THE CONTEST OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE AND THE CALIPHATE
641-717
Dynastic troubles after the death of Heraclius—Wars of Constantinus
(Constans II.) with the Caliphate—His publication of the ‘Type’—His
invasion of Italy and war with the Lombards—Reign of Constantine
V.—His successful defence of Constantinople—Tyranny of Justinian
II.—His deposition—Usurpations of Leontius and Tiberius—Justinian
restored—Anarchy follows his murder—Rise of Leo the Isaurian.
At the moment of the death of the unfortunate Heraclius the East-Roman
Empire was left in a most disadvantageous position for resisting the
vigorous attack which the Moslems were pressing against its remaining
provinces. Yielding to the influence of his ambitious wife Martina, the
old emperor had left the imperial power divided between Heraclius
Constantinus, the offspring of his first wife, and Martina’s eldest son
Heracleonas. The elder of the young emperors was twenty-nine, the
younger only sixteen. [Sidenote: Troubles at Constantinople, 641.] Their
joint reign opened ill, for Heraclius Constantinus and his stepmother,
who acted in all things as the representative of her young son, were at
open discord. But before three months had elapsed Heraclius Constantinus
died; it is probable that his decease was due to natural causes, but the
Byzantine public believed otherwise, and Martina was openly accused of
having poisoned her stepson. Her conduct was not such as to render the
charge improbable, for she at once proclaimed her son Heracleonas sole
emperor, although Heraclius Constantinus had left two young boys behind
him.
This was more than the Constantinopolitans would stand. Rioting at once
broke out, and the senate, which about this time assumes an independent
attitude, very different from its usual obedient impotence, made the
most strongly worded representations to Martina and her son, threatening
the worst consequences if the sons of Heraclius Constantinus were
excluded from the succession. In terror of their lives Martina and
Heracleonas bowed to the popular will, and allowed the boy Constantinus
to be crowned as the colleague of his uncle; he was no more than eleven
years old at his coronation.
The joint rule of the two lads, under the regency of Martina, lasted
less than a year. In September 642 the senate executed a _coup d’état_;
Martina and her son were seized and banished to Cherson. On the
accusation that they had poisoned Heraclius Constantinus they were
cruelly mutilated: the tongue of the empress and the nose of Heracleonas
were slit—the first instance of such a treatment of royal personages,
but by no means the last in Byzantine history.
THE HOUSE OF HERACLIUS.
Heraclius the Exarch.
|
+------------+-----------+
| |
| Maria=Martinus.
| |
Eudocia = HERACLIUS = Martina,
| A.D. 610-641. |
| |
HERACLIUS HERACLEONAS,
CONSTANTINUS, A.D. 641-642.
A.D. 641.
|
+------------------------------+
| |
CONSTANTINUS IV. (CONSTANS II.) Theodosius,
641-668. executed 660.
|
CONSTANTINE IV. or V.,
668-685.
|
JUSTINIAN II., = Theodora the Khazar.
685-695, and |
705-711. |
|
Tiberius Caesar.
[Sidenote: Constans II., 641-68.] Constantinus IV., or as he was more
usually but less accurately styled Constans II.,[37] thus became the
sole ruler of the East ere he had finished his twelfth year. The real
government was, for some time, carried on by the senate—a fact which
vouches both for the loyalty of the empire to the house of Heraclius and
for the great rise in the power of the senate during the last two or
three generations. In earlier days there is no doubt that some powerful
general would have seized the throne. But Constantinus, though his
minority was not untroubled by revolts, was permitted to grow up to
man’s estate, and to assume in due course the personal control of the
empire.
Footnote 37:
There is no doubt that his real name was Constantinus, or in full
Flavius Heraclius Constantinus. But the Western historians, and some
of those of the East, call him Constans. Probably this was a mere
convenience to distinguish him from his father, Heraclius
Constantinus, and his son, Constantine IV. (or V.).
It is astonishing that more evils did not come upon the State during the
boyhood of Constantinus. The energetic caliph Omar was still urging on
the Arabs to conquest, and with no firm hand at the helm it might have
been expected that the ship of the East-Roman state would have run upon
the breakers. But though the Saracens still continued to make way, the
rate of their progress was checked. Alexandria, the last Christian
stronghold in Egypt, had fallen during the short reign of Heracleonas.
The resources of the empire were drained for an attempt to recover it,
and in the second year of Constantinus a considerable expedition, under
a general named Manuel, fell unexpectedly upon the place and retook it.
The Arab governor of Egypt, the celebrated Amrou, had to besiege the
place for more than a year before it yielded. Irritated by its long
resistance he cast down its walls and massacred many of its inhabitants.
It would seem that the Saracen arms were for the next few years more
engrossed in the final conquest of eastern Persia than in assaulting the
Roman empire. It was not till Yezdigerd, the last of the Sassanian
kings, had been defeated and stripped of the farthest corners of his
dominion that the Arabs turned once more to the West.[38]
Footnote 38:
The final subjection of Persia was not complete till 652, though the
battle of Nehavend, the last which Yezdigerd risked in the open field,
was in 641.
[Sidenote: War in Africa.] The only point of the Roman frontier which
was seriously attacked was Africa. The sandy waste between Egypt and
Barca had less terrors for the Arab than for any other invader.
Encouraged by the fact that Gregory the exarch of Africa had rebelled
and proclaimed himself emperor, so that he could hope for no aid from
Constantinople, the Saracen general, Abdallah Abu-Sahr crossed the
Libyan desert and attacked Barca. Gregory came out against him, but was
defeated and slain: Barca and Tripoli fell to the invaders, but Carthage
and the rest of Africa relapsed into allegiance to Constantinus, when
the usurper was slain. The Saracen frontier stood still at the Syrtes
(646-7), and it took half a century more of fighting before the Romans
were evicted from the western half of their African possessions.
Meanwhile the caliph Omar had died, and his weaker successor, Othman,
proved less dangerous to the Eastern empire. His generals, however,
invaded Cyprus, and overran the island: unable to permanently hold it,
because of the preponderance of the Byzantine fleet, they contented
themselves with exacting a tribute, and retired (642). But encouraged by
the result of this, their first expedition by sea, the Saracens
commenced to build a great war fleet, and in a few years they were in a
condition to dispute the command of the eastern Mediterranean with the
Roman galleys, who since the destruction of the Vandals in 533 had known
no rivals on the sea.
Meanwhile Constantinus had grown up to manhood, and, luckily for the
empire, proved to be the kind of sovereign required in those days of
adversity. He was a stern warlike prince, possessed of no small share of
the military ability of his grandfather Heraclius. He was always in the
field, headed his own forces by sea no less than by land, and deserved
success by his courage and perseverance if he did not always obtain it.
Occasionally he was harsh and cruel, but such faults are more easily
pardoned in an emperor who had to face such a time of peril than are
cowardice and indolence.
[Sidenote: Saracen victories, 652.] In 652 Constantinus sent a second
expedition against Alexandria: it was met at sea off the Canopic mouth
of the Nile by a great Saracen fleet, gathered from the ports of Syria
and Egypt, and defeated with great loss. Three years later the enemy
took the offensive, Muavia, the governor of Syria, gathered a great
armada to attack the southern coast of Asia Minor, while he himself
marched by land to force the passes of the Taurus and invade Cappadocia.
Constantinus put to sea with every ship he could launch, and met the
Saracens at Phoenix, off the Lycian shore. Here the greatest naval
battle which the Mediterranean had seen since the day of Actium was
fought: the two fleets grappled, and the crews struggled desperately
hand to hand for many hours. Constantinus was in the thickest of the
fighting, his imperial galley was boarded, and he only escaped by
throwing off his purple mantle, and springing into another ship when his
own was captured. At last the Saracens won a decisive victory, and it
seemed as if they were about to become the masters of the Ægean (655).
Even before the battle Rhodes had fallen into their hands, and the
long-prostrate Colossus had been sold for old brass to a Jewish dealer,
and exported to Syria to be melted down.
The empire, however, was to be saved from the humiliation of seeing a
hostile fleet approach the Dardanelles for yet twenty years. In 656 the
caliph Othman was murdered, and his death was immediately followed by a
savage civil war among the Saracens. The two claimants for the vacant
dignity of ‘Successor of the Prophet,’ were Muavia, who held Syria, and
Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, who held Mesopotamia and the new Arab
capital of Kufa. Engrossed in his struggle with Ali, Muavia was fain to
leave the Roman empire unmolested. In 659 he bought peace from
Constantinus on the curious terms that he should pay for every day that
the peace lasted a horse and a slave. This treaty proved the salvation
of the empire: for the first time for twenty-seven years it was free
from Saracen war, and Constantinus could pause and take thought for the
reorganisation of his much-harassed dominions. In the five years of
peace which were now granted to him, he contrived to make a considerable
improvement in their condition.
[Sidenote: State of the Empire, 659.] When he took stock of his realm,
Constantinus found that in the East five great districts were
irretrievably lost: the nearer half of the exarchate of Africa, from
Tripoli to the Libyan desert, Egypt, Syria, and the greater part of
Roman Armenia had fallen into the power of Saracens. Moreover, in
Europe, the troubled years between 610 and 659 had brought about the
complete loss of the inland parts of the Balkan peninsula. The Slavs,
whose incursions had already grown so dangerous in the reign of Maurice,
had now obtained complete possession of the whole of Moesia, and of the
inland parts of Thrace and Macedon. Their settlements extended to within
a few miles of the gates of Adrianople and Thessalonica, both of which
cities they from time to time besieged without success. They had even
encroached south of Mount Olympus, and thrust forward their colonies
into some parts of Greece. The imperial dominions were restricted to a
coast-slip running all round the peninsula, from Spalato in Dalmatia to
Odessus on the Black Sea. In the West we have seen, while detailing the
history of the Lombards, that the East-Romans now preserved only the
exarchate of Ravenna, the duchies of Rome and Naples, the southern point
of Italy, and the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
Recognising that he must look to reorganisation rather than to
reconquest for restoring the strength of the empire, Constantinus
devoted himself to securing his borders. The moment that the civil war
of the Arabs broke out, and left him free to move elsewhere, he marched
against the Slavs of the Balkans, defeated them, and reduced them to pay
tribute. It was hopeless to dream of driving them back across the
Danube, and the emperor was contented to accept the existing state of
things, and to secure the coastland of Thrace and Macedonia from further
molestation, by imposing a line of demarcation between the Slavonic
tribes and the much-reduced provinces (657-8).
The emperor’s attention was now drawn to Africa and Italy. His presence
was needed there no less than in the Balkan peninsula, if the Lombard
and the Saracen were to be finally checked from advancing. In 662 he
sailed for the West, and was busy there for the next six years, right
down to the moment of his death. Constantinus hated the capital: he was
sufficiently autocratic in his notions to dislike the control that the
senate had been wont to exercise over him in earlier years, and he
cordially detested the mob of Constantinople. He had fallen out with
them on the same grounds that had once proved fatal to the popularity of
Zeno. [Sidenote: The ‘Type’ of Constans.] The city was torn with the
religious feuds between the Orthodox and the Monothelites, and the
emperor, to calm the storm, had issued an edict of comprehension called
‘the Type,’ in which he forbade all mention of either the single or the
double will as residing in the person of Our Lord. Without satisfying
the heretics, the Type succeeded in irritating the Orthodox to great
fury: they persistently accused Constantinus of being a Monothelite
himself, and made his life miserable by their clamour. There was yet a
third reason for his quitting Byzantium. In 660 he had conceived
suspicions, whether true or false we know not, that his brother
Theodosius was plotting against him. He promptly condemned the young
prince to death, but after the execution his mind had no rest: we are
told that his dreams were always haunted by the spectre of his brother,
and that the palace where the deed was done grew insupportably hateful
to him. If these tales be true, he left Constantinople to seek ease of
spirit, no less than to restore the failing powers of the empire in the
West.
It was probably in the period 657-662, before his departure from the
capital, that Constantinus recast the provincial administration of the
empire in accordance with the needs of the times. It seems that the
institution of the ‘Themes,’ or new provinces, must date from this, the
only space of rest and rearrangement to be found in a long age of wars.
The old provinces, as arranged by Diocletian, and somewhat modified by
Justinian, had been small, and in each of them civil and military powers
were kept separate, the local garrison not being under the control of
the local administrator. The needs of the long Persian and Saracen wars
had led to the practical supersession of the civil governors by the
military commanders, for it was absolutely necessary that the men
trusted with the preservation of the empire should be able to control
its local administration and finance. [Sidenote: Creation of the
Themes.] The new provinces were few and large, and ruled by governors,
who had civil as well as military authority. They were called ‘themes,’
after the name of the military divisions which occupied them, a ‘theme’
being originally a force of some 4000 regular cavalry detailed for the
protection of a district. The names of the original Asiatic themes
easily explain themselves, ‘Anatolikon’ and ‘Armeniakon’ the two
largest, were the regions garrisoned by the ‘army of the East’ and the
‘army of Armenia.’ ‘Thrakesion,’ farther west, shows that the original
‘army of Thrace’ had been brought over into Asia to give aid against the
Saracen. ‘Bucellarion’ was named after the Bucellarii,[39] a corps
originally formed of Teutonic auxiliaries. The theme called Obsequium
(Opsikion) was held by the Imperial Guard. Only the Cibyrhaeote theme,
along the southern coast of Asia Minor, was named from a town, and not
from the troops who garrisoned it. In the West, there seem to have been
originally three themes in the Balkan peninsula, Thrace, Illyricum, and
Hellas, and three beyond it, Ravenna, Sicily, and Africa. Each theme was
governed by a stratêgos, whose military title shows his military
character, and was garrisoned by its own local force of regular troops,
the core of which was in each case a division of 4000 heavy cavalry. The
full force of the twelve themes would give some 48,000 horsemen for the
field, in addition to the less important infantry, the local militia
used for holding fortresses, and the irregular hired bands of barbarian
auxiliaries of many different races.
Footnote 39:
See page 131 for a Visigothic use of the word Bucellarii.
[Illustration:
PROBABLE ARRANGEMENT
OF THE
SIX ASIATIC THEMES
A.D. 660-700
]
Constantinus was the only Eastern emperor who ever paid a large and even
preponderant share of attention to his Western dominions. The long stay
of six years which he made in Italy and Sicily caused his Eastern
subjects to suppose that he had designs of restoring Rome to the
position of capital of the empire, or even, perhaps, of raising Syracuse
to that distinction. Such a project seems so inconvenient from
geographical reasons, that we can hardly credit it; probably
Constantinus’ personal dislike for Constantinople, while sufficing to
keep him away from it, did not make him scheme to transfer the seat of
empire elsewhere.
There is no doubt, however, that Constantinus was determined to reassert
the supremacy of the empire in Italy against the Lombards, and also to
take care that the exarchs and the popes should not grow too strong and
independent. [Sidenote: The fate of Pope Martin.] Even before he sailed
for Italy his jealousy of the power of the papacy had been shown by his
dealings with Pope Martin I. That prelate had dared to hold a synod at
Rome, in which he condemned the ‘Type’ or Edict of Comprehension issued
by the emperor (649). Constantinus never pardoned this: he bided his
time, directed the exarch to seize the person of Martin at a convenient
opportunity, and had him shipped off to Constantinople. There he was
tried for contumacy, thrown into chains, and banished to Cherson, in the
Crimea, where he died in exile (655).
[Sidenote: Campaign in Italy, 663.] Constantinus left the Bosphorus in
662 with a large army, and sailed for Taranto. There he landed, and at
once fell upon the duchy of Benevento, the southernmost of the Lombard
States in Italy. The time of his attack happened to be unfortunate, for
Grimoald, duke of Benevento, had seized the Lombard crown, and his son
Romuald was ruling the duchy under him. For once in a way, therefore,
Pavia and Benevento were united and ready to act together. The Lombard
historian, Paulus Diaconus, has preserved the details of the campaign of
Constantinus—whom he usually styles Constans, as do so many other
writers. The emperor captured, one after another, all the Lombard cities
of south Italy, including Luceria, the chief town of Apulia. He drove
Romuald into Benevento, and held him closely besieged there, till he
gave up his sister Gisa as a hostage, and promised to pay tribute. He
would not have granted such easy terms, but for the fact that he had
learnt that king Grimoald, with the whole force of Lombardy, was
marching against him.
Departing from Benevento, Constantinus moved on Rome, leaving a part of
his army under a Persian exile named Sapor to watch the Lombards. This
division was cut to pieces at Forino, and after he had received the
news, the emperor seems to have given up his idea of re-conquering
central Italy. He contented himself with visiting Rome and receiving the
homage of pope Vitalian, who met him at the sixth milestone, at the head
of the whole Roman people, and escorted him into the city. But Rome took
little profit from the advent of an emperor, a sight it had not seen for
two hundred years. Constantinus plundered it of many ornaments, and in
particular stripped the Pantheon of its tiles of gilded bronze and sent
them to Constantinople (663).
After staying only twelve days in the ancient capital, the emperor
turned on his heel, and instead of proceeding against the northern
Lombards, led his army through Naples into Lucania and Bruttium as far
as Reggio. King Grimoald and his son do not seem to have molested him in
this long march. [Sidenote: Constans in Sicily, 664-8.] Constantinus
then crossed the straits of Messina into Sicily, and established himself
at Syracuse, which he made his residence for more than four years
(664-8). His attention was engrossed by the forward movement of the
Saracens in Africa. Muavia, having secured the sole caliphate by the
death of his rival Ali, had at last recommenced his attacks on the
empire in 663. His troops pushed forward in Africa and seized Carthage,
from which, however, Constantinus succeeded in driving them out, and
once more pushed them back to Tripoli. It must have been in this African
war that he spent the treasures which he is said to have wrung out of
the people of Sicily, Sardinia, and south Italy by ‘exaction such as had
never been heard of before,’ even tearing the sacramental plate from the
churches, and selling as slaves those who refused to pay. These harsh
proceedings did as much to weaken the power of the empire in the West as
the military successes of Constantinus did to strengthen it.
It was at Syracuse that Constantinus met his end. While he was bathing
in the baths that were called Daphne, his attendant Andreas smote him on
the head with his marble soap-box, so that the skull was broken, and
then fled away. [Sidenote: Murder of Constans, 668.] The blow was fatal,
and with this strange death perished that plan of restoring the empire
in the West which had been the favourite scheme of Constantinus. His
murder was probably the result of a conspiracy, for when it was known,
an Armenian officer named Mezecius proclaimed himself emperor in Sicily,
and reigned there for a few months.
For the last five years of Constantinus’ long absence in the West there
had been grievous trouble with the Saracens in Asia Minor, against which
the caliph Muavia had launched his hosts for five successive summers.
The raids of his generals reached as far as Amorium in Phrygia, which
was stormed by the Arabs, and promptly retaken by the Romans in 668. The
nominal control of affairs in Asia had been left to the emperor’s eldest
son Constantine, when his father sailed to the West. [Sidenote:
Constantine Pogonatus, 668-85.] On the news of the murder at Syracuse
and the usurpation of Mezecius, Constantine, now aged eighteen, sailed
in person to Sicily, put down and executed the usurper, and then
promptly returned to Constantinople. He had been beardless when he set
out, but returned next year with his face covered with hair, wherefore
the people of the capital gave him the nickname of ‘Pogonatus,’ the
bearded, by which he is generally known. Curiously enough the name would
have been far better applied to his father whose beard was enormous,
while that of Constantine V. did not exceed a very moderate limit.
Constantine Pogonatus was his father’s true son, a hard-working,
hard-fighting, and somewhat high-handed Caesar, who kept the empire well
together, and spent all his energy in holding the Saracens in check, a
task in which he won great success. He reigned for seventeen years
(668-85), of which the first ten were a time of unbroken war with the
Caliphate. The first beginning of this struggle was not very favourable
for the empire; in 669-70 the generals of Muavia pushed their way as far
as the sea of Marmora, and in 672 the Caliph thought success so nearly
in his grasp that he prepared for a formal siege of Constantinople, the
second that it had undergone in the century. Using the harbour of
Cyzicus as their base, the Saracens, under a general named Abderrha-man,
and the Caliph’s son Yezid, beleaguered the city for six months
(April-September, 673). They were finally forced to retire after a naval
engagement in which the Imperial galleys had the better, largely owing,
it is said, to the newly invented ‘Greek fire,’ by which they burnt many
of the Moslem ships. [Sidenote: Constantine V. saves Constantinople.]
When forced away from the Bosphorus, the Saracens fell back on Cyzicus,
which they succeeded in holding for no less than four years, making
occasional sallies from it towards Constantinople, of which every single
one was repelled with loss by the emperor. At last the Arabs, after
losing their general, and seeing Abu Eyub, one of the last surviving
companions of Mohammed, perish before the walls, raised the siege. Their
fleet was destroyed by a storm off the Lycian Coast: their land-army was
attacked on its retreat by the East-Romans, and defeated with a loss of
30,000 men.
So great was the blow inflicted on the Caliph by the entire failure of
his army before Constantinople, that he was glad to conclude an
ignominious peace with the emperor, by which he engaged to pay 3000
pounds of gold to Constantine, and to send him fifty Arab horses for
every year that the treaty lasted (678).
The fidelity of the East-Romans to the house of Heraclius was thus
justified by the victory of Constantine; it is a pity that only a very
meagre account of his campaign has come down to us, owing to the dearth
of chroniclers in the seventh century. We know, however, that the fame
of his triumph went all over Europe, and that ambassadors came from the
Avars, the Lombards, and even the distant Franks to congratulate him on
beating off an attack which had threatened serious consequences to the
whole of Christendom.
[Sidenote: The Bulgarians.] For the remainder of his reign Constantine
enjoyed a well-earned peace, disturbed only by some slight bickering
with a new enemy, the Bulgarians. This Ugrian tribe, who had dwelt for
the last two centuries beyond the Danube, crossed the river in the end
of Constantine’s reign, and threw themselves upon the Slavonic tribes
who held Moesia. They subdued the Slavs without much difficulty, and
defeated a Roman army which Constantine led by sea to the mouth of the
Danube. Recognising that it was impossible to reconquer the long-lost
Moesia, the emperor made peace with Isperich, the Bulgarian king, and
allowed him to settle without further opposition in the land between the
Danube and the Balkans, where the Slavs had hitherto held possession
(679). A new Bulgarian nation was gradually formed by the intermixture
of the conquering tribe and their subjects: when formed, it displayed a
Slavonic rather than a Ugrian type, and spoke a Slavonic not a Ugrian
tongue.
The later years of Constantine V. were better known to contemporaries as
the time of the holding of the council of Constantinople, than as the
time of the foundation of the new Bulgarian kingdom. To settle the
dispute on the divine and human wills of Christ, the emperor summoned an
œcumenical synod, at which the Western churches were well represented.
It finally condemned the Monothelite heresy, which for the future ceased
to be the great question debated between the churches (680-1). But a new
controversy, that on Iconoclasm, was ere long to break out.
[Sidenote: Character of Constantine V.] To the misfortune of the empire
the able and hard-working Constantine died in 685, at the comparatively
early age of thirty-six. We hear little that is unfavourable to him from
any chronicler: his sole crime seems to have been the cruel act of
slitting the noses of his two brothers Heraclius and Tiberius in 680, to
disqualify them from holding imperial power. They had hitherto been
nominally the colleagues of Constantine, and were honoured with the
title of Caesars, but in the interests of his own son Justinian, now a
growing boy, the emperor determined to make it impossible for them to
aspire to the supreme power. It appears to have been a cruel and
unjustifiable act, and unless the Caesars had given provocation, a fact
of which we have no hint in any chronicler, it was a grievous blot on
the otherwise excellent character of Constantine V.
The young Justinian, second of that name, mounted his father’s throne in
685, when only in his seventeenth year. The accession of this prince was
a fearful misfortune for the empire. He possessed the qualities of his
grandfather Constantinus in an exaggerated form, being arbitrary, cruel,
reckless, and high-handed, yet so brave and capable that his throne was
not easy to shake. [Sidenote: Justinian II., 685-95.] He started on his
career too young, and might have come to better things if his father had
lived for another ten years; but, abandoned to his own devices ere he
was well out of his boyhood, he developed into a bloodthirsty tyrant.
The first few years of his reign, ere he had felt his feet and fully
realised his own desires, were comparatively uneventful. The Saracens
were occupied in civil wars since the death of Muavia, and gave no
trouble: the caliph Abd-el-Melik was only too glad to renew with
Justinian the treaty that his predecessor had made with Constantine V.
Unmolested by the Saracens, Justinian sent armies into Iberia and
Albania, the Christian kingdoms under the Caucasus, and compelled them
to pay him tribute. Soon after he undertook in person a great expedition
against the Bulgarians, designing to push the Roman boundary once more
to the Danube. He was very successful, beating the enemy in the field,
and bringing back more than 30,000 captives, from whom he organised an
auxiliary force for service in Asia.
Justinian’s triumph over the Bulgarians emboldened him to undertake the
greater scheme of winning back Syria from the Saracens. In 693 he picked
a quarrel with the Caliph on the most frivolous grounds: when the annual
payment due under the treaty of 686 was tendered to him, he refused to
receive the money, because the coins were not the old Roman _solidi_,
which had hitherto circulated in Syria and Egypt, and still formed the
bulk of the Saracen currency, but new Arab ‘dirhems’ with Abd-el-Melik’s
name upon them, which the caliph had lately begun to strike. [Sidenote:
Justinian’s Saracen war, 693.] But any pretext was good enough for
Justinian: he declared war with a light heart, and led his armies in
person across the Taurus into Cilicia. At Sebastopolis near Tarsus he
suffered a fearful defeat, mainly caused by the desertion to the
Saracens of the unwilling recruits whom he had enlisted from among the
captives of the Bulgarian War. When he had rallied his army Justinian
was cruel and illogical enough to order those of the corps who had _not_
deserted to be put to death—lest they might follow their comrades’
example in the next battle (693). In the next year the emperor lost
Roman Armenia by the revolt of its Governor, a native Armenian named
Sumpad, who deserted to the Saracens. Other disasters followed, and the
Arabs harried the ‘Anatolic’ and ‘Armeniac’ themes.
Meanwhile the young emperor had been making himself most unpopular at
home by the exactions necessary for the support of his unlucky war, and
still more by persisting in building expensive and unnecessary palaces
in the capital, while the war still raged. His two finance ministers,
Theodotus, a lapsed abbot who had quitted his monastery, and the eunuch
Stephanus, are reported to have gone to the extremes of cruelty in
dealing with the citizens. It is said that Theodotus was wont to torture
defaulting tax-payers by hanging them over smoky fires and half stifling
them. Stephanus preferred the rod: it is said that he even presumed on
one occasion—during Justinian’s absence—to seize and beat the
empress-dowager Anastasia. The emperor only punished him by ordering him
to complete, at his own expense, a building on which he was then
engaged.
It was not only by heaping taxes on his subjects that Justinian made
himself unpopular. He had a mania for seizing and imprisoning on
suspicion senators and other important personages, and he was so
merciless in dealing with military officers who met with any defeat,
that to accept a command under him was considered the shortest way to
the dungeon or the block. Meanwhile his ill-luck in the Saracen war made
him as much detested by the soldiery as he was dreaded by their
officers. In 695 a distinguished general named Leontius, the conqueror
of Iberia and Albania,[40] was ordered by Justinian to take command of
the theme of Hellas. Regarding this charge as a mere preliminary to
disgrace and execution, Leontius in sheer desperation planned a _coup
d’état_. [Sidenote: Fall of Justinian, 695.] At the head of a few dozen
followers he burst open the prisons, and made a dash at the palace.
Justinian was taken completely by surprise; he fell into the hands of
Leontius, who slit his nose, and banished him to the distant fortress of
Cherson, in the Crimea. His two detested ministers, Theodotus and
Stephanus, were torn to pieces and burnt by the populace.
Footnote 40:
See p. 249.
With the fall of Justinian II. began twenty-two years of anarchy and
disaster for the empire. Hitherto Constantinople had been singularly
fortunate in escaping the consequences of military revolts and changes
of dynasty. With the single exception of the usurpation of the tyrant
Phocas, and his deposition by Heraclius, there had been no cases of the
transfer of the imperial crown by violence for more than three hundred
years. All the earlier emperors of the East had been either designated
by their predecessors or peaceably elected by the senate and army. It
was now to be seen how fatal was the breaking up of the rule of orderly
succession: in the next twenty-two years there were no less than five
revolutions at home, and abroad many grave disasters cut the empire
short.
[Sidenote: Carthage lost, 698.] The three-years’ rule of Leontius was
mainly distinguished by the final loss of Carthage and Africa. Already
in Justinian’s time the province had been invaded and partially overrun
by the generals of the Caliph. In 697 Carthage fell: it was recovered
for a moment by an expedition sent out by Leontius, but in 698 it fell
permanently into the hands of the Saracens. The Roman generals, however,
escaped by sea with the main body of their army. Fearing to face the
wrath of Leontius with such a tale of disaster, the returning officers
conspired against him. They sailed to the Bosphorus, where their arrival
was quite unexpected, caught the emperor, slit his nose, and threw him
into a monastery. In his stead they proclaimed the admiral Tiberius
Apsimarus as sovereign (698).
Tiberius II., a very capable man, clung to the throne for seven years.
He was fortunate in his war with the Saracens: his armies defeated those
of the Caliph, recovered Cilicia, and even occupied Antioch. But this
success abroad did not save Tiberius from the wonted end of usurpers. He
was overthrown by the banished and mutilated Justinian II., who now
reappears upon the stage in a most startling fashion.
Justinian had been consigned by Leontius to the remote fortress of
Cherson—the modern Sebastopol—on the north shore of the Black Sea. But
being carelessly guarded, he succeeded in escaping, and reaching the
court of the Chagan of the Khazars, the Tartar tribe who dwelt on the
lower Volga and the shores of the sea of Azoff. [Sidenote: Adventures of
Justinian.] In spite of his mutilated nose he succeeded in gaining the
good graces of the Chagan, and received the hand of his sister in
marriage. Hearing of this Tiberius II. sent a huge bribe to the Tartar,
to persuade him to surrender his guest. The treacherous barbarian
consented, and despatched an officer to arrest Justinian. But the exile
got wind of the plot through a message from his wife, and instead of
allowing himself to be seized, slew the Chagan’s emissary, and escaped
to sea in an open boat, with half-a-dozen attendants. A storm arose, and
the little vessel seemed likely to founder. ‘Make a vow to God that if
you escape you will forgive your enemies,’ said one of Justinian’s
companions to him, as the boat began to fill. ‘No,’ replied the reckless
and inflexible exile, ‘if I spare a single one of them when my time
comes, may God sink me here and now.’ The storm abated, the boat came
safe to land, and Justinian fell into the hands of Terbel, the king of
the Bulgarians. Terbel lent him an army with which to try his fortune,
and with its aid he advanced to the gates of Constantinople. [Sidenote:
Justinian restored, 705-11.] The city was betrayed to him by partisans
within the walls, and he succeeded in getting possession of the palace,
and of the person of Tiberius II. Justinian then dragged out of his
cloister the deposed usurper Leontius, bound him and Tiberius hand and
foot, and laid them before his throne in the Hippodrome. There he sat in
triumph with his feet on the necks of the vanquished Caesars, while his
partisans chanted ‘Thou shalt trample on the Lion and the Asp,’ an
allusion to the names of the two fallen rulers (Leontius and Apsimarus).
The two prisoners were then beheaded (705).
During his first reign Justinian had chastised his subjects with whips,
it was with scorpions that he now afflicted them. He had returned from
exile in a mood of reckless cruelty: the vow he had made was kept with
rigid accuracy. Every one who had been concerned in his deposition ten
years before was sought out, tortured, and put to death. Some of his
doings rose to a monstrous pitch of inhumanity: the chief men of
Cherson, who had offended him during his exile, were bound on spits and
roasted: many patricians were sewed up into sacks and cast into the
Bosphorus.
It is astonishing to find that the second reign of Justinian lasted for
more than five years. His tyranny was such that an instant explosion of
popular wrath might have been expected. But if reckless, he was also
active, suspicious, and strong-handed, and crushed many plots before
they could come to a head. [Sidenote: Justinian slain, 711.] At last he
fell before a military revolt: the army, headed by a general named
Philippicus, disavowed its allegiance, seized the tyrant, and beheaded
him. His little six-year-old son, Tiberius, whom the Chagan’s sister had
borne him, was torn from sanctuary, and murdered. Thus perished the
house of Heraclius, after it had given five rulers to the empire during
a century of rule (610-711). It had done much to save the state from the
Saracens: all its members, even Justinian, had been men of ability, and
Heraclius himself, Constantinus-Constans, and Constantine V. had each
borne his part in the long struggle with credit, if not with complete
success.
[Sidenote: Anarchy, 711-17.] There now followed six years of complete
anarchy (711-17), during which the imperial annals are filled by the
obscure names of Philippicus (711-13), Artemius Anastasius (713-715) and
Theodosius III. (715-17). Each was the creature of a conspiracy, and
each fell by the same means by which he had been uplifted. They were all
feeble and incompetent sovereigns, far below the rank of the two earlier
usurpers, Leontius and Tiberius Apsimarus. The importance of their
reigns lies not in their struggle with each other, but in the general
collapse of the system of defence of the empire against the Saracen, the
natural result of the employment of the whole army in civil war. The
generals of the caliphs Welid and Soliman, the sons of Abd-al-Melik
(705-17) burst through the boundaries of the empire on every point. In
711 Sardinia, the westernmost province of the empire since the loss of
Africa, was subdued by the Arabs. In the same year they crossed the
Taurus, and sacked Tyana in Cappadocia. In 712 they overran Pontus and
captured Amasia, in 713 Antioch in Pisidia fell, and with it much of
southern Asia Minor. It appeared as if with the downfall of the house of
Heraclius the power of self-defence had been taken away from the
East-Romans. Nor was the lowest depth yet reached.
Emboldened by the easy successes of his armies over those of the
ephemeral sovereigns who followed Justinian II., the caliph Soliman at
last resolved to fit out an expedition on the largest scale against
Constantinople. [Sidenote: Saracen invasion, 716.] A hundred thousand
men advanced by land from Tarsus, while a fleet of more than 1000 sail
gathered in the ports of Syria, and sailed round Asia Minor into the
Ægean. The Caliph’s brother Moslemah was to head the whole expedition.
Cappadocia was already in Saracen hands, and the Caliph’s vanguard was
occupied with the siege of Amorium, the chief stronghold of Phrygia.
That town, indeed, was saved from destruction by Leo the Isaurian, the
governor of the Anatolic theme. But soon after, while the Arabs were
still advancing, this same Leo, after concluding a private truce with
the invaders, proclaimed himself emperor, and advanced against
Constantinople, instead of reserving his strength to resist the armies
of Soliman (716).
[Sidenote: Leo the Isaurian, 717.] Once more fortune favoured the newest
rising against the emperor of the day. The troops of Leo beat those of
Theodosius III., and then the latter voluntarily abdicated and sent to
offer his crown to the victor. He was a mild and virtuous man, who had
been raised to the purple against his will by his military partisans,
and longed to return to his obscurity, feeling himself destitute of the
power needed to cope with the insurgents, and still more unable to face
the impending Saracen invasion.
Accordingly the senate and the patriarch formally elected the rebel Leo
as emperor, and set him on the throne which had already changed masters
seven times in the last twenty-two years. At length the empire had found
a master who could defend what he had won, and was fully able to
transmit his power to his heirs. The armament of Moslemah might be
awaited without dismay, for the state was once more in the hands of one
who could be trusted to use its resources aright. Leo was to dissipate
once and for all the Saracen storm-cloud, and to free Constantinople
from all danger from the East for more than three hundred years. But his
achievements demand a chapter to themselves.
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