Chapter XVII: The New Basileus

It was a glorious morning of summer, and the sun had just risen over the crests of the range of Anti-Taurus, when the most brilliant army of that warlike age was drawn up on the plain of Cæsarea for the installation of the new emperor. Nicephorus advanced to the tribune, surrounded by the counts, strategi, and captains of his eastern force. He had suffered them to place on his feet the vermilion buskins clasped with their golden eagles--the sign of majesty--but he resolutely refused to accept the diadem and the purple mantle they sought to force on him. Then he commanded silence, and, with that voice like a trumpet that had so often rung along their ranks, he spoke thus:

"Comrades, it is with no desire to be a tyrant that I have taken up these imperial trappings; it has been forced upon me by your summons and the will of the army. You are my witnesses how unwillingly I assume the task of preserving this our realm of Rome, and, indeed, my own life. Almighty God above us knows that I am ready to give my life for you, and no suffering or danger can turn me from my purpose. You have resolved that I shall not be crushed by the insolent devices of that upstart eunuch, who presumes to play the despot over all. He holds my venerable father Bardas in his prisons; he is hunting to death my brother Leo and my friends; he has sent orders to our gallant generals here to send me in chains to the capital, there to be blinded or murdered. I am going, not in chains, but at the head of my brave soldiers, to wrest the power of the empire from the cruel hands of this usurper, to rescue my father and my brother from his clutches, to restore the government to its lawful princes. You know how I love you, my children, and will stand by you till death. Rise, and put your hearts into the fight. There is stern work for us to do. I cannot tell you that it can be done without shedding of your blood. I am leading you this day, not against Cretans or Scythians or Arabs, whom you have so often beaten, but against Romans. We have to capture, not a hill-fort, but that great city of the Cæsars on the Golden Horn, which has walls and towers, garrisons, riches, stores, and splendor such as no other city on earth can show. God is with me, for my cause is just. I go not to dethrone our young sovereigns, but to be their guardian and to secure their throne. It is not I that break my oath. It is the perjured villain who breaks faith with me, and is plotting to kill me and mine. I have led you to glory in many a fight of old. Follow me now to Rome, where a nobler triumph awaits us, the cause of justice and of God above!"

These words roused a frenzy of excitement in the troops, who replied with shouts of applause, with the brandishing of their lances and the crash of arms. Their beloved general, like the great Ironside he was, would mingle appeals to battle and to God in the same speech, for he well knew his Armenian and Anatolian veterans to be as keen for fight as they were God-fearing in heart. "These words of his," says Leo the deacon, in his chronicle, "stirred the army to an indescribable state of excitement, making them eager for the most desperate adventure. The soldiers adored him frantically and gloried to serve under him. Bred to war from his youth upward, he not only was the bravest of the brave in battle and endowed with marvellous personal dexterity in arms, but he had that genius for inspiring men with his own zeal that no one of that age could be compared with him as commander-in-chief."

That very day the great march to the Bosphorus began. Exercising at once the rights of emperor, Nicephorus, with politic generosity, conferred on Tzimisces and on Courcouas the very dignities with which the eunuch had proposed to purchase their treason. John was promoted to be magistros and grand domestic of the eastern armies, and he was placed in command of the Asiatic frontier to hold in check the Saracens of Syria. From headquarters there issued a stream of imperial despatches, nominations to command, orders to march, and official requisitions. Every high-road and every dominant post was occupied with adequate detachments. The passes, the fortresses, and the ports were all taken over by trusty officers of the new sovereign. The army was mobilized and concentrated, and was hurled in columns by forced marches upon the shores of the Propontis.

The whole of the Asiatic themes being thus in secure possession of the new sovereign, and the seaboard closed against any carrying of intelligence, Bishop Philotheus was sent in advance with imperial missives addressed to the patriarch at Constantinople, to the senate, and to the great chamberlain at the palace. The despatch to the latter was thus worded:

"You will prepare to receive me, Nicephorus Phocas, your sovereign, now duly invested with imperial authority. My care will be to watch over the infant sons of our late sovereign, Romanus, and to protect them as their guardian until they come of age. I shall devote myself to the service of the state, and I undertake to increase the power of the Roman empire by deeds of arms. They who resist my will must take the consequences of their folly, for this issue must be fought out to the death. Their blood will be upon their own heads if they choose the wrong in place of the right."

So skilful had been the dispositions of the new autocrat, and so perfect was the discipline of the Asian government, that, according to the chronicle, no rumor of the resolution that had taken place at Cæsarea reached the capital until the bishop presented his despatch to Bringas in council. The eunuch, beside himself with rage, stormed at the venerable prelate, as if he had been a rude messenger from some barbarous frontier chief. He flung the poor bishop into prison, proclaimed Nicephorus a rebel and an outlaw, and prepared for a desperate defence.

Bringas was not the man to yield without a stout fight. As his overtures to John and to Courcouas had failed, he turned to leading nobles and captains in the west, whom he inspired with jealousy of Nicephorus. He sent for Marianos Apambas, once commander of the imperial forces in Italy, to whom he committed the defence of the city. He secured also Paschal, a former strategus, and Nicholas and Leo of the noble house of the Tornicii. The vast ramparts of the city, with their three hundred towers, were made ready for assault, the city gates were barred, and a boom was cast across the Golden Horn. The imperial guard was called under arms, and contingents brought in from Macedonia and Thrace, who were known to be always jealous of the eastern divisions. Bringas got a sentence of excommunication against Nicephorus; he obtained an imperial order in the names of the infant Basileis declaring the family of Phocas and his partisans as outlaws.

The empress, meantime, shut herself close in her own wing of the palace, guarded by the most powerful force she could muster to her defence. There the Princess Agatha rushed into her room in a state of acute agony with the news that the party of Bringas had drawn up an order for the arrest of Basil Digenes, the akritas, whom it was intended to mutilate or murder. "Find some way to save him," she cried in despair, "for we owe him this service. With his heroic spirit, he neglected all the warnings of his friends to escape in time. He thought he could still aid the cause of his chief by watching his interests here--and I fear that he lingered still for my sake--though I pressed him to think of the danger he incurred. Save him, Augusta, save the truest friend of the general and the noblest soldier of Rome! He may be killed or blinded before an hour is passed."

"Where is he now?" asked Theophano. "I was assured he had made his escape into Asia to the army."

"But he came back secretly and managed to reach the apartments of my sister and myself--in order," she added, with a blush, "to induce me to fix a day for our marriage, if he lived through the turmoil of these times. We have concealed him for the moment, but we cannot protect him long."

"He shall be put in charge of our own cubiculars of the royal chamber, and he shall be enrolled under another name in the corps of palace guards whom I have mustered for defence of myself and my children. We will not be beaten without a sharp fight."

The news now ran through the great city that Nicephorus, with the vanguard of his army, had reached the shores opposite. He was actually in possession of Chrysopolis, the modern Scutari, and his ensigns could be seen in the summer palace of Hieria, on the shore that now faces Seraglio Point. The excitement in the city grew intense. Vast crowds filled the streets day and night, restrained only by the Macedonian troops, whom Bringas had posted throughout the city, which was declared to be in a state of siege. The passions of the multitude rose to fever pitch when it was discovered that the astute eunuch had taken care to have all ships, barges, and every kind of craft removed from the Asiatic coast, and that no means as yet existed by which Nicephorus and his forces could cross the straits. At dawn it was found that the venerable Bardas, the father of Nicephorus, had escaped from his prison and had sought sanctuary in the cathedral, where the patriarch had taken him under his protection. The guards of Bringas were sent to drag the veteran out of the church; but angry crowds, with arms, stones, and staves, drove back the troops, who sought to force their way into the temple and to seize their prisoner.

It was now the morning of Sunday, August 9th, and vast crowds filled the church of the Holy Wisdom, where the service of the day had begun. Bringas, puffed up with overweening pride in his own authority and confident in his military strength, rode down in person from the palace, and with a body of his guards tried to force his way to the very choir. He harangued the people with daring insolence and threatened them with his vengeance and an embargo on corn. This roused the citizens to fury, and Bringas and his men were driven out with insults and missiles. He made his way back to the palace, with magnificent audacity, still defying the mob, and even ordering the corn market to be closed and no bread to be sold or issued. But finding that Theophano and the royal princesses were strongly guarded and barricaded in a large part of the vast edifice, where Basil Digenes had assumed the chief command, he felt himself no longer safe there, and shut himself up with his guards in his own palace.

The city thereon broke out into revolution, and for three days and nights desperate street fights ensued between the bands of citizens who sided with Nicephorus and the Macedonian guards who remained loyal to Bringas. By degrees armed detachments of Nicephorus's partisans made their way into the city, and some bands managed to cross the Bosphorus. Polyeuctus, with his clergy and masses of citizens, bore the aged Bardas in triumph to the imperial palace, and there installed him in a strong position of defence. In one of the desperate street fights which raged throughout the city, a woman threw a heavy vase from a top window, which clove the skull of Apambas, the commander of the Macedonians. His death demoralized the last defenders of the eunuch. The mob now stormed his palace, sacked and burned it; and the defeated tyrant, in turn, fled for sanctuary to the great church which his intended victim had so recently left. His partisans were hunted by the populace and thrown into prison. The streets of the capital ran with blood. For three days and nights massacre, pillage, arson raged unchecked through the mighty city "protected of God." Nicephorus, with his officers and troops, on the Asian coast, without vessels to cross the straits, watched from afar the tumult which they were powerless to quell.

The party of the new Basileus at last found a leader. Basil, natural son of the former emperor or usurper, Romanus Lecapenus, by a Russian slave of the harem, had long been in high office under Constantine. He was created a patrician in that reign, captain of the guard, president of the senate, grand chamberlain, and general in the war against the Saracens. He had been prepared in childhood for high office short of empire by the barbarous rite of emasculation, which was regarded as a grotesque form of lay tonsure.[1] But he had wonderful energy, courage, and sagacity--a born statesman. Before the accession of Romanus he had been displaced by his rival, Bringas, disgraced, deprived of office and rank, and consigned to obscurity and strict surveillance. He naturally hated the eunuch who had overthrown him. And his hour of retaliation had come. Arming his own household, his slaves and followers, to the number of three thousand, he patrolled the city in force, beating down the remnants of the Bringas faction, proclaiming the new emperor, and restoring a regular police in the devastated city.

[1] Such persons, even if they were of royal blood, could be intrusted with the highest office and power, without risk of their aspiring to the throne, from which by law and custom they were cut off as disqualified. Throughout the whole history of the Byzantine empire, as of the sultanate, they often rose to almost despotic power.

Thence he led his men to the Golden Horn, seized the ships in port, and despatched them across the straits to transport the army of the new sovereign. The imperial fleet, barges, vessels of all kinds, and open boats, carried over crowds of citizens, who flocked to hail the rising sun of empire with shouts of "Long live our glorious and ever-victorious Nicephorus!" On Sunday, August 16th, exactly a week from the outbreak of the revolution, the new emperor was escorted by the new grand chamberlain and a swarm of functionaries to the capital to be crowned. The imperial galley, gilt from stem to stern, dressed with silken banners and awnings, had a deck bridge adorned with figures and emblems and an image of St. George at the prow. There sat on his throne the new chief, as his oarsmen, with gilded sweeps, slowly rowed the state vessel beneath the city walls round to the suburb of Hebdomon, south of the mighty ramparts. Thence through the Golden Gate, the autocrat, in golden armor, rode in procession to the church of the Holy Wisdom. He sat on a white charger, caparisoned with housings of purple, gold, and jewels. The long route of many miles in extent, thronged with vast crowds cheering the new sovereign, was adorned with wreaths, banners, and triumphal arches. At various points on the course the emperor dismounted to prostrate himself in many a venerated church before some miraculous image, and placed lighted tapers in sign of adoration. At other spots he had to be disarmed from his military accoutrements and invested with the imperial scaramangion, or mantle of ermine and rare furs. His sword was then laid aside and the sceptre surmounted with the cross was placed in his right hand. At the Golden Gate the Saracen prisoners fell into the cortège, and the factions met him with their eternal chants of "Hail, victorious chief!" "Nicephorus, king of the Romans!"

It would be tedious to narrate in detail the interminable ceremonies of that long day of triumph and consecration. It was all carried out minutely, according to the book of ceremonies, in the solemn and sacramental forms that had been used at the installation of Romanus four years before, forms that had been used in the city of the Constantines for some five centuries already, that were destined to be used there for some five centuries more. These secular rites have been servilely imitated and adapted by all the monarchies of the west and of the north for a thousand years since. It was the same elaborate consecration of a king by the high-priests of the state church, of which we lately witnessed the revival in an age which claims to have outgrown Byzantine servility, superstition, and gaudy display.

In those days kings and their people attached a mystical importance to the sacramental character of those acts of consecration. And the new Basileus was himself a mystic among mystics. Accordingly, Nicephorus duly prostrated himself before the miracle-working image of the Mother of God; the tapers were duly lighted; the incense ascended from the altars; the royal vestments were duly exchanged for the imperial tunic. The diadem was bound round the grizzled head of the new sovereign; the military greaves were then solemnly changed for the vermilion buskins. And thus on foot the emperor entered the porch of the Holy Wisdom, where he was met by the patriarch and all his chapter. The true cross, which St. Helena had recovered, and which, ultimately, at the fourth crusade, passed to St. Louis, in Paris, was solemnly borne before the monarch amid the adoration of the worshippers around. Again and again the royal vestments were changed, after being first solemnly blessed by the patriarch. Then the emperor was conducted by the priests to the ambon, where the prayers and offices of consecration were said, and the holy oil of anointing was poured on the royal person; and at last the imperial crown was solemnly placed on the veteran's brow amid chants of "Holy, holy, holy, glory to God in the heaven, peace to men on earth!"

But the very enumeration of the endless stages in the rite becomes intolerable. Nor can modern patience endure the recital of the perpetual acts of reverence, homage, symbolic gestures, of the processions, feastings, and gala courtesies of that prodigious ceremonial. Hour after hour the chants went on with a rhythm that combined Oriental prostration to a despot with Christian litanies of adoration: "Hail, Nicephorus, autocrat of the Romans!" "Hail, mighty sovereign of the Romans!" "Hail, thou who hast put to flight our enemies!" "Hail, thou who hast destroyed the cities of the foe!" "Thou hast thrust Ishmael into the dust!" "God hast shown pity on His people, in that He has placed thee on the imperial throne!" "Rejoice, thou city of the Romans!" "Receive him whom God has crowned!" "The people desire Nicephorus to be their king!" "The law requires him to reign!" "The palace asks for him to rule!" "The senate calls for him!" "The army cries out for him!" "The whole world craves for Nicephorus to be its sovereign lord!" "Hear us, O God, when we call to Thee!" "Hear us, O God, and grant long life to our king!" "Give him long life, O Christ!" "God preserve him!" "Long may he reign!" "May God keep this Christian realm in His holy keeping!"

Such were the chants and litanies which hour after hour rang through the domes of the Holy Wisdom, rang through the streets and porticos of the vast city. They were chants which, in a few short years, were turned into execrations and comminations. But they are the very words which for a thousand years the peoples of Europe have shouted to high Heaven on the day when they have to welcome a new master and ask the blessing of God upon his reign.

When the portentous ceremonial in the church of the Holy Wisdom was completed, the imperial procession was formed again, led by a body-guard consisting of one hundred Varangian halberdiers and one hundred young nobles. The sovereign was escorted to the hall of the throne, where the homage or "adoration," as it was called, was duly performed. The chief dignitaries of the empire prostrated themselves at the feet of the new lord. An endless stream of courtiers followed, in their ranks, as marshalled by the masters of the ceremonies. At last Nicephorus was carried back to the Sacred Palace--now "autocrat of the Romans, the equal of the apostles, successor of the pious Constantine, of him who had founded the city and endowed the church, the vicegerent of Providence on earth." There he was joined by the empress, radiant and triumphant, who received him with a smile that, to him, was of more value than the blessings of a thousand priests and the cheers of a hundred thousand citizens, a smile which promised him a crown more precious than all the glories and the powers which the empire of the world had to give.