[17] About 1053, Constantine IX disbanded what the 11th century Byzantine historian John Skylitzes called the "Iberian Army", which consisted of 50,000 men.

Skylitzes' contemporaries, the former officials Michael Attaleiates and Kekaumenos, agree that by demobilizing these soldiers, Constantine did catastrophic harm to the empire's eastern defenses.

Despite this success, Alp Arslan quickly sought a peace treaty with the Byzantines, signed in 1069; he saw the Fatimids in Egypt as his main enemy and had no desire to be diverted by unnecessary hostilities.

However, the peace treaty had been a deliberate distraction: Romanos now led a large army into Armenia to recover the lost fortresses before the Seljuks had time to respond.

Under Doukas, the rear guard at Manzikert was largely made up of the private retinues and peasant levies of the border lords (archontes).

[5] The quantity of the provincial troops had declined in the years before Romanos, as the government diverted funding to mercenaries who were judged less likely to be involved in politics and could be disbanded after use to save money.

[25] Thinking that Alp Arslan was either further away or not coming at all, Romanos marched towards Lake Van, expecting to retake Manzikert quickly and the nearby fortress of Khliat if possible.

[26] Romanos ordered his general Joseph Tarchaniotes to take some of the regular troops and the Varangians and accompany the Pechenegs and Franks to Khliat.

[5] Alp Arslan summoned his army and delivered a speech while dressed in a white robe similar to an Islamic funeral shroud on the morning of the battle.

Romanos was unaware of the loss of Tarchaneiotes and continued to Manzikert, which he easily captured on 23 August; the Seljuks responded with attacks by horse archers.

Romanos then drew his troops into formation and sent the left wing out under Bryennios, who was almost surrounded by the rapidly approaching Turks and forced to retreat.

In the end, the emperor's personal troops and these Armenian foot soldiers suffered the heaviest casualties in the Byzantine army.

[13] When Romanos was conducted into the presence of Alp Arslan, the Sultan refused to believe that the bloodied and tattered man covered in dirt was the mighty Emperor of the Romans.

After discovering his identity, Alp Arslan placed his boot on the emperor's neck and forced him to kiss the ground, a traditional symbolic gesture at the time.

During this time, the Sultan allowed Romanos to eat at his table while concessions were agreed upon: Antioch, Edessa, Hierapolis, and Manzikert were to be surrendered.

Despite attempts to raise loyal troops, he was defeated three times in battle against the Doukas family and was deposed, blinded, and exiled to the island of Proti.

Certainly, all the commanders on the Byzantine side (Doukas, Tarchaneiotes, Bryennios, Theodore Alyates, de Bailleul, and, above all, the Emperor) survived and took part in later events.

[41] Doukas had escaped without casualties and quickly marched back to Constantinople, where he led a coup against Romanos and proclaimed his cousin Michael VII as basileus.

John Julius Norwich says in his trilogy on the Byzantine Empire that the defeat was "its death blow, though centuries remained before the remnant fell.

In his smaller book, A Short History of Byzantium, Norwich describes the battle as "the greatest disaster suffered by the Empire in its seven and a half centuries of existence".

"[44] Anna Komnene, writing a few decades after the actual battle, wrote: ...the fortunes of the Roman Empire had sunk to their lowest ebb.

The usurpation by Andronikos Doukas also politically destabilized the empire, and it was difficult to organize resistance to the Turkic migrations that followed the battle.

[46] Finally, while intrigue and the deposition of emperors had taken place before, Romanos' fate was particularly horrific, and the destabilization caused by it also rippled through the empire for centuries.

They included intrigues for the throne, the fate of Romanos, and Roussel de Bailleul's attempting to carve himself an independent kingdom in Galatia with his 3,000 Frankish, Norman, and German mercenaries.

[48] He defeated the Emperor's uncle John Doukas, who had come to suppress him, advancing toward the capital to destroy Chrysopolis (Üsküdar) on the Asian coast of the Bosphorus.

Delbrück considers the battle's importance exaggerated, but the evidence makes clear that it resulted in the Empire's inability to put an effective army into the field for many years.