Buoyed by a certain amount of grudging international respect, and now seen once again as a great power of the Aegean and the Balkans, Byzantium paid little attention to the animosity that was building against it. Seemingly capable of raising vast armies by “stamping its foot,” the empire had cowed its enemies in the East and imposed its will over its provinces in the West. Manuel was so confident of its power that he had even written to the pope, offering in effect to act as the sword arm of the church. But the strength of Byzantium was largely an illusion, built by the smoke and mirrors of three brilliant emperors. The erudite and flashy Manuel may have looked every inch an emperor and impressed all he met with the breadth of his learning, but his victories lacked any real substance. The crusader princes and kings promised him allegiance, but that disappeared with the departure of his armies; and though the Turks had become his vassals, that only lulled the empire to sleep. Without Asia Minor restored to the empire, Byzantium lacked the resources for a permanent recovery, but with one calamitous exception, none of the Comnenian emperors ever attempted to reconquer their lost heartland. Their wars were only defensive, reacting to outside threats instead of trying to repair the extensive damage done by Manzikert.
Manuel’s greatest mistake was his failure to evict the armies of Islam from Anatolia. At the start of his reign, the Danishmend Turks were broken and squabbling, and the sight of the imperial army seemed enough to cow the Seljuks. After humbling the crusader kingdoms, Manuel could have turned his sword against the Turks, but instead he accepted their vassalage and turned his back on them for nearly a decade. The moment the imperial armies left the region, the Seljuks invaded Danishmend territory, easily overcoming their weakened enemies. For the first time in nearly a century, Turkish Asia Minor was once again united under a single strong sultan. Instead of quarreling, divided enemies, Manuel now faced a united, hostile front. In 1176, he tried to correct his mistake, marching with his army to attack the Turkish capital of Iconium, but was ambushed while crossing the pass of Myriocephalum. After nearly a century of rebuilding, the imperial army had been as powerless against the Turks as ever, and its reputation had been irrevocably broken. Imperial strength was revealed as nothing more than a monstrous sham, an illusion based on the emperor’s dazzling style but without real substance.
Manuel lived on for four more years, even managing to ambush a small Turkish army as revenge for his great disaster, but his spirit was diminished, and the tides of history were running against Byzantium. In the fall of 1180, he fell mortally ill, and on September 24 he died, bringing the brilliant century of the Comneni to a close. His death was as most of his life had been: an example of exquisite timing. Having presided over the pinnacle of Byzantine prestige, he exited just as the empire’s power dissolved and the sky grew dark, leaving his successors to face the storm. Those watching his funeral procession unknowingly caught the final glimpse of imperial glory as it faded from view. After Manuel, the entire house of cards came tumbling down.
*One of Alexius’s more unsung contributions to Byzantium was in restoring the gold content of its coins and thereby ending the vicious inflation that was crippling its economy.*Though his body was carried off and interred in Venosa, Italy, the charming town of Fiscardo—where he died—still bears a corrupted form of his name.*He managed to escape from Byzantine territory by concealing himself in a coffin with a decaying rooster to provide an appropriate aroma. While his supporters wept and dressed in mourning clothes, Bohemond’s “coffin” was smuggled onto a ship and delivered safely to Rome.*Among them was his daughter Anna Comnena, who wrote the Alexiad—perhaps the most entertaining Byzantine account of the life and times of Alexius.†The church is still there, tucked unobtrusively into the surrounding masonry, and though it’s now in ruins (and not entirely uninhabited), no tomb has ever been found. Perhaps Alexius sleeps there still in some undiscovered vault, dreaming of happier days.*Unlike earlier Roman emperors who entered Olympic games or gladiatorial contests assured of victory (Nero, Commodus), Manuel was apparently quite proficient at jousting. According to Byzantine accounts, in one tournament he managed to unhorse two famous Italian knights.*The Germans elected to ignore Manuel’s advice and march by the quickest route and were ambushed almost immediately, virtually eliminating the Teutonic army from the struggle. Under the command of the French, the remaining crusaders made the mind-boggling decision to attack Damascus—the one Muslim power that was allied with them—invading at the height of summer. By July 28, 1148, after only five days of a disastrous siege, the various leaders abandoned the attempt in disgust and returned to their homes.
22
SWORDS THAT DRIP WITH CHRISTIAN BLOOD
The speed at which the empire collapsed took even its citizens by surprise. In the past when Byzantium was threatened, great leaders had arrived to save it, but now it seemed as if the imperial stage was conspicuously absent of statesmen. Manuel’s twelve-year-old son, Alexius II, was obviously incapable of dealing with the looming problems facing the empire and could only watch as the Turks advanced unopposed in Asia Minor, the brilliant Stefan Nemanja declared independence for Serbia, and the opportunistic king of Hungary detached Dalmatia and Bosnia from the empire. Some relief arrived when Manuel’s cousin Andronicus seized the throne, but he proved a deeply flawed savior, fully earning his nickname of Andronicus the Terrible.* Gifted with all the brilliance but none of the restraint of his family, he understood only violence, and though he cut down on corruption, his rule quickly descended into a reign of terror. Nearly demented with paranoia, he forced Manuel’s son to sign his own death sentence, had him executed, and, in a final act of depravity, married the eleven-year-old widow. After two years, the people of the capital could take no more and in suitably violent fashion put a new emperor on the throne.
For all his faults, Andronicus the Terrible had at least preserved some sort of central authority in the empire. Isaac Angelus—the man who took his place—founded the dynasty that would throw away the empire’s remaining strength and preside over its complete breakup. Unaccustomed to enforcing his will on others, Isaac sat back while the authority of the central government crumbled. Governors became virtually independent, and friend and foe alike began to realize that Constantinople was impotent. The Aegean and Ionian islands, safely outside the reach of the decaying navy, rebelled almost immediately, and the Balkans slipped forever out of Byzantium’s grasp.
The empire’s misery was compounded by the worsening situation in the Christian East. The Muslim world was united under the brilliant leadership of a Kurdish sultan named Saladin, and the squabbling crusader kingdoms could put up little resistance. In 1187, Jerusalem fell, and inevitably the West launched another Crusade to retake it, again using Constantinople as a staging point. The presence of foreign armies passing through the capital was dangerous at the best of times, but Isaac would have been hard pressed to have handled the situation more poorly. When the German ambassadors arrived to discuss transport to Asia Minor, Isaac panicked and threw them into prison. The enraged German emperor Frederick Barbarossa threatened to turn the Crusade against Constantinople, and the blustering Isaac caved completely, immediately freeing the prisoners and showering them with gold and apologies.