The Byzantine Empire Part 8

While the emperor's financial expedients were making him hated by the moneyed cla.s.ses, he was rendering himself no less unpopular in the army.

After his ill-success in the Saracen war, he began to execute or imprison his officers, and to decimate his beaten troops: to be employed by him in high command was almost as dangerous as it was to be appointed a general-in-chief during the dictators.h.i.+p of Robespierre.

In 695 the cup of Justinian's iniquities was full. An officer named Leontius being appointed, to his great dismay, general of the "theme" of h.e.l.las, was about to set out to a.s.sume his command. As he parted from his friends he exclaimed that his days were numbered, and that he should be expecting the order for his execution to arrive at any moment. Then a certain monk named Paul stood forth, and bade him save himself by a bold stroke; if he would aim a blow at Justinian he would find the people and the army ready to follow him.

Leontius took the monk's counsel, and rus.h.i.+ng to the state prison, at the head of a few friends, broke it open and liberated some hundreds of political prisoners. A mob joined him, he seized the Cathedral of St.

Sophia, and then marched on the palace. No one would fight for Justinian, who was caught and brought before the rebel leader in company with his two odious ministers. Leontius bade his nose be slit, and banished him to Cherson. Theodotus and Stepha.n.u.s he handed over to the mob, who dragged them round the city and burnt them alive.

Twenty years of anarchy followed the usurpation of Leontius. The new emperor was not a man of capacity, and had been driven into rebellion by his fears rather than his ambition. He held the throne barely three years, amid constant revolts at home and defeats abroad. The Asiatic frontier was ravaged by the armies of Abdalmalik, and at the same time a great disaster befel the western half of the empire. A Saracen army from Egypt forced its way into Africa, where the Romans had still maintained themselves by hard fighting while the emperors of the house of Heraclius reigned. They reduced all its fortresses one after the other, and finally took Carthage in 697-a hundred and sixty-five years after it had been restored to the empire by Belisarius.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Church Of The Twelve Apostles At Thessalonica. (_From "L'Art Byzantin."

Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._)

The larger part of the army of Africa escaped by sea from Carthage when the city fell. The officers in command sailed for Constantinople, and during their voyage plotted to dethrone Leontius. They enlisted in their scheme Tiberius Apsimarus, who commanded the imperial fleet in the Aegean, and proclaimed him emperor when he joined them with his galleys. The troops of Leontius betrayed the gates of the capital to the followers of the rebel admiral, and Apsimarus seized Constantinople. He proclaimed himself emperor by the t.i.tle of Tiberius, third of that name, and condemned his captive rival to the same fate that he himself had inflicted on Justinian II. Accordingly the nose of Leontius was slit, and he was placed in confinement in a monastery.

Tiberius III. was more fortunate in his reign than his predecessor: his troops gained several victories over the Saracens, recovered the frontier districts which Justinian II. and Leontius had lost, and even invaded Northern Syria. But these successes did not save Tiberius from suffering the same doom which had fallen on Justinian and Leontius. The people and army were out of hand, the ephemeral emperor could count on no loyalty, and any shock was sufficient to upset his precarious throne.

We must now turn to the banished Justinian, who had been sent into exile with his nose mutilated. He had been transported to Cherson, the Greek town in the Crimea, close to the modern Sebastopol, which formed the northernmost outpost of civilization, and enjoyed munic.i.p.al liberty under the suzerainty of the empire. Justinian displayed in his day of adversity a degree of capacity which astonished his contemporaries. He fled from Cherson and took refuge with the Khan of the Khazars, the Tartar tribe who dwelt east of the Sea of Azof. With this prince the exile so ingratiated himself that he received in marriage his sister, who was baptized and christened Theodora. But Tiberius III. sent great sums of money to the Khazar to induce him to surrender Justinian, and the treacherous barbarian determined to accept the bribe, and sent secret orders to two of his officers to seize his brother-in-law. The emperor learnt of the plot through his wife, and saved himself by the bold expedient of going at once to one of the two Khazar chiefs and asking for a secret interview. When they were alone he fell on him and strangled him, and then calling on the second Khazar served him in the same fas.h.i.+on, before the Khan's orders had been divulged to any one.

This gave him time to escape, and he fled in a fis.h.i.+ng boat out into the Euxine with a few friends and servants who had followed him into exile.

While they were out at sea a storm arose, and the boat began to fill. One of his companions cried to Justinian to make his peace with G.o.d, and pardon his enemies ere he died. But the Emperor's stern soul was not bent by the tempest. "May G.o.d drown me here," he answered, "if I spare a single one of my enemies if ever I get to land!" The boat weathered the storm, and Justinian survived to carry out his cruel oath. He came ash.o.r.e in the land of the Bulgarians, and soon won favour with their king Terbel, who wanted a good excuse for invading the empire, and found it in the pretence of supporting the exiled monarch. With a Bulgarian army at his back Justinian appeared before Constantinople, and obtained an entrance at night near the gate of Blachernae. There was no fighting, for the adherents of Tiberius were as unready to strike a blow for their master as the followers of Leontius had been [705 A.D.]

So Justinian recovered his throne without fighting, for the people had by this time half forgotten his tyranny, and regretted the rule of the house of Heraclius. But they were soon to find out that they had erred in submitting to the exile, and should have resisted him at all hazards.

Justinian came back in a relentless mood, bent on nothing but revenging his mutilated nose and his ten years of exile. His first act was to send for the two usurpers who had sat on his throne: Leontius was brought out from his monastery, and Tiberius caught as he tried to flee into Asia.

Justinian had them led round the city in chains, and then bound them side by side before his throne in the Cathisma, the imperial box at the Hippodrome. There he sat in state, using their prostrate bodies as a footstool, while his adherents chanted the verse from the ninety-first Psalm, "Thou shalt tread on the lion and asp: the young lion and dragon shalt thou trample under thy feet." The allusion was to the names of the usurpers, the Lion and Asp being Leontius and Apsimarus!

After this strange exhibition the two ex-emperors were beheaded. Their execution began a reign of terror, for Justinian had his oath to keep, and was set on wreaking vengeance on every one who had been concerned in his deposition. He hanged all the chief officers and courtiers of Leontius, and put out the eyes of the patriarch who had crowned him. Then he set to work to hunt out meaner victims: many prominent citizens of Constantinople were sown up in sacks and drowned in the Bosphorus. Soldiers were picked out by the dozen and beheaded. A special expedition was sent by sea to sack Cherson, the city of the Emperor's exile, because he had a grudge against its citizens. The chief men were caught and sent to the capital, where Justinian had them bound to spits and roasted.

These atrocities were mere samples of the general conduct of Justinian. In a few years he had made himself so much detested that it might be said that he had been comparatively popular in the days of his first reign.

The end came into 711, when a general named Philippicus took arms, and seized Constantinople while Justinian was absent at Sinope. The army of the tyrant laid down their arms when Philippicus approached, and he was led forth and beheaded without further delay-an end too good for such a monster. The conqueror also sought out and slew his little son Tiberius, whom the sister of the Khan of the Khazars had borne to him during his exile. So ended the house of Heraclius, after it had sat for five generations and one hundred and one years on the throne of Constantinople.

The six years which followed were purely anarchical. Justinian's wild and wicked freaks had completed the demoralization which had already set in before his restoration. Everything in the army and the state was completely disorganized and out of gear. It required a hero to restore the machinery of government and evolve order out of chaos. But the hero was not at once forthcoming, and the confusion went on increasing.

To replace Justinian by Philippicus was only to subst.i.tute King Log for King Stork. The new emperor was a mere man of pleasure, and spent his time in personal enjoyment, letting affairs of state slide on as best they might. In less than two years he was upset by a conspiracy which placed on the throne Artemius Anastasius, his own chief secretary. Philippicus was blinded, and compelled to exchange the pleasures of the palace for the rigours of a monastery. But the Court intrigue which dethroned Philippicus did not please the army, and within two years Anastasius was overthrown by the soldiers of the Obsequian theme, who gave the imperial crown to Theodosius of Adrammytium, a respectable but obscure commissioner of taxes. More merciful than any of his ephemeral predecessors, Theodosius III. dismissed Anastasius unharmed, after compelling him to take holy orders.

Meanwhile the organization of the empire was visibly breaking up. "The affairs both of the realm and the city were neglected and decaying, civil education was disappearing, and military discipline dissolved." The Bulgarian and Saracen commenced once more to ravage the frontier provinces, and every year their ravages penetrated further inland. The Caliph Welid was so impressed with the opportunity offered to him, that he commenced to equip a great armament in the ports of Syria with the express purpose of laying siege to Constantinople. No one hindered him, for the army raised to serve against him turned aside to engage in the civil war between Anastasius and Theodosius. The landmarks of the Saracens'

conquests by land are found in the falls of the great cities of Tyana [710], Amasia [712], and Antioch-in-Pisidia [713]. They had penetrated into Phrygia by 716, and were besieging the fortress of Amorium with every expectation of success, when at last there appeared the man who was destined to save the East-Roman Empire from a premature dismemberment.

This was Leo the Isaurian, one of the few military officers who had made a great reputation amid the fearful disasters of the last ten years. He was now general of the "Anatolic" theme, the province which included the old Cappadocia and Lycaonia. After inducing the Saracens, more by craft than force, to raise the siege of Amorium, Leo disowned his allegiance to the incapable Theodosius and marched toward the Bosphorus.

The unfortunate emperor, who had not coveted the throne he occupied, nor much desired to retain it, allowed his army to risk one engagement with the troops of Leo. When it was beaten he summoned the Patriarch, the Senate, and the chief officers of the court, pointed out to them that a great Saracen invasion was impending, that civil war had begun, and that he himself did not wish to remain responsible for the conduct of affairs.

With his consent the a.s.sembly resolved to offer the crown to Leo, who formally accepted it early in the spring of 717.

Theodosius retired unharmed to Ephesus, where he lived for many years.

When he died the single word ?G????, "Health," was inscribed on his tomb according to his last directions.

XIV. THE SARACENS TURNED BACK.

By dethroning Theodosius III. on the very eve of the great Saracen invasion, Leo the Isaurian took upon himself the gravest of responsibilities. With a demoralized army, which of late had been more accustomed to revolt than to fight, a depleted treasury, and a disorganized civil service, he had to face an attack even more dangerous than that which Constantine IV. had beaten off thirty years before.

Constantine too, the fourth of a race of hereditary rulers, had a secure throne and a loyal army, while Leo was a mere adventurer who had seized the crown only a few months before he was put to the test of the sword.

The reigning Caliph was now Suleiman, the seventh of the house of the Ommeyades. He had strained all the resources of his wide empire to provide a fleet and army adequate to the great enterprise which he had taken in hand. The chief command of the expedition was given to his brother Moslemah, who led an army of eighty thousand men from Tarsus across the centre of Asia Minor, and marched on the h.e.l.lespont, taking the strong city of Pergamus on his way. Meanwhile a fleet of eighteen hundred sail under the vizier Suleiman, namesake of his master the Caliph, sailed from Syria for the Aegean, carrying a force no less than that which marched by land. Fleet and army met at Abydos on the h.e.l.lespont without mishap, for Leo had drawn back all his resources, naval and military, to guard his capital.

In August, 717, only five months after his coronation, the Isaurian saw the vessels of the Saracens sailing up the Propontis, while their army had crossed into Thrace and was approaching the city from the western side.

Moslemah caused his troops to build a line of circ.u.mvallation from the sea to the Golden Horn, cutting Constantinople off from all communication with Thrace, while Suleiman blocked the southern exit of the Bosphorus, and tried to close it on the northern side also, so as to prevent any supplies coming by water from the Euxine. Leo, however, sallied forth from the Golden Horn with his galleys and fire-vessels bearing the dreaded Greek fire, and did so much harm to the detachment of Saracen s.h.i.+ps which had gone northward up the strait, that the blockade was never properly established on that side.

The Saracens relied more on starving out the city than on taking it by storm: they had come provided with everything necessary for a blockade of many months, and sat down as if intending to remain before the walls for an indefinite time. But Constantinople had been provisioned on an even more lavish scale; each family had been bidden to lay in a stock of corn for no less a period than two years, and famine appeared in the camp of the besiegers long ere it was felt in the houses of the besieged. Nor had Moslemah and Suleiman reckoned with the climate. Hard winters occasionally occur by the Black Sea, as our own army learnt to its cost in the Crimean War. But the Saracens were served even worse by the winter of 717-18, when the frost never ceased for twelve weeks. Leo might have boasted, like Czar Nicholas, that December, January, and February were his best generals-for these months wrought fearful havoc in the Saracen host. The lightly clad Orientals could not stand the weather, and died off like flies of dysentery and cold. The vizier Suleiman was among those who perished.

Meanwhile the Byzantines suffered little, being covered by roofs all the winter.

When next spring came round Moslemah would have had to raise the siege if he had not been heavily reinforced both by sea and land. A fleet of reserve arrived from Egypt, and a large army came up from Tarsus and occupied the Asiatic sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus.

But Leo did not despair, and took the offensive in the summer. His fire-s.h.i.+ps stole out and burnt the Egyptian squadron as it lay at anchor.

A body of troops landing on the Bithynian coast, surprised and cut to pieces the Saracen army which watched the other side of the strait. Soon, too, famine began to a.s.sail the enemy; their stores of provisions were now giving out, and they had harried the neighbourhood so fiercely that no more food could be got from near at hand, while if they sent foraging parties too far from their lines they were cut off by the peasantry. At last Moslemah suffered a disaster which compelled him to abandon his task.

The Bulgarians came down over the Balkans, and routed the covering army which observed Adrianople and protected the siege on the western side. No less than twenty thousand Saracens fell, by the testimony of the Arab historians themselves, and the survivors were so cowed that Moslemah gave the order to retire. The fleet ferried the land army back into Asia, and both forces started homeward. Moslemah got back to Tarsus with only thirty thousand men at his back, out of more than a hundred thousand who had started with him or come to him as reinforcements. The fleet fared even worse: it was caught by a tempest in the Aegean, and so fearfully shattered that it is said that only five vessels out of the whole Armada got back to Syria unharmed.

Thus ended the last great endeavour of the Saracen to destroy Constantinople. The task was never essayed again, though for three hundred and fifty years more wars were constantly breaking out between the Emperor and the Caliph. In the future they were always to be border struggles, not desperate attempts to strike at the heart of the empire, and conquer Europe for Islam. To Leo, far more than to his contemporary the Frank Charles Martel, is the delivery of Christendom from the Moslem danger to be attributed. Charles turned back a plundering horde sent out from an outlying province of the Caliphate. Leo repulsed the grand-army of the Saracens, raised from the whole of their eastern realms, and commanded by the brother of their monarch. Such a defeat was well calculated to impress on their fatalistic minds the idea that Constantinople was not destined by providence to fall into their hands. They were by this time far removed from the frantic fanaticism which had inspired their grandfathers, and the crus.h.i.+ng disaster they had now sustained deterred them from any repet.i.tion of the attempt. Life and power had grown so pleasant to them that martyrdom was no longer an "end in itself"; they preferred, if checked, to live and fight another day.

Leo was, however, by no means entirely freed from the Saracens by his victory of 718. At several epochs in the latter part of his reign he was troubled by invasions of his border provinces. None of them, however, were really dangerous, and after a victory won over the main army of the raiders in 739 at Acroinon in Phrygia, Asia Minor was finally freed from their presence.

XV. THE ICONOCLASTS. (A.D. 720-802.)

If Leo the Isaurian had died on the day on which the army of the Caliph raised the siege of Constantinople it would have been well for his reputation in history. Unhappily for himself, though happily enough for the East-Roman realm, he survived yet twenty years to carry through a series of measures which were in his eyes not less important than the repulse of the Moslems from his capital. Historians have given to the scheme of reform which he took in hand the name of the Iconoclastic movement, because of the opposition to the wors.h.i.+p of images which formed one of the most prominent features of his action.

For the last hundred years the empire had been declining in culture and civilization; literature and art seemed likely to perish in the never-ending clash of arms: the old-Roman jurisprudence was being forgotten, the race of educated civil servants was showing signs of extinction, the governors of provinces were now without exception rough soldiers, not members of that old bureaucracy whose Roman traditions had so long kept the empire together. Not least among the signs of a decaying civilization were the gross superst.i.tions which had grown up of late in the religious world. Christianity had begun to be permeated by those strange mediaeval fancies which would have been as inexplicable to the old-Roman mind of four centuries before as they are to the mind of the nineteenth century. A rich crop of puerile legends, rites, and observances had grown up of late around the central truths of religion, unnoticed and unguarded against by theologians, who devoted all their energies to the barren Monothelite and Monophysite controversies. Image-wors.h.i.+p and relic-wors.h.i.+p in particular had developed with strange rapidity, and a.s.sumed the shape of mere Fetis.h.i.+sm. Every ancient picture or statue was now announced as both miraculously produced and endued with miraculous powers. These wonder-working pictures and statues were now adored as things in themselves divine: the possession of one of them made the fortune of a church or monastery, and the tangible object of wors.h.i.+p seems to have been regarded with quite as much respect as the saint whose memory it recalled. The freaks to which image-wors.h.i.+p led were in some cases purely grotesque; it was, for example, not unusual to select a picture as the G.o.dfather of a child in baptism, and to sc.r.a.pe off a little of its paint and produce it at the ceremony to represent the saint. Even patriarchs and bishops ventured to a.s.sert that the hand of a celebrated representation of the Virgin distilled fragrant balsam. The success of the Emperor Heraclius in his Persian campaign was ascribed by the vulgar not so much to his military talent as to the fact that he carried with him a small picture of the Virgin, which had fallen from heaven!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Bishops, Monks, Kings, Laymen, And Women, Adoring The Madonna. (_From a Byzantine MS._) (_From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._)

All these vain beliefs, inculcated by the clergy and eagerly believed by the mob, were repulsive to the educated laymen of the higher cla.s.ses.

Their dislike for vain superst.i.tions was emphasized by the influence of Mahometanism on their minds. For a hundred years the inhabitants of the Asiatic provinces of the empire had been in touch with a religion of which the n.o.blest feature was its emphatic denunciation of idolatry under every shape and form. An East-Roman, when taunted by his Moslem neighbour for clinging to a faith which had grown corrupt and idolatrous, could not but confess that there was too much ground for the accusation, when he looked round on the daily practice of his countrymen.

Hence there had grown up among the stronger minds of the day a vigorous reaction against the prevailing superst.i.tions. It was more visible among the laity than among the clergy, and far more widespread in Asia than in Europe. In Leo the Isaurian this tendency stood incarnate in its most militant form, and he left the legacy of his enthusiasm to his descendants. Seven years after the relief of Constantinople he commenced his crusade against superst.i.tion. The chief practices which he attacked were the wors.h.i.+p of images and the ascription of divine honours to saints-more especially in the form of Mariolatry. His son Constantine, more bold and drastic than his father, endeavoured to suppress monasticism also, because he found the monks the most ardent defenders of images; but Leo's own measures went no further than a determined attempt to put down image-wors.h.i.+p.