The Apogee - Byzantium 02

by John Julius Norwich

  The Emperor acted with his usual speed. The bishop, arrested and interrogated, soon revealed all he knew; on the basis of his evidence Leo and his son were given a summary trial and condemned to death. Almost at once, however, John had second thoughts - in a way that the chroniclers suggest was typical of him and that makes his earlier brutality towards his predecessor still harder to understand. He commuted the death sentence to one of blinding, with perpetual exile; and then, stretching his compassion further still, sent secret instructions to Lesbos that the red-hot iron should at the last moment be withdrawn, leaving the two men their sight. It was, after all, not they but the pretender himself who presented the real danger. To him John sent envoys with the promise that his life and property would be spared if he would only renounce his claim; but Bardas Phocas replied much as Svyatoslav had done the year before and began slowly to advance, at the head of several thousand men, towards the capital.

  By now the Emperor must have bitterly regretted his withdrawal of the army from Anatolia. As a result, he had no effective force capable of dealing with the situation on the spot - and of those soldiers who remained a considerable number had joined the rebels. There was only one course open to him: to send his best general, with his best men, from Thrace. A few days later Bardas Sclerus too was on the march. It was undeniably a risk, leaving as it did the way clear for Svyatoslav should he choose to invade before Scleras could return; but the eastern threat was more immediate than the western and the chance had to be taken.

  Even now John hoped to spare the Empire a civil war. He enjoined his brother-in-law to make every effort to avoid bloodshed, and to offer all those prepared to abandon Phocas not only a guarantee that they would go unpunished but even honours and financial rewards. Scleras, for his part, was only too happy to obey. He was an old friend and companion-in-arms of Phocas - his younger brother Constantine, hero of Arcadiopolis, had married the pretender's sister -and the whole affair can have been little to his taste. Thus, when he reached what was then known as the Lake of the Forty Martyrs1 and his scouts reported a sighting of Phocas's camp just ahead, he made no attempt to attack; instead, he sent a number of secret agents, disguised as wandering beggars, to suborn the rebels. Perhaps the speed and size of the imperial army had weakened their morale, perhaps the promises of generous rewards for desertion proved irresistible; in any event the agents were quite extraordinarily successful. Every night more and more of Phocas's adherents dropped away, slipping out of his camp and across to that of Scleras, where they were welcomed with open arms. The pretender soon found his army reduced to a few hundred men - and not an arrow had yet been loosed in anger. Desperate and humiliated, and accompanied only by a small company of cavalry that had remained loyal, he himself fled under cover of darkness and took refuge with his family in the fortress of Tyropoion, just outside the modern town of Ilgin. But it was no use: Scleras had followed him, and immediately put the little castle under siege. He held out as long as he could, then - after receiving confirmation that all their lives would be spared — marched out with his wife and children and surrendered.

  John Tzimisces was as good as his word. He ordered Bardas Phocas to be tonsured, and then to be shipped off with his family to exile on Chios, one of the most delightful of all the Aegean islands. Few rulers anywhere would have dealt so leniently with a rebel pretender to their

  1 Now Aksehir Golu, some ten miles north of the present town of Akjehir.

  throne; few such claimants could have congratulated themselves on so moderate a punishment.1

  After the revolt of Bardas Phocas, John Tzimisces was to encounter no further threats to his throne; the fact remained, however, that he could claim no legitimate right to it unless he could make himself at least in some degree part of the imperial family. Marriage with his exquisite mistress Theophano would, leaving aside its obvious advantages to himself, have strengthened his position immeasurably; but that he now knew to be out of the question. Fortunately there were other possibilities, in the shape of the five sisters of Romanus II whom Theophano had packed off to convents; and it was to one of these, Theodora, that the Emperor announced his betrothal in the autumn of 971. Twelve years of monastic seclusion had done little to improve her appearance: 'she was,' writes Leo the Deacon - for whom all princesses (let alone Empresses) normally represent the summit of physical perfection — 'neither beautiful nor elegant.' But John was not marrying Theodora for her looks; he had, after all, the choice of the loveliest women in the Empire for his bed. He was marrying her because she was the great-granddaughter, granddaughter, daughter and sister of Emperors, and because by doing so he became, through her, a member of the most glorious dynasty of the Macedonians.

  The wedding took place some time in November. Old Polyeuctus had died at last, only five weeks after the coronation - if John had delayed his coup another couple of months, his future life (and Theophano's) might have been very different - and the ceremony was performed by his successor, an unworldly ascetic of the Emperor's own choosing named Basil the Scamandrian.2 The celebrations continued until well after Christmas - by which time, however, there was another imperial marriage in the air: a marriage of far greater long-term significance than the first, intended as it was to put an end to the five-year quarrel with Otto the Saxon and to forge an indissoluble link between the Eastern and the Western Empires. The idea of such a union had, as we know, been first considered in the reign of Constantine Porphyrogenitus; it had been resurrected by Otto in 967, and had been the chief reason for the

  Hieronimo Giustiniani, in his Storia di Scio of 15 86, records that in his time there were still descendants of the Phocas family living as peasants in the village of Volissos.

  Doubtless after his birthplace, or the monastery that he had founded, on the river Scamander -now the Kucuk Menderes - that flows through the plain of Troy.

  ill-fated mission of Liudprand of Cremona in the following year. To the narrow and suspicious mind of Nicephorus Phocas it had been predictably repugnant; John Tzimisces on the other hand supported it for all he was worth, and it was at his invitation that an embassy under the Archbishop of Cologne arrived in Constantinople towards the end of December to collect the bride-to-be and to carry her back to her imperial bridegroom.1

  This bridegroom was to be the seventeen-year-old Otto, son and heir of the Emperor of the West. As to the identity of the bride, historians are somewhat less clear. Her name was Theophano, and until quite recently it was generally supposed that she was the daughter of Romanus II and thus the sister of the two boy Emperors. Modern authorities, however, are now generally agreed that she was a blood relation of John Tzimisces — probably his niece - and thus not of the Macedonian dynasty at all. There seems to have been some consternation when the poor girl arrived in Rome and it was discovered that she was not the porpbyrogenita that had been expected; Otto the Great at first considered sending her straight back to Constantinople. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed. It was pointed out that John was, since his marriage, a member of the imperial family and that so, therefore, was his niece;2 she was finally accepted by the Ottoman court, and she and young Otto were married by Pope John XIII in St Peter's on 14 April 972.

  Thus it came about that Theophano, whoever she may have been, was removed from her home and family by a party of elderly ecclesiastics to be carried off to an unknown land and a husband she had never seen, of whose character she knew nothing and of whose language she understood not a single word. In the long run, admittedly, she was lucky: the marriage proved a surprisingly happy one, she was treated with kindness and consideration and. allowed to maintain all her Byzantine customs and ways of life - to the point where her son, the future Otto III, was to grow up far more of a Greek than a Saxon. And she could later congratulate herself on the transformation of relations between the two Empires, brought about not just by her marriage but also by her own intelligence and hard work. None the less, for a girl of just sixteen, those

  1 There is some tenuous evide
nce to suggest that this embassy may have included old Liudprand, on his third diplomatic mission to the Byzantine court.

  2 Could it be that John deliberately arranged his marriage with this particular issue in mind? It seems not unlikely. If, on the other hand, the old theory were correct and the princess was indeed Romanus's daughter, she would anyway have become John's niece by virtue of his marriage to her aunt. Of such riddles is history made.

  first four months of 972 must have been little short of a nightmare; and it is only right that we should spare a thought for her misery, fear and loneliness before we return to her uncle, John Tzimisces - who was having the time of his life.

  In the week before Holy Week, 972, John had left Constantinople for Thrace. He was in buoyant mood. He had, it is true, lost a whole year: the revolt of Bardas Phocas had taken up much of 971, and by the time it had been settled the season had been too far advanced for any major campaign to be practicable; but the remaining months had been spent profitably enough on diplomatic activity (which included an important treaty with Venice), the preparation of his Black Sea fleet and the constant training and exercising of his troops — an occupation of which he never tired. The danger that he had most feared had not materialized: marauding bands of Russians might have taken advantage of the Byzantine withdrawal to roam the countryside, raiding and raping to their hearts' content, but the Prince of Kiev had not been able to launch his major attack and was still skulking in Bulgaria. The time had now come to deal with him once and for all.

  John's last act before his departure from the Palace had been to pray in the little chapel by the great gate of the Chalke. It had been begun by Romanus Lecapenus as a private oratory for the Emperor, but John had enlarged it and enriched it and chosen it for his eventual burial-place: an immense tomb, inlaid with gold and enamels, was already in the course of construction. Thence, at the head of a long and solemn procession and carrying in his right hand a tall cross in which was set a gold-framed fragment of the True Cross, he continued first to St Sophia, where the God of Battles was again besought to grant him victory, and then on to Blachernae where, after further prayers in the Church of the Virgin, he reviewed the fleet assembled in the Golden Horn before giving it the signal to sail to its appointed destination - the mouth of the Danube, where it would prevent any attempt by Svyatoslav to escape by sea. As soon as the first ships were under way he wheeled his horse and headed westward, his troops behind him.

  At Adrianople he picked up the rump of the army that Bardas Sclerus had left in Thrace the year before. Under the temporary command of the magister John Curcuas — who, with his deep mistrust of any strenuous activity and his fondness for the bottle, made a deplorable contrast to his illustrious namesake — the men had become not a litde demoralized; but the sight of the Emperor in his gilded armour cap-a-pie, and his generals almost as magnificent on their splendidly caparisoned horses, put new life into them as they headed northward into the Bulgarian heartland. To John's relief, the defiles that twisted through the Balkan range - scene of earlier catastrophes to Constantine Copronymus in 757 and Nicephorus I in 811, to mention but two - were found to be unguarded. The first part of his plan had worked perfectly: the Prince of Kiev, expecting him to celebrate Easter as usual in Constantinople and to set off on campaign in mid-April at the earliest, had as yet made no defensive arrangements. On the Wednesday of Holy Week John emerged from the mountains above the old Bulgarian capital of Preslav and found himself looking down on the Russian camp. Surprise was everything: he attacked at once.

  The battle, fought by the banks of the river now known as the Goljama Kamciya, was long, furious and for a long time indecisive. It was only after John had loosed his own personal regiment, the 'Immortals' - which he had raised and trained himself and had hitherto kept in reserve - in a murderous charge against their left flank that the Russians suddenly lost their nerve and broke up in disorder, fleeing for their lives towards Preslav with the imperial cavalry in hot pursuit. Few of them reached the city alive. The massacre continued till nightfall, and dawn broke next day on a field strewn thick with the bodies of the dead. By then the Emperor was at the gates of Preslav, calling upon the garrison to surrender. They refused, and immediately the siege began, the Byzantine catapults and ballistas hurling heavy rocks or flaming bolts of Greek fire over the walls. Meanwhile the ladders were hauled into position for the final assault.

  The first into the city was a young man, 'still beardless', named Theodosius Mesonyctes. He was quickly followed by a hundred others, and Preslav was soon overrun. At its centre, however, was a fortified enceinte, part palace, part citadel, part treasury; hither the surviving Russians retreated to make their last stand. After more heavy fighting, during which his army failed absolutely to penetrate these inner defences, John ordered the walls to be put to the torch. The houses within were all of timber and went up like matchwood. The Russians were burnt alive, or struck down as they fled. Among those who delivered themselves up to the conquerors was the deposed Tsar Boris - he of the red beard - who for the past two years had been held by Svyatoslav as his prisoner. The Emperor received him with the utmost courtesy; his mission, he told Boris, was not to conquer Bulgaria but to set it free — an assurance which, in view of his later actions, he had better not have made.

  Easter was celebrated amid the ruins of Preslav, while John considered the problem of Svyatoslav himself. The Prince, he now learned, was away at Dristra - to the Greeks Dorystolon, the modern Silistra -Bulgaria's chief port on the Danube, struggling, presumably to keep open his lines of communication in spite of the Byzantine fleet. An embassy was dispatched at once, informing him of the fate of Preslav and calling upon him in the Emperor's name to surrender. Then, pausing only to rebuild the shattered defences of the city - which he renamed, after himself, Ioannopolis - John set off once more for the north. It was a long and arduous march, but at last on St George's Day he drew up his army before Dristra. The pattern was very much the same as at Preslav, with a desperate battle outside the walls followed by an attack on the city itself. On this occasion, however, he met tougher opposition. Dristra successfully resisted every attempt to take it by storm and both sides settled down to a siege, with a squadron from the Byzantine fleet completing the blockade from the river.

  The siege continued for three months, until supplies within the city were virtually exhausted. At last Svyatoslav resolved to risk everything on a last throw, and on 24 July burst out of the main gate with the remainder of his men. So great was their impetus, so desperate their determination, that they almost succeeded - and would have, according to Leo the Deacon, but for the miraculous intervention of the warrior St Theodore Stratilates, whom the Emperor and many of the soldiers saw, mounted on a snow-white horse, laying valiantly about him in the midst of the melee. In fact, the day was eventually won by means of John's favourite trick, a feigned retreat; and at nightfall the Prince of Kiev sued for peace. He would, he promised, evacuate the whole country and deliver over every prisoner he had taken since his arrival in Bulgaria, adding a further undertaking never to attack or invade the Byzantine city of Cherson in the Crimea. All he asked in return was safe conduct across the Danube, and a little food for his few surviving men. John Tzimisces was only too happy to agree.

  Before they left for their respective homes the two rulers met, at Svyatoslav's request, for the first time face to face. John rode down in state to the meeting-place on the river bank, mounted on his charger; the Prince of Kiev arrived by boat, rowing alongside his men and distinguishable from them only by the relative cleanliness of his white robe, his jewelled earring and the two long strands of fair hair - badges of rank - that fell from his otherwise shaven head. (That hair, together with his blue eyes and drooping moustache, testified, despite his name, to his Viking forebears.) In the course of a short but friendly conversation he expressed the hope that the old commercial treaty - governing, inter alia, visits of Russians to Constantinople - might be renewed. Then, with a dignified bow to
the Emperor, he climbed back into his boat and rowed away.

  He was never to see Russia again. As he passed through the land of the Pechenegs on his return journey he was stopped and interrogated: where was the rich plunder that he had promised them in return for their alliance? Alas, he told them, there was none. The spoils had gone to the victor: he, the vanquished, had been lucky to escape with his life. For the Pechenegs it was not a satisfactory outcome. The following spring, as Svyatoslav was negotiating the cataracts of the Dnieper, they ambushed him and killed him - subsequently making his skull into a drinking cup, just as the Bulgar Krum had done with that of the first Nicephorus, 161 years before.

  John Tzimisces enjoyed a happier homecoming. Before leaving Dristra he renamed it Theodoropolis in honour of the saint who, he believed, had fought shoulder to shoulder with him beneath the walls. Then he headed south towards Constantinople, Tsar Boris and family following in his train. He could congratulate himself on two major achievements. Not only had he driven a dangerous enemy out of the Balkan peninsula; he had also regained Bulgaria for the Empire - for, whatever he might have said to Boris at Preslav, he had no intention of reinstating him on his throne. Indeed, anyone witnessing his triumphal entry into his capital that August might have been forgiven for supposing that it was the Bulgars rather than the Russians who had been defeated. Place of honour in the procession — in the gilded chariot, drawn by four white horses, that had been intended for his own use - he had accorded to the most revered of all Bulgarian icons, a portrait of the Virgin which he believed to have been, with St Theodore, partly instrumental in his victory and which he had brought back with him as one of the spoils of war. He himself rode behind it in his shining armour. At the rear of the procession, on foot, walked Tsar Boris, his wife and children. The crowds lining the streets could draw their own conclusions.