Text by Manolis Chatzimanolis

During Holy Week of the year 971 (April 1–7), an imposing Roman army of 28,000 men under Emperor John I “Tzimiskes” Kourkouas (15,000 infantry and 13,000 cavalry) passed unhindered through the passes of the Haemus Mountains and entered Bulgaria, which was occupied by the Rus under Prince Sviatoslav. The army was followed by a multitude of wagons and pack animals, led by “parakimomenos”¹ Basil Lekapenos, carrying supplies, siege engines, and everything needed to support large-scale and long-duration operations. Meanwhile, the Byzantine fleet sailed along the Bulgarian coast, aiming to enter the Danube. The northern pagan invaders were taken completely by surprise, as they had never imagined that the “pious” Romans would campaign against them during these holy days, leaving the dangerous mountain passes unguarded.

The “Rus problem” was largely the legacy left to the Emperor by his great predecessor, Nikephoros II Phokas. Following a Byzantine-Bulgarian diplomatic incident, and just before his overthrow by John I, the ascetic emperor, preoccupied primarily with the East, made the grave mistake of inviting the fearsome warriors from the North to “discipline” the “insolent” Bulgarian Tsar.

Leading a multinational force of at least 60,000 men, including heavily armored Rus of Scandinavian origin, Slavic druzhina from Novgorod, Kiev, and Smolensk, wild “half-naked” Slavs from the forests (Drevlians, Radomysl, Tivertsi, and White Croats), red-haired Finnish club-bearers from the White Lake and Upper Volga, and light cavalry from the nations of the Pechenegs, Magyars, Finns, and Estonians, the tireless Prince Sviatoslav of Kiev crossed the Danube in 968. After utterly crushing the Bulgarians, he captured their capital, Great Preslav, and took Tsar Peter I prisoner, who died in captivity, shocked by the collapse of his kingdom.

Arrogant on his easy victory over a powerful regional force, Sviatoslav began to harbor imperial ambitions, setting his sights on capturing Constantinople. In March 970, along with his “allies” the Bulgarians, Pechenegs, and Magyars, he invaded imperial territory and captured Philippopolis. The city was plundered, and 20,000 of its inhabitants were impaled, giving Emperor John I (who had meanwhile seized the throne in a coup, overthrowing and murdering Nikephoros II) a taste of the threat he was about to face. Though a Russian invasion of Adrianople in April of that same year was successfully repelled by the camp commander Petros Phokas and General Bardas Skleros in a fierce battle outside Arcadiopolis (with Zonaras perhaps exaggerating the toll at 30,000 dead and wounded, mostly Pechenegs and Magyars), Sviatoslav was undeterred and moved his base to the city of Dorostolon on the Danube, preparing for the next year’s campaign season.

However, the Emperor, now convinced of the need for a swift and decisive resolution of the Rus “thorn” at the empire’s northern borders, set out in late March 971 with the troops from the Queen of Cities and the East, uniting with European forces in Adrianople. He entered Bulgaria by surprise. On Holy Wednesday (April 3, 971), he was already outside Great Preslav. The Bulgarian capital fell in an assault on the night of Holy Thursday, with the soldier Theodosios Mesonyktis from the Eastern Theme being the first to scale the wall.

Eight thousand Rus under Prince Svegnel were slaughtered, and among the captives was the Bulgarian royal family, with the heir Boris being recognized by his distinctive light-colored beard and his “imperial” red shoes. On Sunday, April 7, the Emperor celebrated the Resurrection of the Lord with his soldiers amidst the smoldering ruins of the tsar’s palace. The once-glorious capital of the infamous Tsar Simeon would henceforth be known as Ioannoupolis…

On April 23, the feast day of Saint George, the Byzantine army, having subdued the surrounding Bulgarian fortresses, arrived outside Dorostolon, where Prince Sviatoslav and his army awaited them. The Rus warriors were notorious for the ferocity of their attacks and the stubbornness with which they held their shield wall, a tactic common among northern peoples. They were also conquerors of countless “barbarian” nations from the Baltic coast to the Caucasus and the Black Sea, having already crushed the nomadic empire of the Turkic Khazars and gained control of the profitable river trade routes of Eastern Europe.

On the other hand, the Romans were in the midst of their own epic era in the East, where, under generals like John Kourkouas and the later emperor Nikephoros Phokas, they had dealt successive blows to the Abbasid Caliphate. The imperial army was, without a doubt, the finest military force of the time, vastly superior to any contemporary European or Islamic army in every aspect.

Thus, what unfolded over the next few days was a true clash of titans, with both sides demonstrating unparalleled bravery, both collectively and individually. The siege of the city lasted for three months, during which the Rus were not idle. They repeatedly launched sorties, either to gather supplies or to surprise their besiegers and break the suffocating encirclement imposed on them by Byzantine fortifications and siege engines, which battered the city day and night. Five major battles took place by July 23, with chroniclers vividly describing epic duels between elite warriors from both sides.

On April 26, the hero Svegnel, third in rank after Sviatoslav in the Rus hierarchy, was killed by the sword of a simple Greek soldier, causing panic among his followers. The veteran general John Kourkouas, a relative of the emperor, fell in battle on July 19, while the second-ranking Rus officer, Ikmor, was slaughtered by the sword of the hero Anemas (a Greek corruption of the Arabic name Al-Numan), the son of the Emir of Crete, who had been captured, converted to Christianity, and entered imperial service after the emirate’s conquest by Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas. The arrival of the imperial fleet in April further tightened the noose, causing despair among the Rus, who had grown up hearing terrifying tales from their grandfathers about the destructive power of the “diabolical invention of the Romans,” Greek Fire. Meanwhile, the “barbaric” customs of the northerners, such as the burning of the dead, human sacrifices, and the presence of women warriors fighting alongside their husbands, horrified the Byzantines, who were raised with Christian ideals.

The battles were fierce and long, with the Rus warriors repeatedly attempting to break through the Roman lines, while the elite, heavily armored cavalry of the imperial guard, the Immortals, counterattacked furiously. The sixth and final battle, the most “ferocious” and bloody of all, took place late in the afternoon of Friday, July 24, 971. The initial Rus charge threatened to rout the Roman infantry, who, demoralized by the intense summer heat, began to retreat in an orderly fashion, with their lines gradually engaging and disengaging.

The emperor himself counterattacked with his cavalry reserves to halt the Rus momentum. After a brief lull, during which the emperor challenged Sviatoslav to a duel (which the latter refused), and the exhausted Romans were refreshed with cool water carried to the battle lines by the camp auxiliaries, John I finally had the Rus where he wanted them—on open ground, where the terrain was more favorable for his cavalry’s maneuvers.

The Byzantine army counterattacked, with the infantry launching a frontal assault and Bardas Skleros’s cavalry executing a flanking maneuver, positioning themselves between the Rus forces and Dorostolon. In the ensuing fierce clash, the Saracen hero Anemas was killed while attempting to slay Sviatoslav, a development that caused the Romans to waver and begin retreating again. At that moment, the emperor personally led the Immortals in a final charge against the Rus wedge, while Bardas attacked from the rear. By a stroke of fate, a violent storm broke out at that moment, striking the Rus head-on. Contemporary accounts mention the appearance of a mysterious rider on a white horse, which spread panic among the pagans.² Surrounded on all sides, the Rus formation collapsed, and the slaughter continued throughout the night. According to Leo the Deacon, Sviatoslav barely escaped under the cover of darkness, while 15,000 Rus lay dead on the battlefield. Indicative of the battle’s intensity, all of the surviving Rus were wounded, while 20,000 shields and numerous weapons fell into the hands of the Byzantine soldiers as spoils.

The battle marks the end of the war, as the next day Sviatoslav sends peace proposals. Dorostolon and the entirety of Bulgaria are surrendered to the Emperor in exchange for the unhindered retreat of the 22,000 surviving Rus and their allies beyond the Danube. In a gesture of magnanimity, Tzimiskes distributes grain to Sviatoslav’s starving men and renews the trade rights of Rus merchants in Constantinople.

The Empire has triumphed completely, as after nearly three centuries, the dangerous Bulgarian kingdom has been dismantled, and the Byzantine frontier on the Danube restored once again. Eastern Bulgaria, between the Haemus Mountains and the Danube, is immediately annexed, and the Bulgarian Patriarchate is abolished, while the petty rulers of the western territories become vassals of the Empire and receive Roman titles. About 15 years later, these principalities would become the focus of a new crisis that another great emperor, Basil II, would have to face.

As for the defeated prince of Kiev, his end would be tragic: while attempting to cross the Dnieper, he is attacked by his former allies, the Pechenegs. The Rus leader falls in battle, and according to the savage customs of the steppe, his silver-plated skull is turned into a drinking vessel for the Khagan Kurya to drink his wine from.

Notes:

1. Literally “the one who sleeps next to the Emperor.” This was the highest Byzantine court title. ↩︎
2. The “miracle” was attributed to Saint Theodore Stratelates, and after the war, his church in Euchaïta, Asia Minor, was repaired, and the city itself was renamed Theodoropolis in honor of the warrior-saint. ↩︎