264

VICTORIES OF ZIMISCES.

ing Theophano. Zimisces readily embraced this excuse for delivering himself from an impious woman, whose crimes he could not avoid hating though he had profited by them he gave the required promise, and Theophano spent the remainder of her miserable life in a convent. The new emperor more than rivalled the military glory of his predecessor; all the mussulman powers, enraged by the fall of Antioch, had entered into a league for the recovery of that city, and their combined forces were assembled in Syria. The imperial army, though far inferior in number, completely routed the Saracenic hosts, and this defeat destroyed their alliance. Zimisces in person marched against the Russians, who had become masters of Bulgaria; and in one brilliant campaign completely destroyed their power, and forced the barbarians to seek refuge in their native forests. Immediately after this glorious achievement, he concluded a treaty with the emperor of the west, and sent the princess Theophano to be united to prince Otho. This princess resembled her mother only in beauty and name; chaste, pious, and benevolent, she was the greatest ornament of the German court while her husband lived, and the faithful guardian of her children after his decease.

Zimisces, encouraged by former success, resolved to attempt the recovery of Syria and Palestine; he was descended from an Armenian family, and shared in the reverence of his countrymen for the city of Jerusalem. The best soldiers of the empire were collected for this expedition, and the emperor himself took the command. The campaign was eminently successful; but before its termination, Zimisces was seized with a dangerous disease which compelled him to return to Constantinople on his road, he observed some rich lands, which he heard had been recovered from the Saracens by his own valour, and subsequently usurped by the eunuch Basil, who held the office of grand chamberlain; he could not refrain from

INSURRECTION OF SCLERUS.

265

venting his indignation at seeing the rewards of valour usurped by the degraded creatures of the court, and his incautious words were soon reported to the minister. Poison was mingled with the emperor's medicine by one of Basil's creatures; and Zimisces only reached Constantinople to die. (A.D. 975.) Five months before his death, the astrologers had promised him a long and happy reign, and the failure of the prediction was one of the first circumstances that brought their art into disrepute.

Basil and Constantine, the sons of Romanus II. had been allowed to preserve the imperial title during the reigns of the two usurpers, but their education had been neglected, and they had weakened their constitutions by riot and debauchery. The eunuch Basil hoped to reign in the name of the two princes, and took care to remove all whom he suspected of an inclination to become his rivals. Soldiers trained in the wars of Nicephorus and Zimisces, were unwilling to submit to such degrading tyranny; the eastern army revolted, and proclaimed Sclerus emperor. The imperial armies sent to subdue the revolters were twice defeated; but in a third engagement, Sclerus, having received a severe wound, fell from his horse. The steed running masterless through the press led the insurgents to believe that their leader was slain; they fell into confusion, and were destroyed almost unresistingly. Sclerus escaped from the field, and sought refuge at the court of the Khaliph. But the young emperor Basil, acquiring wisdom as he grew older, gave fresh alarms to his name sake, the ambitious chamberlain. Ashamed of his indolence and dissipation, Basil II. headed his army in a campaign against the Bulgarians, and was eminently distinguished by his skill and courage. The fame he acquired emboldened him to dismiss his ambitious minister; and the chamberlain, after a vain struggle to recover his influence, died of a broken heart. From this time, Basil changed entirely his habits of life. Wholly occupied by affairs of state,

he renounced pleasures, splendid dresses, and equipages. He became sober, vigilant, industrious, but at the same time haughty, morose and suspicious. His brother Constantine, on the contrary, remained sunk in debauchery, and never bestowed a thought on the affairs of the empire.

The generals who had been most loud in reproaching the indolence of Basil, were most indignant at discovering the change in his character, which threatened to diminish their importance. Bardas Phocas proclaimed himself emperor Sclerus, who had escaped from Bagdad, again assumed the same title, and thus perhaps for the first time a sovereign's virtues became the cause of a civil war. Phocas, by treachery, got Sclerus into his power, but soon afterwards dropped dead suddenly. Sclerus, restored to liberty, resolved to submit himself to Basil; he was readily pardoned and permitted to spend the remainder of his life in safe obscurity.

The dangers of civil war being thus averted, Basil was left at liberty to accomplish the great object on which he had for some time fixed all his attention, the complete subjugation of the Bulgarians. The war lasted more than twenty years it was terminated by the complete subjugation of the Bulgarians, and the annexation of their country as a province to the Byzantine empire. Basil next prepared to recover the island of Sicily, and had already sent a part of his army to secure a landing place, when he was seized with a disease which soon proved mortal (A.D. 1025). Glorious as his reign was, his death was not much lamented by his subjects, who bitterly complained of the heavy taxes levied to support the Bulgarian and Saracenic wars. Unlike Nicephorus, he did not exact contributions from the clergy; on the contrary, he repealed the law which prohibited bequests to the church, a law which the priests declared to be the cause of all the evils that afflicted the empire.

Constantine, who had enjoyed the title of emperor for

END OF THE MACEDONIAN DYNASTY.

267

about fifty years, now began for the first time to exercise authority. Utterly incapable of governing, he delegated his power to the companions of his debauchery, whose exactions and cruelties filled the entire empire with confusion. But intemperance shortened his days; as he had no son, he resolved when on his dying bed to choose a successor, and compel him to marry one of his daughters. He selected Romanus Argyus, who was already married to a lady named Helena, whom he passionately loved. Romanus refused the proffered elevation, but was threatened with loss of sight unless he complied. A few hours were allowed for deliberation, and Helena herself prevailed upon Romanus to consent to the second marriage. A new difficulty arose: of the three daughters of Constantine, Eudocia was in a convent; and Theodora, whom the emperor destined to succeed him, obstinately refused to marry a man who had a wife alive. Her sister Zoe was less scrupulous; three days before the death of Constantine she was married to Argyus, and the generous Helena hid her sorrows in a convent (A.D. 1028). Thus ended the Macedonian dynasty, during which the Byzantine empire had recovered from its state of degradation, and almost attained its former pride of place; but it rose only to fall into still lower depths, and finally to fall before the barbarians that overthrew its greatest rival, the Saracenic empire. The downfall of the Khaliphate and the establishment of the Turkish Sultanies, is the event that unites again the politics of the eastern and western world, and it must therefore engage our earnest attention.

268

DECLINE OF THE KHALIPHATE.

CHAPTER XXI.

Decline of the Khaliphate. Foundation of the Turkish power.

(From A.D. 834 to A.D. 1090.)

+

AL MOTASSEM, the eighth Khaliph of the house of Abbas*, succeeded his brother, the munificent Al Mamu'n, at a time when the Saracenic empire seemed to have reached the zenith of its splendour. (A.D. 834.) Spain, indeed, had been long separated from the dominions of the Khaliph, and an independent dynasty, that of the Aglabites, had been established in western Africa; but the loss of these distant countries was scarcely felt by monarchs who ruled over the richest portions of Asia. But though the glory of the empire had scarcely been diminished, its real strength was decayed; the descendants of the bold sons of the desert, had lost their native courage and enthusiasm, when mingled with the degraded Syrians, Egyptians, and Persians. A race of freemen had won the empire; it was now tenanted by a herd of slaves. The magnitude of the change was most forcibly shown in the Greek wars: the Saracens had ceased to be conquerors in every field, and so far were they from menacing Constantinople, that they could scarcely defend the borders of Syria. The Khaliph, despairing of ever raising the character of his degenerate subjects, sought for soldiers in the barbarous countries beyond the Caspian, watered by the Oxus and Jaxartes; he trained to his service, Turkish youths, either purchased or made prisoners, and the kindness with which they were treated, induced many of their countrymen to join them as volunteers.

*He is called by many oriental writers, Al Mothamen, or the eighth," because the number eight occurs so often in his history. He was the eighth Khaliph of the Abassides; was born in the eighth month of the year; reigned eight years, eight months and eight days; left eight sons and eight daughters behind him; fought eight battles; possessed eight thousand slaves; had eight millions of gold dinars, and eight myriads of silver dirhêms in the treasury at the time of his death.