In the 11th Century two battles were fought within 5 years of each other but 2,200 miles apart which smashed the nations of the defeated armies. Everyone knows about Hastings and how it led to the supplanting of Saxon rule by Norman. Very few have heard of Manzikert where Moslems broke the army of the Christian Byzantine Empire, conquered most of Asia Minor very quickly and ultimately it led to the capture of Constantinople and the Moslem invasions of Central Europe. This Contribution aims to add a little to the well-known Hastings account and introduce that of Manzikert.
Hastings
King Harold Godwinson lost the battle of Hastings because he fell out with his brother Tostig, who had become Earl of Northumbria in1055 as part of the control of England by the Godwin family. The Northern thegns, who disliked him as a Southerner anyway, tired of his strict rule and taxes and rebelled violently in 1065. They wanted Morcar, brother of Earl Edwin of Mercia, in his place. Earl Harold of Wessex, then the main supporter of King Edward (known to history as “the Confessor” for his piety) was appointed to decide the issue and chose Morcar. Tostig was banished and became, literally, Harold’s mortal enemy. When King Edward died on 5th January 1066 the highest body in Saxon England, the Witan – or such as could be hastily summoned – elected Harold as King the following day, as was their right as royal advisors. A promise of the reversion to the English throne said to have been given by Edward to Duke William of Normandy in 1052 was not valid. Nor was a similar promise of Harold himself, give under duress as William’s “guest” in about 1064 after he had landed inadvertently in France during a storm in the Channel (that explanation is more likely than that he intended to land there).(Ref. 1). Tostig then sought by various means to obtain his revenge, and in fact obtained it posthumously, as will be described.
The reaction of Duke William of Normandy to Harold as King of the Saxons
Duke William of Normandy saw Harold as a forsworn usurper. He decided that he would seize the valuable land of England by force anyway and even had Pope Alexander III’s approval of that for his own reasons of wishing to reform the English church – which William promised to do. The Pope actually excommunicated Harold as a sacred oath-breaker and provided William with a special banner under which to invade. Collection and construction of the many ships (about 700, according to Ref.2) was put in hand Money was borrowed on the promise of repayment with high interest from the looting of England. Soldier adventurers came forward on the same expectation, to add to those Normans bound to serve the Duke, loosely grouped as Bretons (who also had an ancient historic grievance against the English) and as French.
The un-planned “Pincer attack”
Tostig visited William but did not reach an agreement to form one of his invaders. Instead, he travelled far North, to Norway and found King Harald Hardrada of that country willing to mount his own attack on Northern England. Ref.1 suggests a pincer movement was envisaged by the Duke, and it certainly occurred to his great – the author claims crucial – advantage (see Fig. 1 on P.2), but it seems unlikely that he would have deliberately set up a rival claimant.
King Harold’s defence
Harold in England had mustered a fleet to fight the invasion in the Channel. King Edward had just “privatised” the royal navy formed originally in about 850 (according to a recent study in Ref.3) by contracting naval defence out to ports around the South-East tip of the island in return for granting them commercial privileges (later called the “Cinque Ports”) (Ref. 4). This organisation may have
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been a weakness. On land he called out the Southern fyrd of peasants bound to provide 40 days military service, to give weight alongside his personal force of paid professionals, his housecarls.
Both naval and military bodies, apart from the housecarls were very dependent on guessing the timing of the invasion right.
Fig. 1
Unfortunately for King Harold, he guessed wrong. Having mustered the fyrd and set up Channel patrols in the summer of 1066, nothing happened. On the 8th September he was forced to stand down the levies to bring in the harvest and also allow the fleet to disperse when it ran out of provisions. Why this could not have been done by sending each port-squadron in turn is not known but possibly because there was no overall commander in the Edwardian re-organisation.
Duke William was not ready to launch his invasion until the 14th September. His fleet, having been assembled in the River Dives estuary, was then blown by a Westerly storm along the coast to that of the R. Somme at St.Valery.
The Northern invasion
In the meantime, around 15th September (Ref. 5), the Norwegians with 300 ships, after joining with Tostig’s 60 ships, and after some coastal raiding, had entered the Humber estuary. In classic Viking fashion their longships were rowed as far up the River Ouse as possible and a base established at Riccall* near the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Wharfe, 12 miles South of York (see Fig. 2 on P.3)
*An earthwork near there was once labelled “Danish Dock” but has since been shown by excavation to be post-1066.
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Fig.2
Defeat of Morcar
The combined forces of King Harald Hardrada and Tostig marched on York on 20th September (Ref. 5) and were opposed by the troops of Earl Morcar of Northumbria, plus a reinforcement from his brother Earl Edwin of Mercia, at Gate Fulford, 2 miles South of the city. The invaders won the battle. In consequence York surrendered. Details of the battle are given in (Ref. 9).
King Harold’s “Race to the North”
Ref. 5 suggests that King Harold could have been advised of the Northern invasion by a chain of beacons as early as the next day, 16th September. He then had to decide whether to trust to Morcar to defeat it or intervene as soon as possible with his own troops, which would mean leaving Southern England unguarded. It was the Equinoctial gales season. If he did not act on simple impulse but weighed up the relative dangers he may have thought that the bad weather might sink an attempted Norman invasion. We only know that he set off for the North from London with his mounted housecarls* on about the 16th (Ref. 6) and rode “day and night” (Ref. 5 quoting the Anglo Saxon Chronicle) the distance of185 miles by the old Roman roads, which must have been kept in good condition. He reached Tadcaster, 9 miles from York late on the 24th, i.e.in 9 days, having averaged 20 miles per day. On route he will have picked up any available mounted thegns, have intercepted messengers telling him of the Fulford defeat and added survivors to his number.
*None of the histories give the number of Harold’s housecarls. The only clue is that King Cnut retained 40 ships-number of housecarls, which might mean 40 x 41 men aboard a snekkja = 1,640 (Refs. 7 and 8). Although serving their lord as a matter of honour they were paid a wage and received presents from him annually on New Year’s Eve.
It is convenient to state here that, while housecarls rode to battle they fought on foot, wielding axes with 5 feet long shafts as their primary weapon. They wore chain-mail. A comprehensive description of their life and equipment is given in Ref. 7.
The battle of Stamford Bridge
The invaders meanwhile had kept out of York and moved 9 miles East of the city to Stamford Bridge over the River Derwent, a useful old Roman cross-roads. King Harold on the 25th rode through York to attack them, adding immediately another 19 miles to his incredible “approach march” -and then beat them! Completely unaware of his presence, they were dispersed in 3 ways: a part on the West bank of the river; many on the other bank and a large force at the Riccall base, 16 miles to the South (see Fig.2), which was sent for but arrived too late except to be beaten in their turn. The slaughter was so great that only 25 ships were needed for the survivors to sail back to Norway, with Hardrada and Tostig amongst the slain. Details of the battle are given in (Ref. 10).
It was a great victory for King Harold but it had been won at substantial cost:- with so many enemy dead he also must have had lost many of his household soldiers.
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The Southern invasion
The equinoctial winds, which had brought the Northern invasion fleet down from the Orkney islands, had indeed kept Duke William’s invasion fleet at St Valery but, 3 days after the battle at Stamford Bridge –on the 27th September 1066 – the weather at last allowed it to sail successfully overnight to England. King Harold had lost his gamble. The Normans reached Pevensey unopposed.
The invasion force was soon moved along the coast to Hastings, because that was the terminus of an old Roman road to London. Fig. 3 shows what is believed to be the topography in 1066 and a guess of how the transfer was made, the ships being first unloaded directly opposite the Saxon Shore fort at Pevensey, which naturally would be garrisoned by William.
Fig. 3
Ref. 1 estimated that the invasion force from about 700 ships for men and horses would have been around 3,600 cavalry and 7,400 infantry. The cavalry, armed with spears and armoured with chain- mail, fought mounted, unlike the Saxons, but did not charge. The infantry included archers.
The Normans built some kind of fort at Hastings while other troops scoured the country around the town, simultaneously foraging and deliberately ravaging. Ref. 5, quoting the Domesday Book of 1086, reports that 20 villages around were then still listed as “wasted”. Those who were despoiled or killed were Harold’s people in his Earldom of Wessex and no doubt William intended the action to provoke him and influence his reactions.
King Harold’s “Dash to the South”
While Harold and his housecarlsu were taking a few days well-earned rest in York, the news of the Southern invasion reached him. Again, that may have been by beacon chain. He probably set off at once to return the 194 miles to London and reached there on the 5th or 6th. The housecarls followed at a similar pace to their “Race to the North” and were ready to ride South from London on the 11th. The road had withstood the trampling of many horses at a season when it no doubt received considerable rain – the “all-weather” construction of the Romans, with raised surfaces and side ditches, even after 650 years of little maintenance, had been effective.
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The decision to attack as soon as possible
King Harold had shown in his “Race to the North” that he was an impulsive man – he could have waited in London then to see whether the Northern earls could “see off” the Vikings. He did not – rightly, as it turned out. Back in London on the 6th October he decided to confront Duke William immediately. Maybe he did fall into the Norman’s trap by wishing to protect his vassals a.s.a.p. Doing this meant he would not accumulate as many of the Southern fyrd as he could have done by waiting a week. He may have been overconfident after the success of Stamford Bridge, not realising that the army with William was a more formidable proposition with its cavalry and archers.
The immediate approach march
The precise approach march route is not known but Fig.4 seems the most likely, using the old Roman road. The distance to the battle site was 65 miles and was covered between 11th and 13th October – again about 20 miles per day.
Fig 4
The battle site
For centuries it has been believed that, to fulfil a penance imposed in 1067 on all surviving participants in the battle by the Pope for killing Christians, graded according to the number (Ref.11), King William had ordered a monastery to be built on the site of the crucial battle with the high altar over the spot where King Harold died. Recent proposals that the battle was not fought there have not explained why the abbey would otherwise have been built on a windy, waterless ridge. The 1990 English Heritage guide adds to the accepted account (without provenance) that the monks in 1070 considered the site to be unsuitable and began to build further West and that, when the Conqueror found this out he ordered them to do as they were told, levelling off as necessary*. Naturally, taxes on the Saxons paid for it.
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*No archaeological finds have been made on this site, unlike those recovered on the recently corrected site of the battle of Bosworth. The stripped bodies of the Saxons were probably left where they lay on the un-populated ridge, to be destroyed by animals and birds and the weather, while the communal grave of the dead invaders may be under the monastery buildings.
However, after the recent discovery of King Richard III’s skeleton, it would be unwise to assume that nothing will ever be found!
Other religious houses and, no doubt, many parish churches were built because of the imposed penance. Christians in those days did believe that they would not enter Heaven if they did not do the penance.
Ref. 6 presented a contour map of the battlefield (see Fig. 5 below), probably after compensating for the levelling which was done for the monastery. The highest point, King Harold’s HQ, was at 275 feet above sea level. The Saxon front is shown as 1,250 yards. The ground in front is as follows:-
| Location | Rise from valley bottom – Feet | Gradient |
|---|---|---|
| West | 200 – 110 = 90 | 1 in 8 |
| Centre | 225 – 175 = 50 | 1 in 10 |
| East | 250 – 200 = 50 | 1 in 15 |
Figure 5
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Deploying for battle
The dispositions on the 14th October 1066 are shown on Fig. 5 and were completed around 9 am, King Harold having occupied the ridge the previous night and Duke William having marched up the 6 miles from Hastings since dawn at 5.30 am.
Harold lined his 1.250 yards front with housecarles, which Ref. 1 suggests were spaced at yard intervals, i.e. totalling 1,250 men. With a personal guard of perhaps 200 men this would be 1,450 housecarls compared to a possible original 1,640 speculated on P. 3, these being the survivors of Stamford Bridge. Behind them were massed those of the fyrd who had reached the battlefield and probably continued to come up over the rest of the day. The ridge could be space for about 6,000 at 5 ranks deep. All accounts agree that there were few archers (only a representative one is depicted on the Bayeux tapestry). The levied troops were un-armoured, a few with spears (tapestry), others perhaps with only agricultural-pitchforks, plus rocks tied to throwing sticks (shown on the tapestry).
Somewhere along the approach road there would have been a stake-out of the housecarls horses, since they fought on foot, principally with long-handled axes.
William initially lined up in 3 broad groups (Bretons on his left, Normans in the centre and French on the right) and in 3 ranks (archers in front, foot soldiers with spears second and cavalry behind).
Allowing for garrisons left at Pevensey and Hastings and less sickness Ref. 1 suggests, with other experienced authorities, that they totalled about 9.000.
Fig.5 suggests that the deployments were 500 yards apart at the centre.
The Battle
The details of the battle may be read in Refs. 12 and 13. Only the salient points are given here
The battle lasted about 8 hours until the sun set about 5 pm on this 14th October 1066.
It began with the invaders’ archers closing to within 100 yards to use their short bows (about 4 feet long – it would be another 2 centuries before the Normans themselves encountered the devastating 6 ½ feet longbow in Wales), using up all their arrows with little effect by having to shoot uphill at men with shields.
There followed the foot-soldiers attack with some cavalry in support climbing up the ridge in the teeth of everything that could be thrown at them -spears, sling-stones and the rock-sticks – then encountering the axes of the housecarls. This melée lasted most of the morning. A retreat led on the Breton’s front, where the slope was steepest, to a panic. The totally unwarlike levies rushed after them downhill. Duke William in the centre, who had been unhorsed and had to show his face with lifted helmet to his men to convince them he was unharmed, grasped the chance to take the isolated Saxons in the flank with his cavalry and annihilate them.
After a pause to get their wind back and bring up a fresh supply of arrows for the archers, the invaders attacked again on the Eastern side where the slope was shallower, led by the Duke (he is said to have had 3 horse killed under him during the conflict which shows how he risked his life to encourage his men). Whether by design – as the Norman chroniclers would naturally describe it. – or another panic, a second retirement again led to an undisciplined downhill rush by the fyrdmen and another massacre as the enemy cavalry turned on them in the valley.
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After their losses the Saxons could no longer man their whole front. The Duke’s men could attack from both sides along the ridge, supported by a fresh barrage from the archers shooting high over those around the final Saxon stand of King Harold and his surviving bodyguard on the highest part. He had already lost his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. He fell wounded, traditionally said to be from a high-angle arrow in the eye, a party of mounted Normans reached him and he was cut down (see Fig. 6) and his body mutilated as an oath-breaker, at about 4 or 5 pm. The Saxons survivors gave up the fight and were pursued until dusk into the thick woods to the North . There is no record of any prisoners being taken.
Fig.6
The standing figure grasping an arrow in his head and the falling figure cut down by a mounted Norman are believed to represent separately the wounding and death of King Harold (Ref. 5 – but see Ref. 13 regarding the arrow)
Summary of the 1066 campaigns
King Harold [KH] was nearly certain to lose his new throne in 1066 to either Duke William of Normandy or to King Harald Sigurdsson of Norway, nicknamed Hardrada (“Ruthless”). This was because so many factors were against him, namely:-
- Superior forces;- Duke William [DW] and Harald Hardrada [HH] had between them (with King Harold’s bitterly-opposed brother Tostig) a total of 1060 ships-worth of men. KH with his own housecarls and those of Earls Morcar [EM] and Edwin [EE] had perhaps 4,000 plus purely local, limited time fyrd levies of a few thousand at each prospective invasion district;
- Superior quality of men:- All the men which DW and HH could bring to England were trained fighters. Only the defending housecarls were their equivalent. The farm labourers of the Saxon fyrd were untrained and undisciplined;
- Superior equipment:-
DW had
(a):-Cavalry armoured in chain mail for Movement on the battlefield;
(b):- Archers for Firepower;
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KH had neither and only the housecarls of KH and his Earls had chain mail. The levies had none and few proper weapons.
- The (unplanned) advantage of a “Pincer attack”:-
The two prongs of the threatened invasions were 265 miles apart (by old Roman roads).
- Plain luck:- DW’s fleet might very easily have been caught in a Channel storm on the 27th September. But no “Kamikaze” blew up.
KH compounded his problems by not obtaining good intelligence of DW’s preparations.
As a result he mobilised his fleet and the Southern fyrd too soon and had to let them leave their stations before DW was ready. That was his big mistake.
KH’s natural impetuosity worked for him – in defeating the Northern invasion when EM and EE failed – and against him when he would not let DW ravage his vassals and personal estates near Hastings by waiting in London while the full Southern fyrd was reassembled. If he had had all the men who could be mustered on the battle ridge including housecarl survivors from EM and EE, losing some to undisciplined rushes might not have had the fatal consequences which they did have.
The consolidation of the conquest
Duke William proceeded methodically to complete the Conquest of England and the destruction of Saxon rule. Firstly, he moved to Dover and built a castle to secure the port which gave the main communication with his Norman base. Next, he approached London, where the Witan had selected Edgar Atheling, then only 14 years old, as the king to succeed Harold. Not receiving the surrender of the city he burnt Southwark and then began a clockwise march to ravage all the districts at a 30 to 50 mile radius of the capital in order to cut off its supplies (Ref. 6). When he reached Berkhamstead, 30 miles North of London the Witan, realising that he intended to starve them into submission, went to him and offered him the crown. Accordingly, he was anointed as King in the late King Edward’s new Westminster Abbey on Christmas day 1066.
All England, except the Northern districts previously ruled by the Saxon Earls Morcar and Edwin, who made their submission to him, was now his with which to reward his battle-winning comrades and dependents. This he proceeded to do. To hold their land, under fealty to the King, “Motte-and-Bailey” castles with timber buildings and palisades were soon erected in their hundreds. Saxon forced labour was used and many were built ruthlessly over demolished Saxon properties. Only a few Royal castles were built with stone, including the Tower of London. Fig. 7 (RHS) shows just the castles built by the king in his 20 year reign.
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.
The “Harrying of the North”
There were several minor revolts against Norman rule over 1067 – 1068. In 1068 there was a more serious rebellion centred around York with Morcar and Edwin involved. A force sent to quell it in January 1969 was cut up. A Danish fleet joined the rebels. Eventually King William marched North, bought-off the Danes with “Geld” just like earlier Saxons and, unable to bring the rebels to battle, proceeded in the winter of 1069-1070 to ravage the land from the Humber to the Tyne with a total lack of mercy. Fig.8 illustrates this.
. Fig.8
The savagery used was far in excess of that used against other insurrections. It may be that King William had expected that the Northerners, descended like the Normans from Danish invaders, would welcome his rule and, when they did not, was provoked into cruelty to the ingrates touching on genocide. Ref. 14 provides details.
By 1086, the date when the “Domesday book” was compiled to show King William how much tax he could extract from his new domain, Ref. 15 states that the former Saxon elite:_
“…had been almost completely wiped out: of the 500 or so top individuals listed in the survey as tenants of the king, only 13 had English names, and of 7,000 or so subtenants, no more than 10 per cent were natives. The aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England had been almost completely swept away – killed in battle, driven into exile or forced to exist in suppressed circumstances.”
The corresponding land area remaining Saxon-owned was 8% (Ref. 5).
The Saxon nation had been well-and-truly smashed.
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The consequences for England
The English people had not been smashed. A very, very slow but relentless absorption of the conquerors began. Its progress can be measured by the use of the English language. Immediately after the Conquest the language spoken at court and in the Law courts was, of course Norman-French. Three Centuries later an Act of Parliament in 1362, 36 years into the reign of King Edward III, allowed common people to plead in English in a court.
When King Henry IV took the throne, 37 years later in 1399, he was the first King of England since Harold to speak English as his first language. During his grandson’s reign English became the official language of government in ca. 1430. It was enriched with many French words.
Today English is the World’s most common language at 15% of the population.
References
(1). Battle 1066 Brigadier C. Barclay Aldine 1967.
(2) Twenty-Five centuries of Sea Warfare J. Mordal Abbey 1970.
(3). https://www.medievalists.net/2020/08/alfred-great-royal-navy/
(4). http://www.open-sandwich.co.uk/town_history/cinqueports.htm
(5). In Search of the Dark Ages M. Wood BBC 1991.
(6). Warfare..Col. O. Spaulding; Capt. H. Nickerson; Col. J. Wright Harrap 1925.
(8). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longship
(9). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fulford
(10). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stamford_Bridge
(11). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ermenfrid_Penitential
(12). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings
(13). https://historicengland.org.uk/content/docs/listing/battlefields/hastings/
(14). https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/harrying-north
(15). https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/what-the-normans-did-for-us/
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Manzikert
Constantine, afterwards honoured as “the Great”, became sole Emperor of Rome in 324 AD. In 330 AD he made the inspired decision to move the empire’s capital to the city of Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. That this location, with easy routes by ship North or South and by land West or East, was both militarily strategic and favourable to trade is proved by the number of attempts by others to seize it, shown by the number of sieges which it withstood. Fig. 9 illustrates this.
Fig. 9
The Eastern Roman Empire largely escaped the Folkwandering of peoples from the North of the Empire which occurred as climate change dropped the temperature of their homelands. There was one black occasion when Goths defeated an Eastern army at Adrianapole, 137 miles North-West of Constantinople in 378 AD, killing the Eastern Emperor Valens. This led to a re-organisation of the Eastern army when Theodosius succeeded as Emperor. The centuries-long history of the Roman army had placed the foot soldier as the major arm. This was changed to make the horse soldier as the principal arm, to combat the mobility of the barbarian invasions (Ref. 6). From around 357 AD these had been armoured both for rider and horse, using chain mail. The term for these was Cataphracts (see Ref. 17 and Fig. 10), which states that a full mail set could weigh 40 kg (88 lbs)).
Fig. 10
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The rider was armed with lance, bow and sword. The full value of the armoured cavalryman in the shock of a charge only came with the adoption of stirrups. These were first mentioned in a Byzantine Empire military manual in 580 AD.
The expansion of Islam
The East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire reached its maximum extent under Justinian in about 550 AD. It then included Italy and much of the North African coast. The expansion of Islam after the death of Mohammed in 632 AD resulted in a contraction. Within 9 years after his death the Arabs had conquered the entire Near East, reaching North to the Taurus Mountains on the Eastern border of the Byzantine Empire* and along the Mediterranean coast to Tripoli.
*Jerusalem was captured in 638. The First Crusade was the counter-attack, much delayed while Western Europe was sorting itself out, which recaptured the city in 1099.
. They made determined efforts to seize Constantinople in 654, 669 674 and again in 717 but failed. The invention of “Greek fire” was significant in this.
Some expansion of the Byzantine empire and the threat of the Seljuk turks.
After the initial impetus of Arab expansion had lessened, the Byzantine Empire was able to recover some of the lost territory beyond the Taurus Mountains. Fig. 10 shows the situation in 1025.
Fig. 10
However, by then a new force had arisen in the East. From their origin near the Aral Sea, after conversion in 985 to the Islamic faith, the Seljuk Turks had taken control of most of the Eastern Arab conquests. Their army of horse archers began to press on the Byzantines by raids.
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Fig. 11 shows the situation in 1071.
Fig. 11
The Byzantine Emperor, Romanos IV Diogenes, decided in 1071 to recapture from the Seljuks Manzikert and other fortresses in the area North of Lake Van, about 750 miles from Constantinople. He was a soldier but did not heed the rules for engaging mobile horse archers which the Romans had developed centuries before, as described in (Ref. 6):-
The disaster of defeat by the Seljuks, led by their Emperor Alp Arslan (“Lion Hero”) was partly caused by a Byzantine emperor about 18 years earlier who had reduced the size of the professional army, which would have comprised the cataphracts described above. Why this was done is hard to understand. The Byzantine Empire was not short of money. Constantinople was probably at that date the richest city in the world (Ref. 6). Romanos’ army therefore had the professionals bulked up with a hodge-podge of foreign mercenaries and levies from the provinces (“Themes”) of Anatolia. Romanos compounded his errors by dividing his army in the area where the enemy was likely to be encountered, although by neglecting reconnaissance he did not know that. The detached portion played no part in the battle, for a reason not clear but possibly because it, with a considerable part of the troops engaged, deserted.
Fig. 12 on P. 15 shows the main phases of the battle:-
- An advance against the Seljuks, who retreated in the centre but left their wings on the Byzantine flanks;
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- A melée with no great losses;
- Retreat to camp ordered but the reserve, commanded by a member of a rival family, instead of covering this movement, left Romanos unsupported to be surrounded and forced to surrender. The Emperor, injured, was captured.
Fig. 12
More details are given in (Ref. 18).
No doubt to his great surprise, Romanos (after a single ritual act of humiliation) was treated well by the Seljuk Emperor. A ransom of a lump sum and an annual payment to a total of 10 M gold pieces was agreed and Romanos was sent back to Constantinople with an escort. This could have been a very subtle plan by Alp Aslan to create dissension in the enemy camp, since Romanos was sure to accuse Andronikos Doukas (the reserve commander) of treachery. Whether provoked or not by the cunning Seljuk, the rival families did come to mortal blows and the leadership of the Byzantine empire was neutralised for 10 years by civil war. When Romanos was captured by his fellow Christians, they treated him infinitely worse than his Moslem enemy; he was blinded and died of his wounds.
Of course, if the long-term interests of the Empire had been paramount, the professional army would have been re-built as soon as possible and sent to defend the Eastern frontier. This was not done and, as a consequence, practically the whole of Asia Minor was over-run by the Moslems and lost to the Christian faith. Centuries of civilisation collapsed. Fig. 13 shows the extent of the loss by 1081.
Fig. 13
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The loss of Anatolia meant the loss of food supplies, the loss of taxes and, worse of all, the loss of a recruiting ground for the army. Ref. 6 states that:-
Decline and Fall
Manzikert, and the civil war which it precipitated, was a smash for the Anatolian inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire. In the 10 years after the battle they had to either convert to Islam or flee. There is a long, long discussion on the internet of the effect of the Seljuk occupation.
The battle did not produce an immediate physical effect on the Western part of the empire, including Constantinople, although the population there ever after looked back on it as a disaster (Ref. 18), which must have affected their behaviour.
The Ottoman Turks (who replaced the Seljuks shortly after they had been defeated by the Mongols in 1293) crossed over from the Western shore of Asia Minor in 1362 and captured Adrianople, the principal city of Western Byzantium in about 1369. Constantinople was then isolated (see Fig. 14).
Fig. 14
Constantinople was finally captured by the Ottoman Turks, led by Sultan Mehmed II, in 1453.
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The moral of the histories of Hastings and Manzikert
Be careful not to quarrel with those close to you who can do you harm!
King Harold quarrelled with Tostig, his brother, who led the Norwegians to York.
Emperor Romanos quarrelled with the Doukas family but trusted his reserve to one of them.
References – Continued
(16). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sieges_of_Constantinople
(17). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphract#Hellenistic_and_Roman_adoption