also ordered his siege engines to be burned. On 10August 1030 the army departed its camp and made for Antioch. Discipline broke down in the Byzantine army, with Armenian mercenaries using the withdrawal as an opportunity to pillage the camp's stores. The Emir of Aleppo launched an attack and the imperial army broke and fled. Only the imperial bodyguard, the Hetaireia, held firm, but Romanos was nearly captured. Accounts vary on the battle losses: John Skylitzes wrote that the Byzantines suffered a "terrible rout" and that some troops were killed in a chaotic stampede by their fellow soldiers, Yahya of Antioch wrote that the Byzantines suffered remarkably few casualties. According to Yahya, two high ranking Byzantine officers were among the fatalities, and another officer was captured by the Arabs. After this defeat the army became a "laughing-stock". Despite his victory, the Emir of Aleppo opened negotiations and signed a treaty that made Aleppo an Imperial tributary and allowed for a Greek governor to preside over the city. In 1032 the capture and successful defence of Edessa by George Maniakes and the sound defeat of a Saracen fleet in the Adriatic did little to restore Romanos' early popularity. Romanos faced several conspiracies, mostly centred on his sister-in-law Theodora. In 1029 she planned to marry the Bulgarian prince Presian and to usurp the throne. The plot was discovered, Presian was blinded and tonsured as a monk but Theodora was not punished. In 1031 she was implicated in another conspiracy, this time with Constantine Diogenes, the Archon of Sirmium, and was forcibly confined in the monastery of Petrion. In a vain attempt to reduce expenditure, Romanos limited his wife's expenses, which merely exacerbated the alienation between the two. Romanos took a mistress. Zoë in turn fell in love with Michael, the brother of high-ranking court eunuch John the Orphanotrophos. Romanos, unaware, allowed Michael to become one of his personal servants. Having survived the attempts on his throne by Theodora, his death on 11 April 1034 was supposed to have been due to poison administered by his wife. There is also speculation that he was drowned in a bath on his wife's orders. He was buried in the Church of St. Mary Peribleptos, which he built. Zoë and Michael were married on the same day that Romanos III died. The next day the couple summoned the Patriarch Alexios I to officiate in the coronation