July 29
1014. The Battle of Kleidion. Those who have avidly followed this thread will no doubt have noted my several references to the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, the Bulgarslayer. And it was with this battle that Basil cemented his reputation, and his title.
It may be somewhat difficult for those of us here in 2010 to accept, given that Bulgaria has never been any kind of significant factor in world affairs, and that absolutely none of us, I'm sure, studied either first or second Bulgarian Empires, but at one point it was a force to be reckoned with, as this map reflects.
After the Battle of Pliska in 1811 and described only a few posts earlier in this thread, the Bulgarian Empire continued to wax while Byzantium was both distracted with affairs in the East (remember that Islam was on the march during this timeframe), as well as respecting and perhaps fearing the mountainous terrain that the Bulgarians had so tenaciously defended the last time they went to war.
Onto this scene enters Basil II, or Basil the Young, crowned Emperor in his own right in 976. At the time of his ascension there was a complicated three-way war going on between Byzantium, Bulgaria and Kiev, which at that time was an independent or semi-independent state centering around, of course, the city of Kiev in modern Ukraine.
This war resulted in a series of defeats for Bulgaria in the east, which had resulted in the cessation of a number of regions to Byzantium. The Byzantines had assumed that the Bulgarian renounciation of its imperial status would signal the end of an independent Bulgaria, but this was not to be. Bulgaria instead more or less retreated into the fastness of its western mountains and continued to pursue policies antithetical to Byzantium.
Upon his ascension Basil undertook to destroy independent Bulgaria. His first attempt was a complete fiasco, and he was almost captured in the effort. A warrior king who was greatly respected by his troops, Basil was then distracted for over a decade by the Islamic Fatimid Empire in the East, as well as subjugating the rebellious nobles in Anatolia. This accomplished, he once again turned his attention to that constant thorn, Bulgaria, which had in the meantime retaken the eastern Bulgarian lands previously surrendered to Byzantium.
Starting in the year 1000, Basil launched upon a grueling and relentless campaign which lasted for well over a decade and was designed to completely grind up Bulgarian resistance and bring it once and for all under Byzantine rulership. Over the years a pattern emerged with Byzantine forces launching assaults and sieges in Bulgaria proper while the Bulgarians, unable to match Byzantine numbers, launched diversionary assaults in Greece and Macedonia.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Byzantine historian John Skylitzes
The Emperor Basil II continued to invade Bulgaria each year and destroy and devastate everything on his way. Samuel could not stop him in the open field or engage the Emperor in a decisive battle, and suffered many defeats and began to lose his strength.
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In 1014 Bulgarian Emperor Samuel decided to meet the Byzantine invasion force in the field and decide the conquest that he was slowly but surely losing. As was invariably the case during these wars, the armies had retired to winter quarters and Samuel knew that before once again entering the Bulgarian heartland the Byzantine army would need to traverse mountainous passes. And there he intended to stop them.
On this date approximately 20,000 Bulgarians met the Byzantine army whose numbers are lost to history, but was certainly at least double and more likely triple the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians had defended the pass stoutly and the first attacks failed. Basil, who could just as easily have been nicknamed the Relentless, ordered one of his generals to take some troops around the high mountain and take the Bulgarians in the rear while he continued his frontal assaults to hold them in place. This the general did, leading them on a steep and narrow pass. When the infiltrators fell on the Bulgarians from the rear, they fell in disorder and confusion, were unable to defend the wall they had built, and BAsil's direct assaults got through as well. Thousands perished, and Samuel himself barely escaped.
And then came the act that stamped Basil's name, for good or ill, in history. Basil had captured approximately 8,000-10,000 prisoners, whom he ordered separated into lots of 100. Of these lots, he had 99 out of 100 blinded, with the last man having only one eye put out so that he could lead his group back to their homeland. This he did in retaliation of the death of one of his favorite generals, as well as to crush Bulgarian morale.
Basil at this time earned his name of Bulgar-slayer (Boulgaroktonos). Samuel could not bear the sight of his mutilated men and died of heart attack only two months later. Samuel's death left Bulgaria divided, and in four more years of relentless war they finally were completely defeated in 1018 and became a Byzantine province.