The Apogee - Byzantium 02

by John Julius Norwich

  1 Such figures as these are, as always, highly conjectural. Byzantine sources give no information, Muslim ones range from 200,000 to 600,000 and Matthew of Edessa claims, grotesquely, 1 million. Most modem historians seem to agree that the estimate given above is the most probable, though the true number could have been as high as 100,000.

  temper, impatience with advice and a streak of cruelty which we have not seen before.1

  Strangely enough, while the immense Byzantine army was marching across Anatolia, Alp Arslan was heading in a completely different direction. Being totally unable to control the Turkoman raiders and having frequently disclaimed all responsibility for their activities, he believed the truce of the previous year to be still in force; he had therefore decided that the moment had come to fulfil his long-cherished ambition of destroying the Fatimid Caliphate. Late in 1070 he left his headquarters at Khurasan, captured the Armenian fortresses of Manzikert and Archesh, then marched south-west to Amida and on to Edessa where, towards the end of March, he drew up his army beneath the walls. Scarcely had he begun the siege when he received a message from the Emperor proposing a renewal of the truce and the exchange of Manzikert and Archesh for Hieropolis in Syria, which he had captured three years before. He accepted and, leaving Edessa untaken, continued his march. Six weeks later he was besieging Aleppo when there arrived another envoy from Romanus, now in Armenia, repeating the offer but this time presenting it in distinctly threatening terms.

  If Romanus had received Alp Arslan's previous acceptance of his offer, he had played the Sultan false. Even if he had not, he was now in a position of strength and putting forward what amounted to an ultimatum. Seeing at once that he had no choice but to abandon his Fatimid expedition, Alp Arslan turned about and made straight back for his homeland. Such was his haste that he failed to take adequate precautions in recrossing the Euphrates: many of his horses and mules were carried away by the current and drowned. But this hardly mattered to him. He knew that he would anyway have to raise a very much larger army before he could meet the Emperor on his own terms. Sending his vizier Nizam al-Mulk ahead to raise troops in Azerbaijan, he himself headed for Khoi (now Khvoi), between Lake Van and Lake Urmia, picking up some ten thousand Kurdish cavalry en route; there he was joined by his new army and set off in search of his foe.

  1 At one point of the campaign a Byzantine soldier accused of stealing a donkey from a local inhabitant and brought before the Emperor was sentenced to have his nose severed - a punishment that had fortunately gone out of fashion in the eighth century. It was when Romanus upheld this sentence even after the poor man had invoked the intercession of the victory-bringing icon of the Holy Virgin of Blachernae (which was always carried by the basileus into battle) that Attaleiates reports his first presentiment of the divine vengeance that would follow.

  Romanus had meanwhile encamped near Erzurum, where he had split his army into two. The greater part he dispatched under the command of his general Joseph Tarchaniotes to Khelat (now Ahlat), a strongly defended Seljuk-held fortress a few miles from the northern shore of Lake Van, while he himself - together with his other principal commander, Nicephorus Bryennius - set off with the remainder for the litde fortress-town of Manzikert, which he believed would offer no serious resistance. He was, as it turned out, perfectly right: the garrison gave in without a struggle. Tarchaniotes, on the other hand, was less fortunate. We do not know precisely what happened. Later Muslim historians refer to a pitched battle in which Alp Arslan scored a decisive victory, but there is no mention of such an engagement in any Byzantine source — the most trustworthy, Attaleiates, simply reporting that the news of the Sultan's arrival with his new army was in itself sufficient to send 'the scoundrel' Tarchaniotes into headlong flight, his men after him. They never stopped until they reached Melitene on the Euphrates, and did not reappear again during the whole campaign.

  But it cannot, surely, have been as simple as that. Joseph Tarchaniotes was a highly respected general, in command of a force of 30,000 to 40,000 - larger, very probably, than the entire Seljuk army. If we reject the Muslim version - that he was soundly beaten in the field - we are left with various other possibilities, all in varying degrees improbable: that he was angry with Romanus, whom he had strongly advised not to split the army, and determined to prove him wrong whatever the cost; that Alp Arslan had taken his army by surprise, and that since it had no opportunity to regroup a general sauve-qui-peut was the only answer; or -most intriguing of all - that Tarchaniotes was a traitor, a tool of the Ducas, who had actually set out from Constantinople with the deliberate intention of abandoning his Emperor when the moment came. If such a theory seems at present far-fetched, it may seem less so by the end of this chapter; and it would also go a long way to explain another mystery - why it was that no word of what had happened was sent to Romanus, only thirty miles away at Manzikert. But however much we may speculate about the cause of the rout, its consequence is all too clear: that by the time the Emperor finally met the Seljuks on the field of battle, more than half his army had deserted him.

  Romanus Diogenes had captured the fortress of Manzikert; he did not have long, however, to savour his triumph. On the very next day some of his men, out on a foraging expedition, were set upon by mounted Seljuk bowmen and suffered heavy casualties. The Emperor, assuming that he had to deal with nothing more serious than a small band of marauders, sent out a small detachment of troops under Bryennius — and flew into a fury when he received, an hour or two later, an appeal for reinforcements. After some hesitation he dispatched a rather larger force under an impulsive Armenian named Basilacius; they tried to pursue the bowmen, but were trapped by them and quickly surrounded. Basilacius himself was captured, but few of those who followed him escaped with their lives. Bryennius, riding out once again - this time with the entire right wing of the army behind him - in an attempt to rescue his rescuers, found himself confronted with what must have been a considerable proportion of the entire Seljuk army. He and his men retreated in good order to the camp, but not before he had received no less than three wounds, two from arrows in the back and one, in the chest, from a lance. Fortunately all three proved to be superficial, and he was able to continue the campaign.

  That night there was no moon - and little sleep for the Byzantine army. The Seljuks kept up an unremitting pressure, loosing hail after hail of arrows and generally causing so much tumult and confusion in the darkness that again and again they were thought to have broken down the defences and overrun the camp. It was a pleasant surprise to everyone the next morning to find that the palisades had held - but a most unpleasant shock to learn that a large contingent of Uz mercenaries had defected to the Seljuks; there were several other Turkic units in the army, any or all of which might at any moment follow their example. In such circumstances, and with half his army — including one of his best generals - vanished without trace, one might have expected the Emperor to welcome the delegation that arrived a day or two later. It came, officially, from the Caliph in Baghdad (though in fact it was obviously sent by Alp Arslan in the hopes that it might fare better than one from himself) and it proposed a truce.

  Why, we may ask, did the Sultan want one? Almost certainly because he was far from sure of victory. We know that shortly before going into battle he spoke of possible martyrdom in the field; he dressed himself in white in order, as he explained, that his garment might also serve as his shroud; and he enforced oaths from those around him that his son Malik-Shah should succeed him in the event of his death. In the past the Seljuks had always relied upon their skill in irregular warfare - the warfare of raids, ambushes and surprise attacks. They disliked pitched battles, which they avoided whenever possible; and recent Byzantine humiliations notwithstanding, they still retained a healthy respect for the imperial army.1 Besides, was there, from the Sultan's point of view, any real reason to fight? The one serious difference of political opinion concerned Armenia, which had considerable strategic value for both him and Romanus. If only the
two of them could agree on a mutually acceptable division of Armenian territory, both armies could remain intact - and Alp Arslan could turn his attention back to what really interested him: the Fatimids.

  But the Emperor's determination remained firm. This was, he knew, his only chance of freeing his Empire once and for all from the Turkish menace. Alp Arslan was only a few miles away with his full army; he himself, despite the disaster of Khelat, still commanded a force which, even if not quite its equal in size, was certainly larger than he was ever likely to muster again. Finally, if he were to return to Constantinople without having so much as engaged the Seljuks on the field, what chance would he have of keeping his throne - or indeed his life - against the intrigues of the Ducas? He dismissed the embassy with the minimum of courtesy and prepared for battle.

  It is a curious and somehow frustrating fact that neither the date nor the location of one of the most decisive battles of the world can be universally agreed. Muslim historians are unanimous that it took place on a Friday, and the month was indubitably August; but scholars still argue whether it was fought on the 5 th, 12th, 19th or 26th. Most European historians seem to have opted for the 19th, but in doing so they have ignored an important clue: the fact that according to Michael Attaleiates - who was there - the second or third night before the battle was moonless (aselenos). Now in August 1071 the full moon was on the 13th (Julian calendar), which means that the nights would still have been bright on the 16th and 17th; they would have been far darker on the 23 rd and 24th, when the moon would have been visible only as a thin crescent, an hour or two before dawn. Leaving aside the possibility that Attaleiates simply meant that the sky was overcast - something extremely improbable in that place and season — we cannot but conclude that it was

  1 But this raises another question: if the Scljuks had indeed defeated the Byzantines in pitched battle at Khelat, would the Sultan not have been rather more optimistic? The more one thinks about it, the more one comes to suspect that that battle never took place.

  on Friday, 26 August that the fate of the Byzantine Empire was settled.1

  As to the location, we know that the battle was fought on fairly level steppe, within a mile or two of the fortress of Manzikert (now marked by the modern Turkish town of Malazgirt). The chronicler Nicephorus Bryennius, grandson and namesake of Romanus's general and another valuable source, adds that in the closing stages the Byzantines ran into ambushes, which suggests - since steppes by their very nature afford few hiding-places - that there must also have been rougher, hillier country close by. Now Armenia is a mountainous country, but there is indeed just such a steppe, some three or four miles across, extending for perhaps ten miles on a south-west-north-east axis immediately to the south and east of the town. Beyond it a line of foothills, cut through with gullies and ravines — ideal ambush country - soon gives way once more to the mountains. Somewhere in those forty-odd square miles the two armies drew up opposite each other, early that Friday afternoon, and battle was joined.

  Or was it? The fact of the matter is that Manzikert, for all its historical significance, was until its very final stages hardly a battle at all. Romanus had formed up his army according to the traditional army manuals, in one long line several ranks deep, with the cavalry on the flanks. He himself took the centre, with Bryennius on the left and, on the right, a Cappadocian general named Alyattes. Behind was a substantial rearguard composed, we are told, of the 'levies of the nobility' - in fact the private armies of the great landowners - under the command, somewhat surprisingly, of Andronicus Ducas, son of Caesar John Ducas and nephew of the late Emperor. This young man seems to have made little secret of his contempt for Romanus, and the wonder is that the latter should have ever allowed him to participate in the campaign at all. Presumably he thought it safer to have him under his eye as a potential hostage rather than to leave him to stir up trouble in Constantinople; if so, it was the gravest mistake of his life.

  All through the afternoon the imperial army advanced across the steppe, but instead of coming forward to meet them the Seljuks steadily withdrew in a wide crescent, leaving the initiative to their mounted archers who galloped up and down on the Byzantine flanks, showering

  1 For this information, as for much else in this chapter, I am indebted to the late Alfred Friendly, whose book The Dreadful Day: The Battle of Manzikert, has proved invaluable.

  them with arrows. The infuriated cavalry would then break line and pursue them into the foothills - straight, it need hardly be said, into the carefully prepared ambushes; but for the increasingly frustrated Emperor in the centre there remained, where the enemy should have been, an empty void. On and on he rode, apparendy convinced that if he continued as far as the mountains he could somehow force his antagonists to turn and fight; then, suddenly, he noticed that the sun was fast declining and that he had left his camp virtually undefended. There was no point in further pursuit - if, indeed, he was actually pursuing anyone. He ordered the imperial standards to be reversed - the recognized signal for turning back - and wheeled his horse.

  This was the moment for which Alp Arslan had been waiting. From his observation post in the hills above he had watched Romanus's every move; now and now only, he gave the order for the attack. As his men poured down on to the steppe the Byzantine line broke in confusion; some of the mercenary units, seeing the reversed standards and not understanding their true significance, assumed that the Emperor had been killed and took to their heels. Meanwhile the Seljuks cut across immediately behind the broken line, separating it from the rearguard. At this point that rearguard should have justified its existence by moving forward, squeezing the enemy between it and the forward line and preventing its escape. Instead, Andronicus Ducas deliberately spread the word among his troops that the Emperor was defeated and the battle lost. He and they thereupon fled from the field and, as the panic spread, more and more contingents followed them. Only the troops on the left wing, seeing the Emperor in difficulties, rode to his rescue; but the Seljuks bore down upon them swiftly from the rear and they too had to flee.

  Romanus stood his ground, his personal guard around him, calling in vain on his troops to rally. But the chaos and confusion were too great. As Attaleiates describes it:

  Outside the camp all were in flight, shouting incoherently and riding about in disorder; no one could say what was happening. Some maintained that the Emperor was still fighting with what was left of his army, and that the barbarians had been put to flight. Others claimed that he had been killed or captured. Everyone had something different to report...

  It was like an earthquake: the shouting, the sweat, the swift rushes of fear, the clouds of dust, and not least the hordes of Turks riding all around us. Depending on his speed, resolution and strength, each man sought safety in flight. The enemy followed in pursuit, killing some, capturing others and trampling yet others under their horses' hooves. It was a tragic sight, beyond any mourning or lamenting. What indeed could be more pitiable than to see the entire imperial army in flight, defeated and pursued by cruel and inhuman barbarians; the Emperor defenceless and surrounded by more of the same; the imperial tents, symbols of military might and sovereignty, taken over by men of such a kind; the whole Roman state overturned - and knowing that the Empire itself was on the verge of collapse?

  Who survived? Effectively, those who took flight in time. We cannot blame the Armenians for doing so; they had little love at the best of times for the Greeks, who had conquered their country and were even now persecuting their families for the faith that they had always upheld. To the mercenaries we need feel less sympathetic; admittedly they had no emotional loyalty to the Empire, and they understandably resented the Emperor's discrimination against them, together with his unconcealed preference for his native troops. But they were under contract, their wages had been paid, and - though their conduct was probably no worse than that of other soldiers of fortune the world over - they might have shown a little more spirit than in fact they did. The only real villains
were the 'levies of the nobility' who formed the rearguard, and their commander Andronicus Ducas. Their shameful flight was probably due to treachery rather than cowardice, and was not a jot the more excusable for that.

  There was another survivor too: Romanus Diogenes himself. Left almost alone, he had refused to flee; he fought like a lion to the end. Only when his horse was killed under him and a wound in his hand made it no longer possible for him to hold his sword did he allow himself to be taken prisoner. His captors must have known who he was, but they gave him no special treatment. All night he lay among the wounded and dying. Only the following morning was he brought before the Sultan, dressed as a common soldier, and in chains.

  Few chroniclers of the period, Greek or Islamic, have been able to resist giving an account of the interview that took place between the victorious Sultan and the defeated Emperor on the morning after the battle. What is surprising, however, is not the number of these accounts but their similarity. At first, we are told, Alp Arslan refused to believe that the exhausted captive who was flung at his feet was indeed the Emperor of the Romans; only when he had been formally identified by former Turkish envoys and by his fellow-prisoner Basilacius did the Sultan rise from his throne and, ordering Romanus to kiss the ground before him, plant his foot on his victim's neck.

  It was a symbolic gesture, nothing more. He then immediately helped Romanus to his feet, bade him sit down at his side and assured him that he would be treated with all the respect due to his rank. For the next week the Emperor remained a guest in the Turkish camp, eating at the Sultan's table; never once did Alp Arslan show him anything but friendliness and courtesy - although he frequently condemned the faithlessness of those who had deserted him in his hour of need and, we are told, occasionally permitted himself a few gende criticisms of Byzantine generalship. All this was, of course, in the highest tradition of Islamic chivalry; we are inevitably reminded of the similar stories told of Saladin a century later. But it was also sound policy on the part of the Sultan: how much better, after all, that Romanus should return safely to Constantinople and resume the throne than that it should be taken over by some inexperienced and headstrong young man of whom he would know nothing and who would think only of revenge.