A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 by Steven Runciman

the next act of the drama would be
played at Constantinople, drew the reserve troops under his command away from
the battlefield and marched them westward, leaving the Emperor to his fate. By
evening the Byzantine army was destroyed and Romanus wounded and a prisoner.
     
     
    CHAPTER V
    CONFUSION IN THE
EAST
     
    ‘Yea , though
they have hired among the nations , now will I gather them , and
they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the king of princes.’ HOSEA
VIII, 10
     
    The Battle of Manzikert was the most decisive
disaster in Byzantine history. The Byzantines themselves had no illusions about
it. Again and again their historians refer to that dreadful day. To the later
Crusaders it seemed that the Byzantines had forfeited on the battlefield their
title as the protectors of Christendom. Manzikert justified the intervention of
the West.
    The Turks made little immediate use of their
victory. Alp Arslan had achieved his object. His flank was now protected; and
he had removed the danger of a Byzantine-Fatimid alliance. All that he demanded
of the captive Emperor was the evacuation of Armenia and a heavy ransom for his
person. He then marched off to campaign in Transoxiana, where he died in 1072.
Nor did his son and successor, Malik Shah, whose empire was to stretch from the
Mediterranean to the boundaries of China, himself ever march into Asia Minor.
But his Turcoman subjects were on the move. He had no wish to settle them in
the ancient lands of the Caliphate; but the central plains of Anatolia, emptied
and turned into sheep-farms by the Byzantine magnates themselves, were
perfectly suited to them. He gave to his cousin, Suleiman ibn Kutulmish, the
task of conquering the country for the Turkish people.
     
    The Turks enter
Asia Minor
    The conquest was made easy by the Byzantines
themselves. The next twenty years of their history were spent in a tangle of
rebellion and intrigue. When the news reached Constantinople of the disaster
and the Emperor’s captivity, his stepson, Michael Ducas, declared himself of
age and took over the government. The arrival of his cousin Andronicus with the
remnants of the army confirmed his position. Michael VII was an intelligent,
cultured youth, who in kindlier times would have been a worthy ruler. But the problems
that faced him required a far greater man. Romanus Diogenes returned from his
captivity to find himself deposed. He attempted to fight for his position but
was easily defeated and taken as a prisoner to Constantinople. There they put
out his eyes so savagely that he died a few days later. Michael could not
afford to let him live; but Romanus’s powerful relatives and the friends that
his gallantry had won him were shocked and angry at the brutality of his end.
Their resentment was soon to find its expression in treachery.
    The Turkish invasions of Asia Minor began
seriously in 1073. They were neither concerted nor uniform. Suleiman himself
wished to establish an orderly sultanate that he could govern under the
suzerainty of Malik Shah. But there were lesser Turkish princes, men like
Danishmend, Chaka or Menguchek, whose aim was to capture some town or fortress
from which they could rule as brigand chieftains over whatever population might
be there. Behind them, giving the invasion its full force, were the Turcoman nomads,
travelling lightly armed, with their horses, their tents and their families,
making for the upland prairies. The Christians fled before them, abandoning
their villages to be burnt and their flocks and herds to be rounded up by the
invaders. The Turcomans avoided the cities, but their presence and the
destruction that they caused interrupted communications throughout the country
and forced provincial governors into isolation and enabled the Turkish
chieftains to follow their own desires. They formed the element that would
render impossible any Byzantine attempt at reconquest.
     
    Roussel of
Bailleul
    The Emperor Michael had tried to oppose the
Turkish