WikiPortallus: Battle of Myriokephalon.html

Manuel I Comnenus, the Byzantine Emperor, had been at peace with Kilij Arslan II, the Seljuk Turkish Sultan of Rûm, during the 1170s. It was a fragile peace, however, as the Seljuks wanted to push westwards, further into Asia Minor, while the Byzantines wanted to push eastwards to recover territory they had lost since the Battle of Manzikert one hundred years earlier. Manuel was able to recover Cilicia and impose his authority over the Crusader Principality of Antioch, and was also aided by the fact that the emir of Aleppo, Nur ad-Din, died in 1174; his successor Saladin was concerned more with Egypt than the territory bordering the Empire, so the Seljuks were left without a strong ally. In 1175, the peace fell apart when Kilij Arslan refused to return territory he had conquered from their common enemy the Danishmends.

The march

Manuel gathered an army, supposedly so large that it spread across ten miles, and marched towards the border with the Seljuks via Laodicea and Chonae. Arslan tried to negotiate but Manuel was convinced of his superiority and rejected a new peace.^[5] He sent part of the army under Andronicus Vatatzes towards Amasia while his larger force marched towards the Seljuk capital at Iconium (Konya). Both routes were through heavily wooded regions, where the Turks could easily hide and set up ambushes; the army moving towards Amasia was destroyed in one such ambush, and Turkish envoys brought Andronicus's head.

The Turks also destroyed crops and poisoned water supplies to make Manuel's march more difficult. Arslan harassed the Byzantine army in order to force it into the Meander valley, and specifically the mountain pass of Tzivritze near the fortress of Myriokephalon. There, Manuel decided to attack, despite the danger from further ambushes, and also despite the fact that he could have attempted to bring the Turks out of their positions to fight them on the nearby plain of Philomelion - the site of an earlier victory won by his grandfather Alexios. The lack of forage and water for his troops and the fact that dysentery had broken out in his army may have induced Manuel into a decision to force the pass regardless of the danger of ambush.^[6]

The battle

The Byzantine force has been estimated at 25,000 soldiers, though its numbers may have been substantially larger, no estimate of Seljuk numbers has been possible. The Byzantine army was divided into a number of divisions which entered the pass in the following order: a vanguard, largely of infantry (the other divisions being composed of a mix of infantry and cavalry), the main division (of eastern and western Tagmata) followed, then the right wing (largely composed of Antiochenes and other Westerners), led by Baldwin of Antioch, the baggage and siege trains came next then the Byzantine left wing, led by John Cantacuzenus, the emperor and his picked troops and finally the rear division under the experienced general Andronicus Kontostephanus.^[7] The Byzantine vanguard was the first to encounter Arslan's troops, and passed through the pass with few casualties, as did the main division. Possibly the Turks had not yet fully deployed in their positions.^[8] By the time the first two Byzantine divisions reached the end of the pass the rear was just about to enter; this allowed the Turks to close their trap on the remaining divisions. The Turkish attack, moving from from the heights, fell especially heavily on the Byzantine right wing. This division seems to have quickly lost cohesion and been broken, soldiers fleeing one ambush often running into another. Heavy casualties were sustained by the right wing and its commander, Baldwin, was killed.^[9] The Turks then concentrated their attacks on the baggage and siege train shooting down the draught animals and choking the roadway. The remaining Byzantine troops were panicked by the carnage in front of them and the realisation that the Turks had also begun to attack their rear. The sudden descent of a blinding dust-storm did nothing to improve the morale or organisation of the Byzantine forces. At this point Manuel seems to have suffered a crisis of confidence and reputedly sat down, passively awaiting his fate and that of his army.^[10] The emperor was eventually roused by his officers, re-established discipline and organised his forces into a defensive formation; when formed up they pushed their way past the wreck of the baggage and out of the pass. Once through the pass they re-joined the unscathed van and main divisions and made a fortified encampment. The night was spent in successfully repulsing further attacks by Seljuk mounted archers.^[11]

Outcome

Both sides suffered moderate casualties, and Manuel's siege equipment had been captured and destroyed. The Byzantines, without any means of attacking Iconium, were now no longer in a position to continue the campaign. However, Seljuk Sultan Kilij Arslan II was keen for peace to be restored as soon as possible. Therefore Manuel and his army were allowed to leave on condition that Manuel should remove his forts and armies on the frontier at Dorylaeum and Sublaeum.^[12] However, since the Sultan had already failed to keep his side of an earlier treaty, signed following a Byzantine victory in 1162, Manuel had no intention of completely keeping to the terms of this new arrangement. Therefore, he only demolished the fortifications of the less important Sublaeum.^[13] Manuel himself compared the defeat to Manzikert, and like Manzikert, it seems to have become a legendary disaster; in reality, although a defeat, it did not significantly ruin the Byzantine army, which was fighting in Asia Minor the next year. The army was quickly repaired, and a new campaign recaptured some territory in 1177. Manuel continued to meet the Seljuks in smaller battles with some success, until he died in 1180.^[14]

However, like Manzikert, the balance between the two powers began to gradually shift - Manuel never again launched an offensive campaign against the Turks and remained on the defensive. After his death, they began to move further and further west, deeper into Byzantine territory.

Myriokephalon had more of a psychological impact than a military impact, as it proved that the Empire still could not defeat the Seljuks despite the advances made during Manuel's reign. Essentially, the problem was that Manuel had allowed himself to be distracted by a series of adventures in Italy and Egypt, instead of dealing with the more pressing issue of the Turks. This had given the Sultan many years in which to eliminate his rivals, enabling him to build up a force capable of facing the Byzantine army in the field. Without the years required to build up this Seljuk force, the battle could never have even taken place. Furthermore, during the campaign, Manuel made several serious tactical errors, such as failing to properly scout out the route ahead and failing to take the advice of his senior officers. These failings caused him to lead his forces straight into a classic ambush.

After Manuel's death, the empire drifted into anarchy, and it was never again in a position to mount a major offensive in the east. Thus, ultimately the defeat marked the end of Byzantine attempts to recover the Anatolian plateau, which was now lost to the empire forever.

Citations

^ Treadgold, p. 635
^ Magdalino, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143-1180, p. 98 "The defeat which it suffrered in the narrows of Tzibritze, a day's march from Konya, near the ruined fort of Myriokephalon, was correspongly humiliating. The Turks made great slaughter, took great quantity of booty, and came close to capturing the Emperor himself who gratefully accepted the sultan's offer of a truce in return of demolishing Dorylaion and Sublaion."
^ Bradbury, The Routledge companion to medieval warfare, p.176 "With Manuel were Hungarian allies and his brother-in-law Baldwin of Antioch. Baldwin charged but was killed. The Byzantines sufferered heavy losses. Kilij Arslan offrered terms and the Byzantines were allowed to withdraw."
^ However, alongside indications of heavy Byzantine losses other sources (see the body of text) emphasise that most of the losses fell on only one of the six divisions of the Byzantine army. Niketas Choniates (p. 107), the main primary source for the battle, also states that when the Byzantines moved back through the pass after the battle they found that the heads and genitals (to disguise Moslem circumcision) of the dead had been mutilated to prevent them being identified. This strongly suggestes that Seljuk casualties had been significant.
^ Angold, p. 192
^ Haldon p. 141-142
^ Haldon p. 142
^ Haldon p. 142
^ Haldon pp. 142-143
^ Haldon p. 143
^ Haldon p. 143
^ Angold pp. 192-193
^ Treadgold p. 649
^ Angold p. 193

Battle of Myriokephalon.html

Contents

Background

The march

The battle

Outcome

Citations

References

See also