The moment that the last of the Macedonian dynasty was gone, the elements
 of discord seemed unchained, and the double scourge of civil war and
 foreign invasion began to afflict the empire. In the twenty-four years
 between 1057 and 1081 were pressed more disasters than had been seen in
 any other period of East-Roman history, save perhaps the reign of
 Heraclius. For now came the second cutting-short of the empire, the blow
 that was destined to shear away half its strength, and leave it maimed
 beyond any possibility of ultimate recovery.
 
 Domestic troubles were the first inevitable consequence of the extinction
 of the Macedonian dynasty. The aged Theodora had named as her successor on
 the throne Michael Stratioticus, a contemporary of her own who had been an
 able soldier twenty-five years back. But Michael VI. was grown aged and
 incompetent, and the empire was full of ambitious generals, who would not
 tolerate a dotard on the throne. Before a year had passed a band of great
 Asiatic nobles entered into a conspiracy to overturn Michael, and replace
 him by Isaac Comnenus, the chief of one of the ancient Cappadocian houses,
 and the most popular general of the East.
 
 Isaac Comnenus and his friends took arms, and dispossessed the aged
 Michael of his throne with little difficulty. But a curse seemed to rest
 upon the usurpation; Isaac was stricken down by disease when he had been
 little more than a year on the throne, and retired to a monastery to die.
 His crown was transferred to Constantine Ducas, another Cappadocian noble,
 who was supposed to be second only to Isaac in competence and popularity.
 Constantine reigned for seven troubled years, and disappointed all his
 supporters, for he proved but a sorry administrator. His mind was set on
 nothing but finance, and in the endeavour to build up again the imperial
 treasure, which had been sorely wasted since the death of Basil II., he
 neglected all the other departments of state. To save money he disbanded
 no inconsiderable portion of the army, and cut down the pay of the rest.
 This was sheer madness, when there was impending over the empire the most
 terrible military danger that had been seen for four centuries. The safety
 of the realm was entirely in the hands of its well-paid and
 well-disciplined national army, and anything that impaired the efficiency
 of the army was fraught with the deadliest peril.
 
 The Seljouk Turks were now drawing near. Pressing on from the Oxus lands,
 their hordes had overrun Persia and extinguished the dynasty of the
 Buhawides. In 1050, they had penetrated to Bagdad, and their great chief,
 Togrul Beg, had declared himself "defender of the faith and protector of
 the Caliph." Armenia had next been overrun, and those portions of it which
 had not been annexed to the empire, and still obeyed independent princes,
 had been conquered by 1064. In that year fell Ani, the ancient Armenian
 capital, and the bulwark which protected the Byzantine Empire from Eastern
 invasions.
 
 The reign of Constantine Ducas was troubled by countless Seljouk invasions
 of the Armeniac, Anatolic, and Cappadocian themes. Sometimes the invaders
 were driven back, sometimes they eluded the imperial troops and escaped
 with their booty. But whether successful or unsuccessful, they displayed a
 reckless cruelty, far surpassing anything that the Saracens had ever
 shown. Wherever they passed they not merely plundered to right and left,
 but slew off the whole population. Meanwhile, Constantine X., with his
 reduced army, proved incompetent to hold them back; all the more so that
 his operations were distracted by an invasion of the Uzes, a Tartar tribe
 from the Euxine shore, who had burst into Bulgaria.
 
 Ducas died in 1067, leaving the throne to his son, Michael, a boy of
 fourteen years. The usual result followed. To secure her son's life and
 throne, the Empress-dowager Eudocia took a new husband, and made him
 guardian of the young Michael. The new Emperor-regent was Romanus
 Diogenes, an Asiatic noble, whose brilliant courage displayed in the
 Seljouk wars had dazzled the world, and caused it to forget that caution
 and ability are far more regal virtues than headlong valour. Romanus took
 in hand with the greatest vigour the task of repelling the Turks, which
 his predecessor had so grievously neglected. He led into the field every
 man that could be collected from the European or Asiatic themes, and for
 three successive years was incessantly marching and counter-marching in
 Armenia, Cappadocia, and Syria, in the endeavour to hunt down the
 marauding bands of the Seljouks.
 
 The operations of Romanus were not entirely unsuccessful. Alp Arslan, the
 Sultan of the Seljouks, contented himself at first with dispersing his
 hordes in scattered bands, and attacking many points of the frontier at
 once. Hence the Emperor was not unfrequently able to catch and slay off
 one of the minor divisions of the Turkish army. But some of them always
 contrived to elude him; his heavy cavalry could not come up with the light
 Seljouk horse bowmen, who generally escaped and rode back home by a long
 detour, burning and murdering as they went. Cappadocia was already
 desolated from end to end, and the Turkish raids had reached as far as
 Amorium, in Phrygia.
 
 In 1071 came the final disaster. In pursuing the Seljouk plunderers,
 Romanus was drawn far eastward, to Manzikert, on the Armenian frontier.
 There he found himself confronted, not by a flying foe, but by the whole
 force of the Seljouk sultanate, with Alp Arslan himself at its head.
 Though his army was harassed by long marches, and though two large
 divisions were absent, the Emperor was eager to fight. The Turks had never
 before offered him a fair field, and he relied implicitly on the power of
 his cuirassiers to ride down any number, however great, of the light
 Turkish horse.
 
                               
 
     Our Lord Blessing Romanus Diogenes And Eudocia. (_From an Ivory at
    Paris._) (_From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin,
                                  1883._)
 
 
 The decisive battle of Manzikert, which it is not too much to call the
 turning-point of the whole course of Byzantine history, was fought in the
 early summer of 1071. For a long day the Byzantine horsemen continued to
 roll back and break through the lines of Turkish horse bowmen. But fresh
 hordes kept coming on, and in the evening the fight was still undecided.
 As the night was approaching, Romanus prepared to draw his troops back to
 the camp, but an unhappy misconception of orders broke up the line, and
 the Seljouks edged in between the two halves of the army. Either from
 treachery or cowardice Andronicus Ducas, the officer who commanded the
 reserve, led his men off without fighting. The Emperor's division was
 beset on all sides by the enemy, and broke up in the dusk. Romanus himself
 was wounded, thrown from his horse, and made prisoner. The greater part of
 his men were cut to pieces.
 
                               
 
 Nicephorus Botaniates Sitting In State. (_From a contemporary MS._) (_From
        "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._)
 
 
 Alp Arslan showed himself more forbearing to his prisoner than might have
 been expected. It is true that Romanus was led after his capture to the
 tent of the Sultan, and laid prostrate before him, that, after the Turkish
 custom, the conqueror might place his foot on the neck of his vanquished
 foe. But after this humiliating ceremony the Emperor was treated with
 kindness, and allowed after some months to ransom himself and return home.
 He would have fared better, however, if he had remained the prisoner of
 the Turk. During his captivity the conduct of affairs had fallen into the
 hands of John Ducas, uncle of the young emperor Michael. The unscrupulous
 regent was determined that Romanus should not supersede him and mount the
 throne again. When the released captive reappeared, John had him seized
 and blinded. The cruel work was so roughly done that the unfortunate
 Romanus died a few days later.
 
 After this fearful disaster Asia Minor was lost; there was no chief to
 take the place of Romanus, and the Seljouk hordes spread westward almost
 unopposed. The next ten years were a time of chaos and disaster. While the
 Seljouks were carving their way deeper and deeper into the vitals of the
 empire, the wrecks of the Byzantine army were employed not in resisting
 them, but in carrying on a desperate series of civil wars. After the death
 of Romanus, every general in the empire seemed to think that the time had
 come for him to assume the purple buskins and proclaim himself emperor.
 History records the names of no less than six pretenders to the throne
 during the next nine years, besides several rebels who took up arms
 without assuming the imperial title. The young emperor, Michael Ducas,
 proved, when he came of age, to be a vicious nonentity; he is remembered
 in Byzantine history only by his nickname of Para-pinakes, the
 "peck-filcher," given him because in a year of famine he sold the measure
 of wheat to his subjects a fourth short of its proper contents. His name
 and that of Nicephorus Botaniates, the rebel who overthrew him, cover in
 the list of emperors a space of ten years that would better be represented
 by a blank; for the authority of the nominal ruler scarcely extended
 beyond the walls of the capital, and the themes that were not overrun by
 the Turks were in the hands of governors who each did what was right in
 his own eyes. At last a man of ability worked himself up to the surface.
 This was Alexius Comnenus, nephew of the emperor Isaac Comnenus, whose
 short reign we related in the opening paragraph of this chapter.
 
 Alexius was a man of courage and ability, but he displayed one of the
 worst types of Byzantine character. Indeed, he was the first emperor to
 whom the epithet "Byzantine," in its common and opprobrious sense could be
 applied. He was the most accomplished liar of his age, and, while winning
 and defending the imperial throne, committed enough acts of mean
 treachery, and swore enough false oaths to startle even the courtiers of
 Constantinople. He could fight when necessary, but he preferred to win by
 treason and perjury. Yet as a ruler he had many virtues, and it will
 always be remembered to his credit that he dragged the empire out of the
 deepest slough of degradation and ruin that it had ever sunk into. Though
 false, he was not cruel, and seven ex-emperors and usurpers, living
 unharmed in Constantinople under his sceptre, bore witness to the mildness
 of his rule. The tale of his reign sufficiently bears witness to the
 strange mixture of moral obliquity and practical ability in his character.