The history of the Byzantine empire is often
overshadowed by the Western Roman empire. Yet among the small but illustrious roster
of truly notable Byzantine rulers, alongside such great figures as Justinian, Constantine
and Heraclius, stands possibly the greatest ruler of the Medieval age - Basil II. Welcome to our video on the eventful life
and magnificent deeds of Basil II, how he came to the throne of Constantinople, how
the empire was governed under his reign and how this emperor eventually came to be known
by the moniker for which he would be famous forever after - Boulgaroktonos, the Bulgar
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battles by clicking our special link in the description to download the game for free! Basil II was son of Emperor Romanos II and
his intelligent but lowborn empress Theophano in 958. At this time, the emperors of Constantinople’s
century-old dynasty, called Macedonian due to the birthplace of its founder Basil I,
intermittently lacked any real authority, although their line remained unbroken. Basil’s grandfather Constantine VII was
a puppet twice during his long reign, first subordinated to his mother and then to a usurping
magnate, while the reign of Romanos himself had been a prosperous one, but it seems to
have been despite the emperor, as his father preferred luxury and excess to military campaigns
and administration. However, Romanos II unexpectedly died, when
Basil was just 5, leaving the imperial dynasty in a precarious position. This dangerous situation was solved swiftly
when Byzantium’s greatest general - Nikephorus Phokas - assumed the role of co-emperor and
married Theophano, swearing to protect and uphold the rights of Basil and his brother
Constantine, becoming as historian Anthony Kaldellis phrased it, a “guardian-general”. In his six year long rule, the man who would
become known as ‘the pale death of the Saracens’ waged constant warfare, reconquering Cilicia,
Cyprus, and Antioch, as well as paving the way for possible future campaigns in Syria
and Mesopotamia as the Abbasid Caliphate disintegrated. However, the strain on Byzantium’s population
and Nikephorus’ failure as a politician led to his murder and deposition by John Tzimiskes
in 969. Just like his predecessor, Tzimiskes, another
‘guardian-general’, also guaranteed the inheritance of Theophano’s children. During his eight year long reign he managed
to subdue Bulgaria and defeated the Rus’ armies of Sviatoslav. In 976 though, Tzimiskes died upon returning
from a ‘grand tour’ of the empire, leaving an 18 year old Basil II basileus of an empire
nearing the zenith of its medieval power. Due to the young ruler’s inexperience, real
governmental authority was exercised by courtier Basil Lakapenos. This vizier-like character reshuffled military
appointments throughout the empire following Tzimiskes’ death, stirring up a hornet’s
nest: Domestikos of the East Bardas, Skleros - a general from an influential family - was
demoted, but unwilling to take such a slap in the face, Skleros proclaimed himself emperor
in summer 976. This initiated a civil war in Anatolia which
initially went well for the rebel forces, prompting Lakapenos to desperately recall
one of Skleros’ dangerous rivals, chief of perhaps the greatest of noble families,
Bardas Phokas. After being appointed domestikos, he lured
Skleros into northeastern Anatolia and defeated him in 979, after which the usurper fled to
Baghdad. By 985, Basil desired political independence
and dismissed Lakapenos. Then a year later, believing military accolades
of his own would nullify Phokas’ power, the emperor embarked on a campaign against
the Bulgarian Empire ruled by a member of the Komitopuli dynasty, Samuel - the first
of his dynasty to do so. On his way home from the unsuccessful venture
however, Basil’s army was ambushed and destroyed at Trajan’s Gate, and he barely escaped
alive. Once word of this catastrophe reverberated
east, Skleros returned and revived his rebellion in 987. He was joined soon after by Phokas, who also
claimed the throne for himself. The two made an alliance, but the latter quickly
betrayed the former and had him jailed. As Basil had little power in Asia Minor at
the time, Phokas’ armies were soon able to reach Abydos on the Hellespont. His situation seemed dire, but Basil II had
one key advantage. Bardas Phokas was a powerful figure, but tactically
and strategically he was thoroughly incompetent. In a now-immortal diplomatic dice roll, Basil
II married off his sister Anna to Vladimir, grand prince of the newly Christanised Rus’,
in return for 6,000 of his ferocious Varangian’ mercenaries, who would be loyal only to the
Byzantine emperor. Their impact on Basil’s reign was felt immediately. With the exotic, lethal force of northmen
at his side, the emperor crossed the Hellespont and locked horns with one of Phokas’ subordinates1
at Chrysopolis in late 988. The rebel army was destroyed, its leader captured
and executed. Early in 989, Basil boldly marched to Abydos
and confronted the archtraitor Bardas Phokas, who was also defeated and killed. The emperor had Phokas’ head paraded around
the empire as a grisly threat, terrifying his remaining supporters into surrender and
leaving Basil the undisputed master of the empire. In the immediate aftermath Basil enacted policies
designed to moderate the unruly aristocracy. The emperor’s own rhetoric depicts his struggle
with powerful nobles in this period as an pro-peasant crusade with himself as the champion
of the serfs, but it is more likely that the actual goal was to increase Basil’s own
power. Perhaps the strictest of these measures was
the allelengyon - or ‘mutual security’ tax - which required the empire’s oligarchy
to meet any financial shortfall for peasants who were too destitute to pay up themselves,
and those who died in war. This brought Basil II great favour among the
peasantry, but irritated the nobles. The emperor also refused to appoint another
domestikos of the east, the high military posting which frequently served as a stepping
stone to the throne. Other political tactics included increasing
the authority of imperial bureaucrats, confiscating property, and most importantly, keeping his
loyal Varangian enforcers close by. Historical narratives generally focus on dramatic
events, and so the notable scarcity of our sources for Basil’s reign after the Skleros-Phokas
revolts indicate that his domestic programme was working. According to Anthony Kaldellis: “The ‘darkness’
that envelops Constantinople probably means that for some fifty years there were few famines,
unpopular appointments, vexatious taxes or abuses by soldiers.” When viewed like this, Basil II appears at
first glance to be an early-medieval equivalent of Antoninus Pius - a wise emperor whose policies
mitigated the kind of chaos which chroniclers love to write about. The image of Basil as a pacifistic emperor
is spoiled completely, however, when his frequent bloody frontier wars are taken into account,
comprising some of the most famous conflicts in all Byzantine history. Unfortunately for us, the information we possess
on Basil’s military activity following the magnate revolts is very poor. A general theme we can nevertheless observe
is a rebalancing of the empire’s martial focus from the eastern frontier, where great
Byzantine generals of the tenth century2 achieved considerable success against failing Muslim
states, to Bulgaria. Having learned tough lessons at Trajan’s
Gate and during his civil wars, Basil took the field again in 991 against the twin Bulgarian
rulers Samuil and Roman, aiming to retake imperial lands which had been lost after the
disasters of 986. This time however, the basileus focused on
raising forces of quality, rather than quantity. Only the best theme troops, an expanded tagmata
professional force and, of course, the vaunted Varangians marched with him. For four consecutive years, Basil II methodically
bulldozed his way around Macedonia and Thrace, capturing or destroying many Bulgarian citadels,
defeating Samuil in battle and even taking Tsar Roman prisoner3. To make the campaign easier, Basil employed
typically sharp Byzantine diplomacy to encircle his foe, drawing up alliances with Serbian
Duklja and Croatia. Meanwhile, the situation on Byzantium’s
eastern frontier in Syria was deteriorating. Since hostilities with the Fatimid Caliphate
resumed in 990, dux of Antioch Michael Bourtzes had been repeatedly thrashed and the empire’s
satellite state of Aleppo besieged. After receiving an appeal from the latter
whilst campaigning in Bulgaria, Basil departed with his main army and went east in early
995. To ensure the march was as efficient as possible,
the basileus mounted his infantry on mules so that the entire army could travel far more
swiftly. Because of this, it took only a month to move
from Bulgaria to Antioch. This goes a long way to show the type of commander
Basil II was: a strategist, logistician, and micromanager who, while not a flashy battlefield
tactician, scoured the Byzantine military manuals and used that knowledge to bring home
the victories. Not wasting a moment, Basil beelined straight
for Aleppo and forced the Fatimid siege army into a retreat. After then receiving the homage forgiving
the debts of his Muslim clients, the emperor captured Apameia and several other cities
in the region. At one point his forces were raided by local
tribesman, and Basil wasn’t going to put up with it. Capturing 40 of them, he had the nomads’
hands cut off and then released them. No more attacks are recorded. Choosing to remain in Syria until the area
was stable, the emperor fought more battles against the Fatimids and inserted himself
diplomatically into the Caliphate’s disintegrating political situation. To earn its goodwill, Basil refused to support
a revolt against Cairo in 997, but then pivoted and cynically supported Tyre’s insurrection
a year later because it severed Fatimid supply lines. At the turn of the new millennium, with the
east pacified, Basil II signed a decade-long peace with Cairo, integrated part of Georgia,
and then turned his gaze back to the west. To ensure tranquility remained on the Fatimid
border, the basileus’ trusted subordinate Nikephoros Ouranos, who had recently beaten
Samuil’s army4 in Basil’s absence, was left there as dux. Making his way up the Via Militaris, the emperor
established his base of operations at Philippopolis before turning north, taking Sredets and a
number of peripheral fortresses despite gritty resistance. With the Sofia Basin thereby secured, Samuil’s
domains were cut in two, leaving each segment more vulnerable. Then in 1001, Basil embarked on a campaign
to recapture Byzantine possessions in Greece and Macedonia, capturing Beroia, Kolydros,
Servia, most of Thessaly, and a hilltop fortress known as Voden. The next year war continued, with Byzantine
forces invading the middle Danube in an attempt to confine Tsar Samuil, who had claimed the
title after Roman’s death at Constantinople, in an imperial pincer. Basil invested the region’s primary fortress
of Vidin. As his countermove, the Bulgarian ruler circled
around and sacked Adrianople as a distraction, hoping the emperor would withdraw to deal
with him. Unwilling to be peeled away from his strategic
objective, however, Basil safely ignored Samuil’s feint and saw out the eight month siege, which
ended in success during December 1002. With Vidin’s fall, Bulgaria’s heartland
was virtually encircled by Roman bases. In 1003, after wintering in the captured city,
the emperor’s tagmata and Varangian warriors took Naissus before bearing down on Skopje. There, they encountered Samuil’s relief
force opposite them over the Vardar River. The Tsar encamped on the south side, trusting
in the water course’s depth to protect his camp. Unfortunately for him, the Byzantine emperor
discovered a fordable section, crossed the Vardar at night, and descended on the Bulgarian
camp, forcing Samuil into rout. It would be gratuitous to include every one
of Basil’s victories, but all of these triumphs led to a military status quo summarised by
our main source - John Skylitzes: “Samuil could do nothing in open country, nor could
he oppose the emperor in formal battle. He was shattered on all fronts and his forces
were declining.” The weakening of Bulgarian forces meant that
they could no longer go toe to toe with the clinical Byzantines. Nevertheless, Skylitzes tells us that “The
emperor continued to invade Bulgaria every year without interruption, laying waste to
everything that came to hand.” So, it is inferred that Samuil either fought
a guerilla war of back and forth raids during the narratively dark years leading up to 1014,
or concluded some kind of temporary peace. The conflict ramped up again in 1014 for reasons
that are not entirely clear. In his acclaimed book on the wars between
Byzantium and Bulgaria, Dennis Hupchik hypothesizes that a peace agreement, made in 1004 or 1005,
simply expired, since Byzantine peace deals usually lasted for a decade as a matter of
course. Alternatively, it may have been Basil II’s
tolerance for Samuil’s constant irregular fighting that expired. Whatever the real cause may or may not have
been, we do know that in 1014 Basil’s main army, perhaps 23,000 strong, struck Bulgarian
frontier positions5 in the lower Struma Valley northeast of Thessaloniki - one of the empire’s
great cities. From his base at Komotini, the emperor marched
north along the Struma River until he reached the valley carved out by one of its westward-leading
tributaries. Basil pivoted and advanced into this low area
between two large mountain ranges6, which the Byzantines dubbed ‘Kimbalonga’, or
‘Long Plain’, until it narrowed midway through. At the valley’s most enclosed point, known
as Klyuch, or more notoriously, Kleidon - ‘Little Key’ - the imperial forces discovered Samuil’s
revitalised Bulgarians blocking their path, heavily fortified behind formidable earthworks. With little other option than to test the
enemy defences, Basil II launched a series of frontal attacks against the Bulgarians
which Skylitzes describes. The Byzantine soldiers “attempted to force
a way in. But the guards stoutly resisted, killing the
assailants and wounding them by hurling weapons from up above.” Applying Herodotus’ immortal tale of Thermopylae,
Basil dispatched Xiphias to outflank the Bulgarians via a Belasitsa mountain pass while he attacked
from the front, leading to a complete imperial victory and many prisoners taken. Boulgaroktonos supposedly had 15,000 captive
Bulgarians blinded, leaving only one in a hundred men with a single eye to lead their
comrades home. When these unfortunate souls filed back into
Samuil’s capital weeks later, the Tsar supposedly suffered a seizure and died. Following the Tsar’s defeat, his realm succumbed
to dynastic strife and weakened even further, allowing Basil II to mop up the last embers
of resistance. Finally, when one of the last Bulgarian claimants
Ivan Vladislav was killed outside Dyrrachium in 1018, the remainder of Bulgaria’s royalty
and bolyari leadership realised there was no prospect of victory and surrendered, ending
a Bulgarian Empire which had troubled Eastern Rome for over three centuries. Basil toured his newly conquered territories,
setting up administrative structures, accepting surrenders and acclamations, before going
to Athens and giving thanks to God at the Parthenon - now functioning as a church. Then, he returned to Constantinople and celebrated
a triumph, parading himself, all of the seized treasure and his Komitopuli clan captives,
particularly the Tsarina Mariyah, through the city as a victorious general. Although the moniker Bulgar Slayer might give
the impression that Basil II disliked Bulgarians in particular, he actually treated his recently
acquired subjects and their former bolyari lords with considerable tact, generosity,
and lenience. In fact, he dealt with this problem of integration
so well that Bulgaria would be under Byzantine rule for almost two centuries. The remnant of Bulgaria’s leadership was
seamlessly inserted into the empire’s social structure, showered with prestigious imperial
ranks and titles, and granted rich donatives, as well as land of their own to rule, if they
pledged fealty to Basil. Surviving members of the Bulgarian Komitopoli
house were made patricians and given land in Anatolia, both physically removing them
from the Balkan realm they once ruled, and tying their fate to Constantinople. In perennially sensitive matters of religion,
the emperor proved himself light-handed by confirming the Bulgarian church’s autonomy
from the Byzantine church, but intelligently refused to recognise its leader as equal in
status to the patriarch in Constantinople. Meanwhile, commoners’ day to day lives in
the conquered regions were not heavily disrupted, as Basil retained the previous tax system,
the only change being which treasury their wealth ended up in. As Yahya of Antioch optimistically concluded:
“In uniting one with the other, he brought to an end the ancient animosity that had existed
between them.” With Byzantine authority established throughout
most of the Balkan Peninsula, Basil went off to campaign in Georgia during the early 1020s. However, despite the apparent glory of the
age, a rebellion erupted in Cappadocia during 1022, led by the hero of Kleidon, Xiphias,
and Nikephoros Phokas - Bardas’ son. Unfortunately for the would-be usurpers, a
lightning fast imperial response led Xiphias to murder his magnate colleague in panic. Neither this act of double betrayal or his
role at Kleidon saved him. According to one account, Xiphias was viciously
tortured to death upon being captured by Basil’s agents and hurried back to the capital - yet
another example of the Bulgar Slayer’s fearsome deterrence tactics. Basil II passed away in December 1025 at 67
years old, his reign having been a long revolt sandwich with a sweet filling of stunning
military success and relative domestic bliss. His younger brother and successor, Constantine
VIII, who had lived irrelevantly in Basil’s shadow for over half a century, buried his
dead sibling at the military mustering point at Hebdomon, instead of the imperial mausoleum,
as was his wish. The lengthy epitaph of Basil II’s tomb survives
to this day, and provides a beautiful glimpse into how he wished to be remembered. “...From the day when the King of Heaven
called upon me to become emperor, the great overlord of the world, no one saw my spear
lie idle.” Although Basil the Bulgar Slayer would later
be remembered as one of the greatest rulers in Byzantine history, his successes would
not long outlive him. Increasing imperial mismanagement, terrible
civil strife, and the presence of ferocious new enemies would eventually, less than half
a century after its greatest triumph, lead to its greatest failure at Manzikert in 1071. We will talk about Roman and Byzantine history
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