238 THE DECLINE AND FALL fourth and last, Romanus undertook the deliverance of Armenia. The desolation of the land obliged him to transport a supply of two months' provisions ; and he marched forwards to the siege of Malazkerd,^^ an important fortress in the midway between the modern cities of Arzeroum and Van. His army amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand men. The troops of Constantinople were reinforced by the disorderly mul- titudes of Phrygia and Cappadocia ; but the real strength was composed of the subjects and allies of Europe, the legions of Macedonia, and the squadrons of Bulgaria ; the Uzi, a Molda- vian horde, who were themselves of the Turkish race ; ^^ and, above all, the mercenary and adventurous bands of French and Normans. Their lances were commanded by the valiant Ursel of Baliol, the kinsman or father of the Scottish kings,"*^ and were allowed to excel in the exercise of arms, or, according to the Greek style, in the practice of the Pyrrhic dance. 35 This city is mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Administrat. Im- perii, 1. ii. c. 44, p. 119) and the Byzantines of the xith century, under the name of Mantzikierte, and by some is confounded with Theodosiopolis ; but Delisle, in his notes and maps, has very properly fixed the situation. Abulfeda (Geograph. tab. xviii. p. 310) describes Malasgerd as a small town, built with black stone, supplied with water, without trees, &c. [Manzikert is on the Murad Tchai, north of Lake Van. ] ^ The Uzi of the Greeks (Stritter, Memor. Byzant. tom. iii. p. 923-948) are the Gozz of the Orientals (Hist, des Huns, tom. ii. p. 522, tom. iii. p. 133, &c. ). They appear on the Danube and the Volga, in Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and the name seems to have been extended to the whole Turkman race. [The Uzi were a Turkish horde akin to the Patzinaks. They are mentioned by Constantine Por- phyrogennetos (in the De Adm. Imp. ) as living in his time beyond the Patzinaks and the Khazars. They are the same as the Cumani [Komanoi in Anna Comnena, i&c.) ; and are called Polovtsi in the old Russian Chronicle. The Hungarians call them Kunok. They first appeared in Russia in A.D. 1055 (Nestor, c. 59). Then they drove the Patzinaks out of Atelkuzu, the land of which they had formerly dispossessed the Hungarians into Walachia. Sixty thousand of them crossed the Danube in 1065, but were for the most part cut to pieces, with the help of the Patzinaks ; some of the remnant were settled in Macedonia. A glossary of the Cumanian language has been accidentally preserved in a Ms. which Petrarch pre- sented to the Library of St. Mark. It was published by Klaproth in MiJmoires relatifs a I'Asia, iii. (title : Alphabetum Persicum Comanicum et Latinum) and has been edited by Count Gdza Kuun, Codex Cumanicus, 1880. It establishes the Turkish character of the Uzes.] s^ Urselius (the Russelius of Zonaras) is distinguished by Jeffrey Malaterra (1. i. c. 33) among the Norman conquerors of Sicily, and with the surname o{ Baliol ; and our own historians will tell how the Baliols came from Normandy to Durham, built Bernard's Castle on the Tees, married an heiress of Scotland, &c. Ducange (Not. ad Nicephor. Bryennium, 1. ii. No. 4) has laboured the subject in honour of the president de Bailleul, whose father had exchanged the sword for the gown. [For the history of Ursel and his Norman realm in Asia Minor see Nicephorus Bryennius, p. 73 sqq., and Attaleiates, p. %£, sqq. Cp. Hirsch, Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, 8, p. 332 sqq.'
