Alexius I Comnenus

Emperor

• Born: c. 1048
• Birthplace: Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey)
• Died: August 15, 1118
• Place of death: Constantinople (now in Istanbul, Turkey)

Born: c. 1048; Constantinople (later Istanbul, Turkey)

Died: August 15, 1118; Constantinople

Principal war: First Crusade

Principal battles: Siege of Dyrrachium (1081–1082), Mount Lebounion (1091), Nicaea (1097), Antioch (1097–1098)

Military significance: Alexius prevented the Seljuk Turks from overrunning the Byzantine Empire, helped initiate the Crusades, and through delicate balancing of his own political ends against the requirements of dealing with the crusaders, managed to preserve the Byzantine Empire.

Alexius I was a member of the Comnenus Dynasty of Byzantine rulers. He was the son of John Comnenus and Anna Dalassena and the nephew of the emperor Isaac I Comnenus. By the time he was in his early twenties, Alexius was already a seasoned general who had seen action against the Turks and rebel groups within the empire. He was a popular leader who was much admired by his men. To many, Alexius seemed destined to rule. In 1081, together with his brother Isaac, Alexius seized the throne from Nicephorus III Botaniates.

Once installed as emperor, Alexius faced serious problems. To the east, the Muslim Seljuk Turks controlled Anatolia (the Turkish name for Asia Minor). To the west, the Norman rulers of southern Italy were ready to attack the empire’s lands in the Balkan peninsula. Alexius turned his attention to the Normans. The Norman leader, Robert Guiscard, had already defeated Byzantine armies in southern Italy and was poised to seize the entire empire for himself and his cohort. In the spring of 1081, Guiscard occupied the island of Corfu and began a Siege of Dyrrachium (later Durrës in Albania), the chief Byzantine harbor on the Adriatic Sea. Using troops lent to him by the Turkish sultan of Nicaea (with whom he had earlier negotiated a peace agreement), Alexius rushed to defend the city. After several months of conflict, Alexius’s troops gave in to Guiscard early in 1082.

The Normans then advanced against Epirus and Thessaly. They besieged the city of Larissa in Thessaly in 1082, but Alexius was able to relieve it the following year. Before the decisive battle, Alexius ordered the main body of his force to advance against the Normans while he and a smaller force moved around the Norman camp and waited until dawn. On the day of the battle, the Normans engaged what they believed to be the main body of the Byzantine force. As instructed by Alexius, his troops scattered, leading the Normans away in pursuit. In the meantime, Alexius and his band raided the Norman camp and took much booty. The Byzantine victory at Larissa and the death of Guiscard in 1085 marked the end of serious Norman incursions into Byzantium.

In the region of the lower Danube River, two groups of nomadic people, the Pechenegs and the Cumans, were raiding into Thrace. Alexius was able to gain the support of the Cumans and, in April, 1091, united with them against the Pechenegs at the Battle of Mount Lebounion. The Byzantines started their advance at dawn on the plain located at the base of the mountain. They moved in a semicircle against the Pechenegs who took protective cover behind their wagons. During the battle, the Byzantines were aided by neighboring people, and the Pechenegs suffered from desertions to the Cumans. At the end of the day, the Pechenegs were totally defeated.

In March, 1095, Alexius sent his emissaries to Pope Urban II to request military aid from the west against the Seljuk Turks. Urban was fired by the idea of freeing the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem—Christ’s burial place—from Muslim control. Another goal was to give assistance to eastern Christians who were under the domination of the Muslim Seljuks. The pope privately urged European nobles to give aid to Alexius and, in November, 1095, made a public call at Clermont, in France, for a crusade.

The armies of the First Crusade journeyed through Byzantine territory on their way to meet up in Constantinople before setting off for the Holy Land. The foreign armies plundered the countryside, caused chaos, and clashed violently with those sent by the emperor to police them. When the well-armed Franks, led by Godfrey of Bouillon and Bohemund, son of Robert Guiscard, began to arrive in Constantinople in 1097, Alexius was faced with a dilemma. He feared they would plunder his capital as they had the countryside and was anxious to get rid of them. However, he needed their help in regaining territory in Turkish-controlled Anatolia. Alexius asked for each noble’s oath of loyalty and offered gifts and promises of assistance on the Crusade if they complied. In swearing loyalty to Alexius, the Frankish nobles pledged to return to him all Byzantine lands and cities seized by the Seljuk Turks.

The Franks and a Byzantine force then began their march south across Anatolia. In Nicaea (later Iznik), Frankish and Byzantine soldiers jointly besieged the city and its Seljuk rulers. After a forty-five-day siege, the city surrendered on June 19, 1097. The defenders had put up a valiant struggle. Fortified by walls four miles long with 240 towers to provide additional defense and protected by a large lake on its rear, the city was nearly impregnable. The crusaders attacked the walls, dodged rocks hurled down on them, and even launched a fleet of boats on the lake to cut off supplies to the inhabitants. Facing defeat and certain slaughter, the defenders surrendered to the Byzantines on the condition that the crusaders be forbidden from plundering the city. When news of the special terms became known, the Franks were irate, but Alexius appeased their leaders with handsome gifts.

At Nicaea, Byzantine and crusader goals began to diverge: The emperor wanted to preserve liberated cities from plunder and ruin; the crusaders needed the loot of gold and other valuables from their conquests to pay for their advance on Jerusalem. To the Byzantines, Alexius was a remarkable diplomat. To the crusaders, he was a traitor. For Alexius, the Crusades had served their purpose: to act as a vanguard for his own reconquest of coastal Anatolia and its important commercial cities.

After Nicaea, Alexius sent a small Byzantine force under his general Tatikios to accompany the crusaders to Antioch (later Antakya), the major city of northern Syria, which had been occupied by the Seljuks since 1084. In October, 1097, the crusaders began a long, bloody siege of the city. During the seven-month-long siege, Tatikios disagreed with Bohemund and Raymond of Toulouse, the two main crusader leaders. In early February, he withdrew to the island of Cyprus on the pretext of resupplying the crusaders. His failure to return to Antioch further estranged the crusaders from Alexius. When Antioch fell to the Crusaders in June, 1098, Bohemund claimed the city as his own.

Alexius spent the next six years trying to recapture Antioch. The Byzantine forces continually attacked the city and forced Bohemund to take countermeasures. In October, 1107, with the permission of the pope, Bohemund besieged Dyrrachium. Alexius ordered a blockade of the city and forced Bohemund to surrender a year later. The Norman then made a treaty with the emperor in which he became Alexius’s vassal and agreed to Byzantine rule of Antioch. However, Bohemund’s successor refused to honor the treaty, and Antioch remained a feudal principality.

Alexius’s final years were marked by continued Turkish incursions into Byzantine territory. As far as the Franks were concerned, Alexius was unsuccessful in preventing the establishment of European kingdoms in the Middle East, which followed the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders in 1099. In the last years of his reign, Alexius launched campaigns against the Seljuks in the Anatolian interior and recovered the city of Philomelion. Alexius ruled for thirty-seven years, during which he strengthened the Byzantine army and led it in person on numerous occasions. As general, diplomat, and statesman he personally defended the empire from its enemies and gave it the stability to endure in the years to come.

Bibliography

Byzantium, the Lost Empire. Documentary. The Learning Channel, 1997.

Comnena, Anna. The Alexiad. 1969. Reprint. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1979.

The Crusades. Documentary. A&E Home Video, 1995.

Norwich, John Julius. Byzantium: The Decline and Fall. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Oman, C. W. C. The Art of War in the Middle Ages: a.d. 378–1515. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1953.

Runciman, Steven. A History of the Crusades. Vol. 1. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1953.