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HOW BYZANTINE CAN YOU GET?
By William Terdoslavich
There are some people you just don’t turn your back on.
The funny thing about decline is that you never can spot it when it happens. The Byzantine Empire found itself in that fix in 1071, when it lost a battle.
That clash happened at Manzikert, an obscure frontier fortress south of Lake Van, near Turkey’s present-day border with Iran and Iraq. But a thousand years ago, it was a rough neighborhood, where Byzantines and Seljuq Turks pushed the border back and forth in a series of skirmishes and sieges. This was par for the course in the long-running dogfight between Christians and Muslims. But why would the loss of one battle set up Byzantium for a downward slide lasting almost four hundred years?
Politics as Usual
An empire is only as good as its emperor—like Basil II, who ruled Byzantium at its zenith. He won a decisive victory over the Bulgars, so ridding the empire of an ever-present threat, then died in 1025. He bequeathed a strong empire to his successors.
But in the following fifty years, Byzantium blew that inheritance. The capital of Constantinople was a snake pit of office politics. Weak emperors, stubborn patriarchs, and cunning bureaucrats played a never-ending game of political musical chairs, promoting favorites to various offices and punishing reformers. Any focus on strategy and diplomacy was lost in a swirl of embezzlement and venality.
Out of this mess emerged Emperor Romanus IV. Formerly Romanus Diogenes, the future emperor was a general posted in Eastern Europe. Accused of plotting against his predecessor, Constantine X, Romanus was stripped of his command and sentenced to death. But Constantine expired instead. The death sentence was dropped. Romanus was politically “rehabilitated.” The widowed Empress Eudocia chose him to wed in 1068. And so he was crowned Romanus IV.
Romanus was competent at first. He sized up the growing “Seljuq threat” to his east and began raising an army. His Seljuq counterpart, Sultan Alp Arslan, did not spot the “Byzantine threat” to his west. Ensconced in Baghdad, Alp Arslan had his eye on the heretical Ismaili sect of Shi’ism ruling Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. To the Sunni Seljuqs, this was the real war. They preferred to maintain peace with the Byzantines.
Alp Arslan was busy besieging Aleppo, Syria, when he got word that Romanus was coming after him with an army of about forty thousand. Breaking the siege, Alp Arslan hustled his army back across the upper Euphrates, now in spring flood. That move cost Alp Arslan almost half his army. But having some forces to face the Byzantines was better than having none at all.
Split Decision
As the Byzantines approached Lake Van in the Armenian region (now northwest Turkey), Romanus divided his army, sending roughly half his force to besiege the Seljuqs at Ahlat, approximately thirty miles south, on Van’s western shore.
History is unclear if this force was defeated in battle outside of Ahlat, or deliberately withdrawn by its commander as an act of political sabotage to hinder Romanus. Either way, the detachment was not around to answer Romanus’s eventual call for reinforcement.
Hearing of Manzikert’s fall, Alp Arslan moved his army to about a day’s march away from the Byzantines and encamped. It was late August. Both forces were evenly matched in number, but differed in composition. The Seljuqs relied on light cavalry; the Byzantines had a mixed force of infantry and heavy cavalry.
Romanus failed to use his cavalry for reconnaissance, so he did not have a precise idea where the Turkish main force was. He found out the hard way when Seljuq horsemen harried the Byzantine foraging parties sent out to gather supplies. Romanus reinforced his foragers with a small detachment, only to have them sucked into a bigger battle with the Seljuq cavalry. Romanus then led an even larger relief force to save the foragers and their reinforcement.
He pursued the skirmishing Turks away from his camp toward some distant foothills. As evening approached, Romanus had to make a decision. Should he pursue the Turks into the foothills and risk a night battle, or march back to camp while there was enough daylight left? Romanus was prudent. He broke off the action and marched back to camp.
Let Battle Decide
On the night before battle, Alp Arslan sent a delegation to make a deal with Romanus, rather than risking a battle. But Romanus was deaf to the pleas of the Seljuqs. He sought decisive victory while he had an army big enough to win it. Going back to Constantinople without a victory was out of the question for Romanus. His political enemies would carve him up.
So it was on a Friday morning in late August that Romanus arrayed his army for battle. Cavalry was posted on the flanks, infantry in the center under Romanus’s control, with a reserve body to the rear. The Seljuqs arrayed themselves into a crescent formation that enveloped both wings of the Byzantine army, but the Turks kept their distance. Mounted archers harried the Byzantine cavalry, provoking them to charge into preset ambushes away from the main force. Romanus marched onward, failing to bring the Turks to blows. He then found himself with the same dilemma as the day shortened: press on to risk a night action, or return to camp while there was still enough daylight?
Romanus ordered his standard turned around, the signal for his army to march back. The Byzantines turned about-face in some disorder. And that is when Alp Arslan ordered his cavalry to charge. Byzantine mercenary units, seeing the royal standard reversed while the Turks attacked, took flight, believing that Romanus had been killed. The Byzantine reserve, instead of aiding the stricken line, ran away. Historians are again unsure if this was an act of cowardice, incompetence, or treachery. Romanus held the center with a rear guard. But the rest of the army had broken and fled.
Eventually Romanus was captured and brought to Alp Arslan. He spared the Byzantine emperor and sent him back. The Seljuqs now owned the border region. Romanus managed to raise another army, this time to march on his own capital. He was twice vanquished by those who were never on his side. Blinded and disgraced, Romanus died at the island of Prota in 1072.
No Second Chance
Emperor Michael VII Ducas succeeded Romanus, but the new emperor lacked strategic aptitude. He could have raised another army and marched back to recapture the frontier. Court intrigue and more marginal troubles in Italy distracted the foolish emperor from focusing on the real threat. Within ten years, Turkish raiders faced no Byzantine deterrent. Raids into the Anatolian heartland turned into an occupation, depriving Byzantium of one of its richest provinces. From that point, decline was irreversible.
It would have been a hundred times better if the Byzantine emperors who ruled after Basil II, and their rivals and colleagues, had all shared a sense of duty that was greater than their self-interest. This would have given the Byzantines the strength to hold out as a Greco-Christian bulwark against a rising Turko-Muslim tide.
The Byzantine hold on Anatolia also would have changed another trajectory in history. The Ottoman Empire never would have gotten its start. Osman I was born in north-central Anatolia in the 1200s, his people finding refuge there after fleeing the Mongol conquest to the east. Without that starter sanctuary, the rise of the Ottomans might never have occurred. Instead, they grew to eventually conquer Constantinople in 1451. No Ottoman Empire would have meant the frontier with Islam would have been drawn along the Taurus Mountains and not in the Balkans.
No ruler can be expected to know how well his country will do against future enemies. But every ruler can maintain a strong foundation for the next to build on. Romanus IV inherited a state in decline, and could not reverse its direction. Neither could his successors. It would have been a hundred times better if they could have.