Revival of the Medieval Roman Empire - Byzantine Reconquista DOCUMENTARY

From a geopolitical standpoint, the Eastern Roman Empire is often depicted as the sick man of the Middle ages. However, amidst the constant territorial retreat, there were periods when they pushed back against the invading tide. In the early Medieval period, a string of capable military-minded men would bring triumph to Byzantium, and secure the long-time survival of the Empire for centuries to come. Welcome to our special longform video on the Basileis of the Macedonian Dynasty, where we will cover a roughly 150-year span when the Eastern Roman Empire rebounded from its long suffering decline, and became the most powerful state in the Mediterranean world. Once you’ve seen how the Byztanies found success, go find it yourself by playing as them in our sponsor, Rise of Kingdoms. In this historic strategy game of civilisation, war, and rulers, they have a motto that Roman craftsmen would appreciate: Technology is power. You probably know it was technology and organisation that boosted Roman society to the top, and in Rise of Kingdoms it’s just as important, as you’ll be developing your civilisation’s core abilities, like agriculture and building settlements, but also unlocking the most powerful units and tactics. From the longbow, to the stirrup, to the ballista, these inventions have huge battlefield potential, and in the epic clashes of Rise of Kingdoms you’ll want to bring the newest, most unseen weapons of war to the field. And it’s not only craft; diplomacy is technology too. You can unlock the ability to make strong alliances, and find secrets in your territory that give you advantages against invaders. Previously Rise of Kingdoms was only on mobile, but now there’s a PC release with great performance, enhanced controls in the real time battles, cross-play, persistent strategy where you can see and react to the situation across the map for you and your allies, and live chat features for more detailed diplomacy, or just hanging out. With all this it’s now a better time than ever to get into Rise of Kingdoms, so try the game for free by using our link in the description or the QR code on the screen, and make sure to use our promo code RoKTechPow to get a load of extra rewards when you do. Technology is power, go build your own powerful kingdom right now! In the year 800 AD, the Eastern Roman Empire was a shadow of its former self. Three centuries earlier, the grand ambitions of Emperor Justinian had created a Mediterranean juggernaut worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as the Empires’ of Augustus and Trajan. Now, little of Justinians’ legacy remained. The bellicose Lombards had pushed the Eastern Romans to the very fringes of Italy. Constant migrations of Slavs and Bulgars along the Danube had put an immense strain on the Empires’ Balkan territories, and even before that: the meteoric rise of a natal Islamic faith had permanently deprived the Romans of Egypt, Syria and North Africa. Perhaps the greatest threat to the Emperors in Constantinople were the aforementioned Muslim Arabs, who, in a stark departure from their desert-dwelling roots, had taken to the seas to become the most deadly sailors of the Mediterranean coast. In 827, the Byzantines suffered two major losses to two different factions of Muslim corsairs. The young, Tunisia-based Aghlabid Emirate struck at Sicily, beginning the 80-year-long conquest of that island, while a roving band of political exiles from Islamic Al-Andalus seized the ancient isle of Crete. The newly founded Islamic Emirate of Crete became a particular menace to the Byzantines. Supported by the mighty navy of the massive Abbasid Caliphate, the isle became a perfect base from which Arab pirates launched constant and devastating raids into the coastal towns of the Aegean sea. In summary, Byzantium in the early 9th century looked to be a polity in terminal decline. And yet, all was not lost. In 811 a peasant boy named Basil was born in Chariopolis, in what was then the theme of Macedonia. As a young man, Basil was employed as a stable boy by a distant relative of reigning Emperor Michael III. There he attracted the attention of important courtiers by his tall stature, enormous strength, and ability to break in the wildest horses.[1] Basil soon became a trusted confidant of the Emperor, In 866, he achieved the role of co-Emperor alongside Michael III. A year later, Basil had Michael assassinated at a banquet, allowing him to ascend as the Basileus, founding the Macedonian dynasty that would endure over 200 years. Basils I’s reign would be the most successful that Eastern Rome had seen in centuries. He oversaw the Christianization of the Balkans, playing a major role in bringing the Bulgars and South Slavs into the Eastern Orthodox fold. He also forged an alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Louis II to eliminate Arab piracy in the Adriatic sea, seizing Bari, which had been a Muslim stronghold, and establishing suzerainty over the Lombard Principality of Benevento in the process. This set the stage for a renaissance of Byzantine power in the Italian peninsula not seen since the days of Justinian. Basil I died in 886, having laid the foundations of a true Eastern Roman resurgence throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. Unfortunately, the years following the seminal Emperors’ death began a regressive trend. From 893 onwards, Byzantium was subject to the Imperial Ambitions of the Bulgarian Prince Simeon, who launched war after war upon Byzantine lands, with the goal of claiming the imperial title and trying to replace the Romans as the biggest power in the region. He was never able to take Constantinople itself, but he still managed to greatly expand the borders of his realm at the expense of Byzantine Balkan territory, imposing an annual tribute upon the Emperors in Constantinople, and forcing them to confirm him with the prestigious Imperial title of ‘Caesar’, or in the Slavonic Bulgarian tongue: ‘Tsar’. [2] With Simeons’ death in 927, Eastern Romes’ northern frontier with Bulgaria became somewhat stable once more. However, its eastern frontiers against the Arabs had remained incredibly volatile the entire time. The ever powerful Abbasid Caliphate still retained inroads into the Empires’ Anatolian heartland, and more importantly, Muslim corsairs continued to launch raid after devastating raid into the Byzantine held Aegean-islands from their the base on Crete. Back in 904, an Abbasid fleet commanded by the infamous Greek defector Leo of Tripoli had even managed to sail all the way up to Thessaloniki, which at the time was the second most prosperous city in Eastern Rome. After a three day siege, the city was put to the torch. [3] Emperor Leo IV responded by appointing Admiral Himerios to subdue the Muslim pirates. Himerios had some initial success, his Byzantine warships crushed an Arab fleet on St. Thomas’ day of 906, and fought its way to the Syrian coastline, sacking the city of Laodicea in 909. Himerios then sailed onwards to Cyprus, which at the time was, remarkably, jointly ruled by both the Abbasid Caliphate and Eastern Roman Empire. [4] Himerios landed his troops unopposed, and re-established undisputed Byzantine control over the isle. The Byzantine expedition then resupplied and pointed the bows of their dromon at Crete, placing its capital of Chandax [k-] under siege by land and sea. A six-month standoff ensued, in which the Romans found no headway against the stubborn Arabs that defended the keep. Upon hearing that Emperor Leo IV had become severely ill, Admiral Himerios broke the fruitless siege and began the journey home, only to be ambushed off the coast of Chios in early 912 by his old friend, Leo of Tripoli. Himerios’ fleet was utterly destroyed, and all his gains he had made were reversed in the space of a year. Meanwhile, an Abbasid fleet led by Damien of Tarsus brought Cyprus to its knees after a four-month sacking spree[5] , while Crete, having survived its siege, remained an impregnable stronghold from which Muslim corsairs raided Eastern Roman coastlines with impunity. From the Bulgarian north, to the Anatolian frontier, and especially upon the Mediterranean sea, the gains Basil I had made to ensure the security of Byzantine borders had begun to falter. However, balance of power is ever a fickle thing, and the geopolitical situation would soon tilt back in the Roman’s favour. The Abbasid Caliphate, which had long been Eastern Romes’ greatest rival, had been slowly losing grip of their central authority since the late 800s. While they retained control of their heartland in Iraq, all their peripheral provinces were slowly gaining more and more regional autonomy. While most of these Muslim states paid lip service to the Caliph in Baghdad, by the mid 10th century, the Islamic world was nevertheless more fractured than it had ever been, a political climate ripe for exploitation. The turning of the tides truly began with the achievements of one John Kourkouas[6] , a brilliant Armenian general who fought under the service of the fifth Macedonian Emperor, Romanos I Lekapenos. Kourkouas’ martial prowess saw Roman armies push the Arabs out of much of Muslim controlled Armenia and conquer the Emirate of Melitene, which for a century had been a thorn in Constantinoples’ side. The capture of Melitene sent a shockwave throughout the Muslim world: for the first time in history, a major Muslim city had fallen and been reincorporated into the Byzantine Empire, with the powerless central Abbasid authority able to do little about it. Kourkouas’ later achievements saw him keep the burgeoning Hamdanid Dynasty of Aleppo at bay, occupy many cities in upper Mesopotamia, and recover the sacred Mandylion from the city of Edessa.[7] In 941, he even fended off a large-scale raid along the Black Sea coast led by Grand Prince Igor of the Kyivan Rus. However, in true Byzantine fashion, Kourkouas was not rewarded for his victories, but punished for his rising popularity by the scheming Imperial court. He was dismissed from service in 944, and soon after faded from the pages of history. With the end of Kourkouas story, we begin the tale of the Byzantiums’ next great conqueror. The one called Pale Death of the Saracens. In 912, a son was born into the Cappadocian noble family of Phokas and given the name Nikephoros, which means ‘bringer of victory’. The Phokas clan had long served as a pillar of the Byzantine military, so from a young age, Nikephoros sought to continue this family legacy. [8] He quickly gained the favour of Emperor Constantine VII, and by 945, had been appointed the military governor of the theme of Anatolikon. Ten years later, he was made Domestic of the Schools, and in 957 proved himself worthy of the position, seizing the strategic fortress town of Hadath from the Hamdanids.[9] 959 saw the ascension of Romanos II to the Eastern Roman throne, who preferred indulging his base pleasures over engaging in statecraft and was happy to leave military matters to his capable generals. To that end, he put Nikephoros in charge of all of Byzantiums’ eastern armies, and commanded him to accomplish what so many other Roman generals had failed to do before him.[10] It was time to finally retake Crete, so Nikephoros set his eyes upon the isle of Minos, and began to prepare for the battle that would make or break his career. It was an opportune time to strike, for the Arabs of Crete were vulnerable. With the decline of the Abbasid Caliphate, they had lost their most powerful benefactor. The nearby Hamdanids could not offer any support either[11] . Nevertheless, the Emirate of Crete would not be easy pickings. Its warriors were battle-hardened on both land and sea, and its main fortress of Chandax was a nigh impregnable redoubt. According to the contemporary chronicler Leo the Deacon, it was protected on one side by the sea, and on the other by tall battlements of ‘earth and goat and pig hair mixed together and compressed thoroughly, wide enough so that two wagons could easily make a circuit on top of the ramparts and pass each other’. These imposing walls were supplemented by two outspread, and thoroughly impassable moats. Nikephoros had a tough fight ahead of him. In early 960, the invasion armada began to assemble at a port south of Ephesus. It was a truly gigantic mass of soldiery, total estimates range between around 30,000 to 50,000 men during an era when the Kings of Europe would rarely muster armies more than a few thousand apiece. Present among this force were not just thematic soldiers of Armenian, Greek, Slavic and other origins, but also a contingent of Norse axe-wielders from Scandinavia. [12] They were transported down the Aegean sea aboard a fleet of 100 Dromon warships, 200 Khelandia light transport ships, and 308 supply vessels. [13] Nikephoros’ invasion force made landfall on northern Crete on July 13th, 960, disembarking in good order. Of the three Medieval Chroniclers who give us accounts of the conquest of Crete, two claim that the Roman army landed uncontested. Leo the Deacon, however, asserts that Nikephoros’ soldiery was confronted on the shore by a large force of Cretan Muslims. Undaunted, Phokas ordered his army to form up into three contingents, and charged the foe, likely with his heavy Cataphract cavalry. The Arab line sustained heavy casualties, and fled within the safety of the walls of Chandax, where the Emir Abd al-Aziz ibn Shu’ayb had prepared his garrison to mount a defense. Following this initial victory, Nikephoros marched upon the fortress. According to Leo the Deacon, the Cappadocian general attempted to immediately storm the walls, but was handily repulsed by the Arab invaders. Following this, he had his army surround Chandax and build a fortified stockade around its walls. He next ordered the navy to blockade the redoubt by sea, commanding them to destroy any Muslim ships that tried to leave its harbour. The Siege of Chandax had begun. While Byzantine catapults showered the Muslim battlements with a withering hail of boulders, Nikephoros instructed one Nikephoros Pastilas, strategos of the Thracesian Theme, to create an expeditionary battalion to scout the Cretan countryside and obtain supplies for the Imperial army. Pastilas’ men ravaged the hinterlands outside Chandax, indulging freely on the food and wine of the local villages, unaware that there were eyes upon them. Indeed, Pastilas' scouting party had been tailed the entire time by squadrons of Arab guerrillas, who had kept enshrouded amidst the island's hills. Seeing the Byzantine soldiers heavy with drink, the Muslims launched a devastating ambush upon them. Despite being inebriated, the Romans fought back viciously, until Pastilas’ was struck down by a hail of arrows. Only a few lucky survivors were able to escape back to the siege camp and inform the main Roman siege camp of the disaster. With both the resistance fighters in the hinterlands, and the garrison in the fort, Nikephoros was stuck fighting a two-front battle. Time and again, Arab skirmishers would stream out off the hills and make lightning strikes against the Roman stockade, at times coordinating with their comrades inside Chandax, who would launch simultaneous sorties outside of their walls in an attempt to pincer their besiegers. These raids were all inevitably pushed back, and in retaliation, Nikephoros unleashed his most battle-hardened warriors to strike back into the Cretan countryside. No more would he allow his soldiers to behave like hedonistic brigands, now, they meant business. Roman death squads put local communities to the torch, slaughtering women, children and old men, all in an attempt to bring the whole island to heel in a sea of fire and blood.[14] According to Leo the Deacon, at some point the disparate Arab guerrillas mustered together into a united force of some 40,000 men, entrenching themselves on a hill nearby the fortress in an attempt to make one last hail Mary to destroy the Byzantine siege camp. However, in one of their raids, some Byzantine soldiers managed to take some prisoners who informed Nikephoros of the existence of this relief force. Guided by some local native Christians, Nikephoros himself led a vanguard through the Cretan hills and quietly surrounded the Arab camp. Now it was his turn to strike from the shadows. He ordered the war trumpets to blare, and charged his unsuspecting foe, taking the Arabs completely by surprise and annihilating them. With the threat from the hinterlands eliminated, Nikephoros was now free to focus all his efforts on Chandax itself. With icy zeal, he ordered the heads of the slain Arabs mounted on catapults and launched into the fortress, so the defenders within would see their dead friends and despair. The Byzantine chief of artillery even had a live donkey launched over the walls, causing Nikephoros to jokingly quip about how it “soared like an Eagle”. All this accomplished, however, was to imbue the Muslims with rage, and when the Byzantines stormed the fortress once more, they were repelled yet again. Realizing that further direct attacks were futile, the Cappadocian general simply settled in for a long siege. Winter was approaching, and he now counted on starving out his foes. Completely blockaded from the outside world, Abd al-Aziz knew he and his warriors were living on borrowed time. The Cretan Emir sent pleas for help to the great rulers of Islam, and while the Fatimids of Egypt expressed a willingness to send troops, no physical aid actually materialized out of the deeply divided Muslim world. The winter of 960 was extremely hard on both the attacking and defending armies. The bitter cold was the worst it had been in years, and while the Muslims inside Chandax had inevitably begun to starve, the Byzantines had also run out of supplies. Morale among the Romans began to plummet[15] , until well-timed arrival of supplies from Constantinople in mid-February reinvigorated the attackers, much to the dismay of the men in the fortress, who had come to realize that the walls that protected them would soon become their tomb. In March of 961, Nikephoros reinvested the fight in earnest. Another barrage of Byzantine siege equipment rained hell upon Chandax, and yet, its walls did not fall. Undeterred, the Cappadocian general ordered a battering ram team to launch a frontal assault on the fortress’ main gates. This, however, was simply a distraction. Nikephoros’ real play was a contingent of sappers, who dug tunnels beneath the fortress battlements to undermine the integrity of their foundations. On March 7th, a section of the walls finally collapsed, and the full might of the Imperial Byzantine army poured in through the breach. The Muslims formed a line and made a brave final stand, but they were cut down nearly to a man. Men, women and children in the fortress were slaughtered indiscriminately. Chandax was in Roman hands, and with it, control over the whole island. After nearly 150 years, the Imperial eagle flew over Crete once more, and from then on, Arabic piracy ceased to be a serious threat to the Byzantines.[16] With that said, Nikephoros’ work was far from done. In Anatolia and Syria, the Hamdanids and other Islamic dynasties were still a big threat to the Roman interests. After the reconquest of Crete, the Arab piracy in the Aegean was limited, and the coastal citizens of the Byzantine Empire enjoyed an era of security not known in centuries.[1] On Crete, Nikephoros initiated an aggressive policy of re-Christianization and the local Arab population was exiled, enslaved, or forced to embrace the Cross. Many native Greeks who had converted to Islam were also forced to revert their allegiances back to the mother Church. [2] The triumphant Roman general sailed back to Constantinople with his army, where Leo the Deacon claims he enjoyed a classical Roman triumph in the grand Hippodrome.[3] But there was little time to bask in glory, as while Nikephoros had been preoccupied in Crete, battles had been raging along Byzantiums’ border with the Hamdanid Emirate of Syria. Since the mid 10th century, the war on the eastern frontier had been a fierce but indecisive stalemate: various border forts had changed hands multiple times, but major territorial shifts were few.[4] By 955, this conflict had become a duel of wits between two exceedingly capable leaders. Ruling from Syria was the wily and ambitious Hamdanid emir Sayf al-Dawla, known as the “Sword of the Dynasty”. His glowing legacy among Islamic historians paints him as an enlightened philosopher and daring warrior-King and under his rule, his capital of Aleppo became a center of learning and fine arts, with a skyline marked by palaces and aqueducts. From 945 onwards, al-Dawla’s campaigns on the frontier kept the Eastern Romans on the backfoot[5] , establishing him as the hero willing to defend the ummah from the infidels during a time when the Muslim world was divided in internal conflict. Meanwhile, holding the Byzantine line was Leo Phokas, the oft-forgotten brother of Nikephoros, who was every bit as martially capable as his older sibling. Leo had been dueling with the Emir al-Dawla in Cilicia with considerably little resources and manpower[6] , especially during 960, when the cream of the Byzantine army was off with his brother in Crete. It was during 960 that Sayf al-Dawla took advantage of Nikephoros’ Cretan campaign to launch an invasion into the Byzantine theme of Charsianon, which he was able to ravage with impunity. It is likely that al-Dawla’s army numbered a massive 30,000 warriors, and as a result, the severely outnumbered Leo was unable to face him head on. Nevertheless, years of being forced to defend with a weaker force had forged the younger Phokas into a master of asymmetrical warfare, and on November 8th, he set up an ambush at the chokepoint of the Adrassos valley[7] , where he fell upon al-Dawla’s much larger army while it was squeezing through the narrow mountain pass, utterly crushing his Muslim foe. While the crafty Emir managed to escape the battle[8] , his ability to launch major offensive campaigns was curtailed. So when Nikephoros’ arrived with direly needed reinforcements to support his brother in late 961, the balance of power was set to turn decisively in the Romans’ favour. Thus, in the spring of 962, with a large, motivated army, and capable lieutenants at his side, Nikephoros began his invasions of Islams’ Syrian heartland. His first targets were the Arab Princes of Cilicia, who held a tenuous allegiance to Emir al-Dawla in Aleppo. Ever since the Hamdanid Emir’s crushing defeat at the hands of Leo Phokas, the Cilicians' confidence in the authority of Aleppo had plummeted. This only made it easier for the Byzantine army to march in and quash them piecemeal. Anazarbus had capitulated by February of 962, while Tarsus managed to rally a paltry force of 4,000 men, only to be crushed by Nikephoros’ far superior host. It was around this time that a certain John Tzimiskes was rapidly gaining a reputation for military brilliance as a general under Phokas’ command. This Armenian warrior was the maternal nephew of Nikephoros, and a descendant of the great John Kourkouas. During his uncles’ career, Tzimiskes would play a big role on the battlefield, and a huge one amidst the schemers of the Imperial court. Throughout Cilicia, Leo, Nikephoros, and Tzimiskes leveled Muslim forts, tore down town walls, and scoured the land. Nikephoros aim was to create a ‘wedge of devastated territory’ between Cilicia and Syria, thereby opening the path to the crown jewel of Syria itself, the Hamdanid capital of Aleppo. For all his cleverness, Emir al-Dawla appears to have fallen right into Nikephoros’ trap. Rather than bolstering the defenses of his capital, he departed for Cilicia to personally re-establish control of the region in the aftermath of Phokas’ devastation. In all fairness, it was reasonable for him to expect that the Byzantines had no plans to attack Aleppo. Winter was approaching, and the Emir was probably deep in peace talks with Nikephoros at the time. But this illusion of safety was shattered when in November, Byzantine forces smashed past the walls of Manbij, capturing the cousin of Emir Al-Dawla in the process. The last major city on the path to the Hamdanid capital had fallen. There could be no mistaking it now, the battle for Aleppo was about to begin.[9] From Manbij, the Byzantine force marched south, split between two columns led by Nikephoros and John Tzimiskes respectively. Although sources on the composition of this army are thin, we can assume that, much like the host that took Chandax, it was composed of soldiers from across the Medieval Roman Empire, with Greek Thematic troops likely marching alongside Slavic, Armenian and Scandinavian soldiers. The gulf in numbers between the opposing forces was considerable, Arab sources claim the Byzantines marched with 70,000 men, while Emir Al-Dawla, hastily rushing back to his capital to build a defense, could barely muster a measly 4,000. These numbers are probably dramatized, but we must remember that Hamdanid military power had been severely crippled by Leo Phokas at Adrassos just two years earlier, and most of Al-Dawla’s forces were probably improvised civilian militias rather than professional soldiers, so it makes sense that only a paltry sum of fighting men could be mustered to defend the Hamdanid capital. The Hamdanid response to the Roman advance was uncoordinated to say the least. As the Byzantine march on the city had been entirely unexpected, Aleppo’s defenses were probably ill-prepared to weather a long siege. Thus, rather than bunkering down in his capital, Emir Al-Dawla split his already small force into two contingents. Taking around 1,000 of his men, he deployed himself to the town of Azzaz, just north of Aleppo to form a vanguard, only to, for one reason or another, retreat back to Aleppo before he had engaged his enemy. Meanwhile, Al-Dawla’s lieutenant, Naja al-Kasaki, had taken the remaining 3,000 warriors to Antioch, where he intended to force an engagement with the Byzantines. However, when no army came to meet him, he circled back to Azzaz, just in time to encounter John Tzimiskes’ column of the Byzantine army. The Armenian general handily bested the smaller Arab force in open battle, but this skirmish was probably not particularly decisive, as it appears that Naja managed to retreat back towards Aleppo with most of his army intact. After these initial maneuvers, Tzimiskes rejoined Nikephoros, and together they brought the full brunt of the Roman army upon the walls of Aleppo. Lionhearted even in the face of overwhelming odds, Sayf Al-Dawla seems to have sallied his 1,000 or so men out of the city to meet the Byzantine horde. We can imagine that a fierce melee likely ensued, but direly outnumbered and outgunned, Al-Dawla’s forces were routed, and he was forced to flee east. Sources say he was doggedly pursued by Tzimiskes, but given that there is no record of his capture, he probably escaped. Meanwhile, it seems that Najas’ forces realized the hopelessness of their situation, and gave up the fight. With their leaders having abandoned them, the remaining authorities in Aleppo approached Nikephoros with overtures for a peaceful surrender. It seems that at first, the Domestikos was inclined to negotiate. Talks started well, but with a massive army at its doorstep, the public order in Aleppo began to collapse, perhaps in the form of panic-induced riots[10] . Ever opportunistic, Nikephoros took advantage of this chaos to abandon peace-talks and storm the city walls, breaching them on December 24th.[11] The contest for Aleppo was now functionally over, and the entire city was under Roman control, with one exception. The elevated citadel at the heart of the city held out against the invaders, defended by a contingent of Daylamites, an Iranian people known for being prolific mercenaries and fierce warriors. Nikephoros allowed his men to have their way with the city and its citizens, and a brutal sack ensued. The domestikos did not attempt to permanently occupy the city, seeing as its citadel was still unconquered, and his army, inundated with loot, was anxious to go home to enjoy their spoils. After seven days of carnage, Imperial forces tore down the city walls and finally left, taking with them mountains of gold and silver, over 10,000 enslaved Aleppines, and a relic of the holy apostle St. John the Baptist. [12] In the wake of their departure, a thoroughly thrashed Emir Al-Dawla was able to return to Aleppo and attempt to rebuild the smoldering remains. The Hamdanid capital was still in his hands, but the power and prestige of his Emirate were permanently crippled. The Sack of Aleppo was a blow to the psyche of the Muslim world and when word spread of its scouring at Christian hands, panicked riots erupted in Mosul and Baghdad, while calls for an organized Jihad erupted from Egypt to Iran. But the Islamic realms were still hampered by division, and any aid that arrived to support the Hamdanid cause came too little, too late. Nikephoros returned to Constantinople in spring to enjoy yet another triumph, but once more had little time to bask in the adoration of the masses, as a new crisis had arisen. On the 15th of March, 963, Emperor Romanos II had passed away at the age of 24, leaving behind his five-year-old son, Basil II, as his principal heir. [13] The period immediately following the death of a Byzantine Emperor was always an extremely tenuous time defined by intrigue and assassinations. Successful commanders like Nikephoros were particularly vulnerable during these interregnums, as their influence among both nobles and commoners was immense. For anyone seeking control over the throne, it was often easier to have these highly popular generals ‘disposed of’, rather than risk them becoming a political rival. Currently, the most powerful statesman in Constantinople was a shrewd and pragmatic Eunuch named Joseph Bringas, who had been the de facto power behind the throne during the reign of the late Emperor.[14] Bringas’ chief goal was now to establish control over the child-Emperor Basil II. As expected, he immediately began to see Nikephoros as a threat, fearing the influence of the man whom the people honoured with chants of “victor.” To get this troublesome war hero out of his way, Bringas reappointed Nikephoros as commander-in-chief of Byzantium’s eastern armies, and made him swear an oath that he would not rebel against Basil II, the subtext being that he would also not challenge the authority of Bringas. Nikephoros was then booted back to the east, out of sight and out of mind. However, this move backfired spectacularly, as Nikephoros was now surrounded by loyal soldiers who pleaded with him to make a claim on the Imperial purple. On July 2nd, with a certain John Tzsimkes as his main backer, the army declared Nikephoros to be their Basileus and marched back to Constantinople to claim his throne. Thrown into a panic, Bringas locked down the city and declared Nikephoros a public enemy[15] , but the Cappadocian general was more popular than the Eunuch, and riots quickly broke out in the streets and alleys in support of the beloved war hero[16] . Eventually, Bringas was forced to flee the city, and on August 16th, Nikephoros was acclaimed co-Emperor of the Romans, and protector of the young Basil II, who would remain Junior Basileus under Nikephoros’ guidance. Nikephoros spent a year in Constantinople putting the Empires’ domestic affairs in order. Those who had been loyal to him were awarded high positions: his brother Leo was made the Imperial master of coin, while John Tzimiskes was given Nikephoros’ old position of military commander-in-chief. Most importantly, Nikephoros married Theophano, the widow of the late Emperor Romanos II, tethering him to the family tree of the Imperial Macedonian dynasty, which lent his reign legitimacy. Nikephoros was still a general at heart, and spent most of his Imperial tenure away from his palace and inside military encampments. In the spring of 964, he had returned to the eastern front. Easy pickings awaited him, the region was still largely devastated from his campaigns two years earlier, while Emir Sayf Al-Dawla held only a shadow of his former power, and was now faced with near constant internal rebellions. [17] At the head of 40,000 men, Nikephoros, Leo Phokas and Tzimiskes steamrolled through an already weakened Cilicia and by the end of 965, the region had been firmly annexed into the Roman Empire. That same year, the Emperor dispatched the patrician Niketas Chalkoutzes to drive the Islamic presence out of Cyprus, which the latter did with ease. Nikephoros also deployed a significant amount of military manpower to fuel campaigns on his Empires’ western frontier, but his European campaigns were significantly less successful, as a massive army sent to reclaim the island of Sicily from the Fatimid Caliphate was crushed in a naval battle in the strait of Messina in early 965. Over the next decades, the Fatimids would establish themselves as the Roman Empire’s next principal Muslim rival. The Fatimids were not the only western enemy Nikephoros had to contend with, for tensions were also bubbling with the Byzantines’ fellow Christians in the west. From 968 onwards, skirmishes erupted between the Byzantines and the German Emperor Otto I across Italy. These conflicts ended inconclusively, but resulted in the growing rift between Latin and Greek Christendom. Back in the east, Nikephoros had begun to eye another prize: Antioch. This city had been under Islamic rule since the rise of the first Caliphate over 300 years earlier, but before that it had been one of the five most important Christian bishoprics in the Roman Empire, alongside Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem and Alexandria. Needless to say, reconquering this historic place would be a fine feather in Nikephoros’ cap. It was a good time to strike too, Sayf al-Dawla, long the wily antagonist of the Byzantine story, had finally succumbed to disease in 967, leaving his already crippled Emirate more vulnerable than ever. After taking a detour to annex some Armenian cities in the east[18] , the Emperor marched south in 968, carving a path of destruction along the forts and cities of the Levantine coast[19] with the intention of isolating Antioch from any allies that might come to its aid. Given Antioch’s symbolic importance to the Romans, Nikephoros wanted as little damage done to it as possible. To that end, he had a fort constructed in the city’s hinterlands, and placed it under the command of one Michael Bourtzes, who was ordered to starve out the Antiochenes through a blockade, and explicitly told not to take the city by force. After this, Nikephoros returned to Constantinople. Bourtzes, however, was an eager commander in search of glory and reputation. Supposedly, when a defector named Aulax offered to show him a secret passage into the city, he leapt at the opportunity, breaching Antioch’s defenses, before storming and capturing the city. No doubt the young general thought this would earn him the praise of the Emperor, but nothing could be further from the truth. Nikephoros was furious, publicly denouncing Bourtzes and removing from his generalship. In disciplining his rogue general, Nikephoros had miscalculated. Rather than affirm the sanctity of his Imperial commands, he made an enemy for life. Bourtzes was only one man, but he was a symptom of the Emperor’s declining popularity. Nikephoros may have been a brilliant general, but this did not necessarily make him a capable head-of-state, and his domestic policies soon began alienating him from many groups he could not afford to alienate. Among these included the Church, whose growing power over state-land he had tried to curtail by forbidding them to open new monasteries or receiving land donations from indulgence-seeking nobles.[20] The soldier-Emperor was also beginning to lose the favour of the commoners. As a career general, Nikephoros seemed to always give preferential treatment to his soldiers, and was willing to turn a blind eye when they extorted Byzantine citizens for material gain. [21] Additionally, the peasantry had spent the last few years being taxed dry to fund the endless wars. The list of Emperors’ powerful enemies continued to grow. Among them was his own wife, Theophano, with whom his relationship had been distinctly lacking in marital bliss. Perhaps his greatest falling out came with the very man who had proclaimed him Emperor, John Tzimiskes. Sources are not clear on why, but at some point, Tzimiskes had run afoul of Nikephoros, and the Emperor had put the decorated Armenian general on house-arrest. Although this imprisonment was reversed at the pleading of the Empress[22] , it was too late: Nikephoros had turned his most faithful ally into a bitter enemy. On the 11th of December, 969, Nikephoros II Phokas retired to his Imperial bedchambers as he did every night, but all was not normal. That night, his wife Theophano had left the doors to his rooms unlocked and unguarded, allowing a shadowy figure to sneak inside with knife in hand. With one swift stroke, the general-turned-Emperor who had lived his life on the battlefield, died in his bed. The murderer was none other than John Tzmiskes, and with the blood of his former friend and ally on his hands, it would be him who would replace Nikephoros as the Basileus of the Roman Empire. Nikephoros’ corpse was still warm when men loyal to Tzmiskes paraded out onto Constantinoples’ streets, declaring that their lord was the new Basileus. Few challenged this, for Nikephoros had become an unpopular monarch in the final years of his reign.[1] Tzimiskes now had to cut a deal with the Holy Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, in whose power it lay to give him a formal coronation. The Patriarch firstly demanded that the restrictions Nikephoros had levied against the Church were lifted, and second, that Nikephoros’ murderers were punished. Since Tzimiskes obviously couldn’t punish himself, he scapegoated his act of regicide on the Nikephoros’ widow, Theophano. She had been instrumental in the plot to murder her husband, and had even allegedly been Tzimiskes’ lover, but she had outgrown her usefulness, so Tzimiskes had her exiled to a monastery.[2] In her place, he legitimized his reign by marrying the sister of former Emperor Romanos II Theodora. John I Tzimiskes was formally crowned Emperor on Christmas day of 969, two weeks after the murder of his predecessor. He succeeded Nikephoros as the guardian of the 11-year-old junior Emperor, Basil II, who was still the true heir of the ruling Macedonian bloodline. As such, Tzimiskes was essentially a regent, destined to run the show only until Basil came of age. Tzimiskes’ reign got off to a productive start. The Hamdanids in Aleppo had been crippled ever since Byzantine forces had sacked their capital back in 962, so a Eunuch General named Petros was assigned to finish what Phokas had started. He laid siege to Aleppo, capturing it by January of 970, and forcing it to become a tributary vassal to the Eastern Roman Empire. It seemed as if for the first time in centuries, the Romans were the primary hegemons of Syria once more. But there would be no time for peace, for, in the distant north, a new foe was about to emerge. It is here that we set the stage for Emperor Tzimiskes’ greatest challenge, his duel with the mighty Prince Sviatoslav of Kyivan Rus. Let us first jump back in time to discuss the lead-up to this upcoming conflict. In 927 the Bulgarian Prince Simeon had finished thrashing the Byzantines in a 13-year-war. As a result, Constantinople was forced to become a tributary to Bulgaria, but this changed in 966, when a Bulgarian embassy arrived in Constantinople to receive the agreed-upon tribute. The then Emperor Nikephoros Phokas, emboldened by his many military victories, had the emissaries beaten up and promptly returned to Tsar Peter. There could be no mistaking it, war was on. But Nikephoros could not afford to step fully into the ring with the Bulgarians just yet, as the majority of his troops were still stationed on the Syrian frontier. So, he resorted to what Byzantine Emperors so often did: outsourcing. Stretching out across the vast steppes, forests and riverlands north of Bulgaria was the Kyivan Rus, the medieval precursor of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. The state was ruled by the Rurikid dynasty, which ostensibly descended from the Viking adventurers that had united the East Slavic tribes under their banner in the 9th century AD. As a result, Kyivan Rus was a hodgepodge of many cultures, all of whom adhered to a panoply of pagan faiths. At the time of Nikephoros’ reign, the Kyivan realm was ruled by the Grand Prince Sviatoslav, one of medieval history’s most vicious characters. Known as the ‘Snow Leopard’, Sviatoslav preferred to leave the governance of his massive realm to his mother, so he could spend all his time perpetually ravaging foreign lands.[3] By 965, the bloodthirsty Prince had all but annihilated the Khazar Khaganate, a trade Empire that had been the hegemons of Central Asia for centuries. [4] Before long, Sviatoslav’s marauding habits took him to the gates of Chersonesus, a Byzantine outpost in the Crimea. Originally intending to sack the city, the Snow Leopard was no doubt surprised when the gates opened and he was greeted by a Roman ambassador who presented him with an offer. Sviatoslav would be paid 1500 pounds of gold, and in return, he was to break his assault on Byzantine lands and take his warband to invade Bulgaria instead, thereby crippling the Tsars’ ability to make war on Eastern Rome. Sviatoslav agreed instantly, and in August of 967, the Rus Prince thundered into northeastern Bulgaria, taking the region of Dobruja with ease[5] , all while more and more enterprising warriors flocked to him. Soon, his army numbered nearly 60,000. Tsar Peter was taken completely off guard and scrambled to meet Sviatoslav in a massive battle outside the Fortress of Dorostolon. Outnumbered two to one, the Tsar’s army was crushed. Shortly after this defeat, Peter suffered a stroke and abdicated the throne to retire to a monastery, leaving Bulgaria leaderless at a critical time. The Bulgarians caught some reprieve when Sviatoslav broke off his invasion due to a horde of renegade Pechenegs tribes assaulting his capital of Kyiv,[6] forcing him to hurry back to mount a defense. In the meantime, Emperor Nikephoros swooped in to install Peter’s son, Tsar Boris II, to the Bulgarian throne, and secure an alliance with Bulgaria that decidedly favoured the Romans. [7] This, however, was only temporary, as the Snow Leopard promptly crushed the Pechenegs outside Kyiv, and returned to Bulgaria in 969 to finish what he started. His fierce warriors cut through Tsar Boris’s forces outside Pereyaslavets and captured the city. The Tsar was forced to capitulate, turning himself over to Sviatoslav and surrendering his country to him. Nikephoros’ bargain had backfired spectacularly. The Emperor had assumed Sviatoslav was a mindless barbarian who would just commit a few raids before returning to his homeland with the plunder. But now it was apparent that the Grand Prince’s intentions were instead to set up a permanent state in Bulgaria. This was made apparent when Sviatoslav forbade his men from looting in his newly acquired lands and shrewdly allowed Tsar Boris to nominally keep his title and throne as a puppet monarch to prevent mass uprisings from amongst the Bulgarian boyars. Instead of establishing hegemony over Bulgaria as he had planned, Nikephoros had inadvertently handed it to a cunning, violent, and unpredictable pagan warlord. To make matters worse, everything indicated that Sviatoslav was not satisfied with his conquests, and would soon be setting his sights on Byzantine land. Nikephoros would not live to see the consequences of his actions, as he was assassinated by the year’s end. It is here our story finally circles back to John Tzimiskes, who upon ascending to the Roman throne in late 969, found himself inheriting the problem created by the man he had murdered. In 970AD, Sviatoslav crossed into Byzantine Thrace with a force that probably numbered about 60,000 strong. It was a massive, pan-ethnic force, consisting of Viking warriors, Slavs, Pecheneg Horse-Archers, Hungarians, and Bulgarians [8] who had sworn loyalty to Sviatoslav after his conquest of their country. The Rus plundered Thrace unimpeded, sacking the city of Philippopolis and marauding their way dangerously close to Constantinople itself. Emperor Tzimiskes found himself in a tough position, most of his forces were still stationed around Antioch and Aleppo, while he himself appears to have been unable to leave the capital, still dealing with internal unrest after his rocky ascension to the throne. But the Armenian still had some resources at his disposal, he was able to muster a new force of some 12,000 soldiers, all experienced and battle-hardened. 4,000 of them belonged to a newly created unit called the Athanatoi, who Leo the Deacon described as heavy shock cavalry, “sheathed in armour and adorned in gold.” The Emperor put this army in the charge of his most trusted general, Bardas Skleros. Skleros marched west and bivouacked his troops outside the city of Arcadiopolis. From there, he had military outposts set up across a wide perimeter around his position, and sent Slavic-speaking spies dressed in plain Bulgarian clothing into Rus-held territory, where they observed the Rus’ armies' habits, tactics, and numbers. Eventually, Sviatoslav was informed of the Imperial army’s presence, and marched half his army, about 30,000 men, to Arcadiopolis. Seeing the Rus approach, the Byzantine soldiers positioned on the perimeter rapidly retreated back to rejoin the main army. The warriors of the Rus interpreted this ordered withdrawal to mean that the Byzantines were fleeing from them in terror, emboldening them significantly. Sviatoslav had his forces set up camp somewhere on the outskirts of Arcadiopolis. Here, Byzantine historian John Skylitzes claims that the invading army had become so overconfident that rather than fortifying their position, they spent their time aimlessly pillaging the countryside and drinking copiously. Meanwhile, Skleros advanced towards the Rus camp, on a path that seems to have been bookended by thick shrubs and woodlands. The Byzantine general knew he was outnumbered three to one, and therefore couldn’t defeat Sviatoslav in an open fight, so he divided his army into three contingents, two of which would conceal themselves on either side of the path, and one that he would command personally. At the head of only around 3000 men, Skleros’ horsemen fearlessly charged towards the Rus camp, smashing into the first body of enemy warriors they could find, which happened to be the Pechenegs. While the rest of Sviatoslav’s massive army scrambled to mobilize, Skleros’ imperial cavalry fought a fierce melee with the Pechenegs, at times nearly being overwhelmed, but always managing to hold their ranks. At their breaking point, Skleros ordered an expertly coordinated feigned retreat back down the wooded path. The Pechenegs pursued, followed closely by a cavalcade of Hungarians who had managed to bear down on the fighting. Now completely overextended and separated from the main Rus army, Skleros blew his war trumpet, and the rest of his army poured out of their hiding spot in the woods, crashing into the Pechenegs and Hungarians from both sides. Surrounded and overwhelmed, the Turks and Magyars put up a hard fight but were inevitably overwhelmed, and those who were not cut down were routed. It was only now that the rest of Sviatoslav’s host had rallied themselves and marched out the camp to meet their foe, but when they saw their allies fleeing in a panic towards them, morale plummeted. Skleros saw the jugular exposed, and ordered a wholesale charge into the enemy army. The full brunt of the Imperial army threw themselves upon the Bulgars and East Slavs, and although they were outnumbered significantly, the iron discipline of the Eastern Romans was able to win the day, massacring many of Sviatoslav’s troops, and routing the rest of them off the field. The battle of Arcadiopolis was a victory for the Byzantines, but not a decisive one. Sviatoslav was still alive, and most of his army was still intact. Although Skleros now had the upper hand, he was unable to capitalize on this success and drive the Rus out of the Empire for good, because back home, domestic troubles were brewing. Emperor Tzimiskes’ old ghosts had come back to haunt him. Nikephoros may have been dead, but his kin, the Phokas clan, was very much alive and ready to reclaim the Imperial throne that in their eyes had been treacherously taken from them when Nikephoros was assassinated. Sometime in spring of 970, Roman troops stationed out in Caesarea had declared one Bardas Phokas, nephew of the late Nikephoros, to be the rightful Emperor.[9] Tzimiskes acted quickly, and immediately had Bardas’ father, Leo Phokas, arrested and confined to the isle of Lesbos. This measure, however, did not deter Bardas, who began marching on Constantinople.[10] With civil war imminent, Tzimiskes had no choice but to pull his best general away from the Rus front, and send him to Dorylaeum to face off against the usurper. Skleros’ duel with Bardas Phokas would prove anticlimactic. It turned out that a few well-placed bribes were all it took to get most of the rebellious general’s army to abandon him. Now powerless, Bardas eventually surrendered to Emperor Tzimiskes, who forced him to become a priest and sent him to a monastery on the isle of Chios. With no other claimants threatening his imperial legitimacy, Tzimiskes was able to return his focus to Sviatoslav and his army, which he set to doing almost immediately. While the Byzantines were busy with their civil war, Sviatoslav had rallied his routed warriors and gotten back to raiding and pillaging the now undefended environs of Thrace. However, the Snow Leopard’s position was not as strong as it had been the year before. The Hungarians and Pechenegs had mostly deserted him, wanting to return home with the booty they’d pillaged, and unwilling to risk being humiliated again as they had been at Arcadiopolis. So, in the winter of 970, Sviatoslav decided to withdraw his army back to his Bulgarian territories to recuperate. Meanwhile, Tzimiskes was finally able to divert the majority of the Empires’ forces westwards, rallying some 32,000 men in southern Thrace in preparation of a decisive offensive against his Rus foe. Additionally, a massive fleet of 300 ships was readied and sailed down the Danube. This time, the Emperor threw himself directly into the fray, putting himself at the head of a 9,000 man vanguard, and riding north through the passes of the Balkan mountains, which Sviatoslav had made the critical mistake of leaving undefended. On Holy Thursday of 971, Tzimiskes had reached Preslav, the capital of the Bulgarian Empire. The local Rus commander Svenkel was taken entirely by surprise, and hastily arranged a force to meet the Armenian in battle outside the city, but was crushed under the thundering hooves of the Athanatoi elites. The next day, the rest of the Imperial army had joined the victorious vanguard, and before long, the city fell. [11] In the ensuing chaos, Byzantine forces were able to capture Tsar Boris II and his family. Tzimiskes received Boris with due honours, telling the puppet-Tsar that he was here to free Bulgaria from the barbaric clutches of Sviatoslav. But this was not the truth, and it later became evident that the Romans had not ridden all this way just to magnanimously liberate their old rivals. In the meantime, Sviatoslav had taken his army and retreated to the fortress of Dorostolon on the Danube river. Once Tzimiskes heard the word of this, he engaged in pursuit. The Romans encountered almost no resistance on their march, as Bulgarian towns and fortresses that had formerly sworn allegiance to Sviatoslav now switched their loyalties to the Byzantines. This enraged the Kyivan Prince, who retaliated against this perceived betrayal by rounding up every Bulgarian boyar within reach of Dorostolon, and ordering some 300 of them executed. Before long, the Roman army had reached Dorostolon, and set up camp outside the fortress. Upon seeing his enemy approach, Sviatoslav sallied his 30,000 strong army outside the walls, where they took the formation of a long, dense shield wall. Tzimiskes decided to answer the Snow Leopard’s challenge to a pitched battle, and arrayed his troops opposite to the Rus, with infantry in the front, archers behind, and heavy cavalry on the wings. The two lines met in a titanic crash, and fought themselves into a bloody deadlock, Rus ferocity matching Byzantine discipline blow for blow. The stalemate was only broken when Tzimiskes deployed his heavy cavalry, which smashed into the Rus flanks to devastating effect, forcing them to retreat back into their fortress. For Tzimiskes, it was a good start, and his situation only improved when the Imperial Byzantine fleet arrived on the Danube-facing side of the fortress a few days later. This no doubt struck fear into the hearts of the Rus- the oldest of whom would likely remember how the fleet of Sviatoslav’s father, Igor, had been bathed in a horrible inferno of Greek Fire after his attempt to besiege Constantinople 30 years earlier. Now unable to escape by sea, Sviatoslav only had two options left: surrender, or fight. The following morning, Byzantine troops tried to surmount the walls at varying points, but were repulsed by a hail of arrows and stones. That same evening, some Rus warriors were sent a mounted detachment to harry the Roman camp but were easily repulsed by the Byzantine cavalry. It seems that the Rus were poor riders, and since the Pecheneg horse-archers had deserted him, Sviatoslav had no cavalry he could truly rely on. The next day, the Snow Leopard once more led his troops out into the field to face the Romans in open battle, but this engagement ended much like the first- right down to Tzimiskes’ heavy cavalry being the deciding factor. The Rus were forced to retreat back behind their walls once more. By now, the Byzantines had set up their siege weapons, and began subjecting Dorostolon with a hellish shower of boulders and missiles. On several occasions, the Rus sent out stealth parties to try and burn down these machines, but largely to no avail. [12] The situation was not looking good for Sviatoslav, and when he asked his top warriors for counsel, they advised him to enter negotiations with Tzimiskes. The Snow Leopard is said to have spat at this notion, remarking that the Rus were not accustomed to giving in, but would rather die in battle and go to Valhalla. They were, after all, the descendants of Vikings. On Friday, July 24th, the Grand Prince of Kyiv arrayed his warriors outside the city wall for the final time, forming a tight phalanx. Eagerly answering the bell, Tzimiskes drew up his own lines, and charged into the Rus lines for one final showdown. Fighting was fierce, and Sviatoslav had learned from his previous mistakes, stationing archers on his wings to shoot at flanking Byzantine cavalrymen, thinning out their lines and dulling the impact of their charges. The bloody contest lasted for hours, and the tide of battle seemed to be creeping slowly in the Rus’ favour.[13] It is here that the medieval Byzantine chroniclers claim that Emperor Tzimiskes charged into the melee with his elite bodyguard cavalry at his side. This was enough to bolster the Romans’ morale, and stabilize their line. The stories also claim that it is at this critical moment that a thunderstorm erupted in the skies above Dorostolon, one that the Rus warriors were unfortunately downwind of. With the wind blowing directly into their eyes, Sviatoslav’s warriors began to falter, and flee back into Dorostolon. The battle then turned into a massacre, and atop the pile of what Byzantine sources claim were 15,000 dead Rus, the Romans were victorious. With his ranks greatly depleted, Sviatoslav was now left with no choice but to negotiate terms of surrender. On the 25th of July, he met with Emperor Tzimiskes on the banks of the Danube, [14] where he conceded defeat. He offered to evacuate the Balkans, cease all raids on Byzantine territory, and live in peace with the Empire. Tzimiskes agreed to these terms, permitted the Rus to leave unmolested, and gifted them food and supplies for their journey home. As it turned out, Sviatoslav would never actually make it back to Kyiv. Fearing that their newly forged truce would not hold, Tzimiskes had bribed the Pecheneg Khan, Kurya, to turn on the Snow Leopard. While crossing the isle of Khortitsa, Sviatoslav was beset upon by a hail of Turkic arrows. Thus ended the life of medieval Rus’ greatest conqueror, whose head was allegedly turned into a drinking vessel for the Pecheneg Khan. In the meantime, Emperor Tzimiskes had returned to Constantinople, where he celebrated a classical Roman triumph. With the Bulgarian heartland under Byzantine military control, and the Bulgarian Imperial family in his captivity, Tzimiskes saw no need to restore the borders of the realm that for so long had terrorized the Romans’ northern frontier. So, during the triumphal celebrations, he had Boris II ritually stripped of his Imperial raiments. The symbolism was clear: the Tsardom was no more, and Bulgaria was officially annexed into the Byzantine State. For the first time in nearly 300 years, the Roman Empire was finally in control of its ancient lower Danubian territories once more. A consummate soldier, Emperor Tzimiskes was never one to rest on his laurels- in this case literally. No sooner had his Slavic foes been quashed, did he turn his attention onto Byzantium’s other traditional foe: the nations of Islam. By the year 972, Eastern Rome’s chief Islamic foe had become the North African Fatimids, who they had in fact already faced once, during Nikephoros’ ill-fated Sicilian campaign in 965. The Fatimids had always been on the periphery of Roman affairs, but all this had changed in 969: as while Byzantium was consolidating its rule over Syria, the Caliph of Shi’a Islam conquered Egypt, the breadbasket of the Mediterranean.[15] Much of the Levant came under Fatimid control shortly after, putting them right on the Byzantine border, and as one might expect, border relations would not be peaceful. [16] In October of 970, the Fatimid general who had conquered Egypt, Jawhar, launched a holy war upon the Byzantines, citing the necessity to reclaim the formerly Muslim lands recently conquered by them. He dispatched a force to besiege the holy city of Antioch. However, this offensive was repulsed by one of the Emperor’s Eunuchs, Nikolaos. Consequently, once Tzimiskes’ arrived on the eastern front sometime in 972, he readied himself for a decisive campaign against the Fatimids. Unfortunately, the Armenian Emperor’s middle eastern campaigns aren’t nearly as well documented as his wars against the Rus. We know that for the next three years, Tzimiskes took his armies on a ‘grand tour’ across the Islamic heartland, ravaging much of Mesopotamia, and taking the cities of Homs, Baalbek, Damascus, Tiberias, Nazareth, Caesarea, Sidon, Beirut, Byblos, and Tripoli. But these conquests seemed to be ephemeral, as none of these cities appear to have been permanently incorporated into the Empire. The Emperor’s campaigns were put to a screeching halt in the winter of 975, when he suddenly grew ill. As sickness gripped him, the legendary warrior-King found himself increasingly feeble, and barely able to breathe. On January the 11th, 976, John I Tzimiskes passed away at the age of 51. At the time of Tzimiskes’ death, Eastern Rome was an Empire with exceedingly strong vital signs, as territorial gains in Northern Syria and Eastern Bulgaria had restored it to its traditional pedestal as the juggernaut of the Mediterranean and the Balkans. Indeed, the reigns of the soldier-Emperors Nikephoros Phokas and John Tzimiskes had been instrumental in revitalizing a once-declining Byzantium, but with both rulers gone, powerful foes loomed over heirs of the classical world. In the Islamic south, the ever-ambitious Fatimids were still flush from their recent expansions, and remained intent on driving the Rum infidels out of their ill-gotten Syrian gains. Deep in Anatolia, the Phokas clan had still not forgiven the death of Nikephoros, and were ready to erupt the nation into civil war once more. Finally, along the banks of the mighty upper Danube, a foe thought vanquished would arise once more, as one Tsar Samuil of a restored Empire of Bulgaria would rise. Fate is a fickle thing, and it seemed that if a strong Emperor did not take the throne, all the gains made by Nikephoros and Tzimiskes would evaporate like seafoam. Luckily, that Emperor would come, in the form of a boy-turned-man who up until recently, has lurked in the shadows of our story. In 976AD, Basil II of the Imperial Macedonian Dynasty ascended as the senior Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire. The youth had spent his entire childhood under the stifling control of eunuchs and Courtiersand overshadowed by his nominal guardian Emperors: Nikephoros and John Tzimiskes. Now, at 18 years old and finally a man, Basil no doubt was eager to finally be firmly behind the helm. [1] Nonetheless, the former puppet had not yet cut all his strings. One remained: his great uncle, Basil Lekapenos. This Eunuch, known to his people as "Nothos", the bastard, had long been one of the most powerful politicians in the Byzantine Empire,[2] and spent the reigns of Nikephoros and Tzimiskes amassing land, wealth, and connections. Thus, when Basil took the throne, Lekapenos was in a position of considerable power over him.[3] So, the young heir to the Macedonian Dynasty had no choice but to let the eunuch effectively run the Empire on his behalf, at least for now. It was an inauspicious beginning, made even more so when the most unpleasant of Byzantine traditions reared its ugly head, civil war. This time, its arbiter was Bardas Skleros, the honoured victor of the Battle of Arcadiopolis. An exceedingly capable general, Skleros had been granted Domestikos of Romes’ eastern armies under Tzimiskes’ reign. When the Armenian Emperor had died, he soon began to wonder why some beardless boy and his Eunuch master should be Imperator over himself, a battle-hardened and celebrated general. Thus, only a few months into Basil’s reign, Skleros’ troops declared him Emperor, and open rebellion began. [4] To bolster his forces, Skleros negotiated a marriage alliance with an unlikely ally: Abu Taghlib, the Hamdanid Prince of Mosul[5] , who sent him a corp of Arab cavalry to help his cause. His numbers swelling, Skleros then marched across Anatolia, where most of the local military governors joined him. Thus, in an act of desperation, the Lekapenos pulled a certain ex-rebel named Bardas Phokas out of monastic exile and made him Domestikos of the West, charging him with quashing the rebels. Trusting Bardas was a gamble: after all, he had treacherously risen up against Emperor Tzimiskes only seven years ago, but the Phokas Clan still commanded great loyalties in central Anatolia, the same region where the core of Skleros’ supporters was based. Lekapenos hoped that having the Phokades back on the Imperial side would encourage the rebels’ forces to defect from the enemy. This seemed to work, and a sizable number of soldiers and generals in Skleros’ camp seem to have changed sides and joined Phokas’ anti-insurrectionist army. [6] However, this did not seem to have handicapped Skleros too badly, as he was evidently able to defeat Phokas in June of 978 at Pankaleia. Phokas was then forced to retreat eastward, with Skleros hot on his heels. The loyalist domestikos soon sought asylum in the territory of his long-time ally David III, the Georgian prince of Tao. Not only did Prince David shelter Phokas’ battered army, but he also reinforced it with as many as 12,000 Georgian cavalry. [7] Reinvigorated, Phokas marched back into Roman territory to confront his foe once more. He and Skleros clashed at Charsianon in spring of 979, where some Byzantine sources claim the two leaders fought in single combat. In this dramatic accounting, Phokas, who apparently towered over Skleros, managed to inflict a serious head-wound upon the pretender-rebel, causing his troops to assume Skleros had been killed, and flee the field in a demoralized rout. In point of fact, Bardas Skleros had actually survived his wounds, and somehow managed to flee east and seek asylum with his Muslim allies. However, his rebellion was effectively over, and for now, there were no more challenges to Basil II’s throne. Nevertheless, it was a subdued victory for the young Emperor, for the triumph could not be attributed to him, but to the machinations of his puppetmaster, Lekapenos. Over the next few years, the Byzantine Empire fell further under the control not just of the Bastard Eunuch, but also Bardas Phokas, who had become more and more influential in the Imperial Court since crushing Skleros' rebellion. To further cement their power, Phokas and Lekapenos shuffled around the Imperial administration in their favour, ensuring that the most powerful military governors in the Empire were men loyal to them personally, rather than to the throne, further reducing Basil’s status to a functional figurehead. To their credit, Phokas and Lekapenos shared some significant successes during their de facto reign. For example, the Byzantines had long struggled with the Imperial German polity for hegemony over southern Italy. [8] So, when German Emperor Otto II fought was defeated by an army of Sicilian Arabs at the costly Battle of Stilo, the Imperial Palace in Constantinople took advantage of their rivals’ weakened position, and swooped into the region, annexing much of southern Italy and establishing hegemonic influence in the Peninsula as far north as Ascoli. As a result, Byzantine territorial reach in Italy was at its greatest point since Justinians’ reconquest of the peninsula four centuries earlier. Still, the Emperor chafed under these conditions. Unlike his hedonistic father, he was not content to be powerless while his courtiers ran the show. The young Emperor knew he was at an inherent disadvantage against Phokas and Lekapenos, old men whose decades of accumulated political connections and military triumph made them exponentially more influential than he was. So, to increase his own gravitas amongst his subjects, Basil resolved to win some military victories of his own. To that end, he looked north, to the land of the Bulgarians. It is here we need to break off from Basil’s story, to explain what was going on in the land of Byzantiums’ traditional northern rival. In theory, the Bulgarian state was supposed to be defunct. After all, back in 971 the late Emperor John Tzimiskes had stripped the last Bulgarian Tsar, Boris II, of his Imperial raiments, and annexed much of his territory. Nevertheless, against the odds, the Bulgarians had managed to survive the tumult they suffered under both the Romans and Rus hordes, and rise up once more as a threat to the Byzantine Empire. When Tzimiskes had driven Prince Sviatoslav out of Bulgaria, he had only annexed the Empire’s eastern Danubian territories, while the lands west of the Iskar river, centered around the territories in the environs of modern Albania and Macedonia, was left mostly untouched. Here, various independent Bulgarian boyars lived in defiance of Eastern Roman domination until they were unified under the rule of the most powerful lord in the region: Nikola of Sredets. When Nikola passed away, western Bulgaria fell into the joint-rulership of his four sons: David, Aaron, Moses, and Samuil. By 976, shortly after Basil’s ascension to the Imperial throne, the Cometopuli, as the sons of Nikolas had come to be known, began raiding into the eastern Danubian territories recently annexed by Byzantium, aiming to restore the old borders of the Bulgarian Empire. They were met with immediate success, as at the time, the cream of the Roman army was off in Anatolia containing Skleros’ rebellion, leaving their eastern Bulgarian territories guarded mainly by inexperienced greenhorns. The Cometopuli ravaged Beroia, Drougoubiteia, and the Strymon with impunity, but their progress was halted by a series of unfortunate events, when David was ambushed and killed by some Vlach tribesmen on the road between Kastoria and Prespa, and Moses was crushed by a catapult stone during an unsuccessful attempt to lay siege to Serres. Meanwhile, the eldest brother, Aron, accused of having pro-Byzantine sympathies, had begun to lose the confidence of the boyars. The demise of the eldest three Cometopuli had an inversely unifying effect, for most of their soldiers now flocked to Samuil, the youngest, but most cunning of the four. In order to sow some political discord, Lekapenos released two key hostages, Boris II and Roman, back into the wild. The former Bulgarian Tsar and his brother had been living in comfortable Byzantine captivity in 971, and by returning them the true heirs of the Bulgarian Empire back home, the Byzantines hoped to disrupt the loyalty of Samuil’s men. However, this plan backfired spectacularly, for when Boris II was crossing the border into Bulgaria, he was shot dead by a guardsman, who mistook him for a Byzantine Noble. His brother was unceremoniously crowned Tsar, but became a powerless puppet ruler controlled by Samuil, whose influence and legitimacy were empowered by the legitimate Tsar’s presence. [9] It was against this new resurgent Bulgaria, united under the dynamic rule of a highly competent warrior-leader, that Emperor Basil II decided to launch his first military campaign, thus, without waiting to consult Lekapenos or Bardas Phokas, whose shadow he was desperate to escape, the young Basileus launched himself into the jaws of the wolf. In the summer of 986, Basil led a host of around 15,000 soldiers across Thrace, towards the key city of Sredets.[10] Hearing of this incursion, Samuil descended from his nest in North Macedonia, and led his army, similarly sized to Basils’, through the Sredna Gora mountains, where he bivoaked his army outside the hill-fort of Urvich, some 12-miles south of Sredets. Protected by thick forests, and with enough high ground to make Obi-Wan cry tears of joy, Samuil saw no need to engage the Byzantines in open battle. Instead, he sent small squadrons of his men down the hill to be dire nuisances to the Roman forces besieging the city down below. Leo the Deacon comments grimly on the guerilla tactics of the Bulgarians, claiming they ambushed Byzantine foraging parties, stole their livestock, disrupted communication lines, and burnt down siege engines. Generally speaking, Basils’ men were ill-equipped to deal with this. Most of the Empires’ best soldiers were the Eastern tagmatas veterans who had fought in Crete, Cicilia, and Antioch, and they were loyal to Bardas Phokas. This left the young Emperor only with inexperienced men, and incompetent commanders. After twenty frustrating and fruitless days, Basil had no choice but to call off the siege, and ordered a general retreat back into Byzantine territory. [11] The Roman army fled down the diagonal highway leading back into Imperial territory, their rear harassed the time by the garrison from Sredets. Unbeknownst to them, Samuil too had broken camp, and shadowed Basil through the mountains, his hardened soldiers able to traverse the rugged terrain with ease. The moment to strike came on the 17th of August, when the Byzantines were passing in a stretched-out line through the narrow pass of Trajan’s gate. Finally, Samuil let the guillotine drop, and from the wooded heights above the roadway, Bulgarian warriors emerged from their ambush positions in the thousands, immediately swamping an entirely unprepared Roman host. Basils’ entire army was either massacred or routed, and the Emperor himself was barely able to escape back to Philippopolis in one piece. The Battle of Trajan’s Gate was the worst Byzantine military disaster in generations. Following up on his victory, Samuil was able to reconquer much of the Eastern Danubian basin, and even managed to seize Thessaly, the heart of central Greece. The Bulgarian Empire was stronger than ever before, and the gains that Tzimiskes had made in subduing it fifteen years earlier were now null and void. Basil II had set out to win himself respect through military victories, and instead, had returned to Constantinople in disgrace. To make matters worse, this calamity was just the excuse that a certain ambitious Anatolian general needed to launch the rebellion he had been planning for years. When news of Basil’s defeat reached the east in early 987, Domestikos Bardas Phokas declared himself Emperor, and entered an open revolt. He was soon joined by Bardas Skleros, returning from exile in the east. Despite having fought against one another eight years earlier, the two joined their causes together and quickly took control of most of Anatolia and Syria. It was a desperate situation for the Emperor, for the western armies loyal to him were in disarray after Trajan’s Gate, while most of the Empires’ eastern veteran troops, who had always been more loyal to Phokas than to him, were now rebels. However, there was a silver lining, for it was around this time that Basil, through some shrewd scheming of his own, finally managed to cut the strings that tied him to his puppetmaster Lekapenos, which he did by accusing the eunuch of secretly supporting the rebellious Phokas. For the first time in his thirty years of life, Basil II was now in full control of the throne he sat upon, but he still had a rebellion to put down. Thus, with his loyalist troops insufficiently capable of fighting Phokas’ elite Anatolian tagmata, the Emperor was forced to look beyond the Empire for reinforcements. To that end, his gaze turned north, and it is here that our story drifts back to the wild forests of the Kyivan Rus. In late 987, Grand Prince Vladimir of Rus had followed in his father Sviatoslav’s footsteps and invaded Byzantium, seizing the city of Chersonesus, the main Byzantine stronghold in the Crimea. No doubt weary to have yet another enemy on his hands, Basil was surely surprised when he found out that the Kyivan Prince had not come in the spirit of conquest, but barter. It seemed that the pagan warlord was looking to adopt one of the major Abrahamic faiths for reasons of political legitimacy[12], but before he relinquished Chersonesus and adopted the Christian religion, he needed the Romans to sweeten the pot. That sweetener took the form of Princess Anna, Emperor Basil’s royal sister. This was a bargain that Basil could not refuse, but the Basileus had one stipulation to add: Vladimir would have to send him military reinforcements against the Anatolian Rebels. The Rus agreed instantly, and in 988, the Bargain was struck. Princess Anna was married off [13] to Prince Vladimir of Rus, whose realm was converted to Eastern Orthodox in Christianity.[14] In return, 6,000 big burly Rus warriors were shipped to Constantinople. As the Kyivan Princes were ancestrally Scandinavian, this warrior-elite was mostly of Norse stock. Eventually, Basil would incorporate these ‘barbarian’ sellswords into a permanent institution, the Varangian guard, and for the next 400 years, Germanic mercenaries would serve as the elite bodyguards of Basil and all his successors. [15] Now with a Viking army at his back, the Emperor then took the fight to the rebels, and after some initial successes, managed to force Phokas to meet him in a pitched battle outside Abydos. However, as the two armies began forming their lines, Bardas Phokas suffered a sudden stroke, and died in full view of his men. Not one to look a miraculous gift horse in the mouth, the Emperor ordered his men forward, and his massive Vikings cut through the demoralized Phokade horde like butter. After this, the second rebellion of Basil’s reign was crushed, Bardas Skleros surrendered a few months later, and Eastern Rome was whole once more. In the immediate aftermath of the revolt and throughout his entire tenure on the imperial throne, Basil enacted policies designed to moderate the unruly Byzantine aristocracy. The emperor’s own rhetoric depicts his struggle with powerful nobles in this period as a pro-serf crusade with himself as the peasants’ champion, but it is more likely that the actual goal was primarily one of realpolitik, to increase Basil’s own standing relative to the great houses. [16] Perhaps the strictest of these measures was the allelengyon - or ‘mutual security’ tax, a Marxian-esque law which required the empire’s estate-holding oligarchy to meet any financial shortfall for peasants who were too destitute to pay up themselves, and those who died in war. This understandably brought Basil II great favour among the peasantry, but irritated the financially burdened upper strata. The emperor also refused to appoint another domestikos of the east, the high military posting which frequently served as a pre-imperial stepping stone for ambitious nobles in years gone by.[17] Other political tactics included increasing the authority of imperial agents, confiscating property and most importantly, keeping his loyal Varangian enforcers close by. For Basil, all of these reforms all circled back to one main purpose: to ensure that never again would he or his successors be the puppets of scheming Eunuch courtiers, or the pawns of usurper barracks-Emperors spawned by the Anatolian military aristocracy. Securing his throne had cost the Emperor no small amount of blood and sweat, but the hardest work was still ahead of him, for external threats still sandwiched the Empire, and there were still wars yet to fight. In the spring of 991, Basil took to campaigning once more, turning his sights upon Samuil’s Bulgaria, with whom he would spend most of the next 25 odd years waging a bitter contest against. This time, however, he had learned from the humiliation at Trajans’ gate. The Emperors’ troops were now professional, well-trained, and, especially in the Varangians’ case, utterly loyal to him. As for Basil himself, both his recent defeats and victories had hardened him, and had tempered him into a better commander. The historical chroniclers we rely on such as Leo the Deacon and Leon Skylitzes are saying relatively little about this early stint of the Bulgarian wars, but it seems that after gathering in Thessaloniki with an army that probably numbered around 23,000, Basil steamrolled his way through Bulgarian Macedonia, and laid siege to Beroia. The fortress fell easily, and yielded a prize: Tsar Roman, the warlord Samuil’s puppet. Basil had the Bulgarian royal shipped back to Byzantium, where he would remain a hostage until his death. However, the loss of Roman did not seem to affect the Bulgarian war effort, for Samuil was the man the Boyars followed, not the useless figurehead Tsar he’d kept around. For the next three years, Basil slowly and methodically incorporated the territories of Bulgarian Macedonia within the environs of Thessaloniki back into the Imperial fold. No doubt he was careful not to expand too far, too fast, remembering full well what had happened when he had overextended himself behind enemy lines during his disastrous siege of Sredets five years earlier. It was also around this time that the Emperor made diplomatic overtures with Jovan Vladimir, the Prince of Serbian Duklja, and Stjepan Drzislav, King of Croatia. It seems some kind of alliance was struck, but little real material aid would ever manifest from either South Slavic state. Samuil had not spent this time sitting idly by, knowing better than to fight Basil’s elite soldiers head on, he had done what had always worked for him, keeping to the mountains, and shadowing his enemy. In 995, the Bulgar warlord managed to lure Gregory Taronites, the governor of Thessaloniki, outside of his walled city, where he ambushed and captured him. After this, Basil appointed one John Khaldos to replace the now missing Taronites as Thessaloniki’s governor, but he too was lured out of the city, ambushed, and captured by Samuils’ guerilla forces. It was very clear now that the Bulgarians were not going to sit by idly while the Romans invaded their land. The Emperors’ foothold in northern Macedonia was growing more and more precarious by the day. But before he could personally pursue the wily Samuil, another matter emerged that demanded his attention: this time from in the far east, from Eastern Romes’ other great rival. Ever since the Fatimids had expanded into Egypt and the Levant in the early 970s, they had made it their goal to take Aleppo, which in years past had been the speartip of Islamic jihad under warrior-emir Sayf al-Dawla, but now had been reduced to the humiliating status of a Byzantine satellite state. In point of fact, the Muslims of Aleppo seemed fairly content under Roman rule, for they still enjoyed internal autonomy under the unbroken line of Hamdanid Emirs, while Islamic scholars of the time speak relatively well of Basil, who had a reputation of kindness towards his Muslim subjects. Nevertheless, since 992, the Caliph al-Aziz had appointed his top Mamluk slave-soldier, Manjutakin, to bring Aleppo under Shi’ite control, and since then, the Turkic commander had been engaged in a prolonged duel with the familiar Michael Bourtzes, Byzantine doux of Antioch, who Basil had charged with protecting Aleppo against Fatimid aggression. Utterly outclassed, Bourtzes found himself outsmarted by Manjutakin time and time again, helpless to stop the Fatimid warriors from besieging Aleppo multiple times, as well as sacking the outskirts and suburbs of his own fief in Antioch. By 995, the situation had become dire enough that the Aleppines sent a plea to the Emperor to intervene personally, and although reluctant to leave his campaign in Bulgaria, Basil agreed, remarkably making the crossing from the Balkans to Syria with his army in less than a month.[18] Upon arrival in March, he beelined it to Aleppo, which was currently being besieged by Manjutakin, but upon hearing of the Emperors’ approach, the slave-general immediately broke the siege, burned his camp, and fled back to Damascus, it seemed that Basil’s reputation had grown to proceed him. After this, the Basileus decided to remain in Syria and reassert the dominance of Rome in the region, pillaging his way through Apameia, Rafaniyya, and Homs. He then tried to take Tripolis, which managed to resist him. Nevertheless, with a trail of smoke and carnage behind him, Basil had made his point. Meanwhile, Fatimid efforts to launch a counterattack were foiled when Caliph Al-Aziz died in August 996, leaving behind his young son and untested son, al-Hakim, as his heir. This sparked a succession crisis in which Manjutakin himself rebelled and made a play for Cairo. In an act of political shrewdness, Basil opted not to support Manjutakins’ insurrection, hoping that by respecting the sanctity of the Caliphal position, he could earn enough goodwill to secure peace with the Fatimids. This might have worked, if not for the fact that he almost immediately after supported Tyre’s anti-Fatimid insurrection a year later because it severed the Caliphates’ supply lines. This move would cost him, as it resulted in flaring of hostilities, and a significant defeat when a Byzantine army led by one Dalassenos was massacred by an army led by the Fatimid governor of Damascus, Jaysh ibn al-Samsama, outside Apameia in July 998.[19] Basil retaliated by going on another pillaging spree. This time with his Varangians in tow, he breached the walls of Homs and subjected it to a brutal sack. By the turn of the millennium, both Empire and Caliphate had fought each other to a standstill, and both had other concerns to deal with. The Fatimids were wrestling with internal political strife, while Basil was eager to get back to Bulgaria. So, in the year 1000 AD, a ten-year truce was agreed to between Cairo and Constantinople, allowing Basil to finally return westwards, where his archrival Samuil awaited. While Basil was gallivanting about in the desert, Samuil had been busy. Taking advantage of the absence of the Emperor and his best troops, the Bulgarian warlord had launched a large-scale raid into mainland Greece in 996, killing, burning and enslaving his way through Achaia, Aetolia, and Corinth. Luckily for Basil, he had at least one competent man on the scene, Nikephoros Ouranos, the new doux of Thessaloniki. Ouranos was able to lure Samuil out of southern Greece by capturing Larissa, forcing the pillaging warlord to retreat north to secure his rear. The two armies met on the banks of the Spercheios river near Lamia, and here, Ouranos dealt Samuil a crushing defeat, massacring 12,000 of his men in the process. This was no doubt a huge blow to the morale of the Bulgarian boyars who followed Samuil, and the warlord now realized that drastic action needed to be taken to restore their confidence. Luckily for him, that opportunity came when Tsar Roman died in early 997. Thus that following summer, Samuil took advantage of the now vacant Caesarship, and declared himself Tsar of all Bulgarians. Having legitimized his position, he was quickly able to rebuild his army, and just in time, for Basil was returning, and the final showdown was at hand. 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.” As this was going on, a diversion force of raiders sent by Samuil to harass Thessaloniki was crushed by the local dux, and the victorious forces dutifully marched to aid Basil. He would not need them. 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. However, the reinforcement army from Thessaloniki was ambushed and destroyed on the way to Kleidon, and its leader gruesomely disemboweled, a defeat that led to one of Basil’s truly legendary and possibly mythical actions. Upon hearing of his helper’s fate, 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 rank and title, granted rich donatives as well as land of their own to rule, if they pledged fealty to Basil. Surviving members of the Komitopoli house were made patricians and given grants of 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 an end the ancient animosity that had existed between them.” [20] 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 in 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.” In the year 1025 AD, the Byzantine Empire was not the same creature it had been two hundred years ago. No longer was it the beaten dog of the middle ages, suffering from invasions of all sides without, and the rot of civil turmoil within. Beginning with Basil I, and ending poetically with Basil II, the reign of the Macedonian Emperors had seen the land of the Romans nearly double in size, secure its frontiers, and become the most dominant regional power in the Mediterranean. To be sure, the Empire that Basil II left behind was not nearly the pan-Mediterranean monster of Caesar, Augustus, and Trajan, but it was nevertheless still a highly respectable Juggernaut, and proof that the Romans of Medieval Era still had the resilience of their more famous ancient ancestors. However, with Basil’s death, the age of reconquests in Byzantium had come to an end. While the Macedonian line would continue for several more Emperors, none of them would burn nearly as brightly as the likes of Nikephoros Phokas, the Pale Death of the Saracens, John Tzimiskes, the vanquisher of the Rus Hordes, or of course, Boulgaroktonos, the Bulgarslayer. By the time the dynasty had finally petered out in 1056 AD, a new existential threat had come to loom over the realm. The Bulgars to the west and Arab Caliphs to the south had been contained, while the Rus of the far north had been tamed. But, in the far east, men who were born in the saddle with bows in their hand had descended from their grassy steppe homelands and into the Mediterranean world. But even as the glory days of the Macedonian Renaissance grew ever more distant, and the crippled Byzantines found itself once more fighting for survival against the Turkic tide through the 11th to 15th centuries, they never forgot that, for a brief time, the heirs of Rome had been the most powerful Empire in the medieval world. More videos on the history of the Byzantine empire and long videos, in general, are on the way, so make sure you are subscribed and pressed the bell button. Recently we have started releasing weekly patron and youtube member exclusive videos. Join the ranks of patrons and youtube members via the link in the description or by pressing the button under the video to watch these weekly videos, learn about our schedule, get early access to our videos, join our private discord, and much more. Please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing - it helps immensely. This is the Kings and Generals channel, and we will catch you on the next one.

Channel: Kings and Generals

Views: 1,480,099

Keywords: byzantine, reconquista, chandax, kleidon, Nikephoros II Phokas, John I Tzimiskes, basil, macedonian, siege, of, jerusalem, how, first, crusade, antioch, 1098, 1097, Dorylaeum, pope, seljuk, empire, alexios, komnenos, manzikert, sack, constantinople, eastern, roman, crusades, sack of constantinople, fourth crusade, king and general, kings and general, kings and generals, animated historical documentary, full documentary, history, eastern roman empire, byzantine empire, emperor, medieval, first crusade, civil war

Id: cpLicb2t7Mw

Length: 106min 51sec (6411 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 29 2022