Chronographia
The Guardian of the Orphans was banished to the monastery of Monobatae.
John was blinded in prison on the orders of Michael Cerularius the Patriarch who never forgave him for his own imprisonment during the reign of Michael IV. The date was 1043.
Harald
Zoe insisted. She was very convincing.
Chronographia
As I have said, the people revolted against the tyrant, but they were afraid their efforts might be wasted. His force might get the better of them and the affair might develop into nothing more than an uproar. Since, therefore, they could not lay hands on the senior empress — the tyrant had anticipated that move and he was watching her with all the vigilance of a tax-gatherer waiting to collect dues from a ship in harbour — they turned their attention to her sister. She was, after all, the second child of an emperor
…
Boldly they dragged her from the sanctuary, brought her out into the open, and clothed her in a magnificent robe. Then they made her sit on a horse, and forming a circle all about her, they led her to the great church of Santa Sophia. Homage was paid to her, not now by a mere fraction of the people, but by all the elite as well.
The guard commander was one of the nobles and I myself accompanied him (I was a personal friend of the man). Actually, he had invited me to advise him and help in the carrying out of his orders. On our arrival at the doors of the church, we saw another guard, composed of volunteers, a company of citizens who had completely surrounded the sacred building. They were ready to do everything but tear it down. So it was not without difficulty that we made our way into the church. Along with us a great multitude of folk poured in, roaring abuse at the accursed fellow. All manner of indecent epithets were hurled at him.
Up till then I too had gone along with the mob with no particularly moderate feelings about him. I was not indifferent to his treatment of the empress, and a certain mild resentment against the man stirred me on my own account. But when I reached the sacred altar where he was, and saw both the refugees, one, who had been an emperor, clinging to the actual Holy Table of the Word, the other, the Nobilissimus, standing on the right of the altar, both with their clothes changed, their spirit gone and utterly put to shame, then there was no trace whatever of anger left in my heart. I stood there dumbfounded, mute with astonishment, as though I had been struck by a hurricane. I was transformed at the strangeness of the thing. Then, recovering my spirits, I began to curse this life of ours, in which these strange and terrible things so often come to pass, and as if some spring had welled up within me, a flood of tears beyond control poured from my eyes. This outburst finally gave way to groans.
Now the mob that had entered the church gathered in a circle round the two men, like wild beasts longing to devour them, while I was standing by the latticed gate on the right of the altar, lamenting.
Harald
I was in the mob. We dragged them out of the holy sepulcher and into the street.
Chronographia
The Nobilissimus quietly looked round for the man to whom the miserable job had been entrusted. “You there,” he said, “please make the people stand back. Then you will see how bravely I bear my calamity!” When the executioner tried to tie him down, to prevent him moving at the moment of blinding, he said, “Look you. If you see me budge, nail me down!” With these words he lay flat on his back on the ground. There was no change of colour in his face, no crying out, no groaning. It was hard to believe the man was still alive. His eyes were then gouged, one after the other. Meanwhile the emperor, seeing in the other’s suffering the fate that was about to overtake him too, lived through Constantine’s anguish in himself, beating his hands together, smiting his face and bellowing in agony.
The Nobilissimus, his eyes gouged out, stood up from the ground and leaned for support on one of his most intimate friends. He addressed those who came up to him with great courage — a man who rose superior to the trials that beset him, to whom death was as nothing. With Michael it was different, for when the executioner saw him flinch away and lowering himself to base entreaty he bound him securely. He held him down with considerable force, to stop the violent twitching when he was undergoing his punishment. After his eyes, too, had been blinded, the insolence of the mob, so marked before, died away, and with it their fury against these men.
Heimskringla
In these two drápas in honor of Harald, and in many other poems about him, it is mentioned that Harald put out the eyes of the very emperor of the Greeks. They might have named a duke or count or some other man of princely rank as having done it if they knew that to be more true. But Harald himself told this story, as did the other men who were with him there.
Chronographia
We departed in full force to find Theodora. Astounded by the unexpectedness of this sight, she refused at first to give way to their pleading and shut herself up in the church, deaf to every entreaty. The citizen army, however, giving up all hope of persuasion, used force, and some of their number, drawing their daggers, rushed in as if to kill her.
Harald
It was to me that Theodora pleaded at the Büyükada Convent. Her pleading was no use, the mob would accept nothing less than a Porphygenitus to parade back to the palace.
Listening to her deny the responsibilities of her birth was when I knew I needed to fulfill my destiny and become King of Norway.
It was time to leave Byzantium. I’d fucked the empress, blinded the emperor; if I stayed there weren’t many realistic scenarios where I would be able to follow the example of Zoe’s father and die in my own bed.
Heimskringla
The same night King Harald and his men went down to where the galleys of the Varings lay, took two of them and rowed out into Sjavid sound. When they came to the place where the iron chain is drawn across the sound, Harald told his men to stretch out at their oars in both galleys; but the men who were not rowing to run all to the stern of the galley, each with his luggage in his hand. The galleys thus ran up and lay on the iron chain. As soon as they stood fast on it, and would advance no farther, Harald ordered all the men to run forward into the bow. Then the galley, in which Harald was, balanced forwards and swung down over the chain; but the other, which remained fast athwart the chain, split in two, by which many men were lost; but some were taken up out of the sound. Thus Harald escaped out of Constantinople and sailed thence into the Black Sea.
Tales of Bygone Years
Yaroslav sent his son Vladimir to attack Greece, and entrusted him with a large force. He assigned the command to Vyshata, father of Yan. Vladimir set out by ship, arrived at the Danube, and proceeded toward Tsar'grad. A great storm arose which broke up the ships of the Russes; the wind damaged even the Prince's vessel, and Ivan, son of Tvorimir, Yaroslav's general, took the Prince into his boat. The other soldiers of Vladimir to the number of six thousand were cast on shore, and desired to return to Rus', but none of the Prince's retainers went with them. Then Vyshata announced that he would accompany them, and disembarked from his vessel to join them, exclaiming, “If I survive, it will be with the soldiers, and if I perish, it will be with the Prince's retainers.” They thus set out to return to Rus'. It now became known to the Greeks how the Russes had suffered from the storm, and the Emperor, who was called Monomakh, sent fourteen ships to pursue them. When Vladimir and his retainers perceived that the Greeks were pursuing them, he wheeled about, dispersed the Greek ships, and returned to Rus' on his ships. But the Greeks captured Vyshata, in company with those who had been cast on land, and brought them to Tsar'grad, where they blinded many of the captive Russes.
Chronographia
Having escaped detection, they had already got inside the Propontis when they made their first proposals for peace, conditional on the payment of an enormous sum for reparations. They mentioned the actual amount, a thousand staters for each ship, on the understanding that this money should be counted out to them in one way only — on one of the ships in their own fleet. Such were the proposals they put forward, either because they imagined that there were springs of gold in our domains, or simply because they had decided to fight in any case. The terms were impossible, purposely so, in order that they could have a plausible excuse for going to war. So, as their envoys were not even considered worthy of an answer, both sides prepared for combat. The enemy were so confident in their own overwhelming numbers that they thought the city, with all its inhabitants, would surrender.
At the time our naval forces were below strength and the fireships were scattered at various naval stations, some here and some there, on guard duty. The emperor therefore gathered together some hulks of the old fleet and strengthened them with new thwarts, added some transport vessels used in the imperial service, and got ready for sea a few triremes, on which he embarked a certain number of fighting men. After a generous supply of Greek fire had been put aboard these ships, he ranged them in the opposite harbour to face the Russian vessels. He himself, with a picked body of senators, spent the night at anchor in the actual harbour, not far from the shore. A clear declaration of war at sea was made to the barbarians by a herald, and when day broke Constantine set his fleet in battle array. The enemy also put to sea from the port on the other side. They sailed out as if they were leaving a military camp, complete with fortified rampart. When they were well out from the land, they arranged all their ships in line, so that they formed a continuous chain stretching across the water from the harbour on one side to the harbour on the other. They were now ready to attack us, or, if we made the first assault, to repel us. It was a sight that produced the most alarming effect on every man who saw it. For my own part, I was standing at the emperor’s side. He was seated on a hill which sloped gently down to the sea, watching the engagement from a distance.
Such then was the order of battle on their side and ours. No attempt was made to join combat, however, for each fleet remained motionless, with line intact. A considerable part of the day had already passed, when the emperor signalled two of our big ships to advance slowly on the enemy. They sailed forward line abreast, moving beautifully, with the pikemen and stone-throwers cheering aloft and the hurlers of Greek fire standing by in good order ready to shoot. At this, several of the Russian vessels left their line and bore down on our ships at full speed. Then, dividing in two, they circled round each of the triremes and hemmed them in, while they tried to hole them below deck with long poles. Our men, meanwhile, engaged them with stones from above and fought them off with their cutlasses. Greek fire, too, was hurled at them, and the Russians, being unable to see now, threw themselves into the water, trying to swim back to their comrades, or else, at a loss what to do, gave up all hope of escape.
Thereupon a second signal was given and more triremes put out to sea. Other ships followed or sailed alongside. It was our fleet now that took courage, while the enemy hove-to in amazement. When the triremes neared the barbarians, the latter lost all coherence and their line broke. Some had the fortitude to stay where they were but the majority fled. Suddenly the sun attracted a mist off the low lying land (most of the horizon consisted of high ground) and the weather changed. A strong breeze blew from east to west, ploughed up the sea with a hurricane, and rolled waves down on the Russians. Some of their ships were overwhelmed on the spot under the weight of tremendous seas; others were driven far away and hurled on to rocks and precipitous coasts. A certain number of these latter were hunted down by our triremes. Some they sank in deep water, with the crews still aboard. The fighting men in the triremes cut others in half and towed them, partially submerged, to nearby beaches. So a great massacre of barbarians took place and a veritable stream of blood reddened the sea: one might well believe it came down the rivers off the mainland.
Harald
I escaped from Byzantium and went to see Yaroslav. Yaroslav remained a master bullshitter. He’d been hit in the ankle with an arrow, so he limped, but on the up side he was King of all the Rus' and he had a marriageable daughter. I was happy to be alive but sad that there was a fortune in gold that I had left behind. So Yaroslav and I hatched a plan.
One thing Zoe couldn’t tolerate was not being able to buy anything she wanted. And there were a lot of things she wanted. Periodically, John the Eunuch would convince her husband that he should limit Zoe’s spending in the name of saving the treasury. Now eventually, Zoe’s husbands tended to wind up dead, but Zoe’s immediate response to being denied in this way was to transfer gold from the treasury to the lower vaults of her personal palace in Blachernae.
Which is also where we had the barracks of the Variangian Guard.
Yaroslav’s son took a fleet down the river, and under cover of Vladimir attacking the palace walls in the Golden Horn I broke into the city, commandeered the cream of Greek shipbuilding, fucked Zoe one more time for old time’s sake, loaded all the gold from the Blachernae Palace onto the boat, and sailed away with the remnants of the Variangian Guard.
I raided a
Pecheneg village and made them haul my boats upriver. At Kiev I paid Yaroslav
his share. I took my gold, his daughter, my friends, and all my boats, and
headed north.
No comments:
Post a Comment