Free A History of the Crusades-Vol 1 by Steven Runciman Page A

either as
a gift from the state or by undertaking the responsibility for paying the taxes
of the community. The wiser Emperors sought to prevent them, partly because the
new landlord seldom resisted the temptation to turn his land into a
sheep-ranch, and still more because the transference of peasant-soldiers’
holdings gave to the landlord the power to raise a private army and weakened
the army of the state. But their legislation failed. In the course of the tenth
century there arose in Byzantium a hereditary land-owning aristocracy, rich and
powerful enough to defy the central government. The Emperor Basil II, the
greatest of the Macedonian dynasty, had with difficulty suppressed a revolt by
members of this aristocracy early in his reign. He triumphed; and his prestige
lasted on till his dynasty ended in 1056, at the death of his niece, Theodora.
Had the Macedonian line produced male heirs, the hereditary principle might
well have been established for the imperial throne, and Byzantium would have
possessed a force capable of curbing the hereditary nobility. But, though
loyalty to the dynasty enabled the Empress Zoe and her successive husbands to
reign on in profligate insouciance for nearly thirty years and the aged Empress
Theodora to rule alone, disruptive forces were growing all the while. When
Theodora died, two parties in Byzantium faced each other in bitter opposition,
the court clique which controlled the central administration and the noble
families who controlled the army; while the Church, with a foot in both camps,
attempted to hold the balance.
    Hardly had the septuagenarian Empress, trusting
till the end in a prophecy that offered her a reign of many years, sunk into her
final coma before the court had pushed on to the throne an elderly civil
servant, Michael Stratioticus. The army refused to accept the new Emperor. It
marched on Constantinople determined that its commander should succeed. Michael
retired without a struggle; and the general, Isaac Comnenus, became Emperor.
The military aristocracy had won the first round.
     
    Comnenus and
Ducas
    Isaac Comnenus, like many of his
fellow-Byzantine noblemen, was an aristocrat of only the second generation. His
father was a Thracian soldier, probably a Vlach, who had caught the fancy of Basil
II and had been given by the Emperor lands in Paphlagonia, where he built a
great castle known as Castra Comnenon , and still to-day called
Kastamuni. Isaac and his brother John inherited their father’s lands and his
military prowess, and both had married into the Byzantine aristocracy. Isaac’s
wife was a princess of the former royal house of Bulgaria, John’s an heiress of
the great family of the Dalasseni. But despite his wealth and his high command
and the support of the army, Isaac found his government continually thwarted by
the ill will of the civil service. After two years he gave up the struggle and
retired to a monastery. He had no son; so he nominated as his successor
Constantine Ducas. His sister-in-law, Anna Dalassena, never forgave him.
    Constantine Ducas was head of probably the
oldest and richest family of the Byzantine aristocracy; but he had made his
career at court. Isaac hoped that he would therefore be acceptable to both
parties. But he soon showed that his leanings were away from his caste. His
treasury was empty; and the army was dangerously powerful. His solution was to
reduce the armed forces. As a measure of internal policy this could be
defended. But at no time in Byzantine history would it have been safe to weaken
the Empire’s defensive power; and at this moment such an action was fatal.
Storm clouds were blowing up from the East; and in the West a storm had broken.
    For some decades past, the state of southern
Italy had been turbulent and confused. The frontier of the Byzantine Empire
officially ran from Terracina on the Tyrrhenian coast to Termoli on the
Adriatic. But within that line only the provinces of Apulia and Calabria were
under the