Battle of Bulgarophygon

Illustrated page from the Madrid illuminated manuscript of the Skylitzes , fol. 109 r. The upper illustration shows Leo VI's reception of a Bulgarian delegation, the lower one the battle of Bulgarophygon.

date	June 7, 896
place	at Bulgarophygon (today Babaeski in Turkey )
Casus Belli	"Trade war"
output	Victory of the Bulgarians
Territorial changes	Thrace
consequences	Thessaly, Erirus, Macedonia and large parts of Thrace came under Bulgarian control. The Byzantines undertake to pay annual tribute

Parties to the conflict
Byzantine Empire	Bulgarians
Commander
Leon Katakalon	Simeon I.
Troop strength
unknown	unknown
losses
devastating	unknown

In the battle of Bulgarophygon in the summer of 896 (probably on June 7th) the Bulgarians defeated the Byzantine army near the present-day northwestern Turkish city of Babaeski . As a result, they were able to conquer large parts of the Byzantine Empire and advance until shortly before Constantinople , but were then repulsed.

prehistory

In 893 the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI awarded At the instigation of his father-in-law Stylianos Zautzes, the trade monopoly with Bulgaria was given to two Greek merchants. Thereupon they moved the market for Bulgarian imported goods from Constantinople to Thessaloniki without consulting the Bulgarians and increased the tariffs.

When peaceful means of eliminating this conflict were unsuccessful, the Bulgarian ruler Simeon I attacked the Byzantines in 894 without warning. The hastily assembled Byzantine army , led by the strategist Krinites , was defeated in Thrace . However, since the war had started without preparation, Simeon had to withdraw again. For the further course of the fighting, the Byzantines were able to win the Magyars under Árpád as allies in the fight against Simeon. The Byzantine fleet made it possible for them to cross the Danube, and together with the Byzantine army that invaded Thrace, they pinned Simeon in 895. Simeon, who was only prepared to invade the south, finally asked for peace.

After the departure of the Byzantines and still during the peace negotiations, Simeon turned to the north. Since the Magyars were fighting in Pannonia at that time , the Bulgarian tsar allied himself in 896 with the Pechenegs living on the Dniester and defeated the Magyars. After the defeat, the Magyars left their territories in Bessarabia forever and moved further west, where they settled in the upper Tisza region and thus no longer posed a threat to the Bulgarian Empire for the time being .

battle

After the Magyar danger had been averted, Simeon I gathered his troops in Thrace again in the summer of 896 and resumed fighting with Byzantium.

On the Byzantine side, Emperor Leo VI replaced. the domestikos tōn scholōn (Domestikos der Scholen) Nikephoros Phokas the Elder (who may have died) on the advice of Stylianos Zautzes by the less experienced Leo Katakalon , who then took command in the Bulgarian War. He planned a preventive strike with all the might of the empire, i.e. an invasion of Bulgaria. For this purpose, troops were even withdrawn from the eastern border, which in view of the expansion efforts of the local neighbors, the Arabs, represented an enormous risk.

But before they even reached the border into the Bulgarian Empire, the Byzantines met the enemy army. For a short time there was a ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners, but these attempts at understanding were not granted long-term success. On June 7th, the decisive battle took place at Bulgarophygon near Adrianople in Thrace (today Baba Eski ). The exact course is not known, the Byzantine chronicler Johannes Skylitzes only speaks of the fact that the imperial army was "routed with heavy losses".

Among the numerous fatalities was Katakalon's subordinate general colleague, Protovestiarios Theodosios. Leo Katakalon himself narrowly escaped and retained his post until the first years of the 10th century. The young soldier Lukas Stylites was so frightened by the events of the Battle of Bulgarophygon that he became an ascetic and became famous as a pillar saint in the decades to come.

Simeon I now had a free hand and invaded Thrace, where he devastated the country and took numerous prisoners (after all, it should have been 120,000 in total). Emperor Leo was so surprised that, according to the Arab historian at-Tabarī, he considered arming Arab prisoners and sending them into the field against Bulgaria. However, it is not certain whether this idea was implemented.

consequences

After the heavy defeat, the Byzantines had little to oppose the Bulgarian army, so that it was able to conquer northern Thessalia , Epirus and large parts of today's Macedonia without any problems . At-Tabarī reports on the following events: “Thereupon the emperor of the Romans [= the Roman, ie the Byzantine emperor] had the king of the Sakalib [= the Slaves] say: Our religion and yours are one and the same, why should we kill each other's men. The king of Sakalib offered him the answer: This is the kingdom of my fathers and I will not leave you as long as one of us has not defeated the other ” . Only shortly before Byzantium could the Bulgarians be stopped and declared that they were ready to negotiate peace. According to the contemporary German Annales Fuldenses , this succeeded in that Emperor Leo VI. the Hungarians were able to move to an invasion of Bulgarian territory, so that the victors of Bulgarophygon found themselves embroiled in a two-front war, as they had before the battle of Bulgarophygon.

In the now concluded treaty, the Byzantines, who had once again found themselves in a difficult position due to the advance of the Arabs in the east, again committed themselves to an annual tribute to the Bulgarians and ceded further areas on the Black Sea, Epirus and southern Hessen. The Bulgarians rose to become the "most privileged economic nation" of the Byzantine Empire and the most important military factor in Southeast Europe , as they ruled almost the entire Balkan Peninsula. All economic restrictions that triggered the war were lifted and the Bulgarian market moved back to Constantinople. This peace treaty lasted until 913 when there was another Bulgarian attack on Byzantium.

literature

Rudolf Abicht: The attack of the Bulgarians on Constantinople in 896 AD. In: Vatroslav Jagić (ed.): Archives for Slavic Philology , Vol. 17. Weidmann, Berlin 1895, pp. 477-482.
Constantin Jireček : History of the Bulgarians. Georg Olm Verlag, 1977, Chapter VIII.
John Van Antwerp Fine: The Early Medieval Balkans. A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. University of Michigan Press, 1991, pp. 137-157, ISBN 978-0-472-08149-3 .
Warren Treadgold: A History of the Byzantine State and Society , Stanford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0-8047-2630-2 .

Individual evidence

↑ Georg Ostrogorsky : History of the Byzantine State (= Handbook of Classical Studies , XII.1.2) CH Beck, Munich 1963, p. 213, note 3.
^ ^A ^b Jonathan Shepard: Byzantium in Equilibrium, 886-944. In: Timothy Reuter (ed.): The New Cambridge Medieval History III, c. 900 - c. 1024. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, p. 570.
↑ Ioannis Vassis: Introduction. To: Leon Magistros Choirosphaktes: Chiliostichos Theologia (= Supplementa Byzantina, Vol. 6). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, p. 5 ( online ).
^ Johannes Skylitzes: Synopsis Historion , Leo VI. , 14.
^ Steven Runciman : A history of the first Bulgarian Empire. Bell, London 1930, p. 147.
^ Warren Treadgold: A history of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1997, p. 464.
^ John Van Antwerp Fine: The Early Medieval Balkans. A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. University of Michigan Press, 1991, p. 139.
↑ cit. according to Rudolf Abicht: The attack of the Bulgarians on Constantinople in 896 AD. In: Vatroslav Jagić (ed.): Archive for Slavic Philology , Vol. 17. Weidmann, Berlin 1895, p. 478, small orthographic corrections.
↑ Annales Fuldenses, entry for 896. Edition and translation in: Reinhold Rau (ed.): Sources for the Carolingian history of the empire. Third part (= selected sources on the German history of the Middle Ages, Freiherr vom Stein Memorial Edition, Vol. VII). Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1960, p. 168 f.

[1] Georg Ostrogorsky : History of the Byzantine State (= Handbook of Classical Studies , XII.1.2) CH Beck, Munich 1963, p. 213, note 3.

[Shepard-2] A ^b Jonathan Shepard: Byzantium in Equilibrium, 886-944. In: Timothy Reuter (ed.): The New Cambridge Medieval History III, c. 900 - c. 1024. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, p. 570.

[3] Ioannis Vassis: Introduction. To: Leon Magistros Choirosphaktes: Chiliostichos Theologia (= Supplementa Byzantina, Vol. 6). Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, p. 5 ( online ).

[4] Johannes Skylitzes: Synopsis Historion , Leo VI. , 14.

[5] Steven Runciman : A history of the first Bulgarian Empire. Bell, London 1930, p. 147.

[6] Warren Treadgold: A history of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford University Press, Stanford 1997, p. 464.

[7] John Van Antwerp Fine: The Early Medieval Balkans. A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. University of Michigan Press, 1991, p. 139.

[8] t. according to Rudolf Abicht: The attack of the Bulgarians on Constantinople in 896 AD. In: Vatroslav Jagić (ed.): Archive for Slavic Philology , Vol. 17. Weidmann, Berlin 1895, p. 478, small orthographic corrections.

[9] Annales Fuldenses, entry for 896. Edition and translation in: Reinhold Rau (ed.): Sources for the Carolingian history of the empire. Third part (= selected sources on the German history of the Middle Ages, Freiherr vom Stein Memorial Edition, Vol. VII). Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1960, p. 168 f.