Chapter Two: Taming the Beast
"The Emperor met with the notable men of the town, and was much aggrieved by their insolence, for they refused to treat him with the respect he considered to be rightfully his": The Chronicle of Ignatios of Phaselis
Any rebel army, in normal circumstances, would have made moves to seize the capital (i)- but the allies of Rōmanos Skleros were cautious, abundantly aware that the Balkans were generally the base of other landowners, who might well take opposing sides in the civil war. Rōmanos Diogenēs, in particular, was thought a potential problem, and this was confirmed to the rebels when he moved south from Preslav and entered Constantinople. With him he brought Anna Dalassēnē, the wife of the Caesar John, and her children, whom he had removed with some force from their home at Adrianople. For now, Diogenēs occupied the City, and refused to accept ambassadors from the rebels. Probably eagerly awaiting the mutual destruction of both of the armies, the Katepánō (ii) had much to gain.
The chance of a quick victory thus cut off, the rebels began to gather an army, largely made up of those Turcoman mercenaries (iii) that the Doux of Antioch Kekavmenos Katakalon had long cultivated cosy relations with. The Turks, who flooded to the rebel standard, were not particularly interested in the triumph of an infidel civil war in the land of Rūm (iv) being promised lands in the fertile Theme of Thrakesion (v). In addition to this, the rebels could count on the support of the majority of the Anatolian Tagmata (vi), and from their own tenant-peasants, whom were armed at their own expense. It seems likely that the pretender Skleros had at least fifty thousand troops at his disposal by end of summer 1063.
The Emperor, on the other hand, was in a miserable situation. In the Cappadocian highlands he was isolated, and desperately short of allies. The ragbag army that he had gathered together was largely composed of inadequate troops from the Themata of Charsianon and Cappadocia (vii), whose rundown had began decades before (viii). At length, he was able to add to this a motley force of Armenians, pulled from their bases along the Euphrates frontier (ix), leaving it perilously undermanned. For now, this was the least of the Emperor’s concerns.
Back in Constantinople, Rōmanos Diogenēs had begun very slowly to collect reinforcements for the Emperor’s men, hoping to tread the narrow line between openly wishing for Isaac’s defeat and appearing a loyal and steadfast ally. In September, he sent out a detachment of some 2000 armoured Western horsemen, largely Normans (x), across Anatolia towards the Imperial camp. Isaac, unwilling to drag the issue out much further, set off west towards the capital, hoping to slip past the rebels and make a break for Europe. But Skleros and his allies were too quick for the Emperor, and cornered him near the small town of Claudiopolis in Bithynia. Battle was joined on the morning of September 27th, 1063.
The Battle of Claudiopolis was one of the most significant of the eleventh century in the Roman Empire, cementing, as it did, the rule of the house of Komnenos for the next century and a half. Nonetheless, it remains shrouded in a veil of mystery. Michael Psellos claims, rather improbably, to have been present on the battlefield and appointed overall commander by Isaac, but this seems deeply unlikely (xi). Ignatios of Phaselis, meanwhile, simply tries to pretend Claudiopolis never happened. It falls to lesser historians (xii) of the day to piece together what happened. It seems that the Armenians, in a display of typical barbarity of the frontier, decided to dip their arrows in pigs’ blood before launching them at the Islamic Turks of the rebel army. Stunned and disgusted, the Turks seem to have lost all discipline, and scattered, to be pursued and butchered by the Imperial Normans (xiii). A stroke of bad luck saw the rebels’ senior commander, Kekavmenos Katakalon, struck down by an arrow, and killed. The rest was down to Isaac, who, showing the military talent that had been so absent against the Pechenegs four years before, was able to lure the lumbering enemy army into rough terrain where his lightly armed frontier troops could dispatch them. It was a crushing victory for Isaac.
For the feudal aristocrats of Anatolia, the Battle of Claudiopolis was an unmitigated disaster. Isaac was merciless- all but the lowliest rebel soldiers were sentenced to death (xiv), and the leaders of the rebellion were mutilated, blinded, and then burned at the stake, a rare treatment generally only meted out to heretics (xv). For weeks afterward, according to Psellos, the town of Claudiopolis was filled with the stench of death. It was, however, a price worth paying. Though the town’s harvest was wrecked by the battle and its aftermath, it afterward became one of the major centres of Komnenid Anatolia, being given taxation privileges and seeing an extensive building programme. Isaac was very eager to stamp the site of his victory with an appropriately Imperial set of honours.
The way to Constantinople now lay open to Isaac, who unsurprisingly seized the opportunity, and marched at all haste to his capital. For Rōmanos Diogenēs, it was a disappointment, but not a disaster: his troops had proved loyal enough, and he had his eye on yet more honours from a grateful Emperor. Isaac, for his part, sent messages ahead to Diogenēs, assuring him of his goodwill (xvi). It seemed all would be well. Here, though, fate intervened. Diogenēs, by sweeping down and taking command of the capital, had made a fatal error. He had left himself open to the machinations of Constantinople’s most experienced political operators.
Michael Psellos emerged from his monastery shortly before the Battle of Claudiopolis, and immediately began to plot the downfall of Diogenēs (xvii). Eager to return himself to Imperial favour, he saw the upstart Diogenēs- the last significant Anatolian aristocrat still alive- as the last obstacle in his path. Psellos therefore hastened to meet the Emperor at Chalcedon (xviii), bearing news of a scandalous plot by Diogenēs to deny Isaac access to the capital (xix). Isaac himself may have had his doubts, but after the fears of the summer, he took no chances, and ordered a trial. Diogenēs was arrested, and tried by Psellos’ court ally Constantine Doukas. As with Michael Keroularios five years before, the trial never ended. Diogenēs was attacked by a raging mob, and lynched. Contemporaries reported that the ringleader of the rioters was John Doukas, Constantine’s brother. It does not seem unlikely. This strange, sordid little coup tied up the last loose end of the early part of Isaac’s reign. The long struggle between bureaucracy and aristocracy had ended in victory for the bureaucrats (xx).
Isaac therefore returned to his capital in triumph. With him, he brought several thousand Turkish captives, whom he pardoned in a show of magnanimity. The Turks were led into Hagia Sophia, baptised, and married off to various women of Constantinople- largely the same peasant refugees who had fled to the capital to avoid the Turks in the first place (xxi). That done, they were dispersed around the Balkans, or sent westward to Italy, to join Isaac’s brother, the Caesar John. Peace might have descended on the Anatolian and Balkan provinces of Isaac’s Empire- but across the Adriatic, the war was just beginning.
The tenure of John Komnenos as Katepánō of Italy is a curious mixture of triumph and tragedy, as his war against the Normans ebbed and flowed. For the early part of the 1060s, he had been in the ascendancy, evicting a Norman garrison from Tarantas in 1061, but this was swiftly re-established. In 1062, he successfully defended Krotōn from attack, and at the end of the following year even managed to regain Tirenon (xxii), in northern Apulia. Hereafter, though, things began to go downhill once again. His eldest son, Manuel, was badly wounded at the siege of Tirenon, and succumbed early in 1064. Distracted by grief, the Caesar did little to prevent the Normans from first capturing Messina, and then swiftly moving on to seize Syracuse. In 1065, he attempted to attack Rhegion, to cut off the Sicilian adventures from their compatriots in Kalabria, but suffered a humiliating defeat when his largely Flemish army (xxiii) deserted him. The Caesar thereafter sank into a state of depression, and effective command of the Italian war effort was taken over by his second son Isaac, who, at the age of just seventeen, was able to decisively defeat a Norman force at Hyria (xxiv). By the end of the decade, the Italian situation was at an effective stalemate. Imperial control was reduced to the tip of Apulia, plus a few fortified coastal strongholds elsewhere- but it remained alive (xxv).
The reason for the Italian impasse can very largely be blamed upon Isaac Komnenos himself, who, after celebrating Christmas in Constantinople, once more set out for Anatolia. Though he had won the civil war, he was acutely aware that an equally formidable foe still remained- the newly crowned Saljūq Sultan Muhammad bin Da'ud Chaghri, better known to us by his nickname of “Alb Arslān”, the heroic lion. Arslān had come to the throne in a coup against his uncle Toghrïl Beg, and was in immediate need of a quick victory to consolidate his grip on the throne, which was eagerly contested by another of his uncles, Kutalmish (xxvi). In the past, the Saljūqs had had no particular quarrel with the Empire- indeed; they had actively sought an alliance against the heretical Fatimid Caliphs in Cairo. Isaac’s actions against the Turcomans in the rebel army of Skleros provided Arslān with an ideal excuse for violence. He argued that the idea of the Armenians of Isaac’s army to attack the rebellious Turks with pig blood was an act of hostility against all Islam, made even worse by the forced conversion of the survivors of the battle. He duly marched west and seized the isolated city of Edessa, crucifying its Armenian governor Philaretos Brakhamios (xxvii).
Isaac moved swiftly. Ignoring the advice of Constantine Doukas, the Emperor raised the remains of those same Tagmatic armies that he had defeated the previous autumn at Claudiopolis, and promised a full pardon to all those who fought with distinction under his banner against the infidel (xxviii). The professional soldiers, eager for a fresh start, generally agreed; though a couple of dissenters had to be blinded to encourage them (xxix). Doukas contributed several thousand soldiers of the western Tagmata, which Isaac had transferred to his control following the death of Rōmanos Diogenēs. Finally, for the first time, the Emperor brought with him on campaign two units of his palace guard, the Noumeroi and the famous axe wielding Scandinavians of the Varangoi (xxx).
Intimidated by this formidable force, Arslān retreated from the flat plains of Edessa, but kept up the attack. During the summer, he concentrated on spreading terror and vengeance amongst the primarily Armenian population of the East. Finally, the two armies met at Manzikert, one of the furthest Eastern outposts of the Empire in the Duchy of Vaspourakan. The battle, for all its build-up, was indecisive, and by the sixth day of skirmishing, the Sultan offered the Emperor a truce in exchange for a transfer of prisoners, and subsidies with which to attack the Fatimids in the Levant and Egypt. After some haggling the Emperor agreed to the deal, and, flush with cash from the confiscated estates of dead Roman aristocrats (xxxi), Arslān turned southwards. Basing his forces at the Imperial vassal of Aleppo, he quickly captured Damascus, which became his regional centre of power. In 1066, he marched on Jerusalem, and also captured that city, but here fate intervened. Marching into the city, he was assaulted by a Shiite fanatic who drew his dagger and rushed upon the Sultan. Arslān, who took great pride in his reputation as the foremost archer of his time, motioned to his guards not to interfere and drew his bow, but his foot slipped, the arrow glanced aside and he received the assassin's dagger in his breast (xxxii). Alb Arslān died young, as a man who could have changed the face of the world forever, but ended up as a mere footnote on the relentless march of history.
As for the Emperor Isaac, he appeared triumphant on all fronts. Shortly after the death of Arslān, he finally returned to Constantinople, where, together with Michael Psellos, he began a second attack on the excess wealth of the Church, using its hoards of bullion to begin to deal with the by now highly devalued Nomisma. It seems it was this reorganisation that finally earned him the undying hostility of the writer Ignatios of Phaselis- for by 1070 he had seized thousands of acres of monastic property, and liberally dispersed it amongst his own supporters, as well as the urban poor of Constantinople (xxxiii). Church authorities could howl in protest all they liked, but it was all too late. Skill and luck had combined to eliminate all potential threats to Isaac’s throne. He was secure at last.
The last years of Isaac’s reign were marked by the issue of the succession. His brother, the Caesar John, had died in 1073, and it had appeared obvious to all that the obvious heir was John’s second son, the Italian Katepánō Isaac Komnenos the Younger. But the Emperor hesitated to name his namesake as his successor, perhaps for the simple reason that he had no desire to remove the young general from the delicate Italian balance of power. Instead, he turned more and more to another of his nephews- the eighteen year old Alexios (xxxiv). It rapidly became clear to the ailing Emperor that it would be Alexios, not Isaac the Younger, who hold the support of the court bureaucracy led by Michael Psellos, whose power would be crucial in the difficult early months of a new reign.
In January 1075, the Emperor Isaac Komnenos made his decision. Alexios was to be married to Euphemia, the daughter of Michael Psellos (xxxv). Both Alexios and Psellos would be made co-Emperor with Isaac for the rest of his reign, with Alexios theoretically occupying the senior position, and the powerful Doukas family sidelined entirely. From Italy, Isaac the Younger made no overt complaints about the accession of his younger brother, and opted instead to watch and wait. Eventually, his time would come. For now, though, the Empire looked forward to a glittering new age of power and prosperity, due in no small part to Isaac’s relentless hard work. The future looked bright: and indeed it was.
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i. The capture of Constantinople was generally (though not always) "game over" in any Byzantine civil war.
ii. Remember from the last update- a Catapan is a senior millitary commander usually based in a region, rather than an individual theme.
iii. Again, a reminder, these are nomadic warriors, not part of the centralised Sultanate, whom they attack as often as they attack the Byzantines.
iv. This is the name used in Islam when referring to the Roman Empire.
v. See Ares' new map, this was one of the wealthiest areas of Anatolia, and remain under reasonably firm Imperial control until the close of the thirteenth century.
vi. Apologies for all these patronising reminders, they will cease in Chapter Three. The Tagmata are the professional armies of the eleventh century Byzantine Empire.
vii. See the map! These areas of eastern Anatolia were traditionally marcher lands, where cavalry was raised, and cattle ranching was the main economic activity.
viii. Under Basil II, to be precise, who had cut funding for the majority of the Themata.
ix. The Euphrates was largely governed by Armenians in Imperial service, as was the majority of the reconquered East. The further Imperial control penetrated into Armenia itself, the more Armenians came down from the highlands to win their fortune in the service of the Emperor.
x. Despite their hostile relations, the Byzantines and Normans were historically very happy to fight alongside each other for a price.
xi. OTL's Michael Psellos likes to present himself as having attended the vast majority of historical events of his life- I'm just continuing the trend here. Psellos' boastfullness can be irksome, but I also find it rather endearing.
xii. To be precise, a couple of monkish chroniclers, and an extremelly pro-Komnenid ATL historian who you'll meet soon enough.
xiii. Coming into contact with pigs' blood when fighting the Infidel is not actually forbidden in Islam- but it seems likely that the devout and fanatical Turkomans would have been disgusted by the experience, and seriously lost their tempers.
xiv. Whether this was actually carried out is debatable- see footnote 28.
xv. Isaac is here making a new point- that rebellion against the Emperor, as God's representative on Earth, is a crime against God. It won't prevent rebellion in future, but, nearly three hundred years after Claudiopolis, it will set something of a precedent to a later Emperor.
xvi. These seem to have been quite sincere.
xvii. Psellos claims to have quit his monastery before Claudiopolis, and set out to meet the Emperor in Anatolia, but he would have had to have travelled extremelly rapidly across Anatolia to get to Claudiopolis, back to Constantinople, and out to Chalcedon in time. It also begs the question of why this determined survivor chose to stick by the apparently doomed Isaac. All in all, it seems like a bit of a tall tale from Psellos, who as you will see, is writing under very different circumstances in the early 1080s.
xviii. Chalcedon is the small town across the straits from Constantinople.
xix. Very likely to be a fabrication- it's hard to see what advantage Diogenes could possibly have gained from behaving in this manner.
xx. Albeit the bureaucrats succesfully backing the right Anatolian aristocrat who could then flatten all the others for them. It's all turned out most rosily for Psellos and the Doukai.
xxi. These were becoming a major problem, causing crime and general tension with the city's own poor population, who saw rural peasants as little more than barbarians.
xxii. Modern OTL Trani, in northern Apulia.
xxiii. Besides the Normans, the Flemings were the most important group of western mercenaries in Imperial service in the eleventh century.
xxiv. Modern OTL Oria, in southern Apulia, at the heart of the "heel" of Italy.
xxv. Not great, but better than OTL's 1070, when the Byzantines controlled little more than Bari.
xxvi. IOTL, it was Kutalmish that overthrew the previous Sultan, but here, his nephew moves more quickly, and is able to become Sultan some six months earlier than IOTL.
xxvii. IOTL, he was able to establish a semi-independent state after Manzikert that would form the nucleus of Cilician Armenia- a rather competent guy, all in all. Here, though, it's all cut short very quickly.
xxviii. See footnote 14. If Isaac really granted a mass pardon, it seems likely that the majority of the enemy troops at Claudiopolis survived to be pardoned.
xxix. Naturally. This is Byzantium, we can't have things going too well without a blinding or two.
xxx. The famous Varangian Guard.
xxxi. A lot of the lack of problems of the latter part of Isaac's reign can be attributed to the fact that he was flushed with cash from the confiscated estates of various rebels after 1063. The Emperor was therefore in all probability quite capable of giving a large personal loan to the Sultan.
xxxii. This is the same death as OTL- but six years earlier, and in a different place.
xxxiii. As with the Turkish marriages, this is probably to move out a lot of the population, and settle them away from the City, to ease the strain.
xxxiv. Yes, this is the famous Alexios Komnenos. He's been in Constantinople since childhood, and has been brought up as a scholarly pupil of Psellos, rather than as the teenage general of OTL.
xxxv. A made up name for a real character, whose name I can't find anywhere.
