Thread by @femboy_swift

Absoutely mind-blowing story

After the Anglo-Saxons were defeated many of them sailed into the Mediterranean sea in search of a new home. The Anglo-Saxon fleet consisted of 250 to 350 ships, and up to 5,000 people, including “three earls and eight barons", their top fighting men

(and presumably their families as well as some clergy). They were led by one "Siward earl of Gloucester", who may (or may not) be the person known to history as Siward Barn. First they did some raiding in north Africa, Minorca and Mallorca.

Then they sailed for Constantinople, a city for which they had long-established trade links and revered as the holy centre of Christendom that many had previously visited on Pilgrimage. their spiritual heartland, and felt an affinity with Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

Upon arrival, the English helped put a stop to a siege taking place and as a reward The ruler of Constantinople, Alexius I Comnenus (Kirjalax), offered to take the English into service, allowing them to live in Constantinople as his personal bodyguards...

"as was the wont of the Varangians who went into his pay".

Some of the English went to Crimea and created 'New England', a region which had city names resembling London, York and others. We even have reports of a Germanic language being spoken there into the 1700s.

Most however stayed in Constantinople where they became the most prominent element in the Varangian Guard from the late 11th to the 13th century, being granted excellent pay and land for them and their families, maintaining their English identity.

'Composed primarily of Scandinavians for the first 100 years, the guard began to see increased inclusion of Anglo-Saxons after the successful invasion of England by the Normans. In 1088 a large number … emigrated to the Byzantine Empire by way of the Mediterranean.

[They] became so vital to the Varangians that the Guard was commonly called the Englinbarrangoi (Anglo-Varangians) from that point…'
'Other than their fierce loyalty, the most recognizable attributes of the Varangian guard during the 11th century were their large axes and...

their penchant for drinking. There are countless stories of the Varangian guard either drinking in excess or being drunk.' The English maintained not only their culture and language but also their drinking habits.
newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Varangia…

The English in the Varangian Guard even maintained the legend of the founding of an English church in Constantinople from their ancestors had first arrived in 1088.

'While the first king from the Normans, William, was reigning over England, an honourable man,

educated in the chapter of the Blessed Augustine, along with many other noble exiles from the fatherland (patrie profugis), migrated to Constantinople; he obtained such favour with the emperor and empress as well as with other powerful men as to receive command over prominent...

troops and over a great number of companions; no newcomer for very many years had obtained such an honor. He married a noble and wealthy woman, and remembering the gifts of God, built, close to his own home, a basilica in honor of the Blessed Nicholas and Saint Augustine.'

Miracula Sancti Augustini Episcopi Cantuariensis, in Acta Sanctorum, May, VI, p. 406; translated in Vasiliev, “The Opening Stages of the Anglo Saxon Immigration to Byzantium in the Eleventh Century,” pp. 60-61.

Although there were probably few Englishmen serving in the guard by the time of its writing, the 14th-century Book of Offices of Georgios Kodinos or Pseudo-Kodinos mentions the Christmas custom of the Guard.

Another interesting point about this is that by 1200-1220 as the absolute latest (some say as early as the 1140-1160s), the Normans had completely assimilated into English culture and created a new English identifying elite aristocracy.

The Varangians kept their English Identity up till the early 1300s meaning that during the 1200s there were two separate groups of upper and warrior classes that identified as English at the same time. One completely Anglo-Saxon, and the other the result of English/Norman mixing.

The stories of these elite soldiers are incredible. The English Varangians would fight in Italy and the Balkans against Normans. Were present at the recapture of Nicaea in 1097 before recapturing territory in Anatolia.

Between 1118 and 1122 English axe-bearers accompanied John II Komnênós on his campaigns against the Turks and the Pechenegs.

In 1122 John defeated a Pecheneg invasion of imperial territory in the Balkans at the battle of Eski Zagra (Beroe), where, after his Frankish, Flemish...

and Byzantine units fail to break the defensive circle of Pecheneg wagons, the emperor overcame his reluctance to risk committing his prized ‘wineskins’ – his English Varangians – and sent them into battle.

Although allegedly facing odds of up to 60 to one, the Englishmen nevertheless broke into the wagon-laager; the Pechenegs were overwhelmingly defeated and slaughtered in great numbers. The battle and its warriors became famous.

(timestamped)

Varangians were probably also with John at the siege of Antioch in 1137. They assisted in the recapture of the Principality of Capua and Thebes from the Normans between 1135 to 1155.

In 1155–56 Renault de Chatillon, the victor of Montgisard and Crusader prince of Antioch, attacked Cyprus, which numbered Varangians among its garrison; after an initial success, Renault was defeated and brought by the Varangians to grovel at the emperor’s feet.

The English Varangians were also the primary defenders of Constantinople during the 4th crusade. According to historian David Nicolle...
'The Anglo-Saxon "axe bearers" had been amongst the most effective of the city's defenders'.

They continued to fight all over the empire...

for 200 more years under a variety of different rulers. In a letter of June 1402, the Emperor John VII wrote to King Henry IV of England that English warriors were active in the defence of the city against the Turks. ‘Axe-bearing soldiers of British race’ are referred to by

Byzantine envoys in Rome during the reign of Manuel II Palaiologos as late as 1404. Meaning that Anglo-Saxon English soldiers were fighting with Rome in her final decades against the Ottomans, and likely the very end itself in 1453.

What an absolutely incredible story.