The cruelty of the Varangian prince Igor, after his return to Russia, caused him to be murdered by his rebellious subjects.[64] Olga, his widow, became regent for their son Sviatoslaff. She embraced the Christian religion, and visited Constantinople in 957, where she was baptized. The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has left us an account of the ceremony of her reception at the Byzantine court. A Russian monk has preserved the commercial treaties of the empire; a Byzantine emperor records the pageantry that amused a Russian princess. The high position occupied by the court of Kieff in the tenth century is also attested by the style with which it was addressed by the court of Constantinople. The golden bulls of the Roman emperor of the East, addressed to the prince of Russia, were ornamented with a pendent seal equal in size to a double solidus, like those addressed to the kings of France.
THE RUSSIAN WAR (970-971 A.D.)
[970-971 A.D.]
We have seen that the emperor Nicephorus II sent the patrician Calocyres to excite Sviatoslaff to invade Bulgaria, and that the Byzantine ambassador proved a traitor, and assumed the purple. Sviatoslaff soon invaded Bulgaria at the head of a powerful army, which the gold brought by Calocyres assisted him to equip, and defeated the Bulgarian army in a great battle, 968 A.D. Peter, king of Bulgaria, died shortly after, and the country was involved in civil broils; taking advantage of which, Sviatoslaff took Presthlava the capital, and rendered himself master of the whole kingdom.
Nicephorus now formed an alliance with the Bulgarians, and was preparing to defend them against the Russians, when Sviatoslaff was compelled to return home, in order to defend his capital against the Patzinaks. Nicephorus assisted Boris and Romanus, the sons of Peter, to recover Bulgaria, and concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with Boris, who occupied the throne. After the assassination of Nicephorus, Sviatoslaff returned to invade Bulgaria with an army of sixty thousand men, and his enterprise assumed the character of one of those great invasions which had torn whole provinces from the Western Empire. His army was increased by a treaty with the Patzinaks and an alliance with the Hungarians, so that they began to dream of the conquest of Constantinople, and hoped to transfer the empire of the East from the Romans of Byzantium to the Russians. It was fortunate for the Byzantine Empire that it was ruled by a soldier who knew how to profit by its superiority in tactics and discipline. The Russian was not ignorant of strategy, and having secured his flank by his alliance with the Hungarians, he entered Thrace by the western passes of Mount Hæmus, then the most frequented road between Germany and Constantinople, and that by which the Hungarians were in the habit of making their plundering incursions into the empire.
Joannes Zimisces was occupied in the East when Sviatoslaff completed the second conquest of Bulgaria and passed Mount Hæmus, expecting to subdue Thrace during the emperor’s absence with equal ease, 970 A.D. The empire was still suffering from famine. Sviatoslaff took Philippopolis, and murdered twenty thousand of the inhabitants. An embassy sent by Zimisces was dismissed with a demand of tribute, and the Russian army advanced to Arcadiopolis, where one division was defeated by Bardas Sclerus, and the remainder retired again behind Mount Hæmus.
In the following spring, 971, the emperor Joannes took the field at the head of an army of fifteen thousand infantry and thirteen thousand cavalry, besides a body-guard of chosen troops called the Immortals, and a powerful battery of field and siege engines.[65] A fleet of three hundred galleys, attended by many smaller vessels, was despatched to enter the Danube and cut off the communications of the Russians with their own country.[66]
The emperor Joannes marched from Hadrianopolis just before Easter, when it was not expected that a Byzantine emperor would take the field. He knew that the passes on the great eastern road had been left unguarded by the Russians, and he led his army through all the defiles of Mount Hæmus without encountering any difficulty. The Russian troops stationed at Presthlava, who ought to have guarded the passes, marched out to meet the emperor when they heard he had entered Bulgaria. Their whole army consisted of infantry, but the soldiers were covered with chain armour, and accustomed to resist the light cavalry of the Patzinaks and other Turkish tribes.[67] They proved, however, no match for the heavy-armed lancers of the imperial army; and, after a vigorous resistance, were completely routed by Joannes Zimisces, leaving eighty-five hundred men on the field of battle. On the following day Presthlava was taken by escalade, and a body of seven thousand Russians and Bulgarians, who attempted to defend the royal palace, which was fortified as a citadel, were put to the sword after a gallant defence. Sphengelos, who commanded this division of the Russian force, and the traitor Calocyres, succeeded in escaping to Dorystolon, where Sviatoslaff had concentrated the rest of the army; but Boris, king of Bulgaria, with all his family, was taken prisoner in his capital.
Types of early Chain Armour.