Originally published on Apectsof history.com 26/8/2024
The loss of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 brought about a seismic change in English society. As the conquering Normans came to dominate the country, many English noblemen and elite warriors found themselves dispossessed and with enormously diminished prospects. The contemporary English chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, tells us that ‘the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off that which was so intolerable’. For many, the solution they found was to leave the country and seek their fortune in foreign lands.
The Byzantine empire had a long history of employing mercenaries. In his seminal works on the history of the crusades, the historian Steven Runciman tells us that the Byzantines found war ‘expensive, disruptive and rather risky’. They also did not share the love of warfare that was typical of the chivalric and warrior societies of Northern and Western Europe, in fact they felt a sense of moral repugnance towards the violence. For these reasons, the Byzantines were culturally pre-disposed to using mercenaries. For centuries, they had employed soldiers from people as diverse as the Norse, Germans, Turks, Pechenegs and Normans, almost anybody who would wage war on their behalf.
However, above all other mercenary units, the Varangian Guard was most prestigious. This elite fighting unit acted both as the emperor’s bodyguard as well as his shock troops in battle. They were highly valued because of their supposedly unwavering loyalty to the person of the emperor, and the separation from the scheming and politicking of Byzantine society that came from being foreigners. They were paid directly by the emperor, and they were paid extremely well.
The Varangian Guard was formally constituted in 988 by Emperor Basil II and was initially made up of 6,000 warriors sent by the newly Christianised ruler of the Kievan Rus, Vladimir I, as part of Valdimir’s obligations in a peace treaty between himself and Byzantium.
In the years that followed, it appears that many warriors from the Scandinavian countries travelled south to seek their fortune in ‘Miklagard’ (the ‘great city’). The exodus of these men was in fact so great that laws were passed in Sweden to discourage warriors from leaving – any man that did so would be unable to claim his inheritance. Most famous of these Viking mercenaries was Harald Hardrada who led a band of warriors to Constantinople to join the Varangian guard whilst in exile from his homeland. There, he earned the fame and wealth that enabled him to return to Norway and claim the throne.
Given the close cultural links between England and Scandinavia at the time, presumably many English warriors were also aware of the chance to seek their fortune in Byzantium. As their prospects disappeared in England after the Norman Conquest, it appears that many followed the old routes south and joined the Varangian Guard.
Under the Emperor Alexios Komnenos, the influx of English warriors was so great that English became the functional language of the guards. Even by the mid-14th century an account of Byzantine court ceremonies says that, at Christmas, the guards would hail the emperor ‘in their native tongue, that is, English’.
Not only was there the push factor of the Norman Conquest, but there is also evidence to suggest that the Byzantine emperor actively recruited from England. Lead seals belonging to the chief financial ministry of Byzantium have been found along the banks of the Thames and these suggest that a financial incentive was being offered to English warriors.
Interestingly, it is thought that the first military engagement for many of these warriors on behalf of the empire was against the Norman warlord Robert Guiscard, who was invading the Byzantine Balkans from his base in Italy. One can only speculate how much English antipathy towards the Normans might have helped to motivate the warriors in this campaign.
Perhaps the most intriguing information about this period is to be found in two written sources that both describe a large migration of English warriors to Byzantium. The first of these is an Icelandic saga called the Edwardsaga, which details the life of Edward the Confessor and the aftermath of the Norman conquest. The other is a chronicle written by an English monk in the 13th century called the Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis. Although they differ in detail, both sources describe a fleet of several hundred English ships sailing through the Mediterranean, possibly led by the Earl of Gloucester, and coming to the aid of a Constantinople that was under siege.
The Edwardsaga tells us that Emperor Alexios was so grateful for their intervention that he gave these warriors an area of land to settle. This land was supposedly six days and nights sailing to the north of Constantinople which would put it in modern Crimea. Here the warriors occupied the land and founded cities that they called London and York in a country called ‘Nova Anglia’ (New England).
There are tantalising scraps of evidence to support this story. At around this time, the Byzantine empire does appear to have re-established control of the Crimean Peninsula. Coastal charts made by European sailors in the 14th to 16th century show a settlement called Londina on the Black Sea coast. Franciscan friars who had been sent by the pope on a mission to the Mongols in the 1240s say that the people of this area were Christians, formidable warriors, and called ‘Saxi’, which many scholars interpret to mean Saxon. Sadly, Archaeological evidence supporting the story is currently lacking.
If such an English colony did exist, it is possible that later Englishmen in the Varangian Guard were actually coming from ‘New England’ rather than making the journey all the way from the old country.
Whilst there was a major migration of English warriors to Byzantium after the Norman Conquest, recent evidence suggests that smaller numbers of Anglo-Saxon warriors may have been serving the empire for centuries. The Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo contains Byzantine artefacts such as silverware and shoulder clasps as well as personal seals from Sassanian Iran which was, in those centuries, in conflict with Byzantium. In the burial at Taplow in Buckinghamshire a man was found wearing a Eurasian style riding jacket, and a copper flagon of Sassanian design was found in a burial at Prittlewell in Essex. These artefacts are not those seen passing along normal trade routes and the findings suggest that Anglo-Saxon warriors were offering their services to Byzantium as far back as the 6th century.
This back and forth of warriors from England to Byzantium places medieval English society in a far more international context than many might imagine. The evidence suggests that there has been exchanges of culture, goods and, probably, genes between these two disparate regions for an extremely long time.
Adam Staten writes historical fiction. Books one and two of the Honour Bound Trilogy are out now.
