire, and in 1068 laid siege to Bari. Romanus sent a fleet under Gosselin, but Guiscard’s brother Roger defeated him. Bari capitulated in April, 1071, and the direct authority of the Roman Empire in Italy was gone forever.]

THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE XI AND NICEPHORUS III (1071-1081 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1071-1081 A.D.]]

The defeat and captivity of Romanus IV inflicted a deadly wound on the Byzantine monarchy of the East; and after he was released from the chains of the sultan, he vainly sought his wife and subjects. His wife had been thrust into a monastery, and the subjects of Romanus had embraced the rigid maxim of the civil law, that a prisoner in the hands of the enemy is deprived, as by the stroke of death, of all public and private rights of a citizen. In the general consternation, the cæsar Joannes asserted the indefeasible right of his three nephews. Constantinople listened to his voice, and the Turkish captive was proclaimed in the capital, and received on the frontier, as an enemy of the republic. Romanus was not more fortunate in domestic than in foreign war: the loss of two battles compelled him to yield, on the assurance of fair and honourable treatment; but his enemies were devoid of faith or humanity, and, after the cruel extinction of his sight, his wounds were left to bleed and corrupt, till in a few days he was relieved from a state of misery.

Under the triple reign of the house of Ducas, the two younger brothers were reduced to the vain honours of the purple; but the eldest, the pusillanimous Michael, was incapable of sustaining the Roman sceptre; and his surname of Parapinaces denotes the reproach which he shared with an avaricious favourite, who enhanced the price, and diminished the measure, of wheat. In the school of Psellus, and after the example of his mother, the son of Eudocia made some proficiency in philosophy and rhetoric; but his character was degraded, rather than ennobled, by the virtues of a monk and the learning of a sophist.

Strong in the contempt of their sovereign and their own esteem, two generals, at the head of the European and Asiatic legions, assumed the purple at Hadrianopolis and Nicæa. Their revolt was in the same month; they bore the same name of Nicephorus; but the two candidates were distinguished by the surnames of Bryennius and Botaniates: the former in the maturity of wisdom and courage, the latter conspicuous only by the memory of his past exploits. While Botaniates advanced with cautious and dilatory steps, his active competitor stood in arms before the gates of Constantinople. The name of Bryennius was illustrious; his cause was popular; but his licentious troops could not be restrained from burning and pillaging a suburb; and the people, who would have hailed the rebel, rejected and repulsed the incendiary of his country. This change of the public opinion was favourable to Botaniates, who at length, with an army of Turks, approached the shores of Chalcedon.

A formal invitation, in the name of the patriarch, the synod, and the senate, was circulated through the streets of Constantinople; and the general assembly, in the dome of St. Sophia, debated with order and calmness on the choice of their sovereign. The guards of Michael would have dispersed this unarmed multitude; but the feeble emperor, applauding his own moderation and clemency, resigned the ensigns of royalty, and was rewarded with the monastic habit and the title of archbishop of Ephesus. He left a son, a Constantine, born and educated in the purple; and a daughter of the house of Ducas illustrated the blood, and confirmed the succession, of the Comnenian dynasty.

Joannes Comnenus, the brother of the emperor Isaac, survived in peace and dignity his generous refusal of the sceptre. By his wife Anne, a woman of masculine spirit and policy, he left eight children; the three daughters multiplied the Comnenian alliances with the noblest Greeks; of the five sons, Manuel was stopped by a premature death; Isaac and Alexius restored the imperial greatness of their house, which was enjoyed without toil or danger by the two younger brethren, Adrian and Nicephorus. Alexius, the third and most illustrious of the brothers, was endowed by nature with the choicest gifts both of mind and body; they were cultivated by a liberal education, and exercised in the school of obedience and adversity. The youth was dismissed from the perils of the Turkish War,[78] by the paternal care of the emperor Romanus; but the mother of the Comneni, with her aspiring race, was accused of treason, and banished, by the sons of Ducas, to an island in the Propontis. The two brothers soon emerged into favour and action, fought by each other’s side against the rebels and barbarians, and adhered to the emperor Michael, till he was deserted by the world and by himself.

In his first interview with Botaniates, “Prince,” said Alexius, with a noble frankness, “my duty rendered me your enemy; the decrees of God and of the people have made me your subject. Judge of my future loyalty by my past opposition.” The successor of Michael entertained him with esteem and confidence; his valour was employed against three rebels, who disturbed the peace of the empire, or at least of the emperors. Ursel, Bryennius, and Basilacius were formidable by their numerous forces and military fame: they were successively vanquished in the field, and led in chains to the foot of the throne; and whatever treatment they might receive from a timid and cruel court, they applauded the clemency, as well as the courage, of their conqueror. But the loyalty of the Comneni was soon tainted by fear and suspicion; nor is it easy to settle between a subject and a despot the debt of gratitude, which the former is tempted to claim by a revolt, and the latter to discharge by an executioner. The refusal of Alexius to march against a fourth rebel, the husband of his sister, destroyed the merit or memory of his past services; the favourites of Botaniates provoked the ambition which they apprehended and accused; and the retreat of the two brothers might be justified by the defence of their life or liberty.

The women of the family were deposited in a sanctuary, respected by tyrants; the men, mounted on horseback, sallied from the city, and erected the standard of civil war. The soldiers, who had been gradually assembled in the capital and the neighbourhood, were devoted to the cause of a victorious and injured leader; the ties of common interest and domestic alliance secured the attachment of the house of Ducas; and the generous dispute of the Comneni was terminated by the decisive resolution of Isaac, who was the first to invest his younger brother with the name and ensigns of royalty. They returned to Constantinople, to threaten rather than besiege that impregnable fortress; but the fidelity of the guards was corrupted; a gate was surprised, and the fleet was occupied by the active courage of George Palæologus, who fought against his father, without foreseeing that he laboured for his posterity. Alexius ascended the throne; and his aged competitor disappeared in a monastery. An army of various nations was gratified with the pillage of the city; but the public disorders were expiated by the tears and fasts of the Comneni, who submitted to every penance.

ANNA COMNENA’S HISTORY

The life of the emperor Alexius has been delineated by a favourite daughter, who was inspired by a tender regard for his person, and a laudable zeal to perpetuate his virtues. Conscious of the just suspicion of her readers, the princess Anna Comnena[i] repeatedly protests, that, besides her personal knowledge, she had searched the discourse and writings of the most respectable veterans; that, after an interval of thirty years, forgotten by, and forgetful of, the world, her mournful solitude was inaccessible to hope and fear; and that truth, the naked, perfect truth, was more dear and sacred than the memory of her parent. Yet, instead of the simplicity of style and narrative which wins our belief, an elaborate affectation of rhetoric and science betrays in every page the vanity of a female author. The genuine character of Alexius is lost in a vague constellation of virtues; and the perpetual strain of panegyric and apology awakens our jealousy, to question the veracity of the historian and the merit of the hero. We cannot, however, refuse her judicious and important remark, that the disorders of the times were the misfortune and the glory of Alexius; and that every calamity which can afflict a declining empire was accumulated on his reign by the justice of heaven and the vices of his predecessors.

TROUBLES OF ALEXIUS

[Sidenote: [1081-1084 A.D.]]

In the East, the victorious Turks had spread from Persia to the Hellespont the reign of the _Koran_ and the crescent; the West was invaded by the adventurous valour of the Normans; and, in the moments of peace, the Danube poured forth new swarms, who had gained in the science of war what they had lost in the ferociousness of manners. The sea was not less hostile than the land; and while the frontiers were assaulted by an open enemy, the palace was distracted with secret treason and conspiracy.[h]

One of the earliest acts of the reign of Alexius was to conclude a treaty of peace with the Seljuk emir Suleiman, who acted in Asia Minor as if he were completely independent of the grand sultan Malekshah. The treachery of Nicephorus Melissenos had placed Suleiman in possession of Nicæa, and his troops occupied several posts on the shores of the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmora; while Alexius, who required the whole forces of the empire to resist the invasion of Robert Guiscard, was compelled to purchase peace at any price. Under such circumstances, it was only to be expected that the immediate neighbourhood of Constantinople could be kept free from the Turks, and accordingly the boundaries of the Roman Empire in Asia Minor were by this treaty reduced to very narrow limits. The country immediately opposite the capital, as far as the mouth of the river Sangarius and the head of the Gulf of Nicomedia, was evacuated by the Turks, as well as the coasts of the Sea of Marmora, from the little stream called Draco, which falls into the Gulf of Nicomedia, westward to the city of Prusias. Already the mountains of the Turkish territory were visible from the palace of Alexius and the dome of St. Sophia; but the Crusades were destined to repel the Mohammedan invasion from the shores of Europe for several centuries.

THE NORMAN INVASION

The spirit of enterprise and conquest which, when placed under the guidance of religious enthusiasm, carried the bravest warriors of western Europe as crusaders to the East, had, in the preceding generation, under the direction of civil wisdom, produced the conquest of England and southern Italy by the Normans. These conquests had raised their military reputation and self-confidence to the highest pitch; and Robert Guiscard, who was lord of dominions in Italy far superior in wealth to the duchy of Normandy, hoped to eclipse the exploits of Duke William in England by conquering the Byzantine Empire. But as he knew that he must expect a more prolonged resistance than England had offered to its conqueror, he sought a pretext for commencing the war which would conceal his own object, and have a tendency to induce a party in the country to take up arms against the government he was anxious to overthrow. His daughter Helena had been betrothed to Constantine Ducas, the son of Michael VII, and was still so young that she was residing in the imperial palace at Constantinople, to receive her education, when Michael was dethroned. Nicephorus III sent the child to a convent, and Robert her father stood forward as the champion of Michael’s right to recover the throne from which he had been expelled. Under the cover of this pretext, the Norman expected to render himself master of Constantinople, or at all events to gain possession of the rich provinces on the eastern shore of the Adriatic.

The preparations of Robert Guiscard were far advanced when Alexius ascended the throne. To inflame the zeal of his troops, he persuaded Pope Gregory VII that a Greek monk, who had assumed the character of Michael VII, was really the dethroned emperor, and thus induced the pope to approve of his expedition, and to grant absolution to all the invaders of the Byzantine Empire, as if they had been about to commence a holy war. The soldiers were impressed with a deep conviction of the justice of their cause and were inflamed with hopes of plunder and glory.

In the month of June, 1081, Robert Guiscard sailed from Brindisi with a well-appointed fleet of a hundred and fifty ships, carrying an army of thirty thousand chosen troops. His first operation was to render himself master of the rich island of Corcyra (Corfu), which then yielded an annual revenue of fifteen hundred pounds’ weight of gold to the Byzantine government. He then seized the ports of Butrinto, Avlona, and Kanino, on the mainland, and laid siege to the important city of Dyrrhachium, the strongest fortress on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and the capital of Byzantine Illyria. It was fortunate for the empire that George Palæologus, one of its bravest officers, had entered the place before Robert commenced the siege.

The interests of Venice bound them to the cause of the Byzantine government at this time. They were alarmed lest their lucrative trade with Greece and the Levant should be placed at the mercy of the rapacious Normans, in case Robert Guiscard should succeed in gaining possession of the entrance to the Adriatic. They plunged, therefore, into the war without hesitation or reserve.

The doge Dominic Sylvio sailed from Venice with a powerful fleet to attack the Normans before the emperor Alexius could collect his army and march to the relief of Dyrrhachium. The Norman fleet, which was commanded by Bohemund, the illustrious son of Robert Guiscard, suffered a complete defeat, and the communications of the invading army with Italy were cut off. This difficulty only excited Robert to press the siege with additional vigour. He employed every device then known for the attack of towns. The military proceedings of Alexius, when he reached the neighbourhood of Dyrrhachium, were very injudicious. The battle which took place was as disgraceful to the Byzantine arms as to the emperor’s judgment.

In the month of February, 1082, a Venetian, who guarded one of the towers, betrayed the city to Robert, who had previously put his army into winter quarters at Glabinitza and Joanina, in order to escape the severe cold of the winter farther north. Alexius collected the remains of the Byzantine army at Deavolis, and repaired himself to Thessalonica, where he passed the winter collecting a second army, which he was enabled to do, as he had replenished his military chest from the church plate of the richest cathedrals and monasteries in his dominions. The affairs of Italy, before the opening of the second campaign, fortunately compelled Robert Guiscard to quit Illyria, and leave his son Bohemund in command of the Norman army.

In the spring of 1083, Alexius had collected an army so powerful that he again marched forward to attack the Normans. In order to break the terrible charge of their cavalry, which no Byzantine horse could resist, the emperor placed a number of chariots before his own troops, armed with barbed poles extending in front like a line of lances, and in these chariots he stationed a strong body of heavy-armed infantry. Bohemund, however, on reconnoitring this strange unwieldy measure of defence, broke up his line of cavalry into two columns, and leaving the centre of the Byzantine army with the chariots unassailed, fell with fury on the extremity of the two wings. The resistance was short, and the emperor Alexius again fled.

Alexius, having procured a subsidiary force of seven thousand light cavalry from Suleiman and the sultan of Nicæa, again took the field in the spring of 1084. He formed his army into two divisions, and advanced to engage the Normans before Larissa. His preparation for a battle was on this occasion made with considerable skill. Bohemund, seeing that he was in danger of being cut off from his resources, retreated to Kastoria. As soon as the Norman army was cut off from plunder, and without any hope of making further conquests, it began to display a mutinous spirit; and Bohemund was compelled to return to Italy, to obtain supplies of money and fresh troops. Brienne, the constable of Apulia, who commanded in his absence, found himself compelled to surrender Kastoria to the emperor Alexius, and to engage not to bear arms again against the Byzantine Empire.

While Bohemund was carrying on the war against the emperor of the East, Robert Guiscard had driven the emperor of the West out of Rome; and after vanquishing Henry IV, he had plundered the Eternal City like another Genseric. He was now ready to resume his schemes of ambition in the East. Collecting a powerful fleet to carry over his victorious army into Epirus, he raised the siege of Corfu (Corcyra), which was invested by the combined naval forces of the Byzantine Empire and the Venetian Republic. The united fleets were completely defeated in a great naval battle, in which, according to Anna Comnena,[i] they lost thirteen thousand men. But in the month of July, 1085, Robert died in the island of Cephallenia, and with him perished all the Norman projects of conquest in the Byzantine Empire. Dyrrhachium was recovered by Alexius with the assistance of the Venetian and Amalphitan merchants established in the place, and the services of the Venetians in this war were rewarded by many commercial privileges which were conferred on them by a golden bull.[e]

[Sidenote: [1084-1118 A.D.]]

The Norman War was scarcely finished when the Patzinaks invaded the empire (1086). This war lasted five years, until, in fact, Alexius concluded a treaty with the Komans, allies of the Patzinaks, and then dealt the latter a crushing blow at Levounion in 1091. Minor wars with Servia and Dalmatia do not deserve mention, but the progress of the Seljuk Turks continued to hasten the decline of the empire. They dared everything, and in 1092 Tzachas, emir of Smyrna, assumed the title of emperor. He was put down, but retained sufficient strength to besiege Abydos in 1093. But Alexius accomplished his murder the same year. The relations of Alexius and the First Crusade will be fully treated in the account of the Holy Wars. The ancient enmity of Alexius and Bohemund was rekindled when the latter entered into his principality of Antioch. The war lasted from 1103 to 1108, or until Bohemund’s death. The last years of Alexius’ reign were occupied with hostilities with the crusaders and again with the Seljuk Turks. The latter sustained a succession of heavy losses, and in 1116 were glad to make peace. This was the end of Alexius’ military career.[a]

In the tempest of the Crusades Alexius steered the imperial vessel with dexterity and courage. At the head of his armies, he was bold in action, skilful in stratagem, patient of fatigue, ready to improve his advantages, and rising from his defeats with inexhaustible vigour.

In his intercourse with the Latins, Alexius was patient and artful; his discerning eye pervaded the new system of an unknown world; and we shall hereafter describe the superior policy with which he balanced the interests and passions of the champions of the First Crusade. In a long reign of thirty-seven years, he subdued and pardoned the envy of his equals; the laws of public and private order were restored; the arts of wealth and science were cultivated; the limits of the empire were enlarged in Europe and Asia; and the Comnenian sceptre was transmitted to his children of the third and fourth generation.

Anna is a faithful witness that his happiness was destroyed, and his health was broken, by the cares of a public life; the patience of Constantinople was fatigued by the length and severity of his reign; and before Alexius expired, he had lost the love and reverence of his subjects. The clergy could not forgive his application of the sacred riches to the defence of the state; but they applauded his theological learning and ardent zeal for the orthodox faith, which he defended with his tongue, his pen, and his sword. His character was degraded by the superstition of the Greeks; and the same inconsistent principle of human nature enjoined the emperor to found a hospital for the poor and infirm, and to direct the execution of a heretic, who was burned alive in the square of St. Sophia.

In his last hours, when he was pressed by his wife Irene to alter the succession, he raised his head, and breathed a pious ejaculation on the vanity of this world. The indignant reply of the empress may be inscribed as an epitaph on his tomb--“You die, as you have lived--a hypocrite!” (1118).

JOANNES (II) COMNENUS (CALO-JOANNES) (1118-1143 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1118-1143 A.D.]]

It was the wish of Irene to supplant the eldest of her surviving sons, in favour of her daughter, the princess Anna, whose philosophy would not have refused the weight of a diadem. But the order of male succession was asserted by the friends of their country; the lawful heir drew the royal signet from the finger of his insensible or unconscious father, and the empire obeyed the master of the palace. Anna Comnena was stimulated by ambition and revenge to conspire against the life of her brother; and when the design was prevented by the fears or scruples of her husband, she passionately exclaimed, that nature had mistaken the two sexes, and had endowed Bryennius with the soul of a woman.

The two sons of Alexius, Joannes and Isaac, maintained the fraternal concord, the hereditary virtue of their race; and the younger brother was content with the title of Sebastocrator, which approached the dignity, without sharing the power, of the emperor. In the same person, the claims of primogeniture and merit were fortunately united; his swarthy complexion, harsh features, and diminutive stature, had suggested the ironical surname of Calo-Joannes, or John the Handsome, which his grateful subjects more seriously applied to the beauties of his mind.

After the discovery of her treason, the life and fortune of Anna were justly forfeited to the laws. Her life was spared by the clemency of the emperor; but he visited the pomp and treasures of her palace, and bestowed the rich confiscation on the most deserving of his friends. That respectable friend, Axuch, a slave of Turkish extraction, presumed to decline the gift, and to intercede for the criminal; his generous master applauded and imitated the virtue of his favourite, and the reproach or complaint of an injured brother was the only chastisement of the guilty princess. After this example of clemency, the remainder of his reign was never disturbed by conspiracy or rebellion; feared by his nobles, beloved by his people, Joannes was never reduced to the painful necessity of punishing, or even of pardoning, his personal enemies.

During his government of twenty-five years, the penalty of death was abolished in the Roman Empire, a law of mercy most delightful to the humane theorist, but of which the practice, in a large and vicious community, is seldom consistent with the public safety. Severe to himself, indulgent to others, chaste, frugal, abstemious, the philosophic Marcus would not have disdained the artless virtues of his successor, derived from his heart, and not borrowed from the schools. He despised and moderated the stately magnificence of the Byzantine court, so oppressive to the people, so contemptible to the eye of reason. Under such a prince, innocence had nothing to fear, and merit had everything to hope; and without assuming the tyrannic office of a censor, he introduced a gradual though visible reformation in the public and private manners of Constantinople. The only defect of this accomplished character was the frailty of noble minds--the love of arms and military glory. Yet the frequent expeditions of John the Handsome may be justified, at least in their principle, by the necessity of repelling the Turks from the Hellespont and the Bosporus. The sultan of the Iconium was confined to his capital, the barbarians were driven to the mountains, and the maritime provinces of Asia enjoyed the transient blessings of their deliverance. From Constantinople to Antioch and Aleppo, he repeatedly marched at the head of a victorious army, and in the sieges and battles of this holy war his Latin allies were astonished by the superior spirit and prowess of a Greek. As he began to indulge the ambitious hope of restoring the ancient limits of the empire, as he revolved in his mind, the Euphrates and the Tigris, the dominion of Syria, and the conquest of Jerusalem, the thread of his life and of the public felicity was broken by a singular accident. He hunted the wild boar in the valley of Anazarbus, and had fixed his javelin in the body of the furious animal; but, in the struggle, a poisoned arrow dropped from his quiver, and a slight wound in his hand, which produced a mortification, was fatal to the best and greatest of the Comnenian princes.

MANUEL I (1143-1180 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1143-1180 A.D.]]

A premature death had swept away the two eldest sons of John the Handsome; of the two survivors, Isaac and Manuel, his judgment or affection preferred the younger; and the choice of their dying prince was ratified by the soldiers, who had applauded the valour of his favourite in the Turkish War. The faithful Axuch hastened to the capital, secured the person of Isaac in honourable confinement, and purchased with a gift of two hundred pounds of silver the leading ecclesiastics of St. Sophia, who possessed a decisive voice in the consecration of an emperor. With his veteran and affectionate troops, Manuel soon visited Constantinople; his brother acquiesced in the title of Sebastocrator; his subjects admired the lofty stature and martial graces of their new sovereign, and listened with credulity to the flattering promise, that he blended the wisdom of age with the activity and vigour of youth. By the experience of his government, they were taught, that he emulated the spirit, and shared the talents, of his father, whose social virtues were buried in the grave. A reign of thirty-seven years is filled by a perpetual though various warfare against the Turks, the Christians, and the hordes of the wilderness beyond the Danube. The arms of Manuel were exercised on Mount Taurus, in the plains of Hungary, on the coast of Italy and Egypt, and on the seas of Sicily and Greece; the influence of his negotiations extended from Jerusalem to Rome and Russia; and the Byzantine monarchy, for a while, became an object of respect or terror to the powers of Asia and Europe.

Educated in the silk and purple of the East, Manuel possessed the iron temper of a soldier, which cannot easily be paralleled, except in the lives of Richard I of England, and of Charles XII of Sweden. Such was his strength and exercise in arms, that Raymond, surnamed the Hercules of Antioch, was incapable of wielding the lance and buckler of the Greek emperor. In a famous tournament, he entered the lists on a fiery courser, and overturned in his first career two of the stoutest of the Italian knights. The first in the charge, the last in the retreat, his friends and his enemies alike trembled, the former for his safety and the latter for their own. After posting an ambuscade in a wood, he rode forwards in search of some perilous adventure, accompanied only by his brother and the faithful Axuch, who refused to desert their sovereign. Eighteen horsemen, after a short combat, fled before them; but the numbers of the enemy increased; the march of the reinforcement was tardy and fearful, and Manuel, without receiving a wound, cut his way through a squadron of five hundred Turks. In a battle against the Hungarians, impatient of the slowness of his troops, he snatched a standard from the head of the column, and was the first, almost alone, who passed a bridge that separated him from the enemy. In the same country, after transporting his army beyond the Save, he sent back the boats with an order, under pain of death, to their commander, that he should leave him to conquer or die on that hostile land. In the siege of Corfu, towing after him a captive galley, the emperor stood aloft on the poop, opposing against the volleys of darts and stones a large buckler and a flowing sail; nor could he have escaped inevitable death, had not the Sicilian admiral enjoined his archers to respect the person of a hero. In one day, he is said to have slain above forty of the barbarians with his own hand; he returned to the camp, dragging along four Turkish prisoners, whom he had tied to the rings of his saddle; he was ever the foremost to provoke or to accept a single combat; and the gigantic champions, who encountered his arm, were transpierced by the lance, or cut asunder by the sword, of the invincible Manuel. The story of his exploits, which appear as a model or copy of the romances of chivalry, may induce a reasonable suspicion of the veracity of the Greeks; yet we may observe, that, in the long series of their annals, Manuel is the only prince who has been the subject of similar exaggeration. With the valour of a soldier, he did not unite the skill or prudence of a general; his victories were not productive of any permanent or useful conquest; and his Turkish laurels were blasted in his last unfortunate campaign, in which he lost his army in the mountains of Pisidia, and owed his deliverance to the generosity of the sultan.

But the most singular feature in the character of Manuel, is the contrast and vicissitude of labour and sloth, of hardiness and effeminacy. In war he seemed ignorant of peace; in peace he appeared incapable of war. In the field he slept in the sun or in the snow, tired in the longest marches the strength of his men and horses, and shared with a smile the abstinence or diet of the camp. No sooner did he return to Constantinople, than he resigned himself to the arts and pleasures of a life of luxury; the expense of his dress, his table, and his palace, surpassed the measure of his predecessors, and whole summer days were idly wasted in the delicious isles of the Propontis, in the incestuous love of his niece Theodora. The double cost of a warlike and dissolute prince exhausted the revenue, and multiplied the taxes; and Manuel, in the distress of his last Turkish campaign, endured a bitter reproach from the mouth of a desperate soldier. As he quenched his thirst, he complained that the water of a fountain was mingled with Christian blood.

“It is not the first time,” exclaimed a voice from the crowd, “that you have drunk, O emperor! the blood of your Christian subjects.”

Manuel Comnenus was twice married; to the virtuous Bertha or Irene of Germany, and to the beauteous Maria, a French or Latin princess of Antioch. The only daughter of his first wife was destined for Bela, a Hungarian prince, who was educated at Constantinople, under the name of Alexius; and the consummation of their nuptials might have transferred the Roman sceptre to a race of free and warlike barbarians. But as soon as Maria of Antioch had given a son and heir to the empire, the presumptive rights of Bela were abolished, and he was deprived of his promised bride; but the Hungarian prince resumed his name and the kingdom of his fathers, and displayed such virtues as might excite the regret and envy of the Greeks. The son of Maria was named Alexius; and at the age of ten years, he ascended the Byzantine throne, after his father’s decease had closed the glories of the Comnenian line.

The fraternal concord of the two sons of the great Alexius had been sometimes clouded by an opposition of interest and passion. By ambition, Isaac the Sebastocrator was excited to flight and rebellion, from whence he was reclaimed by the firmness and clemency of John the Handsome. The errors of Isaac, the father of the emperors of Trebizond, were short and venial; but Joannes, the elder of his sons, renounced forever his religion. Provoked by a real or imaginary insult of his uncle, he escaped from the Roman to the Turkish camp; his apostacy was rewarded with the Sultan’s daughter, the title of Chelebi, or noble, and the inheritance of a princely estate; and in the fifteenth century Muhammed II boasted of his imperial descent from the Comnenian family.

_The Adventures of Andronicus_