This book provides a new military history of Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos's campaigns in the Balkans, during the first fourteen years of his rule. While the tactics and manoeuvres Alexios used against Robert Guiscard's Normans are relatively well-known, his strategy in dealing with Pecheneg and Cuman adversaries in the region has received less attention in historical scholarship. This book provides a much-need synthesis of these three closely linked campaigns - often treated as discrete events - revealing a surprising coherence in Alexios' response, and explores the position of Byzantium's army and navy on the eve of the First Crusade.
1. Introduction .- 2. Army and Navy in Eleventh-Century Byzantium .- 3. Alexios I Komnenos .- 4. War against the Normans (1081-1085) .- 5. War against the Pechenegs (1083-1091) .- 6. Kuman Invasion (1095) .- 7. Synthesis .- 8. Conclusion.
Marek Mesko is an assistant professor at the University of Hradec Kralove, Institute of History, Czech Republic.
This is a well-structured and well-researched monograph which provides new insights into the military challenges the empire faced in the eriod 1081-1095 and focuses on the personality, motivations, political and martial qualities of Alexios I Komnenos. (Savvas Kyriakidis, The Byzantine Review, Vol. 6, 2024)
This is a thorough and deeply-researched book that ultimately convinces. The step-by-step study of the chronology and events do much to shed light on these crucial decades and Me ko makes use of a vast array of secondary literature in a huge range of languages . This book is anything but niche, and will serve as an exemplar of how to write pre-industrial military history at the operational level. (Lucas R. McMahon, International Journal of Military History and Historiography, Vol. 45 (1), 2025)
