years’
experience as a general, usually as a general with inadequate forces, whose
success depended on his wits and his diplomacy. His presence was impressive; he
was not tall, but well-built, with a dignified air. His manner was gracious and
easy, and his self-control was remarkable; but he combined a genuine kindliness
with a cynical readiness to use trickery and terror if the interests of his
country required. He had few assets beyond his personal qualities and the
affection of his troops. His family, with its connections branching through the
Byzantine aristocracy, had undoubtedly helped him into power; and he had
strengthened his position by marrying a lady of the Ducas house. But the
intrigues and jealousies of his relatives, especially the hatred that his
domineering mother bore for his wife and all her clan, only added to his problems.
The court was filled with members of former imperial families or the families
of would-be usurpers, whom Alexius sought to bind to him by marriage alliances.
There was the Empress Maria, desperately jealous of the new Empress, Irene; and
Maria’s son, Constantine Ducas, whom he made his junior colleague and soon
betrothed to his eldest child, Anna; there were the sons of Romanus Diogenes,
one of whom he married to his sister Theodora; there was the son of Nicephorus
Bryennius, who actually married Anna Comnena after the early death of
Constantine Ducas; there was Nicephorus Melissenus, already married to his
sister Eudocia, who yielded his claims to the Empire to his brother-in-law in
return for the tide of Caesar. Over all of them Alexius had to keep a watchful
eye, calming their quarrels and forestalling their treachery. An elaborate
system of titles was created to satisfy their pretensions. The nobility and the
higher civil service were equally unreliable. Alexius continually discovered
conspiracies against his government and was in constant danger of
assassination. Both from policy and from temperament he was gentle in his
punishments; and this clemency and the calm long-sightedness of all his actions
are the more remarkable in view of the personal insecurity in which his whole
life was spent.
The state of the Empire in 1081 was such that
only a man of great courage or of great stupidity would have undertaken its
government. There was no money in the treasury. Recent Emperors had been
spendthrift; the loss of Anatolia and rebellions in Europe had sadly diminished
the revenue; the old system of tax-collection had broken down. Alexius was no
financier; his methods would have left a modem economist aghast. Yet somehow,
by taxing his subjects to their utmost limits, by exacting forced loans and
confiscating property from the magnates and the Church, by punishing with fines
rather than imprisonment, by selling privileges and by developing the palace
industries, he managed to pay for a large administrative organization and to
rebuild the army and the navy, and at the same time to maintain a sumptuous
court and to make lavish gifts to loyal subjects and visiting envoys and
princes. For he realized that in the East prestige depends entirely on
splendour and magnificence. Niggardliness is the one unforgiven sin. But
Alexius was guilty of two great errors. In return for immediate aid he gave
commercial advantages to foreign merchants, to the detriment of his own
subjects; and at one crucial moment he debased the imperial coinage, the
coinage that for seven centuries had provided the only stable currency in a chaotic world.
In foreign affairs the situation was even more
desperate — if ‘foreign’ was still an applicable epithet; for on all sides
enemies had penetrated far into the Empire. In Europe the Emperor maintained a
precarious hold over the Balkan peninsula; but the Slavs of Serbia and Dalmatia
had risen in revolt. The Turkish tribe of Petchenegs, roaming beyond the
Danube, continually crossed the river to raid. And in the West Robert Guiscard
and the Normans had captured Avlona
experience as a general, usually as a general with inadequate forces, whose
success depended on his wits and his diplomacy. His presence was impressive; he
was not tall, but well-built, with a dignified air. His manner was gracious and
easy, and his self-control was remarkable; but he combined a genuine kindliness
with a cynical readiness to use trickery and terror if the interests of his
country required. He had few assets beyond his personal qualities and the
affection of his troops. His family, with its connections branching through the
Byzantine aristocracy, had undoubtedly helped him into power; and he had
strengthened his position by marrying a lady of the Ducas house. But the
intrigues and jealousies of his relatives, especially the hatred that his
domineering mother bore for his wife and all her clan, only added to his problems.
The court was filled with members of former imperial families or the families
of would-be usurpers, whom Alexius sought to bind to him by marriage alliances.
There was the Empress Maria, desperately jealous of the new Empress, Irene; and
Maria’s son, Constantine Ducas, whom he made his junior colleague and soon
betrothed to his eldest child, Anna; there were the sons of Romanus Diogenes,
one of whom he married to his sister Theodora; there was the son of Nicephorus
Bryennius, who actually married Anna Comnena after the early death of
Constantine Ducas; there was Nicephorus Melissenus, already married to his
sister Eudocia, who yielded his claims to the Empire to his brother-in-law in
return for the tide of Caesar. Over all of them Alexius had to keep a watchful
eye, calming their quarrels and forestalling their treachery. An elaborate
system of titles was created to satisfy their pretensions. The nobility and the
higher civil service were equally unreliable. Alexius continually discovered
conspiracies against his government and was in constant danger of
assassination. Both from policy and from temperament he was gentle in his
punishments; and this clemency and the calm long-sightedness of all his actions
are the more remarkable in view of the personal insecurity in which his whole
life was spent.
The state of the Empire in 1081 was such that
only a man of great courage or of great stupidity would have undertaken its
government. There was no money in the treasury. Recent Emperors had been
spendthrift; the loss of Anatolia and rebellions in Europe had sadly diminished
the revenue; the old system of tax-collection had broken down. Alexius was no
financier; his methods would have left a modem economist aghast. Yet somehow,
by taxing his subjects to their utmost limits, by exacting forced loans and
confiscating property from the magnates and the Church, by punishing with fines
rather than imprisonment, by selling privileges and by developing the palace
industries, he managed to pay for a large administrative organization and to
rebuild the army and the navy, and at the same time to maintain a sumptuous
court and to make lavish gifts to loyal subjects and visiting envoys and
princes. For he realized that in the East prestige depends entirely on
splendour and magnificence. Niggardliness is the one unforgiven sin. But
Alexius was guilty of two great errors. In return for immediate aid he gave
commercial advantages to foreign merchants, to the detriment of his own
subjects; and at one crucial moment he debased the imperial coinage, the
coinage that for seven centuries had provided the only stable currency in a chaotic world.
In foreign affairs the situation was even more
desperate — if ‘foreign’ was still an applicable epithet; for on all sides
enemies had penetrated far into the Empire. In Europe the Emperor maintained a
precarious hold over the Balkan peninsula; but the Slavs of Serbia and Dalmatia
had risen in revolt. The Turkish tribe of Petchenegs, roaming beyond the
Danube, continually crossed the river to raid. And in the West Robert Guiscard
and the Normans had captured Avlona
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