Anna Komnene

Alexios has been rumored during this time to be the lover of Empress Maria of Alania, the daughter of King Bagrat IV of Georgia, who had been successively married to Michael VII Doukas and his successor Nikephoros III Botaneiates, and who is renowned for her beauty.

Alexios has arranged for Maria to stay on the palace grounds, and it was thought that he was considering marrying her.

However, his mother consolidates the Doukas family connection by arranging the Emperor's marriage to Irene Doukaina, granddaughter of the Caesar John Doukas, the uncle of Michael VII, who would not have supported Alexios otherwise.

As a measure intended to keep the support of the Doukai, Alexios has restored Constantine Doukas, the young son of Michael VII and Maria, as co-emperor and a little later had betrothed him to his own first-born daughter Anna, who moved into the Mangana Palace with her fiancé and his mother.

This situation changes drastically, however, when Alexios' first son John II Komnenos is born in 1087: Anna's engagement to Constantine is dissolved, and she is moved to the main Palace to live with her mother and grandmother.

Alexios becomes estranged from Maria, who is stripped of her imperial title and retired to a monastery, and Constantine Doukas is deprived of his status as co-emperor.

Nevertheless, he remains in good relations with the imperial family and succumbs to his weak constitution soon afterwards.

Melissenos, along with George Palaiologos and John Taronites, is left in charge of defending the region of Berrhoe (modern Stara Zagora) against Cuman attacks in the 1095 campaign against the Cumans.

This is the last mention of Melissenos in Anna Komnene's Alexiad.

He will die on November 17, 1104.

Peter the Hermit, according to Anna Komnena, had attempted to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem before 1096, but had been prevented by the Seljuqs from reaching his goal and was reportedly mistreated.

However, doubts remain that he ever made such a journey.

Sources differ as to whether he was present at Pope Urban II's famous Council of Clermont in 1095; but it is certain that he was one of the preachers of the crusade in France afterward, and his own experience may have helped to give fire to the Crusading cause.

He soon leapt into fame as an emotional revivalist; and the vast majority of sources and historians agree that thousands of peasants eagerly took the cross at his bidding.

This part of the crusade is also the crusade of the "paupers", a term which in the Middle Ages indicated a status as impoverished or mendicant wards of the Church.

Peter has organized and guided the paupers as a spiritually purified and holy group of pilgrims who would be protected by the Heavenly Host.

Peter had had difficulty in Germany, controlling his men, who in spring 1096 had gone on rampages killing Jews.

Leading the first of the five sections of the People's Crusade to the destination of their pilgrimage, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, he had started (with forty thousand men and women) from Cologne in April, 1096, and arrived (with thirty thousand men and women) at Constantinople at the end of July.

The Eastern Roman Emperor Alexios I Komnenos is less than pleased with their arrival, for along with the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople, he is now required to provide for the care and sustenance of the vast host of paupers for the remainder of their journey.

Most of the paupers had failed to make their way out of Roman Catholic jurisdiction.

The majority were incapable of being provided for by the various lordships and dioceses along the way and either starved, returned home or were put into servitude.

Peter the Hermit had joined the only other section of the People’s Crusade that had succeeded in reaching Constantinople, that of the French Walter Sans Avoir, into a single group, encamping the still numerous pilgrims around Constantinople while he negotiated the shipping of the People's Crusade to the Holy Land.

The Emperor meanwhile had failed to provide for the pilgrims adequately and the camp had made itself a growing nuisance, as the increasingly hungry paupers turn to pilfering the imperial stores.

Alexios, worried at the growing disorder and fearful of his standing before the coming armed Crusader armies, had quickly concluded negotiations and ships them across the Bosporus to the Asiatic shore in the beginning of August, with promises of guards and passage through the Turkish lines.

He has warned the People's Crusade to await the arrival of the main body of crusaders, which is still on the way, but in spite of his warnings, the paupers enter Turkish territory, joined by number of bands of Italian crusaders who had arrived at the same time.

The army of the People's Crusade lands in Asia Minor on August 6, 1096, and camps at Helenopolis (Civetot/Civetote) to the northwest of Nicaea, capital of the Seljuq Sultanate of Rûm.

The young Sultan, Kilij Arslan I, is in the middle of a military campaign to the east, fighting the Danishmend emirate.

Baldwin of Boulogne is a son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne and Ida of Lorraine, daughter of Godfrey III, Duke of Lower Lorraine.

He is the younger brother of Eustace III, Count of Boulogne and Godfrey of Bouillon.

As the youngest brother, Baldwin was intended for a career in the church, but he had given this up around 1080; according to William of Tyre, who lived later in the twelfth century and did not know Baldwin personally: "in his youth, Baldwin was well nurtured in the liberal studies.

He became a cleric, it is said, and, because of his illustrious lineage, held benefices commonly called prebends in the churches of Reims, Cambrai, and Liège."

Afterwards he lived in Normandy, where he married Godehilde, or Godvera, de Toeni, daughter of Raoul de Conches of a noble Anglo-Norman family and formerly betrothed wife of Robert de Beaumont.

She represents Baldwin’s only claim to European lands and wealth.

Baldwin had returned to Lower Lorraine in order to take control of the county of Verdun previously held by Godfrey.

He had joined the Crusade in 1096 with his brothers Godfrey and Eustace III of Boulogne, selling much of his property to the church in order to pay for his expenses.

His wife had also accompanied him.

This was the second movement of crusaders; the first, the People's Crusade, had caused much destruction on their march, although no more than other crusading groups.

When Godfrey passed through Hungary, King Coloman had demanded a hostage to ensure their good conduct, and Baldwin had been handed over until his companions had left Hungarian territory.

After entering imperial territory, there had been a few skirmishes with the Greeks, who had also suffered from the People's Crusade.

Baldwin had commanded a detachment of troops which captured a bridge in the vicinity of Constantinople.

After reaching the city, the mass of troops could not be restrained from pillaging the surrounding territory, and Emperor Alexios had been forced to provide a hostage in order to restore peace.

The hostage, his son the future emperor John II Komnenos, had been entrusted to Baldwin’s care.

According to Anna Komnena, Baldwin reprimanded one of his soldiers who dared to sit on Alexios' throne in Constantinople.

Baldwin had accompanied his brothers as far as Heraclea in Asia Minor, where he had broken away from the main body of the crusaders with Tancred to march into Cilicia.

Tancred was surely seeking to capture some land and establish himself as a petty ruler in the east, and Baldwin may have had the same goal.

During his absence, his wife had fallen ill and died at Marash, which means that Baldwin can no longer depend on his wife's lands for support.

Some historians have suggested that his entire strategy changed from that point, others believe that the change happened earlier.

After passing through the Cilician Gates, Baldwin, with no apparent incentive to return to Europe, sets off on his own towards the Armenian lands around the Euphrates.

Thus, he resolves to seize a fiefdom for himself in the Holy Land.

Alexios leads a sizable imperial army deep into the Anatolian interior in the campaign of Philomelion.

Anna Komnene, the primary source for the campaign, implies that the Seljuq capital of Iconium was the goal of the expedition, but evidently Alexios abandoned this plan and contented himself with staging a conspicuous show of force and evacuating the native Christian population from the Turkish dominated areas his army passed through.

The imperial forces are to employ a new battle formation of Alexios' devising, the parataxis.

Anna Komnene's description of this formation is so imprecise as to be useless.

However, from her account of the army in action, it is obvious that the parataxis was a defensive formation, a hollow square with the baggage in the center, infantry on the outside and cavalry in-between, from whence they could mount attacks.

This is an ideal formation for tackling the fluid Turkish battle tactics, reliant on swarm attacks by horse-archers.

A similar formation will later be employed by Richard I of England at the Battle of Arsuf.

The imperial army moves through Santabaris, sending detachments via Polybotos and Kedros, and, after dispersing Turkish resistance, takes Philomelion by assault.

Parties of scouts are then sent out to round up the local Christian population for evacuation to areas under firm imperial control.

Alexios becomes aware that a substantial Seljuq army is approaching from the north and begins his retreat to his own territory.

His army resumes its defensive formation with the civilians accompanying the baggage in the center.

The Turks, under an officer called Manalugh, are initially baffled by the imperial formation and do not attack with any vigor.

However, the following day Sultan Malik Shah arrives and the imperial army is attacked in earnest.

The Turks mount a simultaneous attack on the van and rear of the army.

The imperial cavalry makes two counterattacks: the first seems to have been unsuccessful, with Alexios' son Andronikos being killed.

A further counterattack is more fortunate, led by Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger (Anna Komnene's husband and Alexios' son-in-law) the leader of the imperial right wing, it breaks that part of the Turkish force led in person by the Sultan, which then turns to flight.

Malik Shah narrowly escapes capture.

The Seljuqs then make a night attack, but the imperial dispositions again frustrate them.

The following day, Malik Shah again attacks, his troops completely surrounding the Byzantine army on all sides.

The Turks are once more repulsed with loss, having achieved nothing.

The next day Malik-Shah sends to Alexios with proposals for peace.

Alexios and Malik Shah meet, Alexios throwing his own costly cloak around the sultan's shoulders.

A peace involving an undertaking by Malik Shah to stop Turkish raiding and an admission by the sultan of some measure of, largely theoretical, dependence on the emperor is made.

Anna Komnene records that the peace treaty involved an undertaking by Malik Shah to evacuate Anatolia, but this is unlikely in the extreme and must represent hyperbole on her part.

The campaign is remarkable for the high level of discipline shown by the imperial army.

Alexios has demonstrated that he can march his army with impunity through Turkish dominated territory.

Alexios has lost much of his popularity during the last twenty years of his life.

The years have been marked by persecution of the followers of the Paulician and Bogomil heresies—one of his last acts is to publicly burn at the stake Basil, a Bogomil leader, with whom he had engaged in a theological dispute.

Basil had first come to the attention of the emperor after imperial officers had tortured a member of the Bogomil sect to reveal the identity of their leader.

He admitted that Basil was their leader and that he had selected twelve teachers to act as his apostles.

This sect, noted for their Manichaean tendencies, iconoclastic principles and their detestation of the Orthodox hierarchy, has been rapidly gaining adherents throughout Alexius’ reign, and has begun to cause alarm among the Orthodox clergy.

Despite the success of the crusade, Alexios had also had to repel numerous attempts on his territory by the Seljuqs in 1110–1117.

Alexios was for many years under the strong influence of an eminence grise, his mother Anna Dalassene, a wise and immensely able politician whom, in a uniquely irregular fashion, he had crowned as Augusta instead of the rightful claimant to the title, his wife Irene Doukaina.

Dalassena had been the effective administrator of the Empire during Alexios' long absences in military campaigns: she was constantly at odds with her daughter-in-law and had assumed total responsibility for the upbringing and education of her granddaughter Anna Komnene.

Alexios' last years have also been troubled by anxieties over the succession.

Although he had crowned his son John II Komnenos co-emperor at the age of five in 1092, John's mother Irene Doukaina wishes to alter the succession in favor of her daughter Anna and Anna's husband, Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger.

Bryennios had been made kaisar (Caesar) and received the newly created title of panhypersebastos ("honored above all"), and has remained loyal to both Alexios and John.

Nevertheless, the intrigues of Irene and Anna disturb even Alexios' dying hours.

The emperor dies on August 15, 1118, and his son succeeds him as John II.

In conspiring to depose her brother, Anna is unable to obtain the support of her husband and the plot is discovered.

Nikephoros had refused to enter into the conspiracy set afoot by his mother-in-law and his wife Anna to depose John and raise himself to the throne.

His wife attributes his refusal to cowardice, but it seems from certain passages in his own work that he really regarded it as a crime to revolt against the rightful heir; the only reproach that can be brought against him is that he did not nip the conspiracy in the bud.

Anna forfeits her property, retiring to a convent, where she begins work on the Alexiad, a history of the life and reign of her father.

Alexios' death means that the ambition of reconquering all of Asia Minor has been left to his thirty-one-year old son, John II Komnenos.

Early in John's reign, the Turks are pressing forward against the imperial frontier in western Asia Minor, and he is determined to drive them back.

The Seljuqs cut the land route to the city of Antalya on the southern coast of Anatolia in 1119.

John II and Axouch the Grand Domestic recapture Laodicea and Sozopolis, reopening land communication with Antalya.

This route is especially important as it also leads to Cilicia and the Crusader states of Syria.

Anna Komnena’s “Alexiad” is a partial but valuable account of the reign of her father, the East Roman emperor Alexios I.

Histories are also written in this era in England, France, and Germany.

The imperial capital, Constantinople, becomes the largest city of the world in about 1153, taking the lead from Merv in the Seljuq Empire.

Anna Komnene dies in 1153, leaving the “Alexiad,” a partial but valuable account of the reign of her father, the emperor Alexios I.

Within the Alexiad, she describes the political and military history of the Eastern Roman Empire during the reign of her father (1081-1118), making it one of the most important sources of information on the empire in the High Middle Ages.

As well as this, within the Alexiad, the First Crusade's interaction with the Eastern Roman Empire is documented (despite being written nearly fifty years after the crusade), which highlights the conflicting perceptions of the East and West in the early twelfth century.

The text is written in some form of artificial Attic Greek, and it is one of only a few examples of a woman writing about the political and military history of her own country, and it is also a valuable source as to ascertain the Imperial Greeks’ perception of the Crusaders.

Most likely, she can be considered the first woman historian of the western world.