MANZIKERT

When Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes assembled the Imperial army in Anatolia shortly after he came to power on 1 January 1068, he was shocked at what he saw. The imperial standards were tattered and grimy, many of the infantrymen were armed with scythes or pruning hooks, and the cavalry was dismounted because it had not been furnished with horses. Furthermore, he would need to hire additional foreign mercenaries to bring it up to strength in the face of a severe manpower shortage.

The Eastern Roman Empire, as it was known at the time, was in the midst of a military crisis. Following the death of Emperor Basil II of the Macedonian Dynasty in 1025, the Byzantine military arm had been in a precipitous downhill slide. Most of the rulers who had held the throne for the past four decades had purposely neglected the imperial army in the belief that by doing so they could prevent military coups.

The army was so downtrodden that it would take several months at least to re-equip it for battle against the Seljuk Turks who plundered Anatolian cities nearly unopposed. By the middle of the 11th century the Turkish raiders had begun penetrating deep into Anatolia nearly unopposed. The Christian Armenians who lived under Byzantine rule had become war-weary and harboured deep doubts about the Byzantines' ability to defend them. They resented the incompetence of Byzantine officers who preferred the luxury of Constantinople to the hardship of the frontier outposts. Indeed, the frail empire was on the verge of a major disaster unless immediate steps were taken to strengthen frontier outposts in Byzantium’s easternmost provinces that bordered Seljuk vassal states.