The Anglo-Saxons of the Byzantine Empire

After being defeated by the Norman-French in the Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066, many Anglo-Saxon soldiers started looking for new employment opportunities. Some of them flocked to the Byzantine Empire, which in those days was in need of valiant mercenaries, and was known to be a good paymaster. 

The Játvarðar Saga, which is the Icelandic story of the life of Edward the Confessor, King of England (1042–1066), relates that after the Battle of Hastings a large body of Anglo-Saxon nobles, soldiers, and their families fled from England in 350 ships to escape the wrath of William the Conqueror, the first Norman monarch of England. After many adventures in the Mediterranean, in which they defeated the infidels and took their gold and silver, they reached Sicily, where they learned that Constantinople was being besieged by Seljuk Turks. 

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in Constantinople and defeated the besieging Seljuk fleet and army, and won the gratitude of the Byzantine Emperor who gave them important positions in his army. The Anglo-Saxons rose rapidly through the ranks of the Byzantine army. Many of them were chosen for serving in the elite Varangian Guard, which had the responsibility of guarding the Emperor and important members of the Royal family. 

The Byzantine Emperor told the Anglo-Saxons that they could build their settlement in the land to the north-east of the Black Sea which once belonged to his kingdom but was now occupied by invaders. The Anglo-Saxons defeated the invaders, evicted them from the land, and made that land their own settlement. They named this land Nova Anglia (New England). Till the fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans in 1453, the Anglo-Saxons continued to dominate the Varangian Guard.

Sir Walter Scott’s 1831 novel Count Robert of Paris is set in Constantinople at the end of the eleventh century, the time of the First Crusade. Anna Komnene, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, plays an important role in the novel, as herself. Scott presents Anna as a brilliant historian and philosopher, but he gives her the character of a spoiled princess who feels that she is entitled to rule, and is being pampered by professional courtiers and her mother, Empress Irene Doukaina. Her father used to let her have her way in almost everything.

The protagonist of the novel is a young, handsome Anglo-Saxon called Hereward, who is employed in the elite Varangian Guard and has the responsibility of guarding Anna’s father, the Emperor. While Hereward is a fictional character, the Count Robert in the novel is inspired by the deeds of a Frankish Knight, a minor historical character, who arrived to the Byzantine Empire with the First Crusade and created a diplomatic scandal, during the oath taking ceremony, when he occupied the Byzantine’s Emperor’s throne, probably because he mistook it for an empty seat.

The presence of a gallery of famous leaders of the First Crusade brings a sense of realism to Scott’s novel. These First Crusade leaders include: Godfrey de Bouillon, Peter the Hermit, Count Baldwin (future Baldwin I of Jerusalem), Count de Vermandois, Bohemond I of Antioch, Prince Tancred of Otranto (future Tancred, Prince of Galilee), and Raymond IV (Count of Toulouse). 

Anna’s husband in real life, Nikephoros Bryennios, is also present in the novel. Scott characterizes Nikephoros as a lecher who tries to seduce Count Robert’s wife, an amazonian woman called Lady Brenhilda. She challenges Nikephoros for a duel, promising to give herself to him if he wins. Count Robert presents himself at the duel in his wife’s place. But Nikephoros did not arrive since he was arrested on the orders of the Emperor for his involvement in a coup attempt.

Zengi and the Fall of Edessa

Imad al-Din Zengi gained recognition as a powerful warlord in 1126, in the conflict between the Abbasid Caliph and the Sultan of Baghdad. Zengi fought on the side of the Sultan and defeated the forces of the Caliph. By conducting himself tactfully, he earned the trust of both the Caliph and the Sultan. With their support he became the atabeg of Mosul in 1127. Till 1130, Zengi exploited the factionalism in Northern Syria to defeat a number of Islamic warlords and seized control of towns like Aleppo, Homs, and Shayzar.

With his exploits in the battlefield, and the cruelty and capriciousness that he showed in his personal dealings, Zengi inspired fear in his political rivals. In the 1130s, he was the most dreaded and powerful figure in Outremer. During this period he made several attempts to capture Damascus, which had an alliance with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, then under King Fulk.

In December 1139, Zengi laid a siege to Damascus. He did not dare to launch a full scale attack, probably because the city was of great historical and religious significance. He preferred to force Damascus into submission through the tactics of economic chokehold. Instead of yielding to Zengi, the ruler of Damascus Mu'in ad-Din Unur turned towards his non-Islamic ally, King Fulk, for help. Fulk dispatched his army to Damascus and Zengi was forced to lift the siege and retreat to Mosul. Throughout the 1130s, Zengi had shown little interest in attacking the crusader states, but that changed in the 1140s.

On April 1, 1143, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire John II Komnenos died when he was injured by a poisoned arrow while hunting wild boar. In the same year, King Fulk died after falling from his horse while he was hunting rabbits. These two hunting deaths led to the Byzantine Empire and Kingdom of Jerusalem getting bogged down in a succession crisis.

Zengi took advantage of the chaos to attack the Kurdish warlords in Diyar Bakr. One of these Kurdish warlords had a mutual defense treaty with Jocelyn II, count of Edessa. Edessa was the first crusader state, established by Baldwin of Boulogne on 10 March 1098. Jocelyn II had little sense of Zengi’s capabilities and intentions. He thought that Edessa was safe from attacks, and marched out with a large force (almost his entire army) to help his Kurdish ally. Zengi had informants inside Edessa. When he learned that Edessa was largely undefended in Jocelyn’s absence, he force-marched his troops to the city.

With continuous bombardment and use of armored seize towers, Zengi devastated the life of the city’s inhabitants. Jocelyn tried to muster a rescue army to save his city, but it was too late. Zengi’s miners collapsed a section of the city’s walls on 24 December 1144, and his troops rushed into the city. The Christian inhabitants fled towards the city’s citadel, but such was the rush that hundreds got crushed to death (among them was the Latin archbishop). Zengi’s soldiers massacred the men and enslaved the women and children. Edessa was lost to the crusaders—the first of the four crusader states to fall.

The fall of Edessa and the reports of the massacre and enslavement of the city’s inhabitants sent shock waves through the remaining three crusader states and Western Europe. In 1145, Pope Eugenius III launched the Second Crusade. In 1147, the armies of Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany left for Outremer. The could not have the satisfaction of extracting vengeance from Zengi for his destruction of Edessa because he was assassinated in September 1146 by one of his Frankish slaves. Zengi’s territories were divided between his two sons: Saif ad-Din (who got Mosul and eastern territory) and the younger son Nur ad-Din (who got Aleppo and western territory).

Nur ad-Din became a powerful ruler. With ruthless and shrewd military action, he destroyed the Second Crusade. During his reign, between 1146 to 1174, he subjugated large parts of Asia Minor and Egypt.

The Fourth Crusade: The 1204 Sack of Constantinople

The claim that the crusaders sacked Constantinople in 1204 is not the complete truth. The crusaders didn’t sack Constantinople. They engineered a regime change in the Byzantine Empire, at the behest of a powerful faction in Byzantine politics and some Venetian and French nobles. Here’s a brief account of the Fourth Crusade:

Pope Innocent III was elected on 8 January 1198. On 15 August 1198, he launched a new crusade (the fourth one). By the summer of 1200, a sizable crusading army had taken shape. Instead of taking a land route, which experience of the past crusades had shown was fraught with danger, the crusaders decided to take the route that Richard Lionheart and Philip II Augustus had taken during the Third Crusade. They planned to sail across the Mediterranean to Palestine.

The French Barons who were leading the Fourth Crusade entered into an agreement with Enrico Dandolo, the half-blind octogenarian Doge of Venice. Dandolo agreed to build ships for ferrying about forty-thousand crusaders, including the knights and their horses, across the Mediterranean for 85,000 silver marks. Pope Innocent III had exhorted the crusaders to conquer the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but without informing the Pope, the French Barons and Dandolo decided that the crusaders would conquer Egypt first. 

The crusaders had to arrive at the Venetian port no later than June 1202, but most of them were late. By August 1202, only eleven thousand men had gathered, and to make matters worse, they didn’t have enough money to pay the shipping charges to the Venetians. The Venetians suggested that they would postpone the payment if the crusaders helped Venice conquer its enemy, the Croatian port town of Zadar. Zadar was under a Christian king, and several crusaders, who thought that they were going to fight for the Kingdom of Jerusalem, were appalled by the idea of attacking a Christian state. But most crusaders went ahead with the new plan. They conquered Zadar for the Venetians in November 1202. 

From Zadar, the crusader ships should have gone to Egypt—that is what the general mass of crusaders had been expecting. But the crusaders found themselves in Constantinople. Who made the decision to navigate the ships towards Constantinople is one of the great mysteries of history. A powerful faction of Byzantine politics certainly had a role to play. 

Alexius Angelus, son of the deposed and blinded Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelus, had reached Europe before the Fourth Crusade departed from Venice. He offered to clear the Fourth Crusade’s entire debt to Venice, and equip the crusaders with enough manpower and funds to ensure the success of their campaign to conquer the Kingdom of Jerusalem, if they reinstated his father on the throne of the Byzantine Empire. He also offered to end the schism between Orthodox Christianity and Latin Christianity. 

A deal must have been struck between some leaders of the Fourth Crusade and Alexius Angelus. This deal must have enjoyed Venetian support, since they controlled the shipping routes and without their cooperation the ships carrying the crusaders could not be diverted to Constantinople. The Venetians were in a position to gain a lot of commercial benefits if the regime change operation in Constantinople was successful. It is possible that the deal had German and French support since Alexius Angelus had meetings with German and French nobility before he arrived at Venice. Who was not part of the deal? Pope Innocent III and many of the crusaders. 

On June 24, 1203, the Fourth Crusade had reached Constantinople. They demanded that Isaac II Angelus and his son Alexius Angelus should be restored to the throne. When Alexius III, who was then the Emperor, refused, the crusaders went on a rampage. In July 1203, Alexius III fled from the city. Isaac II Angelus and Alexius Angelus were proclaimed the joint rulers of the Byzantine Empire. The crusaders had accomplished their mission. But now a new problem arose—the two new Emperors were unable to honor the lavish promises that they had made to the crusaders and the Venetians. This led to a rapid deterioration in the popularity of their regime. 

The two Emperors were arrested on 27 January 1204—apparently without the knowledge of the crusaders. Isaac II Angelus died soon after his arrest (perhaps due to poisoning). On 8 February 1204, Alexius III was killed by strangling. Despite the failure of Isaac II Angelus and Alexius Angelus to honor their commitments, the crusaders interpreted the deposition and murder of the two Emperors as a coup. They besieged Constantinople for more than a month. On 12 April 1204, they managed to enter the city. For three days, they rioted, vandalized, and looted, causing significant damage to life and property in Constantinople. 

The two regimes that the Fourth Crusade toppled were Christian: Zadar and the Byzantine Empire. The Fourth Crusade never went to Palestine. The crusaders never marched towards Jerusalem. They stayed in Constantinople and founded a new kingdom to which they gave the name Romania. They first offered the imperial crown to Enrico Dandolo who refused it. Baldwin I was crowned as the first emperor of Romania on 9 May 1204. The surviving members of the Byzantine Empire’s aristocracy founded their own empire in Nicaea, where they awaited for an opportunity to win back the empire that they had lost.