passion, Nicephorus drew himself free from the throng of flatterers,
friends, and rivals; and, wrapping himself in a trooper's cloak, so
as not to be recognized, the triumphant general had himself rapidly
borne away to his own modest home in a distant quarter of the city.
There, tearing off his accoutrements and all insignia of office and
rank, he flung himself on his simple couch in solitary seclusion;
and, falling on his knees before a small ikon of Mary, he prayed to
the Mother of God to guide his steps in the dark wilderness in which
he found himself entangled. Transported out of himself far above the
vociferous pageants of that exhausting day, Nicephorus gave himself,
with all the mystical imagination of his Oriental nature, to visions
wherein he beheld the Queen of Heaven offering him a place among the
blessed saints who had forsaken things of the earth for that peace
which the world cannot give.
XVI
Cæsar at the Rubicon
All through the night of that eventful day of his triumph the general
tossed in a tumult of conflicting emotions, while the noisy crowds
surrounded his abode with shouts of, "Our ever-victorious commander!"
and again, "Nicephorus to the Sacred Palace!" and even "Nicephorus,
our Basileus!" He refused to show himself to the people, denied
access to all, sent for the monk Athanasius in order to confess, and
had himself clothed in the rough garb of a postulant. He now fully
understood the imminent peril to his liberty and his life which the
hatred of the ruling faction involved. He felt, with a burning sense
of shame, that with all her fascinations the empress sought him
rather as a tool than as a husband. And he saw before him the
whirlpool of revolution, civil war, calumny, and crime that he must
face if he suffered himself to be looked on as an aspirant to the
throne. He fell back, with groans and prayers, on his old purpose of
seeking rest in a cell as a simple monk or hermit, as his own uncle
had been before him.
At last the faithful Digenes succeeded in forcing his way to the
chief. The whole city, he said, was now in wild excitement, calling
for the general to assume the government and displace the hated
eunuch. Bringas, he said, was well aware of the danger to himself,
and was conspiring to arrest and destroy his rival. There was but
one course left. To save his own life, to protect his friends, to
restore the empire, the general must grasp the power that all Rome
and the army thrust into his hands.
"It cannot be," said Nicephorus, calmly; "I am about to retire from
this world of blood, struggle, and evil passions. I have sent for
the holy man of Mount Athos, who is preparing for my admission to
their order. When my enemies find that I withdraw from the contest
and have no more part in things of earth, they will leave me in peace
and soon forget me. I shall be forgotten--ay, by those," he added,
bitterly, "who now profess to care for me. It shall never be said
that a Phocas turned rebel to the dynasty of Basil and plotted to
drive an infant Basil from the throne of his fathers, or made himself
the tool of a woman's ambition. Go, my son; go and tell them in the
city and in the palace that Nicephorus has now become the hermit,
Father Zachariah."
"It is too late," said Digenes, with a groan--"too late to save you
from arrest, mutilation--it may be death!"
Here the colloquy was interrupted by a messenger, who brought the
general a formal missive from the Sacred Palace that the council of
state craved the immediate presence of the grand domestic of the east
to confer on urgent affairs of the empire.
"Tell them," said Nicephorus, with proud contempt, "that I have done
with council, palace, empire, politics, and arms. I go to my cell.
I leave it to them to save Rome. I will not come."
Digenes withdrew in despair; and now the hermit Athanasius was again
announced as craving an interview.
"Let him come," said the great soldier, as he flung himself down in
abasement beneath the ikon; "all will withdraw, and see that no man
enter here."
"Holy father, strengthen me in my purpose," groaned the chief, as the
hermit stood behind him, still completely enveloped from head to foot
and concealed in an immense black cloak.
Slowly the hood of the mantle was thrown back and disclosed the pale
countenance of Theophano herself. Her eyes flashed with excitement;
her features shone with looks of eagerness, entreaty, and love; her
voice shook with anxiety, passion, and fear.
"My hero," she broke out, spasmodically, "your life is at stake, and
I cannot save you from these fiends. They have already set the
vermilion seal to an order to have you arrested and deprived of
sight. They will seize you if you set foot in the palace, and our
friends there are not strong enough to save you. They will seize you
even if you stay here. Rush for sanctuary to the great church and
claim the protection of the patriarch. I came here myself at every
risk, for I dared not trust a messenger, and I know well, my hero, my
master, my saint," she added, in her sweetest voice and with a look
of love, "that Nicephorus is a man of iron, who will not be turned
from his purpose even by his best friend." And Theophano put her
hand upon his shoulder as he still remained on his knees before the
ikon, and, passing her soft fingers over his burning brow, she looked
down into his eyes.
"Madam," he said, slowly, "I am dead to this world. I am dedicated
now to God and to heaven."
"It shall not be!" she replied, passionately. "If you choose to
sacrifice yourself, will you leave the Rome you have saved to the
mercy of these wretches, to the savagery of the infidel? Will you
doom to a prison and mutilation my poor children, your true and
lawful sovereigns? Will you abandon me to degradation, to a life of
torment, to the worst shame that the eunuch or the Hagarenes can
devise--me who offer you everything that the love of woman and the
authority of an empress of Rome can offer a soldier of the Cross?
Nicephorus, son of the hero Bardas, of the noble race of Phocas, can
you abandon to shame and ruin the widow of your sovereign and the
children of the house of Basil?"
He sank on the ground before her, and taking the skirt of her robe in
his hands he pressed it to his lips with veneration, as if it were
the girdle of the Mother of God.
"I go," she murmured; "I dare not stay; they will send their guards
here in a few moments. Rush to the church. Claim sanctuary. I bid
you in the name of Christ--do this for me--and for mine."
Theophano disappeared as silently and mysteriously as she had come.
And now Digenes broke in again with news that the palace guard were
already on their way to seize the general. He concealed Nicephorus
in a military cloak and forced him into the church of the Holy
Wisdom. Then he rushed to the patriarch to implore his protection
for the fugitive who had taken sanctuary in the most venerated temple
of the city. Polyeuctus summoned his whole chapter, and, bearing
aloft the miraculous crucifix, took Nicephorus under his
guardianship. In the mean time Digenes called together the partisans
of Nicephorus, and appealed to the people to protect their hero from
the vengeance of his rivals. Furious mobs gathered round the
cathedral, shouting, "Long live the victorious chief!" "Death to the
eunuch!" "Nicephorus, our king!" and they offered, by their mass and
violence, effective resistance to the guards who attempted to enter
the church and arrest the chief.
Polyeuctus, with his austere virtue and genuine patriotism, had long
desired to put an end to the corrupt and savage reign of the powerful
eunuch, and he flung himself into the defence of Nicephorus with all
the energy of his fiery and generous nature. He vehemently denounced
his purpose of retiring to a cell, refused him absolution, and
menaced him with excommunication and every spiritual penalty unless
he continued to do his duty to the state. Dragging the general with
him, girdled by a crowd of priests bearing sacred images and relics,
in the midst of an immense mob of citizens cheering the hero of the
day, the patriarch forced Nicephorus into the senate, which had been
already convoked by the regent's will.
There Polyeuctus, with the general standing beside him, poured out an
impassioned appeal, of which this is the substance: He gave a moving
picture of the decay of the empire and the ravages of the infidel by
sea and land until the invincible arm of Nicephorus had driven them
back to the far east. He spoke of the orgies of the late reign and
of the corruptions that had eaten into the heart of the government.
The prime-minister, who had suffered--nay, encouraged--all this
corruption, he said, now claimed to be undisputed master of the
empire, and was affecting to be the real Augustus in the name of an
inexperienced woman and her two babes. "Let us close this era of
corruption and fraud," he continued, "by giving absolute power to the
hero who has twice saved our name and faith from its deadly
foes--this stern and pious soldier who is feared as much for his
honesty by the evil crew of the palace minions as he is feared for
his invincible prowess by the Hagarenes of Abd-el-Aziz or of the
accursed Chamdas, the enemy of Christ. Senators, magnates, and
officials of Rome, there is but one man who can restore this empire
and confront its secret enemies at home as well as its open foes
abroad. Let us confer, as our forefathers of Rome would do of old,
dictatorial power on the one man who is worthy to wield it."
This fervid and bold appeal was received with cheers by a majority of
the Senate, but the party of Bringas met it with furious opposition.
Amid the storm of conflicting voices, Nicephorus himself came forward
to protest that he would accept no office or task which in any way
trenched on the rights and prerogatives of the regent or menaced the
succession to the throne of their lawful sovereigns, the infant
Basileis. With his hand on the holy relics, which the deacons had
carried before the patriarch into the senate house, Nicephorus swore
in presence of the entire senate, the priests, and ministers
assembled, that he prayed God to strike him down with the foulest
form of death, and to consign his soul to eternal damnation, if he
ever should break his faith as a loyal subject of the regent and the
two Augusti. On their side, the senate, by its chief officials,
swore to maintain in his office the grand domestic of the east, to
suffer no act of state, no appointment to office, and no dismissal
from office to be made without his sanction and advice.
Nicephorus was saved. So far as words and oaths could go--and they
did not go far in the city "that God protects"--he was practically
invested with despotic powers. But in face of the savage enmity of
Bringas and his party, and without any adequate body of troops
devoted to him, the general knew how precarious was his life in the
capital. He hurriedly withdrew and hastened to his headquarters in
Cappadocia, where his friends gave out that he was busy organizing
his army for a fresh expedition into the east. The struggle between
Theophano and the eunuch was carried on by both sides with desperate
energy and unscrupulous arts. The regent now took into her favor
Digenes, the akritas, as a trusty partisan to Nicephorus, and had
even sanctioned his marriage with the Princess Agatha. Theophano now
saw the advantage of gathering to her faction the relations of her
late husband, whose legal successor she claimed to be. She restored
to their rank and liberty the sisters of Romanus, now aunts of the
Basileis de jure, and ranged round her all the friends of the
chivalrous akritas and all the partisans of the princesses of the
Basilian dynasty. On his side, the astute lord chamberlain was
straining every nerve to find rivals to Nicephorus, who might act as
a counterpoise. He was even suspected by the regent of looking to
the deposed family of Lecapenus, the late emperor, for a possible
pretender to the throne.
After the revolution, which had driven out the sons of Romanus
Lecapenus and restored to his legal rights Constantine
Born-in-the-Purple, Stephanus Lecapenus had been a state prisoner for
nearly twenty years in strict seclusion. He was now kept under rigid
surveillance in the island of Lesbos. In the church of Methymna he
was suffered to attend the solemn mass on the eve of Easter Sunday.
He was led to the altar, and there was offered the consecrated
elements by the archpriest officiating. As he drank the cup he was
seen to stagger and fall, and before the rite was concluded he lay a
corpse in the church. The report of his death was a three days'
wonder at Byzantium, and a fruitful occasion for suspicion,
recrimination, and gossip. But the sudden death of royal prisoners,
deposed sovereigns, and possible pretenders was too common an
incident in such times to cause any serious commotion. The faction
of the regent accused the eunuch of the murder. The faction of
Bringas laid it at the door of the regent. Its only effect was to
make each more suspicious of the other side, as well as more
desperate in their own schemes.
Nicephorus was now working night and day at the reorganization and
equipment of his veteran army. His ulterior plans were undecided.
But he saw that, both for his own life and freedom, as well as for
the defence of the empire, his command of an army perfect in
discipline and ready for instant action was an indispensable
condition. Whether he was to crush the Saracen forever, whether he
was to save his own life, he must be at the head of troops devoted to
himself and perfectly ready to fight. Michael, a secret emissary of
the regent, had just left his tent with an urgent appeal from
Theophano to hasten back to the capital with a powerful army, in
order to save her and her children from the machinations of Bringas.
Thrusting aside his maps, plans, and the reports of his officers,
Nicephorus brooded over the tremendous issues at stake--equally full
of peril whether he advanced or drew back.
Hour after hour the general meditated, torn in opposite ways by love
and doubt, by eagerness to obey his enchantress and by horror at the
sin of plunging the empire in civil war. In despair he flung himself
down with groans on his couch. Suddenly there burst into his tent
John Tzimisces, in a state of wild excitement which made him defy all
the courtesies of life. "What! are you sleeping, general?" the
impetuous soldier broke forth--"asleep, when that wretched eunuch is
plotting your death! Up, or it will be too late; there is not an
hour to lose! March, or enter the prison in which Bringas has
ordered us to fling you!"
"Prison! what prison?" said Nicephorus, stupefied by the violence of
the furious Joannes.
"Read this," said John; "and a similar offer is made to General
Courcouas!"
The letter was a long and formal document, signed by Joseph Bringas
in the name of the council of state, over which he presided,
detailing the facts of the vast conspiracy that they had discovered
in Byzantium to do away with the infant Basileis and to place the
popular general on the throne of Basil. This plot, it was added, was
directed by Nicephorus in person, while pretending to march against
the Saracen, and his agents and partisans had already been arrested
and put to torture. His father Bardas was in prison, and his brother
Leo was about to be arrested. The arrest and punishment of so
notorious a rebel was the duty of every loyal officer of the empire.
And the council charged the Lord General Joannes, strategus of the
Anatolian theme, and the Lord General Courcouas, strategus of the
Cappadocian theme, to put away this public enemy by all and every
means in their power. When they had fulfilled this service, John
should be duly appointed marshal of the armies of the east, in place
of the traitor, and Courcouas should have supreme command of the
armies of the west. "Seize him, and force on him the tonsure he
pretends he desires, and immure him in a frontier monastery for life;
or send him in chains to us at Byzantium; we shall know how to deal
with him." And the letter to Tzimisces was inscribed within, "To the
lord marshal of the east, hereafter to be named Basileus of the
Romans."
And here General Courcouas burst in with the second letter to the
same effect. He was as much excited as Tzimisces himself, and
equally enraged at the treachery of Bringas.
"What can we do?" said Nicephorus, gloomily; "they hold the official
authority of the palace; to wrest it from them means rebellion,
anarchy, and civil war."
"What can we do?" roared Tzimisces, aflame with passion. "What!
shall chiefs such as we are, at the head of the finest army in the
world, suffer ourselves to be the slaves of a vile eunuch, a
miserable Paphlagonian? Are we going to be crushed by the infamous
tricks of the palace harem? There is not an hour to lose, I say.
Advance, or perish! Put the imperial diadem on your brow and march
for Constantinople this very day!"
So, too, said Courcouas, with furious gestures. And, beside
themselves with rage, the two generals drew their swords and pointed
them at the bare breast of Nicephorus.
"March!" they shouted, "or take this sword and die as a Roman general
should die rather than be made a captive and a slave!"
In the midst of this madness the officers of the staff burst in, with
a wild, insubordinate crowd of troopers, for John had already
communicated to his own following the infamous proposals sent by the
eunuch. The news flew round the camp and excited an uproar. John,
Courcouas, and their comrades seized Nicephorus as he was, and
dragged him to the exercising plain, where already the troops had
been hastily called to arms. They mounted their commander on a
shield and carried him round the squadrons and battalions with a roar
of cries: "Ever-victorious Nicephorus!" "Autocrat of the Romans!"
"All-powerful Basileus!" "Long life to Augustus, our sovereign lord!"
"Long may he reign!" "God protect our invincible emperor!" And this
was followed by a roar as loud and as spontaneous from ten thousand
throats at once, as spears and swords glistened in the sunlight and
the eagles were shaken in the air: "To Rome! to Rome! to the city of
the Cæsars!"
Nicephorus, indeed had crossed his Rubicon.
XVII
The New Basileus
It was a glorious morning of summer, and the sun had just risen over
the crests of the range of Anti-Taurus, when the most brilliant army
of that warlike age was drawn up on the plain of Cæsarea for the
installation of the new emperor. Nicephorus advanced to the tribune,
surrounded by the counts, strategi, and captains of his eastern
force. He had suffered them to place on his feet the vermilion
buskins clasped with their golden eagles--the sign of majesty--but he
resolutely refused to accept the diadem and the purple mantle they
sought to force on him. Then he commanded silence, and, with that
voice like a trumpet that had so often rung along their ranks, he
spoke thus:
"Comrades, it is with no desire to be a tyrant that I have taken up
these imperial trappings; it has been forced upon me by your summons
and the will of the army. You are my witnesses how unwillingly I
assume the task of preserving this our realm of Rome, and, indeed, my
own life. Almighty God above us knows that I am ready to give my
life for you, and no suffering or danger can turn me from my purpose.
You have resolved that I shall not be crushed by the insolent devices
of that upstart eunuch, who presumes to play the despot over all. He
holds my venerable father Bardas in his prisons; he is hunting to
death my brother Leo and my friends; he has sent orders to our
gallant generals here to send me in chains to the capital, there to
be blinded or murdered. I am going, not in chains, but at the head
of my brave soldiers, to wrest the power of the empire from the cruel
hands of this usurper, to rescue my father and my brother from his
clutches, to restore the government to its lawful princes. You know
how I love you, my children, and will stand by you till death. Rise,
and put your hearts into the fight. There is stern work for us to
do. I cannot tell you that it can be done without shedding of your
blood. I am leading you this day, not against Cretans or Scythians
or Arabs, whom you have so often beaten, but against Romans. We have
to capture, not a hill-fort, but that great city of the Cæsars on the
Golden Horn, which has walls and towers, garrisons, riches, stores,
and splendor such as no other city on earth can show. God is with
me, for my cause is just. I go not to dethrone our young sovereigns,
but to be their guardian and to secure their throne. It is not I
that break my oath. It is the perjured villain who breaks faith with
me, and is plotting to kill me and mine. I have led you to glory in
many a fight of old. Follow me now to Rome, where a nobler triumph
awaits us, the cause of justice and of God above!"
These words roused a frenzy of excitement in the troops, who replied
with shouts of applause, with the brandishing of their lances and the
crash of arms. Their beloved general, like the great Ironside he
was, would mingle appeals to battle and to God in the same speech,
for he well knew his Armenian and Anatolian veterans to be as keen
for fight as they were God-fearing in heart. "These words of his,"
says Leo the deacon, in his chronicle, "stirred the army to an
indescribable state of excitement, making them eager for the most
desperate adventure. The soldiers adored him frantically and gloried
to serve under him. Bred to war from his youth upward, he not only
was the bravest of the brave in battle and endowed with marvellous
personal dexterity in arms, but he had that genius for inspiring men
with his own zeal that no one of that age could be compared with him
as commander-in-chief."
That very day the great march to the Bosphorus began. Exercising at
once the rights of emperor, Nicephorus, with politic generosity,
conferred on Tzimisces and on Courcouas the very dignities with which
the eunuch had proposed to purchase their treason. John was promoted
to be magistros and grand domestic of the eastern armies, and he was
placed in command of the Asiatic frontier to hold in check the
Saracens of Syria. From headquarters there issued a stream of
imperial despatches, nominations to command, orders to march, and
official requisitions. Every high-road and every dominant post was
occupied with adequate detachments. The passes, the fortresses, and
the ports were all taken over by trusty officers of the new
sovereign. The army was mobilized and concentrated, and was hurled
in columns by forced marches upon the shores of the Propontis.
The whole of the Asiatic themes being thus in secure possession of
the new sovereign, and the seaboard closed against any carrying of
intelligence, Bishop Philotheus was sent in advance with imperial
missives addressed to the patriarch at Constantinople, to the senate,
and to the great chamberlain at the palace. The despatch to the
latter was thus worded:
"You will prepare to receive me, Nicephorus Phocas, your sovereign,
now duly invested with imperial authority. My care will be to watch
over the infant sons of our late sovereign, Romanus, and to protect
them as their guardian until they come of age. I shall devote myself
to the service of the state, and I undertake to increase the power of
the Roman empire by deeds of arms. They who resist my will must take
the consequences of their folly, for this issue must be fought out to
the death. Their blood will be upon their own heads if they choose
the wrong in place of the right."
So skilful had been the dispositions of the new autocrat, and so
perfect was the discipline of the Asian government, that, according
to the chronicle, no rumor of the resolution that had taken place at
Cæsarea reached the capital until the bishop presented his despatch
to Bringas in council. The eunuch, beside himself with rage, stormed
at the venerable prelate, as if he had been a rude messenger from
some barbarous frontier chief. He flung the poor bishop into prison,
proclaimed Nicephorus a rebel and an outlaw, and prepared for a
desperate defence.