to resign the purple and retire to a monastery. But his hatred of Romanos was so great that he reneged on the agreement and ordered that Romanos be blinded, sending him a mocking message congratulating him on the loss of his eyes as he lay dying from the infected wound. With the elimination of Romanos, John and Michael Psellos were supreme at court. The Caesar was undone, however, by one of his own creatures, the eunuch Nikephoritzes. By 1073 the eunuch had gained the confidence of Michael VII, whom he turned against his uncle. The Caesar was forced to retire to his great estates, where he amused himself by hunting in the forests near the shores of the Bosphorus. Rebellion of 1074 In the meantime, the progress of the Seljuk Turks roused the Byzantine government into action, gathering together an army of mercenaries under the command of Isaac Komnenos. The Norman mercenaries, led by Roussel de Bailleul, rebelled against the Byzantines, crushed an imperial army, and attempted to establish an independent kingdom in Anatolia. The situation in Asia Minor was now so dire, that in 1074 Michael was forced to order his uncle to take command of an imperial army and defeat the Norman mercenaries. Fixing his headquarters at Dorylaeum, the two armies met near the bridge over the Zompi River, one of the great lines of communication between Constantinople and the central provinces in Asia Minor. Betrayed by his Frankish mercenaries and by the shameful retreat of the Asiatic reserves under the command of the future Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates, John was defeated and captured together with his son Andronikos. The victorious mercenaries then proceeded to advance to the shores of the Bosphorus, as a relieving force under John's younger son Constantine disintegrated when its commander suddenly died. Roussel, unsure if his mercenary force could overthrow the emperor at Constantinople, decided to act as the chief general for his own emperor. He proclaimed John Doukas emperor, easily persuading his prisoner to assume the title and dethrone his ungrateful nephew, and they continued on their way to Constantinople. Michael VII and Nikephoritzes were deeply concerned about their own safety. They formed an alliance with Suleiman ibn Qutulmish, Seljuk sultan of Rûm, concluding a formal treaty between the Byzantines and the Turks, whereby Michael gave to Suleiman the government of the provinces of which the Seljuk Turks were in possession of.