Battle of Adrianople (1205)
| date | April 14, 1205 |
|---|---|
| place | near Adrianople (today Edirne in Turkey ) |
| output | Victory of the Bulgarians |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| unknown | unknown |
| losses | |
|
allegedly 352 knights, total number unclear |
unknown |
This battle of Adrian Opel was held on 14. April 1205 between the Bulgarians under their Tsar Kaloyan and the Latins under their Emperor Baldwin I held.
prehistory
Latins (and Venetians ) besieged the Bulgarians in Adrianople from March 29, 1205 . Kaloyan gathered a relief army of Bulgarians, Wallachians and Cumans , which outnumbered the Latins. The Latin army, however, consisted of the majority of the victorious knights who sacked Constantinople. On April 14th a battle broke out between the two armies.
location
The battlefield is still not clearly defined. Some historians, such as Nikolai Ovcharow, suspect it to be at the confluence of the Arda River with the Maritsa River .
Course of the battle
The Bulgarian Tsar could only defeat the superior heavy cavalry of the Latins with cunning. With the light Cuman cavalry he first harassed the knights in their camp. They furiously took up their weapons and pursued the Cumans, ignoring their battle rules. The Cuman forces led them to a swampy place where the rest of the Bulgarian army was waiting. In the trap, the heavy horses could not show their mobility and ultimately it was easy for the Bulgarian troops to push the riders from their horses and kill them. In the bloody battle over 300 Latin knights (i.e. almost all) fell and the whole Latin army was destroyed. The Emperor Baldwin I was captured and blinded , he later died in Bulgarian captivity. His place of death in the Tsarevets fortress in Veliko Tarnovo still bears his name - the "Baldwin Tower" ( Балдуинова кула ). The doge Enrico Dandolo escaped wounded to Constantinople, where he eventually died of his injuries.
consequences
The Bulgarians then overran large parts of Thrace and Macedonia . An uprising of the Byzantine general Alexios Aspietes in Philippople was put down in June 1205.
Baldwin was followed by his younger brother Heinrich , first as regent, then, when Baldwin's death was certain, as emperor.
literature
- Constantin Jos. Jireček : History of the Bulgarians. Tempsky, Prague 1876, p. 239 f. (Digitized facsimile. Textor, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-938402-11-5 )