Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars
The Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars were a series of conflicts between the Bulgarian Empire and the Byzantine Empire, primarily occurring from the 7th to the 11th centuries. The origins of these wars can be traced back to the settlement of the Bulgars across the Danube River, following pressure from neighboring tribes. The early interactions included both military confrontations and periods of uneasy peace. Notably, the conflicts intensified under Byzantine Emperor Constantine V, who regarded the Bulgars as significant adversaries, leading to multiple campaigns against them.
Key battles marked the course of these wars, with pivotal moments such as the defeat of Emperor Nicephorus I by Khan Krum in the early 9th century and the successful siege of Constantinople by Tsar Symeon I in the late 9th century. Despite these victories, the Byzantines ultimately prevailed in their long-term goal of suppressing Bulgar sovereignty, especially under Emperor Basil II, who earned the moniker "Bulgar Slayer."
The wars eventually led to a temporary consolidation of Byzantine control over Bulgaria, which remained under Byzantine influence for nearly two centuries, until the emergence of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the late 12th century. This resurgence was characterized by resistance to Byzantine authority, culminating in further conflicts that would continue until the rise of the Ottoman Empire, which ultimately absorbed both the Bulgarians and Byzantines. Throughout these tumultuous centuries, the struggles for power and identity played a crucial role in shaping the cultural and historical landscape of the region.
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Bulgarian-Byzantine Wars
At issue: Control of the area south of the Danube River and the border between the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian kingdom
Date: Intermittently 493-1364; major wars 756-775, 809-814, 894-924, 966-971, 991-1016, and 1185–1202
Location: Danube region, the Balkans, Thrace, and Greece
Combatants: Byzantine Empire vs. Bulgarian tribes and First and Second Bulgarian Empires
Principal commanders:Byzantine, Constantine V Copronymus (718-775), Nicephorus I (d. 811), Nicephorus II Phocas (912-969), John I Zimisces (925-976), Basil II (958-1025); Bulgarian, Krum (d. 814), Symeon (d. 927), Samuel (d. 1014), Kalojan (d. 1207), John Asen II (r. 1218–1241).
Principal battles: Anchialos, Verbitza Pass, Versinicia, Achelous, Bulgarophygon, Constantinople, Clidium, Adrianople, Klokotnica
Result: Bulgarians carve out a national homeland south of the Danube and, despite a long period of Byzantine reconquest, keep it until both are conquered by the Ottomans.
Background
The Danube was the northern frontier of the early Byzantine Empire. The Bulgars, a Turkic people related to the Huns, began raiding across it sporadically in 493. In the 670’s, however, the Bulgars were pressured by the Khazars to their east, and a horde of them crossed the Danube to settle. The Byzantine emperor Constantine IV made inconclusive war on them in 680-681, then made a peace with them that allowed them to remain and consolidate their rule. Despite episodes of alliance against common enemies like the Arabs in 717, the Byzantine government never permanently accepted Bulgar independence south of the Danube, and the Bulgars continually tried to conquer land farther south. Thus the Bulgars’ recurring objective was to increase their territory and the Byzantines’ was to conquer it all back.
Action
The period of major wars between the Bulgars and the Byzantines began when the Emperor Constantine V Copronymus took the Bulgars as major enemies, fortified the frontier, and fought nine campaigns against them from 756 until his death in 775. He had great success in 763, when the Bulgars were completely defeated at the Battle of Anchialos, June 30, and in 774.
The Emperor Nicephorus I alarmed a strong Bulgar khan, Krum, by advancing in the region in 807; Krum attacked and Nicephorus retaliated in 809. In 811, Nicephorus made a great campaign, took Krum’s capital Pliska, and rebuffed his offer of peace. Krum managed to trap the Byzantine army in a valley, possibly the Verbitza Pass (July 26, 811), defeat it, and kill Nicephorus. He then invaded the empire, took 40,000 prisoners, and defeated a quarreling Byzantine leadership in battle at Versinicia (June, 813). He was planning to besiege Constantinople when he died in 814.
His successor Omurtag made peace with Byzantium, which lasted almost unbroken through the ninth century, except for a Byzantine show of force in 864, which convinced the khan Boris I to convert to Christianity under Byzantine rather than Frankish sponsorship.
Boris’s son Symeon, Byzantium’s greatest Bulgar enemy, started a war in 894 after Byzantium raised trading tariffs. After some reverses, Symeon defeated the Byzantines at Bulgarophygon (896) and won a peace treaty involving a large annual payment to him. When the Byzantines stopped this payment in 913, he marched on Constantinople and besieged it. A badly rattled regency for an emperor who was not yet of age conceded him the money, marriage of his daughter to the emperor, and the title of emperor for himself. This regency was then deposed by the young emperor’s mother, who repudiated the agreement. Symeon therefore kept up a war involving a claim to the Byzantine throne. He took Adrianople twice (914 and 923) and defeated the Byzantine army at Achelous (August 20, 917) but could not take Constantinople despite attempts in 921, 922, and 924. He finally agreed to a truce and payment to him in 924. Thereafter the Bulgar rulers called themselves emperor (czar).
Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas stopped payment to the Bulgars in 966 and paid the Russians of Kiev to attack them in 967. This was a mistake, as the Russians occupied eastern Bulgaria in 969 and were the stronger enemy. Emperor John I Zimisces drove out the Russians in 971. He then annexed all of eastern Bulgaria himself.
The western Bulgarians began a resistance in 980 under four brothers. One of them, Samuel, reconquered the old Bulgar capitals, Preslav and Pliska, by 989. Emperor Basil II started warring on him in 991. Samuel sued for peace in 997 but proclaimed himself czar the same year. Basil began a major offensive in 1001 and had captured half of Samuel’s territory by 1005. In 1014, he invaded Bulgaria with a large army and encircled and defeated Samuel’s army at the pass of Clidium (June, 1014), the most decisive battle in any of these wars. Basil here earned his nickname “Bulgarostonos” (Bulgar Slayer) by blinding 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners and sending them home; Samuel died of a heart attack at the sight. His successors could not withstand the final invasion, and Basil entered and annexed all of Bulgaria in 1016. The Byzantines had achieved their objective of annihilating Bulgar sovereignty, and Bulgaria remained a region of Byzantium for 170 years.
The Bulgars reemerged in 1186 under the brothers Asen and Peter, who led an antitax revolt and conquered an independent territory again. The Byzantines fought and tried to subvert them but had many internal troubles. In 1202, they made peace with this “Second Bulgarian Empire” under the third brother, Kalojan.
After the Fourth Crusade, the Second Bulgarian Empire was one of several coequal players in former Byzantine territories and fought the others. Kalojan crippled the Latin Empire of Constantinople at the Battle of Adrianople (April, 1205), and John Asen II captured the ablest despot of Epirus at the Battle of Klokotnica (spring, 1230). Border fighting between Bulgaria and the Empire of Nicea (which later revived the Byzantine Empire) resumed in 1246 but with no permanent results. Both sides were drastically weakened by thirteenth century events, and the tangle of alliances and border raids between them in the fourteenth century—the last raid in 1364—was insignificant next to the advance of the Ottoman Turks.
Aftermath
The Ottomans overran Bulgaria in 1393 and captured Constantinople in 1453; both parties to this series of wars were subjects of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. The Bulgarians’ fight to remain distinctive from the Byzantines, however, gave them enough of a history and common memory to survive the Ottoman occupation and reemerge as a modern nation.
Bibliography
Browning, Robert. Byzantium and Bulgaria: A Comparative Study Across the Early Medieval Frontier. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Fine, John V. The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983.
Runciman, Steven. A History of the First Bulgarian Empire. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1930.
Treadgold, Warren. A History of the Byzantine State and Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.