Chapter XXX: The Last Campaign

Nicephorus was now again in Asia, on his third and last great expedition to achieve the reconquest of Syria. Night after night, the fire-signals across the Bosphorus recorded the rapid stages of the imperial advance over the passes of the Amanus, and day by day couriers arrived with despatches to the regents and the council of state. It was known that the Basileus was bent on recovering to Christendom Antioch and Aleppo, finally driving the Moslem from Syria, and at last planting the Cross again on the tomb of the Saviour in the Holy City.

The capital was kept in a constant state of excitement and expectation. Crowds gathered in the streets and forums discussing the reports and the rumors, and decorations were hung on the buildings and public monuments as each new success of the triumphant army was announced. The anxiety of the official world was at last satisfied by a meeting of the senate at which the regents undertook to make full announcement of the state of affairs.

The nobles and all who had the right to attend or who could obtain access to the tribunes and approaches crowded into the senate house, which resounded with loud acclamations as Leo, the curopalate, and his ministers took their seats. And the cheers and cries of "Long, long life!" were redoubled when the venerable Bardas Phocas, the father of the Basileus, was borne along into the assembly in his carrying-chair. The old hero, shrunk to a skeleton, wrinkled and shrivelled like a mummy--the sarcastic Bishop Luitprand declares that he looked one hundred--with still some light in his eye, and his snow-white beard, seemed like a ghost of the past as he was lifted, tottering and bent, into his place. And the cries of "Long, long life!" again renewed, seemed a cruel mockery of his exhausted frame.

When the storm of cheering had at last subsided, the regent rose and spoke thus:

"Most noble magistroi, patricians, and illustrious senators, we have received a series of despatches from the august autocrator to the following effect: With a force of 157,000 men of all arms, 55,000 of whom were mounted, he passed from Cilicia, as already reported, across the mountains into Syria, making straight for Aleppo. His sudden rush upon the country of the Hamdanites demoralized the enemy, who fled in every direction, and left their cities and forts an easy prey to our men. The terror of their approach called out such outbursts of fanatical hate against our holy faith that it spread as far as Jerusalem, where--it grieves us to report--the patriarch John was savagely massacred with all his priests and many of his flock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with the other churches of Jerusalem, was burned to ashes."

At these words groans of grief and cries of rage broke forth in the chamber from side to side; and the tribunes and corridors burst into yells of horror and passion. As soon as the tumult could be appeased, Leo again resumed his speech.

"But the Basileus has amply avenged the blood of the martyrs and the outrage on our faith. He has gained a great battle under the walls of Aleppo. Thence he ascended the valley of the Orontes, and stormed Maaret en Noamen, that rich city named after one of the companions of the False Prophet. Thence he swept down upon Maaret Mouserim, on Kafartab, and Chaizar and the city of Hamah. All these rich and splendid cities of Chambdas have been sacked and burned and the mosques of the False Prophet destroyed. The land has been laid waste, and tens of thousands of captives have been carried off, with enormous masses of booty in coin, gems, valuables, beasts, and stores."

Loud cheers rang through the hall, with cries of "Long life to our autocrator Nicephorus, the ever-victorious!" Leo at last resumed his address.

"But we have a still more glorious triumph to announce. The ancient city of Emesa, which the Hagarenes call Homs, has been captured and destroyed. The Basileus and his staff worshipped Christ in the hallowed and famous Church of St. John the Baptist, and there they recovered that most venerable relic, the head of the divine forerunner and herald of the Saviour. This inestimable prize is now on its way to our city, and will be offered to the adoration of the faithful in the Temple of the Holy Wisdom."

At these words there broke forth a storm of shouts of triumph and joy. The sitting was suspended till the excitement could be calmed, while the patriarch offered up an invocation of thanksgiving to God for the mercy that He had extended to His people.

Day after day fresh successes were made known by the regents. The Basileus and his victorious troops had now crossed the Lebanon Mountains and were descending the coast of Phœnicia. They were again on the shores of the sea, and in touch with the fleet at hand to supply all they needed. Swift dromons now brought round the Asian coast the reports of the chief. Gabala fell to the conquerors, then Cæsarea; and next Tripoli was invested. After that Laodicea was made a subject city of the empire, and the Saracen emir was transformed into an imperial commander. With Tortosa and Marakieh the whole Phœnician coast from Tripoli to Antioch was in the power of the Basileus. By the end of the autumn the official report informed the people of the empire "that eighteen cities, each having large mosques of the Prophet, had been taken by storm or surrendered; together with at least one hundred forts, and lesser places which the Basileus has ordered to be levelled to the ground. Vast numbers of the enemy have been removed and taken as prisoners. In other cases, both along Syria and the coast, the inhabitants have renounced the Prophet, and have accepted baptism and our holy faith. The victorious Basileus has now closely invested Antioch, the 'City of God,' as it was once called, and is about to complete the annihilation of the race of Chambdas and the recovery of the Holy Land and the sepulchre of Christ."

This last and memorable campaign of Nicephorus did finally effect nearly all that its author had designed. The power of Islam in Syria and the valleys of the Orontes was broken for two generations. The progress of the Saracen towards the west was stayed, and the safety of the empire guaranteed until the fatal arrival of the Turk. The Frank crusades had been anticipated by more than one hundred years. Antioch, "the third city of the world," as Nicephorus himself called it, was ultimately stormed and captured by his arms, and Aleppo was taken by his nephew, and became a tributary state; but Nicephorus himself was not present at either capture. In the midst of this series of overwhelming triumphs, the most brilliant and effective of his whole career, he suddenly again returned to Byzantium for reasons which his people could not fathom, and which his historians have never explained. The cause was one that touched his honor and his life.

He was completing the investment of Antioch, and building, to blockade it, the vast rock fort of Bagras, carrying the stones, in order to lay the foundations, on his own shoulder, to encourage his men in the work, when he received from his brother Leo a most momentous despatch. "Great and dangerous intrigues had been discovered in the palace itself. The empress has been in constant communication with John Tzimisces, who, in spite of the imperial order to remain in the Cappadocian theme, had secretly visited Nicomedia, if not Byzantium itself. John was furiously inveighing against the Basileus for having kept him in the background, as he declared, in inglorious and shameful retirement. In spite of the triumphs of the imperial arms, the monks of the Stoudion were exciting the rabble of the city and the mendicant hermits and hedge-priests to rebellion and riot. Theophano was the soul of this conspiracy; and, although they had failed as yet to trace any criminal intercourse between her and John, there were ominous signs that she was plotting a revolution which would place Tzimisces on the throne."

This terrible missive aroused all the indignation and suspicion in the soul of Nicephorus which he had struggled to smother and dismiss. He felt the need of instant action to save his government, his honor, and his life. With bitter feelings he postponed all his projects to recover Antioch, Aleppo, and even Jerusalem and the sepulchre of Christ. He placed the army of Antioch under the command of General Michael Bourtzes, a patrician; and he despatched another army to Aleppo under command of his own nephew, Petros Phocas, son of Leo. Having made all his dispositions for completing the campaign, Nicephorus took ship and rapidly returned to the capital by sea.

The return of the Basileus was so sudden and unexpected that no signs of welcome had been prepared to greet him. It was the sour evening of a dull day when he made his way back to the palace, with a very small and quiet retinue, almost unnoticed. Even as he passed hurriedly through the streets, he had noticed monks and demagogues haranguing small knots of citizens on their distresses and the cruelty of the government. Leo came down to the port to meet his brother. "The city," he said, "is seething with suppressed resentment and discontent. In spite of all his efforts and the rigors of the police, disaffection was being nursed in the monasteries and churches, and their privileges made it too dangerous to prosecute and punish the disturbers of the peace. Daily the chapels and courts of the clergy resounded with incendiary sermons. The official signs of public rejoicing had hardly concealed the apathy of the public over the successes of the army in the east. Every triumph was regarded as the occasion of a new tax. And the bad season and the tempests with which they had been afflicted made the collection of the revenue a constant source of trouble and disorder."

Nicephorus listened to his brother's report in silence, patient, unmoved, and resolute. He pondered it without a word, with no sign of anger or of fear. At last he said, slowly, forcing his lips to utter the words to which he dreaded the answer, "Brother, tell me of her."

Leo grasped his brother's hand, and he bent over it as he replied in a whisper: "Sire, I obey, though I shrink from the task. She is conspiring against you. We seized a secret messenger of hers to John. We found on him a document urging Tzimisces to come to the palace to confer with herself and her privy council. Our officers wrung from the messenger at last that he was charged with verbal assurances of a new marriage and promises of a lavish kind."

Nicephorus writhed silently, but said no word for a space. Then he asked, "What, then, of Tzimisces himself?"

"We have not been able to obtain any evidence that John has listened to these overtures; nor can it be proved that they have yet reached him. But Tzimisces is a traitor, your enemy, your supplanter. Seize him, blind or execute him. Seize and deport her. They will be your ruin, if not your death."

Nicephorus took no such action. He who had swept Islam before him from the Phœnician coast to the Euphrates, he who was the idol of the most powerful army of that age, he who had found the civil and military organization of all Asia work in his hand like a perfect machine, cared little for the discontent of the luxurious nobles of the capital, and still less for the idle mobs of the forum. And, conscious of his burning zeal in the cause of Christendom, and his vast services to the people of God, he cared little for the intrigues and anger of the churchmen. Patriarch and abbot might be unjust. But Christ and His Mother would intercede for him at the mercy-seat of the Almighty.

Even now he could not bring himself to believe in the treason of John, and he shrank from condemning him without convincing proof. He even suffered Theophano to justify herself, and to refute all the accusations of her enemies. She burst into the privy chamber of her husband, as he strode up and down in thought, swayed with contending emotions and racked with doubts. She dragged in her little Basil, and made him prostrate himself before the Basileus, and kiss his father's hand, and, rising in an attitude of superb majesty, with a voice that the greatest actress would envy, she broke forth:

"You will not believe, my lord, my lover, my glory, that I who raised you to this throne, and saved your life when the masters of this palace were thirsting for your blood--that I could be seeking to injure you at the highest hour of your triumph. Who could protect my boys, and secure them the throne of their ancestors, if you were cast out before they were old enough to act for themselves? Their inheritance, their liberty--nay, their lives, are in jeopardy if you their father were gone. What would become of me if they put you away? Could you bear, my Nicephorus, to see me in prison, in a cell, in the veil and garb of a nun? Could you bear to think of me growing old in misery and want? Have you ceased to love me, to feel for me? Do you hate me?"

Nicephorus looked steadily at Theophano with profound sorrow and reproach, gazing at her as if he was searching the depths of her soul. But he spoke not a word. The woman shrank down before him and clasped his hand.

"I swear before the Mother of God that what they say of me is false. I have never sinned against you. Your brother Leo is a bitter enemy of me and of Tzimisces. He envies his glory, he seeks to poison your heart and to destroy us both. The greatest soldier of Rome next to you has been cruelly maligned and ill-used. Yes! I grieve to see him caged like a wild beast when he would be your best and truest comrade. I admit that I have sought to restore him to his true place. I have not seen him--but--yes!--I have been in communication with him. But for what purpose? My own beloved friend, the Lady Hypatia Palæologos, may be persuaded to accept him as a husband, now that he is a lonely widower. John presses his suit, but her family have other views. My own messages to John were to urge him to come and win the lady himself. But your stern orders to keep him caged in Cappadocia have prevented him from approaching the city. Countermand this, my lord. Bring your best general back to your side. Let us marry him to this noble and beautiful woman whom I love as a sister myself. And then send John to command an army in Syria. Yield me this, my king, my lover, my husband. John is true, as I am true. Do not listen to the falsehoods of our enemies--to those who seek to displace us in your trust and in your love."

And she clasped him, and sank upon his neck in tears.

Slowly, quietly, but resolutely, Nicephorus unclasped the woman's hands, and stood musing silently and sadly. At last he said, "John Tzimisces shall be summoned to me. I will hear what he has to say from his own lips."

Tzimisces was summoned, but no reconciliation was effected. He furiously denied all traitorous machinations against the throne, and made blunt denial of any interviews with Theophano. He then inveighed with passion against the orders to keep him in retirement. A violent scene ensued, and the old friends and comrades parted in wrath. Nicephorus found Tzimisces to be mutinous, if not in actual revolt. He placed him in arrest on the Asian frontier across the Propontis.

The Basileus was preparing to return to the front when despatches arrived with the startling news that General Bourtzes had stormed Antioch and was master of the great city and all its contents and resources. Great rejoicings were ordered by the official world, and Nicephorus attended the ceremony of thanksgiving in the cathedral with great pomp. And the news was hardly made public, when fresh despatches announced that the emir of Aleppo, despairing of overcoming Petros Phocas, was ready to make his submission and to become the tributary and satrap of the Basileus of Roum.

Nicephorus Phocas was now at the culmination of his great crusade against Islam. His arms had triumphed everywhere, and for two generations the Moslem advance was effectually repelled. The government made every effort to celebrate these triumphs, and Bourtzes was about to be received with honors and rewards when Leo's agents discovered that he also had been engaged in a new conspiracy into which Tzimisces and others had been drawn by Theophano herself. Thus Bourtzes was disgraced and dismissed from office. Much as the people of Byzantium loved pageants and public rejoicings, their irritation at the pressure of taxation and the machinations of the monks increased rather than allayed the general discontent. And all the efforts of Leo, the curopalate, and the rest of the ministers failed to rekindle the national enthusiasm.

In the vain hope of touching the public mind, they caused the venerable Bardas Phocas to be carried round in the constant services and _Te Deums_ which were sung in the churches. He was now more than ninety years of age; and as his snow-white head on his shrivelled body was borne along in the crowds, he seemed to be a corpse being carried to a tomb, rather than the living remnant of a hero whose name lived in every field of Asian warfare.

But the strain was too much for the last flicker of the veteran's spirit. He was borne back fainting to the palace and laid on the couch from which he never rose again. Nicephorus watched long hours beside his father, in hopes of having some last words that he could remember before they were parted forever.

On the third day some signs of life returned. The old man opened his eyes and saw his glorious son. He faintly smiled and said, "I go hence with joy and thankfulness of heart; Rome lives, and for evermore shall live. The people of Christ have risen from their long night of defeat. Farewell, my son; I go to tell the martyrs that their deaths are avenged." The smile settled on his lips. The veteran was dead. The Basileus bent down and kissed the lifeless forehead of his sire. He felt alone--at peace--with his work on earth completed.