Given how limited the butterflies have been on the Islamic world, the Turks will be on the Byzantine's doorstep soon, and regardless of the various engagements and rulers who have to contest that threat, the migration itself seems unavoidable. I'd suggest the Anatolian plateau is probably lost regardless...
Sons of the Harlot Empress
- Thread starter Carp
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Deleted member 67076
Not really, without a major Civil war to distract the troops and an active attempt by the Byzantine Emperor to risk his crack troops smack down border raids, its unlikely the Turks will be able to push through the Anatolian Plateau. The number of migrants wasn't that large initially, taking generations (and really the Mongol Era migration) to alter demographics.
What you will have IMO is a repeat of the Arab raiding cycle that the Byzantines had to deal with from the 600s-800s, albeit now the raiders have better light cavalry. But the Byzantine army was still used to defensive warfare, even if they became increasingly specialized towards offensive warfare.
I have no great problem with similar historical trends being followed, but personally, I'm a "butterflies beat babies" fundamentalist: within 50 years time, I wouldn't expect anyone genetically identical to OTL being born in Europe. It doesn't matter if there is no direct connection, the situation is different, peoples lives will be changed, different people will meet, people will be a little more prosperous or a bit less prosperous, their daily schedules will change, however subtly, and for any one person to be born requires exactly the same single sperm out of 100 million and egg getting together, which most likely involves the parents having sex at exactly the same time, in exactly the same position, as OTL. (And that's assuming the production before hand of an exactly identical set of sperm and egg is unaffected by any changes in the lives of the parents.)
That being said, I continue to enjoy this TL, and will continue to follow it: it's a marvel of fine detail and careful exploration of changes in government, administration, etc. and if the cast of characters is too OTL for my standards, I can happily ignore that [1], at least until Genghis Khan shows up.
Ten feet tall and tears down bronze gates: when historians of the era decided to exaggerate, they weren't pikers, were they?
[1] in part because my knowledge of the era is poor enough that I have no great investment in the existence (or non-existence) of most specific individuals of the day: from my perspective, they might as well be AH figures.
That being said, I continue to enjoy this TL, and will continue to follow it: it's a marvel of fine detail and careful exploration of changes in government, administration, etc. and if the cast of characters is too OTL for my standards, I can happily ignore that [1], at least until Genghis Khan shows up.
Ten feet tall and tears down bronze gates: when historians of the era decided to exaggerate, they weren't pikers, were they?
[1] in part because my knowledge of the era is poor enough that I have no great investment in the existence (or non-existence) of most specific individuals of the day: from my perspective, they might as well be AH figures.
I'll admit, it's not really my strongest area, but wouldn't you say that the Turks had a bit more investment in taking a holding land than the Arabs?
Civil Wars and internal dissent will eventually happen, sooner or later (especially with how... well... Byzantine the current Byzantine court is), and Manzikert wasn't that disastrous to the Byzantine military establishment. I think there's a good chance the Byzantines get caught flat footed by this new paradigm, rather like OTL - although I'll grant that OTL was pretty exceptionally disastrous.
I've always been skeptical that the Byzantine Empire was undone in large part by events - at a distance the Arab conquests, the Turkish invasions, and the 1204 sack all seem to be almost freak occurrences with special, unique circumstances that, if butterflies just flapped their wings, would all be undone. Personally, I tend to see it more as the Empire really never being ready for the next threat. It's institutions, while usually strong, were also usually forced to adapt only by utter catastrophes - perhaps in part because they were so strong, easily able to survive coups and civil wars, invasions and population declines.
Plus, there's always people like Constantine Doukas who are willing to do short-sighted or stupid things for various reasons, and even if the butterfly gives us a better succession of post-Macedonian Emperors than OTL, that's not saying much...
That's sensible, it's just not the approach I've decided to take here. I'd guess I'd characterize my approach as a sort of "domino theory" of AH, in which there is an ever-expanding field of chaos emanating from the POD which, once it reaches an area, renders its people unrecognizable. (In this tortured analogy, truly AH areas are fallen dominoes, and historical or very-nearly-historical areas are standing dominoes.) Sometimes the dominoes fall faster in one direction than another, based on what is actually going on in the PoD, like how France went into AH-territory faster than the Byzantines.
I have a variety of reasons for this, some already enumerated. Another is that I absolutely hate having to do "backfill," by which I mean creating a history for a previously-unmentioned part of the world that suddenly acquires relevance. If I were to pursue your method of butterflies, I'd have to not only make up a whole new cast of characters for 1030s Byzantium but also decide retroactively what's been going on there since the 970s or so (50 years post-POD), and then I've put myself in a pickle because those retroactive events might logically have affected my TL but can't because, well, I've already written it. The solution is to write everything relevant at once, but given that this is supposed to be a fairly narrow timeline (the conceit is that this is a pop-history book about Tusculani Italy) and that researching/writing the TL already takes a fair amount of time I don't consider that to be desirable.
If the physics of it bothers you, then pretend that the infinite version of the many-worlds theory is true, and thus a universe in which Alberic of Tusculum becomes King of Italy and Maniakes still exists 100 years later is no less likely than any other particular historical outcome, as the probability of any particular timeline occurring is essentially one among infinity.
In any case, the dominoes have now fallen in the Byzantine Empire, and after the current generation you can expect to see no historical personages there.
What's interesting is that this description comes from Michael Psellos, who was not just a later writer repeating tall tales but a contemporary of Maniakes who claimed plausibly to have met him. His exact description of Maniakes in the Chronographia reads:
"I have seen this man myself, and I wondered at him, for nature had bestowed on him all the attributes of a man destined to command. He stood ten feet high and men who saw him had to look up as if at a hill or the summit of a mountain. There was nothing soft or agreeable abort the appearance of Maniaces. As a matter of fact, he was more like a fiery whirlwind, with a voice of thunder and hands strong enough to make walls totter and shake gates of brass. He had the quick movement of a lion and the scowl on his face was terrible to behold. Everything else about the man was in harmony with these traits and just what you would expect. Rumour exaggerated his appearance and the barbarians, to a man, lived in dread of him, some because they had seen and marvelled, others because they had heard frightful tales of his prowess."
You can see why Zoe ITTL doesn't consider him husband material!
I think modern scholarship has done away with the myth of Manzikert breaking the back of the empire and handing Anatolia to the Turks in a single blow and left us with a murkier and more complex picture of the Turkish "invasion." The loss of Byzantium's eastern half was the product of decades of infiltration and migration both before and after Manzikert, in which both peaceful settlers and aggressive conquerors penetrated Byzantine borders which were no longer defended by competent and organized thematic armies due to the decay of the theme system. After Manzikert, accelerating migration occurred less because of a single defeat than the years of civil strife which lasted until Alexios Komnenos was securely on the throne. Turks were in fact invited into Asia Minor as far as Nikaea during these years to serve as mercenaries and even to garrison Byzantine towns.
If you accept that story, then some parts of the Turkish migration are "unavoidable" and some are clearly not. A new emperor in 1042 is not capable of waving a wand and restoring the system of thematic defense in the east, nor are the bands of Turkmen looking for new pastures going to shrug and go home if the Byzantines happen to defeat a Seljuk army. If the post-Manzikert political chaos does not happen, however, a stiffer and more organized resistance to the migrants/invaders is absolutely possible.
I think a better analogy to how the Byzantines could have handled the Turks under better circumstances is not so much the Arabs as the Pechenegs, another nomadic, Turkic people that invaded Byzantine territory in the 11th century, albeit from the opposite end of the empire. The weakness of the Bulgarian frontier allowed large groups of Pechenegs to migrate into the empire. Constantine IX took advantage of a feud between the Pecheneg chieftain and one of his lieutenants by suborning the lieutenant, having him baptized and giving him court titles and land. When his new client harried the Pecheneg chieftain too much, the chieftain appealed to help from the Byzantines and was baptized too, and his people were settled in Paristron. But ongoing feuds between these leaders, plus Constantine's attempt shortly thereafter to conscript thousands of these Pecheneg settlers into his army to fight the Seljuks, caused them to rise in rebellion. Poor generalship resulted in a number of lost battles for the Greeks, but they ultimately got smarter: they split the field army up into smaller operational groups, and used surprise and mountainous terrain to harass and ambush the Pechenegs. Peace was established, but it was short-lived, and for the next few decades the "Pecheneg problem" continued intermittently. After they were crushed at the Battle of Levounion in 1091, many surviving Pechenegs were resettled and enrolled in tagmatic units, but as a whole the Pechenegs only ceased to bother the empire after John Komnenos defeated them at the Battle of Beroia in 1122. Pechenegs went on to serve the empire and were present in Manuel's invasion of Italy in 1155-6; thereafter, they assimilated into other populations both in Byzantium and outside it and ultimately ceased to be a distinct people.
There are obviously differences between the Pechenegs and the Seljuks, but I think this gives us a rough "game plan" of what management of the Turkish migration would look like even without depending on hyper-competent emperors. You exploit divisions between the invaders; you co-opt them with titles, land, and (if possible) religion; you settle them in far and varied places, and try not to concentrate them too much (which contributed to the Pecheneg rebellion); and you adapt to the diffuse nature of nomadic invasions by avoiding pitched battles and using smaller forces to ambush the enemy and strike at soft targets (camps, herds, etc.).
I think that Turkish settlement in Asia Minor was, by the mid-11th century, inevitable. I do, however, think that a more stable imperial government with emperors of fairly moderate efficacy (Constantine IX is not remembered as a god among emperors, after all) could have averted the wholesale loss of all Anatolia, and instead managed a restive and occasionally rebellious Turkish population in eastern/central Anatolia over decades. Defeats will happen, territory will be lost, but catastrophe is not at that point pre-ordained IMO.
I'm not saying that will happen in this timeline. Just that it could.
As far as what I think is realistic I'm a pretty extreme butterfly fundamentalist. But as far as what makes for an enjoyable time line to read, well butterfly nets can be very good things. A realistic approach to butterflies means that the TL writer has to either start rewriting the history of the entire world pretty much from the get go or do a lot of handwaving which is often a lot more annoying for the reader than a bunch of butterfly nets.
I'm really happy that Carp ISN'T giving us updates about how all of India is different. Focus is good.
I'm really happy that Carp ISN'T giving us updates about how all of India is different. Focus is good.
Deleted member 67076
It depends really. The Bedoin shock troops the early caliphate used would have been roughly analogous to the poor Turks that moved into Anatolia and there was never much of a concentrated settlement outside of Cilicia. Now arguably, the Turks would have different goals and would prefer the dry steppe of inland Anatolia, yet without an organized state to take the land, I don't view that migration as being able to break the state.I'll admit, it's not really my strongest area, but wouldn't you say that the Turks had a bit more investment in taking a holding land than the Arabs?
Civil Wars and internal dissent will eventually happen, sooner or later (especially with how... well... Byzantine the current Byzantine court is), and Manzikert wasn't that disastrous to the Byzantine military establishment. I think there's a good chance the Byzantines get caught flat footed by this new paradigm, rather like OTL - although I'll grant that OTL was pretty exceptionally disastrous.
I've always been skeptical that the Byzantine Empire was undone in large part by events - at a distance the Arab conquests, the Turkish invasions, and the 1204 sack all seem to be almost freak occurrences with special, unique circumstances that, if butterflies just flapped their wings, would all be undone. Personally, I tend to see it more as the Empire really never being ready for the next threat. It's institutions, while usually strong, were also usually forced to adapt only by utter catastrophes - perhaps in part because they were so strong, easily able to survive coups and civil wars, invasions and population declines.
Plus, there's always people like Constantine Doukas who are willing to do short-sighted or stupid things for various reasons, and even if the butterfly gives us a better succession of post-Macedonian Emperors than OTL, that's not saying much...
Most of the Turkic peoples who moved in were small bands of troublemakers, not that large in number at first. They don't have the manpower to contest the state and are more interested in fighting themselves than the Rum. Carp makes a great analogy with the Pechenegs.
Even with the constant civil wars that are a feature, not a bug, I'm skeptical of the narrative Anatolia will be inevitably overrun; there's little difference between the Seljuqs fighting style and the last few waves of Steppe invadors to my knowledge, and the Arabs have been using their slave soldiers/mercenaries against the Byzantines for 200+ years now. Hence why I feel it would take a large, protracted conflict that saps the army strength and leads to a number of mass settlements and depopulation of Anatolia. And even then, arguably Alexios' policies played a major role in the loss of the east.
I'll give you that with Byzantine institutions, although I will note as time passed they got more self aware and a reform faction always popped up before the Crisis hit. Usually ignored unfortunately.
Aw, you're going to make Practical Lobster feel bad now.
Hey now, I have nothing against butterfly nets! Some of my favorite timelines use them!
Hey now, I have nothing against butterfly nets! Some of my favorite timelines use them!
White Huns is incredible. It's one of the very very few TLs that actually pull off the whole "and butterflies go everywhere and I cover the WHOLE DAMN WORLD." It's just that for every TL that pulls that off there are a couple where the scope just overwhelms the author and the TL peters out, including some of my very favorite TLs on this site.
I guess it is definitely surviving 1204 thanks to butterflied crusades.
I do wonder if its deathblow in TTL might be delivered by a Bulgarian/Italian 2 punch rather than OTL Latin/Ottoman one.
Incidentally I'm also a "Dominoist" when it comes to AH butterflies. While I accept that it can be less likely, I feel it shows up the narrative differences between TLs more effectively, and with less effort
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XXXVI. The Last Macedonian
XXXVI. The Last Macedonian
An illustration of the medieval city of Ani, capital of Bagratid Armenia
An illustration of the medieval city of Ani, capital of Bagratid Armenia
The Southern Contest
The invasion of Salerno by the Armenian-Byzantine general Basil Theodorokanos in 1046 was probably not imagined by either Basil or Emperor George Maniakes as a first strike against the Italo-Roman Empire. Duke Leo had placed his duchy squarely within the Byzantine sphere and had been compensated well for it, and it is understandable how the treachery of his sons would have been seen in Constantinople not as aggression by an Italian vassal but as rebellion by disloyal subjects. Given his many other obligations, George may wall have ignored the defection of Salerno to the Tusculani had the new dukes Gregory and Leo Lupellus not already provoked a revolt in Apulia and endangered the Byzantine position in Sicily which had seemed on its way to recovery before the death of Duke Leo.
The initial moves of Basil and his army support this notion. After defeating Lombard rebel forces in Apulia, Basil marched into Lucania and recovered this province with little opposition. From there, the Byzantines marched on Salerno itself and besieged the city. They found it held by the younger duke, Leo Lupellus, and while the Salernitans were at a severe disadvantage Basil nevertheless hoped to avoid a prolonged siege. He opened negotiations with Leo, offering him court titles to return to imperial obedience; this may have been Basil’s terms to both brothers or an attempt to suborn the younger duke into Byzantine clientage in exchange for becoming the sole ruler of Salerno. Either way, Leo didn’t bite, and Basil was forced to proceed with an actual siege of the city.
The reason Gregory was absent was that he had already gone north to seek the aid of the emperor his father had abandoned, Constantine II. Now in his ninth year of co-rule alongside his overshadowed brother Theodorus, Constantine had yet to see battle; the only serious conflict the empire had been involved with in his reign had been the rebellion of Vazul against his cousin Constantine of Hungary, which had involved the Italo-Roman empire only by way of Italian mercenaries in Hungarian service. Constantine, we are told, was enticed into action by the promises of Duke Gregory, who offered to be his vassal in exchange for protection. The very fact that Gregory could offer this is notable, as it suggests that the functional independence or Byzantine clientage of the Salernitan state was recognized even by the Italian emperor. The apparent autonomy of the southern dukes, which was not exclusive to Salerno, is pointed to by some as a criticism of the reign of Constantine and Theodorus. The south, however, had clearly been drifting out of imperial control even in the reign of Constantine I.
The elder Constantine had arguably erred by leaving his dynasty’s cadette branch, the Crescentii, ruling in Benevento and Capua. The emperor had some years earlier intervened to divide those states between rival brothers Crescentius[1] and Theophylact, but the death of Crescentius in 1020 (and the death of his only son, John, in the Sardinian expedition four years earlier) had allowed Theophylact to reunite the principality with no apparent opposition from Constantine. Theophylact died in 1038, a year after the elder Constantine, and the state was once again partitioned between his sons Cencius,[2] Demetrius, and John (often titled in the chronicles as Iohannes Parvus, “John the Small” or “Little John”). Miraculously this arrangement seems to have held – Cencius in Benevento, Demetrius in Capua, and John apparently holding lands around Melfi – but the death of Demetrius ended the family peace. Cencius and John agreed to a new two-way split to the disadvantage of the son of Demetrius, also named Cencius and differentiated at that time as Cencius of Capua. After driving his nephew into exile, John assumed control in Capua but reneged on his bargain with his elder brother, which was apparently to surrender his lands in Melfi upon taking the Capuan duchy. The subsequent conflict between the two brothers ended only in 1043 with the death of the elder Cencius, at which point the family domains were reunited under John.
“Little John” had no direct involvement with the Byzantine campaigns in Sicily, but had joined Gregory and Leo Lupellus in their invasion of Apulia, no doubt to expand his own considerable domain. That provided an opening to Cencius of Capua, who had been in exile in Amalfi since 1039 or 1040 and now sought the support of Basil Theodorokanos in exchange for giving his fealty to Constantinople. Capua and Benevento had not been eastern dependencies for a century, but installing pro-Constantinople governments in the south did have the obvious advantage of creating a buffer between the Italians and Byzantine Italy. Whether Basil himself considered that worth the prospect of directly antagonizing the Italians is difficult to know, but the point was moot, for word soon reached him that an Italian army was on its way south with Emperor Constantine II at its head.
Quite contrary to the Byzantine point of view, Constantine II acted as if the southern duchies were possessions of the Tusculani monarchy which he was bound to protect. It was clearly an idea he had only come to lately, as the emperor had made seemingly no protest during the years in which Duke Leo was so far within the Greek camp as to be an imperially appointed catepan, and why exactly the emperor felt it necessary to take this step is still a subject of debate. Apart from the effect of the pleas of Duke Gregory, it may also be that Constantine saw this as an opportunity to assert his own power and martial might. This was, after all, still an age in which a king and emperor in the Latin world was required to be – or at least appear to be – a brave leader of men, and Constantine had never led an army in his life. This interest in proving himself, or perhaps just his pride, may be what inspired him to lead the army personally, something which his father had rarely done after the Burgundinian war of his youth; or perhaps he simply did not trust anyone else with command of the imperial army in the field.
Benedictus Azymus
There is also the chance that the emperor was influenced by his foremost ecclesiastical magnate. The death of the powerful and worldly Pope Demetrius in 1029 had been followed by a string of short-lived and rather unremarkable popes, all of them eminent old Roman or Italo-Greek clerics. Demetrius was followed by John XII (1029-1031), Romanus II (1031-1036), and the feeble Isaac (1036-1037), a Lucanian monk who was in his eighties when he assumed the Papacy and lasted less than a year. Isaac survived Constantine I only by two months, and when Constantine II and Theodorus were faced with the choice of a successor the former turned in a wholly different direction than his father. His Carolingian empress, Mathilde, prevailed upon him to select her confessor, Anselm of Chartres, as Pope Anselm. The choice was unpopular among the nobility and clergy of Rome, who barely tolerated the Italo-Greeks and considered anyone from further afield than Lombardy to be a barbarian, but Constantine II was trading on the considerable weight of his father’s influence and the Romans were convinced to go along with it. Anselm, lacking much talent for rule and surrounded by suspicious citizens and disdainful clergy, ran into obstacles at every turn. Eventually he resorted to importing French priests to fill important curial posts, which only further enraged the Roman clerical elite. One of his newly-appointed cardinal-deacons was beaten half to death by a Roman mob in 1039, and thereafter the pope was practically a man under siege in his own palace. He died in 1040, allegedly of apoplexy, although rumors persisted that the Romans had finally dealt with the interloper by poisoning him.
The emperor’s choice to replace Anselm was Gilbert of Vertus, another of the empress’s circle of expatriate Franks. The Romans were even less pleased with a barbarian pope a second time around, but Gilbert was a more canny politician than his predecessor. At his coronation he selected the acceptably Roman moniker of Benedictus as his regnal name, becoming Pope Benedict V. Rather than importing foreigners to rule the church hierarchy, “Benedict” turned to the local Romans and attempted to drive a wedge between them and the more recent Italo-Greek arrivals. There was, truthfully, not much difference to work with, so the pope increasingly turned to small variations of doctrine which had over the centuries developed between the Latins and those churches more directly supervised by Constantinople. He authored a tract inveighing against the use of leavened bread in the Eucharist, which was used in the Greek rite but not by the Latins, and is the first pope to have introduced the filioque – the phrase “and the son” to the Nicene Creed – which had previously been standard in most of the Carolingian world but had evidently not penetrated far into Italy. Although the many Greek monasteries in Rome and its environs were not closed, Benedict began placing restrictions upon them, including limiting the number of new novices they could add or attempting to enforce changes in the Basilian rite to “Latinize” their practice, even meddling in such trivia as the monastic diet. This predictably created tension within Rome, which was probably Benedict’s purpose, but it was also poorly received in Constantinople. It was either there or among the Italo-Greeks themselves that Benedict acquired one of the more unusual epithets of medieval popes, Benediktos Azymos (“Benedict the Unleavened”).
For Benedict, the invasion of Basil Theodorokanos was heaven-sent. Like Demetrius, he longed to extend Rome’s rule to all of Italy, but Demetrius’ concerns were purely temporal – he does not seem to have begrudged any part of the Greek rite so long as the clerics who followed it in Italy were under his authority. In contrast, Benedict entertained notions of making the Latin rite – and the Frankish version of that rite which he favored – ascendant in all the south. Egidius of Florence gives him a prominent place among those who encouraged Constantine II to “rescue” Salerno, and the pope no doubt hoped that the emperor’s victorious army would take the rest of Byzantine Italy with it.
Alburnus
Constantine’s army probably represented one of the largest Italian forces fielded in decades, including imperial milites, the emperor’s own milites Ungarorum, Roman nobility, and civic militiamen from Tuscany. The dukes of Gaeta, Benevento-Capua, Salerno, and Naples joined the host once Constantine arrived in the south. Contemporaries claimed the force to be as many as fifty thousand strong, but even allowing for expected exaggeration it seems unlikely that a truly large force could have been mustered for what was must have been a hurriedly arranged affair. Every source indicates that this was not a campaign planned in advance, but a prompt reaction to an invasion; Basil seemingly had only a few weeks to besiege Salerno before he was faced with the emperor’s response.
Basil’s army was representative of typical 11th century Byzantine expeditionary forces in that it included a little bit of everything – veterans of Macedonian and Anatolian tagmata as well as Armenians, Paulicians, Italo-Greeks, and southern Lombard auxiliaries serving either as mercenaries or under Cencius of Capua, who possessed some small military following of his own. A 200-strong detachment of the exkoubitoi, an imperial guard cavalry regiment, accompanied Basil, but the varangoi who had followed Maniakes to Sicily were notably absent.
Basil lifted the siege of Salerno and retreated some 30 or 40 miles east in the vicinity of the village of Sicinianum, in the shadow of the Alburni mountains. Greek and Latin chroniclers alike imply or state outright that he was retreating either out of fear of his adversary or a prudent amount of caution given the numerical superiority of his enemy (although even that is disputed), but as mentioned earlier it is unlikely that Basil had been ordered to start a war with Constantine and his retreat may have been as much an act of diplomacy as strategy. He eventually halted at a low hill near a river (probably the Sele).
Although accounts conflict, the most sensible narrative of the battle seems to be that Constantine’s Hungarians skirmished against the defenders with reasonably good effect, but failed to dislodge them from their position. Growing impatient, the emperor ordered a full attack. This succeeded in breaking the Byzantine right flank, which stood halfway up the hill, and threatened to roll up the whole Byzantine line. In in the moment of crisis, however, Basil committed his reserve of cavalry, including the exkoubitoi, who smashed into the victorious but now-tiring Italian cavalrymen who had collapsed the Byzantine right. In the furious melee of cavalry that followed, the Byzantine heavy cavalry proved irresistible; the murderous effect to which they used their iron maces is noted in several sources, both Latin and Greek. The Italian milites fell back into confusion and then routed en masse, and the remaining Italian forces were put to flight. The emperor himself does not seem to have been heavily engaged, for which some chroniclers reproached him for cowardice; he retreated with his Hungarians upon realizing the battle was lost.
Although a wholesale slaughter of the defeated is not mentioned – many of the Italians seem to have escaped – Constantine’s army nevertheless seems to have dissolved in the wake of the Byzantine victory. Duke John V of Naples and Leo Lupellus of Salerno were both captured, while Leo’s older brother Gregory was mortally wounded. With these eminent prisoners, Basil obtained the surrender of Salerno and Naples. Wasting no time, Basil then besieged Capua and defeated an attempt by John Parvus to relieve the city, being defeated and nearly captured at Caserta. Capua fell shortly thereafter to a Byzantine assault.
The effect of the Battle of Alburnus was to roll back a century of Tusculani encroachment into southern Italy. Basil failed to take Benevento, where John Parvus continued to rule a territory of considerable size, and little Gaeta continued to be a Tusculani client state, but the rest of the southern principalities now acknowledged George Maniakes as their sovereign. John V of Naples, who had assisted the Byzantines in Sicily and had not participated in the Apulian invasion of Gregory and Leo, made a seamless transition from Italian to Byzantine client, as did John II of Amalfi who had come to power in a pro-Italian coup but was more than happy to flow with the current. The Gaetan dynasty of Salerno was replaced with a native South-Lombard prince, Gisulf (or Gisulf II), whose name may imply some relation to the old princely family which the Tusculani had displaced, and Leo Lupellus was taken in fetters back to Constantinople.
The Giant Astride the Empire
The victory of Basil Theodorokanos brought the Byzantine Empire to the largest territorial extent it had enjoyed since the Arab conquests. Judged only by a map, the empire seemed ascendant and unassailable. Certainly there are good things to be said for Emperor George Maniakes, who led the empire to considerable military success in his reign, but the giant himself stood on the shoulders of those much taller than him. The state, the army, and the finances which sustained them both had been kept well in order by Basil II, and the inertia which he left his successors continued to carry them for decades.
Despite his reputation as a warrior and a commander, the military accomplishments of George as emperor were fairly modest. His greatest personal accomplishment was the reduction of Serbian Dioclea, whose prince was an enemy of the empire but hardly an existential threat in the manner of the Bulgarian emperors. Pecheneg raids over the Danube, accelerating after 1045, were dealt with diplomatically rather than militarily, to decidedly mixed success. Victory in Italy secured that long-troubled frontier and restored the Lombard clients lost a century prior, but Sicily continued to be a vain exercise. Syracuse, Messina, and a handful of coastal fortresses still held out, but only by the constant exertions of Byzantine generals and the overstretched imperial fleet. It was, on balance, a liability to the empire, and one it could ill afford.
In matters of defense, the policy of Maniakes which was most distinct from his predecessors was the empire’s policy towards the Armenians. Since the reign of Basil II, the emperors had pursued a policy of gradual absorption in which the various independent principalities of the Armenians were made into clients and then annexed one by one into the empire. In modern scholarship this is sometimes portrayed as simple conquest, but there must have been considerable buy-in by the Armenian elites, as the naxarar aristocrats of the Armenian petty kingdoms seem in many cases to have transitioned into Byzantine officials with relatively little fuss.
In terms of defensive strategy, this policy of annexation was reasonable only so long as the Armenians who were now within the empire’s borders remained loyal. After the death of Constantine VIII in 928, however, the new emperor Romanos III Argyros had favored a more hard-line policy towards the non-Chalcedonian churches of the east which the conquests of the Macedonian emperors had returned to Byzantine control. According to legend, while Romanos passed near Antioch in his ill-fated campaign against Edessa in 1030 he had been appalled at the number of “heretical” monks in the mountains nearby (some of which were in turn conscripted into his army). Imperial-supported attempts at converting the Syriacs and Armenians followed, which for the most part succeeded only in creating further estrangement between the Christian communities of the east. George Maniakes returned to the more tolerant policies of the earlier Macedonians (at least with regards to the Armenians – the situation of the Syriacs seems not to have improved much), which has been seen by some as a wise policy of courting the empire’s Armenian subjects. It should be said, however, that there is little evidence that by the time of George’s coup any such religious controversy had grown dire enough to pose a material threat to the empire’s frontier.
George also reversed the aggressive stance of his predecessors towards the independent Armenians, in particular Gagik II, the Bagratuni king of Ani. Gagik had only taken the throne recently, either in the reign of Michael V or late in the reign of his uncle, but had already fought off a Byzantine attempt to take his kingdom. Soon after the accession of George Maniakes, Gagik sent out an olive branch to the new emperor, offering to be his vassal (or “ally,” depending on the source). George’s acceptance was signified by his bestowal of the high court title of kouropalates upon Gagik. This restored relationship bore immediate fruit: untroubled by the threat of Byzantine invasion, Gagik attacked the Shaddadid emir of Ganja Ali ibn Musa in 1046 with support from the Byzantine governor of Vaspurakan and reconquered Dvin, which had been lost to the Armenian kings since 1022.
The emperor’s approach to the Armenian issue seems a likely product of his familiarity with both individual Armenians and the military importance of the Armenians in the empire’s defense. He had served in various command billets in the east, at Telouch, Mesopotamia, Edessa, and Vaspurakan, all of which had Armenian majorities or at least sizable Armenian populations. Armenian soldiers were present in his Sicilian expedition, including capable officers like Basil Theodorokanos. Not all, however, shared his views, and the religious establishment in particular was at best wary of the emperor’s coddling of the Armenians and other divergent sects.
Indeed, by the time of the Battle of Alburnus the emperor was well on his way towards alienating nearly every base of power in the empire. He had already embittered the mob against him with his handling of Zoe and the Varangian massacre in the capital, but more serious was his loss of support among the aristocracy. The cost of the imperial military continued to grow in George’s reign; any savings by passing on responsibility for defense to Gagik in the east was easily washed away by the cost of repeated expeditions to Italy and Sicily – prestige projects which did little to strengthen the state – on top of the already immense costs of defending the empire’s Danubian and Armenian borders against the Pechenegs and Seljuks, respectively.
More worryingly, the revenues of the empire were not only failing to keep up, but falling more and more behind. Basil II had kept a firm hand on the fiscal tiller, raising taxes and eliminating exemptions and privileges for the dynatoi and the church alike while lifting burdens from the farmers who supplied him with his army. That uncompromising probity had been swiftly abandoned by Constantine VIII and revenue policy had only grown more lax since then. Realizing the dire situation the treasury was in, George attempted beginning around 1046 to claw back the privileges and possessions which the aristocracy had accumulated over the past two decades, but in doing so he only provoked resentment. An aristocratic revolt in Anatolia broke out in 1044, led in part by the emperor’s old rival Romanos Skleros; as much motivated by personal animus as imperial policy, this rebellion was quickly crushed, but that did nothing to mitigate the growing hostility of the aristocracy towards the emperor.
The Last Macedonian
What George lacked most critically was legitimacy. George Maniakes is often compared to the earlier non-dynastic “general-emperors” of the Macedonian period – Romanos Lekapenos, Nikephoros II Phokas, and John Tzimiskes – but all of those claimed some formal association with the dynasty, either as the legitimate emperor’s stepfather (Phokas, Tzimiskes) or father-in-law (Lekapenos). Romanos III and Michael IV, maligned as they often are, were still married to the empress Zoe. His farcical “adoption” by Zoe aside, however, George Maniakes had ultimately nothing behind him but force. The lesson that his coronation taught to the dynatoi was that with ambition, ruthlessness, and an army, a disgruntled general of no extraordinary pedigree could aspire to the throne.
In 1047, the Seljuk prince Qutalmish appeared in Ganja with an army, possibly summoned by the Shaddadid emir who had embraced Seljuk suzerainty after his ejection from Dvin by King Gagik II. Despite valiant resistance by the Armenians, Dvin was recaptured and much of Gagik’s eastern kingdom was laid waste. In the following year, bolstered by a large force of migratory Oghuz Turks who had come from Transoxiana in search of food and pasture, Qutalmish returned alongside Ibrahim Yinal, the half-brother of the Seljuk ruler Tughril, and led a raid by way of Vaspurakan which nearly reached the Black Sea. The devastation was significant, but while withdrawing towards Armenia with their plunder the Turks were attacked by the Armenian sparapet Grigor Pahlavuni and the strategos of Vaspurakan Basil Apokapes (himself of Armenian descent). The ensuing Battle of Vaghashkert was the first serious engagement between the Byzantines and Seljuks and resulted in a clear defeat of the invaders, who were forced to leave much of their plunder behind in their flight. Nevertheless, the Seljuks had proven themselves capable of piercing the empire’s eastern defenses with little trouble, and they had no shortage of Oghuz tribesmen hungry for land and plunder.
The same year saw the death of Empress Zoe at the age of 69. Even from her convent she had constituted a threat, and with her passing the emperor could breathe a little easier. Her younger sister, Theodora, still lived, but Theodora had never married, had never exercised power, and did not seem to pose much of a threat. At the age of 50, George still had many potential years of rule before him, but was already looking ahead. Freed from deference to the Macedonians after the death of Zoe and buoyed by the recent success of his armies at Alburnus and Vaghashkert, George chose the following year, 1048, as the proper time to crown his adult son Theophylact Maniakes as his co-emperor and heir.
The emperor had badly misjudged his position. Those that had tolerated his overthrow of the pitiful Michael V had not done so imagining that he would then attempt to establish his own familial dynasty; it seemed like a gross display of arrogance. The centers of power which had already been waning in their support for the emperor now completely turned against him. He had alienated the aristocracy with his over-eager attempts to balance the imperial budget on their backs, he had alienated the court by his contempt for ceremony and his slashing of courtiers’ salaries (a cost-cutting measure), he had alienated the Church by his pandering to eastern “heretics,” and he had alienated the Constantinopolitans by his butchery. Lacking much in the way of personal diplomacy, he intimidated courtiers and roared at officials who displeased him; his great and terrifying visage gave him the respect of his soldiers but only evoked fear and resentment from the court.
In September of 1048, his enemies moved against him. While hawking with his son near Thessalonica, his party was attacked by armed men dispatched by the Macedonian nobleman Leo Tornikios, who had been actively conspiring with George’s enemies at court. The emperor had made the fatal error of leaving his Varangians at the capital, and George’s guards present with him were either overwhelmed or themselves party to the conspiracy. Michael Psellos, who memorably described George as a superhuman giant, claims that the emperor was shot by several arrows to no apparent effect, and even when wounded and surrounded by armed men managed to kill four of his assailants with his bare hands before succumbing to their swords.
Theophylact escaped the ambush and fled to the capital. His support within the city, however, did not extend far beyond the Varangians, and it was clear that his rule would be short-lived. Yet although George’s opponents had been united in their opposition to him, there was no consensus as to who would replace him. Leo obviously hoped he would be that person, but his co-conspirators in the court were not a controlling majority. With a very serious chance of civil war on the horizon, the high officials in the capital pressured Theophylact to abdicate in favor of the last Macedonian, Theodora. Theophylact, seeing no other option, bowed to their will. The empress was taken from a convent to a coronation, while Theophylact replaced her in exile.
Feeling betrayed, Leo decided to seize the throne anyway, and marched on the capital with his soldiers. Now, however, George’s domestic of the east, Isaac Komenos, arrived on the scene accompanied by a tagmatic army; summoned by Theophylact, he had arrived too late to save the career of George’s son, but faced with a choice between Leo or Theodora he elected to serve the latter. Isaac crossed over to Thrace and decisively defeated the rebels near Adrianople. Leo Tornikios fled, but in one of history’s finest examples of poetic justice he was captured by the Varangian Guard, who avenged the murder of their esteemed Gyrgir by torturing him to death.[A]
Despite his dynastic pretensions, George thus shared the fate of Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes as a militarily effective but short-lived caretaker for the Macedonian dynasty. Although reviled by many contemporaries, his later reputation was rescued by the diligent effort of Michael Psellos, who without excusing George’s faults promoted him as the epitome of bravery and martial vigor at a time when the empire had great need of men with such attributes. He was perhaps most beloved by the Armenians, whose medieval historians dubbed him Gevorg Hzor (“George the Mighty”).[3]
Sole Emperor
Constantine had little time to recover from his military setback, for in March of 1048 he abruptly died of a fever. His death at 43 was totally unexpected; later writers blamed his luxuriant lifestyle (and a few darkly whispered of poison, the go-to explanation when a seemingly healthy ruler dropped dead). Fortunately for the realm, the succession was once again straightforward. There was, after all, already an emperor, Constantine’s younger brother Theodorus. Mathilde of France, the widowed empress, had borne Constantine two daughters and no sons, and both daughters were as yet unmarried.
Theodorus, a shy and retiring man who had never sought glory or influence, was now thrust into power as the sole ruler of Italy and emperor of the Latin world. Despite the sudden death of Constantine and the debacle of Alburnus, the fact of Tusculani rule did not seem to be seriously imperiled; by now the family had ruled Italy for a century and there did not seem to be any serious alternatives. While on the rise, the new class of imperial milites and bureaucrats could not produce a man from their ranks who could credibly aspire to the imperial throne. An absence of pretenders, however, did not mean an absence of conflict. Theodorus’ reign was troubled from the outset, pulled in different directions by several competing factions: the judicial-bureaucratic syndicate of the calamarius Milus Olearius, the aristocratic old guard represented by the Roman nobility and some northern senatorial families, and a “Frankish” faction emerging around an alliance between Empress Mathilde and Pope Benedict.
Map of Italy and its environs in 1048 after the death of Constantine II
Next Time: Overthrow[B]
Footnotes (In Character)
[1] This is the son of Crescentius the Younger, who is somewhat confusingly called Crescentius II by some and Crescentius III by others, as he was the third Crescentius of the family but only the second to rule as Duke of Benevento.
[2] Over the course of the 11th century, “Cencius” seems to have largely displaced “Crescentius” as a given name. The first evidence of this early in the century is in the vicinity of Rome, presumably among people unrelated to the Crescentii, but by the middle of the century even the Crescentii dukes are referred to in charters more often as Cencius than Crescentius. Cencius, son of Theophylact, is occasionally known as Crescentius IV or Cencius IV for this reason (or Cencius/Crescentius III of Benevento).
[3]A sad postscript to George’s fall is the fate of his son Theophylact. After his abdication, George’s son went into exile on the “Prince’s Islands” near the Bosporus. Theodora had originally promised him amnesty, perhaps solely to keep the Varangians pacified during the transition of power, but within a few months of her accession she reneged on her agreement. Theophylact Maniakes was blinded and castrated, and vanishes from the historical record thereafter.
Timeline Notes (Out of Character)
[A] Some people just have no luck in any timeline. Both IOTL and ITTL, Leo Tornikios rebels for the throne and gets killed in the attempt.
[B] The present update will be the last one of 2016. As an added Christmas bonus, I've set up threadmarks throughout the thread, so you can now easily navigate between all chapters in the thread (and a few non-chapter posts of importance). See you next year!
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Shame that George Maniakes couldn't keep the throne. It seemed that he could at least ensure the Empire didn't go completely belly up.
Once again Basil II, why didn't you produce an heir and thus force the last major Macedonian rulers to be incompetents? Why?
Also it's nice to have threadmarks now available for AH.com. It'll make timeline reading easier than it was before.
Once again Basil II, why didn't you produce an heir and thus force the last major Macedonian rulers to be incompetents? Why?
Also it's nice to have threadmarks now available for AH.com. It'll make timeline reading easier than it was before.
At the risk of derailing the thread, every time I read some comment like this, I feel obligated to note that competence is not genetic, a fact the House of Valois serve as an excellent example of. Further, as the one competent father/son pair among that whole lot demonstrate, an able father and son are no guarantee of an easy kingdom, even if they will probably make things... less chaotic.
Deleted member 67076
Wonder if Isaac will take the throne next. Hes a solid pick: from a good family, is an established general with plenty of connections and experience, and was competent enough to routinely crush rebels.
Now comes the hard part anyway given the Turks have no shown up. Damned nomads always have to ruin everything. Still, with the buffer of Armenia and the eastern army not gutted things should be easier. Of course, theres still the problem of dealing with wave after wave of migratory pressures. (Always wondered what's up with that; how steppe entities can just keep throwing waves of men seemingly without exhuasting themselves?)
Now comes the hard part anyway given the Turks have no shown up. Damned nomads always have to ruin everything. Still, with the buffer of Armenia and the eastern army not gutted things should be easier. Of course, theres still the problem of dealing with wave after wave of migratory pressures. (Always wondered what's up with that; how steppe entities can just keep throwing waves of men seemingly without exhuasting themselves?)
Well, they can't...
The trick though is that they can mobilize much higher proportions of their society, and settled peoples generally don't take over their base of power after defeating them - thus a new group quickly fills any vacuum left.
Tldr: steppes OP. Plz nerf.