Part 8: The Lost Decade
Part 8: The Lost Decade
Justinian II had only a single child, a son named Maurice who was born in 639. The Emperor didn’t even see the boy until he was three, and had barely spent time with him, or Theodora, the Empress he had married in 638. While it was likely that Justinian would have invested Maurice with Imperial titles eventually, he had not done so when plague struck the Emperor dead.
The boy was however declared Augustus in 643. Obviously a four year old cannot hold real authority, so a regency council was set up, headed by Gregorious, the cousing of the last three Emperors, and the brother of the briefly mentioned first wife of Constantine IV, and the Exarch of Africa. He left the post to a trusted general named Gennadius and departed for Constantinople as soon as he got the news.
Gregorious took charge rapidly, and set about securing his position immediately. Theodora was exiled to convent in Italy, and many of Justinian’s former ministers were soon gone as well. In their place men from Africa were appointed, angering many inside the capital.
Gregorious was not interested in being a mere regent however, and had himself declared Caesar. Soon afterward he was crowned Augustus. In early 644 his wife bore a son, and soon afterward Maurice was found dead. Messages went out that Gregorious was now the sole Emperor. He did not get the answers he expected, which is to say complete and immediate fealty. Gregorious’s regime had been viewed with suspicion by the Danube commanders, and he had sent no support the army of Anatolia.
Their generals, Thomas the Armenian and George of Amorium were hailed Augustus by their troops, and were soon marching on Constantinople. I mentioned last time that of the five old field armies only three remained. One was posted in Egypt to defend against further Arab attack, one was kept near the capital, and one was posted to Anatolia. Thus, the army marching from the East was the full field army of Anatolia, while the Danube troops were the local defense forces, and their march south would not go unnoticed by the Bulgars.
Thomas the Armenian naturally arrived first, setting up camp outside of the city in 645. He rapidly set about putting his soldiers in contact with city guards, and after a few days of negotiations one of the guards took a bribe, allowing Danube soldiers into the city, where they entered the palace and murdered Gregorious. Thomas was declared Augustus on April 3, 645.
Immediately however problems emerged. The Imperial field army had been across the Hellespont in Honorius when the Danube forces arrived, and had not moved quickly enough to confront Thomas. But they refused to recognize the new Emperor, instead elevating their own commander, John of Lazika to Augustus.
John was a friend to the man in command of the Imperial fleet, and at night in June 645 Admiral Manuel ferried five thousand men across the Hellespont and into the capital. Thomas was murdered in the palace and John was recognized as Augustus the next day. Note, that for the purposes of numbering our Emperors only one of these men will ever be recognized as Emperor.
John was in place less than a month when George’s army arrived inside Bithynia. He personally led the battle that followed as the two Imperial armies clashed. We know little of the battle that followed, only that at the end John was dead, his army had surrendered, and George was declared Emperor.
George was in place all of six months when word arrived that the Egyptian army was in revolt. The general of the Egyptian Army, Cyrus of Rhodes had been a partisan of Gregorious, and so declared himself in revolt when word of his assassination came. George gathered his men and prepared to sail to Egypt, but Admiral Manuel despised him, and so when George tried to sail away the Admiral had a heavy iron ball tied to the Emperor, and threw him into the Aegean.
Cyrus arrived in Constantinople in 646 and had himself declared Augustus.
For a time the Romans hoped normality was returning, and Cyrus reigned for a full year. But his time in Egypt had left him a firm believer in the compromise religion which still was in place in the province. When he tried to change the liturgy of the Chalcedonian services in Constantinople the Archbishop had him excommunicated. Cyrus’s bodyguards were all Chalcedonians, and when the mob came for him they did not resist. Cyrus was murdered on June 7, 647.
In his place was elevated a man named Probus, about whom we know very little. He doesn’t appear to have held any major commands, nor to have made much of a name for himself in any other field. It doesn’t matter however as Probus would be dead of fever sixteen weeks after being declared Augustus.
His death left a power vacuum at the top. Five men had now worn the purple in less then three years, and none of them had lasted very long. Their supporters and family were each purged in turn, and with the three field armies now all having had their commanders take the purple only to lose it there were few senior men ready to fill the role of Emperor. One finally emerged when Isaac, the Exarch of Ravenna declared himself Augustus, and departed Italy in July 647. Word of his elevation was met by the new commanders of the field armies, and once again the Roman people settled down for infighting. Isaac arrived at the capital with twenty-five thousand men raised from Italy, mostly mercenaries from Beneventum and the Exarchate troops. He met the forces of the Anatolian field army in August, and defeated them, then did the same to the Capital’s army.
Seeing the way the winds were blowing the Egyptian army murdered their commander and sent his head to Constantinople as a show of loyalty.
Isaac was officially recognized as Augustus on August 22, 647. The new Emperor rapidly set about consolidating his position, putting able men in charge of the armies and sending them back out to their posts. He also organized a planned attack on the Caliphate when word came that the Arabs had besieged Nisibis and Dara while Imperial attention was focused inward. For eighteen months Isaac set about preparing a new dynasty. But then in March 649 he had a stroke, and died.
His son, also named Isaac was elevated to the purple, and he tried to continue his father’s plans. Inn 650 he led an army into Armenia, and then down and toward the two fortresses, which by now had been forced to surrender. The Battle of Dara was fought on May 8, 650. It was a crushing Roman defeat. Isaac was completely inexperienced, and lost nearly fifteen thousand men against the hardened Arab army. The Romans fled back into the mountains, the Arabs on their heels. Isaac was murdered by his own officers two days later.
Using local knowledge the new Roman commander, Gregoryy of Armenia managed to put together a smaller army and inflict a defeat on the pursuing Arab forces, driving them out of the mountains once again. He did not risk another campaign south however. For now the Romans would have to wait and watch for signs of weakness. For his victory Gregory was declared Augustus by his men on June 3, 650. He returned to Constantinople, but rumors had filtered back that he had actually deserted Isaac on the field, and that was why the Emperor had lost.
This was not idle speculation either. You will recall it was exactly what had gotten Heraklanos into power, and a second such rumor set the city on edge. Gregory was murdered by a plot of the city’s elite on February 25, 651.
Immediately a single man put his foot down. Manuel had been the key force behind the murder of at least two usurpers, and had had enough. The admiral of the Imperial fleet already controlled access to the city, and used his naval power to seize the city itself on February 28, 651. Soon afterward he was declared Augustus, and we will now refer to him as Manuel I.
The civil war was not over however. News of Isaacs death had seen the Duke of Benevento declare himself independent and try to invade Calabria. Manuel gathered the remains of the Anatolian and Constantinople field armies and fused them into a single army, the Tagmata, before sailing to Italy. The Duke’s army was beaten in a battle near Reggio, and the man fled back to Beneventum, the Emperor following. Over the next three months the duchy was steadily overcome by Imperial forces, and the duke was besieged.
Hoping to spare themselves the Emperor’s wrath the population of Beneventum mutinied, opening the gates for the Roman army. Manuel’s forces stormed the city, sacking it and capturing the Duke and his family, who were all murdered. Key to Manuel’s victory had been forces sent by the Duke of Spoleto, who was happy to stab his fellow Lombard duke in the back. As a reward he was given control of most of Campania. The former territory of Beneventum was organized into new provinces, and due to the now lack of foreign threat to Italy Manuel took the momentous step of simply abolishing the Exarchate of Ravenna completely. Italy would be reformed into two new Diocese, one in the north with headquarters at Ravenna, and one in the south headquartered at Taretum.
Finally, in May 654 Manuel sailed back to the capital to properly begin his reign as the sole master of the Roman Empire. He would be the first Emperor of the Thalassan dynasty, which would rule more or less interrupted for the next six hundred years. The longest of any dynasty in the history of the Empire. Along the way it would preside over victories, defeats, the lowest lows, and some of the highest highs in Roman history.
The decade of civil war was from any metric, a complete disaster for the Empire. Thousands of soldiers were dead. The treasury, already depleted by the decade before, was now completely empty. Manuel, upon returning to the city to take stock of his finances is said to have commented that if he had to rub two coins together to keep warm he would instead have to die of cold.
The Arabs were once again on the offensive in the East, with raids having smashed through the Cilician Gate while the soldiers were away, and more raids having penetrated Egypt in the south. In the North the Bulgars had crossed the Danube and looted and burned their way across Moesia.
The new Emperor had a lot of work to do if he was to stop the ongoing collapse.
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