The Emperor's Gamble: Campaign of Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1167

It is the first warm months of 1167 AD, and on the northern Danubian border of the Roman Empire, where the imperial presence was re-established a century earlier by Basil the Bulgar Slayer, an immense horde of horsemen explode across the water from the Kingdom of Hungary. Their goal is the province of Siumium, lately given over to direct rule from Constantinople by their own King Stephen III. To the inhabitants who watch terrified from their hiding places, these Magyar riders are the embodiment of their worst fears. Their path of reconquest is lined by fire and despoliation. While they overcome the limited Roman garrisons and their king stands powerless to halt them, the riders under their leader Deni, Lord of Hungary and veteran of countless battles, grow in number, until they are 15,000 strong, a massive force for the time. It is as though all of Hungary bar their monarch has come forward to fight for their land, and a seemingly imminent annexation to mighty Constantinople. To the south, however, the Emperor Manuel Komnenos is not without strength, and he deputizes command in this new campaign to his nephew Andronikos Kontestophanos, megadu of the Empire and like his opponent Deni, a warrior of long-standing admiration. The Byzantine Commonwealth draws upon its own metal, with warriors coming from the Anatolian heartland, Italy, Serbia, Kiev, the Black Sea, and even Germany and France. There will be no more deals or bribes from the Emperor, nor will the Hungarians accept another two-faced treaty with the Romanoi Greeks. Agreement will come on the end of a sword, a lance, and a horse archer's arrow point. This will be a titanic clash in the manner of the ancients, with nothing less than the freedom of one people over another as its prize. The conflict of 1167 is born out of the long struggle that has boiled between the forces of the Byzantine Empire and the Magyar Hungarian Kingdom, for close on a century. Since the crushing of Magyar westward expansion at the Second Battle of Lechfield in 955 AD, any hope of a permanent presence in the Holy Roman Empire has been a forlorn hope. Instead, the Kings of Hungary have looked south and east for new domains, outside their heartland, in the Carpathian Basin. In those same decades that the Magyar riders raided and probed for weaknesses through the ancient lands of Pannonia and Dalmatia, the resurgent East Roman Empire fought its way back to the Danube frontier, stationing its soldiers along the same watchtowers that had been manned by the legions some thousand years previous. The 1100s thus sees near-interminable war between the now Latin Christian Kingdom of Hungary and the Orthodox Byzantine Commonwealth. During the 1160s there is a spark of hope for some kind of settlement, when the Hungarian Prince Béla, younger brother of Hungarian King Stephen III, arrives in Constantinople to take the title of despot, and accept the hand of the Emperor Manuel's daughter Maria in marriage. Béla has the strongest claim to the Hungarian throne, and Manuel goes so far as to name him his own successor to the throne of Constantinople. Thus it appears briefly that there is the possibility of both Hungary and Constantinople sharing the same ruler, with a combined power that would see Christian lands in both the west and the east made secure for their peoples. A tendentious issue arises, however, when Roman troops and administrators occupy lands in both Siamium and Dalmatia, that were gifted by Béla's father King Géza II of Hungary to him years before. Though technically Béla's territories, Stephen III opposes this Roman presence in lands that he says are rightfully part of his own domain. In 1165 he takes advantage of a revolt within the Byzantine court and takes back the territories, extending the limit of his realm back to those ruled by his father. A Venetian naval expedition fails to hold the coastal regions and the galleys return across the Adriatic. Manuel, however, distracted as he may be, still has many cards to play, and he constructs a large coalition against the Hungarians. Again Emperor Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire pledges non-involvement, and allows knights and nobles from his domains to fight on the side of Constantinople. Forces too come from the Duke of Austria, Henry Iazomyrgot, who is related to Manuel by way of the Emperor's niece, the Byzantine princess Theodora Komnena. The Veliki Zupan of Serbia ride out to join the alliance, as the Venetians unleash a stronger armada of a hundred ships to the Dalmatian coast. They take back Zédar, while the other allies run the Hungarians out of Dalmatia. Manuel himself campaigns later to take the area of Sirmium. At Semlin, there is a sharp exchange, and many of the citizens are killed. When Manuel reaches the territory of Frankakorian, or Sirmia, Stephen sends him a missive, promising the return of both Sirmium and Dalmatia. This prompts laughter from the Emperor and his advisors, and he writes back to Stephen telling him that there is nothing to return. He already controls the lands. A peace treaty is hastily forced on the Hungarians, putting the contentious areas under direct Roman suzerainty in perpetuity, as well as ordering the church of the city of Esztergom under the authority of the Eastern Patriarchal See of Constantinople. As the kings of Hungary are crowned in Esztergom, what this effectively means is that the throne of the kingdom now exists as a vassal of the Emperors. It is a devastating application of symbolic dominance. When the campaign ends, Manuel leaves a garrison of Csáza-Chalicioi at Semlin, and his forces in the area under the generals Michael Gabrus and Michael Branus. The Romans consider the matter at a close, but at the dawn of the campaign year of 1166, a new Hungarian army under the general Deni sweeps over the border. It overwhelms the initial Roman defences of the two Michaels, and then it is only contained by an organised proactive defence. While the Prince Béla commands a holding army on the Danube, two other Roman armies power into Hungary by way of Transylvania. This surprise assault succeeds in capturing many valuable Hungarian nobles and servicemen, and once again Stephen is forced to appeal for a negotiation. Henry of Austria once more takes a leading role in the talks, and a renewed treaty sees him marrying his daughter to Stephen of Hungary. Stephen thus gives his honour to be of good behaviour, and abide the terms of the agreement, and the various armies return to their stations. It may have suited Stephen to marry into German nobility while also having a familial link to the Byzantine imperial throne, but it is not to the liking of the Hungarian warriors who have fought and bled in his name. Moreover, they see this latest treaty as a capitulation, a partitioning between the Holy Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire, and a loss of Hungarian independence. It is a smear, a humiliation, and the warrior caste of the Magyars will not abide by it. Even before the year 1166 is over, renegade Hungarian armies are moving into Dalmatia, and at Spolato the Magyar Ban Ampud defeats an imperial force commanded by Nikiforos Chalus. When the campaign season of 1167 begins, the largest Hungarian army yet, fully 15,000 strong and led once more by the Lord Dany, streams into the lands that they claim for their own people, and makes straight for Sirmium. For Manuel, the time for patience has run its course. Whether Stephen of Hungary is responsible for this perfidy or not, the army of Hungary must be crushed. When April arrives, Manuel arrives in Philippopolis and greets ambassadors of Stephen, but he also gathers his main army around him. Again, these are Rassian Serbs, Seljuk Turks, Pechenegs, Cumans, and Italian mercenaries, alongside his own Varangians and regular Roman forces. Manuel is enraged to learn that Henry of Austria has actually sent reinforcements to Hungary, further motivating his wish to punish the enemy with a decisive victory. Word reaches him that a monument in Constantinople of two women, one Roman and one Hungarian set above an arch, has suffered a collapse, and the Roman woman has fallen down. Manuel orders that the statue be righted, and the Hungarian woman knocked in its place, thus reversing the omen. He passes command of the army to Andronikos Kontostephanos, who officially holds the rank of commander of the fleet, and the Commonwealth army marches north once more, via Sophia to Sirmium, picking up reinforcements as it passes the ancient roads. Zeugmion is reoccupied before the arrival in the Semlin region, and the location of the Hungarian forces. When the Roman scouts arrive on the far side of the Sava river, they see that Denis has arraigned his army into a solid mass, eschewing any recognisable formation, or organised deployment. With his heavy armoured cavalry in front, he clearly believes that his numbers, and a patriotic motivation of his brothers in arms, will simply trample the multinational Byzantine force down like grass in the field. Closer inspection of the Hungarian host would give the scouts a different perspective, however. Denis has close to 40 men in his host who hold the rank of general, and he and they are not without military sophistication. The Hungarian army is in fact drawn into three closely packed formations, with a limited number of foot behind the armoured cavalry, so that it appears to the Romans that there is but a single block of troops. There are also a number of archers, but in contrast to their ancestors, whose armies were predominantly light horse archers, the Magyar army of the 12th century is built around the heavy armoured cavalry at its forefront. There is also a sizeable contingent of allied Germans in the Hungarian army. Denis leads an exhortation to his men, calling out to them that they are to drink a toast to the enemy, for he will take the Roman bones at the end of the battle, as he has done before, and build a victory mound for them. Most of the rank and file in the Roman army guess their numbers to be one third regular imperial troops, with the remainder made up of allied federates. Of these, the Cumans and Turks are placed in the front row. Next come the Byzantine cavalry, and behind them again are the infantry, archers, and an armoured regiment of mounted Turks. The third line holds picked Byzantine troops, likely the more experienced and proven men, along with Germans and yet more Turks. At the very rear of the Roman army, Contos Stephanos takes position surrounded by the Italian mercenaries and Serbian infantry, with the imperial palace Varangian units of the emperor as his closest guards. Unlike the Hungarians, Contos Stephanos has clearly designated wings on the flanks of his central units, with the left wing comprising regular imperial taxiarchia, while the right is a mixed formation of Byzantine, German, and Turkish riders under Antronikos Lepardos. Both flanks are provided with supporting infantry. It is high summer, early July, and the feast day of the martyr, Procopius of Scythopolis. Deni, who the Greek-speaking Romans call Dionysus, moves forth on the battlefield with a splendid battle standard so large, that it is mounted on a cart and drawn by oxen. He claps his hands as though he is approaching a festival, whipping up cheers from his men. While Contos Stephanos watches the enemy, a courier arrives at his position, and hands him a message from the emperor Manuel. It tells him that the omens are not good, and he is not to fight that day. The general reads the letter silently, and then places it inside his tunic without a word. With a final prayer, he gives the order for the attack to begin. The Roman vanguard comprising the horse archers rides forth and looses a tremendous volume of arrows onto the Hungarian lines, causing the heavy cavalry to duck down below their shields. The Roman orders are to maintain the rate of missiles, and thus put the enemy under as much pressure as possible. The sun has now reached its midday zenith and it scorches men's hands and faces where they are uncovered. The deadly points of the arrows do far worse, hundreds of them catching any exposed point and rendering extreme pain unto its recipients. Dany knows that although his army is not immediately threatened by these arrows, to remain beneath such a hail interminably will eventually lead a ruinous attrition of his forces and a collapse of morale. Still projecting his supreme confidence to all and sundry, he gives the order for attack. The Hungarian army moves forth, slowly at first, its knights urging their mounts forward into a trot, and then a canter the closer they come to the enemy. As Contos Stephanos ordered prior to the action, the lighter front line of the Byzantine army splits apart and moves off to the flanks, maintaining its rate of fire on the now rushing Hungarian cavalry. The armoured horsemen slow at this manoeuvre, their animals already breathing hard at the effort of charging beneath the weight of the night, his armour and their own protective metal tunics. The regular Roman infantry is next and the Hungarians increase their pace once more, crying out the name of their land, king and god. The Taxiarchs, descendants of the ancient Centurions, ball at the Romans to hold their line, and then the noise and tidal wave of animal hooves subsumes all, and everything ceases, except the electric current that men feel in the arm when the spear cuts into the figure before them. When that initial blacked out moment of contact is passed, thousands of men are surprised to find themselves alive, and now they settle down to the mortal fight, from which they pray to emerge unscathed. From across the Roman line, the entire left wing has been steamrollered back and is in the process of disintegration. The centre is holding, but only just. The Hungarians withdraw, regroup, and charge again. Men and horses are a riot of colour and metal, helmets glinting and scaled armour on the animal's flanks glistening. The Roman line holds once more, Contos Stephanos feeding reserves forward to bolster their positions. Lepardos, the only Roman general who has survived the initial charge intact, charges his companies into the enemy, and this action steals the Hungarian momentum to such a degree that deadlock is the inevitable result. Cries of death and fury rise out and are heard for miles around, along with the plaintive calls of the trumpets and drums. The Hungarians charge again and again, each time their irresistible force barrelling into the immovable object of the Roman line. Spears break and become clogged with viscera, while the two armies sway back and forth, like an undulating serpent rattling its scales. Both Dene and Contos Stephanos are in the thick of the battle, and when the spears finally break on both sides, swords are drawn, and the fight starts anew. Peasant, professional soldier, mercenary and knight, all slashing and swinging their blades. Savage cuts and gaping wounds open, but still the two armies fight on, a century of battles by their fathers and grandfathers for the same land boiling over into a cataclysmic denouement. Neither side wavers, neither side shows timidity. It is the exemplification of every warrior's dream. The afternoon gives way to evening and the sun slides lower in the sky. But then comes the reckoning. The swords that have seen hours of use are now dull and many begin to break. For the Hungarians this renders them without an offensive weapon, save those few that can still be gleamed from the dead. Contos Stephanos' men, on the other hand, have been equipped with maces, Parduchion flanged bludgeons, designed specifically to penetrate and shred armour, and with these malicious tools, the Romans and their allies go to work. The Hungarians are now at the disadvantage, and exhaustion seeps into the bones and washes through the body faster than a flooded river current in such times. The end comes all at once, for in one instant the Hungarians are fighting and holding just as they have for the long hours previous, and then they are turning and pulling back, nothing left with which to fight the enemy. The disorganized withdrawal hands the Romans just what they need, and they cut down the fleeing warriors as quickly as they can. Deni manages to get to safety, but his huge standard is captured and paraded by the Romans, while his army is caught up and flounders due to its packed formation, and the rout turns into a general massacre. The Hungarian losses at Sirmium are said to be ruinous, so much so that every man in the Roman army collects a new suit of armour from the dead. Of the near 50 Hungarian generals present on the day, just a handful survive, and most of these are put into captivity. The issue of Sirmium's overlordship as well as that of Dalmatia now appears to be settled, and the Emperor Manuel can enjoy the fact, if only for the moment, that his empire is larger than at any time since the reign of Justinian. New adventures are assuredly ahead, the interior of Anatolia and the peninsula of Italy await his presence, and the divine mandate of Constantinople. Great things loom on the horizon for the eternal empire. 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