Samuil’s Campaigns to Preserve Bulgaria and Bulgarian Defeat, 976–1018

Abstract

The Bulgarians inhabiting unoccupied western Bulgaria refused to accept Byzantine claims of conquest. Led by the Komitopuli brothers, they instigated hostilities against Byzantium (976), sparking the final phase of the hegemonic wars. Samuil emerged as primary leader and, ultimately, tsar, defeating Byzantine Emperor Basil II at Trajan’s Gate (986) and expanding Bulgaria to its largest territorial extent in the early medieval era. His assorted campaigns are treated in detail. Thereafter, Basil II unleashed a series of military efforts against Bulgaria between 999 and 1018. His blinding a Bulgarian army after the battle of Klyuch (1014) is particularly examined. A leadership crisis after Samuil’s death (1014) broke the Bulgarians’ will to resist, leading to total defeat and Basil’s conquest of Bulgaria in 1018. The hegemonic wars ended.

The following works provided the basic informational framework for the text of this chapter treating the final phase of the Bulgarian-Byzantine hegemonic wars: Bozhilov and Gyuzelev, pt. 3, chap. 6; Zlatarski, IBDSV 1/2, 562–566, pt. VI; Mutafchiev, IBN 1, chap. XII; IB 2, pt. IV, chap. 3; Andreev, 82–93; IB 5 VI, 96–103; Angelov and Cholpanov, 32–61; Tzvetkov, 141–147; A.P. Dimitrov, Zapadno bŭlgarsko tsarstvo (Sofia, 1930); S.G. Kashev, Voinite na tsar Samuil i negovite priemnitsi (Sofia, 1933); D. Radulov, “Tsar Samuil,” VISb, no. 2 (1982): 188–197; A. Nicoloff, Samuel’s Bulgaria (Cleveland, OH, 1969); S. Antoljak, Samuel and His State, E. Frankel and Z. Anchevski, trans. (Skopje, 1985); S. Pirivatrić, Samuilova država. Obim i karakter (Belgrade, 1997); Runciman, A History, bk. III, chap. III; Browning, Byzantium and Bulgaria, 73–75; Fine, Early Medieval Balkans, 188–200; Curta, Southeastern Europe, 241–247 and passim; NCMH 3, 595–601; Obolensky, Byzantine Commonwealth, 130–133; Stephenson, Byzantium’s Balkan Frontier, 58–79; id., The Legend of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer (Cambridge, 2003), chaps. 2–3; Whittow, 296–298, 369, 376, 386–389; Treadgold, A History, 510, 513–528; Ostrogorsky, History, chap. IV, sect. 6; G. Schlumberger, Tsar Samuil i Vasilii II (Sofia, 1943); Jenkins, Imperial Centuries, chaps. 22–23.