A Military Disaster?

In a ground-breaking article published in 1980, Cheynet pondered whether Manzikert was “un désastre militaire.” Since then, the consensus among historians of the period has been that Manzikert was not a military disaster and that the imperial army seems to have escaped relatively unscathed from the day's fighting on August 26, 1071, with the political and socio-economic consequences of the defeat far outweighing the losses the empire sustained on the battlefield. The rearguard and reserve units of “the tagma of the Hetairiae and that of the nobles” under Andronikos Doukas certainly escaped back to the capital without suffering any casualties, whilst Bryennius's left wing, which included the five western tagmata also escaped with relatively few losses; these units are reported defending the Balkans against the Patzinaks in the following years. Concerning the units of the right wing under Alyates, and especially the Armenian and Kappadokian forces, the sources tell us that a significant number of them managed to make an orderly escape to Trapezounta, Theodosiopolis, and Dokeia. According to Attaleiates, the units under Alyates reportedly pledged their allegiance to the emperor after his release from Turkish captivity.

Furthermore, what is notable is that the prominent men who were reported to have died in the battle were few and relatively unknown figures (Leon, who was epi ton deeseon and the magistros and protoasecretis Eustratios Choirosphaktes), while even fewer were captured alive (the protovestes Basileios Maleses and Nikephoros Basilakes, the latter having been taken prisoner the day before the main battle).5 If we add the elite units of Trachaneiotes and Roussel, which retreated to Melitene before the battle, a significant number of perhaps even twenty thousand men, it seems clear that the actual losses incurred during the battle were limited to the Diogenes's immediate retinue, the Armenian infantry, and the palatine and other elite units close to him, around five to ten percent of the campaigning army.