The Excubitors took part in the failed Azaz campaign of 1030, where they were ambushed and dispersed by the Mirdasids, while their commander, the "patrikios" Leo Choirosphaktes, was taken captive. As with most of the Byzantine army, the "tagmata" of the capital atrophied during the mid-11th century, and many of them disappear in the turmoils of foreign invasion and civil wars that followed the destruction of the Byzantine field army in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The Excubitors are last attested in Anna Komnene's "Alexiad", where they are recorded as participating at the Battle of Dyrrhachium against the Italo-Normans in 1081, under the command of Constantine Opos.