Not everyone was impressed by the emperor’s largesse, however. Misgivings began to be articulated about Alexios’ role and about why the emperor should be benefiting from western strength and skill. A leading cleric on the expedition wrote to Manasses II, archbishop of Rheims, some months later, noting that ‘the princes of the army hastened to meet the emperor who had come to express his gratitude to them. After receiving gifts from him of priceless value, they returned, some feeling kindly towards him, others not.’27 Ironically, it was Alexios’ generosity that caused some of this bitterness. The knights had set out from western Europe to do God’s will and to some, to be financially rewarded by the Byzantines seemed inappropriate.
Alexios’ decision to raise the matter of the oaths once again at Nicaea caused further discontent. Anna Komnene’s claim that her father wanted all those who had previously made commitments to reconfirm them in June 1097 seems unconvincing and is not supported by Latin sources.28 In fact, it was those knights who had not already sworn allegiance that Alexios was seeking to pin down after the fall of Nicaea. Some prominent leaders had escaped his attention in Constantinople. Some, like Tancred, the nephew of Bohemond, had quietly avoided paying homage to the emperor, which he regarded as a yoke of bondage according to his twelfth-century biographer.29 When, after the capture of Nicaea, Tancred too was pressed to take the oath, he protested violently – at least, that is, until he named his price: the same payments as had been given to the other leaders plus some additional incentives. When one Byzantine senior officer lunged at him for his insolence, the two men had to be pulled apart. Once again, it was Bohemond who smoothed things over, persuading Tancred to take the oath.30
Alexios’ efforts to strengthen his personal authority over the expedition after the fall of Nicaea stemmed from his decision not to join the march across Asia Minor in person – at least not for the time being. Although the emperor had advanced to Nicaea to oversee and witness the fall of the town, he was reluctant to venture deeper into Anatolia. Mindful of the dangers of leaving the capital after the problems he had experienced on the eve of the Crusade, he instead chose an experienced and trusted general to lead the western army east. The obvious choice was the emperor’s childhood friend Tatikios. Gnarled and experienced, Tatikios had long proved his loyalty to Alexios, especially during the denouement of the Diogenes conspiracy. He had a slit nose, which he covered with a gold proboscis – likely the result of his loyalty to the emperor during the fierce infighting of the mid1090s.31 Tatikios was appointed to command the force that was to lead the Crusaders across Asia Minor, and to take possession of any towns captured on the route to Jerusalem.32
Alexios’ reluctance to take part in the expedition was understandable given the crisis in Byzantium on the eve of the Crusade. The emperor had told Raymond of Toulouse that he could not lead the knights to Jerusalem because ‘he feared that the Alemanni, Hungarians and Cumans and other savage peoples would ravage his empire if he made the journey with the pilgrims’.33 These were real dangers: the Cuman attack in the spring of 1095 had stretched Byzantium to breaking point, leaving the emperor unable to take direct action, having to stage an elaborate ceremony in Hagia Sophia where he placed two tablets on the altar – one saying he should march against the nomads, the other that he should not; the rest was left up to God.34
In 1097, therefore, the threats to the empire from within and without meant that the risks were simply too high for Alexios to contemplate taking the lead in person. As we shall see, a year later, when desperate reports from Antioch reached Alexios, begging him to head east to relieve the embattled Crusade force which was by that time on the edge of annihilation, there was little the emperor could do to help. The weakness of his position at the time of his appeals to the west underpinned the First Crusade. Nevertheless, Alexios still retained control of the expedition in 1097; although some of the knights agitated to press straight on with their journey after the fall of Nicaea, it was only when the emperor gave his permission to depart that the Crusaders got on their way at the end of June.35
Meanwhile the emperor stayed in northern Asia Minor, monitoring Byzantine attempts to recover the western coast and river valleys of the subcontinent. As soon as Nicaea was secure, Alexios equipped a force and placed it under the command of John Doukas and Constantine Dalassenos, with orders to move on Çaka’s base at Smyrna. From there, they were to retake the other towns on the coast that had fallen to the Turks before turning inland, with Doukas marching up the Maiander valley, while in a flanking movement, Dalassenos was to head north to Abydos. The aim was to recover a substantial swathe of territory in western Asia Minor.36
The emperor’s initiative was supported by the route taken by Tatikios when he set out from Nicaea to lead the Crusaders east at the end of June 1097. Rather than follow the most direct route across central Anatolia, the Byzantine commander led the massive army as far south as Antioch-in-Pisidia.This was done to maximise the Byzantine military presence across the coast and its hinterland as John Doukas’ campaign got under way.37 The idea was to persuade the Turks to surrender on the grounds that they might be otherwise subjected to a massive assault.
To further impress the Turks, Doukas took with him Çaka’s daughter, who had been taken prisoner at Nicaea. She was brought to prove that the town had fallen, and to show that her father’s power was waning. The fact that she was treated well by the Byzantines clearly demonstrated to Çaka’s faltering followers the benefits of co-operating with the emperor.38
The Byzantine campaign that began in the summer of 1097 was spectacularly successful. Smyrna, Ephesus and all the towns on the coast were recovered. Philadelphia, Sardis, Laodikeia, Khoma and Lampe were then taken by force or surrendered as Doukas advanced. By the summer of 1098, the coast and the key nodes of the interior were once again back in imperial hands. Byzantine governors were quickly appointed in the locations that had been regained. All those given such positions – men like Kaspax, Hyaleas, Petzeas, Michael Kekaumenos, Eustathios Kamyztes – were part of the new guard that had emerged after the Diogenes conspiracy. They had been obscure figures before the mid-1090s; now they were on the front line of a major fightback in the empire’s eastern provinces.39
Having caused trouble for the empire for nearly a decade, Çaka himself was finally forced to flee from Smyrna. His fall was dramatic. Arriving in Abydos to take counsel with Kilidj Arslan, he was murdered after a lavish banquet, a sword plunged into his side by the former governor of Nicaea himself. He had become a liability to the Turks of Asia Minor.40
Such was the revival in Byzantine fortunes that Kilidj Arslan sought out the emperor to come to terms with him. As Anna Komnene put it, ‘these did not fail to meet with success’. Although she does not provide any detail of what was agreed, the fact that ‘peace was restored to the maritime provinces’ is a telling indication that Byzantium’s fortunes in Asia Minor had improved suddenly and decisively.41
The most important towns and regions in the eastern provinces were back in imperial hands. And while there was still much to be done if the Turks were to be driven out of the subcontinent altogether, the emperor also had to be pragmatic about how much he could realistically recover in one go. Quite apart from finding enough officers he could trust to reimpose his authority, it was essential that the gains of 1097–8 were made permanent. There was of course the prospect that as the Crusaders marched on from Nicaea, the Turks would regroup and subject the town, and the rest of this region, to renewed pressure. This made the agreement with Kilidj Arslan a welcome development for Alexios, allowing him the scope to rebuild the empire’s position in western Asia Minor properly, and to consolidate the improvement in his own position in Byzantium.