The Apogee - Byzantium 02 (38 page)

Constantine Porphyrogenitus to the highest office in the Byzantine State after the Emperor himself. Since then he had held it under Romanus II, Nicephorus Phocas and John Tzimisces; and whether or not (as has often been maintained) he deliberately encouraged the two co-Emperors in their early dissipations in order to keep power in his own hands, he certainly had no intention of letting go of it without a struggle.

The second obstacle was a good deal more serious, since it concerned the nature of the throne itself. The first Roman Emperors, it must be remembered, had gained power not by inheritance but by the acclamation of their army; and although the hereditary principle had long been accepted in Constantinople, it had never been an integral or essential feature of the body politic. Now, after the seizure of power by three victorious generals in less than sixty years, it was - especially in the minds of the Anatolian military aristocracy - wearing distinctly thin: would it not be better, they reasoned, to return to the old tradition, whereby the imperial diadem was the preserve of mature men who had proved themselves in battle, rather than of callow, untried youths whose only recommendation was that they had been born in the purple?

Thus it came about that the first nine years of Basil's theoretically autocratic reign were largely overshadowed by his formidable Chamberlain, and the first thirteen occupied in defending his throne against the attacks of two rebel generals determined to wrest it from him. Both have already made' their appearance in these pages. One was Bardas Scleras, Domestic of the armies of the East, who had served his brother-in-law John Tzimisces with unwavering loyalty and saw himself as his legitimate successor; the other - more predictably perhaps — was Bardas Phocas, nephew of the Emperor Nicephoras, who having failed in his first rebellion against Tzimisces was resolved to launch a second against Basil as soon as the opportunity offered. Scleras was the first to act. In the spring of
976,
only a month or two after his brother-in-law's death, he had himself proclaimed
basileus
by his troops, took possession of his army's treasury and marched on Caesarea. By the autumn of
977
he had won two decisive battles — during the second of which the commander of the loyalist forces, his erstwhile companion-in-arms Peter Phocas, met his death — and gained the support of the southern fleet based on Attaleia; and a few months later, having captured Nicaea, he drew up his army on the Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus and settled down to an amphibious siege of the capital.

At sea the issue was quickly settled. The home fleet, traditionally loyal to the reigning Emperor, streamed out of the Golden Horn and made short work of the rebel ships. On land, however, the situation seemed grave; and so it might have continued had not the eunuch Basil (who was at this time still in effective control of the government) had the imagination - and, it must be said, the courage - to entrust the command of the army to Bardas Phocas. It was a surprising appointment, to say the least. The loyalty of Phocas to the throne was scarcely less questionable than that of Sclerus himself; indeed, when the decision was taken, he was still in exile on Chios. On the other hand the entire army was now controlled by the Anatolian barons, and no other general would have been any more reliable; besides, even if Phocas did dream of acquiring the supreme power for himself, he would still have to get rid of Sclerus first. The only danger was that the two generals might combine, making common cause against Constantinople; but on balance this seemed unlikely. In any case, it was a risk that had to be taken.

So Bardas Phocas, having been brought back with all speed from Chios, flung off his monastic habit, swore an oath of loyalty to the
porpbyrogeniti
and secretly made his way back to his own power base at Caesarea, where it was an easy matter for him to raise an army. Sclerus, seeing a dangerous threat to his rear, had no choice but to retire. The civil war that followed lasted nearly three years. There were several fierce engagements; but Bardas Sclerus, despite repeated tactical victories, was never able to destroy the forces of his rival, who always managed to retreat in good order, collect reinforcements and return a month or two later with renewed vigour to the fray. Finally, on a date which is disputed but which must certainly have been some time in the spring of
979,
the two armies fought for the last time and Bardas Phocas, seeing the tide of battle turning against him, challenged the rebel to decide the issue by single combat. Courageously - for Phocas was a giant among men
1
- Sclerus accepted the challenge; the soldiers on both sides gathered round to watch; and, in a scene that seems to come straight out of the
Iliad,
the contest began. The two combatants galloped towards each other, then struck simultaneously. Phocas managed to parry Sclerus's thrust, which fell instead on his horse, splitting its bridle and severing its right ear. His own blow, meanwhile, found its mark. Sclerus pitched forward on his saddle and slid to the ground, blood streaming

1
'Anyone who received a blow from his hand was a dead man straightway, and whole armies trembled even when he shouted from afar.' (Psellus,
Cbronograph
ia.
The translation, like all others from this source, is based on that of E. R. A. Sewter.)

from his head. A few of his men carried him, unconscious, to a nearby stream to bathe the wound; the remainder fled from the field. The war was over.

For the moment, at least. The Emperor Basil, following events from Constantinople, knew that his grasp on the throne remained uncertain. Apart from anything else, both his rivals were still very much alive and doubtless making new plans for the future. Bardas Scleras, having somewhat dented the reputation of Bardas Phocas by surviving his blow on the head, had sought refuge with the Saracens and had been borne off in semi-captivity to Baghdad - whence, sooner or later, he was bound to return; while Bardas Phocas was stronger than ever and, despite his oath of loyalty, equally certain to make another bid for power. None the less, here was a much-needed respite; and it afforded Basil time and opportunity to prepare himself for the tremendous tasks that lay ahead. For the six years following the defeat of Scleras we hear little of him, but we may be sure that he was hard at work, familiarizing himself with the innermost workings of the army, the navy, the Church, the monasteries and every department of state. If he were to be what he was determined to be - an Emperor in the fullest sense of the word, in complete charge of his own government, responsible for every aspect of its foreign policy and ready when the need arose to lead his own troops in the field — he could afford to leave nothing to chance.

In
98
5
he was ready; only his great-uncle stood in his way. Basil the
parakoimomenos,
however, was not easy to shift. A eunuch he might be, but there were few men in Constantinople who did not tremble before this tremendous figure, whose every word and movement seemed to proclaim his own imperial origins and to radiate authority. After a lifetime of loyalty to the Macedonian house - of which, after all, he was himself indirectly a member - he seems to have been at first genuinely attached to the young Emperor; his mistake was to underestimate him. By turns patronizing and domineering, he insisted on treating his great-nephew like the child he no longer was, dismissing his ideas, ignoring his suggestions, countermanding his orders without hesitation or apology. As Basil found himself blocked and frustrated at every step, his long-felt resentment gradually gave way to hatred: he knew that he could never breathe freely until he had rid himself of this insufferable incubus once and for all. Fortunately there were grounds in plenty for doing so. His Chamberlain's corruption was notorious, and had brought him enormous wealth which he flaunted shamelessly, maintaining a degree of state that put the Emperor himself in the shade. More serious still, he had recently been discovered — doubtless suspecting a coming attempt to unseat him - to be in secret and potentially treasonable correspondence with Bardas Phocas. Basil laid his plans carefully; then he struck. The capital awoke one morning to the news that the most feared man in the Empire had been arrested and exiled, and all his property confiscated.

That, one might think - particularly considering the amount of the property involved, the
parakoimomenos
having been by far the greatest landowner in all the imperial dominions - should have been enough; but there was in the Emperor's character a streak of brutal vindictiveness which he never managed to control. Not content with having broken and dispossessed his old enemy, he even turned against the immense monastery which the latter had built in the capital and had richly endowed in honour of his namesake St Basil. He was tempted, we are told, to demolish it completely; not wishing, however, to encourage accusations of impiety, he contented himself with stripping it of all its movable furniture and mosaic decoration and reducing the. luckless monks to penury.
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More extraordinary still, he then issued an edict by which all laws promulgated by his great-uncle should be considered null and void unless they bore a mark in his own hand signifying his approval; 'for,' he explained, 'at the beginning of our own reign, until the deposition of Basil the
parakoimomenos
.
..
many things happened which were not according to our wish, for he decided and appointed everything according to his own will.' To the old man in his place of exile, it must have seemed as if his very existence were being denied. He sank quickly into senility and died soon afterwards.

At last Basil was master in his own house. But less than a year later his Empire was facing a new threat, and one that was to bring him greater humiliation than any that he had yet suffered. Samuel, self-proclaimed Tsar of the Bulgarian Empire, had invaded Thessaly and captured its chief city, Larissa.

Of the origins of Tsar Samuel we know little. His father, the
comes

1 Pse
llus, who tells this story, records a distinctly bad-taste pun of which the Emperor is also said to have been guilty at this time. Like all puns it is untranslatable; but the following adaptation, gleefully repeated by several modern English and French historians, probably comes as close as we shall ever get to the original: 'I have turned their refectory into a reflectory, since all they can now do is to reflect on how to feed themselves.'

Nicholas, seems to have been governor of all or part of western Bulgaria around the time of Svyatoslav's invasion; and when he died his influence, if not
hJ8
position, passed to his four sons. These young men thus became the natural leaders of an insurrection which broke out soon after the death of John Tzimisces and soon developed into a full-blown war of independence. When the news of it reached Constantinople, Tsar Boris escaped with his brother Romanus to join the insurgents; but the Tsar was accidentally killed at the frontier by his own subjects while Romanus, being a eunuch, was debarred from the throne. The leadership therefore remained with the sons of the
comes
— known collectively as the
Cometopuli
- and, in particular, with the youngest and ablest of the four, Samuel.

The revolt of Bardas Scleras had played perfectly into Samuel's hands, providing him with just the opportunity he needed to extend his dominions without opposition. Gradually he had managed to impose control over all Bulgaria west of a line drawn south from the Danube and passing roughly midway between his first capital Serdica (the modern Sofia) and Philippopolis; he had then assumed the old title of Tsar and simultaneously revived the old Bulgarian Patriarchate abolished by Tzimisces. Thus, both politically and ecclesiastically, the new State came to be seen by the Bulgars not so much as the descendant of its predecessor as its continuation — the continuity being further emphasized by the close association of Prince Romanus, whom Samuel took care to load with honours and titles.

By 980 Samuel was secure enough to make his presence felt beyond his own borders, and thenceforth not a summer went by without one or more Bulgar incursions into Thessaly; but it was not for another five years that he put Larissa seriously under siege. The citizens held out as long as they could; but early in 986, when a woman was found eating the thigh of her dead husband, they understandably decided to surrender. With the exception of a single quisling family, the Nicoulitzes, all were sold into slavery; while the city's holiest relic, the body of its former bishop St Achilleus, was carried off to adorn the cathedral of Prespa, to which Samuel had recently transferred his capital.
1

Here was an outrage that could not go unpunished. On hearing the news Basil gave orders for the immediate mobilization of the army, personally assumed the supreme command and marched on Sardica,

1
R
unci
man.
The First Bulgaria
n Empire,
pp.
221-2.

following the valley of the river Maritsa before turning north-west through the pass known as Trajan's Gate and out on to the plain on which the city lies. Just short of his objective, however, he stopped to await his rearguard: a disastrous mistake, since it allowed Samuel - who, accompanied by his brother Aaron and Prince Romanus, had meanwhile hurried up from Thessaly — to occupy the surrounding mountains. Not till the end of July did the Emperor pass on to the city and lay siege to it; and even then he met with little success. The weather was stiflingly hot, morale was low, and Samuel's constant harassment of the imperial foraging parties meant that the besiegers were often almost as short of food as the besieged. After only three weeks, Basil decided to give up the struggle and return home. But worse was to come. On Tuesday, 17 August, as the Byzantine troops passed for the second time through Trajan's Gate, they marched straight into Samuel's carefully-prepared ambush - the Bulgarian cavalry streaming down from the mountains to each side and taking them totally by surprise. The vast majority were cut down where they stood; all the baggage, including the treasury, was lost. It was but a poor shambling rump of his former army that followed the distraught Emperor into Philippopolis a day or two later.
1