The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (22 page)
did the Patriarch obviously feel little or no loyalty to the Macedonian house; his obvious terror at the thought of losing control of the Bulgarian Church gave Symeon immense bargaining strength -particularly since he himself cared not a straw for the independence of his Church, one way or another: since he himself intended to be Emperor, what difference could it make? For both these reasons, to have adopted an aggressive or threatening attitude at this juncture would have been folly. His interests (and his daughter's) would best be served by showing himself in as favourable a light as possible: as a man whose decisions were governed by reason and good sense - he had after all been educated in Constantinople - and whose family was in every respect worthy of an imperial alliance. Only one indication did he give that an iron hand still lurked within the velvet glove - a hint so slight as to be almost imperceptible, and negative at that: he avoided any further mention of a treaty of peace. With the Empire in its present enfeebled state, there was no point in needlessly limiting his freedom of action.
But if Symeon had played his hand beautifully, Patriarch Nicholas had badly overplayed his. His fellow-members of the Council were increasingly irritated by his arrogance and like everyone else had been revolted by his cruelty, first to Euthymius and then to the whole Ducas clan. They were also appalled by his treatment of Zoe, whose claims to a share in the Regency were undeniable, and they could not but be moved at the sight of the pale, delicate little Emperor, wandering miserably around the Palace crying for his mother. The news that the Patriarch, who was by now strongly suspected of collusion in at least the early stages of the Ducas affair, had been in secret negotiations with the Bulgar King - for as usual he had not bothered to inform them in advance - was the last straw. From that moment on, the Council began to fall apart. In February 914 Sister Anna was recalled from her nunnery and, once again an Empress, took over the Regency, reappointing all her old friends and advisers.
The new government was to be contemptuously described by Symeon as a 'council of eunuchs' — which in a very large measure it was. But eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire were neither the mincing male sopranos of later Western Europe nor the overweight and epicene harem-keepers of the Oriental tradition. For at least the four centuries since the age of Justinian - one of whose generals, Narses, must despite his castration be numbered among the greatest soldiers in imperial history — they had been highly respected members of society and holders of many of the most distinguished offices of Church and State, among which they were denied only those of Prefect of the City, Quaestor, Domestic of the four imperial regiments and the throne itself. By the tenth century to be a eunuch was, for a promising youth about to enter the imperial service, a virtual guarantee of advancement; many an ambitious parent would have a younger son castrated as a matter of course. The practice may seem strange, even barbarous; but the reasons are in fact not far to seek. Eunuchs, with no wives or family to support, tended to be far more industrious and dedicated than their more completely-endowed colleagues. Since they left no sons, there was no tendency for certain offices to become hereditary, as happened so often in the West: posts could be awarded on merit alone. By the same token they constituted an invaluable bulwark against that feudalism which was to cause the Empire more and more trouble, particularly in Asia Minor, as the century progressed. Finally and most important of all, they were safe. A eunuch might — and frequently did - engage in a litde mild intrigue on behalf of a brother or a nephew; but never, however powerful he might be, could he make a bid for the throne.
Small wonder, then, that the Empress and her eunuchs soon showed themselves far more capable administrators of the Empire than Nicholas and his Regency Council had ever been. The old Patriarch himself, on the other hand, presented them with something of a problem. Zoe's first intention had been to replace him for the second time with Euthymius, but Euthymius had demurred; not surprisingly, he had had enough. With some reluctance, therefore, she allowed Nicholas to continue in office - though with dire warnings as to what he could expect if he meddled any further in affairs which did not concern him. Back he went to his pastoral duties - setting foot in St Sophia, according to one (admittedly hostile) source, for the first time since his assumption of the Regency some eight months before — and accepting his fate with as much grace as he could muster; though it doubtless galled him not a little when Zoe almost immediately raised her already considerable popularity still higher with a trio of military and political triumphs of very considerable importance to the security of her Empire.
The first of these was the enthronement of Ashot, King of Armenia.
1
i The title of 'King', or more properly 'King of Kings', was periodically bestowed upon whichever leader of the principal Armenian clans was for the time being the most powerful. Though it might on occasion pass from father to son it was never in any real sense hereditary, and frequently fell into abeyance altogether
.
That bleak, inhospitable region around Mount Ararat, long the most sensitive point of confrontation between the Byzantines and the Saracens, occupied a delicate and ambiguous political position. To the Emperor at Constantinople, the Armenian princes - the land was never truly united - were his vassals; unfortunately the Caliph in Baghdad took a similar view, and for well over a century had regularly appointed an Arab
ostigan,
or Governor. As for the Armenians, they prided themselves on their intelligence and their ancient culture, and claimed to have been the first people to have adopted Christianity as their national faith. They were however — like most of their Christian neighbours in the East — convinced monophysites, and felt little loyalty or affection for Byzantium: many of them indeed, following that well-known tendency of the dogmatist to prefer infidels to heretics, frankly welcomed the Muslim influence.
Given the natural disputatiousness of the Armenians and the basic instability of their situation, it was little wonder that they seemed to pass from one political crisis to the next. In 909, however, they found themselves faced with a threat which was, even by their standards, unusually grave when the Caliph's
ostigan,
the Persian Emir Yusuf, determined to eliminate Byzantine influence altogether and to reduce them to a state of total subjection to Baghdad; First sparking off a civil war - never difficult in Armenia - Yusuf swept across the strife-torn country, massacring all who resisted him and committing unspeakable atrocities in the towns and villages through which he passed. For four years the terror continued, until in 913 the Armenian King Smbat, in the vain hope of saving his subjects' lives, finally surrendered to Yusuf and was rewarded by a particularly hideous martyrdom.
To Byzantium, Armenia constituted a vital bulwark; and one of Zoe's first actions on her return to power in 914 had been to invite Smbat's son and heir, the young Prince Ashot, to Constantinople to decide on a plan of campaign. Thus it came about that in the spring of the following year Ashot returned to his native land at the head of a large Greek army. Yusuf put up a stiff resistance, but was hopelessly outnumbered; and by the first snowfall - winter comes early in those regions - all western and much of eastern Armenia was back in Ashot's firmly pro-Byzantine hands. It was to be another four years before the land was properly at peace - the inevitable internal squabbling saw to that - but its integrity had been saved, and both Zoe and Ashot had good reason to congratulate themselves.
The Empress's second success was the decisive defeat of a large Muslim army that had launched a major raid on imperial territory from its base at Tarsus. There was much jubilation when the news reached Constantinople; but this triumph was as nothing compared with the third, achieved just as Ashot was re-establishing himself in Armenia, in the very opposite corner of the Empire - the south Italian Theme of Langobardia. Here, just outside the city of Capua, the imperial
strategos
totally destroyed the Saracen army, thereby restoring Byzantine prestige in the peninsula to its highest level since the departure of Nicephorus Phocas in 886. By the end of 915, in the minds of the large majority of her subjects, the Empress Zoe could do no wrong.
Even Symeon of Bulgaria suffered a reverse, if only a temporary one. To him Patriarch Nicholas's fall from power and the return of Zoe had been a devastating blow: the Empress, he knew, would never for a moment countenance that all-important marriage on which he had set his heart. His careful diplomacy had gone for nothing; it would have to be war after all. In September he appeared with his army before Adrianople (Edirne), which was immediately surrendered by the local governor without even a show of resistance. He seems to have been genuinely astonished when the Empress sent a massive force to recover the city, and in his turn hastily withdrew.
For the next two years he contented himself with harassing the cities and towns of Thessaly and Epirus; but in 917 his armies were back again in Thrace, and Zoe decided on a pre-emptive strike. Her
strategos
at Cherson in the Crimea, a certain John Bogas, had succeeded in bribing Symeon's erstwhile allies, the notoriously venal Pechenegs, to invade Bulgaria from the north; and the Byzantine fleet had been enlisted to carry them across the Danube, just as it had carried the Magyars a quarter of a century before. Meanwhile the army was to march up from Constantinople to the southern frontier. Trapped between the two arms of a gigantic pincer movement, Symeon would have no alternative but to accept the terms he was offered; it would be a long time before he were once more in a position to make trouble for the Empire.
As a plan it seemed almost foolproof; and so it might have proved, but for a sudden, unexpected twist of fate: a twist so surprising, indeed, that we may be forgiven for suspecting that Symeon had again exercised his remarkable talent for bribery. John Bogas arrived with his Pechenegs on the banks of the Danube to keep his rendezvous with the fleet, which
was commanded by its
drungarius -
an Armenian named Romanus Lecapenus; the moment they met, however, the two men became involved in a furious argument, each denying the authority of the other. The upshot was that Romanus categorically refused to transport the invaders across the river; and the Pechenegs, soon tired of waiting, drifted away to their homes.
The army meanwhile, under the command of the Domesticus Leo Phocas - son of the great general Nicephorus - had advanced from the capital along the Black Sea coast and had entered Bulgar territory at the southern end of the Gulf of Burgas, where dawn on 20 August found it encamped outside the little port of Anchialus. It was then that Symeon, who had been carefully monitoring its progress, saw his chance. Sweeping down on it from the hills to the west, he took it entirely by surprise and showed it no mercy. What exactly happened is uncertain: George Cedrenus claims that Leo's horse suddenly took fright while its master was bathing and galloped riderless through the ranks, causing a panic among the soldiers who immediately concluded that their general must be dead. This story may or may not be true; what is beyond doubt is that virtually the entire Byzantine army was massacred. The navy, which should have been standing by to pick up survivors, had already returned to the Bosphorus; those who managed to flee from the butchery found themselves with no means of escape and were cut down by their pursuers. Leo the Deacon, writing the better part of a century later, reports that even in his day the battlefield was still covered with the bones of the fallen, lying bleached in the sun. One of the few to get away with his life was Leo Phocas himself, who somehow managed to make his way northward along the coast to Mesembria whence, some time later, he took ship for Constantinople.
The anger of the Empress on hearing the news of the disaster can easily be imagined. She at once ordered an official inquiry into the conduct of Romanus Lecapenus, who was sentenced to be blinded; it was fortunate for him - and, as it turned out, for the Empire — that some of his influential friends were able to intercede on his behalf and win him a last-minute reprieve. Strangely enough, her confidence in Leo Phocas remained apparently unshaken; that same winter she entrusted him with another army, with which to drive back the Bulgars who had once again overrun eastern Thrace up to the very walls of the capital. But Leo had inherited none of his father's military genius. He had got no further than Casasyrtae in the western suburbs before his second army was destroyed almost as completely as his first had been.
For Symeon it was another victory - of a "kind; but there soon came additional confirmation of what he already knew all too well: that whatever damage he might do to the imperial soldiery, he could still make not the slightest impression on the defences of Constantinople. He had no choice but to return, frustrated and furious, to Bulgaria for what was left of the winter. In the capital, however, the year 918 opened to reveal a situation of growing chaos. After two annihilating defeats, Zoe's reputation was in ruins and her regime in serious danger. There was, she knew, no chance of any accommodation with Symeon; he continued to insist on the marriage between young Constantine and his daughter as a
sine qua non
of any settlement, and the Empress still could not bring herself to contemplate the idea of a barbarian daughter-in-law. If she were to find the support she needed to shore up her tottering throne, she would have to look for it within the Empire.
But where was it to be found? Not, certainly, with the Patriarch, who was by now sniffing the possibility of his own return to power and could be trusted to do her down at every opportunity. There were in fact but two alternatives. The first was Leo Phocas, discredited as he was, who after the disgrace of Casasyrtae had crossed over to Asia in an attempt to rally the army of Anatolia. Since the downfall of Constantine Ducas, the family of Phocas was the recognized leader of the rich landed aristocracy; Leo was moreover a widower, with whom the Empress may have been contemplating marriage - a step which would have immeasurably strengthened her own position, to say nothing of that of her son.
The other alternative was Romanus Lecapenus. He differed from Leo in two important respects. First, he was a man of neither birth nor breeding, an Armenian peasant's son who had risen to his present rank entirely on his own merit. Second, although he too had signally failed to distinguish himself during the recent hostilities, he had not been defeated. His great flagship was even now riding proudly at anchor in the Golden Horn, surrounded by the rest of the imperial fleet: a proclamation of naval might that was not lost on the Byzantines, particularly when they remembered the condition of their army - for which, as they well knew, Leo Phocas was principally to blame.
Of the two, the Empress not surprisingly preferred the handsome, aristocratic general to the jumped-up foreign parvenu. She therefore
summoned Leo to the Palace where, within a few weeks, he became one of her closest associates and most trusted advisers. She had, however, seriously underestimated the strength of public opinion. The people of Constantinople - a political element which, especially in times of crisis, sovereigns ignored at their peril - had always mistrusted these feudal lords from Anatolia; their traditional loyalties were to the established imperial dynasty, and their opinions were shared by most of the old urban aristocracy and many members of the court itself. Little Constantine was now thirteen years old; although his health remained poor, he was clearly a child of quite unusual intelligence who appeared to have the makings of a first-class Emperor. But what chance would he stand against the ambitions of a Phocas, when not even his own mother seemed aware of the danger?
It was at this moment that a member of the imperial household took matters into his own hands. Theodore, Constantine's personal tutor, now wrote a letter in his pupil's name to Romanus Lecapenus appealing for his protection. Why Romanus was considered any more trustworthy than Leo is not altogether clear: perhaps his modest beginnings told in his favour. But he was certainly no less ambitious, and unhesitatingly proclaimed his readiness to serve the young Emperor as his protector and champion. In doing so, he can have had no delusions as to the effect that such a pronouncement would have on the Empress. Doubtless encouraged by Phocas, she instructed her old friend and counsellor, the
parakoimomenos
Constantine, to order Romanus in her name to pay off his sailors and disband the fleet forthwith. The admiral replied with the utmost courtesy, inviting Constantine to come on board the flagship to see for himself how conscientiously the imperial commands were being obeyed. All unsuspecting, the Chamberlain did so - only to be immediately seized and put under arrest.
To lay hands on her chief representative was a deliberate affront to the Empress herself; but when Zoe sent envoys to the admiral to demand an explanation they were greeted by a hail of stones. Now seriously alarmed, she called a meeting of her ministers at the Bucoleon
1
— only to find that they too had turned against her. She was obliged to listen in silence while the young Constantine Porphyrogenitus read from a prepared script, informing his mother that her Regency was at an end:
1
The area between the southern end of the Hippodrome and the Marmara, which included the private harbour and maritime entrance to the Great Palace.
henceforth the government would be entrusted jointly to Patriarch Nicholas and another member of the former Council, the
magiste
r
Stephen. The next morning a body of soldiers arrived to escort her back to the convent of St Euphemia; only in response to long and tearful entreaties on the part of her son was she at length permitted to remain, powerless but at least uncloistered, in the
gynaeceum
of the Palace.
Nicholas had triumphed; but he soon discovered that the condition of the Empire was very different from what it had been five years before. Zoe had been dealt with satisfactorily enough; but Leo Phocas and Romanus Lecapenus were now locked in an open struggle for supremacy. Floundering hopelessly between them, the unhappy Patriarch did his utmost to play one off against the other, but succeeded only in making his own position more and more untenable. Finally, on 25 March 919, Romanus appeared with his fleet at the Bucoleon, entered the Palace by the Marine Gate and announced that he had taken over the government of the Empire; and only a month later, in St Sophia, he gave away his exquisite young daughter Helena to Constantine in marriage, taking for himself that same title of
basileopator
that Leo the Wise had invented for his own father-in-law, Stylian Zautses.