The Apogee - Byzantium 02

by John Julius Norwich

  Basil's situation was indeed desperate; but he kept his head. If he could not hope to defend his Empire unaided, he must seek foreign help; and help on the necessary scale could come from one quarter only: Vladimir, Prince of Kiev. Even before Bardas Phocas had arrived on the Bosphorus shore the imperial ambassadors were on their way, though it was months later before they returned with the Prince's answer. Vladimir, they reported, considered himself bound by his father Svyatoslav's agreement with John Tzimisces to send the force required: a druzhina of 6,000 fully-equipped Varangians1 would be dispatched as soon as possible. In return, he asked one thing only: the hand in marriage of the Emperor's sister, the porphyrogenita Anna.

  The effect of this demand on the Byzantine court can hardly be imagined. In the whole history of the Empire, no princess born in the purple had ever been given in marriage to a foreigner; and Vladimir was not only a foreigner but - despite the conversion of his grandmother Olga — a heathen, a man who was known to have killed his own brother and who already boasted at least four wives and 800 concubines: a fact which however in no way discouraged him from cutting an almost legendary swath through the matrons and maidens of any town or village in which he happened to be. He possessed, in the minds of the Byzantines, only one 'redeeming feature: he had given it out that he was seeking, for himself and his people, a respectable religion. If we are to believe that curious document known as Nestor's chronicle, he had already ordered a survey of all the principal faiths of the known world and had personally made searching inquiries of Muslims, Jews and

  1 The name (which comes from an Old Norse word meaning 'plighted faith') was given to those Russianized Vikings whose forefathers had sailed across the Baltic and up the rivers of northern Russia, easily dominating the Slav tribes of the interior.

  Roman Catholics - by none of whom, however, had he been particularly impressed. Finally, in that very year of 987, he had sent emissaries to Constantinople where, in their honour, a special service had been held in St Sophia. So captivated had they been by its beauty that, as they subsequently reported to their master, they had not known whether they were on earth or in heaven: 'all we can tell is that in that place is God's dwelling among men.' It seemed likely therefore that Vladimir might soon be forswearing his pagan gods and, with any luck, some of his more reprehensible habits; and Basil accordingly gave his consent to the match, on the sole condition that the Prince of Kiev were to embrace the Orthodox faith. Then he settled down to wait.

  He waited for the best part of a year: a year he survived thanks to the imperial navy which, by its constant patrolling of the Hellespont, the Marmara and the Bosphorus, successfully prevented Bardas Phocas and his army from crossing over into Europe. Only around the time of the winter solstice1 did the Black Sea lookouts espy the first of a great fleet of Viking ships on the northern horizon; but a week or so later the whole of that fleet was safely anchored in the Golden Horn and 6,000 burly giants drawn up for the inspection of the Emperor. He made his plans quickly. One night in late February 989 the Norsemen, with Basil himself at their head, crossed the straits under cover of darkness and took up their positions a few hundred yards from the main rebel camp, spread out along the coast at Chrysopolis. Then, at first light, they attacked, while a squadron of imperial flame-throwers sprayed the shore with Greek fire. Phocas's men, roused from sleep to find this terrible horde bearing down upon them, could do little to defend themselves; but their assailants swung their swords and battle-axes without mercy until they stood ankle-deep in blood. Few of the victims escaped with their lives; three subordinate commanders, delivered into the hands of the Emperor, were respectively hanged, impaled and crucified.

  Bardas Phocas seems - fortunately for him - to have remained with his reserves, if not actually at Nicaea, at any rate some litde distance

  1 The chronology at this point presents something of a problem, since our principal sources - to say nothing of modem historians - are in considerable disagreement. If however we accept Yahya's precise date of 13 April 989 as the date of the batde of Abydos, it is hard to see how the massacre at Chrysopolis could have preceded it by more than a few weeks, or that the latter could have occurred long after the Norsemen's arrival.

  away from Chrysopolis. As soon as he heard of the massacre, he hastened to join the rest of his army outside Abydos; if he could but capture this port at the mouth of the Hellespont he would, he knew, find vessels enough in its harbour to transport his men across to the Gallipoli peninsula, whence they could launch their assault on Constantinople. On his arrival he immediately laid siege to the city; but the town put up a determined resistance, and with the imperial navy in firm control of the straits a proper blockade proved impossible. Meanwhile the Emperor, who had returned to the capital, set about preparing a relief expedition. By mid-March 989 it was ready, and he at once sent off an advance contingent under the command - rather surprisingly - of his brother and co-Emperor Constantine: the only time in his long life, so far as we know, that this unsatisfactory prince led an army in the field. Basil himself embarked a few days later, landed near Lampsacus a few miles to the north-east and immediately set off for the besieged city, his gigantic Varangians following behind.

  The next morning saw the two opposing armies drawn up facing each other on the open plain to the landward side of Abydos, where they remained for several days manoeuvring for position. Only at dawn on Saturday 13 April did the Emperor give the order to attack. At first it seemed as if this initial onslaught might prove decisive. The rebel troops scattered: many were cut down, others simply turned and ran. Only with the greatest difficulty did Phocas manage to restore order and regroup the survivors. Then, we are told, as he gazed across the plain, he caught sight of Basil himself, riding up and down the lines of Norsemen, congratulating them and encouraging them to still greater feats of valour, with young Constantine, carrying a long lance, at his side; and his expression changed as he remembered how, during his last encounter with Bardas Sclerus, he had turned defeat into victory by proposing that the issue be decided by single combat. Ignoring all attempts to dissuade him he suddenly called for his horse, spurred it to a gallop and, as both armies watched, silent and incredulous, thundered towards the imperial lines, his sword pointing directly at the Emperor. Basil stood his ground, his own drawn sword clasped in his right hand, while in his left he clutched an icon of the Virgin, well known for its miraculous powers.1

  1 Was this the icon that was to be stolen by the Venetians during the Fourth Crusade and, now known as the Nicopotia or Bringer of Victory, still hangs in the north aisle of the Basilica of St Mark? It may well have been: see Canon Ag. Molin,

  Nearer and nearer came his assailant - 'like a cloud driven by a hurricane' as Psellus describes him; then, suddenly, he seemed to falter. Swaying as if overcome by a fit of dizziness, he reined in his horse, slipped slowly from the saddle and lay motionless on the ground. When Basil, Constantine and their followers rode up a moment or two later they found that he was already dead. At first they assumed that he had been hit by an arrow, but his body bore no trace of a wound. He had in fact suffered a sudden stroke, presumably brought on by excitement and exertion, which had killed him instantly. His troops, seeing what had occurred, panicked and fled; but they were no match for the Norsemen, who pursued them and cheerfully hacked them to pieces.

  Bardas Sclerus was left the only pretender to the throne of Byzantium. During his two years' captivity at Tyropoion, his gaoler had been none other than Phocas's wife; with her husband's death, however, seeing him no longer as her prisoner but as her one hope of revenge, she immediately set him free to raise a new army. Almost from the first, however, Sclerus realized that it was too late: he was getting old, and his sight was rapidly failing. In the comparative darkness of his prison he had scarcely noticed the cataracts that were by now clouding both his eyes; back once again under the brilliant Anatolian sky, he knew that there was no hope -blindness would soon be upon him. Basil - his usual vindictiveness for once
put aside - had already offered him almost unbelievably generous terms: he asked only that Sclerus should formally renounce all imperial attributes and the title of basileus, in return he would be accorded that of curopalates. His officers, once they had taken a new oath of loyalty, would retain all their ranks and titles and suffer no further penalties, while the rank and file would be allowed to return peaceably to their homes.

  And so Bardas Sclerus made his submission; and on one of the imperial estates in Bithynia, for the first time in thirteen years, the young Emperor and the old general met face to face. When Basil saw his former enemy, now almost blind, being led into the audience chamber by two of the court ushers, he could barely suppress a gasp. 'Can this old dotard,' he asked those around him, 'truly be he whom I have feared for so long? See, he can scarcely walk by himself]' Then his eye fell on Sclerus's feet, which unaccountably still wore the imperial purple buskins; and he turned away his head. Only when the old man had removed the offending boots was he allowed to approach his sovereign and prostrate himself at the foot of the throne. Basil continued to treat him with surprising courtesy and consideration, listening carefully to his explanation of his past conduct which - if Psellus is to be believed - he simply ascribed to the will of God; at the dinner that followed, as a further gesture of reconciliation - though also, perhaps, to allay any suspicions of poison - he seized the wine-cup and took a copious draught before handing it to his guest. Then the two settled down to talk.

  The Emperor opened the conversation by seeking the old general's advice. How, he asked him, could he best guard against any further rebellions by the powerful Anatolian barons, similar to those which Bardas Phocas and he himself had so recendy led? Sclerus's reply is quoted at the head of this chapter. He did not propose that the barons should be suppressed: not even Basil at his most ruthless could have succeeded in doing that. But he did recommend that they should be kept on the tightest of reins, that they should be taxed to the hilt, harassed, plagued, financially persecuted, even deliberately and unfairly victimized, in such a way that they would be far too preoccupied in keeping their own heads above water to pursue any schemes of personal ambition. To Basil, these words alone would have occasioned little astonishment, expressing as they did his own opinions to the letter. What was interesting was the source from which they came. Now at last, as his life was drawing to a close and after the collapse of all his own ambitions, Bardas Scleras was putting the interests of the Empire above those of himself and his class. His words may have been cynical, but they were also wise. Not only would Basil remember them for the rest of his life; he would act upon them, making them the keystone of his domestic policy. And he would never regret having done so.

  In view of all the momentous events of the past two years, it is perhaps understandable that Basil should have given little time to the question of his sister's promised marriage to the Prince of Kiev. But Vladimir soon made clear that he was not to be trifled with. By responding to the Emperor's appeal he had saved Byzantium, and he was impatient for his reward. It was thus by way of reminding Basil of his responsibilities that in the summer of 989 he suddenly seized the imperial colony of Cherson in the Crimea, the last Byzantine outpost on the northern Black Sea coast, simultaneously sending him an ominous message to the effect that if his forgetfulness continued, Constantinople itself would suffer a similar fate.1

  For Basil, the fall of Cherson was quite enough to be getting on with. Not only was the colony financially and strategically valuable in its own right; its capture also suggested the withdrawal of Russian support at a time when Bardas Scleras was sdll at large and, worse still, the real possibility of a rapprochement between Vladimir and Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria. The 6,000 Varangians were still in Constantinople: they tineeded only a word from their sovereign for their present friendship to change to open hostility, in which event the damage that they might do would be incalculable. There was, in short, nothing for it: the agreement must be honoured. When the twenty-five-year-old princess was told by her brothers of her fate, she wept long and bitterly, accusing them of selling her into slavery - which, in the light of what was known about Vladimir, was not far from the truth. Finally, however, she was persuaded to accept the inevitable, and reluctantly embarked on the ship that was to take her to Cherson, where her betrothed awaited her. There the two were duly married, the colony being immediately returned to Basil as the veno - the traditional gift from the bridegroom; there too, immediately before the ceremony, the Prince of Kiev was baptized by the local bishop in what was perhaps the most fateful religious ceremony in Russian history.2

  For it was the conversion of Vladimir, far more than that of his grandmother thirty-two years before, that marked the entry of Russia itself into the Christian fold. After their marriage, he and his bride were escorted to Kiev by the local clergy of Cherson, who immediately set about proselytizing and converting whole towns and villages en masse. The new Russian Church was thus from the outset subordinated to the the Patriarchate of Constantinople, forming part of the Eastern Church and tied culturally to Byzantium. There is consequently some reason to. hope that poor Anna may have found her new life a degree or two less intolerable than she had feared it might be. Kiev, admittedly, was no Constantinople; but her husband became, after his baptism, a changed man. Away went the four previous wives and the 800 concubines;

  Prince Svyatoslav's undertaking never to attack or invade this city (p. 223) had presumably lapsed on his death.

  It is in fact possible that this was Vladimir's second baptism - the first having already taken place two years previously, after the return of his representatives from Constantinople and the conclusion of his agreement with the Emperor.

  henceforth he was to give her no cause for complaint, spending all his time instead on supervising conversions, standing godfather at innumerable baptisms and building churches and monasteries wherever he went. Saints, one feels, can never be the easiest of husbands, and St Vladimir of Kiev is unlikely to have been an exception to the rule; but for a girl who had expected to share her bed with an ogre it must, all the same, have been something of a relief.

  The Bulgar-Slayer

  [989-1025]

  His cruelty inflicted a cool and exquisite vengeance on the fifteen thousand captives who had been guilty of the defence of their country. They were deprived of sight, but to one of each hundred a single eye was left, that he might conduct his blind century to the presence of their king. Their king is said to have expired of grief and horror; the nation was awed by this terrible example; the Bulgarians were swept away from their settlements, and circumscribed within a narrow province; the surviving chiefs bequeathed to their children the advice of patience and the duty of revenge.

  Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter LV

  In the sixty-five-year reign of Basil II, the year 989 marks the watershed. Though still only thirty-one, he had held the title of Emperor for twenty-nine years. Of those years, the first sixteen - covering the period of his minority - had been overshadowed by the two military adventurers who had successively seized the throne, Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces. The next nine had seen him the puppet - albeit a most unwilling one - of his great-uncle. The last four had been chiefly notable for his defeat and humiliation by Tsar Samuel at Trajan's Gate; for a major rebellion which had been contained only with outside help and which might still have been threatening him but for the sudden death of its leader; and, most recently, for his own submission to a piece of shameless blackmail on the part of the Prince of Kiev. It was not a distinguished record.

  But by the end of 989 his luck had changed. The year itself had provided more than its share of disasters. After one of the cruellest winters in living memory, during which the sea itself was frozen, there had been the struggle with Bardas Phocas, and another with Bardas Scleras; within days of the Russian capture of Cherson had come news of the fall to the Bulgars of Berrhoea (the modern Verria), a strategic fortress town guarding the approach
es to Thessalonica; while serious disturbances had broken out in Antioch. The significance of the aurora borealis on 7 April, and of the brilliant comet which illuminated the sky for three weeks during July and August, was variously interpreted; but there could be no two minds about the calamitous earthquake which on the night of 25 October destroyed or damaged over forty churches in the capital alone - including St Sophia itself, whose central dome was split right across and had to be completely redesigned,1 while part of the eastern apse simply subsided into a pile of rubble. A more unmistakable manifestation of the divine wrath could scarcely be imagined: yet the year was to close with the Empire enjoying internal peace for the first time since the death of John Tzimisces in 976 and its Emperor, with his defeats and disappointments behind him, standing at last on the threshold of glory.

  Now that he had no longer anything to fear from the Anatolian barons, he was free to concentrate on the great task that was to occupy him for the next three decades: the annihilation of the Bulgar Empire. It was, however, typical of his farsightedness that he should first turn his attention to a small piece of unfinished business concerning David, Prince of the region of Upper Tao in Georgia. In 978 David, as a loyal vassal of the Empire, had been awarded temporary possession of a large area of imperial territory to the north of Lake Van. Since then, however, he had rather spoilt his record by supporting the rebellious Bardas Phocas - an error of judgement which he must bitterly have regretted when, in the autumn of 989, an imperial army marched eastward with obviously punitive intent. Fortunately for him the commanding general, a certain John of Chaldia, had authority from the Emperor to offer terms: David might keep the ceded territory for his lifetime and would be additionally awarded the title of curopalates, provided that all his lands - including his own birthplace and patrimony - reverted on his death to the imperial crown. With the army sharpening its swords only a mile or two away, the prince had little choice but to agree; and Basil considerably extended his eastern frontiers without the loss of a single life.