War with the Byzantine Empire
Coup in Byzantium. On December 11, 969, as a result of a coup, the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus Phocas was killed, and John Tzimiskes was on the imperial throne. Nicephorus Phocas fell at the zenith of his glory: in October, the imperial army captured Antioch. Nicephorus caused strong opposition among the nobility and clergy. He was a harsh and ascetic warrior, focused on restoring the power of the Byzantine Empire, giving all his strength to the fight against the Arabs and the fight for southern Italy. The wealthy estates did not like the abolition of luxury and ceremonies, the frugality in spending public funds. At the same time, the Basileus planned to carry out a series of internal reforms aimed at restoring social justice. Nicephorus wanted to weaken the nobility in favor of the people and deprive the church of many of the privileges that made it the richest institution of the empire. As a result, a significant part of the Byzantine aristocracy, higher clergy and monasticism hated the "upstart". Nicephorus was accused that he did not come from a royal family and did not have the right to the imperial throne by birth. He did not have time to win the respect of the common people. The empire was seized by famine, and the relatives of the emperor were marked for embezzlement.
Nicephorus was doomed. Even his wife opposed him. Tsarina Theophano, apparently, did not like the asceticism and indifference to the joys of Nicephorus's life. The future queen began her journey as the daughter of a Constantinople shinkar (the owner of a drinking house) and a prostitute. However, her amazing beauty, ability, ambition and depravity allowed her to become an empress. First, she seduced and subdued the young heir to the throne, Roman. Even during the life of the Basileus, she struck up a relationship with a promising commander - Nikifor. After Nicephorus Phocas took the throne, she again became queen. Theophano made her lover a brilliant companion of Nicephorus, John Tzimiskes. Theophano let Tzimiskes and his men into the emperor's bedroom, and Nicephorus was brutally killed. Before his death, the emperor was mocked. It must also be said that Tzimiskes was the nephew of Nicephorus Phocas, his mother was Phocas' sister.
The coup d'état significantly weakened the Byzantine Empire, which had just begun to “collect stones”. Nicephorus's conquests in the East - in Cilicia, Phenicia and Kelesiria - were almost completely lost. In Cappadocia, in Asia Minor, the nephew of the deceased emperor, the commander Varda Foka, raised a powerful uprising, who gathered a strong army at the expense of the Fok family. He began to fight for the throne. The younger brother of Emperor Nicephorus II Phocas, Phocas Leo tried to revolt against Tzimisce in Thrace.
Under these conditions, Kalokir, who came to Bulgaria with Russian troops, got a chance to take the imperial throne. It was quite in the spirit of the times. More than once or twice over the course of many centuries energetic pretenders to the Byzantine throne raised mutinies, turned their subordinate armies to the capital, and led foreign troops to the Byzantine Empire. Others have carried out successful or unsuccessful palace coups. The most fortunate and capable became the new basileus.
Preparing for war, the first skirmishes
Under John I of Tzimiskes, relations between Byzantium and Russia became openly hostile. The Russian prince, according to Vasily Tatishchev, learned from the captured Bulgarians that the attack of the Bulgarian troops on Pereyaslavets was carried out at the instigation of Constantinople and that the Greeks had promised help to the Bulgarian government. He also learned that the Greeks had long ago made an alliance with the Bulgarians against the Russian prince. Moreover, Constantinople now did not particularly conceal its intentions. Tzimiskes sent an embassy to Pereyaslavets, which demanded from Svyatoslav that he, having received a reward from Nicephorus, returned to his possessions. Since the departure of Svyatoslav to fight the Pechenegs, the Byzantine government stopped paying tribute to Russia.
The Grand Duke quickly replied: Russian forward detachments were sent to harass the Byzantine borderlands, while conducting reconnaissance. An undeclared war began. John Tzimiskes, barely seized the throne, faced constant raids of the Rus on the Byzantine possessions. Thus, Svyatoslav Igorevich, returning to Pereyaslavets, abruptly changed the restrained policy towards Byzantium. An open conflict broke out. The prince also had a formal reason - Svyatoslav had an agreement with Nikifor Foka, and not Tzimiskes. Nikifor, a formal ally of Svyatoslav, was despisedly killed. At the same time, the Hungarians, the allies of the Rus, became more active. At the moment when Svyatoslav rescued his capital from the Pechenegs, the Hungarians struck a blow at Byzantium. They reached Thessalonica. The Greeks had to mobilize significant forces to drive out the enemy. As a result, Constantinople and Kiev exchanged blows. Bribed by the Byzantines, the Pechenezh leaders led their troops to Kiev for the first time. And Svyatoslav, knowing or guessing who was to blame for the Pechenezh invasion, sent ambassadors to Buda and asked the Hungarian leaders to strike at Byzantium.
The masks have now been dropped. The Greeks, convinced that neither gold nor the raids of the Pechenegs had shaken Svyatoslav's determination to stay on the Danube, presented an ultimatum, the Russian prince refused. The Bulgarians entered into an alliance with Svyatoslav. The Rus ravaged the border areas of the empire. It was heading towards a big war. However, the time for the fight with Svyatoslav was inconvenient. The Arabs conquered the territories occupied by Nicephorus Phoca and tried to recapture Antioch. Varda Fock revolted. For the third year the empire was tormented by hunger, especially aggravated by the spring of 970, causing discontent among the population. Bulgaria split up. The West Bulgarian kingdom separated from Preslav, which began to pursue an anti-Byzantine policy.
In these extremely unfavorable conditions, the new Byzantine Basileus proved to be a sophisticated politician and decided to buy time from Svyatoslav in order to gather troops scattered across the fema (military-administrative districts of the Byzantine Empire). A new embassy was sent to the Russian prince in the spring of 970. The Russians demanded that the Greeks pay tribute, which Constantinople was obliged to pay according to previous agreements. The Greeks apparently agreed at first. But they were playing for time, they began to collect a powerful army. At the same time, the Greeks demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from the Danube. Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich, according to the Byzantine chronicler Leo the Deacon, was ready to leave, but demanded a huge ransom for the cities left on the Danube. Otherwise, Svyatoslav said, “may they (the Greeks) migrate from Europe, which did not belong to them, to Asia; but do not dream that the Tavro-Scythians (Rus) will reconcile with them without this."
It is clear that Svyatoslav was not going to leave, presenting difficult demands to the Greeks. The Russian prince did not plan to leave the Danube, which he wanted to make the center of his state. But the negotiations continued. The Byzantines were buying time. Svyatoslav also needed it. While the Greek ambassadors tried to flatter and deceive Svyatoslav Igorevich in Pereyaslavets, the envoys of the Russian prince had already gone to the Pechenezh and Hungarian possessions. The Hungarians were old allies of Russia and constant enemies of Byzantium. Their troops regularly threatened the Byzantine Empire. Hungarian troops supported the troops of Svyatoslav in 967 and in 968 attacked the Byzantine lands at his request. And now Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich again called the allies to battle with Byzantium. The Byzantine chronicler John Skylitsa knew about Svyatoslav's ambassadors to the Ugrians. Tatishchev also reported about this union. In the "History of Russia" he said that when negotiations were going on between the ambassadors of Tzimiskes and Svyatoslav, the Russian prince had only 20 thousand soldiers, since the Hungarians, Poles and reinforcements from Kiev had not yet arrived. Other sources do not report on the Poles, but at that time there was no enmity between Russia and Poland, so some Polish soldiers could well have sided with Svyatoslav. The baptism of Poland according to the Roman model began at the turn of the 10th - 11th centuries and lasted until the 13th century, only then the Polish state became an implacable enemy of Russia.
There was a struggle for the Pechenezh leaders. Constantinople knew perfectly well the value and significance of an alliance with them. Even the emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, the author of the essay "On the management of the empire", wrote that when the Roman emperor (in Constantinople they considered themselves the heirs of Rome) lives in peace with the Pechenegs, neither the Rus, nor the Hungarians can attack the Roman state. However, the Pechenegs were also looked upon in Kiev as their allies. There is no data on the hostilities between Russia and the Pechenegs for the period from 920 to 968. And this in the conditions of constant clashes on the border of "forest and steppe" in that period of history is quite rare, one might even say a unique phenomenon. Moreover, the Pechenegs (apparently, the same fragment of the Scythian-Sarmatian world, like Russia) regularly act as allies of the Rus. In 944, the Grand Duke Igor Rurikovich leads the "Great Skuf (Scythia)" to the Byzantine Empire, the Pechenegs are part of the allied army. When an honorable peace was concluded with Constantinople, Igor sent the Pechenegs to fight the hostile Bulgarians. Eastern authors also report about the alliance of the Rus and Pechenegs. The Arab geographer and traveler of the 10th century Ibn-Haukal calls the Pechenegs "the thorn of the Rusies and their strength." In 968, the Byzantines were able to bribe part of the Pechenezh clans, and they approached Kiev. However, Svyatoslav punished the impudent. By the beginning of the war with Byzantium, the Pechenezh detachments again joined the army of Svyatoslav Igorevich.
Preparing for a war with the Byzantine Empire, the Russian prince also took care of Bulgaria's foreign policy. The tsar's government was tied to the policy of Svyatoslav. This is evidenced by numerous facts. Bulgarians acted as guides, Bulgarian soldiers fought with the Greeks as part of the Russian army. Rus and Bulgarians together defended the cities from the enemy. Bulgaria became an ally of Russia. It is quite possible that during this period, surrounded by Tsar Boris, those nobles who saw the catastrophic nature of the compromising, Grecophile line of Preslava's policy prevailed. Bulgaria, through the fault of the Byzantine party, split and was on the verge of destruction. Byzantium twice exposed Bulgaria to the blow of Rus. Moreover, Svyatoslav Igorevich, when he made the second Danube campaign and again occupied Pereyaslavets, could easily capture Preslav. But the Russian prince generously stopped military operations against the Bulgarians, although he could have captured the whole country: the Bulgarian army was defeated, and the leadership was demoralized. Svyatoslav Igorevich saw these doubts and vacillations, he tried to eliminate the "fifth column" in Bulgaria, which was oriented towards Byzantium. So, he destroyed the conspirators in Pereyaslavets, because of them the governor Volk was forced to leave the city. Already during the war with Byzantium, Svyatoslav cruelly dealt with some of the prisoners (apparently, Greeks and pro-Byzantine Bulgarians) in Philippopolis (Plovdiv), which was located on the border with Byzantium and was a stronghold of the Byzantine party. At the second stage of the war, the conspiracy in Dorostol will be suppressed, during the siege by the Romans.
While the negotiations were going on, Russian troops harassed the Greek lands, carried out reconnaissance in force. The Roman commanders, who commanded the troops in Macedonia and Thrace, could not stop them. Allied Hungarian and Pechenezh detachments joined Svyatoslav's army. At this point, both sides were ready for war. The commanders Barda Sklir and the patrician Peter - he defeated the Arabs at Antioch, received an order to march the European possessions of Byzantium. The empire was able to transfer the main forces to the Balkan Peninsula. Emperor John Tzimiskes promised to march with his guards against the "Scythians", as "he can no longer bear their unbridled impudence." The best Byzantine generals were ordered to guard the border and conduct reconnaissance, sending scouts across the border in "Scythian dress". The fleet was prepared. In Adrianople, they began to concentrate stocks of weapons, food and fodder. The empire was preparing for a decisive offensive.
The negotiations were broken off. The ambassadors of Tzimiskes began to threaten the Russian prince on behalf of the Byzantine Basileus: in particular, they reminded Svyatoslav of the defeat of his father Igor in 941, when part of the Russian fleet was destroyed with the help of the so-called. "Greek fire". The Romans threatened to destroy the Russian army. Svyatoslav immediately replied with a promise to break tents near Constantinople and engage the enemy: “we will bravely meet him and show him in practice that we are not some artisans who earn a living by the labor of our hands, but men of blood who defeat the enemy with weapons ". The Russian chronicle also describes this moment. Svyatoslav sent people to the Greeks with the words: "I want to go and take your city, like this one," that is Pereyaslavets.
"Svyatoslav's sword". A sword of the "Varangian" type discovered in the Dnieper River near the island of Khortitsa on November 7, 2011. Weight about 1 kg, has a length of 96 cm. Dated to the middle of the X century.
The first stage of the war. Battle of Arcadiopol
In Constantinople, they wanted to strike at the enemy in the spring, starting a campaign through the Balkans to Northern Bulgaria, when the mountain passes are free of snow and the roads begin to dry up. However, the opposite happened, the Russian troops went on the offensive first. Prince Svyatoslav, receiving information about the enemy's preparations from the forward forces, the spy-Bulgarians, warned the enemy strike. The warrior prince himself set off on a campaign against Constantinople-Constantinople. This news was for Tzimiskes and his generals like a thunderbolt. Svyatoslav Igorevich intercepted the strategic initiative and mixed up all the cards for the enemy, preventing him from completing the preparations for the campaign.
It soon became clear that the rapid offensive of the Russian soldiers and their allies was simply impossible to stop. In the spring of 970, the troops of Svyatoslav Igorevich with a lightning throw passed from the lower reaches of the Danube through the Balkan Mountains. The Rus, with the help of the Bulgarian guides, scattered or bypassed the Roman outposts on the mountain passes and transferred the war to Thrace and Macedonia. Russian troops captured several border towns. They also recaptured the strategically important city in Thrace, Philippopolis, which had been captured by the Greeks earlier. According to the Byzantine historian Leo the Deacon, the Russian prince executed thousands of "Grekophiles" here. Also in Thrace, the troops of Patrician Peter were defeated; from the moment of the war, the Byzantine chroniclers "forgot" about this commander.
The Russian army marched headlong towards Constantinople. After passing about 400 kilometers, Svyatoslav's troops approached the fortress of Arkadiopol (modern Luleburgaz), in this direction Varda Sklir held the defense. According to other sources, the decisive battle of the first stage of the Russian-Byzantine war took place near the large Byzantine city of Adrianople (present-day Edirne). According to Leo the Deacon, Svyatoslav had 30 thousand soldiers, the number of the Byzantine army was 10 thousand people. The Russian chronicle speaks of 10 thousand Russian soldiers (Svyatoslav's army advanced in several detachments), and 100 thousand Greek troops.
According to the Byzantine chronicler, both sides displayed perseverance and valor, "the success of the battle leaned first in favor of one, then in favor of the other army." The Greeks were able to defeat the Pechenezh detachment, putting it to flight. The Russian troops also trembled. Then Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich turned to his soldiers with words that became legendary: “Let us not disgrace the land of Rus, but let us lie down with bones, dead imam is not a shame. If we run away, shame imam. Do not flee to the imam, but let us stand strong, and I will come before you: if my head lies down, then provide for yourself. " And the Russians fought, and there was a great slaughter, and Svyatoslav prevailed.
According to Leo the Deacon, the Greek troops won a convincing victory. However, there is ample evidence that the Byzantine chronicler distorts historical truth by placing politics above objectivity. I must say that information warfare is far from a modern invention. Even the ancient chroniclers of Rome and Constantinople in every possible way belittled the "barbarians" from the east and north, attributing all the advantages and victories to the "highly developed" Greeks and Romans. Suffice it to say about the discrepancy and outright lies of Leo the Deacon. The chronicler says that huge masses of troops fought and "the success of the battle leaned first in favor of one, then in favor of another army", that is, the battle was fierce, and then below reports on losses - 55 killed Romans (!) And 20 thousand with superfluous (!!) of the dead Scythians. Apparently, the "Scythians" were shot from machine guns ?! An obvious lie.
In addition, there is evidence of a direct participant in the events - the Greek Bishop John. The church hierarch, at the moment the Russian troops approached Constantinople, turned with bitter words to the assassinated emperor Nikifor Foke, expressing complete distrust of the successes of the commanders of Tzimiskes: “… rise now, emperor, and gather troops, phalanxes and regiments. The Russian invasion is rushing towards us. One must think that the Tale of Bygone Years, although it describes the events of this war extremely sparingly, is more reliable when it reports that Svyatoslav, after this brutal battle, went to Constantinople, fighting and breaking cities, which are still empty.
In such a situation, when the victorious army of Svyatoslav was stationed about 100 kilometers from Constantinople, the Greeks asked for peace. In the chronicle story, the Greeks again tricked, tested Svyatoslav by sending him various gifts. The prince remained indifferent to gold and precious stones, but praised the weapon. Byzantine advisers gave advice to pay tribute: "This man will be fierce, for he neglects wealth, but takes weapons." This is further evidence of the Greek deception about winning a decisive battle. The Romans could win up in one of the skirmishes, over the auxiliary unit, but not in the decisive battle. Why else would they ask for peace. If the bulk of the Russian troops (20 thousand soldiers) were destroyed, and the rest were scattered, it is obvious that then Tzimiskes would have had no reason to seek peace negotiations and pay tribute. Emperor John Tzimiskes in such a situation had to organize the pursuit of the enemy, the capture of his soldiers, go through the Balkan mountains and, on the shoulders of Svyatoslav's soldiers, break into Veliky Preslav, and then Pereyaslavets. And here the Greeks are pleading with Svyatoslav Igorevich for peace.
The first stage of the war with the Byzantine Empire ended in victory for Svyatoslav. But Prince Svyatoslav did not have the strength to continue the campaign and storm the huge Constantinople. The army suffered heavy losses and needed replenishment and rest. Therefore, the prince agreed to peace. Constantinople was forced to pay tribute and agree with the consolidation of Svyatoslav on the Danube. Svyatoslav "… go to Pereyaslavets with great praise." Rus, Bulgarians, Hungarians and Pechenegs left Thrace and Macedonia. In fact, Russia and Byzantium returned to the state of the agreement of 967, concluded between Svyatoslav and Nikifor Foka. The Byzantine Empire resumed the payment of the annual tribute to Kiev, agreed with the presence of the Rus in the Danube. Russia renounced claims to the northern Black Sea and Crimean possessions of Byzantium. Otherwise, the norms of the Russian-Byzantine treaty of 944 were preserved.
Byzantine sources do not report this agreement, which is understandable. The Byzantine Empire suffered a heavy defeat from the "barbarians", but it will soon take revenge. And history, as you know, is written by the winners. The Romans did not need the truth about the defeats of their mighty army from the "Scythian" prince. Constantinople went to peace to prepare for a new war.
In this case, there is no reason not to trust the information of the Russian chronicle, since the same Byzantine sources report that hostilities were suspended, and Barda Sklir was recalled from the Balkan front to Asia Minor to suppress the uprising of Barda Phoca. In Constantinople, the peace agreement was regarded as a pause in hostilities, a military ruse, and not a long-term peace. The Byzantine command tried to restore order in the rear, regroup forces and prepare a surprise attack in 971. Svyatoslav apparently decided that the campaign was won and there would be no active hostilities in the near future. Allies - auxiliary Pechenezh and Hungarian detachments, the Russian prince let go. He took the main Russian forces to Pereyaslavets, leaving a small detachment in the Bulgarian capital - Preslav. There were no Russian troops in any other Bulgarian cities. Pliska and other centers lived their own lives. The war did not affect the West Bulgarian kingdom, which was hostile to Byzantium. Although Svyatoslav could conclude an alliance with the West Bulgarian kingdom. If Svyatoslav had been defeated and retreated, he would have behaved differently. He would not let go of the allies, on the contrary, he strengthened their ranks, called for reinforcements from the lands of the Pechenegs, Hungarians and Kiev. He concentrated his main forces at the mountain passes in order to repulse the enemy offensive. Having received reinforcements, I would have launched a counteroffensive. Svyatoslav, on the other hand, behaved like a victor, not expecting a treacherous blow from the defeated enemy, who himself asked for peace.
