Decline & Fall - Byzantium 03, page 4
part #3 of Byzantium Series
1 See Byzantium: The Early Centuries, p. 215.
strength, she hardly ever left her husband's side - least of all in battle, one of her favourite occupations. At such moments, charging magnificently into the fray, her long blond hair streaming out from beneath her helmet, deafening friend and foe alike with huge shouts of encouragement or imprecation, she must have looked - even if she did not altogether sound — worthy to take her place among the daughters of Wotan: beside Waltraute, or Grimgerda, or even Brunnhilde herself.
As was the invariable rule when the Emperor took the field in person, his Varangian Guard was present in strength. At this time it consisted largely of Englishmen, Anglo-Saxons who had left their country in disgust after Hastings and had taken service with Byzantium. Many of them had been waiting fifteen years to avenge themselves on the detested Normans, and they attacked with all the vigour of which they were capable. Swinging their huge two-handed battle-axes round their heads and then slamming them into horses and riders alike, they struck terror in the hearts of the Apulian knights, few of whom had ever come across a line of foot-soldiers that did not immediately break in the face of a charge of cavalry. The horses too began to panic, and before long the Norman right had turned in confusion, many galloping straight into the sea to escape certain massacre.
But now, if contemporary reports are to be believed, the day was saved by Sichelgaita. The story is best told by Anna Comnena:
Directly Gaita, Robert's wife (who was riding at his side and was a second Pallas, if not an Athene) saw these soldiers running away, she looked fiercely after them and in a very powerful voice called out to them in her own language an equivalent to Homer's words: 'How far will ye flee? Stand, and acquit yourselves like men!' And when she saw that they continued to run, she grasped a long spear and at full gallop rushed after the fugitives; and on seeing this they recovered themselves and returned to the fight.
Now, too, Bohemund's left flank had wheeled to the rescue, with a detachment of crossbowmen against whom the Varangians, unable to approach within axe-range, in their turn found themselves defenceless. Having advanced too far beyond the main body of the Greek army, their retreat was cut off; they could only fight where they stood. At last the few exhausted Englishmen remaining alive turned and sought refuge in a nearby chapel of the Archangel Michael; but the Normans immediately set it on fire - they were a long way now from Monte Gargano — and most of the Varangians perished in the flames.
Meanwhile, in the centre, the Emperor was still fighting bravely; but the cream of the Byzantine army had been destroyed at Manzikert, and the motley collection of barbarian mercenaries on whom he now had to rely possessed neither the discipline nor the devotion to prevail against the Normans of Apulia. A sortie from Durazzo under George Palaeologus had failed to save the situation, and to make matters worse Alexius suddenly saw that he had been betrayed by his vassal, King Constantine Bodin of Zeta, and by a whole regiment of seven thousand Turkish auxiliaries, lent to him by the Seljuk Sultan Suleyman, of whom he had had high hopes. His last chance of victory was gone. Cut off from his men, saddened by the loss on the battlefield of George's father Nicephorus Palaeologus and Michael VII's brother Constantius, weak from exhaustion and loss of blood and in considerable pain from a wound in his forehead, he rode slowly and without escort back over the mountains to Ochrid, there to recover and regroup what he could of his shattered forces.
Somehow, Durazzo was to hold out for another four months; not till February 1082 were the Normans able to burst open the gates, and even then only through the treachery of a Venetian resident (who, according to Malaterra, demanded as his reward the hand of one of Robert's nieces in marriage). From Durazzo on, however, the pace of conquest quickened; the local populations, aware of their Emperor's defeat, offered no resistance to the advancing invaders; and within a few weeks the whole of Illyria was in the Guiscard's hands. He then marched east to Kastoria, which also surrendered instantly - despite the fact that its garrison was found to consist of three hundred more of the Varangian Guard. This discovery had a further tonic effect on the Normans' already high morale. If not even the crack troops of the Empire were any longer prepared to oppose their advance, then surely Constantinople was as good as won.
Alas for Robert: it was nothing of the kind. The following April, while he was still at Kastoria, messengers arrived from Italy. Apulia and Calabria, they reported, were up in arms, and much of Campania as well. They also brought a letter from Pope Gregory VII. His arch-enemy Henry IV, King of the Romans,1 was at the gates of Rome, demanding to be crowned Emperor of the West. The Duke's presence was urgently required at home. Leaving the command of the expedition to Bohemund, and swearing by the soul of his father Tancred to remain unshaven until
1 A purely honorary title, normally adopted by the elected Emperor of the West until he could be properly crowned by the Pope in Rome.
he could return to Greece, Robert hurried back to the coast and took ship across the Adriatic.
The Venetians were not the only people whom Alexius had approached for help against Robert Guiscard. Already at the time of his accession he had been fully aware of the preparations being made against him, and he had lost no time in seeking out potential allies. The nearest at hand was one of Robert's own nephews: Abelard, son of his elder brother Humphrey, who had been dispossessed by his uncle and had later sought refuge in Constantinople, where he needed little persuading to return secretly to Italy and, with the aid of his brother Herman and a quantity of Byzantine gold, to raise the revolt. Meanwhile the Emperor had sent an embassy to Henry IV, pointing out the dangers of allowing the Duke of Apulia to continue unchecked; subsequent exchanges had ended in an agreement by which, in return for an oath of alliance, Alexius sent Henry no less than 360,000 gold pieces, the salaries of twenty high court offices, a gold pectoral cross set with pearls, a crystal goblet, a sardonyx cup, and 'a reliquary inlaid with gold containing fragments of various saints, identified in each case by a small label'. It was, by any standards, an expensive contract; but when in the spring of 1082 the Emperor received reports of Robert's sudden departure, he must have felt that his recent diplomatic activities had been well worth while.
He himself had spent the winter in Thessalonica, trying to raise troops for the following summer's campaign. Bohemund and his army were steadily extending their power through the Empire's western provinces, and his father would probably be back in person before long, ready to march on the capital. A strong and adequately-trained defence force was essential if the Normans were to be resisted; but mercenaries by definition cost money, the imperial treasury was bare, and to have asked any more from the hard-pressed Byzantine taxpayer would have been a virtual invitation to rebellion. Alexius appealed to his mother, his brother and his wife, all of whom provided what they could, paring their living expenses to the bone; but the proceeds were nowhere near enough for his purposes. Finally his brother Isaac the sebastocrator summoned a synod at St Sophia and, invoking ancient canons which allowed ecclesiastical gold and silver to be melted down and sold for the redemption of Byzantine prisoners of war, announced the confiscation of all church treasures. Byzantine history recorded only one near precedent: when, at the time of the invasion of the Persian King Chosroes in 618, the Patriarch Sergius had voluntarily put the entire wealth of every church and monastery at the disposal of the State and the Emperor Heraclius had gratefully accepted his offer.1 On this occasion the initiative came from the other side. The hierarchy showed itself distinctly less public-spirited and made little attempt to conceal its displeasure. It had no choice, however, but to submit, and in doing so enabled Alexius to raise his army.
Yet even that army, in the first year of its existence, proved powerless to halt Bohemund's advance. After two more major victories, at Yanina and Arta, he had slowly pressed the Byzantines back until all Macedonia and much of Thessaly lay under his control. Not until the spring of 1083, at Larissa, did Alexius succeed in turning the tide. His plan was simple enough. When he saw that battle was imminent, he handed over the main body of the army, together with all the imperial standards, to his brother-in-law George Melissenus and another distinguished general, Basil Curticius, with orders first to advance against the enemy but then, when the two lines were face to face, suddenly to turn and run as if in headlong flight. He meanwhile, with a body of carefully picked troops, crept round under cover of darkness to a place behind the Norman camp and lay there in hiding. At daybreak Bohemund saw the army and the standards and immediately launched his attack. Melissenus and Curticius did as they had been instructed, and before long the Byzantine army was galloping away in the opposite direction, with the Normans in pell-mell pursuit. Meanwhile Alexius and his men overran the enemy camp, killing all its occupants and taking substantial plunder. On his return Bohemund was obliged to raise the siege of Larissa and to withdraw to Kastoria. From that moment on he was lost. Dispirited, homesick, its pay long overdue and now still further demoralized by the huge rewards which Alexius was offering to all deserters, the Norman army fell away. Bohemund took ship for Italy to raise more money, and his principal lieutenants surrendered as soon as his back was turned; next, a Venetian fleet recaptured Durazzo and Corfu; and by the end of 1083 Norman-held territory in the Balkans was once again confined to one or two offshore islands and a short strip of the coast.
Across the Adriatic, on the other hand, Robert Guiscard was doing splendidly. The insurrection in Apulia had admittedly taken him longer to deal with than he had expected, largely owing to the generous subsidies that the rebels had been receiving from Constantinople; but by mid-summer the last pockets of resistance had been satisfactorily
1 See Byzantium: The Early Centuries, p. 288.
eliminated. He had then set about raising a new army with which to rescue Pope Gregory - who had barricaded himself into the Castel Sant' Angelo - and to send Henry packing. Early the following summer he marched; and on 24 May 1084, roughly on the site of the present Porta Capena, he pitched his camp beneath the walls of Rome. The Emperor, however - who had deposed Gregory and had had himself crowned by a puppet anti-Pope on Palm Sunday - had not waited for him. Three days before the Duke of Apulia appeared at the gates of the city he had retired, with the greater part of his army, to Lombardy.
Had the Romans not been foolish enough to surrender to Henry the previous March, the Normans would have entered the city as deliverers; instead, they came as a conquering enemy. On the night of 27 May, Robert silently moved his men round to the north of the city; then at dawn he attacked, and within minutes the first of his shock-troops had burst through the Flaminian Gate. They met with a stiff resistance: the whole area of the Campus Martius - that quarter which lies immediately across the Tiber from the Castel Sant' Angelo — became a blazing inferno. But it was not long before the Normans had beaten the defenders back across the bridge, released the Pope from his fortress and borne him back in triumph through the smoking ruins to the Lateran.
Then, and only then, came the real tragedy. Despite all the depredations it had suffered, Rome still offered the Guiscard's men possibilities of plunder on a scale such as few of them had ever before experienced; and the entire city now fell victim to an orgy of rapine and pillage. For three days this continued unabated - until the inhabitants, able to bear it no longer, rose against their oppressors. Robert, for once taken by surprise, found himself surrounded. He was saved in the nick of time by his son Roger Borsa, who in an uncharacteristic burst of activity smashed his way through the furious crowds with a thousand men-at-arms to his father's rescue - but not before the Normans, now fighting for their lives, had set fire to the city. The Capitol and the Palatine were gutted; churches, palaces and ancient temples left empty shells. In the whole area between the Colosseum and the Lateran hardly a single building escaped the flames. When at last the smoke cleared away and such Roman leaders as remained alive had prostrated themselves before the Duke of Apulia with naked swords roped round their necks in token of surrender, their city lay empty, a picture of desolation and despair.
A few weeks later, Robert Guiscard returned to Greece. As Anna Comnena has occasion to point out, he was nothing if not tenacious. Though now sixty-eight, he seems to have been in no way discouraged at the prospect of starting his campaign all over again; and in the autumn of 1084 he was back, with Bohemund, his two other sons Roger and Guy, and a new fleet of 150 ships. At the outset, things could hardly have gone worse: bad weather delayed the vessels for two months at Butrinto, and when at last they were able to cross the straits to Corfu, they were set upon by a Venetian fleet and soundly beaten in pitched battle twice in three days. So severe were their losses that the Venetians sent back their pinnaces to the lagoon with news of the victory; but they had underestimated the Guiscard. Few of his ships were in fit condition to venture a third battle; but seeing the pinnaces disappear over the horizon and recognizing the opportunity of taking the enemy by surprise, he quickly summoned all those vessels that were somehow still afloat and flung them forward in a last onslaught.
He had calculated it perfectly. Not only were the Venetians unprepared; their heavier galleys, already emptied of ballast, stood so high in the water that when, in the heat of the battle, their entire complements of soldiers and crew dashed to the same side of the deck, many of them capsized. (So, at least, writes Anna Comnena; though her story is hard indeed to reconcile with what we know of Venetian seamanship.) Anna reports 13,000 Venetian dead, together with 2,500 prisoners - on whose subsequent mutilations at the hands of their captors she dwells with that morbid pleasure that is one of her least attractive characteristics.1 Corfu fell; and it was a generally happier and more hopeful army that settled down into its winter quarters on the mainland.
But in the course of the winter a new enemy appeared - one more deadly to the Guiscard's men than the Venetians and the Byzantines together. It was a raging epidemic - probably typhoid - and it struck without mercy. By spring five hundred Norman knights were dead, and a large proportion of the army effectively incapacitated. Yet even now Robert remained cheerful and confident. Of his immediate family only Bohemund had succumbed, and had been sent back to Bari to recuperate; and in the early summer, determined to get his men once again on the move, he dispatched Roger Borsa with an advance force to occupy Cephalonia. A few weeks later, he himself set off to join his son; but now, as he sailed southward, he felt the dreaded sickness upon him. By
1 Anna goes on to describe a fourth battle, in which she claims that the Venetians had their revenge; but there is no trace of such an engagement in the Venetian records, and since we know that Doge Selvo was deposed as a result of the Corfu catastrophe, it looks as though she is guilty of a particularly unscrupulous piece of wishful thinking.
the time his ship reached Cape Ather, the northernmost tip of the island, he was desperately ill. The vessel put in at the first safe anchorage, a little sheltered bay still called, in his memory, by the name of Phiscardo. Here, on 17 July 1085, he died, his faithful Sichelgaita beside him.
The past four years had seen the two greatest potentates of Europe -the Eastern and Western Emperors - fleeing at his approach, and one of the most redoubtable of medieval Popes rescued and restored by his hand. Had he lived another few months, he might well have achieved his ambitions; and Alexius Comnenus might have proved one of the more transitory - possibly even the last - of the Greek Emperors of Byzantium. With the Guiscard's death, the Empire was delivered from immediate danger. Immediately and inevitably, his sons and nephews plunged into quarrels over the inheritance and soon lost sight of the grand design that had dominated his last years. But they did not altogether ignore the new horizons that he had opened up to them. Henceforth we find the Normans of the South looking with increasingly envious eyes towards the East; and in only twelve years' time we shall find Robert's son Bohemund carving out for himself, at the Emperor's expense, the first Crusader principality of Outremer.
'The Empire was delivered from immediate danger': for anyone attempting to write its history, these are brave words. Byzantium was never safe for long. Her western neighbours were at the best of times unreliable, betraying her as they did time and time again; those to the east were almost invariably hostile — and were destined, one day, to deliver her death blow. More continually troublesome than either, however, over the centuries, were those who came from the north: the barbarian hordes - Goths and Huns, Avars and Slavs, Gepids and Bulgars, Magyars and Uzz - who descended in wave after wave from the steppes of Central Asia and who, if they never succeeded in capturing Constantinople, continued by their very existence to threaten it and seldom left the Emperors and their subjects altogether free from anxiety.
Now, with the temporary disappearance of the Normans from the scene, it was the turn of the Pechenegs. They were by no means new arrivals. For more than two hundred years they had been a force to be reckoned with; over that time they had proved themselves the most grasping (as well as the cruellest) of the tribes, and readers of the previous volume may remember how, in the middle of the ninth century, Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus had warned his son Romanus to keep them happy at all costs with pacts, alliances, treaties of friendship and an endless stream of expensive gifts.1 Recent Emperors, however, had ignored this advice, and the Pecheneg menace, aided and abetted by Bogomil2 heretics in the eastern Balkans, had steadily increased. In the spring of 1087 a huge barbarian army, estimated by Anna at eighty thousand, invaded the Empire; three years later, after several desperate battles in which victories were scored on both sides, it stood within reach of Constantinople.
Nor were the Pechenegs and the Bogomils the only enemies with whom Alexius had to contend. The Turkish Emir of Smyrna, Chaka by name, had over the previous decade extended his power along the entire Aegean coast. He had lived for a year or more in Constantinople, where Nicephorus Botaneiates had finally granted him the tide of protonobilissimus; but his ambitions, like those of Robert Guiscard before him, were directed at nothing less than the Byzantine throne. The Pecheneg invasion gave him just the opportunity he had been awaiting. For some time he had been preparing a fleet, and in the late autumn of 1090 he had little difficulty in capturing the key Byzantine islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos and Rhodes. Fortunately for Byzantium, Alexius too had been building up his navy; and early the following year an imperial squadron under the command of his kinsman Constantine Dalassenus drove back the Emir from the entrance to the Marmara. But Chaka was by no means beaten, and there is little doubt that he would have renewed his attempt had he not been murdered by his Sultan, Kilij Arslan, at a banquet in 1092.
