Arabesque Design From A Byzantine MS. (From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883.)
But the attack which John Zimisces had to meet in 970 was far more formidable than either of those which had preceded it. Swiatoslaf, king of the Russians, had come down the Dnieper with no less than 60,000 men, and had thrown himself on to the kingdom of Bulgaria, which was at the moment distracted by civil war. He conquered the whole country, and soon his marauders were crossing the Balkans and showing themselves in the plain of Thrace. They even sacked the considerable town of Philippopolis before the imperial troops came to its aid. This roused Zimisces, who had been absent in Asia Minor, and in the early spring of 971 an imperial army of 30,000 men set out to cross the Balkans and drive the Russians into the Danube. The struggle which ensued was one of the most desperate which East-Roman history records. The Russians all fought on foot, in great square columns, armed with spear and axe: they wore mail shirts and peaked helmets, just like the Normans of Western Europe, to whom their princes were akin. The shock of their columns was terrible, and their constancy in standing firm almost incredible. Against these warriors of the North Zimisces led the mailed horsemen of the Asiatic themes, and the bowmen and slingers who were the flower of the Byzantine infantry. The tale of John's two great battles with the Russians at Presthlava and [pg 237] Silistria reads much like the tale of the battle of Hastings. In Bulgaria, as in Sussex, the sturdy axeman long beat off the desperate cavalry charges of their opponents. But they could not resist the hail of arrows to which they had no missile weapons to oppose, and when once the archers had thinned their ranks, the Byzantine cavalry burst in, and made a fearful slaughter in the broken phalanx. More fortunate than Harold Godwineson at the field of Senlac, King Swiatoslaf escaped with his life and the relics of his army. But he was beleaguered within the walls of Silistria, and forced to yield himself, on the terms that he and his men might take their way homeward, on swearing never to molest the empire again. The Russian swore the oath and took a solemn farewell of Zimisces. The contrast between the two monarchs struck Leo the Deacon, a chronicler who seems to have been present at the scene, and caused him to describe the meeting with some vigour. We learn how the Emperor, a small alert fair-haired man, sat on his great war-horse by the river bank, in his golden armour with his guards about him, while the burly Viking rowed to meet him in a boat, clad in nothing but a white shirt, and with his long moustache floating in the wind. They bade each other adieu, and the Russian departed, only to fall in battle ere the year was out, at the hands of the Patzinak Tartars of the Southern Steppes. Soon after Swiatoslaf's death the majority of the Russians became Christians, and ere long ceased to trouble the empire by their raids. They became faithful adherents of the Eastern Church, and drew their learning, their civilization, even their [pg 239] names and titles from Constantinople. The Tzars are but Caesars misspelt, and the list of their names—Michael, Alexander, Nicholas, John, Peter, Alexis—sufficiently witnesses to their Byzantine godparents. Russian mercenaries were ere long enlisted in the imperial army, and formed the nucleus of the “Varangian guard,” in which at a later day, Danes, English, and Norsemen of all sorts were incorporated.
Russian Architecture From Byzantine Model. (Church at Vladimir.) (From "L'Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883.)
John Zimisces survived his great victory at Silistria for five years, and won, ere he died, more territory in Northern Syria from the Saracens. The border which his uncle Nicephorus had pushed forward to Antioch and Aleppo was advanced by him as far as Amida and Edessa in Mesopotamia. But in the midst of his conquests Zimisces was cut off by death, while still in the flower of his age. Report whispered that he had been poisoned by one of his ministers, whom he had threatened to displace. But the tale cannot be verified, and all that is certain is that John died after a short illness, leaving the throne to his young ward Basil II., who had now attained the age of twenty years [976 a.d.].
XIX. The End Of The Macedonian Dynasty.
Basil II., who now sat in his own right on the throne which his warlike guardians Nicephorus and John had so long protected, was by no means unworthy to succeed them. Unlike his ancestors of the Macedonian house, he showed from the first a love for war and adventure. Probably the deeds of John and Nicephorus excited him to emulation: at any rate his long reign from 976 till 1025, is one continuous record of wars, and almost entirely of wars brought to a successful termination. Basil seemed to have modelled himself on the elder of his two guardians, the stern Nicephorus Phocas. His earliest years on the throne, indeed, were spent in the pursuit of pleasure, but ere he reached the age of thirty a sudden transformation was visible in him. He gave himself up entirely to war and religion: he took a vow of chastity, and always wore the garb of a monk under his armour and his imperial robes. His piety was exaggerated into bigotry and fanaticism, but it was undoubtedly real, though it did not keep him from the commission of many deeds of shocking cruelty [pg 241] in the course of his wars. His justice was equally renowned, but it often degenerated into mere harshness and indifference to suffering. No one could have been more unlike his gay pleasure-loving father, or his mild literary grandfather, than the grim emperor who won from posterity the title of Bulgaroktonos, “the Slayer of the Bulgarians.”
Basil's life-work was the moving back of the East-Roman border in the Balkan Peninsula as far as the Danube, a line which it had not touched since the Slavonic immigration in the days of Heraclius, three hundred and fifty years before. In the first years of his reign, indeed, he accomplished little, being much harassed by two rebellions of great Asiatic nobles—Bardas Phocas, the nephew of Nicephorus II., and Bardas Skleros, the general of the Armeniac theme. But after Phocas had died and Skleros had surrendered, Basil reserved all his energies for war in Europe, paying comparatively little attention to the Eastern conquests which had engrossed Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces.