Diogenes, A.D. 1068-1071. not imitated by Alp Arslan; and he attacked without scruple the Greek empress Eudocia and her children. His alarming The emperor progress compelled her to give herself and her sceptre to Romanus the hand of a soldier; and Romanus Diogenes was invested with the Imperial purple. His patriotism, and perhaps his pride, urged him from Constantinople within two months after his accession; and the next campaign he most scandalously took the field during the holy festival of Easter. In the palace, Diogenes was no more than the husband of Eudocia : in the camp, he was the emperor of the Romans, and he sustained that character with feeble resources and invincible courage. By his spirit and success, the soldiers were taught to act, the subjects to hope, and the enemies to fear. The Turks had penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; but the sultan himself had resigned to his emirs the prosecution of the war; and their numerous detachments were scattered over Asia in the security of conquest. Laden with spoil, and careless of discipline, they were separately surprised and defeated by the Greeks: the activity of the emperor seemed to multiply his presence; and while they heard of his expedition to Antioch, the enemy felt his sword on the hills of Trebizond. In three laborious campaigns the Turks were driven beyond the Euphrates: in the fourth and last, Romanus undertook the deliverance of Armenia. The desolation of the land obliged him to transport a supply of two months' provisions; and he marched forwards to the siege of Malazkerd,30 an important fortress in the midway between the modern cities of Arzeroum and Van. His army amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand men. of Constantinople were reinforced by the disorderly multitudes of Phrygia and Cappadocia ; but the real strength was composed of the subjects and allies of Europe, the legions of Macedonia, and the squadrons of Bulgaria; the Uzi, a Moldavian horde, who were themselves of the Turkish race; and, above all, the mercenary and adventurous bands of French and Normans. Their lances were 31 The troops 30 This city is mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Administrat. Imperii, 1. ii. c. 44, p. 119 [tom. iii. p. 192, ed. Bonn]) and the Byzantines of the xith century, under the name of Mantzikierte, and by some is confounded with Theodosiopolis; but Delisle, in his notes and maps, has very properly fixed the situation. Abulfeda (Geograph. tab. xviii. p. 310) describes Malasgerd as a small town, built with black stone, supplied with water, without trees, &c. The Uzi of the Greeks (Stritter, Memor. Byzant., tom. iii. p. 923-948) are the Gozz of the Orientals (Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 522; tom. iii. p. 133, &c.). They appear on the Danube and the Volga, in Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and the naine seems to have been extended to the whole Turkman race.a The Uzi were the people afterwards tine writers. See Editor's note, vol. vii, called Cumani or Comani by the Byzan- p. 79.-S. commanded by the valiant Ursel of Baliol, the kinsman or father of the Scottish kings, 32 and were allowed to excel in the exercise of arms, or, according to the Greek style, in the practice of the Pyrrhic dance. Defeat of A.D. 1071, August. On the report of this bold invasion, which threatened his hereditary dominions, Alp Arslan flew to the scene of action at the the Romans, head of forty thousand horse.33 His rapid and skilful evolutions distressed and dismayed the superior numbers of the Greeks; and in the defeat of Basilacius, one of their principal generals, he displayed the first example of his valour and clemency. The imprudence of the emperor had separated his forces after the reduction of Malazkerd. It was in vain that he attempted to recall the mercenary Franks: they refused to obey his summons; he disdained to await their return: the desertion of the Uzi filled his mind with anxiety and suspicion; and against the most salutary advice he rushed forwards to speedy and decisive action. Had he listened to the fair proposals of the sultan, Romanus might have secured a retreat, perhaps a peace; but in these overtures he supposed the fear or weakness of the enemy, and his answer was conceived in the tone of insult and defiance. "If the barbarian wishes for peace, let him " evacuate the ground which he occupies for the encampment of the "Romans, and surrender his city and palace of Rei as a pledge of his sincerity." Alp Arslan smiled at the vanity of the demand, but he wept the death of so many faithful Moslems; and after a devout prayer, proclaimed a free permission to all who were desirous of retiring from the field. With his own hands he tied up his horse's tail, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and scimitar, clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body with musk, and declared that, if he were vanquished, that spot should be the place of his burial. 34 The sultan himself had affected to cast away his missile weapons; but his hopes of victory were placed in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry, whose squadrons were loosely distributed in the form 66 32 Urselius [Ursellus] (the Russelius of Zonaras) is distinguished by Jeffrey Malaterra (1. ii. c. 33) among the Norman conquerors of Sicily, and with the surname of Baliol: and our own historians will tell how the Baliols came from Normandy to Durham, built Bernard's castle on the Tees, married an heiress of Scotland, &c. Ducange (Not. ad Nicephor. Bryennium, 1. ii. No. 4) has laboured the subject in honour of the President de Bailleul, whose father had exchanged the sword for the gown. 33 Elmacin (p. 343, 344) assigns this probable number, which is reduced by Abulpharagius to 15,000 (p. 227), and by D'Herbelot (p. 102) to 12,000 horse. But the same Elmacin gives 300,000 men to the emperor, of whom Abulpharagius says, Cum centum hominum millibus, multisque equis et magnâ pompâ instructus. The Greeks abstain from any definition of numbers. 34 The Byzantine writers do not speak so distinctly of the presence of the sultan; he committed his forces to an eunuch, had retired to a distance, &c. Is it ignorance, or jealousy, or truth? of a crescent. Instead of the successive lines and reserves of the Grecian tactics, Romanus led his army in a single and solid phalanx, and pressed with vigour and impatience the artful and yielding resistance of the barbarians. In this desultory and fruitless combat he wasted the greater part of a summer's day, till prudence and fatigue compelled him to return to his camp. But a retreat is always perilous in the face of an active foe; and no sooner had the standard been turned to the rear than the phalanx was broken by the base cowardice, or the baser jealousy, of Andronicus, a rival prince, who disgraced his birth and the purple of the Cæsars.35 The Turkish squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on this moment of confusion and lassitude; and the horns of their formidable crescent were closed in the rear of the Greeks. In the destruction of the army and pillage of the camp, it would be needless to mention the number of the slain or captives. The Byzantine writers deplore the loss of an inestimable pearl they forget to mention, that in this fatal day the Asiatic provinces of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed. of the As long as a hope survived, Romanus attempted to rally and save the relics of his army. When the centre, the Imperial Captivity station, was left naked on all sides, and encompassed by the ander victorious Turks, he still, with desperate courage, maintained emperor. the fight till the close of day, at the head of the brave and faithful subjects who adhered to his standard. They fell around him; his horse was slain; the emperor was wounded; yet he stood alone and intrepid till he was oppressed and bound by the strength of multitudes. The glory of this illustrious prize was disputed by a slave and a soldier; a slave who had seen him on the throne of Constantinople, and a soldier whose extreme deformity had been excused on the promise of some signal service. Despoiled of his arms, his jewels, and his purple, Romanus spent a dreary and perilous night on the field of battle, amidst a disorderly crowd of the meaner barbarians. In the morning the royal captive was presented to Alp Arslan, who doubted of his fortune, till the identity of the person was ascertained by the report of his ambassadors, and by the more pathetic evidence of Basilacius, who embraced with tears the feet of his unhappy sovereign. The successor of Constantine, in a plebeian habit, was led into the Turkish divan and commanded to kiss the ground before the lord of Asia. He reluctantly obeyed; and Alp Arslan, starting from He was the son of the Cæsar John Ducas, brother of the emperor Constantine (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 165). Nicephorus Bryennius applauds his virtues and extenuates his faults (1. i. p. 30, 38 [p. 41, 54, ed. Bonn]; 1. ii. p. 53 [p. 76, ed. Bonn]). Yet he owns his enmity to Romanus, οὐ πανὺ δὲ φιλίως ἔχων πρὸς Βασιλέα. Scylitzes speaks more explicitly of his treason. VOL. VII. M his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the neck of the Roman emperor.36 But the fact is doubtful; and if, in this moment of insolence, the sultan complied with the national custom, the rest of his conduct has extorted the praise of his bigoted foes, and may afford a lesson to the most civilised ages. He instantly raised the royal captive from the ground; and thrice clasping his hand with tender sympathy, assured him that his life and dignity should be inviolate in the hands of a prince who had learned to respect the majesty of his equals and the vicissitudes of fortune. From the divan Romanus was conducted to an adjacent tent, where he was served with pomp and reverence by the officers of the sultan, who, twice each day, seated him in the place of honour at his own table. In a free and familiar conversation of eight days, not a word, not a look, of insult escaped from the conqueror; but he severely censured the unworthy subjects who had deserted their valiant prince in the hour of danger, and gently admonished his antagonist of some errors which he had committed in the management of the war. In the preliminaries of negociation Alp Arslan asked him what treatment he expected to receive, and the calm indifference of the emperor displays the freedom of his mind. "If you are cruel," said he, "you will take my life; if you listen to "pride, you will drag me at your chariot wheels; if you consult your "interest, you will accept a ransom and restore me to my country." "And what," continued the sultan, "would have been your own "behaviour had fortune smiled on your arms?" The reply of the Greek betrays a sentiment which prudence, and even gratitude, should have taught him to suppress. "Had I vanquished," he fiercely said, "I would have inflicted on thy body many a stripe." The Turkish conqueror smiled at the insolence of his captive; observed that the Christian law inculcated the love of enemies and forgiveness of injuries; and nobly declared that he would not imitate an example which he condemned. After mature deliberation, Alp Arslan dictated the terms of liberty and peace, a ransom of a million, an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty thousand pieces of gold,37 the marriage of the royal children, and the deliverance of all the Moslems who were in the power of the Greeks. Romanus, with a sigh, subscribed this treaty, so disgraceful to the majesty of the empire: he a 36 This circumstance, which we read and doubt in Scylitzes and Constantine Manasses, is more prudently omitted by Nicephorus and Zonaras. 37 The ransom and tribute are attested by reason and the Orientals. The other Greeks are modestly silent; but Nicephorus Bryennius dares to affirm that the terms were oux avas 'Pauxiwv [p. 44, ed. Bonu], and that the emperor would have preferred death to a shameful treaty. a Elmacin gives 1,500,000. Wilken, Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, vol. i. p. 10.-M. was immediately invested with a Turkish robe of honour; his nobles and patricians were restored to their sovereign; and the sultan, after a courteous embrace, dismissed him with rich presents and a military guard. No sooner did he reach the confines of the empire than he was informed that the palace and provinces had disclaimed their allegiance to a captive; a sum of two hundred thousand pieces was painfully collected; and the fallen monarch transmitted this part of his ransom, with a sad confession of his impotence and disgrace. The generosity, or perhaps the ambition, of the sultan prepared to espouse the cause of his ally; but his designs were prevented by the defeat, imprisonment, and death of Romanus Diogenes. 38 Death of A.D. 1072. In the treaty of peace it does not appear that Alp Arslan extorted any province or city from the captive emperor; and his revenge was satisfied with the trophies of his victory, and Alp Arslan, the spoils of Anatolia, from Antioch to the Black Sea. The fairest part of Asia was subject to his laws: twelve hundred princes, or the sons of princes, stood before his throne; and two hundred thousand soldiers marched under his banners. The sultan disdained to pursue the fugitive Greeks; but he meditated the more glorious conquest of Turkestan, the original seat of the house of Seljuk. He moved from Bagdad to the banks of the Oxus; a bridge was thrown over the river; and twenty days were consumed in the passage of his troops. But the progress of the great king was retarded by the governor of Berzem ; and Joseph the Carizmian presumed to defend his fortress against the powers of the East. When he was produced a captive in the royal tent, the sultan, instead of praising his valour, severely reproached his obstinate folly; and the insolent replies of the rebel provoked a sentence, that he should be fastened to four stakes and left to expire in that painful situation. At this command the desperate Carizmian, drawing a dagger, rushed headlong towards the throne: the guards raised their battle-axes; their zeal was checked by Alp Arslan, the most skilful archer of the age: he drew his bow, but his foot slipped, the arrow glanced aside, and he received in his breast the dagger of Joseph, who was instantly cut in pieces. The wound was mortal; and the Turkish prince bequeathed a dying admonition to the pride of kings. "In my youth," said Alp Arslan, "I was The defeat and captivity of Romanus Diogenes may be found in John Scylitzes ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 835-843 [p. 689-704, ed. Bonn]; Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 281-284 (1. xvii. c. 13-15]; Nicephorus Bryennius, 1. i. p. 25-32 [p. 33-44, ed. Bonn]; Glycas, p. 325-327 [p. 607-611, ed. Bonn]; Constantine Manasses, p. 134 [v. 6594, p. 280, ed. Bonn]; Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 343, 344; Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 227; D'Herbelot, p. 102, 103; De Guignes, tom. iii. p. 207-211. Besides my old acquaintance Elmacin and Abulpharagius, the historian of the Huns has consulted Abulfeda, and his epitomiser Benschounah, a Chronicle of the Caliphs, by Soyouthi, Abulmahasen of Egypt, and Novairi of Africa. |