Unpleasant Historical Date #1

On this day in 1091 AD the Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos won a crushing victory over the Pechenegs.  This was very good news for Alexios as up until this point in his reign the crushing victories had tended to be won by his opponents.  The previous twenty odd years had been bad ones for Byzantium.  Political idiocy, rampant treachery and military inefficiency had led to a catastrophic defeat at the battle of Manzikert at the hands of the Seljuk Turks.  The Byzantines had followed this up with even more political ineptitude and a series of uprisings and civil wars which allowed the Turks to follow up their victory by conquering most of Asia Minor (most of what today is in fact called Turkey).

Alexios came to the throne in the traditional manner; he was a general who thought he could do a better job of running the empire than the incumbent.  Since it had been Alexios' generalship which had defeated the last three uprisings he was probably right.  Very soon after gaining the throne Alexios realised he might have done better to stay at home.  The empire was bankrupt, had lost most of its Asian territory to the Turks and the Normans were busy invading the European provinces.  In addition corruption, treachery and political opportunism were rife and most of the army had been killed, enslaved, captured or deserted due to lack of pay.  Part of what was left was in revolt.

After being beaten about the Balkans by the Normans and with the Turks still encroaching to the east Alexios desperately needed a win.  He got it when the Pechenegs decided to invade as well.  The Pechenegs were a nomad nation who seem to have existed largely so that inhabitants of more settled regions could be terrified by them.  Eighty odd thousand of them including wives and children poured across the Byzantine border and started cheerfully looting their way to Constantinople.

Scraping together what remained of his army once the Normans were finished with it Alexios set off to do battle.  Most of his force was actually about forty thousand Cuman tribesmen whom he had hired on the ancient Byzantine principle of "why use your own army when you can buy somebody elses".  Near the small town of Levounion Alexios caught up with the Pechenegs and launched an attack.  It would be pleasant to record heroic tales of derring do as a revitalised empire reclaimed its own but in actual fact it would appear that most of the Pechenegs were asleep.  What followed although dignified with the title of "Battle of Levounion" could probably be better described as a massacre.  The Pechenegs were eliminated as an independent nation for all time (so far) and Alexios was able to claim a much needed victory.

It was hardly the most edifying way to start a restoration but Alexios was able to build on this victory to reorganise what was left of the empire, see off the Normans and start to chip away at the Turkish conquests in the east.  Perhaps more importantly for him it gave him some breathing space at a time when a lot of his political opponents were contemplating removing that privilege from him completely.  As for what remained of the Pechenegs.  Well Alexios still needed mercenaries so the survivors wound up serving in the Byzantine army.  This was another Byzantine tradition.  Never beat your enemies so badly that you can't hire what's left to fight somebody else.