At Alexios I's seizure of power, a merciless sack of Constantinople left the populace cowed. Enemies threatened the empire from every side: the Seljuk Turks, from their base at Nicaea, raided as far as the capital's Asian suburbs; Pechenegs from beyond the Danube penetrated Thrace unopposed; Guiscard prepared for an attack on the western Balkans. Alexios dealt with these problems one by one. Mastering them more by diplomacy than by military force.
The Balkan frontier proved less difficult than the others for Alexios and his successors. In 1091 Alexios won the support of the Cumans (another Turkish tribe in south Russia) and used them to defeat the Pechenegs; the final Pecheneg incursion was crushed by John II in 1122. Cuman raids into the empire were repelled without great difficulty. In the western Balkans Zeta was subdued by Byzantium, but the Serbs of Rascia (the valleys of Ibar, Lim and Tara) joined the rising power of Hungary to oppose the empire. John and Manuel repeatedly campaigned on this front. After a victory in 1150 at the Tara river over a combined Serbian-Hungarian force, Manuel brought Rascia to heel. Bitter conflicts with Hungary continued through the 1160's, and only in 1172 was Manuel's protege Bela III placed on the Hungarian throne.
The Norman peril to the Byzantine Empire was real. The Byzantines never abandoned their desire to regain southern Italy; the Komnenoi hoped to enlist the pope or the German emperor on their behalf. Thus, when Robert Guiscard landed in 1081 on what is now the Albanian coast, defeated a series of Byzantine armies and advanced into Macedonia and Thessaly, Alexios stirred up Henry IV of Germany to march on Rome. The beleaguered pope, Gregory VII, summoned home Guiscard, his principal secular ally. In Robert's absence Alexios skillfully sowed dissension among the Norman troops and drove them back.
In 1085, as he was about to renew his invasion, Guiscard died. The Normans did not abandon their ambitions; in 1107-1108 Guiscard's son Bohemond sought to avenge his own frustrations as prince of Antioch by securing papal support for a crusade against the Byzantines. Alexios shrewdly bottled up Bohemond's forces in the Albanian coastal plain, and forced a humiliating treaty upon him. Later, Roger II of Sicily launched repeated naval attacks on Byzantine territory; in 1147 he took advantage of the Second Crusade's passage through the empire to seize Kerkyra (Corfu) and plunder Corinth and Thebes. Only in 1149 did Manuel regain Kerkyra.
John and Manuel renewed Alexios' policy of alliance with the German empire against the Normans; they experienced some success with Lothair II and Conrad III. However, Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190) was hostile to the Byzantines. Manuel took advantage of William I's accession in Sicily (1154) to appeal for Frederick's participation in a joint attack. Frederick declined, but Manuel sent several small expeditionary forces to southern Italy to support rebel Norman barons (1155-1157). Only after their defeat did he come around to the idea of a Norman-papal-Byzantine alliance against Frederick's expanding power in northern Italy. Manuel even hoped that the pope would depose Frederick and accept the Byzantine as the sole ruler of a unified Roman Empire. The Eastern emperor furnished encouragement and money to the Lombard League for its resistance to Frederick.
Relations with the West were complicated by the empire's dependence on Italian maritime cities for naval assistance. Finding the state bereft of a fleet and threatened by Normans, Alexios I in 1082 granted tax exemptions, a quarter in Constantinople, and trading rights in most towns of the empire to the Venetians in return for naval aid. Benefitting from their tax-exempt status, Venetian merchants undercut and partially replaced Byzantines in their own territory. To check Venetian domination of the Byzantine economy, Alexios granted inferior, but still extensive privileges to the Pisans (1111), while Manuel introduced the Genoese (1155) on similar terms. Aroused by Venetian arrogance, John in 1122 drove them from the empire, but their attacks on the Aegean islands forced him to reinstate them in 1126. Manuel, aggrieved by Venice's lack of cooperation in his Western policies, abruptly arrested and imprisoned all the Venetians in the empire (12 March 1171); this time the Venetian counterstroke was frustrated, and at Manuel's death peace had not been restored.
The pope's proclamation of the crusade was partially a response to Alexios' request for Western mercenaries, but the Crusaders had other goals than to rescue Byzantium from the Turks. The first to enter the empire, through Hungary and Thrace, were bands of peasants and poor knights (1096), enthusiastic but undisciplined. When they sought to plunder the countryside along the way, they suffered from the Pecheneg archers whom Alexios sent to control them. Despite the emperor's advice, the ill-armed troops insisted on crossing into Turkish territory. Where they were destroyed. In the following year the nobles began to reach Constantinople, after experiencing their own conflicts with Byzantine police forces. Alexios insisted on an oath to restore any former Byzantine territory that they might regain; in return he promised to help. Only a few obdurate leaders refused the oath. With this powerful force Alexios dared to attack Nicaea (whose Seljuk ruler was absent); after a siege the city surrendered to the emperor. Later, the Crusaders, supported by a small Byzantine army, defeated the Turks at Dorylaeum, and Alexios used the opportunity to regain the western part of Asia Minor.
During the Crusaders' siege of Antioch, Bohemond tricked the Byzantine forces into departing. Once the city fell, Bohemond claimed it for himself, alleging that Alexios had failed to keep his promise. Recovery of Antioch, or at least imposition of Byzantine sovereignty, became a goal of successive Komnenoi emperors. Alexios put so much pressure on Bohemond that, in 1104, he returned to Italy to enlist papal support and Western Crusaders for the attack he made on the Byzantine Empire in 1107.
During the early twelfth century the Armenians in Cilicia, led by the Roupenid family, sought independence. Frequently they had the help of the princes of Antioch. Imperial expeditions tried to impose Byzantine authority on both sides. In 1137 John II reduced both to momentary obedience and enjoyed a triumphant reception in Antioch. Beginning about 1145, Toros or Thoros II, the Roupenid, took advantage of Manuel's preoccupations to revolt, and Cilician Armenia was never again fully subdued. As a result of a great expedition (1158-1159), Manuel obtained acceptance of his sovereignty over Cilician Armenia and Antioch, but this proved a transitory success.
Alexios and his successors did not abandon Byzantium's claims to the Holy Land. John II in 1138 joined with the Antiochenes to capture several small Syrian fortresses, but was defeated at Shaizar. The Second Crusade (1147-1148), which was intended to recover lost land in Palestine, clashed repeatedly with Byzantine forces during its passage through the empire. In 1169 a Byzantine fleet and expeditionary force attempted to cooperate with the Crusaders in Egypt. King Almaric I of Jerusalem came to Constantinople in 1171 and offered what a Byzantine author deemed to be homage, without substantial result.
The Komnenian emperors were too preoccupied with the Turkish problem to take action in Palestine. Following his recovery of Nicaea and western Asia Minor, Alexios waged a series of campaigns (1112-1116) to repel Turkish raiders; he advanced as far as Philomelion. John II reestablished Byzantine predominance along the north and south coasts of Asia Minor. When, in 1146 Manuel attempted an attack on Iconium, the capital of the Seljuks, he found he had overextended himself, and suffered severely in his withdrawal. In 1159,, on his return from Antioch to Constantinople, Manuel dared to cross through Turkish territory; he again lost any troops. Peace was made in 1161, and the following year Kilij Arslan II, sultan of Iconium, was splendidly received in Constantinople. A decade later, however, Manuel became alarmed at the sultan's expansion in eastern Asia Minor. After some initial forays the imperial army advanced again on Iconium. En route, on 17 September 1176, the Turks intercepted the emperor near Myriokephalon and inflicted a crushing defeat. The greatest part of the Byzantine army was lost; Manuel and his immediate followers escaped only by courtesy of Kilij Arslan. Thereafter, Manuel could scarcely defend his frontiers from Turkoman raids.
Internally the Komnenoi emperors experienced less opposition than their predecessors; initially, consciousness of peril, and later, the rising prestige of the dynasty, contributed to the unusual calm. At John II's accession his mother, Irene, and sister, Anna, tried to place the latter's husband, Nikephoros Bryennios, on the throne, but at the last moment he refused to act. Manuel's unexpected succession brought special perils, but the ill-organized, hasty conspiracies that resulted were easily overcome. John II's brother Isaac had previously given trouble; Isaac's son Andronikos sustained a fixed opposition to Manuel. Charmed by Andronikos' brilliant personality, Manuel repeatedly gave him provincial governorships. On each occasion Andronikos conspired with the enemy beyond the frontier. Imprisonment, flight and exile did not quell his spirit. Near the end of Manuel's reign, the two were reconciled; Andronikos was appointed governor of Pontus.
Conciliation of all factions, indeed, was a consistent Komnenian policy. Alexios I came to power as the candidate of the military aristocracy of Asia Minor and of the Doukas family, leaders of the bureaucratic party: Alexios' wife was Irene Doukas. The Komnenoi strove to create a solid bulwark around the throne by judicious marriages with members of the landholding class. Their adherents were rewarded with ceremonial titles, generalships and political offices. Followers great and small might receive pronoiai, grants of land with peasants working on it, who rendered their taxes and other dues to the pronoia holder. Such grants were, at most, for life, and conditional upon continued loyal service.
While the peasants (or paroikoi) who fell under the sway of a monastery or great landlord suffered from oppression, the Komnenoi made an effort to revive the older militia of small property holders who owed military service instead of taxation. The perils of the empire, however, placed extraordinary demands on the taxpayers, and often tax farmers were allowed to exploit the populace. Immunities for monasteries and great landholders created gross inequalities of taxation. Favoritism and corruption were frequent. On the positive side, the Komnenoi improved and stabilized the coinage.
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Last modified: Thurs Dec 10, 1998