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The Battle of Manzikert (Mantzikert) in ancient Armenia in August 1071 CE was one of the greatest defeats suffered by the Byzantine Empire. The victorious Seljuk army captured the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, and, with the empire in disarray as generals squabbled for the throne, nothing could stop them sweeping across Asia Minor. Manzikert was not a terrible defeat in terms of casualties or immediate territorial loss, but as a psychological blow to Byzantine military prowess and the sacred person of the emperor, it would resound for centuries and be held up as the watershed after which the Byzantine Empire fell into a long, slow, and permanent decline.
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Battle
The two leaders and their armies finally met on 25 August near Manzikert, and a skirmish followed which resulted in the Byzantines being harassed by the Seljuk bowmen and Nicephorus Byrennius receiving three, albeit superficial, wounds. Almost immediately after the real fighting started, the Normans turned about and fled. Some of the Uzes mercenaries switched sides, too. The sporadic engagements, nevertheless, continued into the second day. Then the Seljuk leader, with his own difficulties to pay his soldiers and, in any case, far more interested in Syria, sent a delegation offering a truce. Romanos rejected it.
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