Isaac's Empire 2.0

[Utgard96]

Here's a map of the Roman Empire at the start of Isaac I's reign. Hopefully this will serve as some guidance to you when you read the timeline.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter One: The Rebel​

The rebel was crowned Emperor of the Romans on the first of September 1057, New Year’s Day and the Feast Day of Saint Joshua. He inherited a system that was, if not at the edge of collapse, creaking at the seams. The Roman Empire was at its greatest territorial extent since the rise of Islam, sprawling from Italy to the Caucasus, but inside this great facade, trouble had been brewing since the death of the great warrior Emperor Basil II. His successors, though individually good and intelligent men, had proved themselves unable to deal with his legacy, and incapable of forging a path of their own through changing times (i). Gradually, the armed forces, descendants of the legions of old, had fallen into disrepair, starved of funds by an Imperial court that simply could not imagine a day when the Empire might lose its hard-fought hegemony. When reform had been attempted, it had been stalled by the opposing poles of a conservative military aristocracy, eager to expand its land and wealth, and its counterpoint, an equally conservative metropolitan bureaucracy, which was reluctant to move away from its ancient traditions. Since the death of Basil, the metropolitan faction had been in the ascendant, trying to imitate his style of rule without understanding the complex structures of domination that Basil had established to maintain himself as the supreme autocrat (ii). Now, though, the helm of the Empire had moved out of their hands, and into that of the Anatolian aristocrats. Through the skill, shrewdness, and simple luck of one of their number, the Empire’s decline would be arrested, and reversed.

Still, as the Emperor’s coronation ceremony played out, there must have been doubts amongst the population. The Empire was battered and bruised by barbarian incursions from all corners, and even her once mighty gold coinage, the Nomisma (iii), had suffered the indignity of devaluation. As the various segments of the population entered the Great Church of Hagia Sophia and prostrated themselves before him, even the rebel general himself surely considered the enormity of the burden he was about to shoulder. As the Patriarch Michael Keroularios lowered the Imperial crown onto his head, and passed him the Imperial Chlamys (iv), the people began to ritualistically chant “Today is the Great Day of the Lord… This is the day of the life of the Romans… Glory to God for such benevolence, you, Isaac, have been crowned Emperor by his own hand”. With this luxuriant ceremonial began the turbulent reign of Isaac Komnenos.

Isaac’s first act as Emperor was to pay off his fellow rebellious generals who had imposed him on the throne in place of the aged Emperor Michael VI. Having no wish to have history repeat itself, he gave them his thanks, a financial token of his gratitude: and a firm order to return to their great estates. There were powerful figures within the Anatolian aristocracy who could easily have threatened his own position, most notably the popular general Kekavmenos Katakalon, who was appointed Doux of Antioch (v). He did not instantly turn on the bureaucrats either, to do so would have been political suicide. In this, Isaac made a wise decision. The support of the bureaucracy would be essential to him in the months ahead, as he attempted to restore to health the Imperial finances.

Basil II had left in his treasury some two hundred thousand talents of gold. Thirty two years later, this was almost spent. Despite periods of fiscal restraint, the state’s resources had continued to be stretched by the demands of maintaining armies on various frontiers, and at the same time, keeping taxation low. By the early 1040s, a balance appeared to have been reached, but this was promptly shattered again by a violent war with the Petchenek barbarians, who had settled around the old Bulgarian capital of Preslav in the early 1050s (vi). By the time of Isaac’s accession, virtually nothing of Basil’s treasury remained intact. It is unlikely that Isaac, a military man to the core, even considered reducing military spending, but he was practical enough to realise that the books of the state had to be balanced somehow. One means of doing so would be to increase taxes on the Anatolian aristocracy, but these were Isaac’s natural supporters, and he had no wish to alienate them. He was left with a single, unpalatable option. Money would have to be obtained from the glittering wealth amassed by the Church.

However, when he turned his attention to Church possessions, he faced serious opposition, which, thanks to the waspish writings of the famous monkish chronicler Ignatius of Phaselis, has blackened his reputation to this day. In 1058 he entered into a major dispute with the Patriarch of Constantinople Michael Keroularios. Keroularios was a headstrong figure, who had, for several years before Isaac’s accession, been the most powerful man in Constantinople. Indeed, Keroularios openly believed that Isaac owed him his throne. Over Isaac’s first year in power, relations between the two men deteriorated rapidly, thanks largely to the intrigues of Isaac’s chief minister, Michael Psellos. Psellos’ rivalry with Keroularios was intense and bitter (vii), and it was probably due to Psellos’ advice that Isaac, inexperienced in the ways of political intrigue in the capital, decided to openly declare war on the Patriarchate, by restoring anti-monastic legislation, and moving to seize property from monastic landowners (viii). Keroularios exploded into furious rage, but was quickly arrested by Imperial authorities and put on trial before Psellos. Unfortunately for all concerned, however, the Patriarch died before the trial could begin, making him a martyr to all of Isaac’s enemies. He would soon enough prove to be far more dangerous dead than alive.

It may well have been in reaction to this that Isaac took to the battlefield in the spring of 1059, intent on rooting out the Petcheneks from their strongholds in what had been the old Theme (ix) of Paristrion (x). With hindsight, it was a foolish move, but to Isaac, the reasons for undertaking the expedition must have seemed eminently sane- by removing the Petcheneks, he could both secure his Balkan frontier entirely, in order to be able to transfer troops to the East. As it was, though, the expedition turned out to be something of a fiasco. Encouraged by a couple of small victories, Isaac pressed forward to Preslav- only, once there, to find himself routed by a large Petchenek force (xi). By late autumn, he was holed up back in Constantinople, where the popular mood was turning increasingly sour. Having promised victory and restoration, the new Emperor seemed to be delivering very little but division and defeat.

A reversal of fortune was desperately needed, and, in February 1060, it was finally provided by the middle aged general Rōmanos Diogenēs, the commander of one of the Western Tagmatic armies (xii). Ambushing a Petchenek raiding force as it retreated north out of the Thracian plain, Diogenēs inflicted a serious defeat on the barbarians, and promptly sent the spoils back to Constantinople. The Emperor, delighted by the performance of his general, promptly promoted Diogenēs to the important position of Katepánō of Paristrion (xiii). It was a statement of intent. The following summer, Diogenēs once again advanced on Preslav, buoyed by a contingent of Anatolian troops levied by the Emperor. This time, the result was a decisive victory. Preslav was stormed, and the Petcheneks massacred, with their shattered remnants being shunted across the Bosphorus and settled in the Theme of Armeniakon, Isaac’s traditional power base (xiv).

For now, Isaac’s position had been consolidated, but it was hardly a miracle- indeed, the promotion of Diogenēs only increased resentment amongst other Anatolian aristocrats, notably Isaac’s former close ally, the Doux of Antioch Kekavmenos Katakalon. Isaac was not being unreasonable in this- indeed, in the summer of 1060, Katakalon actively encouraged the invasion of Cappadocia by a band of Turcoman Ghāzīs (xv) in order to despoil the lands of a rival lord. In the West, meanwhile, the Normans continued their advance, evicting the Imperial garrison from its last Kalabrian stronghold at Rhegion (xvi). The Katepánō George Miriarch was brought back to Constantinople in disgrace following an abortive revolt, and replaced with Isaac’s capable brother John, who was named by the Emperor as Caesar and thus his heir apparent before his departure. The circumstances of the revolt of Miriarch are murky, not helped by the fact that our primary sources, Michael Psellos and Ignatius of Phaselis, are pushing clear agendas. What is certain, though, is that Psellos was forced for the second time in his career to make a diplomatic retreat into monastic obscurity.

The troubles of 1060 continued into the autumn, with the failure of the harvests in Epiros and Hellas. By this point, it seems likely that Isaac was beginning to build up a new budgetary surplus, but he did not want to risk three years of hard won fiscal consolidation on relieving the peasants of two poor and marginal Themata. That Christmas, the people went hungry, and Isaac’s already low reputation continued to suffer.

Less than a year after his salvation at the hands of Rōmanos Diogenēs, then, the Emperor Isaac was struggling once more. The year 1061 was marked by a series of riots in Constantinople, one of which almost claimed the life of the Emperor’s wife, Catherine of Bulgaria. For a while, it seemed as though order might be restored when news arrived from Italy that the Caesar John Komnenos had enjoyed a major victory over the Normans at Tarantas (xvii), but news of a further damaging Turkish incursion into Anatolia put paid to this. In October 1062, Isaac departed Constantinople for Anatolia, leaving the reigns of Empire in the hands of the newly appointed Patriarch, his close ally Constantine Leikhoudes. It could very easily have been the very last time he saw his capital.

What exactly happened next is murky. The Emperor established his camp at Ikonion (xviii) in the Anatolikon Theme and there he summoned the great generals of the East, the men who had put him on the throne just a few years before. Once the generals arrived, though, things started to go badly wrong. Early in 1063, led by Kekavmenos Katakalon and Nikēphoros Botaneiatēs (xix), the troops of the Eastern Tagmata point blank refused to accept Isaac as their Emperor, and promptly raised upon their shields Rōmanos Skleros (xx), another of the aristocrats. Isaac was forced to beat a hasty retreat to Cappadocian Caesarea (xxi). All the troubles of his short reign appeared to be coming to a head. The eternal enemy of Roman Emperors had just broken out under Isaac Komnenos: the explosion of armed revolt.
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(i) The old view of the Emperors between Basil II and Isaac I as being a universally useless bunch of idiots is now generally rejected. Romanos III, Michael IV, and Constantine IX now enjoy rather improved reputations amongst scholars. Their main failing, according to many modern historians, notably Michael Angold, was their dependence on following models of rule set up by Basil II, when, in reality, that mode of rule had depended on the Bulgar-Slayer himself.

(ii) See Angold's book "The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204" for a more thorough discussion of this.

(iii) The Nomisma (the Latin Solidus) was a coin established by Diocletian in 301 to replace the then very devalued Denarius. It contained about 4.5 grams of pure gold, and maintained this value until around 1050, when devaluation began.

(iv) The Chlamys was a large cloak, with origins in Graeco-Macedonian royal fashion.

(v) This is a minor departure from OTL, where Katakalon was sent into exile by a jealous Isaac. The title of "Doux" is, unsurprisingly, one that corresponds to the English "Duke". Antioch, together with many of the Eastern territories captured between 950 and 1050, was not a Theme, but a Duchy.

(vi) The Petcheneks thus formed a state that would remain for all intents and purposes independent IOTL until the 1090s. The Romans continued to control the Danube itself, and a series of key fortresses, but most other areas of the north Balkans dropped out of their control.

(vii) Psellos once wrote to Keroularios "I love, you hate; I conciliate, you bring hatred; I propitiate, you disdain; I praise, you denigrate".

(viii) This legislation went back to the times of the Isaurian Emperors, and had most recently been enacted by Nikephoros Phokas in the 960s. In all cases, Emperors were concerned that monastic expansion was eroding the Imperial tax base, and the lands of its peasant smallholders, the traditional backbone of the army.

(ix) A Theme (plural Themata) was, literally, a division of the army. In practise, when Roman historians talk about Themata, they are referring to the regions in which specific armed divisions were based. These had sprung up in the seventh century as the old armies of the East retreated into Anatolia, and had been settled on Imperial estates, to form soldier farmers, well adapted to the challenge of raiding warfare with the Arabs. By the 1050s, though, they had become largely moribund, replaced by a fully professional army of both citizens and mercenaries.

(x) See the map. Paristrion is, roughly, modern eastern Bulgaria.

(xi) Here's our POD, folks. IOTL, Isaac thoroughly defeated the Petcheneks, and spent the autumn relaxing and hunting at his palace in Thrace, where he caught a chill and was persuaded to retire. Here, Isaac is defeated and forced back to Constantinople, which is, if nothing else, warm. It's an uncomfortable winter for him, but he stays healthy, and keeps his throne.

(xii) This is the Romanos who IOTL became Emperor in 1068. Here, he's merely a prominent general. The Tagmata were the armies I mentioned above that gradually replaced the Thematic armies in the ninth and tenth centuries. They were made up of both mercenary and citizen contingents. Historically, there was always something of a division between the Western, Balkan, Tagmata, and the Eastern, Anatolian, Tagmata. They would fight alongside each other on occassion, but this was very rare.

(xiii) The breakdown of the Thematic structure can be seen here, with Isaac appointed Romanos as a "Catepan", a sort of millitary-civilian governor, rather than a traditional Thematic Strategos. This is not unprecedented, the reconquered Balkans often switched between being Catepanates, Themes, and Duchies.

(xiv) Very traditional Roman practise here, of moving barbarians around the Empire, and settling them in lightly populated areas to become a new population base.

(xv) Note, these are not Seljuk Turks- they are raiders, who are as irritating and damaging to the Sultan as they are to the Emperor. Seljuk Sultans tried to encourage these tribal people west, to attack Armenians, Romans, and Fatimids without discrimination- just as long as they weren't ruining the "image" of the Turkish ruling class in Mesopotamia and Iran. It was this policy that IOTL led to the Battle of Manzikert, when a confused and weary Imperial army attacked the Seljuks in an attempt to deal with a Turkish problem that was probably not fully understood.

(xvi) This is Reggio di Calabria, if you didn't guess.

(xvii) OTL Taranto, one of the more important cities in Imperial south Italy.

(xviii) Modern Konya. Prior to about 1000, this was a fairly minor provincial fortress, but it became a centre of the important Anatolian trade of cattle ranching.

(xix) Another guy who IOTL managed to become Emperor.

(xx) A scion of an illustrious family, the Skleroi were the major Anatolian aristocratic family of the tenth century. By the 1060s, though, they are fading in importance, becoming increasingly eclipsed by hithero obscure dynasties like the Komnenoi and Palaiologoi. The raising on the shield of a new candidate for the throne is a very ancient Roman practise.

(xxi) This is modern Kayseri, and was one of the largest and most important cities of Roman Anatolia- perhaps the only one on the plateau that did not lose its urban character during the traumas of the seventh century.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Two: Taming the Beast

"The Emperor met with the notable men of the town, and was much aggrieved by their insolence, for they refused to treat him with the respect he considered to be rightfully his": The Chronicle of Ignatios of Phaselis​

Any rebel army, in normal circumstances, would have made moves to seize the capital (i)- but the allies of Rōmanos Skleros were cautious, abundantly aware that the Balkans were generally the base of other landowners, who might well take opposing sides in the civil war. Rōmanos Diogenēs, in particular, was thought a potential problem, and this was confirmed to the rebels when he moved south from Preslav and entered Constantinople. With him he brought Anna Dalassēnē, the wife of the Caesar John, and her children, whom he had removed with some force from their home at Adrianople. For now, Diogenēs occupied the City, and refused to accept ambassadors from the rebels. Probably eagerly awaiting the mutual destruction of both of the armies, the Katepánō (ii) had much to gain.

The chance of a quick victory thus cut off, the rebels began to gather an army, largely made up of those Turcoman mercenaries (iii) that the Doux of Antioch Kekavmenos Katakalon had long cultivated cosy relations with. The Turks, who flooded to the rebel standard, were not particularly interested in the triumph of an infidel civil war in the land of Rūm (iv) being promised lands in the fertile Theme of Thrakesion (v). In addition to this, the rebels could count on the support of the majority of the Anatolian Tagmata (vi), and from their own tenant-peasants, whom were armed at their own expense. It seems likely that the pretender Skleros had at least fifty thousand troops at his disposal by end of summer 1063.

The Emperor, on the other hand, was in a miserable situation. In the Cappadocian highlands he was isolated, and desperately short of allies. The ragbag army that he had gathered together was largely composed of inadequate troops from the Themata of Charsianon and Cappadocia (vii), whose rundown had began decades before (viii). At length, he was able to add to this a motley force of Armenians, pulled from their bases along the Euphrates frontier (ix), leaving it perilously undermanned. For now, this was the least of the Emperor’s concerns.

Back in Constantinople, Rōmanos Diogenēs had begun very slowly to collect reinforcements for the Emperor’s men, hoping to tread the narrow line between openly wishing for Isaac’s defeat and appearing a loyal and steadfast ally. In September, he sent out a detachment of some 2000 armoured Western horsemen, largely Normans (x), across Anatolia towards the Imperial camp. Isaac, unwilling to drag the issue out much further, set off west towards the capital, hoping to slip past the rebels and make a break for Europe. But Skleros and his allies were too quick for the Emperor, and cornered him near the small town of Claudiopolis in Bithynia. Battle was joined on the morning of September 27th, 1063.

The Battle of Claudiopolis was one of the most significant of the eleventh century in the Roman Empire, cementing, as it did, the rule of the house of Komnenos for the next century and a half. Nonetheless, it remains shrouded in a veil of mystery. Michael Psellos claims, rather improbably, to have been present on the battlefield and appointed overall commander by Isaac, but this seems deeply unlikely (xi). Ignatios of Phaselis, meanwhile, simply tries to pretend Claudiopolis never happened. It falls to lesser historians (xii) of the day to piece together what happened. It seems that the Armenians, in a display of typical barbarity of the frontier, decided to dip their arrows in pigs’ blood before launching them at the Islamic Turks of the rebel army. Stunned and disgusted, the Turks seem to have lost all discipline, and scattered, to be pursued and butchered by the Imperial Normans (xiii). A stroke of bad luck saw the rebels’ senior commander, Kekavmenos Katakalon, struck down by an arrow, and killed. The rest was down to Isaac, who, showing the military talent that had been so absent against the Pechenegs four years before, was able to lure the lumbering enemy army into rough terrain where his lightly armed frontier troops could dispatch them. It was a crushing victory for Isaac.

For the feudal aristocrats of Anatolia, the Battle of Claudiopolis was an unmitigated disaster. Isaac was merciless- all but the lowliest rebel soldiers were sentenced to death (xiv), and the leaders of the rebellion were mutilated, blinded, and then burned at the stake, a rare treatment generally only meted out to heretics (xv). For weeks afterward, according to Psellos, the town of Claudiopolis was filled with the stench of death. It was, however, a price worth paying. Though the town’s harvest was wrecked by the battle and its aftermath, it afterward became one of the major centres of Komnenid Anatolia, being given taxation privileges and seeing an extensive building programme. Isaac was very eager to stamp the site of his victory with an appropriately Imperial set of honours.

The way to Constantinople now lay open to Isaac, who unsurprisingly seized the opportunity, and marched at all haste to his capital. For Rōmanos Diogenēs, it was a disappointment, but not a disaster: his troops had proved loyal enough, and he had his eye on yet more honours from a grateful Emperor. Isaac, for his part, sent messages ahead to Diogenēs, assuring him of his goodwill (xvi). It seemed all would be well. Here, though, fate intervened. Diogenēs, by sweeping down and taking command of the capital, had made a fatal error. He had left himself open to the machinations of Constantinople’s most experienced political operators.

Michael Psellos emerged from his monastery shortly before the Battle of Claudiopolis, and immediately began to plot the downfall of Diogenēs (xvii). Eager to return himself to Imperial favour, he saw the upstart Diogenēs- the last significant Anatolian aristocrat still alive- as the last obstacle in his path. Psellos therefore hastened to meet the Emperor at Chalcedon (xviii), bearing news of a scandalous plot by Diogenēs to deny Isaac access to the capital (xix). Isaac himself may have had his doubts, but after the fears of the summer, he took no chances, and ordered a trial. Diogenēs was arrested, and tried by Psellos’ court ally Constantine Doukas. As with Michael Keroularios five years before, the trial never ended. Diogenēs was attacked by a raging mob, and lynched. Contemporaries reported that the ringleader of the rioters was John Doukas, Constantine’s brother. It does not seem unlikely. This strange, sordid little coup tied up the last loose end of the early part of Isaac’s reign. The long struggle between bureaucracy and aristocracy had ended in victory for the bureaucrats (xx).

Isaac therefore returned to his capital in triumph. With him, he brought several thousand Turkish captives, whom he pardoned in a show of magnanimity. The Turks were led into Hagia Sophia, baptised, and married off to various women of Constantinople- largely the same peasant refugees who had fled to the capital to avoid the Turks in the first place (xxi). That done, they were dispersed around the Balkans, or sent westward to Italy, to join Isaac’s brother, the Caesar John. Peace might have descended on the Anatolian and Balkan provinces of Isaac’s Empire- but across the Adriatic, the war was just beginning.

The tenure of John Komnenos as Katepánō of Italy is a curious mixture of triumph and tragedy, as his war against the Normans ebbed and flowed. For the early part of the 1060s, he had been in the ascendancy, evicting a Norman garrison from Tarantas in 1061, but this was swiftly re-established. In 1062, he successfully defended Krotōn from attack, and at the end of the following year even managed to regain Tirenon (xxii), in northern Apulia. Hereafter, though, things began to go downhill once again. His eldest son, Manuel, was badly wounded at the siege of Tirenon, and succumbed early in 1064. Distracted by grief, the Caesar did little to prevent the Normans from first capturing Messina, and then swiftly moving on to seize Syracuse. In 1065, he attempted to attack Rhegion, to cut off the Sicilian adventures from their compatriots in Kalabria, but suffered a humiliating defeat when his largely Flemish army (xxiii) deserted him. The Caesar thereafter sank into a state of depression, and effective command of the Italian war effort was taken over by his second son Isaac, who, at the age of just seventeen, was able to decisively defeat a Norman force at Hyria (xxiv). By the end of the decade, the Italian situation was at an effective stalemate. Imperial control was reduced to the tip of Apulia, plus a few fortified coastal strongholds elsewhere- but it remained alive (xxv).

The reason for the Italian impasse can very largely be blamed upon Isaac Komnenos himself, who, after celebrating Christmas in Constantinople, once more set out for Anatolia. Though he had won the civil war, he was acutely aware that an equally formidable foe still remained- the newly crowned Saljūq Sultan Muhammad bin Da'ud Chaghri, better known to us by his nickname of “Alb Arslān”, the heroic lion. Arslān had come to the throne in a coup against his uncle Toghrïl Beg, and was in immediate need of a quick victory to consolidate his grip on the throne, which was eagerly contested by another of his uncles, Kutalmish (xxvi). In the past, the Saljūqs had had no particular quarrel with the Empire- indeed; they had actively sought an alliance against the heretical Fatimid Caliphs in Cairo. Isaac’s actions against the Turcomans in the rebel army of Skleros provided Arslān with an ideal excuse for violence. He argued that the idea of the Armenians of Isaac’s army to attack the rebellious Turks with pig blood was an act of hostility against all Islam, made even worse by the forced conversion of the survivors of the battle. He duly marched west and seized the isolated city of Edessa, crucifying its Armenian governor Philaretos Brakhamios (xxvii).

Isaac moved swiftly. Ignoring the advice of Constantine Doukas, the Emperor raised the remains of those same Tagmatic armies that he had defeated the previous autumn at Claudiopolis, and promised a full pardon to all those who fought with distinction under his banner against the infidel (xxviii). The professional soldiers, eager for a fresh start, generally agreed; though a couple of dissenters had to be blinded to encourage them (xxix). Doukas contributed several thousand soldiers of the western Tagmata, which Isaac had transferred to his control following the death of Rōmanos Diogenēs. Finally, for the first time, the Emperor brought with him on campaign two units of his palace guard, the Noumeroi and the famous axe wielding Scandinavians of the Varangoi (xxx).

Intimidated by this formidable force, Arslān retreated from the flat plains of Edessa, but kept up the attack. During the summer, he concentrated on spreading terror and vengeance amongst the primarily Armenian population of the East. Finally, the two armies met at Manzikert, one of the furthest Eastern outposts of the Empire in the Duchy of Vaspourakan. The battle, for all its build-up, was indecisive, and by the sixth day of skirmishing, the Sultan offered the Emperor a truce in exchange for a transfer of prisoners, and subsidies with which to attack the Fatimids in the Levant and Egypt. After some haggling the Emperor agreed to the deal, and, flush with cash from the confiscated estates of dead Roman aristocrats (xxxi), Arslān turned southwards. Basing his forces at the Imperial vassal of Aleppo, he quickly captured Damascus, which became his regional centre of power. In 1066, he marched on Jerusalem, and also captured that city, but here fate intervened. Marching into the city, he was assaulted by a Shiite fanatic who drew his dagger and rushed upon the Sultan. Arslān, who took great pride in his reputation as the foremost archer of his time, motioned to his guards not to interfere and drew his bow, but his foot slipped, the arrow glanced aside and he received the assassin's dagger in his breast (xxxii). Alb Arslān died young, as a man who could have changed the face of the world forever, but ended up as a mere footnote on the relentless march of history.

As for the Emperor Isaac, he appeared triumphant on all fronts. Shortly after the death of Arslān, he finally returned to Constantinople, where, together with Michael Psellos, he began a second attack on the excess wealth of the Church, using its hoards of bullion to begin to deal with the by now highly devalued Nomisma. It seems it was this reorganisation that finally earned him the undying hostility of the writer Ignatios of Phaselis- for by 1070 he had seized thousands of acres of monastic property, and liberally dispersed it amongst his own supporters, as well as the urban poor of Constantinople (xxxiii). Church authorities could howl in protest all they liked, but it was all too late. Skill and luck had combined to eliminate all potential threats to Isaac’s throne. He was secure at last.

The last years of Isaac’s reign were marked by the issue of the succession. His brother, the Caesar John, had died in 1073, and it had appeared obvious to all that the obvious heir was John’s second son, the Italian Katepánō Isaac Komnenos the Younger. But the Emperor hesitated to name his namesake as his successor, perhaps for the simple reason that he had no desire to remove the young general from the delicate Italian balance of power. Instead, he turned more and more to another of his nephews- the eighteen year old Alexios (xxxiv). It rapidly became clear to the ailing Emperor that it would be Alexios, not Isaac the Younger, who hold the support of the court bureaucracy led by Michael Psellos, whose power would be crucial in the difficult early months of a new reign.

In January 1075, the Emperor Isaac Komnenos made his decision. Alexios was to be married to Euphemia, the daughter of Michael Psellos (xxxv). Both Alexios and Psellos would be made co-Emperor with Isaac for the rest of his reign, with Alexios theoretically occupying the senior position, and the powerful Doukas family sidelined entirely. From Italy, Isaac the Younger made no overt complaints about the accession of his younger brother, and opted instead to watch and wait. Eventually, his time would come. For now, though, the Empire looked forward to a glittering new age of power and prosperity, due in no small part to Isaac’s relentless hard work. The future looked bright: and indeed it was.

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i. The capture of Constantinople was generally (though not always) "game over" in any Byzantine civil war.

ii. Remember from the last update- a Catapan is a senior millitary commander usually based in a region, rather than an individual theme.

iii. Again, a reminder, these are nomadic warriors, not part of the centralised Sultanate, whom they attack as often as they attack the Byzantines.

iv. This is the name used in Islam when referring to the Roman Empire.

v. See Ares' new map, this was one of the wealthiest areas of Anatolia, and remain under reasonably firm Imperial control until the close of the thirteenth century.

vi. Apologies for all these patronising reminders, they will cease in Chapter Three. The Tagmata are the professional armies of the eleventh century Byzantine Empire.

vii. See the map! These areas of eastern Anatolia were traditionally marcher lands, where cavalry was raised, and cattle ranching was the main economic activity.

viii. Under Basil II, to be precise, who had cut funding for the majority of the Themata.

ix. The Euphrates was largely governed by Armenians in Imperial service, as was the majority of the reconquered East. The further Imperial control penetrated into Armenia itself, the more Armenians came down from the highlands to win their fortune in the service of the Emperor.

x. Despite their hostile relations, the Byzantines and Normans were historically very happy to fight alongside each other for a price.

xi. OTL's Michael Psellos likes to present himself as having attended the vast majority of historical events of his life- I'm just continuing the trend here. Psellos' boastfullness can be irksome, but I also find it rather endearing.

xii. To be precise, a couple of monkish chroniclers, and an extremelly pro-Komnenid ATL historian who you'll meet soon enough.

xiii. Coming into contact with pigs' blood when fighting the Infidel is not actually forbidden in Islam- but it seems likely that the devout and fanatical Turkomans would have been disgusted by the experience, and seriously lost their tempers.

xiv. Whether this was actually carried out is debatable- see footnote 28.

xv. Isaac is here making a new point- that rebellion against the Emperor, as God's representative on Earth, is a crime against God. It won't prevent rebellion in future, but, nearly three hundred years after Claudiopolis, it will set something of a precedent to a later Emperor.

xvi. These seem to have been quite sincere.

xvii. Psellos claims to have quit his monastery before Claudiopolis, and set out to meet the Emperor in Anatolia, but he would have had to have travelled extremelly rapidly across Anatolia to get to Claudiopolis, back to Constantinople, and out to Chalcedon in time. It also begs the question of why this determined survivor chose to stick by the apparently doomed Isaac. All in all, it seems like a bit of a tall tale from Psellos, who as you will see, is writing under very different circumstances in the early 1080s.

xviii. Chalcedon is the small town across the straits from Constantinople.

xix. Very likely to be a fabrication- it's hard to see what advantage Diogenes could possibly have gained from behaving in this manner.

xx. Albeit the bureaucrats succesfully backing the right Anatolian aristocrat who could then flatten all the others for them. It's all turned out most rosily for Psellos and the Doukai.

xxi. These were becoming a major problem, causing crime and general tension with the city's own poor population, who saw rural peasants as little more than barbarians.

xxii. Modern OTL Trani, in northern Apulia.

xxiii. Besides the Normans, the Flemings were the most important group of western mercenaries in Imperial service in the eleventh century.

xxiv. Modern OTL Oria, in southern Apulia, at the heart of the "heel" of Italy.

xxv. Not great, but better than OTL's 1070, when the Byzantines controlled little more than Bari.

xxvi. IOTL, it was Kutalmish that overthrew the previous Sultan, but here, his nephew moves more quickly, and is able to become Sultan some six months earlier than IOTL.

xxvii. IOTL, he was able to establish a semi-independent state after Manzikert that would form the nucleus of Cilician Armenia- a rather competent guy, all in all. Here, though, it's all cut short very quickly.

xxviii. See footnote 14. If Isaac really granted a mass pardon, it seems likely that the majority of the enemy troops at Claudiopolis survived to be pardoned.

xxix. Naturally. This is Byzantium, we can't have things going too well without a blinding or two.

xxx. The famous Varangian Guard.

xxxi. A lot of the lack of problems of the latter part of Isaac's reign can be attributed to the fact that he was flushed with cash from the confiscated estates of various rebels after 1063. The Emperor was therefore in all probability quite capable of giving a large personal loan to the Sultan.

xxxii. This is the same death as OTL- but six years earlier, and in a different place.

xxxiii. As with the Turkish marriages, this is probably to move out a lot of the population, and settle them away from the City, to ease the strain.

xxxiv. Yes, this is the famous Alexios Komnenos. He's been in Constantinople since childhood, and has been brought up as a scholarly pupil of Psellos, rather than as the teenage general of OTL.

xxxv. A made up name for a real character, whose name I can't find anywhere.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Three: Education for an Emperor

"Two things in particular contribute to the hegemony of the Romans, namely, our system of honours and our wealth, to which one might add a third: the wise control of the other two, and prudence in their distribution": Michael Psellos, Chronographia​

Isaac Komnenos felt death’s approach early. At the end of April 1075, he abdicated the throne, and joined his daughter Maria in monastic confinement (i), and died a few weeks later. He was sixty four years old.

Initially, Isaac’s plans for the succession ran smoothly. His nephew Alexios’ marriage had quickly proved to be a fruitful one, with the birth of a daughter, Anna (ii), to the Empress Euphemia at the end of the year. The new Emperor was intelligent and very well read, as a pupil of his new father-in-law Michael Psellos, who, of course, sat on the throne alongside him as Michael VII. But this pupil-master role did not easily adjust itself to the new roles that Alexios and Psellos found themselves in. A year after Isaac’s death, it was noted, Alexios was already being pushed into the background.

In part, this was inevitable. Michael VII, as we should perhaps now call him, had been at court in Constantinople for the better part of half a century (iii), whilst Alexios was still yet to reach his twentieth birthday. Alexios’ whole life had been spent under the shadow of Michael as his tutor, and it was inevitable that Michael’s influence should continue now they shared the reigns of Government. Ever since his arrival in the City, Michael Psellos had criticised and sniped at the workings of the Imperial court (iv). Now, as Emperor, he finally had the opportunity to do something about them.

He began, in the spring of 1076, by starting to systematically strip various members of the court of their titles and pensions, ostensibly to restore the dignity of the Imperial office and court. The Emperor’s motives seem to have been genuine (v) - but his policies immediately sprung up a whole wave of resentment, especially following the birth of a grandson, Michael Komnenos, in the autumn of that year. Little Michael was almost immediately associated with his father and grandfather in the purple (vi), and showered with a whole host of titles.

The foreign policy situation was also beginning to look shaky. One of the Emperor Isaac’s last acts in office had been to make a guarantee of his support to Pope Gregory VII in his growing dispute with the Western Emperor Henry IV (vii), in exchange for his recognition as the one True Emperor. For Isaac, it had been a sensible act of realpolitik in dealing with the Normans and his Latin subjects in Apulia, but the real consequences of the policy only came to light in the opening months of Michael’s reign, with the details of Gregory’s so called Dictatus Papae filtering through to Constantinople. This, which included fragments openly asserting Papal superiority over the whole Church, as well as his temporal power in Italy (viii), provoked a storm of outrage in Constantinople, which eventually compelled Michael to dismiss the Patriarch, John VIII, and replace him with his own nominee, John IX “Italos” (ix). The Papal alliance was a firm plank of Michael VIII’s foreign policy, but by the end of 1076, it was beginning to cause more problems than it was worth.

Over Christmas of 1076, a plague descended on Constantinople, and was caught by both the Emperor Alexios and the Domestikos tēs Dyseōs, Michael’s ally Constantine Doukas. Doukas, a man in his early seventies, swiftly perished, leaving the position of the Empire’s most senior Western commander vacant. Alexios, from his sickbed, spoke vaguely of a desire to elevate his brother the Katepánō Isaac to the position, but Michael was swiftly able to dissuade his son-in-law. Isaac was popular, successful, and, most threateningly to the prospects of Michael’s two grandchildren, a Komnenid. He feared, with good reason, that if Alexios died, Isaac would easily be able to sweep in, and remove all of Psellos’ family from the Palace. To this end, therefore, the Emperor held his nose, and, early in 1077, proclaimed the aristocratic general Nikēphoros Bryennios (x) as Doukas’ successor. Isaac was left out in the cold.

As it turned out, it had all been for nothing. Alexios made a strong recovery, so much so that by the late spring, he was with difficulty restrained by his father-in-law from going out on campaign with Byrennios against the Serbs (xi). All that Michael VIII had done, it turned out, had been to fatally weaken the balance with which he held onto his throne. Alexios, aided by the Patriarch, had begun to grow tired of Michael’s overbearing ways and patronising tone (xii). Inch by inch, Michael began to find himself pushed out of the picture by his determined young son-in-law.

Alexius was not Michael’s only worry. In the autumn of 1077, news reached Constantinople that the Normans had mounted a dramatic counteroffensive back into Apulia, and had met with only the scantiest resistance from Isaac Komnenos, who had holed himself up at Barion (xiii). Michael had reassured the anxious mob of Constantinople that the deteriorating weather conditions would prevent a Norman crossing over to Epirus, but he was swiftly proved wrong, when a Norman raiding party captured Dyracchion in a surprise attack. From there, they fanned out across the unprepared winter land, and, in January 1078 (xiv), they marched on Thessaloniki.

The response from Alexios and his allies, led by his formidable mother Anna Dalassēnē, proved to be rapid and harsh. Michael was seized while writing, and compelled at sword point by an ally of Alexios, George Palaiologos (xv), to renounce all claims to the Imperial throne and retire to a monastery. Alexios, meanwhile, summoned troops from the Armenian front, and prepared to stake his future in a confrontation against the Normans. In April, the great force set out, with Alexius at its head, leading some 25,000 troops.

Unsurprisingly, the Normans collapsed before the Emperor’s onslaught. Their supply lines were overextended, and, when the general Nikēphoros Bryennios captured the city of Ochrida (xvi), they found themselves cut off from any hope of retreat to the coast. The Emperor, after defeating them in a couple of minor skirmishes, offered terms, chiefly concerned with settling Norman warriors along the Euphrates front, and in rebellious Serbia. The threat, for now, was at an end.

Alexios could not afford to retreat to Constantinople for now, however. Events in Italy demanded his attention. Accordingly, he left the capital’s administration in the hands of his infant son Michael, though, in practise, Anna Dalassēnē was in charge of the whole operation (xvii). He crossed to Barion, and, there, extracted a humiliating oath of personal loyalty from his doubtless fuming brother. For young Alexios, bullied and patronised for the past three years, it must have been a sweet triumph.

The Italian expedition provided an opportunity for Alexios to assert his authority in other ways. While in Barion, messengers arrived from the Pope of Rome, inviting Alexios to come as a supplicant to the Eternal City, to be recognised as a “True Emperor” by the Pope. Pope Gregory must have intended to stamp his recent ecclesiastical triumph over the Western Emperor Henry (xviii) by recognising Alexios, but the letter was seen as a dire insult by Alexios, implying, as it did, that the status of Roman Emperor was for the Pope, and the Pope alone to bestow. Further letters arrived, describing Alexios, insultingly, as being merely a “Greek King” (xix), and proposing an enhanced role for the Papacy in Constantinopolitan court matters. The Imperial court was left fuming with rage at the barefaced cheek of Gregory.

Fortunately, an alternative soon arrived. The Emperor Henry may have bowed the knee to Pope Gregory, but he was far from beaten, and already was plotting his revenge. To Alexios, he proposed a deal. Alexios would provide him with money and troops to crush his rebellious barons (xx), and, in exchange, he would surrender all claims of sovereignty over the important city of Ravenna (xxi). Most importantly, both would unite to enforce the claims of the “indivisible Roman Empire” against Pope Gregory. Alexios immediately seized the deal with open arms.

It was not, on the face of it, an especially good bargain. Ravenna was gained, but it quickly became an expensive outpost to defend, and its citizenry was none too happy with being subdued to Constantinople and her rapacious tax collectors. Pope Gregory immediately opened church funds to the Normans, who, by 1079, were once more running amok in Apulia. More seriously, he incited a major rebellion in the client state of Croatia. Alexios personally took command of the Croatian war effort, but it took until the end of 1081 for him to restore even the appearance of order. The treasury had been stripped bare, for minimal gains. Alexios had discovered the hard way that Pope Gregory had to be treated with respect.

In 1082, Imperial ambassadors made their way to Rome, and, humiliatingly, asked for a renewal of the alliance. Gregory, delighted with this turn of events, gladly accepted, and, seeing no need to be needlessly provocative, addressed a series of adoring letters to the “Most August Emperor of the Romans, Alexius”. It was, nonetheless, a serious climb-down for the Emperor. He had been on the throne for seven years, and in that time, had achieved little. Alexios had the seeds of greatness in him but he still had plenty of lessons to learn. Only now would he begin to unleash his true potential. The Roman Empire was about to strike back.


____________________________________________________


i. It was fairly standard practise for Emperors to retreat to monastic exclusion at the very end of their lives, to wash away their sins. As for Isaac joining his daughter, mixed sex monasteries were very rare in the eleventh century, but it was quite common to have monks and nuns sharing buildings and land, in theoretically separate institutions.

ii. This is not OTL's Anna Komnena, but she's named for her formidable grandmother nonetheless.

iii. Psellos had come to court towards the end of the reign of Michael IV (1034-1041), when he was around the age of twenty.

iv. He was no republican, he just envisaged the ideal state of the Empire as being a Platonic land ruled by the theoretical "Philosopher-King", and felt that no Emperor had lived up to this ideal. Becoming that Philosopher-King himself is a bit of a wet dream scenario for Psellos.

v. This sort of behaviour is based on Psellos' OTL criticisms of the behaviour of Constantine IX and X in office, doling out titles.

vi. Very common practise- Constantine V, in particular, had been famous for being associated with his father Leo III on the throne as a baby.

vii. OTL's investiture controversy. Even after 1054, Byzantine-Papal alliances didn't seem implausible, as the schism was widely thought to have been a temporary thing. This only changed IOTL after about 1100.

viii. This is OTL as well.

ix. IOTL, Italos was a heretic who caused some problems for Alexios Komnenos. Here, as Patriarch, he's going to prove himself an even bigger headache, in due course. For now, though, he's someone Michael VII can rely on not to rock the boat when it comes to the Papal alliance.

x. A bit of a court rival of Psellos, Byrennios had been an ally of Romanos Diogenes. Nonetheless, he's a better bet than the threatening figure of Isaac Komnenos the Younger.

xi. Nominally Imperial subjects, in practise, the Serbian princes were entirely autonomous, and paid only lip service to Byzantine overlordship.

xii. Emperor and Patriarch had both studied under Psellos, and they thus share some common grievances at his style.

xiii. For good reason, as you'll see, the sources ITTL don't really state why Isaac was so inactive here. It doesn't seem unlikely that he wanted to politically damage his brother.

xiv. An audacious attempt, but the Normans are masters of warfare, and, I think, if anyone can mount an attack in a Balkan winter, it's them. The Byzantines are certainly caught unprepared.

xv. An OTL figure, from a hitherto minor family, who have been raised to sudden prominence after Claudiopolis.

xvi. A former capital of Bulgaria, Ochrid was one of the largest cities of the Byzantine Balkans in the eleventh century.

xvii. Because, obviously, a male baby is more capable than a political woman at looking after Christendom's largest city.

xviii. This is OTL's Canossa. The Investiture Controversy, up until this point, has worked as OTL. From now, things are about to start to change.

xix. Pretty much the ultimate insult.

xx. Who are, of course, the main problem for a Holy Roman Emperor, far more so than in centralised Byzantium.

xxi. The Byzantines tended to request Ravenna in negotiations with Western Emperors.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Four: Heart and Soul​

Embarrassing though it was, the capitulation to Pope Gregory had yielded a significant prize for the Emperor Alexios- direct Papal support for the campaigns in southern Italy. The Normans had already antagonised Gregory thanks to their aggression in southern Italy and interference with Church politics- and now, seizing the chance for revenge, he sent money and several thousand Italian soldiers to reinforce the armies of Isaac Komnenos the Younger, who was able to win a couple of small victories over the Normans and push them out of Apulia by the end of 1082. The following year, Alexios sent across his loyal general Nikēphoros Bryennios, who, acting in concert with Isaac the Younger, managed to capture the Normans in a pincer attack and destroy their forces at the Battle of Kaulōnia in Kalabria (i).

The Battle of Kaulōnia marked the beginning of the end of the Norman ascendancy. In the autumn of 1083, Bryennios and Isaac contracted an alliance, betrothing the former’s daughter Sophia to Isaac’s young son Manuel. Bryennios thereafter crossed over to Sicily, and compelled Messina to surrender before the year was out. Isaac, meanwhile, concentrated on mopping up the remnants of Norman resistance in Italy, taking care to send the spoils of war east to his brother in Constantinople.

Alexios Komnenos had now enjoyed two consecutive years of success on the Italian front, but this period of relative calm would not last. Noting that Imperial troops were largely tied up in Sicily the Western Emperor Henry, eager to exact retribution on Pope Gregory, took the correct decision and struck rapidly down towards Rome the moment the Alpine snows had melted. Gregory, for his part, decided discretion was the better part of valour and fled south to Barion, where he threw himself on the mercy of the Katepánō Isaac Komnenos. It was, for Alexios, a golden opportunity. He stripped the Balkan provinces of their troops (ii) and proceeded at all haste towards Italy. By September, he was in Apulia, and then, four weeks later, had arrived in Rome at the head of a massive army. Now it was Henry’s turn to flee, and Alexios Komnenos found himself the first Eastern Roman Emperor to set foot in the Eternal City since the seventh century (iii).

The Imperial troops did not stay long, however. Pope Gregory was safely reinstalled in the Lateran Palace (iv), where he would spend another year drifting into senility before his death (v). Alexios had little desire to stay in Rome, which was by his standards a rather small, shabby little town, another Adrianople or Philadelphia and certainly nothing to compare with the true seat of the Roman Empire at Constantinople. Even had he wanted to stay, the barely disguised hostility of the Roman people and aristocracy at the sight of an invading schismatic Greek was enough to make up his mind. The Pope was bullied into confirming the ecclesiastical transfers imposed upon the Holy See by Leo III nearly four centuries previously (vi), and, in addition to this, he donated the divided island of Sardinia to Constantinople (vii).

During Alexios’ first absence in Italy, control of the civil administration had largely been in the hands of his mother, the redoubtable Anna Dalassēnē (viii). In 1084, Alexios had once more entrusted her with the controls of the state, but found, upon his return to Constantinople, that things had gone increasingly awry. Dalassēnē, a headstrong and intelligent woman, had found her match in the Patriarch John Italos (ix), one of the few characters of Constantinople who could equal her for that brand of self-confidence that often tips into arrogance. In the summer of 1084, the two had come to repeated blows over the education of Alexios’ young son Michael Komnenos, who was under the tuition of one Basilios, a pupil of Italos. Dalassēnē considered the influence of Basilios and Italos upon her grandson to be corrosive and near heretical, and had tried to arrange for him to be sent out to the old Komnenid estates in Anatolia for his education (x), but this had been strongly resisted by Alexios’ wife, the Empress Euphemia, a born metropolitan and the daughter of Michael Psellos. Tensions had rapidly begun to rise, splitting the Imperial family. Ignatios gleefully records that by the time of Alexios’ return to the city, his wife and mother had not spoken for weeks.

This was more than just family trouble. The argument between Dalassēnē and Euphemia ran to the very heart of contemporary politics- should one support simple Orthodoxy, or those who encouraged the study of philosophy as the key to approaching Christ? Nowadays, this is often simplified by historians into the issue of the rustic provincial Dalassēnē confronting the arrogant intellectuals of the Psellos faction, but the debate was much more complicated than that (xi). For a while, once Alexios returned, there was a degree of quiet. Alexios himself had been raised in the philosophical tradition, and was eager to throw himself back into intellectual culture once freed from the burdens of war in Italy- accordingly, in 1087 we find him writing a handbook for the layman setting out the basic philosophical concepts behind the teachings of Christ (xii). The controversy continued to simmer, but quietly.

In 1088, he placated his mother somewhat by marrying his eldest daughter Anna off to Basil Palaiologos, the son of his ally George and a member of the influential families of Palaiologos and Doukas (xiii)- Anatolian aristocracy both, even though the Doukai had long since based themselves in Constantinople. As it turned out, though, the marriage would prove to be an awkward thorn in Alexios’ side. His new son-in-law was just fifteen years old at the time of the marriage, and quickly came under the influence of Dalassēnē, who began to champion his right to the throne ahead of that of Michael. Matters were not helped by the death of the Empress Euphemia in childbirth at the beginning of 1089. Both Empress and baby (a son) died, and Alexios retreated from court politics into himself. At a stroke, Michael Komnenos, a boy of eleven, stood alone against the full might of the aristocracy.

Dalassēnē was quick to seize her advantage, and immediately proclaimed Basil Palaiologos to be a Caesar. Michael suddenly found himself being sidelined from politics by his own grandmother, and things became worse still, when, in the summer of 1090, Anna delivered Basil a healthy daughter (xiv). Michael was now thirteen and his family should have begun making active efforts to find him an eligible princess, but little was done. The young prince found himself alone and almost friendless, with his only constant companion being his eunuch tutor Basilios. It was Basilios, who, in desperation, played what he thought would be his only viable card. He sent messengers to Barion.

Isaac Komnenos the Younger had watched the developments on the Bosphorus with interest. He had never got on with his mother (xv), but had little love for his nephew Michael either. Nonetheless, the increasing prominence of the House of Palaiologos was troubling for him. Furthermore, the emissaries of Basilios had arrived at a fortuitous time. In the spring of 1091, the soldiers of the Katepánō had finally cornered and captured Robert Guiscard, the last Norman warlord still active in Sicily, restoring the island to Imperial rule in its entirety (xvi). Isaac sat at the pinnacle of one of the richest provinces of the Empire, with a large army that needed a new target. His sons Manuel and Stephen were both capable generals and administrators (xvii), and could, Isaac felt, be trusted to take care of Italy in his absence.

Accordingly, in 1092, he invaded the Balkans at the head of a large army, emphasising carefully his loyalty to his brother and nephew. The governors of the Balkan Themata did little to hinder Isaac’s passage, and, approaching Adrianople, he accepted the surrender of the Tagma of Thrace. The Palaiologoi family indignantly protested their own loyalty to the Komnenoi, and Alexios Komnenos himself was wheeled out from obscurity to attempt to reassure the Constantinopolitans of his trust for them (xviii).

The urban mob, though, had other ideas. Try as he might, George Palaiologos was quite unable to convince them of his earnest intentions (xix), and, as Isaac’s army approached, took the decision to head west to throw himself upon the mercy of the Katepánō. Isaac, for his part, was magnanimous, offering Palaiologos lands in western Sicily, far away from Constantinople. The aristocrat could do little but scuttle away into exile, and, with his fall, the whole situation engineered by Anna Dalassēnē collapsed. Isaac’s ceremonial entry into Constantinople was dressed up as a triumph over the Normans, but few were convinced- this was a demonstration of his power over his mother and her allies. Dalassēnē was forced into a monastery by her son, where she died a broken woman a few months later. Alexios was dragged out of his self-imposed political exile, with his son and brother at his side. Basilios, for his role in the coup, was promoted to the feted office of Parakoimomenos (xx), where he would remain for the best part of half a century.

The events of 1084-1092 have baffled modern scholars, and there is a tendency by many to dismiss their significance (xxi). Rather, these writers point to events in the East, where the Seljuk Sultanate’s hold over the Levant first splintered, and then collapsed altogether, in the same period (xxii). Alternatively, they look north to Germany, where a process of political centralisation had begun that would be the dominant theme in German history for the next two hundred years (xxiii). These historians are fools. The triumph of Michael Komnenos marks the victory of the philosophers in the battle for the Imperial soul that had been fought since the death of Basil II. It had been won, ironically, by a practical military man with little interest in either the welfare of his nephew or the Platonic contribution to the Christian faith. Had the career of Isaac Komnenos the Younger ended here, it would have been enough. Of course, it did not, and the summit of this man’s achievement was still decades off. But for now, we must leave him in the shadows.

For events of the coup had shaken Alexios Komnenos out of the stupor of depression, and back into vigorous action. And it was not a moment too soon.


_________________________________________________

i. Kaulonia is the modern city of Caulonia, in eastern Calabria.

ii. Relatively easy to do with the Petchenks now subdued. Bulgaria is restive, but troops can finally start to be withdrawn now.

iii. The last was Constans II in the 660s.

iv. Still at this point the seat of the Papacy, as it had been since the fourth century.

v. Gregory lives a year longer than IOTL.

vi. These transfers took place at the very beginning of the Iconoclastic Controversy in the 720s, when the Emperor Leo III arbitrarily confiscated all Papal revenue from Calabria, Sicily, and Dalmatia (Apulia remained Papal). The Papacy never accepted this IOTL.

vii. Gregory's authority to do this is limited to say the least, but the Emperor in Constantinople is probably the most legitimate person to "donate" the island to. In this period, Sardinia was ruled by the remnants of a Byzantine aristocracy that had been left high and dry by the Arab conquest of Sicily in the ninth century.

viii. This is OTL behaviour from Alexios, who had a very close relationship with his mother.

ix. One of Michael Psellos' former pupils. IOTL he was a University professor and accused of heresy, but here, he was raised to the Patriarchate in 1076.

x. To be precise, in Paphlagonia and Pontus.

xi. As we will see, the Uniate Church after the 1350s becomes very keen on re-writing its own history, especially under the influence of the nascent Dragon Society. This makes it rather difficult for historians of the IE Universe to properly get to grips with Church history.

xii. A name for this book would be appreciated, Greek-speakers!

xiii. George Palaiologos was married into the house of Doukas.

xiv. This is medieval politics after all, and fifteen year old Anna is just about old enough to be pressed into the important business of childbearing.

xv. Isaac believes that Anna manipulated her brother-in-law the Emperor Isaac Komnenos the Elder into favouring Alexios, even though Alexios is the younger brother.

xvi. Guiscard is not killed, however. You'll see more of him and the Normans, fear not.

xvii. Isaac is in his early forties in 1091. Manuel is twenty one, and Stephen nineteen.

xviii. In a couple of staged speeches at the Hippodrome, to be precise.

xix. IOTL, the influence of the urban mob of Constantinople was minimal under the Komnenoi- but this isn't the case ITTL, as we shall see. In this respect, there's a small element of democracy in Byzantium- one simply cannot become Emperor without the support of Constantinople's urban poor.

xx. "The One Who Sleeps Nearby". The Parakoimomenos was the most important eunuch in the Imperial hierarchy. IOTL, the importance of the role disappeared with the Komnenoi, but not here.

xxi. See above comments about the Uniate Church.

xxii. I may do a short update specifically focusing on this, if there'd be interest in it? In short, the Seljuks get distracted by revolts in Iran in the 1080s, as well as a civil war. The local Turkish governors in the west are never reincorporated into the main Sultanate, and by 1095 run small, independent Turkish states in the Levant.

xxiii. This is the genesis for what will become the Holy German Empire. At this stage, it consists mostly of Henry IV going round and battling with various lords.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Following the eviction of the Emperor Henry IV from central Italy in the autumn of 1084, all hell had broken lose in Germany. Henry had spent a relatively comfortable winter in Milan, but, crossing the Alps the following spring, found his German homeland in disarray, with no fewer than four pretenders to the throne on the lose across his Reich. The young Emperor’s response to this was entirely characteristic- he met his rebellious barons head on in battle near Magdeburg. The result was a catastrophic defeat for the Emperor, who, if popular legend is to be believed, survived only by cowering in a woodcutter’s forest home for weeks. By the end of 1085 he had shut himself up in the collection of castles at Hamburg (i), and his pretensions to the throne of the Western Roman Empire seemed to be firmly at an end.

What happened next need not concern us directly. Suffice it to say that of Henry’s four rivals, one died in battle, and two of the others retracted their claims to the throne, instead backing a long term rival of Henry’s, Ekbert of Meissen (ii), who promptly sent out feelers to Rome. Ekbert’s endeavours met with success, and he was crowned Emperor of the West in May 1087 by the new Pope, Victor III (iii). Ekbert was quick, too, to come to terms with the court at Constantinople, and proposed a marriage alliance between his infant son Conrad and Alexios Komnenos’ youngest daughter Styliane, an alliance that was supported by Dalassēnē and her allies during their period of ascendency at court. Ekbert rapidly proved himself to be an enthusiast for all things Eastern, sending men and money to aid the Imperial armies operating in Sicily and Sardinia. More importantly for the West, he decided to attempt to emulate Constantinople’s greatest asset- her taxation system.

In doing so, however, Ekbert would spell his own doom. In the summer of 1088 he conducted a relatively limited census that came to be known in the Reich as “Die zudringliche Erkundigung”- literally, “the intrusive enquiry”. Unrest began to build, especially when the following year, “gifts” of money were requisitioned from a number of large landowners by Ekbert. The barons recognised the thin end of a taxation wedge when they saw one, and quickly burst into revolt against their Emperor. Now it was Ekbert’s turn to scuttle into a fortified stronghold. His replacement, naturally, was Henry. Swaggering down from Hamburg, he brutally enforced his victory over Ekbert, stripping his prostate rival of his lands and titles. Ekbert was sent on his way, a German chronicler records, “to die by the roadside like a flea-bitten hound” (iv).

Henry had been out of power for four bitter years, and his revenge, when it came, was brutal. The great lords of the Reich were summoned to Hamburg in Christmas of 1090, there to be variously humiliated, executed, or promoted at their new master’s will. Recognising a good idea where he saw one, Henry demanded annual tribute in gold from those aristocrats who had done well out of his rise to power, thus formally beginning systematic taxation of the German people. A couple of small revolts over the next couple of years were crushed with brutal efficiency by Henry and his allies. Germany was now secure- and it was time to look to Italy.

The previous summer, of course, things had looked rosy enough in the peninsula for Isaac Komnenos to withdraw the majority of his armies, and leave the domestic administration of Italy in the hands of his sons, Manuel and Stephen. Now, though, the skies were rapidly darkening. Henry’s armies crossed the Alps in the spring of 1093. Pope Victor’s squeals of alarm (v) were met with sympathy by Manuel Komnenos in Barion, but there was little he could do about the situation. What troops he had at hand were on campaign with his brother in Sardinia, and the majority of the armies of his father had recently been transferred to the East, there to form the vanguard of a campaign to be led by Alexios against the fast crumbling Saljūq Sultanate (vi). Victor was left uncomfortably exposed, and, with Henry’s army rapidly bearing down on him, he attempted flight. It was in vain. The Bishop of Rome was captured by a force of German knights and used for target practise by them, his mangled remains brought back to the Emperor, who had occupied the Lateran, and selected his own Pope, the loyalist Bishop of Ravenna who betrayed his notional masters in Constantinople and took the Papal throne as Clement III (vii). The alliance between West and East had been irrevocably sundered.

Stephen Komnenos returned swiftly to Barion, together with his small army, and the two brothers made a show of force when Henry’s ambassadors arrived. It was largely in vain, and the westerners were not particularly intimidated. Henry would agree to a cessation of hostilities between West and East, conditional upon the annual payment of some five hundred pounds of gold in annual tribute. With their uncle the Emperor fully occupied in the East and months away from communication, the two brothers had little choice but to accept the demands.

Thus satisfied, Henry moved north, to the loyalist city of Milan, from where he legislated in the manner of one of the great Roman Emperors of old. In 1094, we find him for the first time issuing demands for taxation from the cities of the Po Valley and the Papal States. This provoked another revolt, led by the disaffected and apparently difficult-to-please citizens of Ravenna, who had hoped that by switching their allegiance to Henry (viii), they had ridded themselves of greedy Imperial tax gatherers. The revolt was initially successful, thanks to tacit funding from the Venetians and the other Adriatic allies of Constantinople, but ultimately was defeated by Henry, who stormed Ravenna in 1097. The network of resistance to him across Italy promptly collapsed- apart from in one city.

Prior to the Italian expeditions of Alexios Komnenos, Genoa had been a small and relatively unimportant town in northern Italy. After his departure, and particularly once Italy came under the administration of his nephews, it began to rise rapidly to prominence. Stephen Komnenos had, in his campaign of 1093, made much use of the sea power of Genoa in order to augment his own forces in operation on the eastern coast of Sardinia (ix); and when he was forced to return to the Italian mainland to deal with the Germans, the Genoese had been generously paid to keep up the war. During the uneasy period of Imperial stalemate in Italy, the Genoese had grown further in prosperity, thanks to their close alliance with Barion. Quietly encouraged by Manuel and Stephen, they had thrown in their lot with the Ravenna-led alliance, and had inflicted a sharp defeat upon German forces attempting to besiege their city. That, though, had been thanks in large part to the timely arrival of reinforcements, and low German morale caused by events elsewhere (x). Now, Genoa stood entirely alone.

Henry began making preparations for the final removal of Genoese resistance the moment Ravenna had fallen to him. The Genoese were quite aware of this, and sent panicky messages to Barion, begging for the support of the Katepánō Manuel (xi). Manuel himself, a reasonably adept military man, though lacking the flair of his younger brother, was quick to realise that the forces at his disposal would not be enough to see off the Germans. In turn, therefore, he appealed to his uncle the Emperor for aid.

Alexios Komnenos had good reason to want to return to the Italian theatre. His war against the Turks, waged in four campaigns between 1094 and 1097 had been a costly and bloody endeavour, for very little reward (xii). His son Michael, now twenty years old, had impressed many with his dynamism and courage on the battlefield, but this was no substitute for the record of success won the sons of the Emperor’s brother Isaac. Isaac, now in virtual house-arrest in Constantinople, had been quick to broadcast this to the populace, and, when Alexios returned to the City in the late autumn of 1097, he had been greeted with very little enthusiasm. Rumours began to circulate of the appearance of an angelic prophet who had appeared to Isaac and promised he and his sons the throne. Alexios, once again, was in need of a victory.

The Genoese campaign would set the seal on his reign, though, infuriatingly, the detail of what actually happened is difficult to pin down. Ignatios of Phaselis seems to have died shortly before he set out- the last year recorded in his waspish chronicle is 1096/97, in which he gleefully recounts a tale of the Emperor’s men being defeated by a dozen Turks. The major historians of the twelfth century only give Alexios’ triumphant campaign a brief mention, for reasons we shall soon see. Despite all of this, one thing is clear. After the Genoese campaign, no one would again begin to doubt Alexios’ claim to the throne.

The Germans began the siege in the summer of 1098, withdrawing briefly over the winter, but returning with a vengeance the following spring. The Genoese, for their part, were hopelessly outnumbered, but were able to utilise their command of the high seas to bring in just about enough food and water to cling on. It was a desperate situation for the city, however. As 1099 wore on, hopes of survival began rapidly to wane.

It was at this point that the Emperor Alexios arrived at the head of a very large army, made up of disciplined troops of the Tagmata and Norman mercenaries. Most remarkably, from the point of view of the Germans (xiii), was the enlisting in his army of a large body of Arab horsemen, bullied from the Zirid Emir of Ifriqiya (xiv). The Germans retreated from the siege, but in good order, and their army was by no means defeated. Large as Alexios’ force was, Henry’s still probably outnumbered it, and his veterans, unlike those of Alexios, had experienced a decade of victory, not grinding stalemate.

The two armies met at Savona, to the west of Genoa, on the chilly day of January 12th 1100. The result was a crushing victory for Alexios’ army. Of the Germans, it is rumoured that only forty survived- a rhetorical illusion, no doubt, but one that points at a broader truth of extreme German casualties. The Emperor Henry IV was sent scrabbling out of Italy for the last time, renouncing forever his claim to the title of Emperor of the Romans (xv). Alexios had saved Genoa, and won an Italian victory far more conclusive than any of those of rival family members.

It was a stunning triumph, in every way but one. Towards the end of the battle, Michael Komnenos, that young man of glorious talent and skill, had been thrown from his horse. All his skill at surviving, his military boldness, his popularity with the urban mob, his intellectual vigour could no longer help him. At Savona, Alexios Komnenos secured his reign, at the price of his son’s life. Michael Komnenos, heir to the throne of the Roman Empire died on January 19th, 1100.

________________________________________________

i. Hamburg is still a very minor settlement in 1085. All this will now start to change, though it's still a while off from the great capital of the Holy German Empire that it will become.

ii. Better known IOTL as Egbert II of Meissen, he was an opponent of Henry IV IOTL, and died fighting the Emperor in 1090.

iii. This is the OTL figure. As he was an important spiritual figure in contemporary Italy, I've decided to leave the Papal succession untouched until this point.

iv. Ekbert's death is so insignificant that no historian from the IE Universe even deigns to mention exactly when it was, though he is presumably dead by 1100.

v. Victor's living rather longer than IOTL here.

vi. The Seljuks face a major civil war in 1088-1090, which allows various Turkish warlords in the west to shake off their authority. Alexios' campaigns aim to take advantage of this.

vii. An OTL Antipope. This is the real POD for the Papal succession. From now on, there won't be any more OTL Bishops of Rome.

viii. Pope Clement III seems to have been acting very much with the interests of his home city in mind when he betrayed the Byzantines in favour of the Germans. Despite its OTL reputation as a centre of Byzantine civilisation, Ravenna and her people have not enjoyed their first experience of direct Byzantine control since the eighth century.

ix. The conquest of Sardinia is a very shaky and piecemeal project. Stephen Komnenos is a very able young general, but, with limited men and money, there's only so much he can do to bring the Sardinians to heel.

x. Specifically, news of a minor defeat at the hands of the Poles far to the north and a major outbreak of dysentery in the German army.

xi. Manuel officially is granted this title in 1096, replacing his father.

xii. Alexios' men manage to sack Damascus in 1095, but are routed retreating north back to Antioch. The following year, the Turks manage to penetrate behind Imperial lines and raid Cilicia, and the campaign of 1097 is a violent struggle to push them out of Imperial territory, expensive in lives and money.

xiii. So appalled were the Germans at the idea of Saracens fighting in the army of a Christian Emperor that several 12th century German historians talk about Alexios as being an Islamic ruler.

xiv. More or less the area of modern Tunisia. The Zirid Emir is pretty much a vassal of the Eastern Emperor by now.

xv. He may not have been "Emperor of the Romans", but he was most certainly still "Emperor". The Battle of Savona therefore marks the definitive beginning of the Holy German Empire.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Six: The Triumph of Alexios Komnenos

"That blessed Emperor brought me to the Ruling City as naught but a barbarian boy, and there he made me a Roman..."

The Life Story of Jordan of Aversa, written circa 1160.​

The breakup of the Empire of the Saljūq Turks in the Fertile Crescent is a long and complicated process that need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that, following the death of the Sultan Alb Arslān in 1066, the state had fatally lost its balance, and his successors were forced to spend most of their time in Persia, keeping an eye on various rivals from within the ruling dynasty. By 1085, Saljūq control over the primarily Arabic areas of Syria and Palestine was little more than a legal fiction, and three new Turkish dynasties had sprung up in the area, all ruled by ātābegs (i). The new states- the Salghurids of Jerusalem, the Ildenizids of Damascus and the Ahmadilids of Harran (ii), fought constantly, both against each other and the infidels of Rūm. For Alexios, these new raiding states were an alarming disturbance, and it was primarily against Harran that he campaigned between 1094 and 1097.

The return of the Emperor and his retinue to Constantinople in the summer of 1100 was a mournful occasion. Alexios himself was reported to be near inconsolable, and, according to the admittedly biased testimony of his own history, the only one who could console him was a young Norman boy by the name of Jordan of Aversa, who now enters our story for the first time. Jordan’s father, like Alexios’ son, had been killed at Savona, and the boy, who apparently reminded Alexios of his deceased son, was taken into the imperial retinue. Jordan, then aged ten years old, was treated “like the Emperor’s own child”, according to his later self. Of course, in his old age, Jordan had ample reason for claiming this, and it could be that the story is a tall tale. We simply do not know. What is clear, though, is that the Emperor was, as he had been following his wife’s death thirteen years previously, badly shaken. Not for the last time, control of the central government quickly devolved down onto the shoulders of the Parakoimomenos Basilios (iii), now in his early forties. Basilios had been close to the deceased prince Michael, as his tutor, but unlike Alexios, he was entirely free of paralysing depression. He moved swiftly. The Emperor’s youngest daughter Styliane, thus far unmarried, was quickly found a husband in the form of her elder cousin Manuel Komnenos, the Katepánō of Italy, whose own Lombard wife had conveniently died in childbirth (iv). To deny the Italians (v) too much power at court, the Parakoimomenos persuaded the Emperor to recall from exile his daughter Anna, and her husband, Basil Palaiologos, who was appointed to the influential position of Khartoularios tou Kanikleiou, the keeper of the Imperial Inkstand (vi).

With the court thus reshuffled, Basilios might have hoped to enjoy a period of ascendency, but it was to be denied to him, for Alexios recovered reasonably quickly from his period of mourning. Perhaps it was the influence of Jordan of Aversa, or, more likely, it was the presence at court of his grandchildren by Basil and Anna that eased the Emperor’s woes and convinced him that there was still hope for the future. Either way, by the end of 1102, the contemporary Arab geographer al-Sabti could report that Alexios was in “high spirits” and “eager to extend the dominion of his people”.

The object of the Emperor’s aggression was the Turkish states. With the Italian situation in the safe and competent hands of his nephew Stephen, Alexios felt free to turn to the Turks, but before he could do so, there were pressing local difficulties to do so. A planned expedition in 1104 had collapsed into acrimonious fighting between the Domestikos tēs Anatolēs (vii) Pantherios Skleros (viii) and Johannes, the exiled King of Ani, whose forebears had been settled in Cappadocia by the Emperor Constantine IX (ix). Pantherios, nicknamed “the leopard” by the Armenian exiles of central Anatolia, had apparently pushed Johannes too far with his insistence on harassing the Monophysite priests accompanying the Imperial army in a campaign against the Atabeg of Harran, with the result that the Armenian and his men had deserted the army, and retreated back to Caesarea before they had even left Edessa. It was an embarrassment for the Empire, made worse by the crushing defeat of the client Emir of Aleppo at the hands of the Atabeg of Harran later in the campaigning season, and the sack of the city.

Relations between Johannes and the Domestikos remained sour enough for Alexios to seriously consider demoting Skleros- it was only the realisation that to do so would mean replacing Skleros with his brother Isaac that kept the Domestikos in his office. Campaigning for the next three years was miserable, and marked by constant insubordination from the Armenians of the Tagmata, which reached its apogee in the autumn of 1107 with the betrayal of Edessa to the Turks the moment the Emperor and his armies had retreated to spend the winter in Cilicia. To make matters worse, the following year, the Turks managed to co-opt a number of Arab pirates, and with their support launched a surprisingly damaging raid on Cyprus. Something would have to be done.

Alexios moved quickly and decisively. Pantherios Skleros was demoted to Doux of Antioch (x) and replaced as Domestikos by a loyal Armenian, Bardanes of Mopsuestia, who had served under Stephen Komnenos in Sardinia. Furthermore, embassies were sent to the Fatimid Caliph in Egypt (xi), proposing a join attack on the Turks. The Egyptians, supported by the Imperial navy and ships from the Italian vassals, would attack the Turks in Palestine, while Alexios himself would personally lead an invasion to retake Edessa, and drive into Syria. The Caliph readily agreed, and the following year, the attack was launched.

Alexios met with the combined forces of the Atabegs of Damascus and Harran at Homs on the Orontes. The Turks attempted to break up the Imperial army, but, thanks to the skills (if we are to believe the writings of Jordan) of a picked band of Norman knights, their horse archers were cornered and massacred. The main body of the Imperial army held together under the Emperor, and then moved forward, to scatter the remainder of the Turkish force. The Atabeg of Damascus fought bravely but was eventually overcome and killed by a detachment of Englishmen (xii). His counterpart from Harran was forced to submit to Alexios, return Edessa, and agree to an annual tribute. With the Egyptians having successfully captured Gaza from the Turks of Jerusalem and neutered their power for the time being, Alexios found himself in the happy position of being the first Emperor to enjoy friendly (and, indeed, dominant) relations with all of the states of his borders since the time of Maurice. His reign would, it appeared, end in well-merited triumph.

There were still a few upsets along the way. In 1114, an uprising was mounted by a Greek general, Theodosios Melissenos, which provoked some alarm in the capital. Melissenos was able to mobilise a great deal of popular support in his province from an increasingly alienated peasantry, tired of paying high levels of taxation to support the expanded armies. Even as economic diversification increased, and urban populations grew, the taxation system remained conservative and based around leeching cash from the rural peasantry, the least politically powerful segment of society. The revolt, after managing to capture Thebes and Corinth, was defeated by Manuel Komnenos, but the problems would continue, and further rioting would break out in Thrace three years later. A static currency and an increasingly rapacious state hurt the rural poor badly while at the same time encouraging the abandonment of traditional practises in favour of movement from the country to the towns. A nettle would have to be grasped by a future administration and, already, the Parakoimomenos was putting his formidable mental power towards coming up with a solution. For now, though, peasants would have to wait. The Emperor Alexios was in steep decline.

Alexios had reached his sixtieth birthday in the spring of 1116 apparently a triumphant man, and had, Jordan tells us, spent an agreeable summer at a rural villa in Bithynia in the company of his only grandson, John, the son of Manuel and Styliane. Jordan, now a man in his mid-twenties, had apparently been appointed the young prince’s tutor, but warmly tells us that Alexios had accepted responsibility for his grandson’s education, lovingly informing John of the secrets of statecraft. In view of what happened later (xiii), of course, Jordan’s testimony about John Komnenos can be argued to be somewhat suspect, but the image he creates, of a doting grandfather, is an attractive one. The historian must surely hope that Jordan’s testimony is correct.

The Emperor caught a chill while returning to the City that autumn, and, by Christmas, it must have been apparent to all that he was not long for the world. Immediately, a quiet struggle began under the surface of court between Basil Palaiologos and Isaac Komnenos the Younger, who had swallowed repeated indignities from his Imperial brother to remain alive and healthy. Alexios himself would likely have preferred the throne to go to Basil than “the Italian” as he dismissively referred to his brother, but affairs were slipping out of his hands, as the Parakoimomenos moved onto the scene and decided, as he had done thirty years earlier, to back Isaac’s faction and deny Basil the throne. Even with Basilios’ intervention, though, both claimants enjoyed a degree of legitimacy and popular support. Alexios’ death, when it finally came, would bring interesting times down upon the Empire.

The Emperor lingered on through the summer of 1117, rarely rising from his bed, and spending much of the time delirious. Eventually, in a moment of lucidity, he decided enough was enough, and, with the support of Jordan and Basilios (xiv), hobbled into the nearby monastery of St. George (xv), neglecting to inform his predatory relatives save for Theodora, the youngest daughter of Basil and Anna, and a child not yet old enough to understand fully what was going on. At the monastery, he removed his Imperial insignia, and heard mass, before breathing his last in the hands of his trusted advisers and his five year old granddaughter. He had enjoyed a reign of spectacular success, and he died at peace, with his Empire at its strongest in centuries.

Alexios I Komnenos died on October 2nd, 1117. By October 3rd, a grand battle for the throne of that Empire had already begun.

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i. This is the Turkish term for local governors. The Atabegs of these western states, though, are only clients of the Sultan in theory. In practise, they are all but entirely independent.

ii. Names taken from various OTL Turkish dynasties of the twelfth century.

iii. If you recall, Basilios' career began as a philosophical tutor to Michael Komnenos. Basilios was himself taught by John Italos, a pupil of Michael Psellos, and thus the eunuch has a strong concern for the welfare of Michael's surviving sisters, who are, after all, the granddaughters of Psellos.

iv. Manuel's wife may have died, but not before delivering him two healthy children, a son and a daughter. This is something we'll return to.

v. Popular derogatory nickname in contemporary Constantinople for Isaac Komnenos the Younger and his sons.

vi. This was an important role because of its constant proximity to the Emperor's person. A century or so previously, Nikephoros Ouranos had become powerful thanks to holding this office under Basil II. The term itself is from a Latin root- the scarlet ink of the Emperor was kept in an inkwell shaped like a puppy- "Canicula", in Latin.

vii. The supreme commander of the Asian Tagmata.

viii. A nephew of the eleventh century rebel.

ix. A common practise of annexation in eleventh century Byzantium. Emperors would offer Armenian monarchs lands, commands, and titles in central Anatolia, in exchange for submitting. Given Anatolia was generally richer and more peaceful than Armenia, it is not too surprising that many Armenian monarchs took up the offer.

x. Of course, in itself, the Duchy of Antioch is a substantial prize. But for a former Domestic of the Schools, pretty much anything besides the throne itself can only be seen as a demotion.

xi. There is a long history of co-operation between Constantinople and Cairo under the Fatimids. It may even be that Egypt once more provided a grain dole to Constantinople from the middle of the eleventh century onward.

xii. England has been conquered as IOTL in IE 2.0, and the Saxon aristocracy has, as with OTL, increasingly gravitated to Constantinople.

xiii. More fun foreshadowing, here!

xiv. The beginnings of a fun little power-duo, here, all. Basilios and Jordan's alliance will dominate the new couple of updates.

xv. St George of Magnaura, on the eastern side of the hill of Constantinople's acropolis.

 

[Utgard96]

To go with the latest chapter, here's a map of the Turkish statelets in Syria and Palestine, and the various campaigns described in the chapter itself.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Seven: The Dragon Emperor

"And so, together, they led the Roman Empire- the barbarian, the eunuch, and the soldier."

Philotheos of Thebes, Life of Manuel, written circa 1190.​

The corpse of the Emperor Alexios was barely cold when Jordan of Aversa hurriedly returned to the Imperial Palace, woke the dead Emperor’s brother Isaac and urged him to hasten to the Great Church of Hagia Sophia, there to become the third of his family to take the Imperial throne. Isaac did not delay. The elderly Patriarch, John Italos (i), was swept out of bed, and forced to perform a rapid coronation ceremony in the early hours of the morning, before a small gathering. By the morning of October 3rd 1117, Isaac II Komnenos seemed to have securely snatched the throne of the Roman Empire.

The new Emperor was fast approaching his seventieth birthday at the time of his accession to the throne, and yet, according to all who describe him, he was in magnificent physical condition, the product of years of vigorous living. Unlike his brother, who had often preferred to retreat to bookish obscurity, Isaac was a loud and domineering figure, every bit the warrior Emperor. His hair was still shaggy golden (“like a fearsome lion”, Philotheos (ii) tells us), and he stood well over six feet tall. When Basil Palaiologos had his first audience with his rival a few days after Isaac’s accession, the Emperor was so intimidating and overbearing that Palaiologos could barely speak to request his promotion to the office of Domestikos tēs Anatolēs in exchange for the abandonment of all claims to the throne. Isaac reacted violently, chasing Palaiologos out of the room armed with the battle-axe of a Varangian guardsman (iii). Isaac had suffered years of humiliation at the hands of his brother, and now he had seized the throne he was intent on revenge.

Chasing his rivals around the Palace might have amused the new Basileus, but it was not intelligent politics. Within a few weeks, Basil Palaiologos had fled to Antioch and there, declaring an alliance with the current Domestikos tēs Anatolēs Bardanes of Mopsuestia, he killed the Doux Pantherios Skleros and raised the standard of revolt. He had ample support. For the armies of the East, Isaac “the Italian” (iv) was a semi-literate barbarian, supported by the equally barbaric Jordan of Aversa and his followers. Palaiologos had little trouble in whipping up the Tagmata, and then, with the coming of spring 1118, marching them west to occupy the Anatolian plateau.

Isaac’s response was characteristically forthright: and all the more disastrous for it. Gathering detachments from the various Themata nearest to Constantinople, plus his own palace guard regiments and a motley band of Western European mercenaries, he sped east, and met the rebels in battle near the town of Amorion. The result was quick, and decisive. The army of the Emperor was routed (v), and Isaac himself barely escaped with his life. Bardanes then advanced yet further westward, and was welcomed into Nicaea by the influential local landowner, Nikēphoros Nafpliotis (vi).

Things got still worse for the beleaguered Emperor, who had fled across the Aegean to Athens, following his defeat. In July, his own son Stephen raised the standard of revolt (vii). Stephen’s motives for doing so are murky, but what seems most likely is that the Emperor’s younger son had felt snubbed by his father, who had repeatedly favoured his elder brother Manuel. Stephen immediately crossed to Epiros (viii), accompanied by a large and experienced army. It was, for the Emperor Isaac II, the lowest point of his reign.

From here, though, the rebel cause would fall apart so rapidly that it was impossible for any of the participants not to attribute affairs to divine intervention of some sort. In desperation, the Senate of Constantinople, alarmed by the prospect of dynastic change, entrusted the remaining armies of the West to Jordan of Aversa, a hitherto militarily inexperienced courtier. It was a wise decision. Jordan surprised many (not least himself) by inflicting a serious defeat on a small section of the rebel army, which prompted Bardanes to retreat from Nicaea, onto less favourable terrain (ix). There, his army demoralised, he was badly defeated by Jordan’s enthusiastic troops, and died on the battlefield. Shortly afterward, Nikephoros Nafpliotis returned to the side of the Government (x). The Emperor Isaac was able to return to Constantinople with his position considerably secured.

The heart was now out of the rebellion, and the Emperor and his allies did not hesitate to press home their advantage. Stephen Komnenos was starved out of the Haemic peninsula (xi), and forced back to Italy, pursued by his brother and a large army. Manuel duly defeated Stephen near the city of Italian Troy (xii), and subjected his brother to a brutal blinding. Meanwhile, Isaac and Jordan pushed Basil Palaiologos out the other way, to the Eastern front, where he too was defeated and blinded near Melitene. An opportunistic invasion by the Atabeg of Harran, attempting to take advantage of the chaos, was briskly smashed, and Isaac II returned to Constantinople, his position secured.

He would never return to the battlefield again, and, indeed, soon began to find his age finally catching up with him. Restricted to his bed for most of the day, and living on a diet of specially softened food to compensate for the loss of most of his teeth, the old Emperor must have cut a rather feeble figure. This enforced confinement, though, was probably distinctly beneficial for the Empire as a whole. It is an irony that circumstances had forced Alexios Komnenos, a born administrator, to become a soldier- and it is even more of one that differing circumstances forced his brother, a born soldier, to enact a serious programme of administrative reforms.

To credit these reforms to Isaac is a stretch, as they had largely been dreamt up by the Parakoimomenos Basilios. Nonetheless, the Emperor was able to throw his weight and remaining energy fully behind the eunuch’s ideas, to force them through with a fearsome degree of efficiency. Basilios’ main concern was the taxation system which had, for close to a century now, been struggling to cope with the changing nature of life in the Empire. A system based on fleecing rural peasants to defend a beleaguered state had worked well enough in the dark days of the eighth and ninth centuries, but now, with the Empire unquestionably more powerful than any of its neighbours, and urban life booming, things had begun to look distinctly different (xiii).

Furthermore, the civil war, plus the expensive wars of the reign of Alexios had left the coffers in a parlous state. The Anatolian peasantry was increasingly turning to banditry; with the exactions of the Imperial tax collectors becoming too much to bear it was hardly surprising that they had enthusiastically supported the revolt of Basil Palaiologos and his allies. As more peasants evaded tax, takings fell, forcing the administration to tighten the squeeze still further on those remaining taxpayers. The situation was plainly untenable and Basilios, with the civil war now out of the way, was determined to scrap it.

Tax would, for the first time in centuries, become the responsibility of cities, not the wider Themata. Inspectors of the Parakoimomenos moved out into the countryside, assigning, in many cases, the exact territories to cities that they had held in the sixth and seventh centuries. Only monastic land remained inviolate, but even that was to be taxed to a degree, a decree imposed upon a Church by Basilios’ ally, Patriarch Italos, who died shortly afterward. Most significantly, for local communities, was the ruling that tax would be collected by local people, with a rotating programme of tax gathering shared by the major landowners, who would be assessed regularly for corruption by one another. It was far from a perfect system, and corruption remained rampant. Nonetheless, for the first time, the return of urban life to the provinces of the Empire was properly acknowledged. The slowly rising urban classes would now begin to acquire an important new stake in society, as allies of the Imperial Government against potential corruption by the tax-gathering magnates- or, alternatively, as allies of the magnates to collude in fleecing the others. It was a significant step- the power of an educated urban group, the so called “Mesoi”(xiv)would henceforth become an increasingly crucial element in governing the Roman Empire. Most importantly, by focusing the state’s finance-gathering apparatus upon the towns, the burden could be lifted somewhat from the fields. The life of the peasant remained a gruelling one, but no longer would it be crushing. These reforms, coupled by a limited debasement of the Nomisma to eighteen carats (xv), were enough for the Empire to financially turn the corner. By 1122, it was rumoured that Isaac had amassed a veritable dragon’s hoard of treasure (xvi).

The dragon himself, though, was not long for the world. Now nearly seventy-five years old, Isaac II Komnenos was by some way the oldest Emperor Constantinople had seen in centuries. In the summer of 1121, to no-one’s surprise, he had associated his son Manuel on the throne with him, and, to make doubly sure of the security of the succession, Manuel soon raised his own son, John (xvii), to the rank of Caesar. Isaac spent much of the day asleep, delegating much of the business of Government to Manuel and the ever energetic Parakoimomenos. The rest of the time he spent in deep theological discussion with the newly appointed Patriarch, Antigonos, a former battlefield chaplain. Isaac, in his prime, had never been a particularly spiritual man. But now, with death approaching, his interest in what lay beyond reached feverish levels. Jordan of Aversa reports on several occasions being forced to physically restrain the elderly Emperor from begging for mercy on the streets of Constantinople in the spring of 1122, and there was a general feeling around court that the end was nigh.

Death, though, would be a while in coming, and Isaac II would suffer badly, losing his sight and control of his bowels before it finally came. Constantinopolitans might have wondered, privately, if this was divine retribution for his aggression and radicalism, but few would have dared utter those thoughts aloud. For the House of Komnenos’ grip on power was now as firm as that of any dynasty had been. When, at length, Isaac finally passed away in late August, there was no doubt as to who would succeed him. Manuel Komnenos was crowned barely an hour after his father’s death- and with his accession began the reign of the most powerful and capable Emperor Constantinople had seen in living memory.
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i. An OTL heretic who died in the 1080s. ITTL, he's raised to the throne by Michael VII Psellos as a young man. Italos enjoys a long and successful time in the Patriarchal chair, holding the office until his death in 1120.
ii. Philotheos of Thebes, that is, an hagiographer/biographer of the late 12th century. His "Life of Manuel" is one of the most important literary texts of the contemporary ERE of TTL.
iii. By the end of the 1110s, the English influence upon the Varangians is fading, and they're starting to encompass all sorts of Northern Europeans. Particularly drawn to Constantinople are the Poles, seeking service with a fellow enemy of the Germans.
iv. As we'll see, coming from Italy can make it difficult for an Emperor to enforce his will over the Eastern armies, with their strong Armenian contingents.
v. Unsurprising, really. The troops of the so called "Roman Themes" of western and central Anatolia are now little more than a local police force- it's hardly surprising they're cut to ribbons by the professional Tagmatic armies.
vi. A name that might be familiar to readers of IE v1.
vii. You might think this is a stretch- but revolts of sons against fathers are not unknown in Byzantine history, although the main examples are admittedly from the post-1204 successor states.
viii. Modern Albania, roughly.
ix. Hitherto something of a bookworm, Jordan has spent years reading up on the military exploits of various commanders. This, coupled with good old fashioned luck, allows him to pull off something quite unexpected- and it's all go from here.
x. It's an indication of how bad the situation is still perceived to be in Constantinople that Nafpliotis is able to keep his eyes.
xi. Haemic peninsula = the Balkans, a Turkish word that obviously wouldn't be used ITTL.
xii. Modern Troia in Apulia. Though reputedly founded by an ancient Greek hero, the town we're talking about is a Byzantine fortress settlement established late in the reign of Basil II.
xiii. I've discussed this briefly before, but basically, what had since the seventh century been a very rural society is finally beginning to return to something more resembling the network of towns and cities of Late Antiquity.
xvi. This is a Byzantine term that literally means "the middle", though we should be cautious to label these people as a true "middle class" as we'd understand it. Nonetheless, they're not a million miles off... IOTL, it's mostly used for when discussing social changes in the successor states, but here, I'm using it to describe a class than IOTL I suspect was somewhat stymied by the turbulence of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.
xv. Originally established at 24 carats by Constantine the Great, the Solidus-Nomisma had been devalued to around 20 by Constantine IX, something that may well have further spurred economic growth. This second, minor devaluation, will be the last for some centuries, though it brings Basilios a degree of short-term unpopularity.
xvi. These are pretty radical changes, I know, and I wasn't sure how to structure them. In the end, I justified them by reasoning that, for a state like Byzantium, about the only thing that could encourage radical restructuring would be the urge to acquire more taxes. Restructuring had taken place in the past several times, after all, and I think in this scenario, it would happen sooner or later in some form.
xvii. The grandson of Alexios Komnenos too, through his daughter Styliane.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Eight: Megas Basileus

"It is our Imperial Will that the Christian peoples should be joined together in a state of perfection and Unity, for this is most pleasing to the Almighty."

Manuel Komnenos, Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans, Opening statement of the Third Council of Nicaea​

The accession to the throne of Manuel Komnenos was uncontested. Fifty-one years old at the time of his coming to power, Manuel had inherited all of his father’s qualities in full. Tall, hairy, and fearsomely intelligent, it was hardly surprising that not one ambitious commander dared to even begin to question his new Emperor. Not for generations had there been such a smooth transfer of power from an Emperor to his heir.

Manuel’s reign is often considered to mark the apogee of the Komnenid dynasty. He was certainly lucky to inherit from his father and uncle an Empire that was stable and dominant on all of its frontiers, and to have the services of the ever-energetic Parakoimomenos Basilios, his intellectual vigour undimmed despite his advancing years (i). Few, indeed, could imagine a court without the old eunuch, who, despite the misgivings of the Emperor, was confirmed in his position within a few days of the accession. There were plenty more spoils. Manuel had long been an ally of Jordan of Aversa, and the Norman was swiftly appointed to the position of Doux of Antioch, from where, in 1124, he led a daring and hugely successful raid that managed to sack Damascus.

The early years of Manuel’s reign were, by the standards of his predecessors, relaxed. A Cuman (ii) raid upon the Imperial colonies in the Chersonesos (iii) were repulsed with minimal difficulty, with the Cumans themselves being forced to acknowledge Constantinople’s suzerainty. The native princes on the frontiers, too, seemed relatively quiescent- even the ever feuding Armenian princes seemed for now tolerant to accept the sovereignty of the new Emperor. Sadly, for the Basileus, it was not a situation that could last forever.

The trouble, though, came not from the Armenian princes, but from a client monarch at the other end of the Empire. Ever since the days of Basil II, the Serbs had been relatively quiet clients of the Empire- aside from a brief flare-up into revolt in the early days of Alexios Komnenos (iv), Constantinople had been able to keep them under control. Of late, though, this had begun to change. The demands of the Imperial tax machine had seen the Serbs grouped together in 1125 under the authority of a sole ruler, given the title of Doux (v). The man chosen for this office was a hardy warrior by the name of Constantine Reljić, a half-Norman whose father had settled in the Serbian lands as an imperial peacekeeper back in the 1070s. Reljić had adopted his mother’s Serbian name, and had grown up as a loyal servant of Constantinople, attracted to the ideals of the Christian Empire in a way that many Serbs had not been. However, several perceived snubs by the new regime of Manuel Komnenos had done much to strain Reljić’s loyalty, and the depredations of the Imperial tax collectors upon his countrymen had angered the Doux. In 1128, therefore, he sought help from a new quarter- the kingdom of Hungary.

Hungary at the time was settling down from the convulsions that had characterised the long reign of King Solomon I, who had finally expired at the age of seventy three in the spring of 1126 (vi). His son and namesake was, like Reljić, a man of a mixed background, with his mother Judith of Swabia being the sister of the same Emperor Henry IV who had caused Constantinople so much trouble in Italy. Solomon II, therefore, was hardly a disinterested party in the struggles between great Empires, and was eager to strike back a blow to redeem the pride of his deceased uncle. Accordingly, with this family injustice in mind, the King of Hungary sent forth an army of several thousand men to “liberate” the Serbs. The Tagmata of the Bulgarian provinces, marching into Serbia in an attempt to quell the flames of rebellion, were put to ignominious flight, and sent scuttling back to Thessalonica in disarray. Worse was to follow. In the spring of 1129, with a belly filled by a prosperous harvest the previous autumn, the Hungaro-Serbian army descended from the mountain passes, and managed to overwhelm the importance fortress of Sardica, on the military road from Constantinople to the city of Singidunum. With Singidunum and her hinterland thus cut off, Reljić and his allies could concentrate on picking off the neighbouring towns piecemeal, which they duly did. By the end of the year, barely a town was left in Imperial hands in a line running from Rasdaria to Dyracchion (vii).

For a man with a military reputation like Manuel Komnenos, this was an intolerable state of affairs, and one which he had no intention of letting rest. The concerns of Jordan of Aversa to keep a large force in the East were overridden, and the Emperor set out from Constantinople in summer 1130 at the head of a very large army- contemporary sources talk of a million men, an obviously absurd figure that nonetheless gives a chilling indication of Manuel’s purpose of intent (viii). When battle was eventually joined, at Haram in Serbia itself, the large army of the Emperor initially seemed cumbersome, and in the course of an epic two-week slog Reljić was able to win several tactical victories. Numbers, though, eventually told. Faced with Manuel’s stern resolve, Solomon of Hungary blinked, and gave orders for his warriors to retreat. Reljić was left friendless, and he was duly dragged back to Constantinople and blinded as part of the concluding ceremony of Manuel’s triumph in the Hippodrome. With him went the vast majority of the Serbian aristocracy. A nation had, effectively been decapitated, and while Serbian resentment would continue to fester, never again would it be able to reach as serious a pitch as in the great revolt of Constantine Reljić.

The example provided by newly subdued Serbia was an intriguing one for Manuel, and it was not long before the Emperor began to contemplate applying the lessons of the Serbian revolt to the seemingly intractable problem of the Armenians who had, shortly after the Serbian campaign, caused a series of major riots in Cilicia linked to Turcoman attacks on the undefended region (ix). The Armenian problem, though, was one of a different order of magnitude to that of the Serbs; for not only did the Armenians exist in various client principalities on the imperial flanks, they also made up substantial parts of the population of the eastern provinces and a large proportion of the Tagmata of Anatolia. Any attempt to decapitate them, therefore, would have to be attempted with extreme care. Still, the idea intrigued Manuel. Early in 1134, he seems to have tried to put some of the ideas into practise, travelling to Antioch and there arranging a dramatic show trial of the Prince of Syunik (x), Roupen, which ended with his arrest and detention on Cyprus and his replacement upon the throne by his one year old son, Smbat. The experiment did not end well- violent riots broke out in Antioch and several Chalcedonian monasteries were burned to the ground before Jordan of Aversa could hurriedly restore order. Manuel was forced to beat a retreat on this occasion- but the idea continued to float around the chanceries of the capital.

By the end of the decade, the Emperor was beginning to fade, and more and more power was passing into the hands of his son and co-Emperor John, a dynamic and ambitious man now in his early thirties. John’s great passion was for theology, and for the future of his Church. The thought that everywhere around him the faithless were dooming themselves to Hell through their own errors was a source of great distress to the young Emperor, and he made repeated and forceful efforts to bring various groups to the light of the Church. In 1141, the Jews of Constantinople suffered the indignity of a series of patronising lectures by John, coupled with blatant bribes at conversion. Three years later, it was the turn of the Armenians who, according to a waspish comment by Jordan of Aversa (xi), were treated to the spectacle of John Komnenos trailing round the Armenian churches of Syria in tears, begging their priests to convert. Both Jews and Armenians, though, remained defiant, and Jordan and his fellow Eastern commanders firmly encouraged John to stay well away. Instead, John’s gaze turned ever further to the West.

Ever since the Battle of Savona, the Patriarch of Rome, the so called “Pope”, had been in a state of subordination to the whims of the Imperial Katepánō, an office occupied in the 1140s by one Constantine Nafpliotis, the son of the Bithynian aristocrat Nikēphoros who had been instrumental in the great revolt against Isaac II. Constantine was a young and not particularly able man who had been raised to his position by Manuel, and, following his arrival in Italy, had promptly done much to irritate Constantinople’s allies in the peninsula, to the extent that, in 1147 the peoples of Rome rose up against their pro-Imperial Pope Anacletus II, replacing him with the ominously named Gregory VIII. Worse still, Gregory immediately began to make appeals to the new German Emperor, Frederick (xii), seeking his support in shaking off the influence of the schismatic “Greeks”. Frederick, young and inexperienced, could not resist the opportunity to play the hero, and duly descended into Italy at the head of a small army. A promising start for Gregory and the Germans quickly turned sour, though. The elderly Emperor Manuel, upon hearing the disturbances, insisted on crossing to Italy personally to deal with a situation that was manifestly out of the control of Constantine Nafpliotis. Confronted with the implacable resolve of this seemingly invincible Emperor, Frederick quickly retreated, and the expedition was over as soon as it had begun. Not for centuries would a German Emperor again attempt a direct attack upon the Roman Empire (xiii).

For Manuel, this might have been the end of the matter- he was a very old man, he had seen off all of his enemies, and he could now return to his capital to live out his last days in peace. Those around him, though, were determined not to let the matter rest. The Parakoimomenos in particular, though now in his ninth decade, immediately grasped that here was an opportunity to force forward the Imperial interest- and he was joined in this by John Komnenos. Together, the two of them encouraged Manuel to demand a general synod of the Church, to ensure that such division never took place again. And so, in the spring of 1150, presided over by the half-dead Manuel Komnenos, the Eighth Ecumenical Council began- the third such gathering to be held in the town of Nicaea (xiv).

To call the gathering of bishops "ecumenical" might have been stretching things, in fairness. Together with the reinstated Pope Anacletus II, some thirty Italian bishops travelled to Nicaea, but the rest of the West was woefully under-represented. Six bishops came from Iberia, three from Hungary, and one each from France, England, and the Rus princes. The Germans, predictably, sent no bishops at all. At a conference so thoroughly dominated by the bishops of Anatolia and the Aegean, therefore, it was scarcely surprising that the westerners were cowed and bribed into submission- indeed, the one English Bishop, Fulk of Lichfield, never bothered to return to his cold and sodden see, and settled himself on sunny Samos for the next twenty years. The schism of 1054 was declared null and void, and the contentious filioque clause (xv) was stripped from the Latin version of the original Creed of Nicaea. Objections from the Eastern side, led by the Patriarch of Constantinople Luke, were brushed aside- indeed, Luke himself lost his eyes six months after the council. What emerged, after much hard work, was an almost total victory for Constantinople. The Chalcedonian Church, it seemed, was restored in perfect unity- as a powerful and indivisible “Uniate Church”.

There were objections, of course, but their scale was small, and it was quickly noted by various bishops that straightforward denial of the Third Council of Nicaea met with disaster. The blinding of Patriarch Luke, in particular, was a fearful sign. On the converse, the advantages to acquiescence were clear. Anacletus was rewarded with the restoration of Sicily to the control of Rome, and the confirmation of Rome’s status as the leading Patriarchate. Further afield, there was more tension- but for now, even the Germans held their tongues. Manuel’s government was triumphant.

The Emperor himself had thoroughly secured his greatness- even in his last years he was becoming known as Megas Basileus. Small wonder that, following his death early in 1152 his life was subjected to the attentions of dozens of biographers, of whom Philotheos of Thebes is but the most familiar to us. Small wonder, too, with such a legacy, that his successors would live under an increasingly lengthening shadow of the greatest Emperor of the House of Komnenos.
______________________________________

i. Basilios is around sixty years old when Manuel comes to power.
ii. Steppe peoples, originally from the frontiers of China, who had pushed west in the eleventh century.
iii. The southern part of what we call the Crimea.
iv. See chapter three.
v. Previously, a number of princes had competed for power.
vi. IOTL, Solomon was overthrown in the 1070s as a child king. Here, he enjoys a long and successful reign.
vii. Sardica = Sofia. Singidunum = Belgrade. Dyracchion = Durrës. Rasdaria is a fort on the Danube, located east of modern day Vidin.
viii. Probably Manuel was leading about 30-40,000 troops. A standard Imperial army in this period would probably have been made up of about 8-10,000.
ix. Linked to the withdrawal of the armies to fight in Serbia.
x. One of the last notionally independent Armenian principalities, occupying what is now the modern nation state of Armenia but what was then at the easternmost edge of the Armenian cultural sphere.
xi. Perhaps not to be trusted, as we shall see.
xii. Not Frederick Barbarossa, needless to say, he has been butterflied.
xiii. See, many things of IE 1.0 will return.
xiv. The second council of Nicaea took place in 787, under Eirene.
xv. “And the son”- in reference to where the Holy Spirit comes from. In the original Greek version of the Creed, it proceeds solely from the Father.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

To whet your appetite for the next update, here's a small treat. I wrote this to help Elfwine to write English history in the IE universe. Now his other commitments have prevented him from doing this, I thought I may as well publish it. Not very detailed, but hey. Enjoy!

1066- Edward the Confessor dies on schedule, nominating as his heir not Harold Godwinson but his teenage nephew Edgar. The regime of Edgar is shaky, though, and is badly damaged by a severe defeat suffered at the hands of Harald Hardraada, who captures York before marching south to London. In panic, Edgar’s regime turns to the Normans, who enter the country and defeat Hardraada at the Battle of Hertford. Edgar is forced to marry William’s daughter Cecilia.

1070- Cecilia gives birth to a son, Robert.

1072- English rebellion in East Anglia breaks out, with the support of Sweyn of Denmark. This is defeated, and the last remaining English barons at court are removed by William, who is now in effective control of the realm.

1073- Edgar dies in mysterious circumstances, to be succeeded by his son Robert. William remains regent for his grandson.

1077- William’s two eldest sons, Robert and Richard, take part in a major offensive against Byzantine positions in southern Italy. Both are killed early in 1078 in the disastrous raid on Thessalonica. The administration of England is left in the hands of the Queen Dowager Cecilia, while William makes war on the King of France.

1080- William sacks Paris, but is unable to consolidate his gains and is soon driven out by King Philip I.

1081- At the Treaty of Caen, King Robert of England is betrothed in marriage to Emeline, the daughter of the King of France. William the Conqueror is now linked by blood to both the French and English monarchies.

1084- William attempts to return to England, but is overwhelmed by a storm at sea. The Duchy of Normandy passes to his eldest surviving son, William Rufus, who defeats and kills his younger brother Henry in battle for the Duchy to become his father’s last surviving son.

1085- Queen Dowager Cecilia dies, and William Rufus crosses to England to assert his authority over his teenage nephew Robert, who is brought back to Normandy as an effective prisoner.

1089- In a reversal of fortune, William Rufus is himself captured and held hostage by the Duke of Anjou. Robert escapes from Normandy and returns to London. A second revolt in East Anglia is summarily crushed, but he is unable to prevent the Scots from asserting authority over much of Northumbria.

1091- Robert’s eldest son Richard is born.

1092- William Rufus is ransomed, but is forced to feudally submit to his nephew in London. Queen Emeline provides King Robert with a daughter, Agatha.

1095- King Robert’s second son, William, is born.

1097- French invasion of Normandy breaks the alliance between England and the Capetians. William Rufus, with English reinforcements, routs the French army.

1101- King Robert suffers a sharp defeat at the hands of the Scots. The Anglo-Scottish frontier is fixed along the Rivers Ribble and Aire.

1103- Battle of Preston ends in an English victory but King Robert is killed fighting. William Rufus quickly seizes the opportunity to emulate his father, and, in a reversal of the expected feudal role, becomes dominant over the young King Richard of England. A posthumous daughter, Adela, is born to the deceased king Robert.

1104- Richard is forced to marry Matilda, the only daughter of William Rufus, and a woman some ten years his senior.

1108- A civil war breaks out amongst the Normans, encouraged by the French, with Queen Dowager Emeline using her second son William as a tool against William Rufus. Matilda gives birth to King Richard’s son Robert.

1109- William Rufus defeats the forces of Queen Emeline, and she and William flee to Scotland. William Rufus himself, though, is executed by his great nephew Richard, who also forces his wife Matilda into a convent and proclaims himself Duke of Normandy.

1111- After a protracted siege, Caen falls to the French and Richard’s control is mostly restricted to the Contentin peninsula. Further erosion of the position is prevented by a skilful defence provided by Edward of Winchester, a native English commander.

1112- William is proclaimed Earl of Northumbria by the Scots, with his seat at Durham.

1117- Robert is made Duke of Normandy as heir to the throne, with the Isle of Wight added to his holdings.

1119- King Richard begins four years solid campaigning to subdue the peoples of Wales. This ends with the southern western areas annexed to England, but little more.

1124- Edward of Winchester defeats an attempted Cornish uprising and then transfers the fight to Brittany.

1126- Large parts of Brittany are forced to submit to the English crown. Edward himself, though, suffers execution, a victim of King Richard’s murderous paranoia.

1129- Robert, Duke of Normandy and heir of King Richard is imprisoned at Winchester.

1132- King Richard executes two more high-flying barons, who have been supported by his brother William from Durham. His kingdom is becoming ever more centralised upon his royal person.

1133- First recruitment of a sort of professional army by King Richard.

1139- Using this new model army, Richard raids deep into Northumbria, and sacks York and several other cities. William’s second son Henry is killed. The main prize for King Richard though is the capture of his mother, the aged Queen Emeline, who is brought back to London and decapitated.

1141- Richard engages in one final Welsh campaign, which is brutally successful, with a large part of the north coast of Wales annexed to England. His son Robert escapes from a twelve year captivity.

1142- While marching on Robert, Richard falls ill and dies at the age of fifty-one. Robert is able to quickly be crowned King of England, though it takes several years for Richard’s war machine to fully accept him.

1143- Robert II intervenes on the French side in a war with the Occitanian nobles. Though the French King is defeated, Robert is able to profit from the war, by marrying a French princess, Bertha, and regaining much of Normandy.

1145- Birth of Matilda to Queen Bertha.

1148- William of Northumbria launches another invasion of England, which is fairly successful. Birth of Henry to Queen Bertha.

1149- An attempted revolt against King Robert, who is away on the continent, is only put down with some difficulty.

 

[Saepe Fidelis]

That Other Empire

Slightly later than promised, here's my update on developments north of the Alps, where the pseudo-Emperor Henry licks his wounds....



The Diet of Hamburg called in 1090 would be like no other called in Germany. After six years of civil war, the once-deposed, now triumphant Emperor Henry summoned those magnates who, unlike his hapless rival Ekbert, were not already resident in Hamburg, in the Archbishop’s dungeons [1]. Some four hundred nobles and princes of the Church arrived by Michaelmas, knowing full well that the Diet to come would be an ordeal for all. War had left the Empire bereft of leadership; huge swathes of Germany had fallen into lawlessness as even the last vestiges of governance were stripped away during the final months of the war which saw Henry’s Franconian armies burn a swathe through rebellious Saxony before triumphing at Wolfburg. In war, as in all things, to the victor go the spoils and some men arriving on the banks of the Elbe might have felt optimistic; Frederick von Staufen was one of these men. Having sworn Swabia to Henry’s banner in 1087 he was not only one of the first to rebel against Ekbert but also one of Henry’s most consistent supporters. Then there were those like Welf V, a nineteen year-old come into his inheritance too soon after the assassination of his father at the height of the war. His father, another Welf, had supported Henry during his first reign yet had quickly turned to Ekbert’s side after the disaster of Genoa. [2] He came to the Diet having loyally supported the Emperor, but he could not have helped but felt apprehensive given his father’s act of betrayal.

The Diet opened on the Feast of Saint Michael itself [3] with a grand feast in the Archbishop’s hall. Bedecked in the pageantry of the Salian dynasty, wine and ale flowed abundantly, while the guests were served the bounty of the North Sea off of platters of silver. At the High Table itself, the Archbishop himself held the high seat while the Emperor sat to his right. The two talked much together and occasionally with those around them, the Emperor with his son and the Archbishop to Benno of Osnabruck, his erstwhile ally in Church politics. When they retired for the night, some of the guests might have felt relieved. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad after all; the Emperor was known for his bouts of fury, yes, but also his swift return to calm. Perhaps he would pursue a modest course after all. Perhaps he would make his peace with them. Other guests, who knew Henry better, knew never to second guess him, and never to underestimate his thirst for revenge.

The Diet of Hamburg lasted three weeks and began with the trial of Ekbert and his ‘rebels’ whom Henry wanted rid of. Presided over by the Emperor himself, the trials would end with the execution of two Dukes, a Margrave, nine Counts, scores of knights and finally the beheading of Ekbert himself, whose pleas for trial by combat were met with a haughty and typically Henrician response, stating that he had already had his trial by arms, and had been found lacking in the eyes of God and man. Henry’s purge of the German aristocracy was followed by a climactic meeting with the assembled nobles who survived his vengeance. Having just seen their compatriots butchered en masse on the cold winter’s morning of the 2nd October on a gallows erected in front of the Episcopal palace, the scions of the realm were herded into the Great Hall by Henry’s retainers to meet their master.

One can only imagine what they felt when they entered and saw Henry, arrayed in full battle armour, seated on a high throne, sword across his knees with his son, Conrad, seated beside him dressed in a miniature version of his father’s resplendent war harness. He announced to them that their old oaths of fealty would have to be repeated and that as Emperor he would brook no further opposition. No one dared point out to him that he was not, technically, Emperor, nor indeed had he ever been. [4] Huddled as they were beneath a-quite literal-sword of Damocles, they prostrated themselves before the Imperial duo and swore their undying allegiance. Bidding them to rise, Henry’s tone then changed. The destroying angel was now gone, or at least retracted his wings and burning sword, and he removed his helmet and gave his sword to a squire. Standing, he announced to them that the past years had proven to them all that the Empire needed to change. He asked them, the assembled gentes of the Empire, to take him once more as their sovereign, and to acclaim him once more their King. In a shout more desperate than joyful, they acceded, and Henry was once more the unquestioned sovereign of Germany.

But what did this mean? Not ten years ago, in his bitter dispute with Pope, the impertinent Gregory had dismissively addressed the self-declared Emperor as Rex Teutonicus, and in response Henry had addressed him simply as ‘Hildebrand’. Even as late as 1148, when preaching Holy War in Livonia the missionary Bishop Hartwig of Uxhale had would refer to the people of Frankfurt as ‘East Franks’, while the Annolied, the mythic history of the Germanic peoples composed in the Rhineland sometime in the early 12th century had traced the origins of the Bavarians to the Christian kingdom of Armenia, the Saxons to Trojan refugees, and the Swabians to the offspring of a lost Roman legion. If the term ‘German’ was widely understood merely as a derogative at this time, then, what can we say it meant to be ‘King of the Germans’, if anything at all? The answer is, of course, nothing; Henry never referred to himself as such and the closest he came was in the second week of the Diet when he had the nobles acclaim his son Conrad ‘Prince of the Germans’ as a means of associating him on the throne [5]. Later historians argued that this period saw the German peoples throw off the shackles of their Roman heritage, emerge from the shadows cast by Otto the Great and Charlemagne and embrace their essential Teutonic nature. This is a pure fallacy which barely merits a response, other than to say that the 11th century was long before the period where language became a source of identification for most Europeans [6]. The next century would be a testing one for the ideology of Imperial rule and it would only be in the 13th century, when contact with fearsome non-European peoples would lead to the solidification of what might be called a ‘German’ identity. The term now commonly used by historians for this period, of the ‘Holy German Empire’ only attained popular use in the early 13th century with the foundation of the Parisian Church [7]. What, then, was Henry?

Everyone knew that the last day of the Diet was going to be a spectacle. Provisions had been arriving from England, Denmark and Saxony for weeks beforehand; food, wine, ale, clothes, ornaments and all the panoply of royal festivities flowed into the city, funded by the extensive Episcopal treasury. The Feast Day of Saint Quadragesimus seemed a fitting, if obscure, end to the proceedings; no doubt it was chosen by one of Henry’s clerical advisors with this symbolism in mind. [8] On this day, Henry was crowned Emperor of the Latins and the Franks while seated on a throne of oak and gold. Invested with the Sword of the Realm by his son, the Prince of the Germans, and the orb by the Archbishop of Mainz, the crown was placed upon his head, auspiciously, by Archbishop Liemar of Hamburg-Bremen. Cloaked not in the furs or tunics of a northern king but in the purple cloak of a Roman Emperor, anointed by holy oils and having sworn before the assembled elites of the new Empire to protect and defend their rights, he was acclaimed Imperator and Dux, and then carried upon the shoulders of his supporters to receive the acclamation of the people of Hamburg, who had been suitably lubricated with free ale by their beneficent Emperor. [9]

It was undoubtedly a magnificent ceremony, and one whose connotations could not have been avoided. The new symbolic importance of the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen was unprecedented, due no doubt to the personal support Liemar had given Henry during the civil war. Furthermore, his coronation by a reliable German cleric meant the difficulties he had encountered with Gregory would never be encountered by his heirs. Secondly, there is the problem of the title. Emperor of the Latins and the Franks is an intermediary title. Not quite ‘King of the Romans’ or ‘Emperor of Rome’, yet not quite ‘German Emperor’, as it would evolve into in the mid-13th century. Only six men would bear this title, four of them Salians. However this historical period in Germany is known now by another name, one which was given to it by those sticklers for protocol, the East Romans. Sneering at the pretence of the northern warlord they had sent skulking not six years ago, Henry was not Emperor of the Latins and the Franks but rather the somewhat less cumbersome ‘Emperor in the North.’

In late 1090, Henry seemed to have put the issue of Imperial iconography and legitimacy to rest. He was the new Charlemagne, the new Clovis; he had stepped out from beneath his father’s shadow and forged a new political order with himself and, more importantly, his dynasty, at its centre. However the weeks and months following the coronation would see the real business of governance begin. Laid low by years of war, Germany lay prostrate. Having suffered the rapines of pillaging armies and foreign invaders (the Weser had seen longboats bearing the sigil of Denmark glide down its waters for the first time in centuries), Germany had also lost most of its political elite either to war or to Henry’s fury. Now came the part that so many had been looking forward to. In a Golden Bull issued on the Feast of Saint Stephen, he decreed that the allodial lands of all rebels had reverted to the Imperial fisc, and that he intended to enfeof those he saw fit in those lands he saw becoming of their service and their stature. By this decree Bavaria, Thuringia, Lower and Upper Lorraine and Saxony were all seized by Imperial agents in contravention to centuries of theoretical independence [10]. Swabia remained the allodial possession of Frederick von Staufen, who received an Imperial charter recognising him as its sovereign lord and granting him the status of Duke Palatine, with the right to mint his own coinage and set his own tariffs. It also confirmed the Duchy as the hereditary possession of the Staufen dynasty under Salic Law. The second main beneficiary of this reorganisation was Duke Vratislaus of Bohemia, who received from Henry what he had long been promised: a crown. Enthroned as King Vratislaus of Bohemia and Moravia in 1092, he swore homage and fealty to Henry, who embraced him as a brother and processed with him through the streets of Prague. Despite this closeness, Henry had stipulated that the crown was not heritable, and that on his death Bohemia’s throne would be open to an election by its gentes whose preferred candidate would then be ratified by the Emperor.

Across the rest of the Empire, Henry acted to secure the interests of his own family. Bavaria was given to his son, Conrad, as a heritable title that he would hold separately from the Imperial fisc it was expected he would inherit, ensuring that Emperor or no, he and his descendents would be preeminent nobles. Henry retained the Duchies of Saxony and Franconia for himself, although he partitioned Saxony, ceding all lands east of the Elbe to create seven Marches, each headed by a minor Saxon family which had supported Henry, the chief of whom were the Ascania clan, whose patriarch Otto had been declared Duke of Saxony by Henry in 1087 yet who now settled for the title Margrave of Meissen, the old holding of Ekbert which was now greatly augmented to the north until it touched the River Oder. Finally the Lorraine Duchies were completely overhauled, with Theodric the Valiant, another Hencrician loyalist, made the new Duke of Lorraine whose territories stretched from the North Sea along the left bank of the Rhine. As for young Welf, he was given the lesser reward of the new County of Nordgau, a sliver of land separating Bavaria, Bohemia and Saxony. A respectable prize, it was perhaps more than he had expected, and quite possibly more than his family deserved.

Henry’s dispensation of territories placated ambitious lords with the promise of new conquests in the east while rewarded stalwart supporters with rich, well-established fiefdoms to rule as their own. However, by retaining Saxony and Franconia for himself, Henry had placed himself at the centre of a web of landholdings that made his possessions the political centre of the Empire. The final terms that Henry dictated to his new tenants-in-chief was that the Ducal title was now to be granted as a licence from the Imperial Chancellery, headed in from 1092-1098 by the Archbishop of Mainz. These licenses would be conditional on the payment of tax in either cash or kind and could be revoked for a failure to abide by its terms of service. Henry and his heirs would use the renegotiations of licenses that occurred each generation to augment their own power, reward allies, or place restrictions upon rivals. The succeeding centuries would see these new five Duchies change and eventually disintegrate, yet the land distribution of the 1090s was an unprecedented moment of refounding in German history. The old Stem Duchies which had comprised the Empire were swept away and replaced by a new system in which the Imperial office and dynasty were the foremost powers in the land.

[1] Archbishop Liemar of Hamburg, Bishop of Bremen, had received Henry in 1087 when he was overthrown by the Saxon alliance headed by Ekbert of Meissen. Using his connections within the German church and with the rulers of Scandinavia, Liemar would prove instrumental in restoring the Salian dynasty, and some would argue was the real driving force behind Henry’s Imperial project.
[2] In 1084 Henry had been defeated before the walls of Genoa by a (Greek) Imperial force sent to turn him away from Northern Italy. Bereft of an army and hounded across Lombardy, he arrived back in Germany in the spring of 1085 to find a four-way civil war raging in which he was all but an after-thought.
[3] 29th September. As the traditional end of harvest season, Henry is showing an unusual sensitivity to the needs of agriculture which had been so disrupted by warfare. It is estimated that 10-15% of Germany’s population died during these years, due either to warfare, famine or disease.
[4] Henry had been crowned ‘King of the Romans’ in 1065 when he came of age but this was very different from the Imperial title, which required Papal coronation. It was this ambition which led him into conflict first with Gregory VII and eventually with the Eastern Empire.
[5] Associative kingship was widely practiced at this time, as the rules of dynastic legitimacy were shaky at best. Similar to the Eastern Roman practice of appointing co-Emperors, it would eventually pave the way to full hereditary monarchy. The practice was never taken up in post-Conquest England, where dynastic succession was assumed.
[6] The nature of group identification in this time period is an interesting and complex one. There was a traditional tripartite social system, divided between the servitores, pugnatores and oratores, which Henry himself probably assumed to be true and which Pope Gregory VII had challenged by asserting there were only two classes-the priestly caste and then the lay-people. One can still speak of a common Latin civilisation in this time period, as Latin continued to be the language of learned discourse and of governance for centuries. German as a language only became somewhat standardised in the 16th century while the earliest works that could be described as recognisably ‘English’ date from the 14th century and show strong Scandinavian influences, rather than the strong Romance influences the modern language contains.
[7] Founded in 1197 as a joint venture between England and the Empire, the Parisian Orthodox Church was meant to be a counter-balance to the Uniate Church which, it was felt, was dominated by the Eastern Empire and which did not sufficiently take into account the ‘interests’ of the northern monarchies.
[8] His feast day on the 26th October, Saint Quadragesimus is a little-known sixth century Italian saint known mainly for his raising a man from the dead. The parallel to Henry’s resurrection of the Empire might have been lost on the lay nobility, but certainly not on the ecclesiastical chroniclers.
[9] Henry’s coronation is, in many ways, the epitome of the transition in royal/imperial iconography that occurred at this time. Not only is the issue of investiture addressed, with his Imperial Crown being conferred by a German prelate, rather than by the Pope, but his acceptance of the Sword, notably from his son, has strong martial overtones as well as the obvious dynastic links. The contrast between the Purple and the acclamation by nobles and commons is an interesting one too. Theoretically, the Emperors before Henry had been elected by the seven Stem Duchies, who in turn represented the seven Germanic tribes and all their free peoples. Thus the ceremony of acclamation has strong roots in tribal German customs. The wearing of the Purple is clearly, and self-consciously, Roman, and must have been a demonstration by Henry that he hadn’t quite forgotten his Imperial roots. The lifting of the Emperor on his nobles’ shoulders is a nice synthesis of the two traditions; echoing the raising of a Roman Imperator on his soldier’s shields, it also keeps in with the Germanic tradition of acclamation by the people under arms.
[10] The allodial land of the Stem Duchies was theoretically the ancient tribal lands which were held freely by the common people of that area, held by the Duke in their name as their war leader. The amount of land held in fief in Germany before Henry’s revolution was relatively small, and mostly between nobles, rather than land owned by the crown with which he enfeoffed nobles. Indeed, the nature of elective monarchy provided a strong incentive against such practices, as there was no point in building up a system of patronage centred on the crown when the crown might not be succeeded dynastically. Henry’s reforms have been described as ‘feudalisation’ which, while a crude term with too much romanticist and ideological baggage attached to it, describes the situation in some approximation of accuracy.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Eight: Out with the Old​

"I, Basilios, servant of Emperors, place my tomb at my Palace of the Ox. I served the Empire without rest, and so, reader, reward my exertions with your prayers"​

Inscription on the tomb of the Parakoimomenos Basilios​

John II Komnenos[1] had already been the power behind his father’s throne for over a decade before he came to the throne at the age of forty eight. The contrast between Manuel and Isaac II was marked. Whereas they had been large, domineering men, John was a slight figure, who spoke in a distinctly quiet voice and whose eyes, we are told[2], would often fill with tears at a particularly moving sermon. Any traces of the roughness of the “Italians” were nowhere to be seen in the figure of the new Emperor. Instead, John seemed to resemble closely his other grandfather, Alexios Komnenos, whom had doted on him as an infant. It need not have been a bad prognosis. John II had inherited much from his illustrious relatives; military talent, theological vigour, and an unusual, penetrating intelligence. Amongst the highly cultured courtiers of Constantinople, men raised by the Parakoimomenos Basilios, the death of John’s father Manuel must have seemed like a relief.

But Basilios did not have long to savour this new reign of bookish intellectualism. Up until the death of Manuel Komnenos he had remained active and energetic, imperiously dismissing the attempts by a younger protégé of his named Andronikos of Lakonia[3] to increase his own power. Time, though, could not be held off forever, even by the most permanent feature of the Imperial court. For Basilios had now long since passed his ninetieth birthday. He was magnificently, almost imposingly ancient, a landmark of court life who seemed as ancient as the Imperial Palace itself. Basilios, by 1152, was certainly the last man in a position of power in Constantinople to remember the days of the first Isaac Komnenos- he may even have been the last subject of that Isaac’s great-great-nephew to have been born in an age before the House of Komnenos had even come to supreme power.

It could not go on. For the first months of John’s reign, the eunuch was as indispensable as ever, organising the coronation of John’s wife Theodora of Hungary[4], and his son George, and so bringing the entire family onto the Imperial throne. Rumblings of discontent from Jordan of Aversa’s men in Antioch were dealt with promptly by Basilios, whose old alliance with the Norman generalissimo continued to hold firm into the new reign. It was while drafting a letter to Jordan in November 1152 that time finally caught up with the Parakoimomenos. According to his aghast personal secretary, a rather pallid young man by the name of David Bringas[5], the great eunuch had collapsed at his desk, sending bottles of outrageously expensive ink spilling across the marble floor of Basilios’ luxuriant palace. Frantic attempts to wake the old man eventually met with success, but the Parakoimomenos was now a broken man. Bound to bed, he quickly divested himself of his great offices of state, and hobbled off to monastic confinement, joining there the half forgotten figure of Theodosios Komnenos, John’s half-brother by Manuel’s second marriage[6]. By January 1153, Basilios was dead.

With him died the balance of power that had for so long kept the House of Komnenos in power unchallenged. Almost immediately, rumours began to circulate around Constantinople that Theodosios, despite his age and obscurity, was considering making a play for power; an outrageous rumour to be sure, and one that the bastardised monk was quick to dispute, but it continued to rumble. Basilios’ replacement as John’s most senior minister, a nobleman named David Angelos[7], attempted to restore calm by pointing out that Theodosios’ mother Yvantia had been a Lombard barbarian, but as things turned out this was wounding to the Emperor in more than one way. First, doubts were immediately cast onto the legitimacy of John II, the product of a dubious marriage between cousins. And more dangerously still, they opened the door to a new possibility. If someone like Theodosios could be considered a semi-legitimate monarch but still a “barbarian”, then it meant the path could potentially be clear to an altogether more threatening opponent. At Antioch, Jordan of Aversa lurked ominously, at the head of a superbly drilled army of thousands upon thousands of men, men who were more often than not hostile to the imperial pretensions of John Komnenos[8].

What began to emerge over the fevered summer of 1154 was an elaborate conspiracy theory, developed above all by John’s powerful Empress Theodora, who was not herself immune from accusations of barbarism[9]. According to Theodora, Basilios had in his dying days involved Theodosios in a fiendish plot, involving the old monk seizing the throne at the head of the armies of Jordan of Aversa, and accepting the hand in marriage of Jordan’s beloved daughter Pulcheria. The new regime would then promptly engage in an orgy of violence against what Theodora considered the legitimate ruling elite of Constantinople. The bad old days of provincial soldiers swaggering about the capital would be restored, and any veneer the Komnenoi had kept up of civilian pretensions would be swept away for good[10].

As a piece of stage management, it worked wonders. The Empress found herself feted in the street by the ever-xenophobic Byzantines[11], and the marriage of her son George to Anastasia Angelina, (daughter of the same David Angelos who had caused much of the trouble in the first place) was a triumphant occasion that did much to silence the whispering campaign against John. Still, Jordan could not be ignored forever. The Domestikos himself sent a number of furious letters to Constantinople, demanding that the allegations against his good name be withdrawn, but these only served to inflame the situation still further[12]. John, under the influence of his wife, now started to indicate to David Angelos and others (notably Philotheos of Thebes) that Jordan’s term in military authority in the East was to be brought to an end soon.

For the army of the East, all this rumbling was deeply damaging to morale, and, sure enough, early in 1155, consequences were felt. Smbat, prince of Syunik[13], who had been placed on the throne as an infant by Manuel Komnenos twenty years earlier had survived a terrifying childhood to become a fearsome warlord, and, understandably, no friend of the Empire. An attempted invasion of Syunik by the Saljūq Sultan of Baghdad[14] in 1153 had been breezily defeated with astonishingly heavy Muslim casualties. The Sultan Maḥmūd[15], impressed by the Armenian prince, opted not to continue his war, but to assimilate young Smbat by friendship, sending the Armenians gold and men to build up their army. In 1154, Armenian raids began over the fertile Imperial territories of the upper Euphrates. Late in the year, an army caught Melitene unawares, and was able to extract huge amounts of ransom booty from the terrified city[16]. Jordan of Aversa, despite the threatening noises coming from Constantinople, immediately despatched an army of perhaps 10,000 men[17] to deal with the problem.

The Armenians, though, were tired of retreating. As the Imperial army approached their position around the town of Chozanon[18], Smbat’s men opted to set the stage for a devastating ambush. In open battle, the disciplined soldiers of the Tagmata had no real rivals, but, caught in rough terrain and unawares by a mixed force of light infantry and Turkish cavalry, they stood no chance. A chaotic retreat was called, led by Andreas Skleros[19], but still, the casualties were every bit as crippling as they had been for the Turks two years earlier. Harried all the way by horse archers, less than a fifth of Jordan’s army made it back to safety in one piece.

Jordan’s perilous position desperately required conclusive victory at Chozanon. The defeat, even if it was caused by factors well outside of his control, sent him sliding towards the edge. Andreas Skleros, that heroic commander who had brought back the remnants of the Imperial army found himself detained at Melitene en-route to Antioch by the young George Komnenos, who had sped to the East at all haste as soon as the news of the defeat had reached Constantinople[20]. Jordan, meanwhile, found himself isolated and friendless in Antioch, as his junior officers and eunuchs deserted him one by one. In the end, it was his new son-in-law[21] Constantine Nafpliotis who informed the Norman that the game was up. The Emperor John, who had advanced to Ikonion, was inclined to mercy for the “crimes” of his Domestikos. Jordan, accompanied by his fearsome Armenian wife Miriam of Kars, was stripped of his rank and titles, and retired in disgrace to a small portion of his estates in Sicily. The rest were forcibly confiscated and passed on to Pulcheria, adding through her to the already considerable portfolio of the House of Nafpliotis[22].

A new settlement was now hammered out in the East. Andreas Skleros, who had feared for his life, was instead made godfather to the newborn son of George Komnenos (in the event, the child died within a few weeks) and set up as Doux of Antioch, holding in actual fact many of the powers of the Domestikos of the East, an office entrusted by the Komnenoi to the ever present nonentity Constantine Nafpliotis[23]. A rare period of calm descended upon the East, with Smbat of Syunik being granted a generous tribute. To celebrate the moment, Constantine chose to call his daughter “Eirene”, after the peace. In time, of course, the baby girl would decisively eclipse her feeble father. The blood of the tragically wronged Jordan of Aversa flowed in her veins, and, soon enough, the Norman’s granddaughter would have her revenge on the House of Komnenos[24].

__________________________________________________

[1] Obviously not OTL’s John II Komnenos.

[2] Mostly by Jordan of Aversa.

[3] Lakonia is the region around Sparta in the Peloponnese, probably the richest area of Byzantine Greece.

[4] The daughter of King Solomon II, Theodora was born as Erzsébet (Elizabeth) and sent to Constantinople in 1131, at the age of seventeen, to marry John Komnenos as part of the peace treaty after the Serbian war discussed in the previous chapter.

[5] A name from IE 1.0. Perhaps this is just a coincidence?

[6] Manuel’s second wife and Theodosios’ mother, was a Lombard lady called Yvantia. She died in childbirth in 1100.

[7] The rise to power of the OTL House of Angelos was wrapped up with the success of Alexios Komnenos- their founder, Constantine, married Alexios’ daughter Theodora. Here, I’m assuming they still succeed, but later than IOTL.

[8] John’s provocative behaviour in the East in the early 1140s has not been forgotten by the largely Monophysite armies under Jordan’s command.

[9] She is after all, horror of horrors, the descendent of steppe nomads.

[10] A bit hypocritical, as the Komnenoi are themselves at heart “provincial soldiers” and Theodora is of course even worse, but that’s medieval politics. Anyway, the regime of John II is very “civilian”, at least at this stage.

[11] This is the only strictly legitimate use of the term “Byzantine”, for the inhabitants of Constantinople. These were the only inhabitants of the Empire who called themselves Byzantine.

[12] Jordan is unable to resist being rather... threatening. The claim that Alexios Komnenos viewed him as a son is trotted out, which doesn’t please John, as the Emperor identifies very closely with his grandfather.

[13] See Chapter Eight.

[14] After the doldrums of the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the Saljūqs have been able to consolidate Mesopotamia and Iran, and are now eyeing expansion again.

[15] A very effective ruler who’s ruled his empire for the past twenty years with all the pomp and grandeur of a Sasanian king of kings.

[16] This was quite common- rather than going to the trouble of capturing and sacking a city, invading armies would simply demand treasure from it. See, for example, the treatment of Edessa at the hands of John Kourkouas in 944.

[17] Numbers are difficult to estimate. 10,000 men is probably a good guess for a large-ish Byzantine army in the field in our period.

[18] Modern Hozat, in Turkey.

[19] Last of an illustrious line, the noble name will die with Andreas.

[20] George really has moved very, very quickly. Then again, Andreas Skleros’ progress has been burdened by his battered rump of an army.

[21] Jordan married Pulcheria to Nafpliotis as soon as he heard the accusations against his daughter, thinking that marrying her to a man favoured by the Komnenoi would protect her. By and large, the gambit works.

[22] They’re now amongst the Empire’s largest landowning families.

[23] Nafpliotis too is busy living the good life on his favourite estates in Thrace to actually command.

[24] And how!

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Ten: The Ladies’ War​

“Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and brought a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him”. ​

Genesis 21:1​

The fall of Jordan of Aversa, despite what appeared to have been an unqualified success on the part of the Emperor John, left a bitter taste in the mouth. A minor defeat suffered at the hands of an imperial army led by John’s son and notional co-Emperor George early in 1157 in the Serbian wilds[1] was enough to convince the Emperor that he was suffering from divine misfavour, and that his ill-treatment of the Norman general was to blame. The Basileus urgently needed a way to make amends to God.

Fortunately for John, who was always a lucky man, it was not to be long before God provided an ideal opportunity. In the summer of 1158, a grand cavalcade wound its way north from Constantinople, with the Emperor at its head. At Singidunum, it met with an equally large parade, this time descending south from Hungary, led by the Emperor’s brother-in-law, Andrew II, King of Hungary. The occasion would be one of mutual celebration and a reaffirmation of the alliance between the two states. What better way, John reasoned[2], to obtain God’s forgiveness for his sins than to assure peace?

The imperial cavalcade, we are told[3], was an impressive sight. With him, the Emperor brought along the hapless figure of Theodosios Komnenos, displaying his half-brother quite prominently before the Hungarian King. A clear message was intended to be shown to Andrew- here was an Emperor entirely secured on his throne, with no rivals for power whatsoever. As if to prove the point, Anastasia Angelina chose an opportune moment to deliver the Emperor a healthy grandson by the name of Michael. Still more conveniently, Theodosios died in apparently peaceful circumstances on the last day of the Imperial court’s two month stay in Singidunum. It was, for John, a near-perfect summer. Andrew departed with his alliance more secure than ever, guaranteeing his loyalty to his Imperial relatives and the Uniate Church. Peace, it seemed, was assured- and with it, the safety of both John’s soul and treasury.

It was therefore unfortunate for all parties when the King of Hungary expired early the following year[4].

Andrew was succeeded by his son, Solomon III. The new monarch, named after his gloriously long reigned grandfather, had been earnmarked by John for a marital alliance when the time came, but the unexpected nature of Andrew’s death caught the Emperor unawares, and distinctly short of close female relatives of marital age. An attempt was made to press young Solomon into marriage with one Euphemia, a granddaughter of John’s disgraced and long-dead aunt Anna Komnena[5]. The proposal was rejected. Euphemia was, after all, an obscure woman in her mid thirties, quite unworthy of the Emperor’s nephew. In any case the point was soon proved to be moot, when, continuing a spectacular run of bad luck for the Hungarian royal house, Solomon himself succumbed in the autumn of 1159 to a wasting illness which had claimed his life by early the following year. He had reigned one year and one day.

Constitutional crisis now beckoned for the Magyar kingdom. The unmarried and childless Solomon left behind him two sisters (themselves both unmarried), Piroska and Sophia. Never before had the kingdom experienced such a situation, and confusion immediately reigned in Esztergom[6]. One party, made up primarily of powerful northern Hungarian nobles, the Előkelők, supported the younger sister Sophia, a woman of famous, dazzling beauty. Within a few days of Solomon’s death, she had been married to oneGéza of Hegyhátszentjakab[7], one of the most important and powerful of the Előkelők and the two had seized together the Hungarian throne.

All of this took several weeks to reach Constantinople and the ears of the Empress Theodora. A proud and ambitious woman[8], Theodora seems to have considered the marriages of her nieces in the absence of any surviving male family members in Hungary a matter for herself. The news, then, that Sophia had gone ahead and married without her permission raised the Empress to heights of indignation. Furious letters were despatched from the Bosphorus, insisting that the marriage of the new Hungarian Queen could not be considered legitimate without the permission of the Emperor and Empress.

For John Komnenos, all of this was deeply disrupting to his own plans, which seem to have involved a campaign in the East to rid the Empire of the thorn that was Smbat of Syunik. Suddenly and unexpectedly he found the situation on the northern frontier, settled satisfactorily less than eighteen months before, unravelling dangerously. King Géza had no intention of asking the permission of the distant “Greeks” for permission to hold the throne he considered to be rightfully his, and made the point forcefully by making a pointed tour, accompanied by a large army, of Hungary’s towns on her frontier with the Empire. More dangerously still, the rogue preacher John of Florence[9], a noted opponent of the clerical compromise of the Third Council of Nicaea was welcomed with open arms into Esztergom, and enthroned as bishop of the small town of Buda. Finally, Sophia’s sister Piroska was imprisoned as a threat to the Hungarian throne.

All was now set for war; and the arrival of a particularly aggressive Hungarian embassy in Constantinople at Easter did much to stir the urban mob into violence. The Emperor found himself being pushed further and further into a conflict he did not desire but seem powerless to halt. Still, as courtiers reasoned, a successful war against the Hungarians could bring substantial profit to the Emperor. His reputation in the army was still fairly low thanks to the fall of Jordan of Aversa five years earlier, and already the first waspish tracts of the wronged general were beginning to circulate amongst the educated circles in the capital. Ultimately, it was an act of God that made up the ever-pious Emperor’s mind, when, in May, Theodora was confirmed pregnant despite being in her mid-forties[10]. The child, an unexpectedly healthy son, was born in November, by which time John’s mind was made up- clearly, God smiled upon Theodora’s plans for Hungary and had, as far as the Emperor was concerned, even provided a candidate for the Hungarian throne[11]. The new baby was named Alexander by his delighted father- a name, it was trusted, would prophesise the success of the imperial armies. Baby Alexander was thus proclaimed King of the Magyars within a few weeks of his birth, with the imprisoned princess Piroska named as his regent. War was now inevitable and, over the winter, troops were brought back from Syria to rally at Bulgarian Sardica, a fortress of great symbolic significance to Imperial/Hungarian relations[12]. Géza’s impudence would soon be fiercely punished.

The imperial armies invaded Hungary in the spring of 1161, under the joint command of the Emperor John and his son George, a dashing figure much more popular than was his father. King Géza, for his part, fought relatively valiantly, seeing off an army led by the young Arab general Joseph of Emesa at the bloody Battle of the Five Basilicas[13]. Still, the end result was not in doubt. In August, John himself captured Esztergom after a siege of just three weeks, and entered the Hungarian capital in triumph, bringing with him the recently freed Piroska, named Regent of Hungary. Queen Sophia, meanwhile, was taken prisoner, and marched back south in chains. Géza’s army, undisciplined and exhausted, fell into an ambush at the hands of George Komnenos while rushing to attempt to relieve Esztergom, with the King killed in the fighting. It had been an astonishingly successful campaign[14], marked, at the end of it all, by the return of both Emperors, father and son, to Singidunum in November. There, just three years after ties of unbreaking alliance and friendship had been signed between the Empire and the Magyars, the Queen of Hungary was brought before her aunt, Empress of the Romans, and compelled to forfeit her claims to the imperial throne. Sophia was forced by Theodora into a life of monastic confinement in the barren wastes of Galatia- she is never heard of again.

War in Hungary had been a glowing triumph for the previously embattled Basileus, who now stood as tall as his predecessors in the House of Komnenos. Theodora, stood beside her husband, could reflect that few foreign-born Empresses had ever had as much power and influence as did she- and now, according to Jordan, her heart swelled with pride, having brought together her homeland and the Empire she ruled under one Imperial family[15]. The whole Imperial family had enjoyed a spectacularly successful two years.

It would be churlish to try to mark down John’s achievement in what is now popularly known as “The Ladies’ War”- though nemesis was certainly not too far away. He had fought with bravery and considerable skill, and, in doing so, had widened the Empire’s influence still further, into realms Imperial armies had not visited since before the rise of the Arabs. His appetite for conquest was now aroused fully and, within a few short years, his dominion would grow larger still. Hindsight is a wonderful thing- for John II Komnenos and his family certainly had no idea of the monumental folly that their Hungarian war had begun. Folly that would, in time, bring the long reign of the House of Komnenos tumbling down.



________________________________

[1] Just a small ambush, nothing serious. As related in Chapter Eight, the Serbs are largely pacified now.

[2] According to the embittered Jordan of Aversa, who may well be trying to paint John as a coward here.

[3] By writers more favourable than Jordan! Much is also made of the affectionate relationship between Andrew and his long-lost sister the Empress Theodora, a heart warming detail if true.

[4] Quite unexpectedly- Andrew’s not even fifty years old.

[5] And, therefore, also a granddaughter of the rebel Basil Palaiologos. See Chapter Seven.

[6] In OTL and TTL the capital of twelfth century Hungary.

[7] A pleasingly complicated name suggested by an Hungarian friend of mine!

[8] As can probably be seen from her behaviour in the last chapter!

[9] You’ll hear the name again- John of Florence is one of the most important martyrs for what will become the Parisian Orthodox Church.

[10] Rumours ever-circulated that the child of this pregnancy, Alexander, was not actually Theodora’s.

[11] I’ve ummed and ahhed about the plausibility of this- I know no case in imperial history where an imperial son, a Porphyrogenitos at that, was considered for placement on the throne of a foreign kingdom. In the end, I’m going to defend the idea on the basis of the fortuitous timing of Alexander’s birth, and of the Empress Theodora’s close attachment to her homeland.

[12] See Chapter Eight. Sardica was one of the most important fortresses to fall to the Hungarians during the 1129 invasion.

[13] This is modern Pécs, known in medieval times as “Five Cathedrals” or Quinque Basilicae. In the IE universe, the town was abandoned around the year 1200, so the reasoning for the name of this battle is quite mysterious to historians.

[14] Perhaps rather wankily so- the Hungarian war is the furthest north Byzantine armies have been operating since the time of Maurice. Still, Byzantium IOTL was certainly capable of these lightning fast campaigns against a divided enemy- John Tzimiskes in Bulgaria provides the best analogy. In any case, readers of the first IE will know that Hungary down, but far from out.

[15] Naturally, Jordan is savage about this- “the arrogant Empress ignorantly dirtied the domains divine Roman Empire with the filthy stains of her barbarian brothers”- a statement of quite astonishing hypocrisy from a Norman.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Eleven: Sultan and Emperor​

“There came at this time a Turk who drove all before him, and brought about much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Romans. His name, Kaugios, soon brought terror into the hearts of the Christians.”​

Joseph the Naturalist[1], On the Hagarenes​

With war in Hungary now successfully concluded, it might be thought that the hitherto naturally peaceable John Komnenos would have been eager to give up his time on the battlefield and spend the rest of his reign[2] in peace at the palace. Not a bit of it. Rather, the war in Hungary had convinced the Emperor that divine favour was on his side. Accordingly, in 1165 we find him leading an invasion of Syunik, that could have come very close to success were it not for the death in battle of John’s elder son and co-Emperor George, which brought the whole campaign to a drastic halt. The wily Armenian prince Smbat had, not for the first time, had a lucky escape.

George was buried at the Church of the Holy Apostles late in the year, amidst much mourning- the Emperor’s son genuinely popular with both the army and the urban mob of Constantinople. Still, he had not died childless and his own small son Michael was soon associated on the throne alongside his grandfather[3]. Once the period of mourning was over, John left again, heading now for Cilicia, where Turkish raids were once again reaching fever pitch.

The explanation for this sudden upsurge in activity came from some way to the south of the imperial frontier. It was not only in Hungary that the year 1159 had brought dynastic problems. In Jerusalem, the Salghurid Atabeg Ibrahim Mesud had passed away, leaving a behind him a savage struggle for power between his young son Zülkarneyn and the state’s chief Wazir[4], an influential and enterprising man named Kürboğa who claimed a distant membership of the broader Salghurid clan. Kürboğa had initially done well, seizing power and fortifying several key locations, but had been forced into retreat two years later by the intervention of a Fatimid Egyptian force, which had returned Zülkarneyn to power. Undaunted, Kürboğa had headed north and stirred up trouble on the ever war-torn Christian frontier, hoping to gain there men and money to regain power. This he had succeeded in doing magnificently, holding a string of towns to ransom and exacting tribute from the ever-present Smbat of Syunik, who had hoped to use the Turks to deflect imperial attention from his own principality. As it turned out, the death of George Komnenos meant that Smbat’s money was wasted from the Armenian’s point of view- but Kürboğa would be careful to put it to good use.

With his army now battle hardened and his coffers overflowing the Turkish general returned to Jerusalem late in 1165, deposing Zülkarneyn for the second time. Once again, the playboy Salghurid prince fled to the Egyptian frontier for aid, but he was pursued by Kürboğa, unwilling to let his quarry slip from his grasp. In February 1166, a Fatimid army was destroyed by the Turks towards the eastern end of the Nile Delta, and by June, the last Fatimid Caliph had fled Cairo on a ship for Constantinople, only to be overwhelmed by a storm and killed before reaching port at Chandax[5] on Crete. Kürboğa, meanwhile, found himself more successful than in his wildest dreams. Jerusalem was his, to be sure, but even the Holy City paled in comparison with the powerhouse of the Mediterranean world which he now controlled[6].

This sudden rise of a new power in Egypt abruptly transformed the balance of power in the East. Previously the Fatimids had been relatively docile and peaceful allies of the Empire, interested mostly in fleecing their subjects and only occasionally indulging in bouts of warfare with Zülkarneyn’s Salghurid ancestors. Now, all of their vast wealth was able to exploited by a new and belligerent figure on the political scene- Kürboğa. The former Wazir now promoted his title to that of the much more imposing Sulṭān, as he felt befitted the man who had restored Egypt back to Sunni Orthodoxy from the Fatimid heretics. Alarmed at the perceived challenge to his authority,Maḥmūd of Baghdad[7] decided to send a large army under the command of one of his nephews westward, to slap down the man he saw as a mere uppity Atabeg. He had reckoned, though, without the intervention of the Atabeg of Harran, an ally of Kürboğa, who attacked the royal Saljūq army as it passed through his lands, causing the refugees to scatter westward into Roman occupied Cilicia. By the end of 1166, a general war had broken out across the Islamic world that would blaze for a generation.

The man most immediately threatened by all of this was the Ildenizid Atabeg of Damascus, who had made the mistake of supporting the deposed Zülkarneyn over Kürboğa, and indeed continued to harbour the former’s wife and infant sons. After a year of preparation, spent marshalling Egyptian resources and defeating a short-lived Christian revolt[8], Kürboğa marched north, routing a Damascene army in the Jawlān Heights[9] and settling down to besiege the great city itself. With the Saljūqs unable to response thanks to his support in Harran, the Salghurid Sultan felt he had little to fear. He had reckoned without the intervention of John II Komnenos.

For, as with Hungary in the previous decade, the Emperor (egged on by his most senior minister David Angelos[10]) had seen an opportunity in the chaos brought on by Kürboğa to remake the world around him, and to advance the cause of God’s peace. An alliance was signed with the panicky Damascenes and in 1168 the Emperor himself marched south along with Andreas Skleros and the newly promoted Strategos David Bringas[11]. The Egyptians were forced reluctantly to abandon a Damascus just days away from capitulation, in order to meet with the Christian threat as it approached. The luck of Kürboğa now seemed to abandon him, as his army was badly mauled and forced to retreat from the imperial army at the Battle of Emesa in January 1169[12].

If the Basileus had hoped for a quick and easy victory, though, he would be disappointed when Kurboga decided to call on the help of his oldest ally and that inevitable enemy of the Roman Empire Smbat of Syunik. Buoyed with Egyptian gold and encouraged by the loss of troops, Smbat took it upon himself to stir up trouble with the Armenian princes to his west who, unlike him, were caught under imperial sovereignty and lacked his freedom of action[13]. A revolt broke out just a few months after the triumph of Emesa, forcing John and his armies to move back north to quell the flames that were rapidly engulfing the eastern provinces. A savage war in the Cappadocian highlands was eventually won by the Emperor, but at a high cost- Caesarea was left a ruin, and other towns of the once prosperous province fared little better. By the time John could once more look south at the end of 1170, Damascus had fallen, and, far worse, the Egyptians had seized Laodicea[14] as a base to launch attacks on Antioch itself.

Fortune, though, never liked to smile on Kürboğa of Egypt for too long. Even as his armies began to set up camp around the walls of Antioch, a small army under the command of the dashing David Bringas had swept round behind them, and returned to southern Syria. Damascus, recently sacked by the Egyptians, was in no position to put up any resistance and Bringas entered the city peacefully, quickly making sure to force the exhausted populace to restore its fortifications[15]. The appearance of the imperial army in the nick of time spared Antioch from the sort of devastation that had befallen Cappadocia and Syria, and now, with the Saljūqs striking hard against the Atabeg of Harran and pinning his armies in place. John could finally move on to a sustained offensive. The cities of the coast surrendered one after another, and were placed under the control of another young new general called Theodore Evagoras. By the opening of 1173, the Emperor was in Palestine.

At this juncture, we come to one of the great “what ifs” of history. While besieging one particularly well-fortified town, the Emperor was hit by a piece of falling masonry, and knocked unconscious, awaking only to rant on occasion. Days passed before he fully came round, by which time Andreas Skleros, who had been contemplating abandoning the whole war to march on Constantinople as “protector” of the child Emperor Michael had captured Bethlehem. John was able to take communion none the worse for wear in Justinian’s Church of the Nativity while perhaps somewhere, in an alternate universe, Andreas Skleros proclaimed himself Emperor and the whole disaster that was the regime of Eirene never came about[16]. As it was, 1173 marked a generally successful year for John Komnenos.

Luckily for Kürboğa, whose position in Egypt was coming increasingly under threat from rival Salghurids, the Emperor was unable to operate in a vacuum. Probably even before the Emperor had suffered his blow to the head, the Bulgars had risen in a revolt more serious than any western problem the Empire had faced since the Serbian revolt at the beginning of Manuel’s reign[17]. The Domestikos tēs Dyseōs[18] Rōmanos Doukas[19]had actually been killed, and the victorious Bulgars had briefly had the nerve to besiege Constantinople itself for a week or so, causing mass panic within the capital. John was needed back in the West with all haste, and took Andreas Skleros with him. Though the Bulgarian revolt had collapsed in on itself before the Emperor had even arrived back in Europe, momentum had been lost. Kürboğa was able in 1174 to inflict several minor stings on the overstretched and demoralised armies under the temporary command of Bringas, doing much to shore up his own position back in Egypt.

John had spent 1175 in the capital, mostly confined to his bed. He had now long passed his sixtieth birthday, and it was becoming clear to many that his mental faculties were not what they had been[20]. An attempt by David Angelos to persuade John to come to terms with the Egyptians was angrily denounced by an Emperor who had once been renowned for his general quiet and bookish character. Despite the pleas of the Empress Theodora, the Basileus was once more on the march shortly after the Christmas celebrations were over[21]. This time, there would be no distraction. Antioch was reached in April, and by midsummer, John was back in Palestine, impatiently leaving behind the exhausted and dying Andreas Skleros. Kürboğa was brushed aside, and sent scurrying back to Egypt. At the sight of John’s massive army, the citizens of Jerusalem knew that serious resistance would be folly, and, on September 15th 1176, a Christian army returned to the Holy City for the first time in over five hundred years.

Celebrations exploded across Christendom, with even enemies of the Empire like the German Emperor and Smbat of Syunik sending John letters of congratulation that survive to this day[22]. John was hailed by the Bishop of Rome as the consummate autocrat, a new Constantine, “defender of the Faith”. For such a pious man, it was all heady stuff. Perhaps too much so- for John would now go one step too far.

As far as the Emperor was concerned, his triumph would never be complete until the “wretched demon”[23]Kürboğa was defeated once and for all. Barely four months after the fall of Jerusalem, the Emperor marched yet further south, at the head of the first Imperial army to set foot in the Sinai since the long-gone days of Heraclius. Ahead of him lay the squat, brooding fortress of Gaza, the last major obstacle before the fat towns of Egypt were his for the taking. John did not hesitate to immediately throw his men at Gaza, and, in doing so, he came very close to throwing away a whole decade of work.

For Kürboğa had not sat around placidly waiting for the imperial armies to come to him; rather, he had spent the months since the fall of Jerusalem in frantic preparation for a final stand. Every resource that Egypt could muster was squeezed from the country by its Sultan, in order to give the very best chance of survival. When John plunged into battle without so much as setting up a defensive command centre, it was as though all of Kürboğa’s wildest dreams had come at once. The imperial armies were, despite their enthusiasm, overstretched and exhausted by a fast march south from Jerusalem, while the Egyptians were fresh and ready to die for their Sultan. Kürboğa and his lieutenants enveloped the Christian soldiers as they attempted to enter Gaza, capturing them in a wide pincer movement as men poured out from within the city. The Battle of Gaza was a bloody massacre. John II himself was almost killed, and would have certainly been taken prisoner were it not for the heroism of an Arab Christian, the exotically named Abd al-Yasu ibn Yusuf[24]. In chaos, the survivors fled back to Jerusalem, led by their broken Emperor. Kurboga had stood his ground, and emerged triumphant from it. A march around Palestine, looting Christian holy places now followed, with the Emperor shut up in Jerusalem “like a monkey in a cage”[25]. Not for months was the Emperor able to limp back to Constantinople, and, by the time he arrived in his capital in the autumn of 1178, he was a scarcely recognisable figure. His public appearances became few and far between, with effective governance left to his younger son Alexander and his grandson Michael[26]. Though, thanks to titanic effort on the part of ibn-Yusuf, the Palestinian conquests were secured and a peace treaty with Kerbogha was patched up, the Empire had paid a heavy price. God’s vice-gerent on Earth had lost his mind to bring the land of Christ back to His people.

Within a few months, John II was dead, to the scarcely disguised relief of many in court. His life, to this day, is one of great contradictions- the instinctive pacifist who spent his reign at war, the great conqueror who died a weeping, incontinent wreck, the Christian intellectual who was forced to dedicate much time and money into shedding the blood of fellow Christians. He left his Empire at a pinnacle in terms of territory, but a nadir in terms of economic security, for the treasury had been utterly emptied by the cost of war and revolt. This, then, was the divided legacy of the Emperor John II- and it would be for a new generation to struggle to work out how to use it.
______________________________
[1] Joseph the Naturalist is an encyclopaedist, compiling his works in the early part of IE’s fourteenth century. Though he was (as the name suggests) primarily interested in animals, Joseph also found time to write two short histories, one of the “Hagarenes” (Muslims) and one of the Armenians.

[2] He’s now around fifty years old

[3] Michael’s similarly youthful uncle Alexander is raised to the Purple a few weeks later, but his name is placed behind that of Michael. John has no wish to provoke Hungarian opinion.

[4] The original Arabic root behind the English “Vizier”, a Wazir was a minister in Islamic states of the middle ages.

[5] The Byzantine name for the town now known as Heraklion.

[6] To put Egypt’s wealth into context for any pre-modern society, Ottoman records from the 16th century have it supplying something like 40% of the Empire’s budget on its own.

[7] See chapter nine.

[8] Copts still probably made up a plurality of the Egyptian population in the twelfth century.

[9] “Golan” is a Modern Hebrew word for the region. In the IE world, I suspect the Arabic would be used.

[10] Angelos recently enjoyed a promotion to a new title- Mégas logothétēs. This will perhaps be more familiar to IE longtermers in its Anglicised variant of “Grand Logothete”. From Angelos onward, the title of Grand Logothete will become more and more associated with the most senior non-eunuch courtier.

[11] Born in the 1130s, Bringas had originally been on course for a career in the capital’s administration thanks to his association with the former Parakoimomenos Basilios (see chapter nine). The rise of David Angelos curtailed this, though, and instead Bringas moved to a military career where he has flourished.

[12] Emesa is the modern Homs, in central Syria.

[13] There were Armenian royals who had been settled as far west as Cappadocia during the eleventh century- see chapter six.

[14] Modern Latakiyah, the major port city of Syria.

[15] Medieval warfare is nasty stuff!

[16] Alternate-alternate history!

[17] See chapter eight

[18] Supreme commander of the imperial armies of the Balkans.

[19] The Doukai have carved out quite a niche since we last met them at the beginning of Alexios’ reign. From their Anatolian origins they have almost entirely transferred their base of operations to the Balkans, and have supplied eleven of the sixteen Western Domestics since the Komnenoi first came to power.

[20] It seems likely John’s encounter with the falling masonry had not been entirely consequence-free, in the long term.

[21] This would have been in January, as the Byzantines focused much of their attention on Epiphany.

[22] One can easily imagine the smugness of the Constantinopolitan civil service at receiving letters of congratulation such as these.

[23] The phrase is put in John’s mouth by a fifteenth century chronicler, Basil of Ephesus.

[24] Which means, if I’ve got my Arab names correct, “servant of God, son of Joseph”.

[25] The rather derisive phrase is found on several inscriptions of Kürboğa.

[26] This is leading to a serious rivalry between the two, in the absence of clear direction as to the order of seniority from John.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Twelve: Filling the Vacuum ​

“Everyone was agreed that for the Roman Empire to be governed by a woman, instead of a man, was improper, and even if the people did not think so, it certainly seemed that they did.”

Michael Psellos, Chronographia​

The Emperor John II Komnenos died in April 1180. By May, his court was already seething with civil conflict, as various influentials jostled for position. Nominally, of course, there was no problem at all. The senior Emperor was John’s grandson Michael VIII, a man of twenty two. But Michael was a limp and ineffective figure, who, others bitterly noted, preferred to cavort with his wife Eirene of Corinth. It did not help the young Emperor that his choice of wife had displeased his influential grandmother Theodora, who refused to allow Eirene to take precedence before her as Augusta at ceremonial affairs. And Theodora was influential. Her court allies, including the Patriarch Andronikos II[1] and the newly promoted Parakoimomenos Eutychios[2] too, disliked the new Emperor, and feared for their positions. Only the elderly Grand Logothete David Angelos stood as a defender of Michael.

But who to replace him with? Theodora, in the autumn of 1180, was faced with two choices. One was her granddaughter, Michael’s sister, who (confusingly for many historians!) also bore the name Theodora. By marrying off the younger Theodora to one of the eastern generals, David Bringas or even an exotic Arab like ibn Yusuf, the Augusta could be sure of securing the support of the generals as well for toppling her grandson, whose wife further lowered herself in Theodora’s eyes by producing a daughter late that year[3].

The second option, which perhaps was more obvious, was Theodora’s own son Alexander who had, to general surprise, finally taken himself off to Esztergom shortly after his father’s death, there to be crowned King of Hungary. Despite Alexander’s impeccably Hungarian heritage, as a grandson of King Solomon II[4] the natives had not altogether been pleased with their new king, as he was perceived to have overthrown the popular Regent, Piroska[5], who retreated into a monastery on Alexander’s coronation.

In the end, it was monasticism that made up Theodora’s mind. Early in 1181, David Angelos died, stripping Michael of his most senior ally. At the same time, the young Theodora herself retreated into a monastery, hoping to escape from the attentions of numerous suitors. The only viable candidate to remove Michael was Alexander. As if to prove divine displeasure for the young Emperor, Eirene of Corinth miscarried a child in the summer of 1181. Theodora’s course was set, and Alexander began the long trip back to Constantinople.

Why Michael did not fight back more strongly has been much puzzled over, and it certainly baffled many of his contemporaries. Ultimately, it seems likely that this rather sensitive and weak young man was too distraught at the loss of a child to care any longer. Alexander arrived back in Constantinople shortly after the beginning of the New Year[6]. The coup was quick and effective. By Christmas, he had replaced the unfortunate Michael as senior Emperor, with the approval of the Patriarch and the chief ministers. Theodora could purr with satisfaction at a job well done.

The Emperor Alexander III[7]probably knew that he had been set up by his mother and he had little desire to allow this state of affairs to continue. The path to side-lining Theodora and her civilian regime lay, he knew, in securing the support of the powerful generals who led the imperial Tagmata, by marrying one of their daughters. Of these, there were plenty of candidates. David Bringas’ daughter Epiphania seemed immediately suitable, as did the ravishing young Angelina Palaiologina, daughter of the Domestic of the West Andronikos Palaiologos[8]. Ultimately, though, Alexander’s youthful eye fell upon one woman- Eirene Nafpliotissa, daughter of the Doux of Antioch Constantine Nafpliotis, and, through her formidable mother Pulcheria, granddaughter of the long-dead and disgraced general Jordan of Aversa.

It was a sensible choice. Nafpliotis was far from a capable commander, but thanks to the help of his loyal young deputy Theodore Evagoras[9] he had attained a high degree of popularity amongst the armies of the East thanks to his easy-going and generous nature, frequently presenting his men with cash bonuses from the fruits of his own massive estates in Bithynia and Thrace[10]. With Kürboğa an ever present menace in the East, it made sense for the Emperor to shore himself up in that area. But there was a problem. His mother Theodora was never one to keep out of her family’s business, especially not the marital choices of her son. Thinking to set her heir back on the straight and narrow, she imperiously demanded that the Emperor instead marry a girl of the Hungarian nobility, to shore up his status as King of Hungary.

When news of this reached Syria early in 1182, Nafpliotis was predictably furious at the snub, and, after a short consultation, decided to march on Constantinople to impose his own daughter as Alexander’s consort. To oppose him, Theodora gathered together a motley army of Hungarian and Bulgarians, plus regular troops under the command of John Palaiologos, son of the Domestikos tēs Dyseōs Andronikos and brother of the Angelina who was Theodora’s favoured contender for Empress. Alexander, as was characteristic, sat quietly, watching and waiting. When his co-Emperor Michael VIII voiced support for Nafpliotis and his allies, he was quickly expelled from Constantinople by Theodora, and sent scurrying for sanctuary on the island of Mytilene[11].

The cold winter of 1182 was one of shadow punching. The western army gathered on the north side of the Marmara, but declined to cross, for Abydos[12] had been seized by the Easterners. The Eastern army, for its part, enjoyed a relaxing time, and Nafpliotis himself was greeted as a returning hero by the peoples of Bithynia. There was a widespread expectation in both camps that the decisive battle would be fought in the warmer weather of the spring, but in fact it would never come at all.


The Palaiologoi had been summoned to Constantinople to celebrate Christmas with the imperial family, leaving their army effectively leaderless. In their absence, scuffles had soon broken out between the Hungarian contingent and the main Tagmata, centred on the teachings of the priest John of Florence, who had preached opposition to what he considered to be the heretical compromises of the Eighth Ecumenical Council[13]. John was popular in Hungary, where he was closely linked to ideas of Magyar resistance to Roman overlordship. With Alexander, technically an half-Hungarian himself, treating his kingdom as a mere province of the Empire, John’s popularity had soared, despite (or perhaps because of) his death at the hands of Alexander’s loyalists early in 1181 during his stay in Esztergom. Soon, the entire Western army was falling apart, and the hasty return of John Palaiologos did nothing to stop it. In April 1183, the entire Hungarian contingent of around three thousand men[14] upped and left the Western army, under the command of the dashing young baron Ladislaus of Pozsony[15].

Ladislaus now began the opening salvos of a struggle that would dominate European history until at least the close of the Great War in the eighteenth century. Moving north-west through Thrace and into Bulgaria, he and his men, destined to be known forevermore to history as the “Marching Martyrs” seized and occupied Ochrida, the former capital of Bulgaria that Basil II had finally conquered generations previously. There, they enthroned one John of Priene, an originally Armenian[16] commander who had taken part in the Bulgar revolt of a decade previously, as Caesar (“Tsar”) of the Romans and the Bulgars, chiefly due to John’s military expertise and opposition to Third Nicaea[17]. With the provinces of the northern part of the Haemic peninsula[18] now increasingly descending into anarchy, Ladislaus moved further north. At Singidunum, the Marching Martyrs were ambushed and badly mauled by an imperial commander, gaining the “Martyr” part of their title in the process, but a hard core around Ladislaus remained intact. By the end of the year, they had returned in triumph to Esztergom, where the former Regent Piroska was removed from her monastery and installed as Queen, adopting Ladislaus as her son.

Unsurprisingly, all of this came as an utter humiliation for both the Empress Theodora and the Palaiologoi. It did, however, have the impact of pushing the Emperor Alexander to make up his mind. At the same time as his statues and icons were being toppled and burned in Hungary, the Basileus was marrying Eirene Nafpliotissa, and recalling his nephew Michael from Mytilene, to join him as a favoured, albeit junior, monarch. In the conflict between the great families, the Palaiologoi had definitively lost this round, and it was only Alexander’s naturally peaceable nature that ensured the family kept their eyes, even if they were forced to retire to Attica. A court reshuffle now took place, with the Doukai, long enemies of Bulgar revolutionaries, returning to a position of power more prominent than at any time since the death of Michael Psellos a century earlier[19], with family members holding both the offices of Domestic of the West and Supreme Admiral, Drungarios[20]. Even the Doukai, though, were now thoroughly put in the shade by Constantine Nafpliotis, who now stood as undeniably the most powerful man in the Empire behind Alexander himself. Constantine had no sons of his own, but his Empress-daughter more than made up for this. In any case, the Nafpliotis line was more than continued by Constantine’s hitherto retiring brother Leo, who had spawned no less than five sons, all of whom were awarded titles and commands by the new regime.

For the citizenry of Constantinople, all this investiture made for a spectacular 1184, rounded off by the arrival of a healthy imperial princess, Theophano[21], to Eirene and Alexander at the end of the year. Outside the gilded world of the capital, though, things were rapidly falling apart. The events of 1182-83 had stripped the already overextended frontiers of troops, so that by the beginning of 1185, just five years after the death of John II, his imperial achievement was rapidly coming to naught. In the East, David Bringas, badly supplied and with a small army, had suffered a punishing defeat at the hands ofKürboğa, and had been immediately been exiled for this failure by Nafpliotis, eager to cut down a rival Eastern commander. In the West, Tsar Ivan, as the Bulgars knew him, had spent a leisurely year and a half picking off tiny imperial garrisons one by one, while the main Tagmatic armies loitered around Thrace- Eirene was insufficiently trusting of the Western armies to risk letting them win a politically important victory over the rebels.

The Empire as 1185 began, then, was one seized up by gridlock, as the fundamental contradictions of John Komnenos’ imperial policy came home. John had pushed out the frontiers and sponsored a clutch of ambitious new generals, but five years on, this had led to a situation where there were simply too many powerful individuals (for whom the term Dynatoi is apt[22]) snatching after power in Constantinople, and too many outside foes aiming to improve their own situation. The defeat of one outsider would lead to the enhancement of whichever Dynatos was responsible for victory, while the removal of the Dynatoi entirely would only boost an outsider, whether it be Ladislaus, Ivan, Smbat or Kürboğa. While John had lived, he could act as the one figure that comfortably stood above all others, but now a multitude of individually less powerful individuals had replaced him. The revolt of Constantine Nafpliotis only made things worse, as it proved to the Dynatoi that a revolt was indeed an eminently workable path to advance their interests.

Eirene Nafpliotissa was now secure in power, and by early in 1185, it was clear to many that whatever niceties were promoted in court it was she who dominated both of the rival Emperors. From herein, then, the successes and failures of the better part of the next thirty years would belong to the regime of one of the most important figures in Rhomanian history.


[1] We last met Andronikos as an ambitious young man in the early 1150s, in Chapter Nine.

[2] Eutychios served in John’s campaigns in the East, and was promoted to the office of head of the imperial bedchamber in February 1180, shortly before the Emperor’s death. He is, of course, a eunuch.

[3] There is some evidence that giving birth to sons could see Empresses promoted in the court hierarchy, whereas daughters would not do the trick.

[4] Reigned 1126-1136. See Chapter Eight.

[5] See Chapter Ten. Piroska is Alexander’s cousin.

[6] Which, of course, took place on September 1st. See Chapter One.

[7] Alexander I would be Alexander Severus (222-235), and Alexander II the Macedonian Emperor (912-913).

[8] Andronikos is the nephew of the Basil Palaiologos who launched an abortive uprising against Isaac II in 1117. His own father, Basil’s brother John, then spent a decade in exile, finally returning to Manuel’s court in 1126, a grizzled and tired man. Only then did John finally produce his heir, Andronikos. Nowadays, both Andronikos and his own son, another John, are senior figures in the western military establishment.

[9] We met Theodore in the last chapter, when he had been placed by John in command of the port cities of the Levant.

[10] The family have long held large estates in the region- see Chapter Eight.

[11] Lesbos.

[12] The most important town on the Asian side of the Hellespont.

[13] See Chapters Eight and Ten.

[14] Hungarian and Parisian Orthodox sources put the number much lower, but this is improbable given their success.

[15] Pozsony is OTL Bratislava.

[16] Priene, in western Anatolia, is reported to have had a large Armenian population in the tenth century, which I’m assuming has survived here.

[17] That is, the Eighth Ecumenical Council, the third such gathering to take place at Nicaea.

[18] “Balkans” is a Turkish word. Apologies for accidentally using this anachronism in the past, I’ll try to be consistent with the use of “Haemic” in future.

[19] See Chapter Three

[20] The evolution of the office of Drungarios into a purely ceremonial one begins now, though there’ll be active Drungarioi into the sixteenth century.

[21] The decision not to call the baby “Theodora” is interpreted in contemporary sources as a deliberate snub to Alexander’s mother.

[22] The Dynatoi had been landowners under the Macedonian dynasty, crushed by Basil II. The Dynatoi of the late twelfth century are a mixture of their descendants and ambitious new men

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Bueno! When I find the time to digest your mountainous volumes of text, I am rewarded with an entertaining and interesting read. Props! I hope we can see Eirene's reign be... Satisfactory. I'd hate to see the hard work put in place John ruined by some silly woman .

Nice map by the way.

Thanks!

Here's the completed edition. Quiz away, folks!

 

[kasumigenx]

My attempt to make a map of Isaac's Empire 2.0

I did not depict the Minor Roman Vassals, sorry.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

Chapter Thirteen: Eirene Naupliotissa

“…A woman who was undoubtedly a fiend in human form”

Constantine X Palaiologos, Roman History​

On April 16th, 1212, Constantinople fell to an invading army. The conqueror, a brusque young barbarian whose grasp of Romaic[1] was distinctly shaky and who had never set foot in the city before, was quick to march to the palace, whereupon he ordered the immediate execution of the Basileus of the Roman Empire. That ruler, crying piteously for help, had ruled Constantinople with an iron fist for the better part of thirty years, and ranked as one of the most powerful Emperors in history. But this Emperor was not a man. Eirene Nafpliotissa, despite ruling in a thoroughly masculine manner, had risen to power on account of her beauty, had deceived many who had expected merely womanly weakness, and had generally been a ferocious monarch. Now, though, it was all over. With the Empire collapsing in all directions, and Constantinople itself in the hands of a barbarian army, Eirene’s reign had ended in disaster. She was executed swiftly, and her remains, far from being buried in some great mausoleum, were carried far out to sea, and then cast away by an exorcist. It was, all in all, perhaps the most shocking end to a reign that the Roman Empire had yet seen. How on Earth had things come to this pass?

Eirene had been put on the throne by the armed interventions of the Army of the East, partly out of respect for her father Constantine Nafpliotis, Doux of Antioch, but largely due to the sacred memory of her grandfather Jordan of Aversa, a great Eastern general deposed by a jealous John II thirty years previously[2]. Those Eastern armies had made her, but just eighteen months after her accession as Empress in the spring of 1184, she would almost be brought down by them too.

The cause of the trouble was, unsurprisingly given the inheritance of John II, the powerful Sultan of Egypt, Kürboğa. For seven years, the Salghurids[3] had been relatively quiet thanks to a peace treaty signed in the autumn of 1178[4] and an attempt by Kürboğa to take over the lucrative pilgrimage roots to the Hejaz. But the removal of the Eastern armies in the spring of 1182, and the fact that they had still not returned under any sort of unified command three years later[5] was soon proving to be an impossible temptation for the Sultan, especially following the completion of his personal campaign in the Hejaz in autumn 1184, when he had made pilgrimage to the holy places. With Mecca and Medina subdued, it was perhaps inevitable that Kürboğa should turn his attention to the third Muslim holy site- Jerusalem. At about this time, news had reached him that the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan was more than just another usurper, and was becoming a serious thorn in the side of Constantinople. With this in mind, the Sultan struck.

Theoretically, the defences of Palestine should have been under the command of Constantine Nafpliotis, but in his absence, confusion reigned, with David Bringas, Theodore Evagoras and ibn Yusuf all having the support of various regiments. The results were predictable. David Bringas was quickly brought to defeat, while his peers watched and waited. They then eagerly moved in and arrested the general once orders arrived from Constantinople[6], clarifying that Evagoras should take command. Meanwhile, Kürboğa had surrounded Jerusalem, and arranged for the city’s peaceful surrender. Restored Roman rule over the city had failed to last even nine years[7].

Back in Constantinople, the news of the fall of Jerusalem had brought about another round of plotting, centred on the figure of the Empress Theodora. Unsurprisingly she attempted to scapegoat her new in-law Constantine Nafpliotis, who had spent the whole time engaged in the construction of a vast new pleasure palace for himself outside the city walls on the Golden Horn. Public unrest quickly began to build, for the mob of Constantinople had little sympathy with the dynasts of the East, and rioting broke out, protesting against the side-lining of John’s widow[8].

The situation quickly turned very nasty for both Eirene and her husband Alexander III, and it must surely have been tempting to them to have followed Michael VIII, who once against beat a hasty retreat to Mytilene[9]. Fortunately for Eirene, the return of ibn-Yusuf to Constantinople, leading an army of perhaps three thousand men, was enough to turn the tide. Mercilessly, the Arab commander’s Armenians mowed down the rioters of the capital until (we are told) the streets flowed with gore. Eirene was safe, and duly delivered a second healthy daughter at the beginning of 1186, who took her mother’s name.

In the East, though, things were going from bad to worse. Theodore Evagoras had managed to win a couple of small tactical victories over Kürboğa, slowing the Sultan’s advance, but at about the same time Eirene was going into labour, he had suffered a major defection of troops, when a third of his army went over to Kürboğa[10]. In the circumstances, Evagoras could do little but limp back north to Antioch, and leave Syria to the Muslims. Damascus and Heliopolis[11] duly fell soon afterward[12].

The situation on the Eastern front was given a brief pause in 1187, when Kürboğa fell seriously ill and felt it prudent to remain hunkered in Jerusalem. Evagoras was able briefly to launch a desultory campaign against Smbat of Syunik, pushing back the Armenian from the upper Euphrates, but it is plain that the general was engaged in little more than a desperate holding operation. What Evagoras badly needed was serious and sustained support from Constantinople, but, given everything that had gone on there, events on the East must have been the very last thing on the minds of the Empire’s great and good.

Since the riots of 1185, Theodora had largely been confined to quarters in a particularly remote and indeed partly derelict part of the Palace[13]. Early in 1187, following the birth of her son Isaac and perhaps emboldened by a seeming end of bad news from the East, Eirene decided that the time had come to put her mother-in-law permanently out of the picture. Shortly after the infant Isaac had been crowned as co-Emperor with his father, Eirene struck.

What ensued was as violent an act of bloodletting as anyone in Constantinople could remember. First Theodora herself was seized by soldiers loyal to Eirene, apparently while at prayer. The old woman died a dignified death, taking a sword across the throat in full view of her wailing servant girls. In death, as in life, Theodora had been careful to guard her pride. But from what should have been a neat act of violence, savagery quickly sprung.

With the news of Theodora’s execution, the mob burst into violence once more, and this time, they did something serious about it. Theodora the Younger, sister of Michael VIII, was dragged out of her monastery and proclaimed Empress by the Patriarch Andronikos II himself[14], who went as far as to suggest Eirene was a demon in human form[15]. A civil war now broke out within Constantinople itself. Compressed and compacted, the loss of life was horrible.

The first casualty was the Emperor Michael VIII himself, sent out at the head of the imperial bodyguard to attempt to persuade his sister to return to her monastery and abandon her claim to the throne. Theodora the Younger may have personally liked nothing better, but Michael saw himself dragged from his horse, blinded, and beheaded for his troubles by the defecting bodyguard, with his mangled body being hurled over the palace walls[16] with a fistful of arrows shoved violently into the rectum. Momentum now seemed to be on the side of Theodora, who sent out a message to the recently crowned king Ladislaus of Hungary, with a proposal of marriage[17]. It would all end badly, though, with the timely arrival of another of Eirene’s military saviours. Alexios Doukas, fresh from saving Adrianople from the Bulgarians, swept into Constantinople in early June, capturing Theodora the Younger as she attempted to flee. Taken prisoner along with the Patriarch, the pair were forced by the sadistic general into a blasphemous marriage ceremony in the grounds of Constantine Nafpliotis’ obscene pleasure palace, before they were blinded and sent back into the City for their execution.

A few loose ends now remained to be tied up. With their father dead, Eirene was quick to act against Michael Komnenos’ two young sons- the boys were confined to the palace and are never heard of again. Slightly more mercy was shown to their sister, who was placed in the care of a remote monastery in the bleak and faraway mountains of coastal Pontus[18]. As for her sister in law and namesake, Eirene of Corinth, the woman is never heard of again. We may hope that she went into exile with her daughter, but the overwhelming likelihood is that after 1187 there was only room for one Eirene in the imperial family, and the Corinthian met her maker. Several more distant figures were killed off too, including Alexander’s aunt Maria, the elder sister of John II. By the middle of the summer, the flies were well fattened on the blood of the House of Komnenos.

Writing three generations later, it is hardly surprising that the Emperor Constantine X saw the year 1187 as marking the end of over a century of Komnenid hegemony. For after that date, though the family would remain the same, it was clear to all that power certainly did not reside in the hands of the feeble Alexander III Komnenos, or with the infant Isaac. In the long dance to rule John II’s Empire, Eirene Nafpliotissa had finally emerged triumphant.
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[1] The term used ITTL for the language we call Greek.

[2] See Chapter Nine.

[3] The Salghurids are the originally Turkish dynasty of Kürboğa, who had controlled Jerusalem for a better part of a century prior to John II’s conquest of Palestine.

[4] See Chapter Eleven

[5] The majority of the actual men have returned to their stations in Cilicia and on the Upper Euphrates, but their commanding officers remain close to the regime around the Sea of Marmara, awaiting further spoils.

[6] See Chapter Twelve

[7] John II captured Jerusalem on September 15th 1176. Kürboğa enters the city on September 11th 1185.

[8] I’m echoing here the OTL riots of the eleventh century in favour of Theodora and Zoe, daughters of Constantine VIII. The figure of the much loved “Empress Mother” seems to have had a lot of traction amongst the Byzantines.

[9] This could be simply cowardice on Michael’s part, but on the other hand, he would have a definite interest in wanting to remain well above the fray. He is, after all, the primary claimant to the throne behind his uncle.

[10] The Sultan had promised the battle-weary men land on the Nile, and they are duly settled there.

[11] Baalbek.

[12] By the end of 1186, imperial control is largely back where it was before John II’s great campaigns, although a few strongholds continue to hold out on the Lebanese coast.

[13] The Imperial Palace of Constantinople seems to have been made up of numerous sections, constantly coming into and out of use. By the end of the twelfth century, there will be very little, if any of the palace used by Justinian and Theodora still standing.

[14] Andronikos II was always an ally of the Empress Mother.

[15] This turn of phraseology from Andronikos, blurted out in a rage, will have serious long term implications for the Church.

[16] High walls had been erected around the imperial palace by Nikēphoros II in the 960s.

[17] Piroska reigned as Queen of Hungary from January 4th 1184 until February 18th 1187. Not having any children of her own, she is succeeded by her adopted son Ladislaus.

[18] Pontus is the region of north eastern Anatolia. In Byzantine times the chief cities of this area were at Kerasous and Trebizond.

 

[Basileus Giorgios]

How exactly was France divided last time?

Implausibly.

I've just got madly obsessed with the A Song of Ice and Fire books this past week, and so I've done a brief summary of the Imperial Court in 1187 in the style of those' books summaries of their own courts. So far it's just the two ruling families of Komnenos and Nafpliotis, but I'm considering adding various other figures too, if people seem to find this interesting!