Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (32 page)

The city of Constantine

Constantinople (modern Istanbul) was founded in 324 by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (r. 306 – 37) on the site of the ancient Greek port of Byzantium. The first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine intended his new city, which he modestly named after himself, to be a new Christian capital for the empire, untainted by Rome’s paganism. When the Roman Empire was permanently divided on the death of Theodosius I in 395, Constantinople became the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, which, because of its predominantly Greek language and culture, historians conventionally call the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine emperors would not have recognised this name, however: they always maintained that they were Roman emperors. Constantine’s choice of site was a stroke of genius. Constantinople stands on the narrow Bosphorus straits that separate Europe from Asia and link the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Its position at this natural crossroads quickly made Constantinople into a wealthy trade centre. The city was built on a peninsula with the Bosphorus on one side and a vast sheltered natural harbour, the Golden Horn, on the other. This was not just convenient for visiting merchant ships, it also gave the city a very strong defensive position. Constantine closed off the landward side of the peninsula with a stone wall but the city soon outgrew it. Between 404 and 413, new walls were built more than a mile further out. About twenty-five years later, walls were built around Constantinople’s seaward sides to protect them against naval assaults. In wartime, the Golden Horn was closed to shipping by an iron chain stretched across its mouth, giving the city even more protection from attack from the sea. When the land walls were damaged by an earthquake in 447, the emperor Theodosius II (408 – 50) ordered them to be rebuilt with a moat and three parallel walls, giving Constantinople the most formidable defences of any city in the world at that time. Theodosius’s walls were arguably the best investment in fortifications ever made: they were breached only once, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Despite the strength of Constantinople’s defences, the Rus found its enormous wealth too tempting not to try to seize it by force. The Rus first attacked Constantinople on 18 June 860, while the emperor Michael III was absent from the city on campaign in the Abbasid Caliphate. The powerful Byzantine navy was also away, fighting Arab pirates in the Mediterranean. The Greeks were taken completely by surprise – the patriarch Photius described the attack as ‘a thunderbolt from heaven’ – and there was little they could do to prevent the Rus plundering Constantinople’s suburbs before sailing through the Bosphorus to raid around the Sea of Marmora, burning and plundering houses, churches and monasteries, and killing and captive-taking. However, the Rus did not attempt to attack Constantinople’s walls, so the city itself remained safe. The Rus faced little or no resistance and the Byzantines ascribed their eventual withdrawal on 4 August to the miraculous intervention of the Mother of God. They were probably really just making sure that they had plenty of time to get home before the rivers froze and left them at the mercy of the Pechenegs.

According to the Russian
Primary
Chronicle
, the second attack on Constantinople was Oleg’s, in 907. Oleg sailed to Constantinople with a fleet of 2,000 ships but found the entrance to the Golden Horn blocked with an iron chain. Undaunted, the Rus hauled their ships ashore, fitted wheels to them and dragged them overland around the chain and into the Golden Horn, just as they would have dealt with impassable rapids at home. Oleg fastened his shield to the city gates but the Byzantines beat off his attacks. Impressed by the ferocity of the Rus, the Byzantines subsequently agreed the trade treaties of 907 and 911. The problem with accepting this account is that no Byzantine writer makes any mention of it, which would seem unlikely if an attack of that scale really did take place. A third attempt to take the city was made by Igor in 941. A fragmentary letter from an unnamed Khazar to an unidentified Jew, known as the Schechter Letter, suggests that the attack was incited by the Khazars who wanted revenge on the emperor Romanos Lecapenus (r. 920 – 44) for pursuing anti-Jewish policies. Igor (called Helgu in the letter) agreed to the attack as the price of his liberty after he had suffered a defeat by the Khazars. Igor’s fleet, claimed to be 1,000-ships-strong, landed on the Anatolian coast in May and plundered widely before moving on to Constantinople. Both the Byzantine fleet and army had gone on campaign leaving Constantinople unguarded except for fifteen old dromons, which the emperor fitted out with Greek Fire projectors. The Byzantines kept the formula for Greek Fire a closely guarded secret, but it was an incendiary weapon probably based on naphtha. The Rus had never experienced this weapon before and their ships swarmed around the dromons as they sailed out to do battle. The Rus were in for a nasty surprise:

‘As their galleys lay surrounded by the enemy, the Greeks began to fling their fire all around: and the Rus seeing the flames threw themselves in haste from the ships, preferring to be drowned in the water than burned alive in the fire. Some sank to the bottom under the weight of their armour: some caught fire as they swam among the waves; not a man escaped that day save those who managed to reach the shore. For the Rus ships by reason of their small size can move in very shallow water where the Greek galleys because of their greater draught cannot pass’ (Liudprand of Cremona,
The
Embassy
to
Constantinople
, trans. F. A. Wright, Routledge, 1930.)

The Byzantine victory was not so decisive as this account implies. Sufficient Rus survived for them to spend weeks plundering on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus, raiding inland as far as Nicomedia (now Izmit). The Rus only withdrew in September when reinforcements finally reached Constantinople. The Rus then sailed to the coast of Thrace (modern Bulgaria) and continued their plundering. Almost at the moment when they were ready to sail for home the Byzantine fleet fell upon them by surprise and only a handful of ships escaped. Those Rus who were captured were taken to Constantinople to be publicly beheaded.

Assimilation and conversion

By the middle of the tenth century, the Rus were becoming assimilated with the native Slavs through intermarriage and were losing their Scandinavian culture and identity. Svyatoslav was himself a sign of that assimilation: all previous Rus rulers had had Scandinavian names, his name was Slavic. Slavs, or at least men with Slavic names, were also achieving high rank. The names of the Rus witnesses to the trade agreements with Byzantium made in 907 and 911 all had Scandinavian names. Half the witnesses to Igor’s new trade treaty of 945 had Slavic names. Even by 907, the Rus appear to have adopted native religious beliefs, swearing to uphold the treaties by the Slavic gods Perun, a thunder god, and Veles, a chthonic deity. A steady trickle of Viking warriors still came east to serve in the
druzhina
of the Rus rulers but these native Scandinavians were now known by a new name to distinguish them from the Slavicised Rus – Varangians. The word is thought to be derived from Old Norse
vár
, meaning ‘pledge’, after the Viking custom of forming sworn fellowships when embarking on a common enterprise such as a Viking raid or a trading expedition.

Despite his Slavic name, Svyatoslav was very much a traditional Viking warlord. After he attained his majority
c.
963, Svyatoslav spent most of his reign campaigning against the Pechenegs, Volga Bulgars and Khazars. Svyatoslav’s motives were probably twofold: to secure complete control of the Volga and Don river trade routes, and to force the Slav tributaries of the Pechenegs, Khazars and Volga Bulgars to pay tribute to the Rus instead. In his greatest campaign,
c.
965, Svyatoslav reduced both the Volga Bulgars and Khazars to tributary status. Bolghar, Sarkel and Itil were all sacked and plundered. An eyewitness told Ibn Hawqal soon after the attack on Itil that there was: ‘not enough left of a vineyard or a garden worth giving to a beggar. If a leaf were left on a branch, the Rus would carry it off. There is not a grape or a raisin left in the country.’ The attack permanently broke the power of the Khazars, Rus pirates were free to operate on the Caspian Sea again and a number of small-scale raids are recorded up to around 1030. After destroying Itil and Bolghar, Svyatoslav turned his sights on the Volga Bulgars’ cousins in the Balkans. He was encouraged in this by the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros Phokas (r. 963 – 9) who, in 967, offered him 1,500 pounds (680 kg) of gold to assist him in a campaign against Bulgaria. This began an entanglement with Byzantium’s proverbially devious politics that would ultimately cost Svyatoslav his life. Kalokyros, the Byzantine ambassador charged with negotiating with Svyatoslav, had ambitions to seize the imperial throne for himself. Kalokyros reached a secret agreement with Svyatoslav: if he helped him become emperor, he would allow Svyatoslav to keep Bulgaria if he conquered it. In August 967, Svyatoslav invaded Bulgaria and captured the important trade centre of Pereyaslavets near the mouth of the Danube. Had he held it, Svyatoslav would have gained control over the important Danube river trade route through central Europe. However, the Bulgars recaptured it when Svyatoslav was forced to withdraw in 968 after news reached him that Kiev was under siege by the Pechenegs. Svyatoslav returned to Bulgaria in 969, recaptured Pereyeslavets, and quickly went on to capture the Bulgar capital at Preslav and the fortress of Dorostolon (Silistra, Bulgaria). However, by this time there had been a change of regime at Constantinople. Kalokyros’ treachery had been discovered, and Nikephoros had been deposed and murdered by his wife’s lover John Tzimiskes (r. 969 – 76).

John offered to continue with the payments of gold offered by Nikephoros if Svyatoslav would withdraw from Bulgaria. Svyatoslav refused to negotiate and contemptuously told the emperor he would meet him at the gates of Constantinople. In 970, Svyatoslav crossed the Balkans and sacked the Byzantine city of Philippopolis (Plovdiv, Bulgaria). The Byzantine historian Leo the Deacon, who later met Svyatoslav in person, accused him of impaling 20,000 captives outside the city. Svyatoslav now advanced towards Constantinople, but he was still several days’ march away when a smaller Byzantine army defeated him at Arcadiopolis (Lüleburgaz, Turkey) and forced him to retreat back over the Balkans. At Easter 971, John took the offensive and recaptured Preslav after a short siege. At the same time, 300 Byzantine warships with Greek Fire projectors took control of the Danube, capturing Pereyslavets and cutting off Svyatoslav’s retreat. Svyatoslav fell back to Dorostolon, where he was blockaded by the Byzantine army on land and by the Byzantine warships on the Danube. Desperate Rus attempts to break the siege failed and, after two months, hunger forced Svyatoslav to negotiate for peace. In return for renouncing his territorial ambitions in Bulgaria, John allowed Svyatoslav to withdraw with his forces, even providing his army with rations for the journey. This was just a front, however: John was also negotiating with the Pechenegs. As Svyatoslav’s fleet made its way back up the Dnepr towards Kiev, it was ambushed by the Pechenegs, probably at the Kichkas ford. Svyatoslav and most of his army were killed. In what was the ultimate accolade one barbarian leader could pay to another, the Pecheneg khagan Kurya had Svyatoslav’s skull made into a prestige drinking goblet.

Svyatoslav’s empire was ephemeral. Soon after his death, civil war broke out between his teenage sons, Yaropolk, Oleg and Vladimir (‘the Great’). After Yaropolk killed Oleg, Vladimir fled to Sweden. In 980 Vladimir returned with an army of 6,000 Varangians and drove Yaropolk out of Kiev. Vladimir lured his brother into a peace conference, where two Varangians murdered him. Vladimir’s reign (980 – 1015) was one of the most important in Russian history, marking the end of Kievan Rus as a Viking state. In his early years, Vladimir was a devotee of the thunder god Perun, but in 988 he made the momentous decision to convert to Orthodox Christianity.

The
Primary
Chronicle
tells a rather fanciful story about Vladimir’s conversion. In 987, Vladimir sent envoys around the world to learn about the monotheistic religions, Judaism, Islam, and Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Vladimir rejected Judaism on the grounds that they had lost their homeland and must, therefore, have been abandoned by God. Islam was rejected because of its ban on the consumption of pork and alcohol. Especially alcohol. The envoys Vladimir sent to Germany to learn about Roman Catholicism reported unfavourably on their drab churches but those he sent to Constantinople to learn about Orthodoxy gave glowing reports about the beauty of the service they had attended in the vast Hagia Sophia cathedral. They apparently no longer knew whether they were in heaven or on earth. Impressed, Vladimir agreed to convert in return for the hand of the emperor Basil II’s sister Anna. It is not known how Anna felt about being married off to a barbarian warlord who reportedly had several wives and 800 concubines already, and leaving behind the sophisticated comforts of Constantinople for the timber halls of Kiev. Vladimir was baptised at the Byzantine city of Cherson in Crimea in 988 and on his return to Kiev he destroyed the pagan shrines, threw the idol of Perun into the Dnepr, and ordered his subjects to accept baptism, starting with his twelve sons. Significantly, Slavic was adopted as the language of the Russian church, a clear sign that by now the Rus elite were Slavic speakers.

Greek and Arabic sources paint a rather different, and altogether more credible, picture of the conversion of the Rus. In the early Middle Ages, Orthodox and Roman Catholic missionaries competed with one another for the souls of Europe’s last pagans. Byzantine efforts to convert the Rus to Orthodox Christianity were actually begun by the patriarch Photius in the 860s. According to the
Primary
Chronicle
, Askold and Dir became converts in 867, and there were sufficient converts by 874 for the patriarch to appoint an archbishop to the Rus. Christianity did not spread quickly among the Rus, but the Rus-Byzantine trade treaty of 945 mentions that there was a substantial Christian community and at least one church at Kiev. Probably in 957, Olga of Kiev visited Constantinople and became an Orthodox Christian. Her son Sviatoslav, however, refused to convert because he thought he would lose credibility with his
druzhina
. This suggests that the warrior aristocracy was still mostly pagan. Vladimir’s decision to abandon paganism was most likely made for reasons of political advantage. In 987, Basil II was faced with a serious uprising and he appealed to Vladimir for military assistance. Vladimir’s price was marriage to Anna, but this was politically impossible while Vladimir was a pagan, so he converted and forced his subjects to do so too. Baptism was a small price to pay for an alliance with Europe’s most powerful state. The agreement with Basil solved an immediate problem for Vladimir. He still had with him the 6,000 Varangians he had recruited in Sweden to help him win power and they were getting restless because he could not afford to pay them. By sending them off to fight for Basil, Vladimir rid his kingdom of a possible destabilising influence.