Sons of the Harlot Empress
- Thread starter Carp
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Hmm, Swabia is very likely to act independently here and pose a direct threat to Saxony preeminence. I wonder if the French king might puthink his own hat into the ring for German king as they did indeed several times during times he Middle Ages and even during the Early Modern era, isn't Lothair a Carolingian or did their direct line die out? Also do the French now control the Rhineland ie Mainz, Aachen, Kleve etc or just Lorraine and the Low Countries? In any case Saxony taking control is a pretty dramatic shift, though one I'm not certain is divergent from OTL. For most of the medieval period the Rhineland in the west and Swabia in the south were the politicial hearts of Germany/the Empire, with Saxony and sometimes Bavaria being distant albeit a potent rival under the Welfs. TTL, the stronger Hungary and Italy certainly help explain the shift, as Bavaria really took a beating. Nonetheless Saxony is very much a poor backwater compared to the west, which is going to strongly affect it's power and standing. Saxony might in time splinter off into a separate kingdom, and I could easily see Swabia and Bavaria splintering off as buffer states, which leaves the northwest ie Westphalia. For that matter France herself might lose or fail to assert control over the south, as Aquitaine was until the Albigensian Crusade (and/or the Hundred Years War) about as loyal and obedient as the Burgundian king is to the Saxon....
Harald Sigurdsson, a.k.a. Harald Hardrada, is indeed a commander in Maniakes' army ITTL as he was IOTL. It's worth noting, however, that only the sagas suggest that Harald was the overall leader of the guard - Greek sources name his ranks specifically as manglavites and then spatharokandidatos. The latter is certainly an officer's rank of distinction, but the leaders of the guard usually bear the ranks of akolouthos or protospatharios, which are never associated with Harald. In fact the "Book of Advice to an Emperor" in the late 11th century specifically praises Harald for not being upset with comparatively lowly ranks - in other words, if anything he was underpromoted relative to his campaign history and skill.
It seems most likely based on what I've read that Harald was an officer who may have been in command of the detachment of the guard which accompanied Maniakes; this represented no more than a thousand men (possibly much less than this) and was certainly not the whole strength of the Guard. ITTL, I've based the narrative on that interpretation - Harald is the commander of the Varangians with Maniakes, but not the overall Guard commander.
Lothair II is indeed a direct Carolingian; he's the son that the short-lived Louis V never had IOTL. He's also one of the better figures the Carolingians have managed to get on the throne recently, and he's won an important psychological and legitimating victory by recovering the central Carolingian heartland. This puts him in a better position than his predecessors, but Francia is a big country (which is even bigger now) and the French peers are still very strong and highly autonomous. You're quite right to point out that taking and keeping Lotharingia, if the French kings manage to do the latter, may come at the expense of royal power in the south. While Italy is in for some rough times in the near future, if they manage to sort themselves out they can potentially contest French power in the Mediterranean littoral (just as they are presently doing with Provence under Theobald, which is a nominal imperial dependency). Toulouse/Gothia with Italian (and Papal!) protection may be capable of asserting real independence from the French crown.
An exact border in Lotharingia has not yet been fixed - these things will probably sort themselves out over the coming years - but at the moment Lothair certainly holds Aachen, as well as Cologne and Bonn on the lower Rhine. Further upriver, Mainz, Worms, and Ingelheim are still in German control. Even further up the river, the possession of Alsace has not yet been determined, but that might be a bit more complicated because King Hermann would rather like that territory too. He may end up getting it, either as the price for his support for Lothair or simply because he's the person in the best position to grab it.
If so, that's not probably not the last of Swabian ambitions towards the Rhineland/Franconia; having won de facto independence, the kings of Swabia-Burgundy may see their state less as its own permanent kingdom than a temporary power base from which to wrest control of the German throne (or at least those parts of Germany outside of Saxony proper). If the Swabians gain Franconia the Ottonian monarchy is in real danger, because right now the king is a teenager who owes his crown to the Billung Duke of Saxony. If Saxony is all that remains, the Ottonians may end up as puppets of (or wholly replaced by) the Billungs.
That's an interesting point about Saxony and its prosperity. As I recall, one thing it does have going for it (economically speaking) is the Rammelsberg/Goslar silver lode, which at this point is still in its prime. As for Bavaria, it's probably the biggest loser in all this - IOTL it was arguably the strongest duchy in parts of the 10th century, but it's now lost Carinthia and the Nordgau, suffered recurring bouts of plundering and destruction for several generations, and has borne the brunt of the human cost of the late wars. It may well recover, but not for a while. Certainly it's a good time to be the King of Hungary.
Northern Europe in general and the Baltic in particular are underdeveloped backwaters during the middle ages, much as Western Europe is largely an underdeveloped backwater compared to the likes of Persia, Byzantium or China. Even in the 1600s, accounts of Brandenburg describe it as silty, marshy, and generally lackluster land.
If and when the Ottonians implode Lothair is all but guaranteed to make a play for the German crown, the million dollar question is whether the Franconian nobility would find him or the Swabians more palatable overlords...
If we're considering different alt-historical unions, what's going on with Britain? IIRC Knuts empire died on schedule, but William the Bastard is (probably?) butterflied. Could Norway hold England for a longer period?
If and when the Ottonians implode Lothair is all but guaranteed to make a play for the German crown, the million dollar question is whether the Franconian nobility would find him or the Swabians more palatable overlords...
If we're considering different alt-historical unions, what's going on with Britain? IIRC Knuts empire died on schedule, but William the Bastard is (probably?) butterflied. Could Norway hold England for a longer period?
Knut's reign differed ITTL only in that his pilgrimage to Rome (1027 IIRC) didn't happen on account of the differing circumstances in Italy and Germany. I judged that the effects of this would be fairly minimal, and that the basic facts of his reign were otherwise unchanged. His empire was fragile and unlikely to survive him for long.
There's no genealogical reason why William the Bastard would not exist - to my knowledge, I haven't hijacked any members of his family tree - but after more than a century of alternate history, having the exact events of 1066 repeat themselves might be a bit too unbelievable. Of course, depending on the fate of Harald (who is presently marching into Macedonia alongside Maniakes), those events might end up wildly different even if William exists and his life doesn't change at all.
In general, I find the idea of an English-Norwegian union exceedingly unlikely. It can be established, certainly, but I don't think it can last. England is richer, more populous, more developed, warmer, and better in pretty much every way than Norway (other than the scenery). Any king who rules both is going to rule them from England, not from Norway, even if the king himself is Norwegian. Correspondingly, there are always going to be Norwegians wondering why it is they have to pay taxes to a king across the sea who pays little attention to them, and no dynasty is going to be able to keep them on a leash permanently.
There's no genealogical reason why William the Bastard would not exist - to my knowledge, I haven't hijacked any members of his family tree - but after more than a century of alternate history, having the exact events of 1066 repeat themselves might be a bit too unbelievable. Of course, depending on the fate of Harald (who is presently marching into Macedonia alongside Maniakes), those events might end up wildly different even if William exists and his life doesn't change at all.
In general, I find the idea of an English-Norwegian union exceedingly unlikely. It can be established, certainly, but I don't think it can last. England is richer, more populous, more developed, warmer, and better in pretty much every way than Norway (other than the scenery). Any king who rules both is going to rule them from England, not from Norway, even if the king himself is Norwegian. Correspondingly, there are always going to be Norwegians wondering why it is they have to pay taxes to a king across the sea who pays little attention to them, and no dynasty is going to be able to keep them on a leash permanently.
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Yeah, I think we can now safely say that the Norman Conquest of England is averted TTL. (Which is 100% fine by me.)
Deleted member 67076
I do find it interesting that despite the constant losses and reversals of fortune the Bavarians are always able to send yet another army to war. How comes that's the case?
Well, Bavaria is a fairly wealthy territory. Also being on the border it's probably rather more militarized due to all the raids.
Seldom does an army of any state compose, at one time, all of its eligible men, and when an army is defeated it's very unlikely for it to be truly wiped out. It takes more than one battle or raiding season to really do demographic damage to a country, unless that battle is truly devastating (as Brenta was claimed to be, when Berengar's army was practically annihilated by the Magyars, and Liutprand IIRC reported that thereafter it was impossible for any Italian king to muster an army of that size).
As The Undead Martyr said, Bavarian society is also fairly militarized. The tribal levy, exercitus, or whatever you want to call it still exists and is in use; there's a sizable (although steadily shrinking) population of free peasants who have not been relegated to serfdom and are still capable of showing up to musters with a shield and spear. During the first half of the 10th century, nearly the whole of Germany's defense-in-depth system existed in Bavaria, and that involved not only dozens and dozens of fortifications but the men to garrison and hold them. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the real heroes of Lechfeld were these Bavarian militia/auxiliaries, who destroyed the Magyar army in detail as it attempted to flee through Bavarian territory and cross bridges and fords protected by local levies. Such men might not be a military elite, but Bavaria probably has a much higher ratio of fighting men to overall population than Italy does... or at least it did ITTL until the wars of Liudolf II, Henry III, and Arnulf II (both as Duke and as King) bled the duchy white. Bavaria will recover, but for the time being they aren't going to be a major political player in East Francia.
As The Undead Martyr said, Bavarian society is also fairly militarized. The tribal levy, exercitus, or whatever you want to call it still exists and is in use; there's a sizable (although steadily shrinking) population of free peasants who have not been relegated to serfdom and are still capable of showing up to musters with a shield and spear. During the first half of the 10th century, nearly the whole of Germany's defense-in-depth system existed in Bavaria, and that involved not only dozens and dozens of fortifications but the men to garrison and hold them. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the real heroes of Lechfeld were these Bavarian militia/auxiliaries, who destroyed the Magyar army in detail as it attempted to flee through Bavarian territory and cross bridges and fords protected by local levies. Such men might not be a military elite, but Bavaria probably has a much higher ratio of fighting men to overall population than Italy does... or at least it did ITTL until the wars of Liudolf II, Henry III, and Arnulf II (both as Duke and as King) bled the duchy white. Bavaria will recover, but for the time being they aren't going to be a major political player in East Francia.
Absolutely. Hastings OTL was a close run thing anyway and most gamblers would have bet against the Bastard. ITTL with Harald Sigurdson less likely to be up north any Norman invasion of England is going to be very different and more in favour of Harold Godwinson.
A fair point. That said, I think I've been pretty consistent to my policy so far, which can be summed up as "things happen as IOTL unless I can think of a good reason that alternate events would change them."
The history of France ITTL has been massively altered. With the Carolingian continuation, presumably the political balance of France is entirely different; even though I haven't hijacked any of William's relatives, as I said, a different political situation is likely to mean different marriages, different times of conception, and plenty of other reasons why either William would not exist or a "William of Normandy" who does exist is an entirely different person from the one we know.
In contrast, the history of the Byzantines ITTL has been almost totally unchanged from OTL. Aside from a somewhat different outcome in southern Italy, which was always peripheral to the empire and its politics, the Tusculani rise has done very little to affect the Byzantine Empire. They were of no consequence in the campaigns of Basil or the politics of his successors; the only marriage link between them involved a bride whose destiny IOTL was merely to waste away in a nunnery. Although this may sound strange given that a limited "Hellenization" of Italy is a big part of this timeline's story, the influence has flowed almost entirely east to west, not west to east. Unlike the French situation, there's no good reason (aside from random butterflies or extremely tortured chains of causation) to think that the lives of Anatolian dynatoi would be seriously altered, Maniakes among them.
Obviously there is expediency at work here too - I don't particularly want to make a whole new cast of characters for the empire at this time, considering that the Greeks aren't my main focus. But in my defense, the existence of Maniakes and his posting to Sicily are far, far more likely in the context of this TL and its butterfly policy than William and his expedition to England given the timeline divergence in France as compared to Byzantium.
The history of France ITTL has been massively altered. With the Carolingian continuation, presumably the political balance of France is entirely different; even though I haven't hijacked any of William's relatives, as I said, a different political situation is likely to mean different marriages, different times of conception, and plenty of other reasons why either William would not exist or a "William of Normandy" who does exist is an entirely different person from the one we know.
In contrast, the history of the Byzantines ITTL has been almost totally unchanged from OTL. Aside from a somewhat different outcome in southern Italy, which was always peripheral to the empire and its politics, the Tusculani rise has done very little to affect the Byzantine Empire. They were of no consequence in the campaigns of Basil or the politics of his successors; the only marriage link between them involved a bride whose destiny IOTL was merely to waste away in a nunnery. Although this may sound strange given that a limited "Hellenization" of Italy is a big part of this timeline's story, the influence has flowed almost entirely east to west, not west to east. Unlike the French situation, there's no good reason (aside from random butterflies or extremely tortured chains of causation) to think that the lives of Anatolian dynatoi would be seriously altered, Maniakes among them.
Obviously there is expediency at work here too - I don't particularly want to make a whole new cast of characters for the empire at this time, considering that the Greeks aren't my main focus. But in my defense, the existence of Maniakes and his posting to Sicily are far, far more likely in the context of this TL and its butterfly policy than William and his expedition to England given the timeline divergence in France as compared to Byzantium.
XXXV. The Giant and the Secretary
XXXV. The Giant and the Secretary
Varangian Guardsmen in Constantinople, Byzantine illustrated manuscript, 12th century
Varangian Guardsmen in Constantinople, Byzantine illustrated manuscript, 12th century
The Interloper
Michael V “Kalaphates” was twenty six years old and had ruled for less than four months when George Maniakes landed in Epirus and made his bid for the empire. Michael had acted aggressively early in his reign to purge those he considered to be obstructing his power, including many favorites of his father and the previous regime. In particular, he cloistered his uncle John, the powerful eunuch minister, and castrated all the Argyroi he could get his hands on.[1] His favorite became another eunuch uncle, Constantine, who the emperor charged with leading an imperial army to confront Maniakes in Macedonia. Constantine was not without military experience, having previously served as doux of Antioch, but despite leading the larger force he was completely defeated by the rebel army at the Battle of Kallikon. Many of the defeated soldiers joined Maniakes, while Constantine escaped to the capital and the rebels continued their eastward march.
Panic now gripped the imperial court. Michael attempted to organize a defense of the capital, but devotion to his cause was flagging. His only connection to the Macedonian dynasty, still extant in the form of the two sisters Zoe and Theodora, was that Zoe had adopted him as her son on the urging of her lover and Michael’s uncle Michael IV. Maniakes did not even have that, but nevertheless there was a certain amount of sense in picking the seasoned commander and great magnate (as Maniakes was himself a landowner of considerable means in Anatolia) over the up-jumped young son of a ship caulker. The “siege” of Constantinople, once it began, ended quickly with little bloodshed; the tipping point may have been when rumors spread that the Varangian Guard, possibly under the influence of one of their officers, Harald Sigurdsson, who had joined Maniakes, was planning to defect to the rebels. Michael fled the city and attempted to escape retribution by taking monastic vows, but the rebels soon dragged him out of his cloister and returned him to the city to face his usurper.
Maniakes and his army now held Constantinople, but ruling it was something else entirely. Zoe, now in her 60s, was still very popular among the people who recalled her eminent forefathers with nostalgia, and the obvious solution to the usurper’s legitimacy problem was for George to marry the empress as had Romanos III and Michael IV before him. George was already married,[2] but this was not necessarily a problem – Romanos III, after all, had renounced and cloistered his first wife to marry the Macedonian empress. Whether George would have been willing to repudiate his own wife will never be known, as nobody seems to have seriously entertained the possibility. It may be that Zoe simply found George too distasteful even to marry as a political accomodation. Zoe had a taste for handsome and good-natured men; Maniakes was described by his contemporary and main chronicler, Michael Psellos, as a ten foot tall giant with a “voice like thunder,” a fearsome mien, ferocious anger, and the physical strength to bend bronze gates with his bare hands.
In any case, Patriarch Alexios refused to officiate another marriage with the twice-widowed empress. This was not in itself an insurmountable obstacle, but it seems to have given both parties a convenient and pious excuse. The only remaining option which would preserve Zoe’s place and give George the barest veneer of Macedonian legitimacy was adoption—admittedly somewhat farcical when the “son” was a man in his forties, but then again Zoe was technically old enough to be his mother. With Maniakes’ army encamped within the walls, Zoe really had no other choice, and Alexios crowned the victorious general as Georgios, Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans.[A]
The Bloody Giant
The relationship between George and Zoe, such as it was, began to break down almost immediately. Zoe remained fond of Michael and asked for clemency to be shown towards him. Instead, the new emperor had both Michael and his uncle Constantine blinded in order to nip any dreams of a Paphlagonian resurgence in the bud. Maniakes was a poor fit for the imperial court; he seemed to find its ceremonies tedious and lashed out angrily at those who displeased him. Soon he turned to what he was good at, and sought an enemy to destroy.
Since the reign of Basil II and the collapse of the “Bulgarian Empire,” the lands of the Serbs had been controlled by native princes who served as Byzantine clients. The preeminent such client was Ljutovid, nominally ruler of all Serbia, who loyally served Constantinople in exchange for high titles and recognition. Since 1039, however, Dioclea had been in revolt against the empire (and against Ljutovid) under the leadership of Stefan Vojislav, a clever and effective leader who by 1042 had foiled several Byzantine-supported attempts to remove him and had carved out an Adriatic state from Dyrrachion to the southern frontier of Dalmatia. The emperor dispatched an army against Stefan in the first year of his reign, but the Diocleans handily defeated it. Instead of backing off, George doubled down, personally leading a larger army in the spring of 1043 which recaptured Dyrrachion and invaded Dioclea proper. Stefan attemped to ambush the imperial army at the Battle of Lissos, but the Byzantines held against the sudden attack and turned the tables on their adversary. Stefan lost two of his sons in the melee. Following this victory, the emperor laid siege to Stefan’s capital of Skodra, and the Prince of Dioclea was compelled to come to terms. He was permitted to remain in power in Dioclea as the emperor’s vassal, but his remaining sons were taken to Constantinople as hostages. When Stefan died less than a year later, his sons remained prisoners of the palace, and Dioclea was annexed to the empire and placed under the command of a Greek strategos.[B]
While George was campaigning, his “mother” was conspiring against him. Zoe could still attract an ambitious usurper with the prospect of marriage and the imperial crown. She covertly courted the man she had once been betrothed to, Constantine Dalassenos, and attempted to suborn him for the cause of a Macedonian restoration. He was not a bad choice for a leader to challenge Maniakes – although is military reputation was not quite as sterling as that of George, the former doux of Antioch was popular among both the Constantinopolitan mob and the aristocracy to whom his family was well-connected. (Crucially for Zoe, he was also famously handsome.) Constantine had been confined to a monastery by Michael IV, but had been freed by his nephew and successor and returned to his own estates.
Zoe invited Constantine to the capital and made a great show of her association with him. The favor of the empress, the obsequiousness of her faction at court, and the evident adoration of the people clearly impressed him, and were no doubt intended to draw him into a conspiracy against the emperor. The plot was foiled, however, by Zoe’s fickleness. Having summoned Constantine Dalassenos to her side, the empress soon realized that he was nearly as forceful and uncompromising a man as Maniakes. She shifted her attentions to Constantine Katepanos, a court official with whom she had once had an affair. Disillusioned with the empress and as disdainful of Katepanos as he had been of Zoe’s last husband Michael IV, Dalassenos betrayed Zoe as soon as George returned from Serbia and named all of her co-conspirators. The emperor had both Zoe and Constantine Katepanos arrested for attempted regicide.
Despite her faults, Zoe was immensely popular with the people, and her arrest provoked a violent uprising by the citizens against the emperor. Initially George was taken by surprise and barely escaped with his life from the palace. He had returned to the capital with many of his veterans of the last campaign, however, and Maniakes could at the very least count on his enduring popularity with the army. Like Justinian before him, he rallied his forces and resolved to take back his throne from the rioters. George unleashed the Varangians, who took up their axes with gusto and carved their way through the citizenry. After two days of street fighting, Constantinople lay prostrate and bleeding at the feet of George Maniakes.
The massacre of 1043 would forever be a black mark on the emperor’s name; even his admirers and defenders in the years to come would condemn his use of savage barbarians to butcher Roman citizens. Many never forgave him and would forever consider him a bloody-handed usurper. For the moment, however, he had won back his throne. Zoe was delivered to an island convent, from where it was hoped she would no longer plague her adopted son with her intrigues. Of Constantine Katepanos, we know nothing; he vanishes from history thereafter.[C]
The Secretaries
It was under the reign of Constantine II in the west that the bureaucratic post of calamarius rose to the apex of its power. Originally and nominally the keeper of the emperor’s inkstand, the calamarii had developed into the private secretaries of the emperor under Constantine I, a position from which they could wield significant influence. The elder Constantine, being greatly interested in the legislation and management of his empire, would not permit any serious independent action by his secretary, but his successor was relatively disinterested in the laborious business of governance. For the calamarii, who penned the emperor’s decrees and carried the emperor’s seal, that laxity was an invitation to amass power for themselves.
The first man to transmute the office into something resembling a prime ministry was a certain Jordan, possibly a Roman, who may have held the office at the time of the younger Constantine’s coronation. While he seems to have discharged his duties competently – the elder Constantine presumably would not have chosen an incompetent for that position – he was unscrupulous enough to greatly expand the power of the office once the elder emperor was in his grave. By controlling access to the emperor, in terms of both personal audiences and written appeals, he could control who was selected for important bureaucratic offices. It was said that he gained power over the judiciary in this matter, and eventually amassed tremendous wealth by demanding gifts for imperial audiences, official appointments, and favorable judicial decisions. Most chroniclers are harsh in their treatment of Jordan, although some sources sources suggest or admit that his “extortion” was not purely self-interested but aimed in part at covering the hemorrhaging finances of the state. Italy, although prosperous by the standards of the west, was still a cash-poor economy whose government skimmed a relatively small amount of in-kind taxation from its people, quite unlike the complex, cash-based, and admittedly heavy taxation scheme of the Byzantines.[3]
Jordan’s innovative approach to revenue generation made him an object of hatred among the mediocres who made up most of the bureaucracy and the imperial milites. The ultimate architect of his demise was Milus Olearius, whose epithet came from the legend that his father was an olive-presser or oil merchant (thus olearius, “oilmaker”). Milus, a northern Lombard, belonged to the upwardly mobile class of “new men” among the lesser aristocracy, middling men who had attained prominence by way of the elder Constantine’s gutting of the old nobility in favor of the imperial milites. There was evidently military land in the family, but Milus himself had entered the civil bureaucracy as a notary in the emperor’s chancery. How exactly he gained the notice of Constantine II is unclear, although Egidius of Florence claims that his sister Rozala was a famous beauty with whom the emperor was having an affair and it was chiefly to her influence that Milus owed his initial rise.
Milus, perhaps through Rozala, levied accusations of embezzlement against Jordan, which may well have been true. Jordan threw himself upon the emperor’s mercy and plead his innocence, and Constantine gave him a full pardon, but either because of false witnesses paid off by Milus (in one telling of the story) or the insistence of the beguiling Rozala (in the other telling) the case against Jordan was renewed. He was removed from office and publicly humiliated by being forced to ride backwards through Pavia on a donkey while being pelted with dung.
The Oiler’s Regime
Milus stood ready to take on the mantle of calamarius, and proved himself to be even more effective at exploiting the position than his predecessor. Although the financial extractions were presumably not as great – Milus had gained his support, after all, from dissatisfaction with the extractive policies of Jordan – the new minister used his position to advance his own family and those closely associated with it. The old aristocracy of the north was largely moribund, but Milus’ actions contributed to a creation of a new elite within the milites and comites, men of relatively humble origins who vaulted into power by way of the favoritism of their new patron at the height of the civil service. This was chiefly accomplished by the awarding of titles of iudex either to members of families associated with the “Olearii” or the filling of these posts with men loyal enough to Milus to favor his followers. The difficulty with the Roman Law, even in its reconstructed form, was that it was composed of innumerable precedents; it was possible to cherry-pick, and much still depended on the judgment of the arbiter. To be part of Milus’ network of clientage during his tenure was to receive favorable treatment within the law, most importantly on matters of land rights an inheritance, by which his friends were able to build up larger and larger estates.
In theory the “military land” of the royal demesne was apportioned in a more or less standard size to the emperor’s client milites in order to support them in that role, but Constantine’s reign saw a rash of instances of conglomeration in which a single comes might possess multiple military estates and yet still only render his own service (or, as was increasingly the case, the service of a substitute in his place). This was technically illegal, but that was a fairly meaningless distinction when corruption was lodged at such a height within the bureaucracy. The result was not only the creation of a new aristocratic elite but the gradual weakening of the cavalry force which constituted the core of the imperial army.
It is worth remembering that the notion of an imperfect but well-meaning ruler having his rule compromised by a corrupt vizier is an extremely common trope in the historiography of monarchy. Constantine, admittedly, was more imperfect than most – the chroniclers lament his fecklessness and idle luxuriating. Most accounts, however, do not make him out to be a villain; that is reserved for Jordan and particularly for Milus. It is possible that this portrayal is too convenient by half. Italian chroniclers of the time were, despite their criticism for the sons of Constantine I, by and large sympathetic to or directly serving the Tusculani monarchy, and were presumably reluctant to portray any member of the dynasty as a greedy tyrant. It would have suited their rhetorical purposes to lay the lion’s share of the blame for unjust, exploitative, and ultimately ruinous policies at the feet of evil ministers while pleading that the emperor was merely incompetent rather than malevolent.
Some recent scholars have argued that the fall of Jordan and the rise of Milus was the inevitable product of the destruction of the traditional Lombard nobility by Constantine I. Regardless of the threat they posed to royal power, the old aristocracy was not simply a tumor that could be excised without consequence, but rather an integral part of the localized power structure of Italy. The elder Constantine had the skills, personality, and resources to bridge the gap, and for some years occupied that most enviable position of a leader with no followers who were fit to challenge him, but such a situation was unsustainable. Nepotistic alliances between milites and bureaucrats – who, after all, came from much the same social class – were clearly already forming late in the reign of Constantine I. A reading of history more charitable to the competence of Constantine II may be that he saw which way the winds were blowing and attempted to consolidate imperial power by creating a class of bureaucratic-military dynatoi, a new aristocracy, populated by his favorites and through which he would rule the empire in a manner that did not require the micromanagement of legions of petty knights and ambitious castaldi.
Urban Renewal
The policies of Milus found their greatest opponents among the inhabitants of the cities. Favoritism towards the rural milites necessarily came at the expense of other segments of society, and while the bishops tended to be powerful enough to maintain their prerogatives the growing productive and mercantile urban classes had no corporate representation under law and few advocates in the government. As the seats of most important judgeships were in cities, this led at times to actual violence; there are a number of recorded instances in the reign of Constantine II in which a judge was assaulted or threatened by townsfolk. In one incident around 950 which seems at first glance more classically Scandinavian than Italian, a group of conspirators in Verona set fire to the house of the palatine judge as he slept, killing him and his whole family. Such extreme measure were a consequence of the fact that the losers of Milus’ regime had little recourse – the office of protoiudex, the official charged with hearing the appeals of “lesser men” (that is, those not of the rank of comes), was part of the lesser chancery which Milus tightly controlled. There was no justice to be found there.
Inadvertently, Milus had sown the seeds of a political awakening among the Italian cities. The stern rule of Constantine I had been a boon to city-dwellers and the artisans and merchants who lived therein; the roads had been restored and patrolled and the aristocracy had been kept in check. The return to banditry and predation in his son’s reign, however, caused a new movements of solidarity within city walls across Lombardy and Tuscany.
This movement was not merely a political one, but military. The early Tusculani, often desperate for soldiers of whatever quality wherever they could get them, had encouraged the establishment of civic militias whose maintenance was often the responsibility of the bishop (or, occasionally, the castaldus). The reign of Constantine I, however, roughly coincides with a period of silence in the historical record regarding these militias. It seems likely that they atrophied during Constantine’s long and peaceful reign in which the service of civic infantrymen in the interior of Italy was simply unnecessary. Without imperial pressure, it made no sense for the bishops and castaldi to continue spending on these citizen-levies of dubious military value. In the reign of Constantine II, however, a new renaissance of these militias is evident, no doubt spurred on by the abuses of the rural milites which became intolerable during the tenure of the calamarius Milus.
The wealthiest and most powerful of cities could navigate other ways to imperial protection. Pisa and Genoa, which already acted more like vassal states than subject cities, seem to have handled their own justice and paid into the imperial treasury for the privilege. While these cities drew their wealth from the sea and foreign nations, however, other cities were much more dependent on their surrounding countryside where the rural elite preyed upon the burghers. Siena seems to have “bought” certain rights to its own justice (“except in matters of the emperor’s concern”) in the 1050s, but even such a concession did not help it outside its own walls.
Thus the cities were arguably at the forefront of a new wave of the privatization of power in 11th century Italy. That trend, which had plunged Italy into anarchy and ungovernability under the reguli, had been substantially reversed by the early Tusculani, but the reign of Constantine II demonstrated that once the emperor’s protection ebbed the local centers of power once again began to assert their independence and build the military power necessary to fight for it.
Wolves of the South
The triumph of Maniakes in the east was also a triumph for Duke Leo of Salerno, who had supported the general-turned-emperor in Sicily, fought alongside him against the loyalist catepan of Italy, and had dispatched forces to follow Maniakes on his march to the capital. As a reward, the new emperor granted Leo high court titles, generous gifts, and the office of catepan. The Tusculani, despite placing him in power in the first place, had repeatedly denied him his ambitions to Apulia and Calabria in the interests of peace between the empires; Maniakes had now delivered them both to him on a silver platter. In the style of the southern Lombard princes whom he had replaced, Leo had effectively switched sides from one imperial power to the other. No “rebellion” is recorded, but it is notable that after 941 it is George, not Constantine, whose name appears alongside that of Leo on Salernitan currency.
After the death of the Zirid prince Abdallah at sea, African support for the Berber faction in Sicily collapsed. Pressed by the hostile Hammadids to his west and deteriorating relations with his Fatimid superiors in Egypt, the Zirid emir al-Mu’izz ibn Badis renounced his allegiance to the Fatimids and their Ismaili sect in 1042 and pledged his loyalty to the Abbasids in Baghdad. The green flags of the Fatimids were burned and replaced with the black flags of their rivals, and in subsequent years the attempts by the Fatimids to punish their former clients for their treachery and apostasy would prevent any possible Sicilian intervention by an African power.
Even with the African withdrawal, however, the Byzantine position had still been put in serious danger by Maniakes’ rebellion. George had stripped the expeditionary force of all its best troops when he launched his bid for the throne, and those that remained soon came under pressure from a resurgent Emir Hasan. By 1043, when a new expeditionary force was dispatched under Katakalon Kekaumenos, an old comrade of Maniakes, Byzantine-held Sicily had diminished to a thin strip on the eastern coast anchored on either side by Messina and Syracuse.
As catepan, Leo was expected to provide support to Kekaumenos, and he seems to have been reasonably cooperative. With Lombard support, the general lifted a Sicilian siege of Syracuse in 1043, and in the following year pushed into the interior in a slow but methodical manner. By 1045, Palermo itself was coming under threat, but the natural death of Duke Leo early that year scuttled what might have been the final decisive push to restore Byzantine Sicily. The catepanate was not, after all, a heritable title; it was a rather extraordinary circumstance in the first place that had led to an Italian prince receiving it. Emperor George bestowed the office on one of his loyal officers, Michael Dokeianos, but the new catepan quickly came into conflict with Leo’s sons Gregory and Leo Lupellus.[4] They resented having not only to give up most of their father’s territory but to serve as auxiliaries to the men who now ruled it. Soon after his arrival, Dokeianos sent a protest to Constantinople regarding the plunder of an Apulian town by the Salernitans; in response, Gregory and Leo arranged the catepan’s assassination and then provoked a new Lombard revolt in Apulia.
The rebellion of Gregory and Leo made the position of Kekaumenos in Sicily untenable. Not only had he now lost many of his Lombard auxiliaries upon whom he had depended for manpower, but the revolt threatened to cut him off entirely from the empire. He withdrew to Calabria with the bulk of his forces, but was unable to drive the Salernitans and rebels out of Apulia. That task was given to yet another of Maniakes’ lieutenants, the Armenian general Basil Theodorokanos, who was appointed as the new catepan in late 1045 and dispatched with reinforcements to crush the rebellion. A capable commander with a considerable force, Basil made short work of the rebels in Apulia and in 1046 invaded Salerno. Fearful of the response they had provoked, Gregory, Leo, and their southern allies – including Benedict Crescentius, Duke of Benevento and son of Crescentius III, who evidently had sought to profit from the Lombard rebellion – turned in desperation to Emperor Constantine II and implored that he defend his southern vassals against the Greeks.
Map of Italy and its neighbors on the eve of the Byzantine invasion of Salerno in 1046.
Next Time: The Last Macedonian
Footnotes (In Character)
[1] It has been traditionally assumed that the Tusculani emperors were neutral in Maniakes’ rebellion and were powerless to stop Maniakes from recruiting southern soldiers and milites from joining him, but that may be the result of the bias of later chroniclers who tended to portray Constantine II as a do-nothing lout. More recently it has been suggested that Constantine may have tolerated, encouraged, or even supported Maniakes because of the outrages Michael V had perpetrated upon the Argyroi, Constantine’s relatives by way of his sister-in-law Helena Argyre, which had occurred only two or three months before Maniakes’ landing in Epirus.
[2] The wife of George Maniakes was named Euphrosyne, but Psellos, our primary source for his reign, tells us nothing else about her save that she was Anatolian nobility. The identity of her noble family can only be guessed at.[D]
[3] It is common now, as it was among contemporary chroniclers, to blame the growing financial burden of the state on the extravagance of the court of Constantine II who sought to imitate the splendor and luxury of the Byzantines. It is true that the numbers of courtiers, and thus the imperial gifts bestowed upon them, grew significantly in the reign of Constantine II, but the largest outlays of the state in the reign of Constantine I were clearly military (such as the upkeep of the Hungarian Guard) and probably remained so under his son. Ultimately the dire straits of the Italo-Roman state treasury during this time probably had less to do with any particular extravagance than the fact that the land-tax which had been the basis of state revenue in the Late Roman and Byzantine empires had fallen into abeyance under the Lombard kings and had not been renewed since. The remaining revenues of state, consisting mainly of rents from the imperial fisc, were clearly insufficient to sustain a state which sought in some modest capacity to imitate the political, ceremonial, and military organization of Constantinople.
[4] Duke Leo I had a third son, Lambert, who entered the church. The relative birth order of Lambert and Leo Lupellus is unknown, but Gregory was certainly the firstborn. The epithet of Leo Lupellus, alternately known as “Leo II,” is a diminutive which may be roughly translated as “wolf cub,” a reference to his father’s title and a means to distinguish the father from the son.
Timeline Notes (Out of Character)
[A] Finally, Byzantine history goes well and truly off the rails for the first time ITTL. Those hoping for a Byzantine-wank, however, are probably going to be disappointed.
[B] This timeline has taken a turn for the worse for the Serbs. Stefan’s OTL son and successor, Mihailo, is among the dead, which robs us of all subsequent medieval Serbian rulers down to the dissolution of the state and the Ottoman annexation. They’ll be back, of course, but under wholly alt-historical leaders.
[C]A similar revolt occured IOTL in 942 when Michael V attempted to banish Zoe to a convent. Michael V quickly backtracked and promised to restore the empress, but not quickly enough, and he lost his throne and ultimately his life. I figured the temperament and armed following of George Maniakes suggested he wouldn’t fold in the face of popular unrest in the same way as Michael.
[D]A wife of Maniakes is mentioned briefly in the historical sources, but we don’t even know her name IOTL. I expect we would know her name if her husband had become emperor, so I made one up for her. A “Theophylact Maniakes” is mentioned some time after George’s death; we don’t know his relationship, if any, to George, but ITTL he is assumed to be George’s son. He’ll appear in the next chapter.
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John Fredrick Parker
Donor
"Those expecting a Byzantine wank will be disappointed", huh? Well that's a pity; will they at least do better, in the next two or three centuries, than OTL? I mean, they're more or less at their post Islam height right now, less than 20 years after the death of Basil II; a slower or less damaging decline from this height in itself could be considered a wank... which, now that I say it, I guess means "no" 
It's possible that the Byzantines will do better than OTL. Maniakes, as we'll see, has a somewhat more sensible eastern policy than OTL's Constantine IX given his personal background (remember, before he was sent to Sicily, most of his known military career was as a commander on the eastern frontier). That said, the skill of Maniakes is somewhat narrow - he's a great commander and a reasonably good strategist, but has a rather nasty temperament and has no real flair for administrative or economic affairs. His legitimacy is also in serious question thanks to his paper-thin association with the Macedonians ("I made Zoe adopt me at sword-point, and then I banished her to a convent"). The people like a victor, but beating on the Serbs doesn't really make up for being responsible for a major massacre in the capital. The eastern empire still has serious problems and George Maniakes is not the man to make them all go away.
Theodorus is at this point a junior emperor without much influence, rather like Constantine VIII was during the life of his brother Basil II, although the interests of Theodorus involve reading and prayer rather than hunting and feasting. He's fairly happy with his position and probably wishes he could have realized his (likely) original vocation as a monk or priest. In theory the brothers are fully equal rulers with equal titles who share equal billing on Italian denarii, but in practice any historian would consider this the reign of Constantine II just as 976-1025 is considered the reign of Basil II, Constantine VIII notwithstanding.
Theodorus is at this point a junior emperor without much influence, rather like Constantine VIII was during the life of his brother Basil II, although the interests of Theodorus involve reading and prayer rather than hunting and feasting. He's fairly happy with his position and probably wishes he could have realized his (likely) original vocation as a monk or priest. In theory the brothers are fully equal rulers with equal titles who share equal billing on Italian denarii, but in practice any historian would consider this the reign of Constantine II just as 976-1025 is considered the reign of Basil II, Constantine VIII notwithstanding.
And so the two empires finally come to blows over Southern Italy... it was pretty much inevitable.
The Byzantine doing better than OTL is not a hard feat to achieve. Simply keeping their pre 1204 borders would itself be much better than OTL after all.
The Byzantine doing better than OTL is not a hard feat to achieve. Simply keeping their pre 1204 borders would itself be much better than OTL after all.