Chapter XIX: The Saracen Peril

The emperor now applied his whole mind to affairs of state with all the burning energy of his nature; and he sat day by day with his chosen officers in secret council, dictating orders to his proto-secretis. Though he submitted with the best grace he could command to the public ceremonials and pilgrimages which policy and the traditions of his office required him to perform in person, his absorbing task was the organization of his army, the navy, the finances, and the imperial administration. And, though the wound so ostentatiously inflicted at once on his pride and his love by the fanaticism of the patriarch lay deep in his mind as an open sore, he remained unshaken in his devotion to Holy Church, and in profound regard for the hermit of Mount Athos.

The very day after this fierce struggle, Nicephorus was closeted with Digenes, and was imparting to him his great schemes for the restoration of the Roman name.

"From the time of our mighty predecessor, Heraclius," said he, "for more than three hundred years, the children of the False Prophet have been gaining, step by step, upon the children of Christ. A few generations more and they will have blotted out the Church of God and His Mother. The prophet of the Lord may well say to the Hagarene, 'Hast thou killed and also hast thou taken possession?'"

"Nay," interrupted the ardent young warden, "such victories as those of thy father Bardas, of thy grandfathers and kinsmen of Armenia, and, above all, thy own most glorious achievements in Crete and in Syria, in Cilicia and Aleppo, bear witness that Christ will not forsake His people forever, and that the days of glory of the Prophet are no more."

"We beat them back time and again, and the tide has turned on our side within the last indiction. But as I look back over these centuries stained with all the savage tyranny of the image-breakers, and the follies of our Isaurians, Amorians, Arabians, and Khazars on the throne, Michael 'the Monk,' Michael 'the Stammerer,' and Michael 'the Drunkard,' I see that the Crescent is steadily driving back the Cross. One or other will assuredly perish in the long combat at last."

"At what point will you strike them first?" asked Digenes, abruptly.

"The power of the great Asian caliphate has been weakened by rivalries, rebellions, and divisions, but it is by no means broken. The accursed Chamdas snake is scotched, but not killed. The Hamdanite family is still as active and fierce as ever. Aleppo, Antioch, Edessa, obey their victorious emirs, and persecute our believers. While Syria, with all its cities and resources, is a stronghold of the Hagarene dynasty, our eastern themes are ever open to their cruel raids and devastating incursions. I tell thee, my son, my first and greatest task is to crush the Chamdas, who seems to rise ever stronger after every defeat."

"Seif Eddauleh! a hero worthy even of your sword," said the warden.

"Hero it may be, but a deadly enemy of Christ and His people," said Nicephorus. "He or I must fall in this death-grapple. My officers are now mustering upon the Anatolian frontier the most numerous army, and the best equipped, that Rome has sent forth since the time of Heraclius. The moment it is ready, I shall put myself at its head and march upon Syria, into which we shall pour as we did when we swept back the Chamdas into his rock-bound citadel as a hunted lion is driven to his pathless lair."

"Will it be Aleppo, Antioch, or Edessa, that you strike first?" asked Digenes, eagerly.

"God in heaven knows, my son," replied the general, solemnly, with a touch of irony in his voice, "and we shall all know in His good time."

"But you will not leave to the Prophet the Holy Land of Abraham, of David, and Christ Himself? Have you no care for Damascus, Beyruth, and Jerusalem?--the tombs of the holy ones and the scene of the birth and death of the Lord Himself?"

"Be not too eager, my son. How are we to reach these holy places, lost to Christ all these hundreds of years, until we have driven the Hagarene swarms from the passes of the Amanus and the Libanon? Assuredly Jerusalem and Bethlehem are our ultimate goal which the Cross shall one day enter, though it is a sight that I shall never live to see; no, nor your son's son. But there is that which to a soldier, if not to a priest, is more sacred than the manger of Bethlehem or the hill of Calvary, and that is the rescuing from the dungeons, and harems, and slave-markets of the infidel the men and women, girls and children, of our Christian people. There is a care more urgent on an emperor of Rome than the recovery of any relic or any place of pilgrimage, and that is the safety and enlargement of the Roman realm."

"There are victorious realms of Islam to the south: in Africa, in Egypt, and in Tunis," said the warden, sadly; "and these last are pressing even to death and slavery the last remnant of the Christian defenders of Sicily, to say nothing of Spain, where you sent me of late to the splendid kingdom of the caliph of the west."

"Yes, our brethren in Sicily are in great danger of destruction, and I am preparing another great army and another fleet to relieve and succor them. This indeed will be despatched before another moon, and will take precedence even of my own campaign."

"And will the Catholic sovereigns of Alemaine, who have annexed so much of the Italian dominions, do nothing to save their fellow-Christians in Sicily in the hour of their distress?" asked Digenes.

"Nothing," said the emperor, fiercely, "nay, worse than nothing. These Saxon barbarians beyond the Danube aim at the destruction of our holy Roman empire, of which they usurp the titles, and copy the practices and institutions. It will be a black day for the city and throne of Constantine when Frank and Latin marauders shall dare to assail them in force. They talk still of alliances, exchange of courtesies, and even of intermarriage; but they mean in their hearts rivalry, treachery, and war. They are biding their time till they can blot out the Byzantine name and Church."

"And the bishop of old Rome on the Tiber, who calls himself Pope, and supreme head of Christ's Church, will not he intercede for the suffering remnant of the Christians of Sicily?" asked Digenes.

"What, he!" broke forth Nicephorus, passionately. "The son of the old harlot, the bandit, the assassin, the catamite, who pollutes that Vatican cloister which is now a brothel and a gamester's hell! The Catholic Church is the deadly rival and foe of our Orthodox Church. It is ever plotting our ruin and inciting its royal patrons to destroy us. It is more deadly than either Saracen or Saxon. They indeed may end in working our ruin. But the Catholic Church, while ever working to our ruin, is ever bearing false witness to vilify, calumniate, and ridicule all we have and all we do in Church or in State, in war or in peace. We stand on the Bosphorus between two sleepless enemies--fierce unbelievers on the east, and traitors to Christ in the west. And we who have defended the Roman name and the Christian faith for three hundred years against the onslaught of Islam, we, the bulwark of Christ and the Mother of God, we are ever being assailed by the masters of the Latin provinces; and forever we are being maligned by the degraded prelacy which has usurped the tomb and see of St. Peter. No, my son, the Romans of the east had better invoke the aid of Satan, Moloch, or Beelzebub, the father of lies, before they trust the words of a Latin priest."

"But on the north we have dangerous enemies as well, and even more near to us--Bulgarians, Slavs, Huns, Patzinaks, and Russ. They have ere now swept down on Byzantium like a winter snow-storm from the Euxine, and they may sweep down again. Have you given thought to them, sir?" asked Digenes.

"Much thought, my son," replied the emperor, "but though they are nearer than Saracen or Latin, they are quite disunited, and full of fierce rivalries, jealousies, and ambitions. If one is our enemy, it makes the rest our friends. When the Bulgarian becomes dangerous, we will hire the Turk or the Russ to fall upon his back. The whole Balkan peninsula is a den of savage beasts, who are ever snarling at each other, and waiting to spring on each other unawares. If they could only agree for an hour, they would join in a combined attack upon us; and their vast hordes and limitless cavalry might make them a formidable foe to beat. But we will take them one by one and swallow them at leisure, as one eats the leaves of an artichoke. Before the Bulgarian can move, we will take care to have the Russ upon his back. I can hear in my day-dreams the roar of our people in the Hippodrome on the day when a Basileus of New Rome shall be hailed on his victories over the northern realm of Crumn and of Symeon as 'the victorious lord,' 'the slaughterer of the Bulgarians,'" said the emperor, with prophetic fervor deepening his voice.

"And the Russ of Kiev and the coasts of the Euxine and the Chersonesus?" asked Digenes, "are they not within your plans?"

"The Russ and Patzinaks who swarm along the northern rivers which flow into the Euxine are too far off us, too restless and nomad, and altogether too loosely organized as settled nations to endanger the Roman empire," said Nicephorus, proudly. "The Russ make fine guardsmen for us, and are willing to do our service for proper reward at any time. We will civilize and Christianize them and teach them to keep Bulgarians and Turks in order. Ah," he went on, musing with something of prophetic strain, "Byzantium may fall before the infidels of the east--nay, even before the schismatic Latins of the west--but before the northern barbarians never! If they strove for a thousand years these Varangians shall never seat their czars upon the Golden Horn."

"Then wherein lie the great dangers of the empire?" asked the lord warden.

"In the corruption of officials, in malversation of the finances, and in the womanish spirit of the people of the great cities of the Greek peninsula. The mongrel mobs which fill our Forum and Hippodrome here in Byzantium, the Hellenes of the Peloponnese and the Ægean islands and seaboard, are good only to tax--or to row ships--not to bear arms and defend their country. Happily we can fill our armies with good men and true from the highlands of Thrace, Epirus, and Macedonia, from the plains and hills of Asia Minor, and from all the wild tribesmen who swarm in the frontier themes of the empire."

"Where then is the difficulty, if there are men enough and men good enough? For I ask for none better than the troopers I have led in Cilicia, Crete, and Syria," said Digenes.

"The enormous efforts we have to make against a circle of foes, the vast armies and fleets we need to raise--to say nothing of the subsidies we have to offer to barbarian tributaries--absorb immense sums which drain the wealth even of this, the richest empire of the world. Our immediate need is strict administration of the finances. Thrift! thrift! my son, is the first of duties to a king, even while gold is poured forth like water from the imperial exchequer, but so that all serves to purchase money's worth and solid results. Victories are won and conquests are made--not alone by stout hearts and strong arms--but by honest handling of unlimited wealth."

"And is not the Roman empire wealthy?" asked the lord warden.

"But not wealthy enough for all its needs," the emperor rejoined, with passion, "while half its lands are held by lazy priests and monks, who neither serve in arms nor pay their taxes, while half the people of the luxurious cities of old Hellas wear the cowl or the stole. Half monk as I am myself, and monk and hermit as I have striven in vain to be, my very first care will be to curb this dry-rot in our people, this flinging away in idle monasteries of the precious wealth of the empire, this consecration to hypocritical sloth of so large a part of our people. It is not God they worship, but some heathen idol--some sacred hog--as the apostle himself says, 'evil beasts, slow bellies.'"

But here the colloquy was interrupted by a messenger from Basil, the prime-minister, craving immediate audience on urgent matters of state. Nicephorus received him alone in private.

The great eunuch had hurried to the palace to inform the emperor of the receipt of grave news from Sicily, and the arrival of envoys from the distressed Christians of Messina, who came to implore immediate help.

One of the first acts of Nicephorus, after his victorious campaigns over the Saracens of the eastern caliphate, had been to denounce the treaty of peace made in a time of weakness with the Saracens of Africa, who were now masters of Sicily. He had insisted on refusing further payment of the eleven thousand pieces of gold with which the governor of Calabria had sought to buy off Saracen invasions. Thereupon the Fatimite Caliph Mouizz of Tunis ordered an immediate investment of Rametta near Messina, which was the sole remaining hold of the Christian power in the island. In Rametta, a rocky fortress in the mountains west of Messina, the last defenders of the Cross had taken refuge, and with them were all that had escaped the destruction of the cities of Sicily.

"The news is indeed grave," said the prime-minister; "no spot in all Sicily remained to us after the terrible storming of Taormina and the loss of Messina, except this fortress of Rametta, which is now closely invested. In Italy the empire holds effective possession of little but the themes of Calabria and Apulia on the southern and eastern seaboards. If we lose all territory west of the Dyrrhachian coast and the Hellenic islands, the name of Rome will be brought low indeed, and all western Europe will be divided between the Saracen and the Teuton."

"True," said the emperor, "it is our first duty to save the brave outpost at Rametta, and the expedition already being fitted out must be pushed on night and day with special haste. See to it, my lord, the vanguard with a hundred ships and ten thousand men will sail from the Golden Horn on the third day from to-night."

"It is impossible, sire," replied Basil, after making some brief calculations in his note-book.

"Nothing is impossible," said Nicephorus, "it will be done. And send to-night our swiftest despatch-boats with orders to the governors of the Peloponnesian theme, of Bari, and of the Calabrian theme, to meet the new force with every man and every ship they can spare with safety."

"They shall sail within an hour," said Basil, "and whom do you destine to command the expedition?"

"I have already commissioned Basil Digenes to the task, to take up command when the entire armament is ready to start. But things are so urgent in Sicily that it might be best to send him with the advance force which is to go at once. His heroic and dashing temper will fire the whole army he is to lead."

"He is sorely needed still in the city to organize the expedition in all its details. We are sending out the biggest men-of-war that have ever left our docks, with every munition and engine of war that our engineers can devise. We have equipped more than forty thousand of our best men, of whom nearly half are cavalry."

"Remember, that in this crisis speed is of more importance than numbers, and dash is more needed than strategy," said the emperor.

"With such a foe, rashness would be fatal," replied the minister, gloomily, "but I go to carry out your Majesty's orders," said Basil, hesitating.

"They are my last words," replied Nicephorus, peremptorily, as he closed the interview. "I have ardently desired to command this expedition to Sicily in person. But it cannot be. The vast and growing power of the Saracens of the east, on our Syrian and Cilician borders, is even more menacing and more urgent than the rescue of the brave Sicilian garrison in the west. It is a matter of myriads in the east rather than hundreds in the west--the loss of a rich province, not of a fortress. I must reserve myself at home to organize the armament for Asia until I go to lead it myself."

As the minister withdrew, Theophano herself entered the emperor's cabinet. The stern and anxious look which his face had worn during the conversations with Digenes and Basil on the crisis of the state passed off like a summer storm-cloud as the form of his adored wife appeared. He started from his seat, rose, and went to meet her with arms outstretched. He took both her white hands in his huge grasp, drew her towards him, and looked with love and inquiry into her eyes.

"And what would my queen have?" he asked. "All that I have is hers--all that I can win shall be hers."

She fondled him and patted his cheek, piercing him with her radiant eyes, and said: "Does my hero think I come to ask for jewels, palaces, or provinces, or any woman's toy? I am the helpmate of my lord, the Basileus. Together we mounted to the throne of Rome, and together we will raise its eternal name to a higher glory. I come not to ask for gewgaws, but to take counsel on affairs of state."

"You have heard the black news from the far west?" asked Nicephorus.

"I have. And I come to say that the emperor must not be tempted to go to the succor of this distant fort; he has his great expedition, into Syria to prepare. He must not desert his capital, his army of the east, his council of ministers--his wife--her from whom these priests seek to part him."

"Your wishes and your counsels exactly jump with my own, my empress," said Nicephorus, smiling and joyful. "I have work here more urgent even than the relief of Rametta. My place will be well filled by the akritas Basil Digenes, whom I have decided to despatch at once with the advanced force."

"Surely not," replied the Augusta; "Basil Digenes is an honorable man and a noble soldier, but his marriage to the Princess Agatha will make him a prince of the Basilian dynasty, uncle of my sons, an inevitable rival to them, a possible rebel to yourself."

"Digenes is the soul of honor," said Nicephorus, warmly; "I would trust him with my life. I would trust him as I trust my God--as I trust you, the saint of my prayers."

"He seems to be even better trusted--better loved," she said, with a bewitching air of jealousy. Theophano continued to pout. Silence ensued.

"My hero of the eastern wars little knows the quicksands and whirlpools of our Bosphorus, and all the intrigues of this palace and court and people. A successful soldier, after a great triumph over the Saracen, will find himself forced into the vermilion buskins by the shouts of the people and the swords of his men, and driven to head a palace revolution, however much he struggle against it himself. Is it not so, my Lord Basileus, who dethroned me and my sons, however much he sought to bury his glory in a cell on Mount Athos?" And the woman shot forth alternate beams of reproach and admiration, irony and love.

Nicephorus felt himself in a world of intrigue that he could not understand, which he despised but could not master. He remained silent and in deep meditation.

"You must name for this office," she said, "members of your own family and close allies of yourself."

"Whom have I?" said he, sadly. "I have no kinsman competent whom I can spare. I have no creatures of my own. I never had, I never will have."

"Nay," said she at once, "you have a cousin, one of the bravest and most dashing soldiers of Rome, the patrician Manuel, son, at any rate in blood, of your uncle Leo Phocas, of him whom the usurper Lecapenus treacherously seized and blinded forty years ago. Manuel is bound to the house of Phocas forever; his bar-sinister makes any rivalry impossible. He is a man of the most fiery nature, one whom the soldiers love to follow."

"Too fiery, perhaps," said Nicephorus, musing; "but the crisis demands the most reckless valor."

"Then put him in charge of the vanguard, and let the general command be reserved for Nicetas, one of our protovestiaries, and brother of Michael, who served us so often as messenger."

"What! The eunuch Nicetas?" said Nicephorus--"a man of hearty piety and profound learning, but hardly fit to lead a forlorn hope."

"No; Manuel will lead the charge," said Theophano. "No captain in your whole army a more desperate fire-eater, and Nicetas with his wisdom and coolness will keep the hot blood of Manuel in restraint."

"I will think of it," said the emperor, who himself had often been inspired by the wild courage of his young kinsman--"I will consider what you urge."

"No," said the temptress. "Promise me this, if you love me."

Nicephorus did not promise; but in the end he committed the great expedition to his cousin Manuel as cavalry leader, with Nicetas as admiral of the fleet; and to them he added a prelate, Nicephorus, one of the ablest administrators in the empire.

The issue was a terrible disaster. The expedition was hurried to the Sicilian waters, where the unenterprising Nicetas wasted it in petty divisions round the coast. Manuel forced his cavalry across the straits of Messina, and captured that city. He dashed down along the coast, recovering Taormina, Leontini, Termini, and Syracuse. Then, mad with triumph, and not waiting for the whole of the force to join him, he rushed to the rescue of Rametta. As the morning sun rose, he could see the rocky citadel still uncaptured, as it stood proudly in the midst of a vast amphitheatre of precipitous crags. The three defiles which led into the plain were forced one by one by the impetuous charges of the Byzantines; and thence Manuel, intoxicated with victory, plunged on to the walls of the beleaguered city. Here he was met by the Saracen general in person, who had gathered round him his reserve--a band of swarthy sons of the desert in snow-white tunics, wielding lances and swords of perfect temper. A desperate hand-to-hand combat ensued wherein Manuel fell in the midst of a mingled heap of Africans and Byzantines. The loss of their hot-headed chief threw the whole cavalry into confusion, for their leader, instead of keeping them in hand and directing their movements, had scattered them far and wide over the plain. Confusion turned to panic--panic became a massacre. As night fell, ten thousand Byzantines lay on the bloody field, for the Saracens made no prisoners. The relieving expedition was repulsed, the captured cities were retaken, Rametta fell, and a dark cloud rested on the reign of the new emperor: his grievous error sank into his soul.