The Early Centuries - Byzantium 01

by John Julius Norwich

  Even now, he was in no particular hurry. There were plenty more stops along the route to Constantinople, each one providing its quota of new adherents; and it must have been a formidable force indeed that, on Saturday 1 October, sailed confidently through the Marmara to anchor at the mouth of the Golden Horn. Heraclius was not expecting opposition. For some time now he had been in secret correspondence with Priscus, the Emperor's son-in-law and another one of Maurice's old commanders, who had himself narrowly escaped execution a year or two before2 and who had assured him that he would be welcomed in the city as its deliverer; he knew, too, that in the unlikely event of trouble he could rely on the entire faction of the Greens to intervene on his behalf. In fact, no intervention was necessary. Two days later the captive Emperor, already shorn of his imperial robes, was rowed out to his ship and dragged into his presence.

  'Is it thus,' asked Heraclius, 'that you have governed the Empire?'

  'Will you,' replied Phocas, with unexpected spirit, 'govern it any better?'

  It was a good question; but it was hardly calculated to incline Heraclius

  Owing to his delay in Egypt, Nicetas was to reach Constantinople some time after his cousin, but Gibbon tells us that 'he submitted without a murmur to the fortune of his friend, and his laudable intentions were rewarded with an equestrian statue and a daughter of the Emperor'.

  Priscus had been conspiring against his father-in-law ever since the leaders of the demes had erected statues of his wife and himself next to those of the Emperor and Empress in the Hippodrome; Phocas, in a paroxysm of fury, had ordered them to be removed and had been with difficulty restrained from executing Priscus on a charge of treason. Two years after his accession Heraclius, having rather better cause to doubt Priscus's loyalty, ordered him forcibly tonsured and removed to a monastery, where he died a year or two later.

  towards clemency. One of our sources, John of Antioch, tells us that he had Phocas chopped into pieces to make 'a carcase fit for hounds'; others suggest that he was delivered up to the combined mercies of the Blues and the Greens, to much the same effect. His henchmen and cronies suffered similar fates; and that very afternoon, in the Chapel of St Stephen within the Great Palace, Heraclius underwent two separate, though near-simultaneous, religious ceremonies. First he was married - to a lady to whom he had long been betrothed. Formerly known as Fabia, she now changed her name to Eudocia. Immediately afterwards, he was crowned Emperor.

  14

  The First Crusader

  [610—41]

  Noblest of the Gods, King and Master of the whole Earth, Son of the great Hormisdas, CHOSROES, to Heraclius his vile and insensate slave:

  Refusing to submit to our rule, you call yourself lord and sovereign. You seize and distribute our treasure, you deceive our servants. You never cease to annoy us with your bands of brigands. Have I not destroyed you Greeks? You say that you trust in God; why then has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria? . . . Could I not also destroy Constantinople?

  Letter from Chosroes II to Heraclius, c. 622

  Now in the prime of life - he was probably about thirty-six - fair-haired and broad-chested, still glowing with his triple triumph of conquest, marriage and coronation in a single day, Heraclius must have appeared something of a demi-god when, on the evening of Monday 5 October 610, he stepped out of the Great Palace, his lovely young wife on his arm. And yet, among all his cheering subjects, there were surely many who feared lest this twenty-first Emperor of Byzantium might also be the last.

  Never had any of his predecessors inherited so desperate a situation. To the west, the Avars and the Slavs had overrun the Balkans, their raiding parties regularly approaching the very gates of Constantinople; to the east the Persian watch-fires at Chalcedon, immediately across the Bosphorus, were clearly visible from the windows of the imperial palace. The capital, he knew, was safe for the moment: the Theodosian Walls were in good repair, while the Persians had no ships by which to pass over the straits, which were in any case ceaselessly patrolled by his own fleet. Constantine the Great had chosen the site for its impregnability, and he had chosen well. But though the centre of the Empire might remain secure, the extremities were fast falling away. The entire Balkan peninsula was by now effectively lost to the Slavs; and the Persian advance, halted as it might be at the frontiers of Europe, was continuing in Asia unchecked - and was now receiving additional momentum all the time, thanks to the enthusiastic support of the Jewish communities. Within a year of Heraclius's accession, the brilliant Persian general Shahr-Baraz - the 'Royal Boar' - had seized Antioch. In 613 he added Damascus, and in 614 Jerusalem.

  Of the many catastrophes that have befallen this unhappiest of cities during its long history, the capture of Jerusalem by the Persians was one of the most hideous. The tale begins innocently enough: the citizens accepted the quite reasonable terms offered them - including a Persian garrison - and for a month all was well. Then, without warning, the Christians suddenly rose up and slaughtered every Persian and Jew on whom they could lay their hands. Those fortunate enough to escape hurried at once to Shahr-Baraz, who had by now continued his advance with the army. He turned back, only to find that Jerusalem had once more closed its gates against him. For the best part of a month it held out; only after the Persians had mined the walls were they able to smash their way into the city.

  What followed was a massacre - and one of quite unprecedented savagery. It lasted for three long days, at the end of which hardly a Christian was left alive, hardly a house standing. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was burnt to ashes, together with most of the other principal Christian shrines; the Patriarch Zacharias was taken prisoner; the True Cross was seized, together with all the other most sacred relics of the Crucifixion, including the Holy Lance and Sponge, and carried away to Ctesiphon. Nor, it appears, were the Persians the only - or even the worst - aggressors. Many Jews had survived the first uprising; many more had taken service with the Persian army; and more still, we may assume, when they heard of what was going on in Jerusalem, hurried up from the neighbouring towns and villages to settle old scores. According to one of our principal sources for the period, the monk Theophanes -who was, however, writing 200 years later, and from a strongly Christian viewpoint - no less than 90,000 of his co-religionists met their deaths at Jewish hands during those nightmare days. None, he maintains, were spared - least of all the monks and nuns, who were often singled out for especially brutal treatment.

  The news of the destruction of Jerusalem, and above all of the removal of the True Cross, was received with horror in Constantinople. No clearer mark of divine displeasure could be imagined. But it was not the end of the Empire's tribulations. Three years later the Great King turned his attention to Egypt; and before long one of the most indispensable sources of the imperial corn supply had become a Persian province. With the entire Greek peninsula now lost to the Slavs and the rich wheatfields of Thrace in Avar hands, the inevitable result was famine, bringing pestilence in its train. It began to look as though the Romans might, after all, be brought to their knees - though by starvation rather than conquest.

  Already in 618 Heraclius had virtually decided on a drastic and unprecedented step - that of abandoning the capital altogether and falling back on his home city of Carthage, there to prepare a major offensive against his enemies similar to that which had led to the elimination of Phocas. From the point of view of the Empire as a whole, such a course would have had much to recommend it. It would have enabled him to make his dispensations in a way that was impossible in beleaguered Constantinople; it would have rid him of the inhibiting and frequently destructive influence of the Byzantine aristocracy and Senate, which had grown dangerously powerful since the death of Justinian; and it would have spared him the expense of maintaining the imperial palace and the court ceremonial that went with it, liberating huge sums of money for the raising of manpower and the provision of equipment and supplies. The citizens of Constantinople, on the other hand, we
re predictably horrified. Led by Sergius the Patriarch, they came to the Emperor in a body and implored him to remain with them; and Heraclius gave in to their entreaties. It may be that he feared a revolution if he stood firm; perhaps he interpreted as a sign from heaven the recent shipwreck, in a violent storm, of the vessel bound for Carthage on which he had secretly entrusted an advance consignment of the palace treasure some weeks before. In any case, he must have seen in this appeal the perfect opportunity of renewing the covenant with his subjects. If he remained with them, they in turn must be ready to accept whatever sacrifices he might demand of them, whatever hardships he might impose. Unhesitatingly, they accepted; and a day or two later, in the Church of St Sophia and in the presence of the Patriarch, he gave them a solemn oath that he would never desert the city.

  By this time Heraclius had already been eight years on the throne - eight years about which our chief sources for the period are unusually silent; and more than one modern historian has expressed surprise at so long a period of apparent inactivity on the part of a young and energetic Emperor, at a time when the Empire was facing one of the most awesome crises in its history. Was it really necessary - so the argument runs - for him to wait twelve years after his accession before leading his army into battle? The answer, surely, is that it was. He had found the Empire in a state of chaos: the treasury exhausted, the army demoralized and dispirited, the civil administration incompetent and hopelessly corrupt. Confronted as he was by two such formidable enemies, there could be no question of victory until he had subjected the whole state to a thorough reorganization, moulding it once again into an efficient fighting machine. Meanwhile, he refused to be hurried. The walls of Constantinople and the waters of the Bosphorus would keep his foes at bay for as long as was required, if not a good deal longer. Let Chosroes whittle away at the eastern provinces if he must; once he were defeated, all the lost territory would be regained at a stroke. But to march against him without adequate preparation would be to risk the defeat not only of the Roman army but - since he was resolved to lead it in person - of Heraclius himself. And that, almost certainly, would be the end of the Empire.

  Therefore, the very day after his coronation, he had set to work. His first task was to make those of his dominions as were still within his control properly ready for war. His years at Carthage - one of the two great exarchates established by Maurice some thirty years before - had shown him the wisdom of running the outlying provinces on strict military lines; and it was on just such a basis that he now began to reorganize all that part of Asia Minor that had not been lost to the Persians. This consisted, roughly speaking, of the land that lay west of a jagged line running north-east from Seleucia (the modern Selifke) on the Mediterranean coast to Rhizus (Rize) on the Black Sea;1 and Heraclius now divided it into four Themes - the Opsikion to the north-west, the Armeniakon to the north-east, the Anatolikon in the centre and finally the Carabisiani, which covered most of the southern coast and its hinterland. The new designation was significant in itself: tbema was the normal Greek word used to describe a division of troops, so the warlike character of the scheme was emphasized from the start. Not only was each theme placed under the supreme command of a strategos, or military governor; but considerable numbers of soldiers, or potential soldiers, were settled in each, receiving inalienable grants of land on condition of hereditary military service.

  1 The Persian camp at Chalcedon had been merely a temporary outpost; all the land around it had remained loyal to the Emperor.

  This new arrangement was to prove of immense value for the defence of the Empire in the years to come. It laid the foundations for a well-trained and on the whole reliable native army, and it effectively put an end to the old hit-and-miss system whereby the Emperor was obliged to recruit bodies of barbarian or other foreign mercenaries who all too frequently betrayed him. Well before the end of the seventh century there had grown up, all over western Anatolia, a whole new class of soldier-farmers who maintained themselves on their own land and, in return for a nominal stipend, were expected to present themselves for duty, armed and mounted, when summoned. The former provincial administration with its Praetorian Prefectures - dating largely from the days of Diocletian and Constantine and in some respects older still -soon withered away.

  Then there were the imperial finances to be restored - another task which could not be accomplished overnight. Heraclius tackled it in a number of ways - through taxation, forced loans and the imposition of crippling fines on former members of Phocas's notoriously corrupt bureaucracy; he was also able to arrange for large subsidies from his family and friends in Africa. But by far the most significant single source of revenue was - for the first time in its history - the orthodox Church. For Patriarch Sergius, the coming war was to be a war of religion, a war which would signal the final victory of the forces of Christ over the pagan fire-worshippers; and he was resolved to back his Emperor to the hilt. Relations between himself and Heraclius had recently been under strain. The Empress Eudocia had died, apparently of an epileptic seizure, soon after the birth of her second child in 612; and her husband had shortly afterwards gone through a ceremony of marriage with his niece Martina, thereby causing much scandal in religious circles. Sergius had made a violent protest at the time; but now, in the national interest, he was prepared to overlook any irregularities in the Emperor's private life. Unhesitatingly he put all the ecclesiastical and monastic treasure, from every diocese and parish under his authority, at the disposal of the State. Heraclius accepted it at once. At least for the moment, his financial worries were over.

  Before he could march against the Persians, however, there were the Avars to be dealt with. In 619 it looked as though some accommodation might be reached, when their Khagan proposed a conference with the Emperor at Heraclea on the Marmara. Heraclius eagerly accepted the invitation, and decided to dazzle the barbarian horde with elaborate pageantry and theatrical performances, all designed to show off the magnificence of the Empire. It was while he was planning these manifestations at Selymbria that he suddenly received word that a detachment of Avar troops was even then taking up its position in the wooded heights above the Anastasian Walls.1 Clearly the whole thing was a plot: his line of retreat to Constantinople was to be cut off, after which it would be an easy matter to take him prisoner. Delaying only long enough to throw off his imperial robes and to disguise himself as a poor peasant, he leapt on to his horse and galloped back at full speed to the capital; minutes later, the Avars were in hot pursuit. They found the Theodosian Walls closed against them, but departed only after having destroyed several churches in the outer suburbs.

  How Byzantine-Avar relations were patched up after this regrettable incident we do not know; our sources are once again silent. All that can be said for certain is that by the spring of 622 Heraclius was ready for the war which would, he was determined, put an end to the Persian threat once and for all. On Easter Monday, 5 April, he boarded his flagship - the first Emperor since Theodosius the Great personally to lead his forces into battle2 - and set sail to the south-west, his war fleet crowding behind him. Already, had he but known it, he had taken the Persians by surprise. They had expected him to move up the Bosphorus and into the Black Sea, ultimately launching his attack through Armenia. Instead, he headed in precisely the opposite direction: through the Marmara and the Hellespont, down the Ionian coast to Rhodes, then east along the southern shore of Asia Minor to the Bay of Issus. Here -only a few miles from where Alexander had routed the Persian host nearly a thousand years before - he landed his army, and here he spent the entire summer in an intensive programme of tactical exercises and manoeuvres, testing his own generalship and building up the endurance and stamina of his men until he felt that together they would be a match for anything the Great King could hurl against them. All the time, too, he was working steadily on their morale. It was their privilege, he told them, to be the chosen instruments of God by which he would destroy the forces of Antichrist. They were fighting not just
for the Empire but also for their Faith, and must comport themselves accordingly. The Emperor's court poet, George of Pisidia, who accompanied the expedition, describes somewhat sanctimoniously the contrast between the two

  Sec p. 260.

  In 487 the Emperor Zeno, in one of his rasher moments, had undertaken to march against Thcodoric the Ostrogoth, and a century later Maurice had wished to take the field against the Avars; but both had thought better of it.

  camps. In the Persian, he claims, the air was loud with cymbals and every kind of music, as the naked houris danced for the generals' delectation; in the Roman, 'the Emperor sought delight in psalms sung to mystical instruments, which awoke a divine echo in his soul'.1