Everything about Battle Of Manzikert totally explained
The Battle of Manzikert, or
Malazgirt (
Turkish:
Malazgirt Savaşı) was fought between the
Byzantine Empire and
Seljuq forces led by
Alp Arslan on
August 26,
1071 near Manzikert,
Armenia (modern
Malazgirt,
Turkey) in the
Basprakania theme (province) of the Empire. It resulted in one of the most decisive defeats of the Byzantine Empire and the capture of the Byzantine Emperor
Romanos IV Diogenes.
The battle marked the high point of the initial Turkish incursions and was followed up two years later with a large influx of Turkish settlers and soldiers, many at the request of the crumbling Byzantine Empire. However, the battle wasn't the slaughter that many historians, including contemporary writers, have stressed it to be — large numbers of mercenaries and Anatolian levies fled and survived the battle, thanks in part to Alp Arslan's refusal to pursue them. Nonetheless, the Byzantine Empire would never be able to muster a force as large, nor as distantly projected as that which took part in the fateful battle.
Background
Although the Byzantine Empire had remained a strong and powerful entity in the Middle Ages, the Kingdom began to decline under the reign of the militarily incompetent
Constantine IX and again under
Constantine X — a brief two year rule of reform under
Isaac I Komnenos only delaying the decay of the Byzantine military. It was under Constantine IX's reign that the Byzantines first came into contact with the Seljuk Turks, the latter attempting to annex Ani in Armenia. Rather than deal with the problem by force of arms, Constantine IX signed a truce. The truce didn't last; in 1063 the
Great Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan came to power and thus the invasion of Armenia, halted in 1045, began again.
During the 1060s, the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan allowed his Turkish allies, as well as the
Kurds, to migrate towards
Armenia and
Asia Minor. In 1064, they conquered the Armenian capital at
Ani. In 1068, Romanos IV took power and after a few speedy military reforms led an expedition against the Seljuks, allowing him to capture the city of
Hierapolis Bambyce in
Syria. A Turkish attack against Iconium was thwarted when a Byzantine counter from Syria ended in victory. The quality of the Byzantine Thematic (provincial) troops had declined in the years prior to the succession of Romanus as the central government diverted resources to the recruitment of mercenaries who were considered less likely to become involved in coups or factional fighting within the Empire. Even when mercenaries were used, they were disbanded after to save money.
The march across Asia Minor was long and difficult, and Romanos didn't endear himself to his troops by bringing a luxurious baggage train along with him; the Byzantine population also suffered some plundering by Romanos' Frankish
mercenaries, whom he was forced to dismiss. The expedition first rested at
Sebasteia on the
Halys, and reached
Theodosiopolis in June 1071. There, some of his generals suggested continuing the march into Seljuk territory and catching Arslan before he was ready. Some of the other generals, including
Nikephoros Bryennios, suggested they wait there and fortify their position. Eventually it was decided to continue the march.
Thinking that Alp Arslan was either further away or not coming at all, Romanos marched towards
Lake Van expecting to retake Manzikert rather quickly, as well as the nearby fortress of
Khliat if possible. However, Arslan was actually in Armenia, with cavalry from
Aleppo,
Mosul, and his other allies. Alp Arslan's spies knew exactly where Romanos was, while Romanos was completely unaware of his opponent's movements.
Romanos ordered his general
Joseph Tarchaneiotes to take some of the Byzantine troops and Varangians and accompany the Pechenegs and Franks to Khliat, while Romanos and the rest of the army marched to Manzikert. This split the forces in half, each taking about men.
On
August 25, some of Romanos' Turkish mercenaries came into contact with their Seljuk relatives and deserted. Romanos then rejected a Seljuk peace embassy as he wanted to settle the Turkish problem with a decisive military victory and understood that raising another army would be both difficult and expensive. The Emperor attempted to recall Tarchaneiotes, who was no longer in the area. There were no engagements that day, but on
August 26 the Byzantine army gathered itself into a proper battle formation and began to march on the Turkish positions, with the left wing under Bryennios, the right wing under Theodore Alyates, and the centre under the emperor. Andronikos Doukas led the reserve forces in the rear - a foolish mistake, considering the loyalties of the Doukids. The Seljuks were organized into a crescent formation about four kilometres away, Romanos was forced to order a withdrawal by the time night fell. The remnants of the Byzantine centre, including the Emperor and the Varangian Guard, were encircled by the Seljuks. Romanus was injured, and taken prisoner by the Seljuks. The survivors were the many who fled the field and were pursued throughout the night, but not beyond that; by dawn, the professional core of the Byzantine army had been destroyed whilst many of the Peasant troops and levies who had been under the command of Andronikus fled. This would have left the vital core of Anatolia untouched. A payment of 10 million gold pieces demanded by the Sultan as a ransom for Romanus was deemed as too high by the latter so the Sultan reduced its short-term expense by instead asking for 1.5 million gold pieces as an initial payment followed by an annual sum of gold pieces. considering that many units survived the battle intact and were fighting elsewhere within a few months. Certainly, all the commanders in the Byzantine side (Doukas, Tarchaneiotes, Bryennios, de Bailleul, and, above all, the Emperor) survived and took part in later events.
Doukas had escaped with no casualties, and quickly marched back to Constantinople where he led the coup against Romanos and proclaimed Michael VII as
basileus. Bryennios also lost few men in the rout of his wing. The Seljuks didn't pursue the fleeing Byzantines, nor did they recapture Manzikert itself at this point. The Byzantine army regrouped and marched to Dokeia, where they were joined by Romanos when he was released a week later. The most serious loss materially seems to have been the emperor's extravagant baggage train.
The disaster the battle caused for the Empire was, in simplest terms, the loss of its Anatolian heartland.
John Julius Norwich says in his trilogy on the Byzantine Empire that the defeat was "its death blow, though centuries remained before the remnant fell. The themes in Anatolia were literally the heart of the empire, and within decades after Manzikert, they were gone." In his smaller book, "
A Short History of Byzantium", Norwich describes the battle as "the greatest disaster suffered by the Empire in its seven and a half centuries of existence". Finally, while intrigue and deposing of Emperors had taken place before, the fate of Romanos was particularly horrific, and the destabilization caused by it also rippled through the centuries.
What followed the battle was a chain of events - of which the battle was the first link - that undermined the Empire in the years to come. They included intrigues for the throne, the horrific fate of Romanos and Roussel de Bailleul attempting to carve himself an independent kingdom in
Galatia with his
Frankish,
Norman and
German mercenaries. From another perspective, the West saw Manzikert as a signal that Byzantium was no longer capable of being the protector of
Eastern Christianity or Christian pilgrims to the Holy Places in the
Middle East.
Delbruck considers that the importance of the battle has been exaggerated; but it's clear from the evidence that as a result of it, the Empire was unable to put an effective army into the field for many years to come.
The
Battle of Myriokephalon, also known as the Myriocephalum, was 'also' compared to the Battle of Manzikert, as a 'pivotal' point in the "decline' of the Byzantine Empire. In both battles, separated by over a hundred years, an expensive Byzantine army finds itself ambushed by a more elusive Seljuk opponent. However, Myriocephalum's implications were initially limited, thanks to
Manuel I Komnenos' holding on to power. The same couldn't be said of Romanus, whose enemies, "martyred a courageous and upright man..." and as a result "the Empire... would never recover"
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