The Glory of the Empire

by Jean d'Ormesson

  “Oh, my lord!” cried the boy. “We would all die for you!”[4]

  Alexis was always amazed by people’s readiness to give themselves to him body and soul. He often thought that the clue to his success lay not in his intelligence or will, nor even in chance, but in that rare response he aroused in others. He could feel a strong, immediate, and living bond come into being between him and the world around him. This sympathy included objects, nature, the trees in the forest, the water in the springs, and the orb of day whose son and servant he was. It was a grace he possessed, with marvelous power over men and women. Eloquence was not the whole explanation: even before he spoke he could feel the crowd taking him to their heart and offering themselves to him. And it was not power and prestige that drew them. Not only in Alexandria, where he was rich and brilliant, but also in the desert, on the caravan routes, and in Samarkand and Bukhara, where he was poor and unknown, everywhere all who saw and heard him wanted to follow and never leave him. No, it was not power. That universal willingness to serve, to give oneself to him, to die for him, was, rather, a burning sign of the passion of love.[5]

  “You are young to talk of dying,” said the Emperor, looking at Jester. “Learn rather to live, to enjoy the gifts lavished so prodigally by an unknown god: the heat of the sun, the cool of the sea at noon, the scent of the forest in the evening, horses galloping across the plain. You are rich because you are alive. Even unhappiness is still life. Learn to love and enjoy, and learn also to suffer. And, when the time comes, you will learn to die.”

  “My lord . . .” said the boy.

  The Emperor stopped. They were walking in the huge garden that Justus Dion tells us stretched from the temple in Aquileus to the Emperor’s palace. A stream meandered among trees and flowers; there were two or three rotundas in honor of the gods, and several villas of wood or stone, the residences of high officials, captains of the Emperor’s guard, officers of the Cohort of Death.

  “Speak,” said the Emperor.

  “If you leave us, my lord, and withdraw again from court and camp, what will become of all those who cry out your name, who love and need you? And what will become of the Empire if you are no longer there?”

  The Empire! Not only the boy, but Helen, too, spoke of it. When Alexis went to tell her of his desire to renounce power as soon as unity and peace were really established, Helen reproached him for what she called spiritual egoism, and for being concerned, especially since Philocrates’ death, with nothing but his own soul and fate.

  “Just because the ambitious bring power into discredit, is that any reason,” she said, “why those called to power by the decree of the gods or the trust of men should airily refuse? The soldier who runs away from the battle is executed; the schoolboy who gives his teacher the slip to go and idle in the fields is punished. Princes and emperors have their duties, too. And their duty is not to cultivate their soul, but to lessen the suffering of those whom birth or fate has entrusted to them. Do you think so much of your own peace and meditation that you put them before the good of your people and the peace of the Empire? You have no son; Philocrates is dead; Isidore is blind. To whom would you leave the Empire and those who live in it? Would you give it back to the barbarians, and leave it again at the mercy of their whims, their tortures?”

  Neither Alexis nor Helen cared to speak Simeon’s name, but the thought of him was there. The Emperor was already affected by the reference to the barbarians, and Simeon was to do the rest. His joining forces with the barbarians removed all Alexis’s doubts and obliged him to remain in power. The news of Simeon’s presence in Balamir’s camp fell on Aquileus like a thunderbolt. The memory of the barbarians still inspired terror, and never, since the time of the battle of Amphibolus and the Great Khan whom for a while Basil had made his ally, had they been as strong as they were now. Balamir’s reputation was beginning to spread. Everyone in the Empire had heard of his skill in war and his cruelty. Of Simeon, though he was a familiar enough figure to the people of the northeast, the inhabitants of Aquileus, Mezzopotamo, and Parapoli knew little. But they did know he was tough, brave, and violent, and above all they knew he was Helen’s son. Simeon gone over to the barbarians! What might not come of this unnatural alliance? It could make available to the enemy much precious strategic and geographical information, and give them advance knowledge of all the characteristics and weaknesses of the Empire’s troops. Simeon, of course, knew these better than anyone, having succeeded his father at the head of the auxiliary bands of the northeast, which, before they were decimated and disarmed by the barbarian tyrants, had been in time of war among the crack troops of the old imperial army. The wave of fear that swept through the land was intensified by rumors that Alexis was about to abdicate. Officers and men alike became demoralized; everywhere, even in the remotest corner, it seemed that the times of trouble were about to dawn anew.

  Helen and the danger decided Alexis. Though, as we know, Helen had never concealed her preference for her younger son, for as long as possible she did her best to be impartial and to try to soothe the feelings of the elder. But his going over to Balamir seemed another proof of the instability, falseness, and love of betrayal he had shown so often since the affair of the dagger and the siege of Balkh. Helen declared herself openly against him, and after a few days’ hesitation Alexis decided to stay on the throne and to muster against Balamir all the forces he could, still recovering as they were from the recent struggle. Messages went out from Aquileus ordering a census of men and arms throughout the Empire.

  If the Emperor knew more or less what was going on in the camp of the barbarians, Balamir for his part had little difficulty in getting daily information, through Simeon’s spies, of every decision, no matter how small, made in Aquileus. Every evening the barbarian received Simeon in the tent decked with precious objects and spoils, some of them the result of previous operations against the Empire. Helen’s son was treated with great consideration, but of course he had to show his submission and respect for the Kha-Khan of all the Oïghurs by kissing his knee or the hem of his robe. It must have been a strange spectacle, this daily meeting between two men contrasting in every respect—geography, past, manner, habits, attitude, and way of thinking—but united by the irresistible forces of hope and hatred. Both wanted to rule over the Empire, the one for revenge, the other in order to give the nomads, weary of sand and steppe, the fertile plains of the Amphyses and the Nephta and the dilapidated palaces of the City, which in the rough imaginations of the barbarians still shone with an illusory glow across mountains and deserts. Both saw quite clearly that either defeat or victory would mean the end of their fragile alliance. But each thought that once they had prevailed together, he could get rid of the other either by trickery or force. Balamir counted on his victorious barbarians, Simeon on the conquered Empire, whose idol and champion against the invaders he would become. But the first thing for both of them was to conquer and kill Alexis.

  The bloodstained sword was paraded from tribe to tribe, in makeshift camps, amid encircling carts and tents, in the light of fires and in sandstorms; and from the frontiers of China to Bactria and Paraponisada the call to war was greeted with savage joy. A sudden stir swept through the silent steppe. Felt tents were folded, harness and arms inspected, herds of sheep and cattle rounded up, and hordes of warriors, horses, and carts began to surge across the great plains of Central Asia toward the vast space between Lake Balkhash and the Aral Sea, the Jaxartes and the Oxus (the ancient Syr Darya and Amu Darya), the rendezvous for all the barbarian peoples on their way to conquer the Empire.

  They came from everywhere, to the sound of drums and rattles, from Lake Baikal and the Yenisei, from the Kereke mountains and Lake Khantaīskoia, from the Patom heights and beyond the Lena, from the banks of the Orkhon and Selenga and the marches of China, from the passes of the Altai and the plains of Turfan. It has been said that two hundred twenty-four tribes each contributed some four or five thousand men. Once again Asia shook under the hoofs of s
teeds ridden by all the devils out of hell, with scar-seamed faces and heads and feet deformed from being bound in infancy. As the echo of the ride of the centaurs, with their infallible arrows, reached the Empire, distant at first, then nearer and nearer as the weeks and months went by, terror began to grip fields and villages and busy towns, surprised in the midst of money-making or pleasure. Even in the camps the anxiety of generals and officers spread uneasiness, mistrust, and sometimes disturbances among the men.

  In the great battle that lay ahead Alexis could clearly see the inevitable aftermath of Amphibolus. What more eloquent proof could history give of the greatness of Thaumas and the rightness of his views? Now it was too late, and the Empire must drink to the dregs, perhaps to the point of disaster, the cup prepared by Basil and Gandolphus—and not by their defeats, but by their victories. In history as in other things, what cannot be forgiven is success. And by a bitter paradox, he who had betrayed Balkh and Fabrician and had gone over to Gandolphus’s men was now again a traitor, and, by the unremembering irony of history, in the camp of those same barbarians whom Gandolphus had so hated and whose threat to the Empire all his guile had not, in the end, been able to avert. As he wandered through the courtyards of the palace at Aquileus, with a Jester suddenly grave, and surrounded by anxiety and the din of arms, Alexis reflected that civilization might have to pay dear for that night of love long ago in the besieged city of Balkh. Alexis could easily imagine, understand, and forgive the horror of the boy who came upon his mother swooning with joy in the arms of a young priest, in the midst of the flames and the groans of the dying. Simeon the traitor . . . and was Alexis so pure? Even before his birth he had been surrounded by bloodshed and crime, and it was in vain he had tried to wash out their stain in the long years of suffering and privation spent on caravan routes and in the tomb.

  “Ah, well,” said Alexis, taking Jester’s hand. “It’s not a question of being pure. The first thing is to conquer, and to live.”

  Outside the trumpets sounded. The sun shone. By the great temple of Aquileus, beneath the ramparts of the City, on the plain covered with helmets and horses as far as the eye could see, the army of the Empire awaited the Emperor.

  XVI

  THE DOUBLE DUEL

  MORE TIME WENT BY, AND NEW IMAGES CONSTANTLY appeared in the kaleidoscopes it slowly revolved before the eyes of history. A certain degree of peace returned to the Mediterranean. Sicily slept under a leaden sky. Pomposa was assimilating its conquests and consuming itself in carousal. For the merchant princes spring and autumn only meant long interludes of festivity in which minds and bodies were exclusively occupied with table or bed. Subtlety and intrigue, whether in love or politics, were carried to sometimes formidable extremes, and the procuresses, masks, spies, informers, ambassadors, and bravoes of Pomposa were all equally notorious. But at the same time it was the country of painters, musicians, poets, and sculptors, and life there was more agreeable and elegant than anywhere else in the world. It was a beautiful city, and the pleasures it offered were innumerable. The patricians enjoyed life, and war was left to soldiers come from Poland, Saxony, the Rhone, and the Alps. Cooks brought from Athens or Alexandria, pages brought from Africa almost always against their will (several painted wooden statues of them, inlaid with ivory and adamantine, have come down to us), spent all their time preparing the great balls that were held in the gardens, by the water, and on the wide lawns decorated with flowers, edifices of marble, masts with banners. Noblemen and courtesans danced there to the music of unseen orchestras. Hardly a month went by without ceremony, hardly a day without some concert. Sometimes the prince would sail forth on a sumptuous ship hung with brocade and velvet to celebrate the marriage of Pomposa with the sea and throw a gold ring set with emeralds into the waves; sometimes the streets would be full of the color and splendor of religious processions, aimed not so much at honoring the gods—the Pomposans did not worry too much about them—as at giving painters special opportunity to make beauty out of reality.

  Rome, far away on its arid Campagna and pestilential marshes, was crushed beneath the weight of its monuments and its past. It was a magnificent memory, perhaps the most magnificent ever, but it had fewer ships and soldiers than Syracuse or Palermo, both largely oriented toward the sea, and much less wealth and land than frivolous Pomposa, now at the peak of a power made glamorous by stolen mosaics and statues, by the reputation of its entertainments, and by the famous green invented by its painters. Rome had really only one resource left, though it was an important one: this was the high priest, at the same time ruler and prince, who bore the illustrious title of archpatriarch. A great builder of temples and bridges, he was the link between heaven and earth, the incarnation here below of the supernatural forces that made—and unmade—kingdoms. Everything in this world depended on him—wealth, fame, honors, advancement in the army, the future. He ruled not by force, but by trust, persuasion, reverential fear. He disposed of men and events not because he had an army, but because he knew words. He knew the words that console and strengthen, the words that fill with courage and hope, the words that make men live and survive, and he set against the cruel vanity of their destinies the peace and eternity of the gods. He was above kings and princes, even when they rebelled against his strange magnificence and his mysterious prestige. His reputation spread far and wide. He was the heir of the Eritrean and Cumaean sibyls, and amid the ruins of a once glorious city, which though only the shadow of its former self had preserved the treasure of its name, he continued to reign over the world and even over those who refused to recognize his powers. There had been terrible conflicts between Rome and Sicily, Sicily and Pomposa, Pomposa and Rome. The fighting had ceased, but the dust it had raised still cast its shadow, and the echo of the trumpets could still be heard. These reverberations of a struggle now over prevented a world deafened and blinded by its self-preoccupation from seeing that its fate was no longer being played out here, but elsewhere. Its future was not being decided between Como and Syracuse, Marseilles and Crete, but on the borders of the Empire, where the barbarians were gathering.

  Balamir’s envoys had now visited all the tribes. The bloodstained sword had been worshipped all over the land of the felt tents, and hundreds of thousands of warriors had poured into the wide valley where their assembly was to be held. We turn again to the colorful and, it must be admitted, imaginative pages in which Augustin Thierry describes this meeting at Székesfehérvár, a tiny village called Ki Lien-chan by the Chinese and Mugodjar-Aktiubinsk by the Russians. Not far from there, today, is the famous rocket base of Baikonur, well known to every school child. Alas, how many of them still remember the great assembly at Székesfehérvár?[1] How many could say more than a couple of words about it? And yet what was at stake there was the future of the world. But nowadays children are lucky to have heard of it from some conscientious teacher in one of the junior classes where they still deign to bother about the realities of history, before rushing into generative grammar or the theory of sets. People are not interested in the past any more. And yet it was the past that made us.

  Let us close our eyes and imagine, across the centuries, that circular valley toward which surged hordes of warriors clad in furs and hides. Many of them knew nothing of Balamir’s plans. But they realized war was in the air and there would be talk of conquest and loot. They were full of fierce joy, intoxicated already by the thought of great cities set on fire, the collapse of golden domes, fainting women thrown captive across their horses’ backs. But in which direction would the nomad cavalry turn this time? Speculation was rife in the dozen or score of languages and dialects used by the barbarians. Some said it would be China, others Persia or India. Who cared? All that mattered was to fight, to loose arrows which never missed their mark, and to lay waste one or another of the coveted lands, whether east or south or in the fabulous west, which inspired the barbarians with mingled hatred and envy, made their narrow eyes gleam in their scarred faces, and sent them and their bloodcurdling c
ries, century after century, to the ends of the earth.

  When Balamir told them what his plans were, there was a moment’s stupefaction, followed by wild enthusiasm. Nothing could be more alien than the Empire to these barbarians of the steppes. With China and Persia they had long had close links of habit, familiarity, even camaraderie, born out of hatred and war. Barbarians had ruled China; trade between Persia and the high plateaus had never ceased; there was a certain interaction of religious and linguistic influence between the nomads and the great states of Asia. But the Empire simply stood for the mirages of the setting sun. True, the barbarians had sometimes thrust toward the west; but they had always been either destroyed or assimilated. The memory of Amphibolus was still green on the steppes, in the felt tents, in the shelter of the chariots ranged around the fire; and with the natural love of war and conquest there mingled a bitter thirst for revenge. As for men like Kanishka and Arrhideus, sensual upstarts out only for their own ends, the people of the Empire remembered them as tyrants and oppressors, but by the barbarians they were forgotten. The nomads of Altai and the Lena, however, had heard enough about the Empire to know that it was good to live there, that the streets of the City were paved with gold and silver, that there were many beautiful women, and that plump and gleaming cattle filled the pastures under the volcanoes where the hay and other crops grew much faster than anywhere else. Highly colored legends, martial chronicles, travelers’ tales, and myths had among them created a picture of the Empire that was, with its suggestions of forbidden delights, at once fascinating and vaguely frightening. Balamir’s speech to the barbarians played skillfully on their dreams and passions, heightening their rage, their love of war, their virtues, and their vices. When he stopped speaking there was a great silence. The wind of death seemed to sweep over the thousands of warriors standing motionless in the valley, still frozen with anticipation and restrained excitement. For a moment Balamir wondered if he had aimed too high, if, despite their numbers and their courage, the barbarians had been seized with holy terror at the thought of attacking the Empire. Then suddenly a cloud of swords and spears, standards and banners were brandished in the air, and a thunderous cheering broke against the steep-sided mountains, each with its lookout. Balamir and Simeon were swept off their feet and borne in triumph, shoulder-high, by a delirious crowd acclaiming war and drunk on thoughts of forthcoming victories and spoils. Under the last rays of the sun a flood of people stretched as far as the eye could see, shouting the names of the leaders who were to conquer the Empire and all the mirages of the City.