The Glory of the Empire

by Jean d'Ormesson

  The reorientation toward the east, the ruin of the City’s harbor, Arsaphes’s new preoccupations, and the influence of the priests all combined to bring about an important change: the court and the government moved to Aquileus. The declining City, while still influential, was valued mainly for its memories—it was the city of pomp and circumstance, but now overshadowed by Aquileus. The coexistence in the latter of the spiritual and temporal powers turned what was originally a religious citadel into the real center for military operations and administrative decisions. Aquileus, temple and fortress, dominated the whole of this age just as former ages had been delighted and fascinated by the City. Arsaphes’s ambassadors, governors, generals, and envoys still spoke in the name of the City, whose Tiger still figured on official documents and flags. But the reality of power was in Aquileus. Until her death, Princess Heloise continued to live in her palace in the City, but afterward Arsaphes, who had always mistrusted the brilliance, levity, and insouciance of the inhabitants of the City, lived almost all the time in Aquileus. He only left his camp there in order to go on expeditions to the northeast or southeast, and he returned there with his booty and his prisoners, to recruit his strength and be able to push back still farther the frontiers of his power.

  Clearly, the new dispositions and increased strength, the new way of life and military and territorial ambition, made new clashes with Onessa inevitable. The conflict soon came. The reason why it did not break out in the early years of Arsaphes’s reign, despite constant brushes, was that the opposition between Onessa and the City did not preclude a deep hostility on both their parts toward Pomposa and the merchant princes. The break between Arsaphes and the High Council even seemed, at first, to foreshadow a rapprochement between the two towns: Arsaphes was not himself a Porphyry, and so the antagonism between the Eagle and the Tiger might die down. Arsaphes was abandoning the great maritime trade that had so annoyed Onessa; he was driving out the merchant princes; he was a protection against the common menace of the barbarians beyond the mountains, deserts, and forests. Perhaps some agreement was possible between those who alike turned their back on the seductions of trade, luxury, the refinements of culture, and foreign influences from across the northwest sea. Years went by in this mistaken hope. Matters were not helped by a rapprochement between Aquileus and Pomposa, slight though this was. But the truth became evident even before Arsaphes’s death—there was no room for two powers, looking inward toward the land and both cultivating strict morals and military might. As Sir Allan Carter-Bennett put it, “After the City and its maritime dreams, Aquileus was merely another Onessa, still farther from the sea, more entrenched on the land, greedier for space and supremacy. The legacy of the rival brothers was the struggle for supremacy over the same continent.” For centuries the Porphyries and the Venostae had fought because they represented the contesting powers of land and sea, austerity and luxury, boorishness and culture. Now Onessa and the City, in the guise of Aquileus, were to confront one another again because, at that time and in that part of the world, there could be a future for only one Empire.

  V

  THE BANQUET AT ONESSA

  ARSAPHES LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SEE THE DANGER grow and conflict break out. But it was not until after his death that the struggle began to rage in earnest between Onessa and the City—or rather, now, between Onessa and Aquileus. Arsaphes, having won a last victory over the Oïghurs on the edge of the Tartar desert, far to the south of Amphibolus, was just preparing in his usual way to switch to a completely different front, when he died suddenly on the way back to Aquileus. Once there he had intended to regroup his forces and strike northward against the Onessan army beyond the volcanoes and the Amphyses. Few deaths have given rise to so many legends and theories, both at the time and ever since. Whether caused by a rear-guard action, accident, poison, treachery, rebellion, or simple illness, it was a mysterious end, and we do not know what became of the Bactrian captain’s remains. A black-and-white marble tomb had been erected for him in the great temple at Aquileus while he was still alive, but it was always to remain empty. The priests, true to the role he had allocated them, spread the legend that he had been caught up to heaven by a sacred eagle with outspread wings, which after seven times seventy-seven years would deposit the body in the tomb at Aquileus, where it would come to life again at moments of crisis. This was an example and a weapon that Arsaphes’s successors, beginning with Alexis, were not to forget. At all events, it was clear that at a time when the heirs of the Tiger were about to take up the struggle once more against the city of the Eagle, it was good tactics to invoke the tutelary deity of the Eagle, at the same time patron of the priests of Aquileus. The question becomes somewhat more complicated if one allows, as some do, that the priests themselves might have had some share in the death of a protector who had finally become an obstacle to their own soaring ambitions. It would take too long to discuss the point here.[1] And, of course, there is no inconsistency in supporting both the theory that Arsaphes was murdered by agents of the soothsayers, and the theory that his death, despite the ostensible affliction with which it was greeted in Aquileus, was exploited by the priests themselves for purposes of religious and political propaganda. In any case, for nearly fifty years, under Arsaphes’s successors, it was in reality the priests who ruled Aquileus and, through Aquileus, the City and its possessions. The legitimacy of the power of Arsaphes’s two sons, who succeeded one another with equal absence of genius, was not challenged, but it simply served to cover the real authority of the priests. During his own lifetime Arsaphes had been strong enough to keep their power within reasonable bounds. After his death, his memory was enough to maintain his sons on the throne, but not to curb the growing force that he had done more than anyone to foster. The priestly-cum-military government continued to follow Arsaphes’s policy even though its author was no longer there. But instead of fighting in the east and southeast against the foreign barbarians, they turned, as Arsaphes himself had been about to do, against Onessa and its rulers. As Sir Allan Carter-Bennett says, in one sense the priests betrayed Arsaphes, and in another they continued his work. Or rather they tried to do so—success eluded them.

  The phase of the Empire’s prehistory that now began was one of the darkest and most cruel. For more than a hundred years there was nothing but fire and slaughter and armies sweeping back and forth, now victorious, now vanquished. Military anarchy was established everywhere as the principle of government. Year after year, from Onessa to the City and Aquileus, all along the banks of the Amphyses, farmers and craftsmen saw their crops destroyed, their tools confiscated, their houses burned down, and their wives and children carried off. Aquileus was taken three times—twice by the Onessan army and once by the barbarians—and three times recaptured by the armies of the priests. The City sank further and further into oblivion, almost into squalor. Only Onessa remained strong and intact. But the fate that seemed to dog Onessa made it yet again incapable of imposing its will on the territories formerly dominated by the City, Arsaphes, and the priests of Aquileus.

  This century or century and a half of violence made the first splendor of the City seem like something belonging to the distant past. To minds dulled by privation it was like a mythical golden age. Philosophers, theaters, silks, statues of ivory, all the charms of culture and luxury—had they ever really existed? All that survived were the weapons and the feast days used by the priests for their own ends. The few texts we possess on the dark ages between Arsaphes and Basil constitute one long lament on the harshness of the present, one long yearning after the beauties of the past. Priests, writers, merchants, men of action and of thought all seem to have become suddenly incapable of hoping for or expecting anything from the future. They only dreamed of what was no more, what was being destroyed a little more each day by hordes of soldiers and incendiaries. Even memories scarcely survived the disaster. All through these endless years of extortion and murder, when rival bands of brigands carved out fleeting zones of influence in whic
h all was subject to their greed and caprice, what is most striking is the absence of leaders. There was no one to command, to plan, to exact obedience to decisions which, rendered haphazard, tardy, and inconsistent by pressure of circumstance, usually remained dead letters. Naturally both Pomposa and the barbarians took advantage of this weakness and anarchy; and to internal strife were added raids and attacks from without, during which towns were captured and laid waste. It was a miracle that this disorder did not end in universal slavery. It was as if, from end to end of the lands that were soon to constitute the Empire, time had turned back to those first dreary ages later sung—and embellished in the singing—by Valerius. For more long years Onessa continued to be a bird of prey, capable of pillage and sudden boldness, but still unable to rise to real organization or peace. The City approached the end of its protracted agony. And under the long decrescendo of Arsaphes’s descendants, struck suddenly with impotence, the priests of Aquileus began to indulge in sterile internecine struggles in the cause of theological influence or private interest. Not a single idea nor a single leader emerged—only, in the country, wolves, bands of deserters, famine and want; and, in the towns, insecurity, poverty, and fear. Then, at last, so many hundreds of years after its first prince, Onessa’s hour struck.

  Prince Basil was the direct heir of the Eagle and the Venostae. He was short, and, to judge by the likenesses on his coins and medals, rather ugly. Puny, with a red beard and a flat nose, he was sometimes sly and sometimes given to display, but always two-faced and cruel. He walked with a limp, and was to lose an eye at the battle of Amphibolus. But that twisted body housed a will of iron, and by employing both battle-ax and murder he was to create the Empire. Historians have long differed over the nature of his ambitions and the role he played. According to some, including Sir Allan Carter-Bennett, Basil even as a boy already had a vague dream of unifying the Empire. But most French and German historians believe Basil was primarily a descendant of the Venostae, dreaming only of Onessa’s greatness and the revenge of the Eagle over the Tiger. In any event, as soon as he appears on the scene of history a change is discernible in the formless chaos of intrigue and ambush. The fate of the people of the Empire found a center, their history found a pivot; in a very few years, everything would revolve around Basil.

  Unlike Arsaphes, he was not an adventurer or a strategist. Nor like Alexis, later, was he a moralist and philosopher. He schemed, plotted, machinated, edged step by step toward his goal. Everything served his turn. Not for nothing was he a descendant of the Venostae—he shrank as little from violence and cruelty as from guile and deceit. As soon as he came to the throne of the princes of Onessa, he calculated the risks to be run and those to be avoided, and drew up a list of objects to be attained. Amid the vast disorder in which all the peoples of the Empire had for years battled in vain, it was impossible to fight on all fronts at once. So at a single stroke Basil reversed the whole traditional policy of the princes of Onessa. He sought to come to terms with Pomposa; he sought to come to terms with the barbarians. Whether he dreamed of an Empire or confined his ambition to the fate of Onessa alone, his immediate object was to enable the Eagle to defeat the Tiger at last, and to rule over the City as it ruled over Onessa. Clearly such a plan entailed the humbling of Aquileus. To enable Onessa’s supremacy to stretch from the Amphyses to the deserts, from the sea to the forests of the northwest, it was necessary to break the power of the priests. The fall of Aquileus would automatically bring about the fall of the City.

  The simplicity of this plan was equaled only by the tortuousness of the means by which it was pursued. Ritter rightly compares Basil to Louis XI and Mazarin.[2] Sometimes he would appear to surrender everything in order to win more surely. Humility and lowliness were as much a part of his armory as pride and genuine grandeur. After the question of the scope of the young prince’s ambitions, the next most interesting problem raised by Basil’s devious policy is whether it constitutes a break with or a continuation of Onessa’s previous history. The discontinuous aspect is clear: the alliance with Pomposa. But the continuous aspect is no less evident: in that this very deviation was made with the traditional object of ensuring Onessa’s supremacy over the City. Basil’s foremost gift was lucidity. Throughout his reign he never hesitated over what was essential and what might be sacrificed. To achieve his ends he hatched intrigues in which the chain of cause and effect was drawn so fine that only when it was too late did his terrified enemies discover the real meaning of stratagems, and even surrenders, that had seemed unimportant at the time. The most striking example of this long-range policy is the famous meeting with the king of Sicily and the Great Khan of the Oïghurs.

  Sicily had long been under the domination of Pomposa and, in the heyday of the City’s splendor and of the High Council, had maintained trade relations with the City and its port. But after the revolt of the mercenaries Pomposa took good care to interpose itself between Sicily and the territories of the Empire. Then, under Arsaphes and his successors, the links grew weaker, and Sicily turned to the powers in the west and aimed at freeing itself from Pomposan influence. This policy was largely successful. Pomposan interests in Sicily were still extensive, but the old political and military domination were now only a matter of form, and the king of Sicily was almost free to rule over the destinies of his island. Regis II mounted the three thrones of Agrigentum, Palermo, and Syracuse almost at the very same moment as Basil came to power in Onessa.

  While still only crown prince, Basil was betrothed to a Pannonian princess, a dazzling beauty as virtuous as she was fair. Her name was Ingeburgh, and Basil had never seen her. Ingeburgh herself was in love with a young Pomposan noble called Tybalt, a skilled harpist who had on three occasions accompanied trade and political missions sent by the merchant princes to Pannonia. The charming but poor Tybalt stood no chance against the dynastic necessities personified in the clubfoot of Onessa; and Ingeburgh, in despair, found herself promised to Basil, not knowing then that she would be immortalized as the Penelope of the sonnets Tybalt was to write under the name Mercutio of Verona. These sonnets have come down to us as one of the purest and most exquisite sources of our knowledge about the manners and feelings of that time. When, after a long voyage, Ingeburgh with her escort and attendants arrived at last at Onessa, Basil was already crowned and had begun to negotiate with Regis II. His minister, Gandolphus, sent as his envoy to Sicily, had just reported that King Regis had a beloved daughter, Adelaide, aged seventeen. At this point there occurs one of the most astounding episodes in the life of Basil, and one of the most striking examples of his decisiveness, lucidity, and lack of scruple.

  Basil had welcomed Ingeburgh with all the honors due to her rank and the role for which she was destined. As soon as he saw her, he, like everyone else, was enchanted by her beauty and charm. We should try to imagine the feelings of a child of fifteen or sixteen, arriving almost alone in the Eagle’s nest of Onessa. Princess Ingeburgh had never left her father and mother before, and the formidable appearance of both the place and its master was enough to make the stoutest heart quail. She doubtless thought of her handsome, mellifluous Tybalt as she gazed with horror on the deformed cripple now smiling on her. But despite his ugliness Basil was not lacking in charm. He spoke to her kindly, and Ingeburgh emerged from the first dreaded interview almost reassured. They had eight or nine such meetings in the course of three or four weeks. Meanwhile, through an intermediary, Basil continued his negotiations with Regis II. One evening he sent for Ingeburgh. The princess had almost begun to enjoy their conversations. She wondered innocently whether she might not be learning to love the terrible prince of Onessa. She smiled as she entered his presence, and dropped him the most graceful of curtsies.

  “My child,” said the prince, helping her to rise, “your beauty, nobility of character, and shining virtue have touched me deeply. I thought to make a marriage consonant with the dignity of our two houses and sure to add to their greatness. But the last few days, during which you have t
ransformed Onessa with your gaiety and grace, have shown me that you would change what seemed a duty into an inexpressible pleasure. I have never before experienced the joy and richness of feeling that your presence bestows. I thank you for having revealed such sentiments to one who but for you would never have known them.”

  Princess Ingeburgh had almost ceased to think about Tybalt. She trembled with happiness at having touched the heart of the deformed prince of whom she had so long thought with horror. She vowed to herself that she would love him, and already felt with delight the first stirrings of her future affection.

  “But princes are not born for happiness,” Basil went on. “And it was with uneasiness and mistrust I felt it overwhelm me. For the great it can only be a sign of weakness, a harbinger of surrender. It makes them soft and distracts them from the great duties they have undertaken. I sent for you this evening,” he suddenly concluded, “to tell you that we must both give up all thought of it.”