Part 4: Yo Ho Ho and a Battle of Rum (1087-1090)

Excerpts from the Alexiad
By Iouliana Komnene

My father did not plan to go war with the Seljuks in 1087. The wounds inflicted on the empire by the traitor Doukas had still not healed. Diligent administration remained a priority of his reign— how could he hope to best Rum where there were still fortifications to be rebuilt, soldiers to be trained, fallow land to be reclaimed? The Sicilian Affair had not overly exerted the resources of Rome, but it did necessitate leaving Constantinople for the shores of Italy, delaying the execution of these tasks. He wanted to ensure that the fortunes of war would favor him before he gambled the empire on an attack on Suleyman. At the very least, he had hoped to gather more allies for his cause. Alania was not insignificant, but Sicily, still ravaged from the war with Messina, would be little help. His intervention on Mathilde’s behalf was less save a valuable ally than to prove that Rome was still in a position to help those who stood by it. The betrothal between Nikephoros Komnenos and the German Princess Agnes was a promising development, but as the girl had not yet come of age an alliance between the two emperors could not yet be finalized.

Perhaps most pressingly, a final settlement of the civil war had not yet been undertaken; vast swaths of Greece and the Balkans were still under the nominal rule of imprisoned nobles of the Doukas faction. The presence of these men and women in the luxurious accommodations provided to them perhaps guaranteed that they wouldn’t take up arms against the emperor anytime soon, but it was hardly a sustainable mode of governance.

“I am no Emperor,” he told my grandmother Anna Dalassene, Augusta of Rome and one of his most valued advisors, “I am the warden of a gaol, with a court of Douxes and Doukessas as inmates.”

Nonetheless, war came. A cabal of high ranking generals appeared at the palace. They presented him with a chest of five hundred gold ducats and a force of 2000 Turkic mercenaries recruited from the Pecheneg steps.

They then told my father to use these to wage war on Rum.

With two thousand Turks at his doorstep, Alexios decided it would be unwise to refuse. Yet let it not be said he was intimidated into submission! As I have said, he was intent on finding the perfect moment to declare war on Rum; and the sudden influx of gold and a fresh force of soldiers untouched by the ravages of the civil wars seemed as singular an opportunity as any.

War was declared, and the faithful Duchess Mathilde answered the call to arms.

Years of constant war made the Varangian Guard an increasingly prominent institution of the empire. Some of them, preferring the glories of war in the service of a great empire to a miserable existed eked out in a cold and forbidding wasteland, pledged themselves personally to the empire. They adopted the civilized ways of Rome, but lost none of their martial vigor.

My father, meanwhile, intently studied the tactics best suited to fighting in the mountains of Anatolia. Confident that he could keep Suleyman on his side of the Bosphorus, he knew any decisive battle would be fought on land claimed by Rum.

The expedition across the Bosphorus saw early success, with a Rum host personally led by Suleyman guarding the straits easily defeated and the territories around the crossing occupied. He was careful to treat these lands with a light hand— he hoped to rule these people one day— and restrained his Varangians and Turks from sacking seized holdings.

Sensing that Rum was faltering, the Seljuk Empire itself intervened on behalf of its fellow Seljuk sultan. Rome may have proven itself more than a match for Suleyman— but Suleyman did not fight alone. The advisors surrounding Ahmad Malikoglu Seljuk recognized that the fall of Rum would eliminate a very useful buffer state between Rome and their empire.

The Seljuk generals were cannier operators than Suleyman’s, and refused to be baited into attacking Alexios on favorable ground. He was forced to consolidate his armies into a single force under the command of the Varangian guard captain Arni and confront a Seljuk army attempting to retake Bursa head-on.

Arni was an uncouth, barbarous man. For all that many Varangians acquired some of the rudiments of civilization, Arni stubbornly resisted these refinements. He strode the halls of power in furs and armor. His Greek was rude and uncultured. He had a single talent: war. But such was the spirit of the times that that was enough to rise to prominence.

Arni successfully defeated the Seljuks, but lost a sizable portion of his army in the assault. Seljuk losses were far more appalling, with nearly 6,000 soldiers slain— but the force at Bursa was just one of many Seljuk forces slowing making their way from Persia to Anatolia.

Arni could not win such victories forever.

As Alexios and his generals considered their next move, troubling news reached their camp from the mainland— the heresy had taken root, precipitating an armed revolt of Bogomilists. With the Seljuks advancing into Anatolia, however, Alexios was unable— for the time being— to peel off any troops to send back across the Bosphorus.

And armies were not the only means for the Seljuks to wage war— somewhere in Persia, an elite order of assassins arose.

One of these killers managed to slip past the imperial lines and infiltrate Constantinople itself, murdering the Empress Irene.

A new marriage was hastily arranged between Alexios and an obscure Norse noblewoman named Cecilia Erlendsdatter.

An elaborate royal wedding was deemed inappropriate in a time of war and mourning. The gold set aside for such was instead put towards continuing to pay the wages of the Varangian Guard.

Then, after this sequence of setbacks, Fortune decided to once again smile upon Alexios. News came from the West that the Princess Agnes had come of age, and the marriage between her and the Roman Prince Nikephoros could take place immediately.

On June 14th, 1089, Princess Agnes arrived in court with an oath from Heinrich IV promising the assistance of the Holy Roman Empire not only in our empire’s war against Rum and the Seljuks but in the Bogomilist revolt back in Greece as well.

A symbolic force of 300 Germans and Italians arrived by sea in October, but the larger body of Heinrich’s forces were undertaking a much slower overland journey from the West.

This larger army wouldn’t arrive until the next June. When it did, though, its presence proved decisive.

When the Gothic king Ataulf married the Roman princess Gala Placidia in A.D. 414, he made this declaration:

“…I have more prudently chosen the different glory of reviving the Roman name with Gothic vigour, and I hope to be acknowledged by posterity as the initiator of a Roman restoration, since it is impossible for me to alter the character of this Empire”

His promise to lend German strength to the rapidly disintegrating western provinces of the Roman Empire was left unfulfilled by his murder in 417. Now, 672 years later, this promise was finally fulfilled by a different German king.

For all that Roman writers have derisively referred to the Holy Roman Emperor as the “King of Alamannia”; for all that wags have observed that the Holy Roman Empire is neither holy, Roman, nor an empire; for all that one could draw unflattering comparisons between their claim to translatio imperii with Suleyman calling his domain “Rum”— I choose instead to reflect on the image of Kaiser Heinrich IV riding across the plains of Anatolia at the head of an army, armor gleaming in the sun, besieging province after promise, protecting the rear of Alexios’ advance into the Anatolian interior to fight Seljuk forces.

In those days, I contend, Heinrich was holy, was Roman, and had virtues and conduct befitting of an emperor.



The war was effectively over. While the Seljuk Empire still had troops in the field, Rum itself was beaten and battered; Roman, German, Alan, and Italian forces had free reign in Anatolia. Suleyman himself had died in the fighting, and the new sultan of Rum, Kilij Arslan Seljuk, chose to seek peace for Rum while there still was a Rum, rather than wait for some form of unspecified salvation to arrive from Persia.

Rum retained control of the Anatolian interior, but the all-important coast was once again in Roman hands.

The loan the crown had taken out during the civil war was finally repaid in full. The emperor personally praised the Jewish merchants of Constantinople for their patriotism in extending a line of credit to the government, and their patience in awaiting its repayment.

The armies of the two brother emperors made short work of the Bogomilist, swiftly ending their armed revolt, although their heresy would remain a potent force in the region for many years.

The first nine years of my father’s reign were marked by a state of constant crisis. Between the Norman War, the Doukas revolt, the expedition to Sicily, and the premature commencement of war with Rum and the Seljuks, the empire had more or less constantly been at war since 1081. Now, finally, in the October of 1090, these wars had been won.

Now came the harder task of attempting to win the peace.

It is one thing to take land in battle.

It is quite another to rule it.

(History notes: Henry IV and Duchess Matilda being on the same side of a war is kind of hilarious, isn’t it?)

(Also, obviously, Ataulf didn’t actually say that.)