77 Chapter 2: Fall of an Empire

           Disturbing news has emerged from Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople and is now constantly at the forefront of our mind: namely that the race of the Persians, a foreign people and a people rejected by God . . . has invaded the lands of the Christians [and has] depopulated them by slaughter and plunder and arson.

-Robert of Rheims

            In these regions the fortunes of the Roman Empire had sunk to their lowest ebb. For the armies of the East were dispersed in all directions, because the Turks had over-spread, and gained command of nearly all the countries between the [Black Sea] and the Hellespont, and the Aegean and Syrian Seas, and the various bays, especially those which wash Pamphylia, Cilicia, and empty themselves into the Egyptian Sea.

            -Anna Komnenos, the Alexiad [first quote read by La Fayette, We are Here!]

            If the theological origins of The First Crusade came from France, the political origins came from the Eastern Roman Empire. Modern Western historians often write about the holy war as if it were its own operation, beginning in 1096 when Westerners sporting a cross on their clothing first assaulted Turks in Anatolia and ending with the Battle of Ascalon in 1099. Contemporary Greeks likely did not perceive the arrival of the Latins as a new war. Instead, they saw it as a continuation of a long-standing conflict for the fate of the empire. To them, the French and their allies came as intruders in the prolonged fight for power in Western Asia. This new phase in an old conflict was born of a desperate gamble by Emperor Alexios I to save Byzantium from collapse at the hands of the Turks and his own life from the intrigues of high-ranking court officials who plotted his murder.

The roots of the Eastern Crisis go back to the early 11^th century. Emperor Basil II’s death in 1025 brought about the end of Byzantium’s golden age. Succession crises and courtly intriguing weakened central authority. Rebellions from subordinate peoples and unruly vassals, often Norman mercenaries, strained imperial resources. Worst of all was the new threat from the east. By the 1040s Turks under the rule of the Seljuk dynasty regularly raided into Anatolia. Like the Huns, the Turks were a nomadic people from the Central Asian steppe. The Seljuks became a particularly powerful group who took advantage of the disintegrating Caliphate of Baghdad. As Sunni Muslims, the Seljuks posed as liberators who defended their fellows from the Shi’a in Persia and Egypt. In 1064 Sultan Alp Arslan conquered much of eastern Anatolia, incorporating it into the ever-expanding Seljuk Empire.

In 1068 emperor Romanos Diogenes IV sought to reverse Byzantium’s losses and crush the Turks before they could establish themselves in the region. The campaign began well, then ended in disaster as the Turks routed the Byzantine forces and captured their general. Afterwards Alp Arslan sent envoys offering peace. The sultan was wise enough to recognize that no rulers welcome the success of their neighbors; the Shi’a Egyptian Fatimids resented Sunni Turkish expansion into the region. Arslan believed that Egypt was his greatest threat and sought to end hostilities with the Byzantines so he could focus on his southern border.

Diogenes IV accepted the offer as he rebuilt the imperial army. In 1071 he renewed the peace, though this was a sham. Diogenes IV believed that with peace established between Byzantium and the Seljuk Turks Arslan would launch a campaign into Egypt. This, Diogenes IV reasoned, would allow him to march into eastern Anatolia and retake the region. The Byzantine leader was so confident that as his army progressed through the territory he split his forces in two, personally leading the Greek host to Manzikert while mercenary Franks, Normans, Pechenegs and others conquered elsewhere.

However, Arslan was not marching on Egypt; he was even then leading his own army towards Diogenes IV. Had the Byzantine host remained together they would have dwarfed the Turks; divided they were outnumbered. When the Emperor learned of the Turkish army’s presence he decided to follow up his first stupid decision with another: he ordered his men to prepare for battle. The Turkish mounted archers decimated the slow-moving Byzantine infantry. Without the ability to even engage their foe, the Byzantine force collapsed. Many fled the field; those left behind were killed or captured. Diogenes IV himself was captured and became the first Roman emperor in seven centuries to be taken prisoner by a foreign enemy.

The Battle of Manzikert was one of the greatest disasters in Byzantine history. It opened Anatolia to invasion from the Turks, who quickly conquered significant territory in the peninsula. Christians, among them the Patriarch of Antioch, fled the violence to take refuge in Constantinople. Anna Komnenos claims in the Alexiad that many massacres followed as Greeks fled into the wilderness and caves to escape the sudden fury of the Turks.

Aside from opening up the east, defeat at the Battle of Manzikert led to civil strife in Constantinople as powerful families vied for the purple. More damaging even than the loss of so many men was the empire’s loss of prestige in the eyes of its enemies who now viewed it as ripe for invasion. That year the Norman ruler of southern Italy, Robert Guiscard, took Bari, the Byzantine’s largest and last city on the Italian peninsula. The Norman mercenary Roussel de Bailleul formed his own short-lived breakaway state in eastern Anatolia that defeated entire Byzantine armies. Minority groups in the Balkans revolted against the Greeks as they sought to form their own states. Fielding armies was expensive and Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates debased the coinage, leading to runaway inflation. Economic crisis compounded with the military crisis, bringing about a swift end to his reign.

By 1081 Byzantium was teetering on the edge of ruin. Recognizing their country’s peril, high-ranking nobles led a coup against Nikephoros III and placed Alexios I Komnenos in power. Alexois I had already proven himself as a great military commander by defeating Roussel de Bailleul after so many others had failed. Yet, no sooner had he ascended to the purple did he have to face a whole new crisis. That year Robert Guiscard led the Normans of Italy in an invasion of Greece. Guiscard’s wife had already secured the succession of her son, Roger Borsa, as leader of southern Italy, leaving nothing for Bohemond, Guiscard’s son from a prior marriage. With Byzantium collapsing, Guiscard believed that he could seize the empire for his eldest progeny; or at least part of it. The war was hard-fought. Alexios I lost multiple battles and large cities fell to the Normans. Yet, Alexios I learned from his mistakes and ultimately triumphed over the Normans.

            Alexios I then turned his attention to the east. Central and Eastern Anatolia was lost, yet the Eastern Roman Empire retained most of the coastline and other valuable territories. The emperor believed that he could stabilize the east due to infighting among the Turks. Four years prior, in 1077, the Seljuk military leader Suleiman Shah I ibn Qutalmish founded an independent state in central Anatolia, known as the Sultanate of Rûm. This audacious move put him at odds with the Seljuk Empire, which ruled from the Himalayas in the east to Jerusalem in the west. It was in this political context that Alexios I and Suleiman developed an understanding. Suleiman made allies with the emperor to defend his western flank, allowing him to commit his forces to the east to ward off invasion from the Seljuks. Meanwhile, Alexios I hired Suleiman to retake towns for Byzantium. Employing the Turks meant Alexios I could save precious Byzantine soldiers for use elsewhere. It also meant that he would not have to rely on rival commanders who might use the fame that came from conquest to justify rebellion against the emperor. In exchange for Suleiman’s campaigning on the empire’s behalf, Alexios I ceded Nicaea to him, which became the sultan’s capital.

            The Eastern Roman Emperor and the Sultan of Rûm quickly became close partners against the greater threats from the east. Suleiman acted as a virtual client of the Byzantines and led his Turks in regular wars to retake territory for them, most famously during the Antioch crisis. In 1084 the Greek general in charge of Antioch, a man named Philaretos Braakhamios, lost faith in the Eastern Roman Empire and agreed to become a vassal of the caliph in Baghdad. Given that the caliph was by that point a figurehead under the control of the Seljuk Turks, the Greek general was effectively defecting to his home country’s greatest enemy. Moreover, Philaretos promised to take the valuable cities of Antioch, Edessa and Melitene with him. Alexios I managed to place loyalists in power in Edessa, Melitene and notable townships, though Philaretos still controlled the great fortress-city of Antioch.

            Alexios I was in a bind; Antioch was a wealthy, populous, strategically-important city and the center of a patriarchate, the highest-ranking church division in Eastern Orthodoxy. However, if Alexios I entrusted its recapture to a Byzantine general he risked giving too much martial glory to a potential rival. Instead, the emperor turned to Suleiman. In 1085 the Turkish sultan marched on the city, taking secret routes shown to him by Byzantine guides. When they arrived the people of Antioch recognized that they were sent by the emperor. The citizens of Antioch rebelled against their upstart general and opened the gates to the Turks, who entered and peacefully reestablished order.

            The reconquest of Antioch provides us with a window into the complex workings of the Middle East at the time. More than anything this event demonstrates the importance of political realities over religious and cultural differences. Philaretos was a Greek-speaking, Eastern Orthodox Byzantine. Yet, he offered to convert to Sunni Islam and join with the Seljuk Empire because he believed that the Turks offered better protection than the Byzantines. Meanwhile, Suleiman and the Turks of the breakaway Sultanate of Rûm sold their services to the Greek Christians. When they arrived in Antioch the mostly Greek-speaking, Eastern Orthodox populace opened their gates to the Turkish Muslims because they understood that they were acting on behalf of the empire.

Religion and spirituality were important to the peoples of the Middle East. Yet, by the 11^th century Christians, Jews, Sunni and Shi’a Muslims had lived alongside each other for hundreds of years. Tensions existed between faiths, but outright violence was limited. Rulers had more to gain by offering tolerance to minority religious groups under their power than by trying to violently suppress them. Under these circumstances, minorities of believers existed in each polity; Christians and Shi’a lived within the Seljuk Empire and the Sultanate of Rûm, Christians and Sunni resided in Fatimid Egypt and Jews lived throughout lands controlled by the other Abrahamic faiths. The fact that Alexios I expected the people of Antioch to open their gates to Suleiman’s Turks demonstrates that religion was but one factor in the political game that dominated western Asia.

            After Suleiman took Antioch he moved on the Syrian city of Aleppo, which he claimed he was seizing for the Byzantines. The maneuver was a disastrous overreach. Tutush I, ruler of Syria, led an army to meet Suleiman’s and crushed it. The sultan either committed suicide when he realized the battle was lost or he was killed by an arrow that struck him in the face. Suleiman’s son, Kilij Arslan I, was taken prisoner and sent to Baghdad. Tutush I then seized Antioch. An upstart named Abu’l-Kasim seized control of the Sultanate of Rûm and conquered territory across Asia Minor. The Asian half of the Byzantine Empire was under the sword and quickly falling to Turkish forces.

            Even this dramatic reversal of fortune did not signal the end of the Eastern Roman Empire in Anatolia. The rules of the political game remained the same even though pieces had been exchanged. While Alexios I lost his ally in Rûm he gained another: the leader of the Seljuk Turks. As historian Peter Frankopen writes, “The rise in power of local warlords such as Abu’l-Kasim and Tutush threatened to destabilise the Turkish world as much as the Byzantine…Around the middle of 1086, therefore, Malik-Shah [the Sultan of Baghdad] sent envoys to Alexios bearing a letter.” The sultan wrote that the renegade Turks were a mutual threat. The Seljuk leader then offered to expel Abu’l-Kasim and recover all coastal territories the Eastern Romans had lost in exchange for a marriage alliance between the emperor’s daughter and his eldest son. To his Greek advisors, Alexios I laughed at the idea of sending his daughter to Baghdad to wed a Muslim prince; yet he spoke to the Turkish emissaries as if this was a realistic possibility. The prospect of an imperial wedding and generous donations from the coffers in Constantinople paid for Seljuk military incursions into Asia Minor. Malik-Shah repulsed the upstart Turks and restored territory to the empire, save Antioch, which he took for himself. The city’s inhabitants willfully surrendered to the sultan for the promise of stability and because he had a reputation as a tolerant ruler.

By 1088 the eastern frontier was stable. Alexios I and Malik-Shah developed their own understanding: the Byzantines would have dominion over Asia Minor while the Seljuks ruled everything further east. The two were on such good terms that the great sultan raised a toast to the emperor every time his name was mentioned.

            The world order that the Byzantine Emperor and Seljuk Sultan hoped to establish fell apart almost immediately after it came into being. In 1090 the Pechenegs revolted in the Balkans and moved on Thrace. Alexios I responded with a campaign of extermination, which the Byzantines remembered in a popular song that went, “All because of one day the [Pechenegs] never saw the month of May.” The emperor acted brutally because he wanted to deal with the western problem as quickly as possible so he could return to the east. Yet, even his rapid suppression of the Pechenegs took too long. Abu’l-Kasim led an army to the important northwestern city of Nicomedia across the bay from Constantinople. Alexios I sent whatever forces he could to aid the city. He even hired Robert, Count of Flanders, who had been returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with 500 knights. Despite all this the city fell to the Turks.

            In rapid succession a number of Turkish military leaders took advantage of Byzantine weakness and captured territory for themselves. Danishmend Gazi seized the east-central interior and declared himself ruler of his own state. Another leader named Çaka Bey conquered the western coast of Anatolia for the Sultanate of Rûm and launched naval raids on valuable Greek islands. The people of Constantinople panicked over the prospect of a joint land and naval attack by the Pechenegs and Turks. Alexios I sent out forces to reclaim territory, though all were crushed.

            Frankopen writes, “The mood in the capital became dark and poisonous. In the presence of the emperor and his retinue in the spring of 1091, the patriarch of Antioch, John the Oxite, delivered a damning assessment of the empire’s predicament…Khios had been lost, said the patriarch, as had Mitylene. All the islands in the Aegean had fallen, while Asia Minor was in complete turmoil; not a single fragment of the east remained. The Pechenegs, meanwhile, had reached the walls of Constantinople, and Alexios’ efforts to deal with them had proved singularly ineffective. Reflecting on why the threats had become acute, John reached a stark conclusion: God had stopped protecting Byzantium. The lack of military success and the terrible hardships being endured were the fault of the emperor, declared the patriarch. Alexios had been an outstanding general before he became emperor but since then he had brought one defeat after another. By seizing the throne in 1081 he had angered God, who was now using pagans to punish Byzantium. Repentance was urgently required if things were to change.”

            The Eastern Roman Empire was dealt an even greater blow in late 1092 when its greatest ally, Malik-Shah, died of food poisoning. His vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, who was instrumental in the Seljuk-Byzantine alliance, was killed by a newly-formed secretive order known as the ‘Assassins.’ The deaths of the two most powerful men in the Turkish world led to civil strife within the Seljuk Empire. This left the Turks in Anatolia with little to fear on their eastern front, permitting them to turn their attention westward.

            Alexios I gathered what forces he could and managed to retake Nicomedia and nearby territory. Then he struck an alliance with Abu’l-Kasim against his easterly rivals. The alliance and Abu’l-Kasim were both short-lived. In 1093 the leaders of Nicaea strangled him and handed over the city to his brother. His reign was also short-lived. Kilij Arslan I, son of the late Sultan Suleiman, escaped his captivity in Baghdad when the civil war broke out. Arslan I took control of Nicaea and the Sultanate of Rûm. Unlike his father, Arslan I was no friend of the Byzantines; given that they had lost virtually all of Anatolia and faced constant raids in the Balkans, Arslan I believed that he had little to gain from allying with the decrepit, Greek-speaking nation.

            The military situation was just one crisis which Alexios I had to face. Another major problem was the economy. The Empire was caught in a bad cycle: Turks would conquer Byzantine territory which meant less tax revenue, which meant the empire could not raise funds for its armies, which in turn meant the Turks could conquer more territory. Alexios I recognized how dire the situation was and decided to squeeze his people as much as possible. He had tax collectors fabricate debts; if an aristocrat could not or would not pay then the state would seize their land. The emperor even confiscated lands from the church, something which was not unprecedented though highly unpopular. Over taxation led to widespread misery and open revolt on the islands of Crete and Cyprus. Wary of further angering his people, Alexios I cut a deal with the city of Venice. In exchange for a huge sum of cash the emperor essentially ceded the northeastern Italian city-state control of the merchant networks along the Adriatic Sea, laying the foundation for the later Venetian empire. In the short term this filled Alexios I’s coffers, yet it proved remarkably unpopular among Greek merchants who struggled to compete with the Venetians.

            In 1094 Alexios I faced numerous assassination and coup plots. The Emperor’s own nephew joined a conspiracy against him, though he was quickly pardoned after it was uncovered. Shortly thereafter, Nikephoros Diogenes, son of the captured emperor Romanos Diogenes IV, tried to murder Alexios I. While on campaign Nikephoros snuck into the emperor’s tent, sword drawn, only to find Empress Irene and a servant girl watching over the sleeping emperor, at which point he fled. When Alexios I learned of this he had Nikephoros tortured, upon which he discovered that numerous military leaders and noble families knew of the plot and supported killing the emperor. This event made Alexios I recognize how widely hated he was and he soon began to worry that anyone and everyone around him might try to murder him. Afterwards he suffered from panic attacks, typified by a sudden shortness of breath.

            By 1095 the emperor and his empire teetered on the verge of ruin. Except for Nicomedia across the Bosporus Strait virtually all of Western Asia had fallen to the Turks. The Greek islands were constantly raided. Many provinces were in open revolt. What forces remained were busy defending the Balkans from northern invasion. The economy was in shambles. Every noble or military official was a potential assassin. Alexios I further knew that whoever killed him would be lauded as a hero by the masses.

Despite his remarkable intelligence, charisma and audacity, Alexios I’s actions were insufficient. He only had one card left to play. In late winter 1095 he sent emissaries to the northern Italian city of Piacenza where Pope Urban II was hosting a great synod. The Byzantines arrived in the first week of March. There they told His Holiness that Asia had fallen to the Turks. They related stories of massacres committed against the faithful and of churches desecrated and converted into mosques. They pleaded for soldiers from the West to save the Christians of Anatolia.

The Byzantine delegation knew their audience well. They understood that Westerners knew little about Muslims and of Islam. Separation made these people seem strange, unreasonable, barbaric, and even Satanic. By playing up the stories of atrocities the messengers relayed an image of innocents beset by animalistic madmen. No mention was made of the cooperation between Christians and Muslims, of the tolerance many Islamic rulers showed their non-Muslim subjects, nor of violence committed by Christians against Muslims. Alexios I understood that moral complexity and martial fervor were anathema to each other. He knew that he had to sell a story to the West of a great enemy that only faithful warriors could defeat. Moreover, he played upon the Catholic love of relics and sacred spaces. He tempted Latin Christians with the promise of touching feet on holy ground and recovering the bones of saints from the heathens.

Alexios I gambled that religious conviction and the promise of eastern treasures might entice enough soldiers to travel east and reverse Byzantine losses. The Emperor’s ultimate ambition was the reconquest of Anatolia and the stabilization of the empire. However, Pope Urban II had far grander ideas. Urban II would use the call for aid to launch a holy war the likes of which had never been seen before.