Romanos IV at Manzikert 1071: Andronikos Doukas Abandons the Emperor

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When Romanos IV Diogenes took the Byzantine throne in 1068, the empire's eastern defenses were already hollowed out. Decades earlier Constantine IX had disbanded the Iberian army, about 50,000 professional frontier troops, to save money and remove a source of rebellion. The Seljuk Turks under Sultan Alp Arslan raided deep into Anatolia and in 1064 took the fortified city of Ani after a 25-day siege. Romanos went on the offensive with about 40,000 men: Byzantine regulars, Frankish and Norman cavalry, Turkic and Bulgarian light troops, peasant levies, and the Varangian Guard. Near Lake Van he split the army, sending 20,000 under Joseph Tarchaneiotes toward Khliat; that force never rejoined him, and sources disagree on whether it was destroyed or simply scattered.

At Manzikert on August 25 and 26, 1071, Romanos rejected a Seljuk peace envoy. Alp Arslan, wearing a white robe that signaled a funeral shroud, met him with a crescent of horse archers who fell back and shot into the Byzantine ranks. When Romanos ordered a withdrawal at sunset, rearguard commander Andronikos Doukas, his political rival, marched his fresh troops off the field. Romanos was wounded, unhorsed, and captured, the first Roman emperor taken alive by a foreign enemy in 800 years.

• Alp Arslan pressed his boot on Romanos's neck, then raised him up and hosted him for a week.
• The sultan opened at 10 million gold pieces and settled for 1.5 million, an annual tribute of 360,000, several frontier cities, and a marriage alliance.
• Doukas raced to Constantinople and put his cousin on the throne, and Romanos lost three battles to the Doukas faction.
• Romanos was blinded, exiled to the island of Proti, and died from infection caused by the blinding.
• Within a decade the Seljuks held more than 30,000 square miles of Anatolia, and Alexios I's later plea to Pope Urban II fed into the First Crusade of 1095.