Ducas died in 1067, leaving the throne to his son, Michael, a boy of fourteen years. The usual result followed. To secure her son’s life and throne, the Empress-dowager Eudocia took a new husband, and made him guardian of the young Michael. The new Emperor-regent was Romanus Diogenes, an Asiatic noble, whose brilliant courage displayed in the Seljouk wars had dazzled the world, and caused it to forget that caution and ability are far more regal virtues than headlong valour. Romanus took in hand with the greatest vigour the task of repelling the Turks, which his predecessor had so grievously neglected. He led into the field every man that could be collected from the European or Asiatic themes, and for three successive years was incessantly marching and counter-marching in Armenia, Cappadocia, and Syria, in the endeavour to hunt down the marauding bands of the Seljouks. The operations of Romanus were not entirely unsuccessful. Alp Arslan, the Sultan of the Seljouks, contented himself at first with dispersing his hordes in scattered bands, and attacking many points of the frontier at once. Hence the Emperor was not unfrequently able to catch and slay off one of the minor divisions of the Turkish army. But some of them always contrived to elude him; his heavy cavalry could not come up with the light Seljouk horse bowmen, who generally escaped and rode back home by a long detour, burning and murdering as they went. Cappadocia was already desolated from end to end, and the Turkish raids had reached as far as Amorium, in Phrygia. In 1071 came the final disaster. In pursuing the Seljouk plunderers, Romanus was drawn far eastward, to Manzikert, on the Armenian frontier. There he found himself confronted, not by a flying foe, but by the whole force of the Seljouk sultanate, with Alp Arslan himself at its head. Though his army was harassed by long marches, and though two large divisions were absent, the Emperor was eager to fight. The Turks had never before offered him a fair field, and he relied implicitly on the power of his cuirassiers to ride down any number, however great, of the light Turkish horse. [Illustration] Our Lord Blessing Romanus Diogenes And Eudocia. (_From an Ivory at Paris._) (_From "L’Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._)