Alexius Comnenus found himself, in 1081, placed in a position almost as
 difficult and perilous as that which Leo the Isaurian faced in 716. Like
 Leo, he was a usurper without prestige or hereditary claims, seated on an
 unsteady throne, and forced to face imminent danger from the Moslem enemy
 without, and from rival adventurers within. It may be added that the
 Isaurian, grievously threatened as he was by the enemy from the East, had
 no peril impending from the West. Alexius had to face at one and the same
 time the assault of the Seljouks on Asia Minor, and the attack of a new
 and formidable foe in his western provinces. We have already mentioned the
 manner in which the Byzantine dominion in Italy had come to an end. Now
 the same Norman adventurers who had stripped the empire of Calabria and
 Apulia were preparing to cross the straits of Otranto, and seek out the
 Emperor in the central provinces of his realm. The forces of the Italian
 and Sicilian Normans were united under their great chief Robert Guiscard,
 the hardy and unscrupulous Duke of Apulia. Just ten years before he had
 captured Bari, the last Byzantine fortress on his own side of the straits;
 now he was resolved to take advantage of the anarchy which had prevailed
 in the empire ever since the day of Manzikert, and to build up new Norman
 principalities to the east of the Adriatic. There seemed to be nothing
 presumptuous in the scheme to those who remembered how a few hundred
 Norman adventurers had conquered all Southern Italy and Sicily, and
 swelled into a victorious army fifty thousand strong. Nor could the
 invaders fail to remember how, but fifteen years before, another Norman
 duke had crossed another strait in the far West, and won by his strong
 right hand the great kingdom of England. Alexius Comnenus sat like Harold
 Godwinson on a lately-acquired and unsteady throne, and Duke Robert
 thought to deal with him much as Duke William had dealt with the
 Englishman.
 
 In June, 1081, the Normans landed, thirty thousand strong, and laid siege
 to Durazzo, the maritime fortress that guarded the Epirot coast. The
 Emperor at once flew to its succour. Always active, hopeful, and
 versatile, he trusted that he might be able to beat off the new invaders,
 whose military worth he was far from appreciating at its true value. He
 patched up a hasty pacification with Suleiman, Sultan of the Seljouks, by
 surrendering to him all the territory of which the Turk was in actual
 possession, a tract which now extended as far as the waters of the
 Propontis, and actually included the city of Nicaea, close to the
 Bithynian shore, and only seventy miles from Constantinople.
 
 The army with which Alexius had to face the Normans was the mere wreck and
 shadow of that which Romanus IV. had led against the Turks ten years
 before. The military organization of the empire had gone to pieces, and we
 no longer hear of the old "Themes" of heavy cavalry which had formed its
 backbone. The new army contained quite a small proportion of national
 troops. Its core was the imperial guard of Varangians--the Russian, Danish,
 and English mercenaries, whose courage had won the confidence of so many
 emperors. With them marched many Turkish, Frankish, Servian, and
 South-Slavonic auxiliaries; the native element comprised the regulars of
 the three provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly, all that now
 remained in Alexius' hands of the ancient East-Roman realm.
 
 Alexius brought Robert Guiscard to battle in front of Durazzo, and
 suffered a crushing defeat at his hands. The Emperor's bad tactics were
 the main cause of his failure: his army came upon the ground in successive
 detachments, and the van was cut to pieces before the main body had
 reached the field. The brunt of the battle was borne by the Varangians:
 carried away by their fiery courage, they charged the Normans before the
 rest of Alexius's troops had formed their line of battle. Rushing on the
 wing of Robert's army, commanded by the Count of Bari, they drove it horse
 and foot into the sea. Their success, however, disordered their ranks, and
 the Norman duke was able to turn his whole force against them ere the
 Emperor was near enough to give them aid. A fierce cavalry charge cut off
 the greater part of the Varangians; the rest collected on a mound by the
 sea-shore, and for some time beat off the Normans with their axes, as King
 Harold's men had done at Senlac on the last occasion when English and
 Norman had met. But Robert shot them down with his archers, and then sent
 more cavalry against them. They fell, save a small remnant who defended
 themselves in a ruined chapel, which Guiscard had finally to burn before
 he could make an end of its obstinate defenders.
 
 The rest of Alexius's army only came into action when the Varangians had
 been destroyed. It was cowed by the loss of its best corps, fought badly,
 and fled in haste. Alexius himself, who lingered last upon the field, was
 surrounded, and only escaped by the speed of his horse and the strength of
 his sword-arm. Durazzo fell, and in the next year the Normans overran all
 Epirus and descended into Thessaly. Alexius risked two more engagements
 with them, but his inexperienced troops were defeated in both. Disaster
 taught him to avoid pitched battles, and at last, in 1083, after a more
 cautious campaign, his patience was rewarded by the dispersion of the
 Norman army. Catching it while divided, the Emperor inflicted on it a
 severe defeat at Larissa, and forced it back into Epirus. After this the
 war slackened, and when Robert Guiscard died in 1085 the Norman danger
 passed away.
 
 Thus one foe was removed, but Alexius was not destined to win peace.
 Constant rebellions at home, and wars with the Patzinaks, the Slavs, and
 the Seljouks filled the next ten years. Alexius, however, was never
 discouraged: "eking out the lion's skin with the fox's hide," he fought
 and intrigued, lied and negotiated, and at the end of the time had held
 his own and lost no more territory, while his throne was growing more
 secure.
 
 But in the fifteenth year of his reign a new cloud began to arise in the
 west, which was destined to exercise unsuspected influence, both for good
 and evil, on the empire. The Crusades were on the eve of their
 commencement. Ever since the Seljouks had taken Jerusalem in 1075, four
 years after Manzikert, the western pilgrims to the Holy Land had been
 suffering grievous things at the hands of the barbarians. But all the
 wrath that their ill-treatment provoked would have been fruitless, if the
 way to Syria had not been opened of late to the nations of Western
 Christendom. Two series of events had made free communication between East
 and West possible in the end of the eleventh century, in a measure which
 had never before been seen.
 
 The first of these was the conversion of Hungary, begun by St. Stephen in
 1000, and completed about 1050. For the future there lay between the
 Byzantine Empire and Germany not a barbarous pagan state, but a
 semi-civilized Christian kingdom, which had taken its place among the
 other nations of the Roman Catholic faith. Communication down the Danube,
 between Vienna and the Byzantine outposts in Bulgaria, became for the
 first time possible, and ere long the route grew popular. The second
 phenomenon which made the Crusades possible was the destruction of the
 Saracen naval power in the Central Mediterranean. This was carried out
 first by the Pisans and Genoese, whose fleets conquered Corsica and
 Sardinia from the Moslems, and then by the Normans, whose occupation of
 Sicily made the voyage from Marseilles and Genoa to the East safe and
 sure. Four new maritime powers--the Genoese, Pisans, and Normans in the
 open sea, and the Venetians in the Adriatic--had developed themselves into
 importance, and now their fleets swept the waters where no Christian
 war-galleys save those of Byzantium, had ever been seen before.
 
 It was the fact that free access to the East was now to be gained, both by
 land and sea, as it had never been before, that made the Crusades
 feasible. Of the preaching of Peter the Hermit and the efforts of Pope
 Urban we need not speak. Suffice it to say, that in 1095 news came to the
 Emperor Alexius that the nations of the West were mustering by myriads,
 and directing their march towards his frontiers, with the expressed
 intention of driving the Moslems from Palestine. The Emperor had little
 confidence in the purity of the zeal of the Crusaders; his wily mind could
 not comprehend their enthusiasm, and he dreaded that some unforeseen
 circumstance might turn their arms against himself. When the hordes of
 armed Frankish pilgrims began to arrive, his fears were justified: the
 new-comers pillaged his country right and left upon their way, and were
 drawn into many bloody fights with the peasantry and the imperial
 garrisons, which might have ended in open war. But Alexius set himself to
 work to smooth matters down; all his tact and patience were needed, and
 there was ample scope for his talent for intrigue and insincere diplomacy.
 He had resolved to induce the crusading chiefs to do him homage, and to
 swear to restore to him all the old dominions of the empire which they
 might reconquer from the Turks. After long and tedious negotiations he had
 his way: the leaders of the Crusade, from Godfrey of Bouillon and Hugh of
 Vermandois down to the smallest barons, were induced to swear him
 allegiance. Some he flattered, others he bribed, others he strove to
 frighten into compliance. The pages of the history written by his
 daughter, Anna Comnena, who regarded his powers of cajolery with greater
 respect than any other part of his character, are full of tales of the
 ingenious shifts by which he brought the stupid and arrogant Franks to
 reason. At length they went on their way, with Alexius's gold in their
 pockets, and encouraged by his promise that he would aid them with his
 troops, continue to supply them with provisions, and never abandon them
 till the Holy City was reconquered.
 
 In the spring of 1097 the Crusaders began to cross the Bosphorus, and in
 two marches found themselves within Turkish territory. They at once laid
 siege to Nicaea, the frontier fortress of the Seljouk Sultan. Encompassed
 by so great a host the Turkish garrison soon lost heart and surrendered,
 not to the Franks, but to Alexius, whose troops they secretly admitted
 within the walls. This nearly led to strife between the Emperor and the
 Crusaders, who had been reckoning on the plunder of the town; but Alexius
 appeased them with further stores of money, and the pilgrim host rolled
 forward once more into the interior of Asia Minor.
 
                               
 
     Byzantine Ivory-Carving Of The Twelfth Century. (_From the British
   Museum._) (_From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin,
                                  1883._)
 
 
 In 1097 the Crusaders forced their way through Phrygia and Cappadocia,
 beating back the Seljouks at every encounter, till they reached North
 Syria, where they laid siege to Antioch. Alexius had undertaken to help
 them in their campaign, but he was set on playing an easier game. When
 they were crushing the Turks he followed in their rear at a safe distance,
 like the jackal behind the lion, picking up the spoil which they left.
 While the Sultan was engaged with them Alexius despoiled him of Smyrna,
 Ephesus, and Sardis, reconquering Western Asia Minor almost without a
 blow, since the Seljouk hordes were drawn away eastward. It was the same
 in the next year; when the Crusaders were fighting hard round Antioch
 against the princes of Mesopotamia, and sent to ask for instant help,
 Alexius despatched no troops to Syria, but gathered in a number of Lydian
 and Phrygian fortresses which lay nearer to his hand. Hence there resulted
 a bitter quarrel between the Emperor and the Franks, for since he gave
 them no help they refused to hand over to him Antioch and their other
 Syrian conquests. Each party, in fact, broke the compact signed at
 Constantinople, and accused the other of treachery. Hence it resulted that
 the Crusade ended not in the re-establishment of the Byzantine power in
 Syria, but in the foundation of new Frankish states, the principalities of
 Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli, and the more important kingdom of Jerusalem.
 
 That he did not recover Syria was no real loss to Alexius; he would not
 have been strong enough to hold it, had it been handed over to him. The
 actual profit which he made by the Crusade was enough to content him: the
 Franks had rolled back the Turkish frontier in Asia not less than two
 hundred miles: instead of the Seljouk lying at Nicaea, he was now chased
 back behind the Bithynian hills, and the empire had recovered all Lydia
 and Caria with much of the Phrygian inland. The Seljouks were hard hit,
 and for well-nigh a century were reduced to fight on the defensive.
 
 Owing, then, to the fearful blow inflicted by the Crusades on the Moslem
 powers of Asia Minor and Syria, the later years of Alexius were free from
 the danger which had overshadowed the beginning of his reign. He was able,
 between 1100 and 1118, to strengthen his position at home and abroad; the
 constant rebellions which had vexed his early years ceased, and when the
 Normans, under Bohemund of Tarentum, tried to repeat, in 1107, the feats
 which Robert Guiscard had accomplished in 1082, they were beaten off with
 ease, and forced to conclude a disadvantageous peace.
 
 The reign of Alexius might have been counted a period of success and
 prosperity if it had not been for two considerations. The first was the
 rapid decline of Constantinople as a commercial centre, which was brought
 about by the Crusades. When the Genoese and Venetians succeeded in
 establishing themselves in the seaports of Syria, they began to visit
 Constantinople far less than before. It paid them much better to conduct
 their business at Acre or Tyre than on the Bosphorus. The king of
 Jerusalem, the weakest of feudal sovereigns, could be more easily bullied
 and defrauded than the powerful ruler of Constantinople. In his own
 seaports he possessed hardly a shadow of authority: the Italians traded
 there on such conditions as they chose. Hence the commerce of the West
 with Persia, Egypt, Syria, and India, ceased to pass through the
 Bosphorus. Genoa and Venice became the marts at which France, Italy, and
 Germany, sought their Eastern goods. It is probable that the trade of
 Constantinople fell off by a third or even a half in the fifty years that
 followed the first Crusade. The effect of this decline on the coffers of
 the state was deplorable, for it was ultimately on its commercial wealth
 that the Byzantine state based its prosperity. All through the reigns of
 Alexius and his two successors the complaints about the rapid fall in the
 imperial revenue grew more and more noticeable.
 
 This dangerous decay in the finances of the empire was rendered still more
 fatal by the political devices of Alexius, who began to bestow excessive
 commercial privileges to the Italian republics, in return for their aid in
 war. This system commenced in 1081, when the Emperor, then in the full
 stress of his first Norman war, granted the Venetians the free access to
 most of the ports of his empire without the payment of any customs dues.
 To give to foreigners a boon denied to his own subjects was the height of
 economic lunacy; the native merchants complained that the Venetians were
 enabled to undersell them in every market, owing to this exemption from
 import and export duties. Matters were made yet worse in 1111, when
 Alexius bestowed a similar, though less extensive, grant of immunities on
 the Pisans.
 
 When John II., the son of Alexius, succeeded in 1118 to the empire which
 his father had saved, the fabric was less strong than it appeared to the
 outward eye. Territorial extension seemed to imply increased strength, and
 the rapid falling off in the financial resources of the realm attracted
 little attention. John however was one of those prudent and economical
 princes who stave off for years the inevitable day of distress. Of all the
 rulers who ever sat upon the Byzantine throne, he is the only one of whom
 no detractor has ever said an evil word. When we remember that he was his
 father's son, it is astonishing to find that his honesty and good faith
 were no less notable than his courage and generosity. His subjects named
 him "John the Good," and their appreciation of his virtues was
 sufficiently marked by the fact that no single rebellion marred the
 internal peace of his long reign. [1118-1143.]
 
 John was a good soldier, and during his rule the frontier of the empire in
 Asia continued to advance, at the expense of the Turks. But his strategy
 would seem to have been at fault since he preferred to reconquer the coast
 districts of Northern and Southern Asia Minor, rather than to strike at
 the heart of the Seljouk power on the central table-land. When he had
 reduced all Cilicia, Pisidia, and Pontus, his dominions became a narrow
 fringe of coast, surrounding on three sides the realm of the Sultan, who
 still retained all the Cappadocian and Lycaonian plateau. It should then
 have been John's task to finish the reconquest of Asia Minor, but he
 preferred to plunge into Syria, where he forced the Frank prince of
 Antioch and the Turkish Emir of Aleppo to pay him tribute, but left no
 permanent monument of his conquests. He was preparing a formidable
 expedition against the Franks of the kingdom of Jerusalem, when he
 perished by accident while on a hunting expedition.
 
 John the Good was succeeded by his son Manuel, whose strength and weakness
 combined to give a deathblow to the empire. Manuel was a mere
 knight-errant, who loved fighting for fighting's sake, and allowed his
 passion for excitement and adventure to be his only guide. His whole reign
 was one long series of wars, entered into and abandoned with equal levity.
 Yet for the most part they were successful wars, for Manuel was a good
 cavalry officer if he was but a reckless statesman, and his fiery courage
 and untiring energy made him the idol of his troops. At the head of the
 veteran squadrons of mercenary horsemen that formed the backbone of his
 army, he swept off the field every enemy that ever dared to face him. He
 overran Servia, invaded Hungary, to whose king he dictated terms of peace,
 and beat off with success an invasion of Greece by the Normans of Sicily.
 His most desperate struggle, however, was a naval war with Venice, in
 which his fleet was successful enough, and drove the Doge and his galleys
 out of the AEgean. But the damage done to the trade of Constantinople by
 the Venetian privateers, who swarmed in the Levant after their main fleet
 had been chased away, was so appalling that the Emperor concluded peace in
 1174, restoring to the enemy all the disastrous commercial privileges
 which his grandfather Alexius had granted them eight years before.
 
                               
 
   Hunters. (_From a Byzantine MS._) (_From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles
                       Bayet, Paris, Quantin, 1883._)
 
 
 The main fault of Manuel's wars was that they were conducted in the most
 reckless disregard of all financial considerations. With a realm which was
 slowly growing poorer, and with a constantly dwindling revenue, he
 persisted in piling war on war, and on devoting every bezant that could be
 screwed out of his subjects to the support of the army alone. The civil
 service fell into grave disorder, the administration of justice was
 impaired, roads and bridges went to decay, docks and harbours were
 neglected, while the money which should have supported them was wasted on
 unprofitable expeditions to Egypt, Syria, or Italy. So long as the ranks
 of his mercenaries were full and their pay forthcoming, the Emperor cared
 not how his realm might fare.
 
 Of all Manuel's wars only one went ill, but that was the most important of
 them all, the one necessary struggle to which he should have devoted all
 his energies. This was the contest with the Seljouks, which ended in 1176
 by a disastrous defeat at Myriokephalon in Phrygia, brought about by the
 inexcusable carelessness of Manuel himself, who allowed his army to be
 caught in a defile from which there was no exit, and routed piecemeal by
 an enemy who could have made no stand on the open plains. Manuel then made
 peace, and left the Seljouks alone for the rest of his reign.
 
 In 1180 Manuel died, and with him died the good fortune of the House of
 Comnenus. His son and heir, Alexius, was a boy of thirteen, and the
 inevitable contest for the regency, which always accompanied a minority,
 ensued. After two troubled years Andronicus Comnenus, a first cousin of
 the Emperor Manuel, was proclaimed Caesar, and took over the guardianship
 of the young Alexius. Andronicus was an unscrupulous ruffian, whose past
 life should have been sufficient warning against putting any trust in his
 professions. He had once attempted to assassinate Manuel, and twice
 deserted to the Turks. But he was a consummate hypocrite, and won his way
 to the throne by professions of piety and austere virtue. No sooner was he
 seated by the side of Alexius II., and felt himself secure, than he seized
 and strangled his young relative [1183].
 
 But, like our own Richard III., Andronicus found that the moment of his
 accession to sole power was the moment of the commencement of his
 troubles. Rebels rose in arms all over the empire to avenge the murdered
 Alexius, and the Normans of Sicily seized the opportunity of invading
 Macedonia. Conspiracies were rife in the capital, and the executions which
 followed their detection were so numerous and bloody that a perfect reign
 of terror set in. The Emperor plunged into the most reckless cruelty, till
 men almost began to believe that his mind was affected. Ere long the end
 came. An inoffensive nobleman named Isaac Angelus, being accused of
 treason, was arrested at his own door by the emissaries of the tyrant.
 Instead of surrendering himself, Isaac drew his sword and cut down the
 official who laid hands on him. A mob came to his aid, and met no
 immediate opposition, for Andronicus was absent from the capital. The mob
 swelled into a multitude, the guards would not fight, and when the Emperor
 returned in haste, he was seized and torn to pieces without a sword being
 drawn in his cause. Isaac Angelus reigned in his stead.