Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates was an old hero, but incapable of
mastering circumstances that were spinning out of control. As if the loss
of Anatolia was not bad enough, Robert Guiscard, the Norman leader, was
massing his forces in southern Italy for an invasion. The commander of
Byzantium’s western armies was now Alexios Komnenos, but his abilities,
ambition and family connections marked him out as a threat to the regime
in Constantinople. The young commander found himself in an impossible
position. He struck in the spring of 1081. On 1 April 1081 Alexios with the
help of his brother Isaac and the support of the caesar John Doukas seized
Constantinople and overthrew the old emperor.
In the meantime Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond had crossed
to Albania and laid siege to Dyrrachium at the head of the Egnatian Way.
Guiscard justified his actions by proclaiming that he was coming to restore
to the throne of Constantinople the rightful house ofDoukas. These dynastic
pretensions made him all the more dangerous at a time when the new
emperor’s hold on power was still shaky. Alexios I Komnenos assembled all
available forces and made for Dyrrachium, only to suffer a shattering defeat.
His troops were no match for the Normans. In military terms it was a far
more serious defeat than Manzikert. While one Norman army advanced
down the EgnatianWay to within striking distance of Thessaloniki, another
under Bohemond headed south into Greece. The key position was Larissa
in Thessaly. If it fell to the Normans, then the rich provinces of Hellas and
the Peloponnese were lost. With a scratch force of Turkish archers Alexios
marched in 1083 to the relief of Larissa. The emperor was careful not to
engage the Normans in open battle, relying instead on skirmishing tactics.
He was able to raise the siege of Larissa and forced the Normans to evacuate
Thessaly. The Norman threat only ended with the death of Robert
Guiscard in 1085, which prompted a succession crisis in southern Italy and
the withdrawal of the Normans from their bases in Albania and the Ionian
islands.
More by luck than judgement Alexios I emerged from the first test of
his reign with his reputation enhanced. His next task was to restore the
Danubian frontier. The key this time was the fortress city of Dristra. This
was under the control of the Pechenegs, who in 1086 caught Alexios by
surprise. Yet another Byzantine army was lost and, once again, Alexios
was lucky to escape. The Pechenegs pushed south towards Constantinople.
The danger was even more serious because they allied with Tzachas, a
Turkish amir who had turned Smyrna into a pirate base. By the winter
of 1090–1 Alexios controlled little more than Constantinople itself, with
no army to speak of. The force that he led out against the Pechenegs
consisted very largely of the retainers of his relatives and supporters. He
headed for the port of Ainos at the mouth of the Maritsa, in the hope
of preventing the Pechenegs from linking up with their Turkish ally. The
situation was further complicated by the appearance of another nomadic
people – the Cumans – who had crossed over the Danube into the Balkans.
Their original intention was to cooperate with the Pechenegs, but Alexios
succeeded in winning them over to the Byzantine side. Thanks largely to
their help, Alexios crushed the Pechenegs at the battle of Lebounion in
Thrace. The Pechenegs ceased to count. The Cumans were still a potential
threat to Byzantine control of the Balkans, but in 1094 Alexios defeated
them outside the walls of Anchialos on the Black Sea. At long last, Alexios
was in full control of the Danubian frontier.
Alexios displayed great tenacity in the face of a series of military defeats.
But this cannot disguise the fact that they were often of his own making. It
was largely his own foolhardiness which had jeopardised Byzantine control
of the Balkans.Without the support of his family it is doubtful whether he
could have survived his early years as emperor, so patchy was his military
record. Alexios had, however, wisely entrusted the running of the government
to his mother AnnaDalassena. While he was campaigning, Anna kept
control of Constantinople and managed to meet his military requirements.
This necessitated a harsh administrative regime.
Alexios’ survival also depended on the support of the great families. He
came to power as the leader of an aristocratic faction and his overthrow
would almost certainly have meant their downfall. The Komnenoi were
linked by ties of blood and marriage to all the major aristocratic families.
Alexios turned this into a principle of government, accomplishing this very
largely through a radical reform of the honours system. His daughter Anna
Komnena perceptively singles this out as a major achievement.26 In the past
the honours system had been hierarchical rather than dynastic; membership
of the imperial family did not bring rank at court as of right. The inflation
of honours over the eleventh century resulted in a collapse of the old
honours system. Alexios rebuilt it by creating a series of new ranks that
were reserved for members of his family. The imperial epithet sebastos was
now accorded to the imperial family in its widest sense. The sebastoi became
a distinct hierarchy with their own gradations. At the top came the rank of
sebastokrat¯or which was a conflation of sebastos and autokrat¯or. This Alexios
created for his elder brother Isaac who shared the burdens of the imperial
office. The rank of pr¯otosebastos went to one of the emperor’s brothers-inlaw.
It was normally combined with the position of pr¯otovestiarios. This too
marked a profound change in the texture of government. In the past the
pr¯otovestiarios had almost always been a eunuch and one of the chief officers
of the imperial household. Alexios did away with eunuchs and created an
imperial household staffed very largely by members of his family, while
the more menial positions went to retainers of the house of Komnenos.
The imperial household had always been the instrument for the exercise of
direct imperial authority. Its identification with Komnenian family interest
gave it a different quality.
In the past, office and rank brought lucrative salaries. One of the attractions
of reforming the honours system was that it provided a way of abolishing
these profits of office. Alexios found other ways of rewarding members
of his family, granting them administrative and fiscal rights over specific
areas. This was the basis of grants that were later known as pronoiai. In
the past similar grants had been made out of the imperial demesne, but
Alexios extended this principle to state lands. In a sense, he was parcelling
out the empire among his family and creating a series of appanages. He
rebuilt imperial government as an aristocratic connection; family business
might be a more accurate description. It was a radical step which would
later create tensions, because the theory of imperial autocracy could not
easily accommodate the transformation that occurred in practice. But it
provided Alexios with the strengths necessary to hold on to power during
his difficult early years.
World History
