Andronikos Kontostephanos - Military Career

Military Career

Andronikos was the leading Byzantine military figure during the reign of his uncle the emperor Manuel I Komnenos. Like his father he was appointed to the office of megas doux (grand duke), the commander-in-chief of the Byzantine navy and governor of the provinces of Hellas, the Peloponnese and Crete. However, his greatest success was as a general rather than as an admiral. At some point, Andronikos was also appointed commander of the Varangian Guard.

The earliest mention of Andronikos in high command was in 1144-5 when he was given a command, jointly with his brother John and a general named Prosuch, of a force sent to defend Cilicia from the depredations of Raymond of Antioch. As his parents married in 1125 he must have been under twenty years old at the time.

Andronikos’ father was killed at the siege of Corfu in 1149, when he commanded the Byzantine forces attempting to expel the Normans of the Kingdom of Sicily. Andronikos too was present at the siege and assumed his father's command, but failed to defeat the Normans.

The Hungarians had defeated the Byzantines on the Danube frontier in 1165, and the following year Byzantine armies ravaged eastern Hungary in retaliation. In 1167 Manuel collected a very large army with the intention of ending the Hungarian threat to the empire’s Balkan possessions. Bad health prevented Manuel from taking to the field in person, and he entrusted his army to the command of Andronikos. The Byzantine army met the Hungarians in a pitched battle on the 8th of July near the fortified city of Zemun. Andronikos’ skillful dispositions and the discipline of his troops gave the Byzantines a decisive victory at the Battle of Sirmium. The Hungarians sued for peace on Byzantine terms and recognised the empire’s control over the region around Sirmium, plus all of Bosnia, Dalmatia and the area south of the Krka River. Following the victory Manuel celebrated a triumphal entry into Constantinople with Andronikos Kontostephanos riding by his side.

In 1169, Andronikos was appointed commander of a fleet of 230 ships carrying a Byzantine army to invade Egypt in alliance with the forces of Amalric, King of Jerusalem, in what was to be the last of a series of Crusader invasions of Egypt. The combined armies laid siege to Damietta in the Nile delta. The Byzantines prosecuted the siege with vigour, but as they were about to assault the city Amalric undermined them by arranging a negotiated surrender of Damietta. Andronikos, disgusted with Amalric’s double-dealing and with his soldiers in state of starvation, evacuated Egypt. He returned with his army by land through the crusader states of Palestine and Syria. Half of the Byzantine fleet was lost in a series of storms on its return journey.

Renewed friction between Venice and the Byzantines resulted in Manuel imprisoning all 20,000 Venetians in the empire and confiscating all of their property (1171). The Republic of Venice retaliated by sending a fleet of 120 ships to capture and occupy Chios. Andronikos commanded a fleet of 150 ships dispatched to drive off the Venetians, a task he accomplished.

Manuel attacked the Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm in 1176, with the intention of taking its capital, Konya, and destroying Turkish power in Anatolia. The Seljuk sultan Kilij Arslan II ambushed Manuel’s impressively large army as it moved through the pass of Tivritze in mountainous border region between the two states. In the ensuing Battle of Myriokephalon parts of the Byzantine force were very badly mauled; however, Andronikos Kontostephanos managed to get his division, bringing up the rear, through the pass with few casualties. He is credited with having persuaded his uncle the emperor, whose confidence had been severely shaken, to remain with his troops following the defeat. Through his influence with the emperor he was instrumental in facilitating the peaceful withdrawal of the Byzantine forces.

The following year (1177), Andronikos led a fleet of 150 ships in another attempt to conquer Egypt, but he returned home after landing at Acre. He was dissuaded from continuing with the expedition by the refusal of Count Philip of Flanders, and many important nobles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, to actively co-operate with the Byzantine force.