The Glory of the Empire

by Jean d'Ormesson

  Princess Ingeburgh could not have been more devastated if a thunderbolt had fallen at her feet. At the very moment when, after the sorrows of girlhood, her future seemed to be opening fair before her, the very man for whom in the last few days she had begun to feel the opposite of her former repugnance now stood before her as a tyrant who, after tearing her away from both her parents and her lover, rejected her. She had a sudden swift revelation of a future of humiliation and despair, and, bursting into tears, fell sobbing to the floor.

  “My child,” continued the prince in a voice that was almost gentle, “I don’t mean to wound you or make you unhappy. Your sorrow delights me if it means I have been able to win your affection. But I do not want the feelings that console me to make you suffer. You would have been the wife I dreamed of, and I could have been for you—or so your affliction now allows me to hope—something other than what you at first supposed. If I thus sever at a blow the relations that would probably have been dearer to me than to you, it is because the destiny of Onessa makes it my duty to do so, and because I would not, through cowardly shrinking from what has to be done, cause you perhaps to suffer even more in the future. Go, then, and remember that a prince who may become mighty has loved you as the humblest man may love the best and most beautiful woman he ever met.”[3]

  Four months later Basil married Adelaide. Ingeburgh had left Onessa, crushed and humiliated. But even the noblest women are fragile and she began to be consumed with passion and jealousy: she loved the ugly and cruel prince of Onessa.

  Basil waited almost two years to meet his father-in-law, King Regis, and the khan of the Oïghurs. When he did decide on the encounter, he held all the trumps. Famagusta, in Cyprus, where the three met, never saw such splendors. The khan appeared, preceded by tigers and elephants; King Regis wore robes of gold and silk more sumptuous than any woven in the memory of man. Basil alone arrived on foot, limping slightly and stammering. The account of the interview, written in Greek by the anonymous clerk known as the Chronicler of Famagusta, gives a host of interesting and picturesque details on what the kings said to one another, and the dances, banquets, and other festivities that surrounded their meeting. Greek, of course, was the language used for the conference. But the only one of the three who could use it with both ease and elegance was King Regis. Not surprisingly, the Great Khan spoke Greek only with difficulty, but he made it a point of honor to use it, and the chronicler slyly reproduces the barbarisms and solecisms with which his flowery phrases were strewn. Basil spoke little. The more he wanted, the less he talked about it. When, after a week, the three princes quitted their golden tents, the rugs richly woven with hunting scenes and the combats of wild beasts, the dancers who had delighted and the tumblers who had amused them, and each king returned to his distant capital, Basil took away with him solid alliances on land and sea. He was protected both in the east and in the west. He had his hands free to move against Aquileus.

  The agreement with the Oïghurs meant little to Pomposa. But the alliance with King Regis, reinforced by the marriage between Basil and Adelaide, constituted a direct threat to the naval supremacy and maritime trade of the merchant warriors. It is at this juncture that the depth and vigor of Basil’s designs are strikingly demonstrated. Many of those about him, especially Gandolphus, urged him to take advantage at once of King Regis’s friendly attitude and turn immediately against Pomposa. It was a good moment. Pomposa was then having to deal with the most violent mercenaries’ revolt in the whole of its long history. The Illyrian crews of the Pomposan warships—the most skilled and highly trained of her sailors—had risen against the merchant princes, and a struggle of frightful cruelty was raging.

  “My lord,” Gandolphus would say, spreading out with his bony fingers a gold-illuminated map that King Regis had sent as a gift, “pray consider the relative positions of Onessa and the merchant princes at this moment. On the one hand, the barbarians are reduced to silence by your friendship with the king of the Oïghurs; Aquileus is divided by the rivalry between its prince and its priests, and the priesthood itself is rent by theological quarrels; and Sicily is not only your friend, but your ally. On the other hand, Pomposa is weakened by civil unrest and revolt within her forces—revolt in the most powerful of her forces, and, within that, in those Illyrian galleys which have inflicted defeat on the Phoenician, Carthaginian, and Irish fleets. Such a combination of favorable circumstances may not recur for a long time. Do not hesitate any longer, sire. Attack! And then, when you have rid yourself of Pomposa, who will dare to resist, let alone defy, you? Onessa will be mistress over both sea and land, and her prince the mightiest among the princes of the earth.”[4]

  But the wily Basil was not to be deflected from his original plan. He did precisely the opposite of what Gandolphus advised. And he sent Gandolphus himself, whom he trusted completely, on a mission of peace to Pomposa.

  The merchant princes had argued like Gandolphus, and had been filled with apprehension. During a banquet given by the Council of Seven, Gandolphus and his opposite numbers spoke freely, amid libations and roars of mirth, of the preoccupations that had been preying on their minds. Pomposa, relieved of her deadly fears lest Basil should threaten her, was ready to agree out of hand to all Onessa’s demands. So Basil had little difficulty in obtaining twenty galleys, twelve thousand men, and ample supplies of arms and provisions to help in the fight against Aquileus. The alliance with the merchant princes brought about a complete reversal of the situation. Three events had sealed the fate of Aquileus: the marriage with Adelaide, and the meetings at Famagusta and Pomposa. Six months later, in the ancient tower of the castle of Sarmizegetusa, where she eagerly awaited messages from Pomposa or the City, Ingeburgh understood the deep designs of the lame prince of Onessa.

  Arsaphes would have hurled himself on Aquileus. Basil went on maneuvering for several months, undermining the sacred town’s resistance from within. Among the crowd of pilgrims who still flocked to Aquileus despite the danger and disturbances were numerous Onessan agents. Some were there to pick up and relay information, others to shake the morale of the army and the population. Even several of the priests themselves were in Basil’s pay, and irritated or discouraged their fellow citizens by proposing measures either too drastic or not drastic enough. When Basil finally decided on action the battle was already won.

  He entered Aquileus after a campaign lasting five weeks. The valleys of the Amphyses and the Nephta, the region of the volcanoes, and the plain up to beyond Amphibolus all now belonged to Onessa. Arsaphes’s great-grandson, a dim young man who loved only horses, and perhaps their grooms, came with shaven head and white robes to offer his submission to Basil in the great temple in Aquileus. After all those centuries, the Eagle had conquered the Tiger. Basil had not hesitated to enter Aquileus, but the memories of the past glory of the City itself were still so much alive that he did not care to show himself there in person, and sent Gandolphus, together with some of his own priests, to take possession in his name.

  But although all these regions had been conquered, they were not all ready to submit. Decadent though the City had become, it had still left an indelible mark on the vast territories once exposed to its trade and culture. Onessa, on the other hand, had never been anything but a strongly garrisoned fortress, and while Basil had turned that garrison into an army, it was still not big enough to occupy an Empire. From the beginning of Basil’s rule, natural disasters rained down all over the country. The second winter of his reign was so severe that two or three centuries later it was still commemorated in the songs of the bards and in popular tradition. The sea froze for 30 or 40 miles along the coast between Onessa and the City. In the region of the volcanoes, some twenty villages and their inhabitants were buried under snow and ice. All that winter and the following spring, packs of wolves roved right up to the ramparts of Amphibolus, Aquileus, and Onessa. Such extremities, together with a plague of locusts at the end of spring two or three years later, several bad harvests, and, at the end of B
asil’s reign, an unusually violent eruption of the volcano Kora-Kora, worsened the plight of the people, especially the peasants. There were several revolts. People murmured that nothing much had been gained by replacing the priests with Prince Basil, and that law and order were of no use if they did not prevent the poor from dying of hunger and cold. The ghost of Arsaphes began to haunt people’s minds. Memories of happiness and ease in connection with the City were now too distant to exercise much power, but the legend of the captain of the mercenaries was still near enough to kindle, suddenly, the hopes of the hungry, the humiliated, and the wretched. Two or three years after Aquileus’s surrender, rebellion threatened everywhere.

  Once again Basil stood out against all the advice that was offered to him. Many wanted him to invade Aquileus, the obvious center of all intrigues and plots, and by noose and sword to drown in blood the calls to resistance and rebellion which, as yet, were still only being whispered.

  “And then what, my good lords?” said the prince, his overlarge head drooping forward, and playing, as was his habit, with one of his rings. “And then what? No, it is wrong to devalue fear and repression by making unskillful use of them. What is the good of killing twenty priests if a hundred arise in their place, or of killing a hundred if they are replaced by a thousand? It is better to act coolly and have patience, to let things take their course. It is better to wait . . . and then we shall see.” And those who knew the prince trembled at his good humor and his cruel smile.[5]

  Basil, who no longer took any account of Arsaphes’s successors and had decided once and for all to deal directly with the hierarchy, opened negotiations with the priests of Aquileus, who had been expecting to be crucified. He offered to set up a federation of all the territories over which they had ever wielded authority, and to link this federation somehow with Onessa, under his own authority. The federation would be autonomous, and all regional authority would be concentrated in the hands of the priests. Basil entrusted them with the task of bringing the population of town and country back to a peaceable frame of mind. The priests gathered in a shrine some 40 miles southeast of Aquileus to examine Basil’s proposals. The oldest and the youngest among them were for mistrusting them and still preparing to fight. But the majority thought the proposals conceded all that any rebellion could reasonably be expected to achieve, and voted in favor of acceptance. Basil came to Aquileus in person to attend the first meeting of the new college of priests appointed to administer the federation. The more suspicious were alarmed by the size of the escort he brought with him. But cavalry and infantry alike did no worse than line the pockets of innkeepers and courtesans, and all went away again at the same time as the prince. Basil was cheered by an enthusiastic crowd of soldiers and priests. He had never been so popular in Aquileus.

  After a year or two, civil peace was restored and a new stage began. Basil, alleging the external dangers that still threatened everywhere, the constant threat from the barbarians, and commercial competition from Pomposa, proposed a tighter link between the federation and Onessa. But he did not want, he said, to give with one hand and take back with the other. He was suggesting not only that Onessa be associated more closely with the affairs of the federation, but also that the federation be associated more closely with the affairs of Onessa. In short, he was asking the college of priests to participate in the government of Onessa just as he himself already participated in the government of the federation. Once more the college of priests wavered. Some wanted at all costs to keep Onessa and Aquileus quite separate. Others pointed out the inequality of their two forces and, since Onessa in any case already had power over Aquileus, were in favor of being able to exercise some inside influence over decisions made in Onessa. It was, of course, the latter opinion that carried the day, and by a large majority. Once more Basil and his troops were installed in force within the walls of Aquileus. And once again, to the surprise of the pessimists, everything went off perfectly smoothly. The priests of Aquileus and Basil’s advisers spent nearly a week together, and the council of priests was invited, at the beginning of the following spring, to attend the solemn assembly that the Onessan leaders held every two years in the presence of the prince. To do away with all the suspicions Basil knew were aroused, he offered to hold the meeting in Onessa. The priests felt that they had got the better of their defeat.

  On the appointed date, Onessa was en fête for the ceremonies. The usually sinister appearance of the Eagle’s nest was brightened by sunshine and mild weather. Many priests came, attended on the journey by their chief captains and most skillful men-at-arms. On the evening of the second day a great banquet was held on the plain at the foot of the fortress, at which the guests were eight hundred priests and nobles from Aquileus, and an equal number of dignitaries and soldiers from Onessa. When the moon rose, young women from the mountains beyond the desert appeared in the vast circle formed by the guests, and began to dance to the sound of unseen music. Rye brandy had been flowing freely, and all these warriors and seers were seized with pleasant nostalgia. They all loved feasting, rich hangings, the music of their temples and camps, the bodies of women, and the comradeship of soldiers around the campfire. Every Onessan sat between two men from Aquileus; every Aquilean had an Onessan on either side. This symbolized the union between the two cities. Prince Basil, sitting between the eldest priest and the general of the Aquilean army, looked on in silence at the ebb and flow of the dance. In the pale light of the moon he could only just see the silhouettes of the dancers standing out briefly against the flames of the braziers before disappearing again into the darkness. A murmur arose from the circle of guests. One man from Onessa, one from Aquileus, one man from Onessa, one from Aquileus . . . The prince thought of the weight that rested on him, the weight of all those intermingled destinies out of which an empire had to be made. These destinies, these ambitions, these dreams, these apathies—all had to be welded together to form a single will. The women danced on. Among them the prince had noticed one, a child of about five or six. He had asked her name, and been told she was called Irene. Already she had great, sad gray eyes, though she laughed easily. She was beautiful. She came neither from the mountains nor from the deserts of the south, but from the sea, far north beyond Onessa, beyond the great forests where neither the City nor Onessa had ever reached. Forests . . . mountains . . . deserts . . . the little girl dancing. Suddenly, to the dreaming prince, the world seemed immense. Sometimes the prince did dream, and then all the serious, important things anyone said to him about his revenues or the discipline of his armies seemed to him futile and meaningless. He dreamed. The world was without limits; it offered no bounds to his formidable ambitions. It stretched out far, far, beyond seas and mountains, beyond deserts and forests. Already he had only to lift his hand and everything obeyed. The music had ceased. He lifted his hand and stood up. Every second man stood too. They all began to sing. Then Prince Basil, who had joined in the song, threw himself on the eldest priest, who was singing too, and thrust his dagger into his breast. And each man who stood and sang at the same moment stabbed the man who sat and sang on his right.

  A fortnight later Basil had himself crowned emperor in the great temple at Aquileus.

  VI

  THAUMAS AND INGEBURGH

  THERE IS SOMETHING DISPIRITING ABOUT THE MARCH of history. That web which never alters despite an infinite range of motifs and variations: the same struggle for power under ever-different masks; the vain triumphs, the declines and falls; the ever-recurring myths; the straining toward a future that, though it always eludes the grasp, never ceases to exert its pressure and make its demands; the turning wheel which changes yet does not change; the hopes always disappointed, the victories foredoomed to failure—whether the picture they paint of man expresses his greatness or his weakness, we shall never know. Both, probably—and both at the same time. Nothing is more futile than history, and yet history is man himself. Nothing is more accidental, nothing more necessary. Everything could probably have been otherwise
. But everything is as it is, and forever.

  The emperor’s first care was to undo all he had done and unmake all that had made him. He reconstructed the power of the priests, and he repudiated the empress. Immediately after his coronation, priests began to be hunted out and exterminated all over the Empire. The setting up of the federation and the emperor’s apparent approval of it had encouraged all the supporters of the priests to declare their opinions freely, and this made them all the easier to track down and destroy. Justus Dion estimates there were nearly seventy thousand victims in about ten days. Although the actual figure has been questioned, it is certain there was terrible slaughter. In both country and town, blood flowed as freely as it had some two hundred years before, when Arsaphes captured the City. With the priests were slaughtered the women and children guilty of having lived with, protected, or served them. Many were crucified; others were impaled, had their eyes gouged out, were dismembered, or flayed alive. But almost as soon as the massacre had ended, Basil set about re-establishing the powers and dignities of the priestly order. In that time and place, the Empire could not exist without priests. Arsaphes had known, Basil knew, and Alexis would know this. The main thing was to have them on one’s side or, better still, under one rather than against one. The emperor bent all his efforts to this end. And it is at this point that the great figure of Thaumas appears.

  When Basil came to the throne of Onessa, Thaumas was only a young shepherd boy. Vivacious, quick, and of exceptional intelligence, he was one of those poor but gifted young men who saw the priesthood first as the goal and then as the instrument of their ambition. Unlike the great feudal families, jealous of their privileges and shut in on themselves, the priests welcomed new talents and strong wills. And for the poor, the herdsmen, and the shepherds, to be received into the priesthood was to emerge from their humble condition and to become someone who mattered. Thaumas, with his open countenance and his zeal in learning, had attracted the attention of an old priest whom his mother repaid with gifts of eggs and poultry, and at seventeen or eighteen, which was then quite late in life, he entered one of the most famous seminaries, where mathematics and philosophy were taught by scholars from Greece, Phoenicia, and Persia. In two or three years he learned to read and write and count. By the time he was twenty-five he could read the future in the stars and in the entrails of vultures. A little of the science and culture that had made the City famous lived on in him. Curious about everything, learned in a thousand secrets lost during the violence and disorder that had overwhelmed the peoples of the Empire, Thaumas found in the study of the City’s past a learned serenity and peaceful richness that soon brought him reputation and honors. Besides quickness, talent, and charm, he possessed inflexibility of character and an unusually strong will. Ambition may have led him to the priesthood, but the priesthood, in its turn, gave him the strength of soul appropriate to his lofty conception of its functions.