The Apogee - Byzantium 02

by John Julius Norwich

  The news spread fast. Minutes after the deed was done Tzimisces's men were out in the snow-covered streets of the city, shouting 'John, Augustus and Emperor of the Romans!' at every corner; they were soon joined by others, led by the Chamberlain Basil himself, on whose instructions they shouted also for the two child-Emperors Basil and Constantine but were otherwise no less vocal in their support of the new regime. Meanwhile in the Palace complex itself - which never slept - the duty guard of Varangian Vikings, axes in hand, hurried down to the Bucoleon. There by the light of flaming torches they saw the head of Nicephorus, struck from his body and held triumphantly aloft at a window by one of the assassins. At once they were still. Had he been alive, they would have defended their Emperor to the last breath; dead, there was no point in avenging him. They had a new master, and that was that.

  As to the identity of that new master, there too they were faced with a fait accompli. As soon as the deed was done, John Tzimisces had made his way to the Chrysotriclinium, the great golden throne room of the Palace, pulled on the purple buskins and decked himself in as much of the imperial regalia as he could find; already he was seated on the throne, Theophano and her two sons at his side, while his fellow-conspirators and a growing crowd of court officials hailed him as Emperor of the Romans.

  Throughout the next day the city lay silent and apparently deserted. Basil - who was henceforth to be ever at John's right hand, his most experienced and trusted lieutenant - had proclaimed a curfew. The citizens were so far as was possible to stay at home; those obliged to venture abroad were forbidden to congregate or to make the slightest disturbance, on pain of instant execution. By now the wind had dropped. The storm had been succeeded by an eerie soilness, the fog hung thick over the Marmara - and the body of Nicephorus lay below the window from which it had been flung, an obscene bundle on the bloodstained snow. After such a death there could be no question of a state funeral. Instead, when night had fallen, it was picked up, thrown on to a makeshift wooden stretcher, covered with a rough blanket and carried quietly through the empty streets to the Church of the Holy Apostles, where it was laid in one of the marble sarcophagi ordered by Constantine the Great six centuries before. It was an honourable resting-place; but Nicephorus Phocas, the White Death of the Saracens, hero of Syria and Crete, saintly and hideous, magnificent and insufferable, had deserved a better end.

  John Tzimisces

  [969-76]

  If you reject my proposals you will have no choice, you and your subjects, but to leave Europe for ever, where you have scarcely any territory left to call your own and where you have no right to dwell. Retire then to Asia, and leave Constantinople to us. Only then can you hope to achieve a genuine peace between the Russian nation and yourselves.

  Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev, to the Emperor John Tzimisces, 970

  For the second time in ten years the throne of Byzantium had been snatched by a member of the Anatolian aristocracy. On both occasions the usurping Emperor had been a dramatically successful general; on both occasions he had succeeded through the machinations of the Empress Theophano, of whose two young sons he had proclaimed himself protector. Between Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces there were, however, two crucial differences: one related to their respective positions, the other to the two men themselves.

  Though neither had any legitimate claim to the imperial diadem, Nicephorus could at least argue that he had accepted it by invitation of the Empress, and had further regularized the situation by his subsequent marriage. John, on the other hand, had acquired it by violence and bloodshed; and it was his further misfortune that the Patriarchate was still in the hands of Polyeuctus, now old and beginning to fail in strength but as stern and inexorable as ever. Even he could not reject the new claimant out of hand, but he could - and did - impose conditions which John was compelled, however reluctantly, to accept; and the first of these concerned Theophano. The lovers had clearly hoped that by the murder of Nicephorus they were removing an obstacle not only to the throne but also to their own union; this, the Patriarch firmly declared, could on no account be contemplated. On the contrary, there could be no question of John Tzimisces being crowned Emperor until the Empress were put away, never again to show her face in Constantinople.

  Perhaps, as has already been suggested, John had never really loved Theophano, and had seen her merely as the most direct instrument of his own ambitions; in any event he did not hesitate in making his choice. The Empress, humiliated and heartbroken, was unceremoniously packed off to that favourite repository of imperial waste, the island of Proti in the Marmara.1 But Polyeuctus was not yet satisfied. He next demanded that John should do public penance and denounce all those who had been his accomplices in the crime. Finally he must undertake to abrogate all his predecessor's decrees against the Church. These conditions were accepted without hesitation; and on Christmas Day 969, just two weeks after the murder, the new Emperor proceeded to his coronation. It remained only for him to deal with his victim's family, notably Leo Phocas - the former curopalates - who, having failed to stage a counter-coup of his own, had lost his nerve and fled with his eldest son - called, like his uncle, Nicephorus - to St Sophia. Both were deprived of their dignities, offices and possessions and sent into exile on Lesbos. Leo's second son Bardas was consigned to the infinitely less congenial Amaseia in Pontus, a rainswept region near the shores of the Black Sea; only his youngest, a Patrician and yet another brilliant general, was left at liberty - perhaps because of bis magnificent military record against the Saracens, but more probably because he was a eunuch and consequently less of a long-term danger.

  Up to this point the story of John Tzimisces can hardly be described as edifying. When we come, however, to compare his character with that of Nicephorus, we find him emerging from the writings of his contemporaries with very much more credit than might have been imagined: indeed, it seems almost impossible to reconcile the brutal and cynical murderer of the last few pages with the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche depicted by the chroniclers. They dwell at length not only on his

  1 She was, even then, to make one last appearance in the capital. Some months later she escaped from her confinement and sought asylum in St Sophia - whence, however, she was forcibly removed by order of the parakoimomenos Basil, who condemned her to a more distant exile in far-off Armenia. The only concession that he was prepared to grant her was that she should be permitted to see the Emperor for the last time. John, perhaps surprisingly, agreed to the interview, at which he was subjected to a torrent of invective. Theophano then turned her attention to Basil, who had insisted on being present - a decision he must have regretted when she attacked him physically, landing several telling blows before being finally pulled off by his attendants.

  valour in the field but on his kindness and generosity, his integrity and intelligence, his dash and his magnificent panache. They speak of his devastating good looks - darkish-blond hair, red beard, a clear and direct gaze from a pair of brilliant blue eyes — and, despite his small size, of his extraordinary agility and strength. None of his men, it was said, could match his seat on a horse, his accuracy with an arrow, his range with a spear or javelin. He possessed, too, an easy-going charm that won all hearts. Like Nicephorus before him, he was a widower; unlike Nicephorus, however, he had taken no vow of chastity, and his way with women was irresistible. Even his vices were attractive: Leo the Deacon,' who knew him well, mentions his love of wine, pleasure and all the good things of life. He presented, in short, an astonishing contrast to his ugly, uncouth and puritanical predecessor, against whose sombre asceticism his own qualities - and above all his sheer, uncomplicated joie de vivre - stood out in even greater relief. One chronicler, Constantine Manasses, goes so far as to liken him to 'a new paradise, from which flowed the four rivers of justice, wisdom, prudence and courage ... Had he not stained his hands with the murder of Nicephorus, he would have shone in the firmament like some incomparable star.'

  Of all his undoubted virtues, that which
most endeared him to his subjects was his quick and instinctive generosity. The Patriarch had, it is true, insisted that he should make a distribution of his own personal wealth before taking possession of the imperial treasury; but what we know of John Tzimisces suggests that he might easily have done so anyway. The larger part of his fortune he distributed among those sections of the population who had suffered the most from the recent succession of disastrous harvests — above all the farming communities of Thrace, where the resulting famine had been particularly severe. (Here again the contrast with the attitude of Nicephorus could hardly have passed unnoticed.) Another major beneficiary was his favourite charitable institution, the Nosocomium or leper hospital across the Bosphorus at Chrysopolis. Throughout his life, writes Leo the Deacon, he was to visit it regularly, giving sympathy and encouragement to the patients and occasionally even bathing their sores with his own hands. No wonder that, within a matter of months, the perpetrator of one of the foulest murders that even the Byzantine Empire had ever seen became one of its best-loved rulers.

  It was fortunate that he did, for Prince Svyatoslav of Kiev was already on the march. Bulgaria was his, but he had no intention of stopping at Bulgaria; for him, the only really worthwhile prize was Byzantium. True, the two previous Russian attacks on the city had failed; but the first, in 861, had been no more than a raid, while the second - launched by his own father, Igor, less than thirty years before - had also been an exclusively naval operation: Constantinople, Svyatoslav was quite ready to believe, was impregnable from the sea. From the landward side, however, it would be a different story. His army was immense; morale, after the Bulgarian victories and the subsequent pillage, had never been higher. What was to prevent him from advancing across the flat, featureless plain that extended almost as far as the Bosphorus, appropriating for himself the fabled wealth of the Emperors and finally seizing their throne - casting out the murderous usurper (who had no more right to it than he did himself) to the distant Anatolian wastes from which he had come?

  John did his best to negotiate, promising to send Svyatoslav the unpaid balance of the sum offered him by Nicephorus to attack Bulgaria if he would then agree to leave imperial territory; but the Prince's reply made it clear that nothing was to be achieved by diplomacy. War, it now seemed, was inevitable. In Constantinople frantic steps were taken to repair the walls where necessary; and tension, inevitably, began to rise. The citizens had of course faced similar dangers in the past; but most of the recent threats had been from the Bulgars, whom they understood and whose numbers, though large, were at least finite. They were now confronted by a vast nation whose frontiers extended from the Balkans to the Baltic, a nation that comprised whole races of whose names they had scarcely heard - all capable, it was said, of hideous savagery.

  The Byzantine army, however, was ready for them. Thanks in large measure to Nicephorus Phocas, it had been developed into a first-class war machine, boasting at least half a dozen generals of a quality unparalleled, perhaps, since the days of Belisarius, the Emperor himself among them. On this occasion - and, we can be sure, to his genuine regret - John knew that he must stay in the capital: his position there was not yet sufficiently secure to allow him the luxury of a military campaign. But he had every confidence in his commanders; and events were to show that that confidence was not misplaced. Of the two whom he selected to lead the advance guard, the first was the magister Bardas Sclerus, brother of John's wife Maria - 'loveliest and purest of them all', writes Leo the Deacon - who had died, childless, some years before. He had fought at the Emperor's side in Syria and was probably his brother-in-law's closest friend. The second was the eunuch Peter Phocas, Patrician and stratopedarch a hero like Scleras of the Saracen wars and also of a recent skirmish with the Magyars in Thrace, in the course of which he had confronted a tribal leader - a giant wearing a thick coat of mail - in single combat, and had run him through with such force that the point of his lance had appeared between the Hungarian's shoulder-blades. Nephew of the murdered Nicephorus, he was as we have seen the only one of his uncle's immediate family to have escaped sentence of exile; if he bore Tzimisces any resentment, he took pains not to show it.

  Both generals had strict orders from their master not to engage in batde if it could be avoided. The Emperor seems to have thought that the sight of the imperial army en masse in the field might itself be enough to persuade Svyatoslav to retreat; his purpose in sending it out at this time - it was still early spring - was simply to impress the undisciplined Russians with its organization and strength, and to protect the Thracian countryside from their unwelcome attentions. But he had underestimated the Prince of Kiev: Svyatoslav intended to fight. To help him he had allied himself with both the Magyars and the Pechenegs, and had even won considerable support among the boyars of Bulgaria, whom he had wooed with promises of a restoration of all their former privileges and even a return to the old paganism — for which many of them still secretly yearned. Numbers are impossible to estimate with any accuracy. Early historians always try to exaggerate the strength of the enemy and the numerical weakness of their own side: thus Zonaras and John Scylitzes put the Russians at 300,000 and 308,000 respectively, while Nestor's chronicle suggests only about one-tenth of these obviously ludicrous figures. Perhaps 50,000 might not be too wide of the mark. Against this, we are told - probably truthfully - that the Byzantines numbered just 12,000; however, all were elite troops - superbly equipped, meticulously trained and hardened in many a batde under the Syrian sun.

  Bardas Scleras, who was in overall command, first advanced as far as Adrianople; then, as the enemy approached, he slowly retreated, deliberately suggesting that he was afraid to give batde, lulling them into a sense of security that soon led to overconfidence. Meanwhile, well behind his own line, he made his dispositions. On the appointed day he sent out as a decoy a detachment of cavalry under the Patrician John Alakas, with orders to employ a similar technique: first lightly engaging the enemy and then quickly retiring - daring, as it were, the Russians to pursue them. Once sure of this pursuit they should quicken their pace, occasionally turning to confront their pursuers before once more taking flight, always keeping a little way in front but never too far, until they had led their unwilling victims into the trap that had been prepared for them.

  The trick worked perfectly. Svyatoslav's army marched in three main divisions: the first was made up of Russians and Bulgars, the second of Hungarians and other Magyar tribes, the third of Pechenegs. It was these last whom Alakas engaged and they pursued him eagerly, confident of being able quickly to catch up with him and his men, looking forward to killing them and robbing them of horses, armour, weapons and all that they possessed. Suddenly, as they entered a shallow valley, the Byzantine cavalry scattered; their pursuers did likewise; and Scleras struck. Surrounded and hopelessly outnumbered, the Pechenegs perished almost to a man.

  And this was only a preliminary; it was followed a few days later by a decisive engagement near the city of Arcadiopolis, about a third of the way from Adrianople to the capital. This was a pitched battle - the first ever fought on open ground between Byzantines and Russians - and an extremely bloody one. We can decide for ourselves whether or not to believe the incidents described by Leo the Deacon and Scylitzes: that of young Constantine Scleras who, seeing his elder brother and chief locked in combat with a gigantic Russian, hurried to his aid and struck a tremendous blow at his assailant, only to have it deflected on to the latter's horse, which was instantly decapitated and deposited its rider on the ground for Constantine to strangle at leisure; or of Bardas himself, splitting a huge Viking chieftain down the middle with his sword in such a way that the two halves fell separately, one on each side of the horse. What we cannot doubt is that it was all a far cry from the warfare of former centuries - a dismal saga, all too often, of indiscipline, cowardice and betrayal. Here, once again, is a heroic - almost Homeric - age: of fearless captains in shining armour, always at the head of their men or where the fighting is thi
ckest, never hesitating to engage an enemy champion in single combat, ever resolved to win victory for their Emperor or die in the attempt. For them, Arcadiopolis was a triumph; for the Russians, a massacre. It was a shamed and shattered army that Svyatoslav led back to Bulgaria - and a full year before he showed his face again.

  While his brother-in-law had been righting in Thrace, John Tzimisces had been consolidating his position in the capital, simultaneously bringing back the bulk of the army from the East, giving it new arms and equipment, swelling it with new recruits. The war, he knew, was not yet over. The Prince of Kiev had been taught a sharp lesson; but he remained very much alive and there was no reason to think that he had renounced his ambitions. Besides, he would want his revenge.

  By the early spring of 971 John was ready for him. The army was in first-class condition, and this time he would lead it himself. If Svyatoslav made no move, he would invade Bulgaria and flush him out. Then, just before he was due to leave, there arrived news from the East. Bardas Phocas, nephew of Nicephorus, had escaped from his place of exile in Pontus and had returned to Caesarea (now Kayseri), his family's Cappado-cian power base, where a large gathering of citizens and fellow-nobles had proclaimed him basileus. This was quite bad enough; but soon afterwards came another report, informing him that Leo Phocas and his son, away in exile on Lesbos, had somehow contrived through a local bishop to spread the news of the rebellion through Thrace, announcing their own imminent arrival and calling upon the people to rise up against the new usurper.