THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY
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THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY |
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THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE-BOOK II-CHAPTER II
SECTION I B REIGN OF JOHN I ZIMISKES
John
I was a daring warrior and an able general. He was thoughtless, generous, and
addicted to the pleasures of the table, so that, though he was by no means a
better emperor than Nicephorus, he was far more popular at Constantinople :
hence we find that his base assassination of his sovereign and relative was
easily pardoned and forgotten, while the fiscal severity of his predecessor was
never forgiven. The court of Constantinople was so utterly corrupt, that it was
relieved from all sense of responsibility; the aristocracy knew no law but fear
and private interest, and no crime was so venial as successful ambition. The
throne was a stake for which every courtier held it lawful to gamble, who was
inclined to risk his eyes or his life to gain an empire. Yet we must observe
that both Nicephorus and John were men of nobler minds than the nobles around
them, for both respected the rights and persons of their wards and legitimate
princes, Basil and Constantine, and contented themselves with the post of
prime-minister and the rank of emperor.
The
chamberlain Basilios had been rewarded by Nicephorus, for his services in
aiding him to mount the throne, with the rank of President of the Council, a
dignity created on purpose. He was now entrusted by John with the complete
direction of the civil administration. The partisans of Nicephorus were removed
from all offices of trust, and their places filled by men devoted to Zimiskes,
or hostile to the family of Phokas. All political exiles were recalled, and a
parade of placing the young emperors, Basil and Constantine, on an equality
with their senior colleague was made, as an insinuation that they had hitherto
been retained in an unworthy state of inferiority. At the same time, measures
were adopted to prevent the rabble of the capital from plundering the houses of
the wealthy nobles who had been dismissed from their appointments, which was a
usual proceeding at every great political revolution in Constantinople.
The
coronation of John I was delayed by the Patriarch for a few days, for
Polyeuktes lost no opportunity of showing his authority. He therefore refused
to perform the ceremony until Zimiskes declared that he hart not imbued his
hands in the blood of his sovereign. He pointed out his fellow-conspirators,
Leo Valantes and Atzypotheodoros, as the murderers, and excused himself by
throwing the whole blame of the murder on the Empress Theophano. The officers thus
sacrificed were exiled, and the empress was removed from the imperial palace.
John was then admitted to the favor of the Patriarch, on consenting to abrogate
the law of Nicephorus, providing that the candidates for ecclesiastical dignities
should receive the emperor's approbation before their election, and promising
to bestow all his private fortune in charity. After his coronation, he
accordingly distributed one-half of his fortune among the poor peasants round
Constantinople, and employed the other in founding an hospital for lepers, in
consequence of that disease having greatly increased about this time. He also
increased his popularity by remitting the tribute of the Armeniac theme, which
was his native province, and by Priding to the largesses which it was customary
for the emperor to distribute.
Basilios Appointed Patriarch. AD 969 The
Patriarch Polyeuktes died about three months after the coronation, and Zimiskes
selected Basilios, a monk of Mount Olympus, as his successor; and without
paying any respect to the canons which forbid the interference of the laity in
the election of bishops, he ordered him to be installed in his dignity. The
monk proved less compliant than the emperor expected. After occupying the
patriarchal chair about five years, he was deposed for refusing to appear
before the emperor to answer an accusation of treason. The Patriarch declared
the emperor incompetent to sit as his judge, asserting that he could only be
judged or deposed by a synod or general council of the church. He was
nevertheless banished to a monastery he had built on the Scamander, and from
which he is called Scamandrinos. Antonios, the abbot of Studio; was appointed
Patriarch in his place.
The
family of Phokas had so long occupied the highest military commands, and
disposed of the patronage of the empire, that it possessed a party too powerful
to be immediately reduced to submission. The reign of John was disturbed by
more than one rebellion excited by its members. Leo, the brother of Nicephorus,
had distinguished himself by gaining a great victory over the Saracens in the
defiles of Kylindros, near Andrassos, while his brother was occupied with the
conquest of Crete. During the reign of Nicephorus he held the office of curopalates, but had rendered himself
hated on account of his rapacity. His second son, Bardas Phokas, held the
office of governor of Koloneia and Chaldia when Nicephorus was murdered, and
was banished to Amasia. Bardas was one of the best soldiers and boldest
champions in the Byzantine army. In the year 97o he escaped from confinement,
and rendered himself master of Caesarea, where he assumed the title of Emperor.
In the meantime his father, escaping from Lesbos, and his elder brother
Nicephorus from Imbros, attempted to raise a rebellion in Europe. These two
were soon captured, and John, satisfied that he had ruined the family when he
murdered the Emperor Nicephorus, spared their lives, and allowed the sentence
which condemned them to lose their eyes to be executed in such a way that they
retained their eyesight. Bardas, however, gave the emperor some trouble, and it
was necessary to recall Bardas Skleros from the Russian war to take the command
against him. Phokas, when deserted by his army, escaped to a castle he had
fortified as a place of refuge, where he defended himself until Skleros
persuaded him to surrender, on a promise that he should receive no personal
injury. Zimiskes, who admired his daring courage, condemned him to reside in
the island of Chios, and adopt the monastic robe. His father Leo, who escaped a
second time from confinement, and visited Constantinople in the hope of
rendering himself master of the palace during the absence of the emperor, was
discovered, and dragged from St. Sophia's, in which he sought an asylum. His
eyes were then put out, and his immense estates confiscated.
Transportation of Manichaeans John,
in order to connect himself with the Basilian dynasty, married Theodora, one of
the daughters of Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Another more important
marriage is passed unnoticed by the Byzantine writers. Zimiskes, finding that
he could ill spare troops to defend the Byzantine possessions in Italy against
the attacks of the Western emperor, released Pandulf of Beneventum, after he
had remained three years a prisoner at Constantinople, and by his means opened
amicable communications with Otho the Great. A treaty of marriage was concluded
between young Otho and Theophano, the sister of the Emperors Basil and
Constantine. The nuptials were celebrated at Rome on the 14th of April 972; and
the talents and beauty of the Byzantine princess enabled her to act a prominent
and noble part in the history of her time.
A
curious event in the history of the Eastern Empire, which ought not to pass
unnoticed, is the transportation of a number of heretics, called by historians
Manicheans, from the eastern provinces of Asia Minor, to increase the colonies
of Paulicians and other heretics already established round Philippopolis. This
is said to have been done by the Emperor John, by advice of a hermit named
Theodoros, whom he elevated to the dignity of Patriarch of Antioch. The
continual mention of numerous communities of heretics in Byzantine history
proves that there is no greater delusion than to speak of the unity of the
Christian church. Dissent appears to have been quite as prevalent, both in the
Eastern and Western churches, before the time of Luther, as it has been since.
Because the Greeks and Italians have been deficient in religious feeling, and
their superior knowledge enabled them to affect contempt for other races, the
history of dissent has been neglected, and religious investigation decried under
the appellation of heresy.
Russian wars The
Russian war was the great event of the reign of John Zimiskes. The military
fame of the Byzantine emperor, who was unquestionably the ablest general of his
time, the greatness of the Russian nation, whose power now overshadows Europe,
the scene of the contest, destined in our day to be again the battlefield of
Russian armies in a more successful campaign, and the political interest which
attaches to the first attempt of a Russian prince to march by land to
Constantinople, all combine to give a practical as well as a romantic interest
to this war.
The
first Russian naval expedition against Constantinople in 865 would probably
have been followed by a series of plundering excursions, like those carried on
by the Danes and Normans on the coasts of England and France, had not the
Turkish tribe called the Patzinaks rendered themselves masters of the lower
course of the Dnieper, and become instruments in the hands of the emperors to
arrest the activity of the bold Varangians. The northern rulers of Fief were
the same rude warriors that infested England and France, but the Russian
people was then in a more advanced state of society than the mass of the
population in Britain and Gaul. The majority of the Russians were freemen; the
majority of the inhabitants of Britain and Gaul were serfs. The commerce of
the Russians was already so extensive as to influence the conduct of their
government, and to modify the military ardor of their Varangian masters. But
this commerce, after the fall of the Khazar empire, and the invasion of Europe
by the Magyars and Patzinaks, was carried on under obstacles which tended to
reduce its extent and diminish its profits, and which it required no common
degree of skill and perseverance to overcome. The wealth revealed to the
rapacious Varangian chiefs of Kiev by the existence of this trade invited them
to attack Constantinople, which appeared to be the centre of immeasurable
riches.
After
the defeat in 865, the Russians induced their rulers to send envoys to
Constantinople to renew commercial intercourse, and invite Christian
missionaries to visit their country; and no inconsiderable portion of the
people embraced Christianity, though it continued long after better known to
the Russian merchants than to the Varangian warriors. The commercial relations
of the Russians with Cherson and Constantinople were now carried on directly,
and numbers of Russian traders took up their residence in these cities. The
first commercial treaty between the Russians of Kiev and the Byzantine empire
was concluded in the reign of Basil I. The intercourse increased from that
time. In the year 902, seven hundred Russians are mentioned as serving on board
the Byzantine fleet with high pay; in 935, seven Russian vessels, with 415 men,
formed part of a Byzantine expedition to Italy; and in 949, six Russian
vessels, with 629 men, were engaged in the unsuccessful expedition of Gongyles
against Crete. In 966, a corps of Russians accompanied the unfortunate expedition
of Niketas to Sicily. There can be no doubt that these were all Varangians,
familiar, like the Danes and Normans in the West, with the dangers of the sea,
and not native Russians, whose services on board the fleet could have been of
little value to the masters of Greece.
But
to return to the history of the Byzantine wars with the Russians. In the year
907, Oleg, who was regent of Kiev during the minority of Igor the son of Rurik,
assembled an army of Varangians, Slavonians, and Croatians, and, collecting two
thousand vessels or boats of the kind then used on the northern shore of the
Euxine, advanced to attack Constantinople. The exploits of this army, which
pretended to aspire at the conquest of Tzaragrad, or the City of the Caesars,
were confined to plundering the country round Constantinople; and it is not
improbable that the expedition was undertaken to obtain indemnity for some
commercial losses sustained by imperial negligence, monopoly, or oppression.
The
subjects of the emperor were murdered, and the Russians amused themselves with
torturing their captives in the most barbarous manner. At length Leo purchased
their retreat by the payment of a large sum of money. Such is the account
transmitted to us by the Russian monk Nestor, for no Byzantine writer notices
the expedition, which was doubtless nothing more than a plundering incursion,
in which the city of Constantinople was not exposed to any danger. These
hostilities were terminated by a commercial treaty in 912, and its conditions
are recorded in detail by Nestor.
In the year 941, Igor made an attack on Constantinople, impelled either by the spirit of adventure, which was the charm of existence among all the tribes of Northmen, or else roused to revenge by some violation of the treaty of 912. The Russian flotilla, consisting of innumerable small vessels, made its appearance in the Bosphorus while the Byzantine fleet was absent in the Archipelago. Igor landed at different places on the coast of Thrace and Bithynia, ravaging and plundering the country; the inhabitants were treated with incredible cruelty; some were crucified, others were burned alive, the Greek priests were killed by driving nails into their heads, and the churches were destroyed. Only fifteen ships remained at Constantinople, but these were soon fitted up with additional tubes for shooting Greek fire. This force, trifling as it was in number, gave the Byzantines an immediate superiority at sea, and the patrician Theophanes sailed out of the port to attack the Russians. Igor, seeing the small number of the enemy's ships, surrounded them on all sides, and endeavored to carry them by boarding; but the Greek fire became only so much more available against boats and men crowded together, and the attack was repulsed with fearful loss. In the meantime, some of the Russians who landed in Bithynia were defeated by Bardas Phokas and John Kurkuas, and those who escaped from the naval defeat were pursued and slaughtered on the coast of Thrace without mercy. The Emperor Romanus ordered all the prisoners brought to Constantinople to be beheaded. Theophanes overtook the fugitive ships in the month of September, and the relics of the expedition were destroyed, Igor effecting his escape with only a few boats. The Russian Chronicle of Nestor says that, in the year 944, Igor, assisted by other Varangians, and by the Patzirt, prepared a second expedition, but that the inhabitants of Cherson so alarmed the Emperor Romanus by their reports of its magnitude, that he sent ambassadors, who met Igor at the mouth of the Danube, and sued for peace on terms to which Igor and his boyards consented. This is probably merely a salve applied to the vanity of the people of Kiev by their chronicler; but it is certain that a treaty of peace was concluded between the emperors of Constantinople and the princes of Kiev in the year 945. The stipulations of this treaty prove the importance attached to the commerce carried on by the Russians with Cherson and Constantinople. The two Russo-Byzantine treaties preserved by Nestor are documents of great importance in tracing the history of civilization in the east of Europe. The attention paid to the commercial interests of the Russian traders visiting Cherson and Constantinople, and the prominence given to questions of practical utility instead of to points of dynastic ambition, may serve as a contrast to many modern treaties in the west of Europe. The trading classes would not have been powerful enough to
command this attention to their interests on the part of the warlike
Varangians, had a numerous body of free citizens not been closely connected
with the commercial prosperity of Russia. Unfortunately for the people, the
municipal independence of their cities, which had enabled each separate community
to acquire wealth and civilization, was not joined to any central institutions
that insured order and a strict administration of justice, consequently each
city fell separately a prey to the superior military force of the comparatively
barbarian Varangians of Scandinavia. The Varangian conquest of Russia had very
much the same effect as the Danish and Norman conquests in the West.
Politically, the nation appeared more powerful, but the condition of all ranks
of the people socially was much deteriorated. It was, however, the Tartar
invasion which separates the modem and the medieval history of Russia, and
which plunged the country into the state of barbarism and slavery from which
Peter the Great first raised it.
The
cruelty of the Varangian prince Igor, after his return to Russia, caused him to
be murdered by his rebellious subjects. Olga, his widow, became regent for
their son Swiatoslaff. She embraced the Christian religion, and visited
Constantinople in 957, where she was baptized. The Emperor Constantine
Porphyrogenitus has left us an account of the ceremony of her reception at the
Byzantine court. A monk has preserved the commercial treaties of the empire,
an emperor records the pageantry that amused a Russian princess. The high
position occupied by the court of Kiev in the tenth century is also attested
by the style with which it was addressed by the court of Constantinople. The
golden bulls of the Roman emperor of the East, addressed to the prince of Russia,
were ornamented with a pendent seal equal in size to a double solidus, like
those addressed to the kings of France.
We
have seen that the Emperor Nicephorus II sent the patrician Kalokyres to excite
Swiatoslaff to invade Bulgaria, and that the Byzantine ambassador proved a
traitor and assumed the purple. Swiatoslaff soon invaded Bulgaria at the head
of a powerful army, which the gold brought by Kalokyres assisted him to equip,
and defeated the Bulgarian army in a great battle, AD 968. Peter, king of
Bulgaria, died shortly after, and the country was involved in civil broils;
taking advantage of which, Swiatoslaff took Presthlava the capital, and
rendered himself master of the whole kingdom. Nicephorus now formed an alliance
with the Bulgarians, and was preparing to defend them against the Russians,
when Swiatoslaff was compelled to return home, in order to defend his capital
against the Patzinaks. Nicephorus assisted Boris and Romanus, the sons of
Peter, to recover Bulgaria, and concluded an offensive and defensive alliance
with Boris, who occupied the throne. After the assassination of Nicephorus,
Swiatoslaff returned to invade Bulgaria with an army of 6o,000 men, and his
enterprise assumed the character of one of those great invasions which had
torn whole provinces from the Western Empire.
His
army was increased by a treaty with the Patzinaks and an alliance with the
Hungarians, so that he began to dream of the conquest of Constantinople, and
hoped to transfer the empire of the East from the Romans of Byzantium to the
Russians. It was fortunate for the Byzantine empire that it was ruled by a
soldier who knew how to profit by its superiority in tactics and discipline.
The Russian was not ignorant of strategy, and having secured his flank by his alliance
with the Hungarians, he entered Thrace by the western passes of Mount Haemus,
then the most frequented road between Germany and Constantinople, and that by
which the Hungarians were in the habit of making their plundering incursions
into the empire.
Rusian War. AD 971 John
Zimiskes was occupied in the East when Swiatoslaff completed the second
conquest of Bulgaria and passed Mount Haemus, expecting to subdue Thrace during
the emperor's absence with equal ease, AD 97o. The empire was still suffering
from famine. Swiatoslaff took Philippopolis, and murdered twenty thousand of
the inhabitants. An embassy sent by Zimiskes was dismissed with a demand of
tribute, and the Russian army advanced to Arcadiopolis, where one division was
defeated by Bardas Skleros, and the remainder retired again behind Mount Haemus.
In
the following spring, 971, the Emperor John took the field at the head of an
army of fifteen thousand infantry and thirteen thousand cavalry, besides a
bodyguard of chosen troops called the Immortals, and a powerful battery of
field and siege engines. A fleet of three hundred galleys, attended by many
smaller vessels, was despatched to enter the Danube and cut off the
communications of the Russians with their own country.
Military
operations for the defence and attack of Constantinople are dependent on some
marked physical features of the country between the Danube and Mount Haemus.
The Danube, with its broad and rapid stream, and line of fortresses on its
southern bank, would be an impregnable barrier to a military power possessing
an active ally in Hungary and Servia; for it is easy to descend the river and
concentrate the largest force on any desired point of attack, to cut off the
communications or disturb the flanks of the invaders. Even after the line of the
Danube is lost, that of Mount Haemus covers Thrace; and it formed a rampart to
Constantinople in many periods of danger under the Byzantine emperors. It was
then traversed by three great military roads passable for chariots. The first,
which has a double gorge, led from Philippopolis to Sardica by the pass called
the Gates of Trajan (now Kapou Dervend), throwing out three branches from the
principal trunk to Naissos and Belgrade. The great pass forms the point of
communication likewise with the upper valley of the Strymon, from Skupi to
Ulpiana, and the northern parts of Macedonia. Two secondary passes communicate
with this road to the north-east, affording passage for an army—that of
Kezanlik, and that of Isladi; and these form the shortest lines of communication
between Philippopolis and the Danube about Nicopolis, through Bulgaria. The
second great pass is towards the centre of the range of Haemus, and has
preserved among the Turks its Byzantine name of the Iron Gate. It is situated
on the direct line of communication between Adrianople and Roustchouk. Through
this pass a good road might easily be constructed. The third great pass is
that to the east, forming the great line of communication between Adrianople
and the Lower Danube near Silistria (Dorystolon). It is called by the Turks
Nadir Dervend. The range of Haemus has several other passes independent of
these, and its parallel ridges present numerous defiles. The celebrated Turkish
position at Shoumla is adapted to cover several of these passes, converging on
the great eastern road to Adrianople.
The
Emperor John marched from Adrianople just before Easter, when it was not
expected that a Byzantine emperor would take the field. He knew that the passes
on the great eastern road had been left unguarded by the Russians, and he led
his army through all the defiles of Mount Haemus without encountering any
difficulty. The Russian troops stationed at Presthlava, who ought to have
guarded the passes, marched out to meet the emperor when they heard he had entered
Bulgaria. Their whole army consisted of infantry; but the soldiers were covered
with chain armour, and accustomed to resist the light cavalry of the Patzinaks
and other Turkish tribes. They proved, however, no match for the heavy-armed
lancers of the imperial army; and, after a vigorous resistance, were completely
routed by John Zimiskes, leaving eight thousand five hundred men on the field
of battle. On the following day Presthlava was taken by escalade, and a body of
seven thousand Russians and Bulgarians, who attempted to defend the royal
palace, which was fortified as a citadel, were put to the sword after a gallant
defence. Sphengelos, who commanded this division of the Russian force, and the
traitor Kalokyres, succeeded in escaping to Dorystolon, where Swiatoslaff had
concentrated the rest of the army; but Boris, king of Bulgaria, with all his
family, was taken prisoner in his capital.
The emperor, after celebrating Easter in Presthlava, advanced by Pliscova and Dinea to Dorystolon, where Swiatoslaff still hoped for victory, though his position was becoming daily more dangerous. The Byzantine fleet entered the Danube and took up its station opposite the city, cutting off all the communications of the Russians by water, at the same time that the emperor encamped before the walls and blockaded them by land. Zimiskes, knowing he had to deal with a desperate enemy, fortified his camp with a ditch and rampart according to the old Roman model, which was traditionally preserved by the Byzantine engineers. The Russians enclosed within the walls of Dorystolon were more numerous than their besiegers, and Swaitoslaff hoped to be able to open his communications with the surrounding country, by bringing on a general engagement in the plain before all the defenses of the camp were completed. He hoped to defeat the attacks of the Byzantine cavalry by forming his men in squares, and, as the Russian soldiers were covered by long shields that reached to their feet, he expected to be able, by advancing his squares like moving towers, to clear the plain of the enemy. But while the Byzantine legions met the Russians in front, the heavy-armed cavalry assailed them with their long spears in flank, and the archers and slingers under cover watched coolly to transfix every man where an opening allowed their missiles to penetrate. The
battle nevertheless lasted all day, but in the evening the Russians were compelled,
in spite of their desperate velour, to retire into Dorystolon without having
effected anything. The infantry of the north now began to feel its inferiority
to the veteran cavalry of Asia sheathed in plate armour, and disciplined by
long campaigns against the Saracens. Swiatoslaff, however, continued to defend
himself by a series of battles rather than sorties, in which he made desperate
efforts to break through the ranks of his besiegers in vain, until at length it
became evident that he must either conclude peace, die on the field of battle,
or be starved to death in Dorystolon. Before resigning himself to his fate, he
made a last effort to cut his way through the Byzantine army; and on this
occasion the Russians fought with such desperation, that contemporaries
ascribed the victory of the Byzantine troops, not to the superior tactics of
the emperor, nor to the discipline of a veteran army, but to the personal
assistance of St. Theodore, who found it necessary to lead the charge of the
Roman lancers, and shiver a spear with the Russians himself, before their
phalanx could be broken. The victory was complete, and Swiatoslaff sent
ambassadors to the emperor to offer terms of peace.
The
siege of Dorystolon had now lasted more than two months, and the Russian army,
though reduced by repeated losses, still amounted to twenty-two thousand men.
The valor and contempt of death which the Varangians had displayed in the
contest, convinced the emperor that it would cause the loss of many brave
veterans to insist on their laying down their arms; he was therefore willing to
come to terms, and peace was concluded on condition that Swiatoslaff should
yield up Dorystolon, with all the plunder, slaves, and prisoners in possession
of the Russians, and engage to swear perpetual amity with the empire, and never
to invade either the territory of Cherson or the kingdom of Bulgaria; while, on
the other hand, the Emperor John engaged to allow the Russians to descend the
Danube in their boats, to supply them with two medimni of wheat for each
surviving soldier, to enable them to return home without dispersing to plunder
for their subsistence, and to renew the old commercial treaties between Kiev
and Constantinople, July, 971.
After
the treaty was concluded, Swiatoslaff desired to have a personal interview with
his conqueror. John rode down to the bank of the Danube clad in splendid armour,
and accompanied by a brilliant suite of guards on horseback. The short figure
of the emperor was no disadvantage where he was distinguished by the beauty of
his charger and the splendor of his arms, while his fair countenance, light
hair, and piercing blue eyes fixed the attention of all on his bold and good-humored
face, which contrasted well with the dark and sombre visages of his attendants.
Swiatoslaff arrived by water in a boat, which he steered himself with an oar.
His dress was white, differing in no way from that of those under him, except
in being cleaner. Sitting in the stern of his boat, he conversed for a short
time with the emperor, who remained on horseback close to the beach. The
appearance of the bold Varangian excited much curiosity, and is thus described
by a historian who was intimate with many of those who were present at the
interview : the Russian was of the middle stature, well formed, with strong
neck and broad chest. His eyes were blue, his eyebrows thick, his nose flat, and
his beard shaved, but his upper lip was shaded with long and thick mustaches.
The hair of his head was cropped close, except two long locks which hung down
on each side of his face and were thus worn as a mark of his Scandinavian race.
In his ears he wore golden earrings ornamented with a ruby between two pearls,
and his expression was stern and fierce.
Swiatoslaff
immediately quitted Dorystolon, but he was obliged to winter on the shores of
the Euxine, and famine thinned his ranks. In spring he attempted to force his
way through the territory of the Patzinaks with his diminished army. He was
defeated, and perished near the cataracts of the Dnieper. Kour, prince of the
Patzinaks, became the possessor of his skull, which he shaped into a
drinking-cup, and adorned with the moral maxim, doubtless not less suitable to
his own skull, had it fallen into the hands of others, "He who covets the
property of others, oft loses his own". We have already had occasion to
record that the skull of the Byzantine emperor, Nicephorus I, had ornamented the
festivals of a Bulgarian king; that of a Russian sovereign now figured in the
tents of a Turkish tribe.
The
results of the campaign were as advantageous to the Byzantine empire as they
were glorious to the Emperor John.
Bulgaria
was conquered, a strong garrison established in Dorystolon, and the Danube
once more became the frontier of the Roman empire. The peace with the Russians
was uninterrupted until about the year 988, when, from some unknown cause of
quarrel, Vladimir the son of Swiatoslaff attacked and gained possession of
Cherson by cutting off the water.
Ther Republic of Cherson The Greek city of Cherson, situated on the extreme verge of ancient civilization, escaped for ages from the impoverishment and demoralization into which the Hellenic race was precipitated by the Roman system of concentrating all power in the capital of the empire. Cherson was governed for centuries by its own elective magistrates, and it was not until towards the middle of the ninth century that the Emperor Theophilus destroyed its independence. The people, however, still retained in their own hands some control over their local administration, though the Byzantine government lost no time in undermining the moral foundation of the free institutions which had defended a single city against many barbarous nations that had made the Roman emperors tremble. The inhabitants of Cherson long looked with indifference on the favor of the Byzantine emperor, cherished the institutions of Hellas, and boasted of their self-govemment. A thousand years after the rest of the Greek nation was sunk in
irremediable slavery, Cherson remained free. Such a phenomenon as the
existence of manly feeling in one city, when mankind everywhere else slept
contented in a state of political degradation, deserved attentive
consideration. Indeed, we may be better able to appreciate correctly the
political causes that corrupted the Greeks in the Eastern Empire, if we can
ascertain those which enabled Cherson, though surrounded by powerful enemies
and barbarous nations, to preserve
"A
Homer's language murmuring in her streets,
And
in her haven many a mast from Tyre."
In
the year 332, when Constantine the Great, in his declining age, had laid aside
the warlike energy of his earlier years, the Goths and Sarmatians invaded the
Roman empire. The emperor called on the inhabitants of Cherson, who were then
presided over by Diogenes, to take up arms. They sent a force well furnished
with field-machines to attack the Goths, who had already crossed the Danube,
and defeated the barbarians with great slaughter. Constantine, to reward their
promptitude in the service of the empire, sent them a golden statue of himself
in imperial robes, to be placed in the hall of the senate, accompanied with a
charter ratifying every privilege and commercial immunity granted to their city
by preceding emperors. He bestowed on them also an annual supply of the
materials necessary for constructing the warlike machines of which they had
made such good use, and pay for a thousand artillerymen to work these engines.
This subsidy continued to be paid in the middle of the tenth century, in the
time of Constantine Porphyrogenitus.
Years
passed on, and Sauromates, the grandson of him who invaded the empire in the
time of Diocletian, determining to efface the memory of his grandfather's
disgrace, declared war with Cherson. He was defeated by Vyskos, the president
of Cherson, at Kapha, and compelled to conclude a treaty of peace, by which
Kapha was declared the frontier of the territory of Cherson. Another Sauromates,
having succeeded to the throne of Bosporos, determined to regain possession of
Kapha, when Pharnakes was president of Cherson. A single combat between the
gigantic king and the patriotic president, in which Sauromates was slain,
terminated this war. The dynasty of the Sauromatan family ended, and Bosporos,
becoming a free city in alliance with Cherson, raised a statue to Phamakes as
a testimony of his moderation and philanthropy.
Again,
after an interval of years, Lamachos was president of Cherson, but the people
of Bosporos, corrupted by the memory of a court, and loving pageantry better
than liberty, had elected a king named Asandros. The Bosporians proposed that
the son of Asandros should marry the only daughter of Lamachos, in order to
draw closer the alliance between the two states; and to this the Chersonites
consented, but only on condition that the young Asander should take up his
residence in Cherson, and engage never to return to Bosporos—not even to pay
the shortest visit to the king his father, or any of his relations—under pain
of death. The marriage was celebrated, and Asander dwelt with the young Gycia
in the palace of Lamachos, which was a building of regal splendor, covering
four of the quadrangles marked out by the intersection of the streets in the
quarter of Cherson called Sousa, and having its own private gate in the city
walls. Two years after the celebration of this marriage, Lamachos died; his
daughter inherited the whole of his princely fortune, and Zetho was elected
president of Cherson. At the end of a year, Gycia went out to decorate her father's
tomb, and wishing to honor his memory with the greatest solemnity, she received
permission from the president and senate to entertain the whole body of the
citizens of Cherson, with their wives and children, at a funeral banquet on the
anniversary of her father's death as long as she lived. The celebration of this
festival suggested to her husband a plan of rendering himself tyrant of
Cherson, and for two years he collected men and warlike stores secretly from
Bosporos, by means of the ships employed in his commercial affairs. These he
concealed in the immense warehouses enclosed within the walls of his wife's
palace. Three of his own followers from Bosporos were alone entrusted with the
secret of his plot. After a lapse of two years, Asander had collected two
hundred Bosporians, with their armour, in the palace of Gycia, and was waiting
for the approaching anniversary of the death of Lamachos to destroy the liberty
of Cherson.
It
happened at this time that a favorite maid of Gycia, offending her mistress,
was ordered to be banished from her presence, and confined in a room over the
warehouse in which the Bosporians were concealed. As the girl was sitting
alone, singing and spinning, her spindle dropped, and rolled along the floor
till it fell into a hole near the wall, from which she could only recover it by
raising up one of the tiles of the pavement. Leaning down, she saw through the
ceiling a crowd of men in the warehouse below, whom she knew by their dress to
be Bosporians, and soldiers. She immediately called a servant, and sent him to
her mistress, conjuring her to come to see her in her prison. Gycia, curious to
see the effect of the punishment on her favorite, visited her immediately, and
was shown the strange spectacle of a crowd of foreign soldiers and a magazine
of arms concealed in her own palace. The truth flashed on her mind; she saw her
husband was plotting to become the tyrant of her native city, and every feeling
of her heart was wounded.
She
assembled her relations, and by their means communicated secretly with the
senate, revealing the plot to a chosen committee, on obtaining a solemn promise
that when she died she should be buried within the walls of the city, though
such a thing was at variance with the Hellenic usages of Cherson. Whether from
the danger of attacking two hundred heavy-armed men, or to avoid war with
Bosporos, the president and senate of Cherson determined to destroy the
conspiracy by burning the enemy in their place of concealment, and Gycia
willingly gave her ancestral palace to the flames to save her country.
When
the day of the anniversary of her father's funeral arrived, Gycia ordered the
preparations for the annual feast to be made with more than ordinary
liberality, and Asander was lavish in his distribution of wine; but due
precautions had been taken that the gates of the city should be closed at the
usual hour, and all the citizens in their dwellings. At the banquet in her own
palace Gycia drank water out of a purple goblet, while the servant who waited
on Asander served him with the richest wines. To the delight of her husband,
Gycia proposed that all should retire to rest at an early hour, and she took a
last melancholy leave of her husband, who hastened to give his three confidants
their instructions, and then lay down to rest until the midnight should call
him to complete his treachery. The gates, doors, and windows of the palace were
shut up, and the keys, as usual, laid beside Gycia. Her maids had packed up all
her jewels, and when Asander was plunged in a sound sleep from the wine he had
drank, Gycia rose, locked every door of the palace as she passed, and hastened
out, accompanied by her slaves. Order was immediately given to set fire to the
building on every side, and thus the liberty of Cherson was saved by the
patriotism of Gycia.
The
spot where the palace had stood remained a vacant square in the time of the
Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and Gycia during her lifetime would never
allow even the ruins to be cleared away. Her countrymen erected two statues of
bronze to honor her patriotism—one in the public agora, showing her in the
flower of youth, dressed in her native costume, as when she saved her country;
the other clad as a heroine armed to defend the city. On both inscriptions
were placed commemorating her services and no better deed could be done at
Cherson than to keep the bases of these statues bright and the inscriptions
legible, that the memory of the treachery of the king's son, and the gratitude
due to the patriotism of Gycia, might be ever fresh in the hearts of the
citizens.
Some
years after this, when Stratophilos was president, Gycia, suspecting that the
gratitude of her countrymen was so weakened that they would no longer be
inclined to fulfil their promise of burying her within the walls, pretended to
be dead. The event was as she feared; but when the procession had passed the
gates, she rose up from the bier and exclaimed, "Is this the way the people
of Cherson keep their promise to the preserver of their liberty?" Shame
proved more powerful than gratitude. The Chersonites now swore again to bury
her in the city, if she would pardon their falsehood. A tomb was accordingly
built during her lifetime, and a gilded statue of bronze was erected over it,
as an assurance that the faith of Cherson should not be again violated. In that
tomb Gycia was buried, and it stood uninjured in the tenth century, when an
emperor of Constantinople, impressed with admiration of her patriotism, so
unlike anything he had seen among the Greek inhabitants of his own wide
extended empire, transmitted a record of her deeds to posterity.
Cherson retained its position as an independent state until the reign of Theophilus, who compelled it to receive a governor from Constantinople; but, even under the Byzantine government, it continued to defend its municipal institutions, and, instead of slavishly soliciting the imperial favour, and adopting Byzantine manners, it boasted of its constitution and self-govemment. But it lost gradually its former wealth and extensive trade; and when Vladimir, the sovereign of Russia, attacked it in 988, it yielded almost without a struggle. The great object of ambition of all the princes of the East, from the time of
Heraclius to that of the last Comnenos of Trebizond, was to form matrimonial
alliances with the imperial family. Vladimir obtained the hand of Anne, the sister
of the Emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII, and was baptised and married in
the Church of the Panaghia at Cherson. To soothe the vanity of the empire, he
pretended to retain possession of his conquest as the dowry of his wife. Many
of the priests who converted the Russians to Christianity, and many of the
artists who adorned the earliest Russian churches with paintings and mosaics,
were natives of Cherson. The church raised Vladimir to the rank of a saint; the
Russians conferred on him the title of the Great.
Death of John John
Zimiskes, having terminated the Russian war, compelled Boris to resign the
crown of Bulgaria, and accept the title of Magister, as a pensioner of the
Byzantine court. The frontier of the Eastern Empire was once more extended to
the Danube.
The
Saracen war had been carried on vigorously on the frontiers of Syria, while the
Emperor John was occupied with the Russian campaign. The continued successes of
the Byzantine arms had so alarmed the Mohammedan princes, that an extensive
confederacy was formed to recover Antioch, and the command of the army of the
caliph was intrusted to Zoher, the lieutenant of the Fatimites in Egypt. The
imperial army was led by the patrician Nikolaos, a man of great military skill,
who had been a eunuch in the household of John Zimiskes; and he defeated the
Saracens in a pitched battle, and saved Antioch for a time. But in the
following year (973) the conquest of Nisibis filled the city of Bagdad with
such consternation, that a levy of all Mussulmans was ordered to march against
the Christians. The Byzantine troops in Mesopotamia were commanded by an
Armenian named Temelek Melchi, who was completely routed near Amida. He was
himself taken prisoner, and died after a year's confinement.
With all his talents as a general, John does not appear to have possessed the same control over the general administration as Nicephorus; and many of the cities conquered by his predecessor, in which the majority of the inhabitants were Mohammedans, succeeded in throwing off the Byzantine yoke. Even Antioch declared itself independent. A great effort became necessary to regain the ground that had been lost; and, to make this, John Zimiskes took the command of the Byzantine army in person in the year 974. He marched in one campaign from Mount Taurus to the banks of the Tigris, and from the banks of the Tigris back into Syria, as far as Mount Libanon, carrying his victorious arms, according to the vaunting inaccuracy of the Byzantine geographical nomenclature, into Palestine. His last campaign, in the following year, was the most brilliant of his exploits. In Mesopotamia he regained possession of Amida and Martyropolis; but these cities contained so few Christian inhabitants that he was obliged to leave the administration in the hands of Saracen emirs, who were charged with the collection of the tribute and taxes. Nisibis he found deserted, and from it
he marched by Edessa to Hierapolis or Membig, where he captured many valuable
relics, among which the shoes of our Savior, and the hair of John the Baptist,
are especially enumerated. From Hierapolis John marched to Apamea, Emesa, and
Baalbec, without meeting any serious opposition. The emir of Damascus sent
valuable presents, and agreed to pay an annual tribute to escape a visit. The
emperor then crossed Mount Libanon, storming the fortress of Borzo, which commanded
the pass, and, descending to the seacoast, laid siege to Berytus, which soon
surrendered, and in which he found an image of the crucifixion that he deemed
worthy of being sent to Constantinople. From Berytus he marched northward to
Tripolis, which he besieged in vain for forty days. The valor of the garrison
and the strength of the fortifications compelled him to raise the siege; but
his retreat was ascribed to fear of a comet, which illuminated the sky with a
strange brilliancy. As it was now September, he wished to place his worn-out
troops in winter-quarters in Antioch; but the inhabitants shut the gates
against him. To punish them for their revolt, he had the folly to ravage their
territory, and cut down their fruit-trees; forgetting, in his barbarous and
impolitic revenge, that he was ruining his own empire. Burtzes was left to
reconquer Antioch for the second time ; which, however, he did not effect
until after the death of the Emperor John.
The army was then placed in winter-quarters on the frontiers of Cilicia, and the emperor hastened to return to Constantinople. On the journey, as he passed the fertile plains of Longias and Dryze, in the vicinity of Anazarba and Podandus, he saw them covered with flocks and herds, with well-fortified farmyards, but no smiling villages. He inquired with wonder to whom the country belonged, in which pasturage was conducted on so grand a scale; and he learned that the greater part of the province had been acquired by the president Basilios in donations from himself and his predecessor, Nicephorus. Amazed at the enormous accumulation of property in the hands of one individual, he exclaimed, "Alas! the wealth of the empire is wasted, the strength of the armies is exhausted, and the Roman emperors toil like mercenaries, to add to the riches of an insatiable eunuch!" This speech was reported to the president. He
considered that he had raised both Nicephorus and John to the throne; his
interest now required that it should return to its rightful master, and that
the young Basil should enjoy his heritage. The Emperor John stopped on his way
to Constantinople at the palace of Romanos, a grandson of Romanus I; and it is
said he there drank of a poisoned cup presented to him by a servant gained by
the president. Certain it is that John Zimiskes reached the capital in a dying
state, and expired on the 10th of January 976, at the age of fifty-one.
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