It had been more than 800 years since a Roman emperor had been taken prisoner on the battlefield. Back then, AD 260, that had happened to Valerian. He was defeated by the Persian Shapur I, who then liked to use him as a “living ladder” to mount a horse. In 1071 it hit the Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV (d. 1072) near Manzikert in the extreme east of Anatolia. His opponent, the Seljuk Alp Arslan, was more forgiving. He gave the “Rhomaean” freedom. The consequences for Byzantium but world-historical dimensions. The Turks went over to conquering Asia Minor.
Four years earlier, Romanos Diogenes had won the throne in Constantinople in one of the usual palace revolutions. As a general, the member of a respected family had fought successfully against the Pechenegs in Anatolia, but was then exiled by Constantine X on suspicion of having participated in a conspiracy. After his death, his widow Eudokia took over the regency for their son Michael.
However, it soon became apparent that Eudokia would hardly be able to cope with the foreign policy crises. In the Balkans, the Pechenegs, who came from Asia, continued to be dangerous. In southern Italy, the Normans pushed onto the borders of the empire, in the east the Turkish Oghuz under the (Greater) Seljuk dynasty. Hence the successful general Romanos was recalled from exile and crowned in January 1068.
Strong opposition immediately formed around the Dukoi family, influential exponents of the capital’s official nobility, who not only descended from Constantine X, but also provided a co-regent with the rank of Kaisar (Caesar) with his younger brother Johannes Dukas. They saw the reforms, which Romanos immediately began, as an attack on their sinecure.
Because the so-called “thematic constitution”, to which Byzantium owed its survival against the Arabs and its resurgence as a great power in the 9th and 10th centuries, had been in force since the death of Basileios II, the “Bulgar Killer”, by the greed for land of corrupt officials and been ruined by large landowners. In the themes, military peasants (stratiotes), who managed their own farms, provided the levies that formed the backbone of Byzantine power in cooperation with the Guards troops and the fleet of Constantinople. As in the late Roman Republic of antiquity, the estates of the peasant soldiers were always threatened by the expansion efforts of the large landowners, especially as the campaigns of the emperors assumed ever greater dimensions.
Basil II was the last emperor who had the will and power to rein in the magnates. But after that, the numerous imperial decrees for the protection of the stratiotes disappear from the sources. Their farms fell victim to the big landowners. With this, however, the army and fleet of Byzantium lost their most important pillars. The gaps were more or less closed with mercenaries, because numerous taxpayers disappeared with the peasant middle class, while the nobility did everything to enjoy the “Eckusseia”, the tax immunity or exemption.
Romanos accepted the challenges. He reduced the costs of maintaining the court and administration as best he could and strengthened the army by recruiting mercenaries with the funds that were freed up – Pechenegs, Uzen, Normans, Franks. With them he took up the fight against the Turks, who under Sultan Alp Arslan were now devastating large parts of Anatolia with their raids.
In 1071 the emperor put everything on one card. With almost 70,000 men, he launched a campaign in March and quickly advanced to Armenia. There the fortified town of Manzikert north of Lake Van was conquered. But then the attack faltered.
Romanos had divided his army and ordered the strategist Joseph Tarchaniotes to attack the city of Khelat. There he apparently fell into an ambush by the Seljuks, at least he claimed so. In any case, his army broke up in a wild flight. It is quite possible that Tarchaniotes acted in concert with the Dukoi faction. For he did not seem to have even considered it necessary to inform the Emperor of his withdrawal.
Romanos was therefore completely surprised when, on August 26, 1071, Alp Arslan marched up in front of him and attacked the camp with horse archers. Its fortifications withstood the attacks. But many of the emperor’s Turkic mercenaries took this as an opportunity to switch sides.
Nevertheless, the imperial army was able to advance, disturbed only by the swift Seljuk horsemen on the flanks. Finally, the Byzantine heavy cavalry rushed forward – “right into the carefully prepared ambushes” of the Turks, writes the British historian John J. Norwich. “But for the increasingly disappointed Emperor in the center, the spot where the enemy should have been remained empty.”
Only after he ordered the retreat to camp did the Turks attack, having outflanked the Byzantine army. The rear guard, commanded by the Dukas Prince Adronikos, hastily left the battlefield.
Romanos was captured. The dialogue between him and Alp Arslan has been preserved: “What would you do if I were brought to you as a prisoner?” asked the sultan. “Perhaps I would have killed you or displayed you in the streets of Constantinople,” replied the loser. The winner responded: “My punishment is far more severe. I forgive you and set you free.”
It was a death sentence. Because for the Dukoi and their allies, the treaty to which Romanos had to commit was an ideal argument to defame the returning emperor. After that, Antioch, Edessa, Hieropolis and Manzikert, an imperial princess as a bride for one of his sons and a ransom, as well as 1.5 million pieces of gold and an annual tribute were to be delivered to the Seljuks.
Michael VII Dukas was proclaimed emperor. In return, red-hot irons were pressed into Romano’s eyes. With the maggots “falling off his face,” he was taken to an island in the Sea of Marmara, where he died shortly thereafter.
The consequences were fatal. Since Michael VII refused to fulfill the obligations arising from the contract with Romanos, Alp Arslan and his son Malik Shah, who followed him in 1072, no longer saw themselves as bound by the agreement. Their people immediately began to systematically settle in Anatolia. Only the coastal areas were controlled by Constantinople. The hinterland, however, became Turkish and became an independent kingdom as the Sultanate of Rum.
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