Chapter XIV: The Conquest of Aleppo

Some months have passed, and the scene changes to Asia. Nicephorus Phocas was now in supreme command of an immense host echelonned along the Cilician frontier, having its headquarters at Cæsaria in Cappadocia. He bluntly refused the offer of the politic prefect to occupy the prefecture within the city, and he had his quarters placed in the centre of the great camp, which lay in the plain beyond. Cæsaria was at that epoch a great and splendid city of the empire, well situated on a branch of the noble river Halys, and within sight of the snowy peak of Mount Argæus, the highest point of the Taurus range. But Nicephorus disdained both for himself and his army the comforts of a luxurious city, to which he had forbidden all access by the troops. As a wealthy and populous centre of trade, as the point of junction for all the great highways, north, west, and south, Cæsaria formed an admirable base for a great expedition. The general himself had for his own use a small and simple camp-tent, rudely equipped, and in no respect superior to the rest of the service baggage. Near it stood a larger tent, in which he held councils and conferred with his staff and officers of rank.

His return to Byzantium after the conquest of Crete, and his ovation in the Hippodrome, where he presented to the Basileus the aged kouropas of Crete and his son, Anernas, as prisoners of war, had called out such an explosion of popular enthusiasm that the inner cabinet of the Sacred Palace was alarmed, and Bringas, the parakeimomenos, was filled with jealousy and rage. Unable to stem the torrent of public favor towards the victorious commander, Bringas persuaded the emperor to order Nicephorus to the Asian frontier. The wily eunuch took care to load with honors and titles the enemy whom he was sending as far as possible from the capital. Romanus heaped on his victorious general magnificent presents, overwhelmed him with gracious words, and gave him a rank equivalent to "generalissimo of the army-corps of the east." The interviews between the soldier and the sovereign had been of a sort little known in the Sacred Palace.

Debauchery, excitement, and exhausting fatigues had wasted the splendid frame of Romanus. Pale, with wild eyes in their sunken sockets, and limbs trembling in all their joints, the young Basileus received his great officer with all the grace and good-nature for which he was conspicuous. He lavished on him every honor and every promise that he could imagine as likely to tempt the veteran; and, without sharing the jealousy of the court eunuch and without understanding his device, Romanus pressed on Nicephorus the command of the eastern armies.

"My Lord Basileus," said the soldier, "I have done my duty to my God, and to my sovereign, and by the blessing of Christ and His Mother in heaven, I gave the best years of my life to this empire of Rome. I am now about to retire to take thought of my own soul, to atone for the life of battle, of blood, and ruin in which it has been passed. I am resolved to take vows of monkhood, and to end the bitter dregs of life that are left to me in a hermitage on Mount Athos. My lord, when you next summon me, you will learn that I am no longer your officer, but the solitary servant of Christ and of her who bore Him."

Neither entreaties nor promises nor commands could move the stubborn soul of the soldier. He left the presence with the barest observance of the prescribed ceremonies, saying: "Do not forget, mighty king of Rome, that there is in heaven above us a King over all kings, and on earth, beside each of us, there is the angel of death, who but waits the signal from on high to strike."

As Nicephorus stalked away down the corridor amid lines of excubitors and cubiculars, who could hardly decide whether to honor the great hero of the day, or to slight the enemy of the all-powerful eunuch, a chamberlain from the empress brought him a summons to attend her in private audience. With a muttered excuse Nicephorus passed on with hastened strides. But at a turn of the corridor Theophano herself, radiant with smiles and in all the charm of her superb grace, confronted the veteran in his very path, and beckoned him into her closet alone.

"I overheard your terrible resolve," she said, in a voice thrilling with entreaty as well as indignation, "but I will not believe that one who is the only hope and bulwark of our country can deliver it over to the sons of Hagar and the followers of the False Prophet. Will you rest in peace in your cell, and whine out your Kyrie, eleison, when you see the accursed Chamdas defile the altars of God and chant prayers to Allah under the dome of the Holy Wisdom? Did the Mother of God vouchsafe you power to gain such glorious victories over the camel-driver and his race that you thus abandon her people and her shrines to the abomination of desolation?" And she looked down on him, majestic and inspired, like the Cumæan Sibyl in Raphael's fresco at Rome.

"There are swords as good as mine," muttered the veteran, visibly abashed and humbled, "and younger men than I, who have not my sins to wash out."

"Nicephorus, victor, hero," she cried with rapture, seizing his brawny hand in both of hers, "the army will follow none but you! You, you are the hero of all Rome and of all its tributary races. The rest are boys or martinets. Save us, protect us, comfort us, or we poor women may yet be swept into the harems of the infamous libertines of Islam!"

Nicephorus was speechless; a shudder shook his huge breast, but he could find no words.

"Have you no eyes?" she whispered, with that silver tone of fascination that was her peculiar secret and gift; "have you not seen that wine, lechery, and furious sports have marked that fribble you have just left to a premature doom? He will never see another summer. And when I am no longer Augusta, who will protect me and my babes? To whom could I look but to the hero whom all Roman men delight to follow, whom all Roman women trust and honor--trust and love?" she whispered, looking into his eyes and drawing herself slowly towards him till she gathered him in her arms and sobbed upon his shoulder. "Go to the Asian frontier, crush the Hagarene! You shall have from the palace absolute power and authority, military and civil. You shall be the true Basileus in the field, before you return to be the Basileus in the palace!" Then she rushed away in tears, and left the chieftain quite dazed, drunk with perplexity, and mad with passion.

So Nicephorus took up the command on the eastern frontier, having received from the Basileus and his ministers plenary authority to raise and equip an army, with power over all the forces and all the reserves of the empire, civil and military, in any theme of Asia. For some months he worked incessantly at his task, and mustered the most powerful army known to his age.

Nicephorus was now seated in the larger tent, to which he had summoned in council his chief officers. First came Basil Digenes, the warden of the marches, again chief of the general's staff. Beside him was Bardas Skleros, commander of the Armenian guard, Leon Balantes, Bourtzes, and other generals, and last entered the illustrious John Tzimisces, the rival and ultimate successor of Nicephorus. An Armenian noble of the highest rank--his real nickname was Tchemeschguig, or the Little, a sound which no Greek throat could utter--John was the hero of a hundred desperate combats. His courage was even more reckless and romantic than that of Nicephorus, and, as a mere cavalry leader, he was almost the equal of the great chief. Short of stature, he had prodigious strength, with the activity and suppleness of an acrobat. Matchless in all military exercises, and unrivalled in the lists, his frankness, generosity, and affable temper made him the idol of men, while his fiery beauty, grace, and high spirits made him the idol of women. In the matter of temperance, chastity, and piety, John was the very opposite of Nicephorus.

Nicephorus opened the council thus:

"My comrades and commanders of the eastern corps, I have summoned you to hear the plan of campaign, and to take counsel as to the task before each contingent of our host. The latest field state shows that we have a force of all arms of two hundred and thirteen thousand men, of whom forty-two thousand are cavalry, with one hundred and twelve thousand horses, mules, asses, and camels; and these are in cantonments along the range of Taurus over against Cilicia, extending nearly one hundred Roman miles. The details of the numbers and their exact position of encampment will remain for the present known only to myself and my secretaries. When the hour of advance has come, due orders will be issued to the commands which are to invade the enemy and to those which will remain in reserve."

"And may we know the day and the line of the advance, my lord general?" broke in the impetuous John Tzimisces.

"The day and the place of invasion, my noble friend," said Nicephorus, with a dry smile, "must remain known to God above--and to me. In a campaign such as this we must rely on overwhelming numbers and lightning rapidity of execution to secure our end. The divided state of the Hagarenes will prevent them from meeting us in great pitched battles. But it is a vast territory in which they are settled, and the most difficult to invade in all God's earth. It bristles with forts on inaccessible rocks, with mountain defiles and dense woods, and is defended by a girdle of fortified towns. We have to pour down over these passes on all sides at once, like the snows in spring when they rush down the gorges of Taurus; we must overwhelm these forts and towns like a sudden flood, and all Cilicia will be again within the fold of Rome--and of Christ!"

"And when we have won back Cilicia we shall have gained but a corner of the empire of Chamdas, whose realm reaches to the Euphrates," broke in Bourtzes, somewhat surlily.

"Most true, my Lord Bourtzes," replied the general, with a voice that vibrated with fervor and faith, "but that corner is the key of the power of Islam in Asia. When we hold Cilicia as a base, we will descend over the ranges of Amanus, even as we are about to push through those of Taurus. Then--Syria is ours again, is Christ's again. The sacred land in which our Saviour deigned to be born as man, the hill of Calvary whereon He died, the tomb wherein His body lay till the third day, shall no longer be polluted by these dogs of Ishmael. After all these hundred years the Holy Land shall again be hallowed with the Cross; Antioch, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem shall again be consecrated to the Blessed Trinity and the Mother of God. We will push on to Mesopotamia, beyond Euphrates, till the empire of Rome has no frontier on the east but the Tigris, and no frontier on the south but the dry deserts of Arabia, into which the unholy race of Hagar shall be driven and made to abide. The empire of our founder, Constantine, of Justinian, and of Heraclius, shall be restored in all its majesty and power, and the dogs who follow the False Prophet shall be kennelled again with the jackals of the desert."

Generals and secretaries listened in silent respect to this outburst of their chief, who spoke like some priest at the altar, rather than as the leader of a mighty host arrayed for war.

"We are all eager to be at them!" cried John Tzimisces, passionately. "Give us the hour, and our marching orders, and we will saddle this coming dawn!"

"In good time, my valiant Lord Joannes. I well know your noble ardor for the fight. There are a thousand things that a commander-in-chief has to prepare, and a few of these are still wanting. Our siege-train is not yet complete and we have at least fifty forts to capture; the remount chargers in reserve are not quite filled up, the reserve of arms is nearly full, the transport service is ready, and the hospital-train, but the reports from the eastern defiles of the Cilician Clisuras have not yet all come in. There are still seven companies of vedettes who have yet to complete the intelligence survey of the distant passes."

"Will it be three days more, twice three days, as many weeks yet?" asked Bourtzes, in his blunt way.

"God in heaven knows, my dear general," said the chief, with his grim smile. "In the mean time, I have copies ready of the _Hand-book of Tactics_, which I have been compiling during the last three months. Every commander of a division shall have it; my orders are that every chief officer shall thoroughly understand the rules of this kind of warfare--to which there are three main keys--rapidity of movement, exact knowledge of all the facts, foresight of every detail."

All next night the general sat in his tent, with none but Basil Digenes and his chief secretary. He had called for the final recension of his book on _Tactics_, which he was explaining to the lord warden as he ran over the heads of the twenty-five chapters.

"'Everything lies in this first chapter on scouting and the distances between the vedettes,'" said the general, reading; "'in a very broken country they must not be more than three or four Roman miles apart. The scouts may have to be away from the main army fifteen days, and must carry provisions for that time. They must explore every hill, stream, and road in the district they survey, never be stationary, but always on the move, and always in touch with the force they are serving. Then take care they master that third chapter on "Occupying heights that flank a pass," and "On flank attacks on an enemy discovered to be on the march." Then that eleventh chapter will be of the utmost importance in such a march as we shall make through the defiles of the Taurus--"How to survey and occupy in force the points that can command a defile which is to be forced." Many and many a Roman army, from the time of the Caudine Forks down to that of Gongyles in Crete, and poor Pastilas this very last year, has been lost by neglecting this caution.'

"Listen to this, my son," the chief continued, reading from his own book: "'This war is one of cavalry. Victory does not depend on numbers, but on prudence, on rapidity, on ingenuity, so that a stroke may be delivered when and where it is least expected by the enemy. War against these children of the desert, on their own light horses, and with camels as transports, has wholly changed since the epoch of pitched battles. If you are swift enough, alert enough, keen enough, if you are well served by your scouts, spies, and signallers, you may defeat a battalion with a mere detachment, and an army with only a battalion.'

"'Then attend to your signal-service. Pick the sharpest eyes, the keenest brains in your force, and take care that the chain of signals is never broken. The one thing essential is to conceal from your enemy your own movements and your objective. Every advance must be covered by feints. March as far as possible by night, and choose moonless nights.'

"'Then as to night attacks. These are exceedingly dangerous, unless carried out with fitting conditions, which are a thorough knowledge of the ground attacked, assaults delivered simultaneously on many sides at once, trustworthy guides, and intelligent officers. The assaults must converge to an instant, they must be invisible till they strike, and they must be directed by a single mind.' In this war we must constantly resort to night assaults," said Nicephorus, as he handed the volume to the lord warden.

"The first thought of a general, my son, is to have his men well rationed, honestly paid, well clothed, and well mounted. It is a scandal how these courtiers and clerks at home stint the soldier of his food, his pay, and his rewards.

"You may wonder that I think it needful in our days of glory to recite at such pains the way in which these accursed infidels are to be defeated. Ah, who can say what is before us in the future? Bardas Cæsar and my mother's brother, Constantine Meleinos, won victories by these tactics, and I myself have seen them successful in six hundred fights, great or small. If you follow these precepts, my dear young warden, you will win an equal success--remembering always this, that it is not thou who art victor, but that the victory is given thee by Christ, our Saviour, very God and very man."

The general now sat alone in his tent studying the reports and rough sketch-maps sent him from a score of advanced posts. His secretary brought him a missive just received by a relay of royal posts from the Sacred Palace.

From the parakeimomenos (lord high chamberlain) to the grand domestic (or marshal) of the army-corps of the east, Nicephorus, the Victorious, and so forth--after compliments, eulogies, and promises in profusion--the mighty Bringas proceeds to explain that the council of his Majesty, the Basileus, are so anxious that nothing should imperil the life and glory of the general-in-chief, that they desire him to remain in reserve with an army in Cæsaria, and to intrust the advance into the enemy's territories to the illustrious commander, John Tzimisces, whose failure to succeed would not so fatally endanger the safety of empire--and more excellent reasons for keeping Nicephorus in the background and idle.

"So ho!" said the general to himself, with a grim smile; "he would pit John against me, and throw me into the shade! Too late, my honest eunuch, too late! The orders to march at dawn have gone forth this very night. But is Tzimisces a party to the plot? Never! he is too noble a spirit. I would trust John with my life."

Another missive now came in, brought by a private messenger. It was from Leo, the brother of Nicephorus, who was watching his interests in Constantinople.

"The voice of all Rome is loud for the House of Phocas, and the name of the victor of Crete is on every tongue. But the arch-eunuch is plotting night and day against you, turning now to the exiled prince, now to Tzimisces. Our autocrator himself is nearer than ever to his God. It is thought he will keep his Christmas in heaven, and they do say that art is assisting sin and disease to make an angel of him. Strike--and strike quickly, and be careful that you celebrate a triumph in the Hippodrome within three months. Three months is the longest period that it is safe for you to be absent!"

"Yes, in three months' time I shall be in the Golden Horn--or in my grave," said Nicephorus, and he flung himself on his couch with a few prayers as he kissed the ikon of the Mother of God. As he raised his eyes he saw a slip of parchment that, without his knowledge, had been hung at the foot of the image. It was folded and addressed: "To the Hero of Rome and Defender of Christ." Within were these words, in the Armenian tongue: "She who loves thee warns thee to win a glorious victory over the Hagarene and then to hasten back to Rome. The Augusta is racked with anxiety and foreboding. In three months she will be a widow. There is but one who could protect her and console her."

The general crushed the parchment in his fierce grip, and then thrust it into his breast. He tossed on his couch for hours, with a storm of passions chasing each other across his soul.

Before dawn the great host had begun its advance. The general, in the centre of his staff, was receiving and despatching mounted couriers, who every minute came and went to and fro. Through seven different passes of the Taurus, mainly through that known as the "Cilician Gates," the various corps debouched down upon the Saracen province that had once been the Cilicia of Augustus and Trajan. The different armies had separate objectives, but were kept in close touch with one another, and each was preceded by an outer screen of light cavalry, which pressed on in front and scoured the whole country. As the parallel forces poured down like a deluge on the rich plains, the miserable people fled before them or crowded into the forts; the Saracen troops of all arms were seized with panic, and made no effort to stem the current. Fort after fort, walled towns, castles, and camps fell rapidly into the hands of the invading Christians. The overwhelming numbers that Nicephorus had collected covered the country for a hundred miles. By light siege-train, hurried forward, they captured fortresses by escalade. Tarsus, Adana, Mopseutia, and Seleucia were taken by storm. The gallant emir of Aleppo, Seif Eddauleh, of the dynasty of Hamdan, the hero of the Saracens of Asia in the tenth century, whom the Greeks called the "Accursed Chamdas," yielded before the avalanche. He ordered his men to retreat inland towards Syria and to attempt nothing but separate and small encounters to harrass the lines of communication. The host poured on, the Arab historian declares, "like hungry wolves," ravaging the land, burning villages, and destroying all crops and stores which they could not use. Karamountis, the emir of Tarsus, attempted a pitched battle, but was utterly defeated and left five thousand of his men dead upon the field, the rest being prisoners of war. All the calculations of the Roman general were fulfilled, every order had been carried out to the letter, every corps reached the point at which it was directed at the appointed time. The whole of Cilicia was swept as by a tornado, and within twenty-two days, the Arab historian, Aboulfaradj, relates that fifty-five fortresses and fortified towns had fallen into the hands of the Christians. Enormous booty and tens of thousands of prisoners were taken, and after three centuries the rich and broad land, watered by the Cydnus and the Pyramus, and lying between the range of Taurus and the Mediterranean Sea, passed again into the realm of Christ and of Rome.

There was a halt to concentrate the forces, collect the booty, and to reinforce or refresh the army after its tremendous rush, and secret despatches had again reached the commander. An unsigned missive in the Armenian tongue warned him again that the Augustus was in delirium, at the verge of death, that the Augusta commanded his return to save the empire and herself from ruin. A later missive from his brother Leo assured him that the Basileus had revived and might live yet some months. "Go on and conquer! Drive the accursed blasphemer, Chamdas, from his last lair in Syria. Then return and triumph!"

Nicephorus resumed his onward march in earnest. He had now received reinforcements of twenty thousand fresh cavalry, bringing up his effective force to over two hundred thousand troops, including thirty thousand engineers and sappers, with ample engines of siege and storm. As the vast range of Taurus had lain between the empire and the Saracen in Cilicia, so now the range of the Amanus divided it from the provinces of Syria, Damascus, and Aleppo. Anazarba, Sis, and other strong forts were swept away, their defenders ruthlessly slaughtered, and their homes sacked, but nothing could arrest the invaders till they poured over the passes of Amanus down into the valley of the Orontes and reached the great plains which stretch away from the "Gates of Syria" to the Euphrates. Once across the defiles of the Amanus range, Nicephorus concentrated his whole force for a plunge upon Aleppo, the seat and capital of "the accursed Chamdas."

Aleppo, which the Greeks called Chalepe and the Saracens called Haleb, was then the most splendid and the richest city of Asia, having some quarter of a million of inhabitants, and was the centre of the trade between East and West. Its magnificent palaces, in the midst of gardens teeming with all the flowers and shrubs of the Asiatic plains, its immense circuit of walls, towers, domes, and minarets, were crowned by the tremendous fortress on the almost precipitous acropolis that rose above the plain in which the city stood. At a glorious sunrise, early in December, Nicephorus gathered his principal officers around him on an eminence from whence in the distance the white towers of Aleppo could be clearly seen. "There lies the lair of the blaspheming Hagarene who has wrought such havoc upon the people of Christ and the realm of Rome! Within those proud walls are the savage horsemen who have burned a thousand homes and have slaughtered ten thousand of our brothers! Ay, and within those gay and lordly palaces, with their smiling groves and terraces, there are ten thousand of our sisters, daughters, and boys who have been ravished from Christian hearts and turned from Christ to defile themselves with the False Prophet, his lies and his fornications! By God and His mercy, we will keep Christmas like Christians, within the very walls and mosques where He has been blasphemed these long three hundred years!"

The city was now entirely invested. All the efforts of the emirs to relieve it were cut off with immense losses, and almost on the eve of Christmas Day the order was given for a combined assault. The walls were carried in a dozen places at once, the gallant Chamdas was driven back step by step into the citadel on the heights, and by nightfall the splendid city of Aleppo was entirely in the hands of the Romans. The booty was enormous, for the rush of Nicephorus upon the capital had been so sudden that nothing had been removed. Three hundred and ninety thousand gold pieces were found in the Saracen treasury; thousands of horses, mules, and camels in the barracks. Gold plate, exquisite damascened work, jewelled arms, brocades, embroideries, ivories, carpets, vases, robes, and painted manuscripts were tossed about in wild confusion. For days the scene of plunder, bloodshed, and destruction raged. The superb palace of the emir, filled with precious things, was sacked, and then consumed with fire, and everything which the victorious troops could neither use nor transport was burned or destroyed. The ramparts of the great city were levelled, the mosques were ruined, and the minarets thrown down in the dust.

The general, with fierce exultation, surveyed the annihilation of the terrible enemy who had made the Roman empire reel to its foundations, and he saw that the frontiers of Rome were destined to extend again to the Euphrates. Thereupon he ordered a solemn Te Deum to be chanted in presence of a great muster of chiefs and chosen detachments of his army. Before the crucifix, which was raised beside the central altar, the fierce soldier of the Cross thrice prostrated himself in the dust, and offered up a silent prayer of thanksgiving; and then the psalm of praise was chanted forth by ten thousand voices in unison.

As Nicephorus returned to his headquarters he found a missive to him from Constantinople. It was unsigned, and in the Armenian language and said that the throne of Constantine and Basil would be vacant before the message could reach its destination.