The stabilisation of the frontiers was one of the great achievements of the Emperors Leo III and his son Constantine V. The latter’s frequent campaigns into the heartland of Bulgarian territory came near to destroying the Bulgar khanate entirely, although the Bulgars offered a tenacious and fierce resistance. In the east, he campaigned against a number of key Arab fortresses, re-establishing military parity between the Roman and Muslim armies, and thus providing the stability economically and politically to permit the devastated provinces to recover from the century and a half of warfare to which they had been subjected.
But although some certain stability was established in the east, and although Constantine’s efforts kept the Bulgars quiescent until the end of the eighth century, the empire’s political presence in the central Mediterranean and in Italy had markedly worsened. Ravenna, the last outpost of the Exarchate of Italy, fell to the Lombards in 751, and they in their turn soon came under Frankish domination. The papacy had for decades been effectively autonomous and independent, since imperial military support was minimal, and from the 750s, exacerbated in part by the tensions caused by the imperial espousal of iconoclasm, the alienation had increased. The popes forged an alliance with the kings of the Franks, Pepin I and then Charlemagne, who now replaced the eastern emperor as the dominant power in Italy (excluding Sicily); and in 800 the pope crowned Charlemagne emperor, an act seen in the east as a direct challenge to imperial claims.
Diplomacy overcame some of the problems and misunderstandings, but the Byzantine emperors had henceforth to reckon with a ‘revived’ empire in the west, independent of Constantinople, frequently with contrary interests, and potentially also a military opponent. The imperial situation was not helped when in the 820s Arab forces invaded Sicily and Crete, conquering the latter fairly rapidly. Sicily was stoutly defended, but gradually fell, fortress by fortress, to the invaders during a long-drawn-out struggle which lasted until the end of the century. The Cretan Arabs became a major maritime thorn in the flesh of the empire, plundering and devastating coastal regions, and several major expeditions during the ninth century failed to dislodge them. Byzantine power in the central and western Mediterranean was fatally compromised by these developments.
Although the Bulgar Khan Krum had inflicted a series of heavy defeats on the Byzantines in the period 811-813, the empire was able to recover and establish a peaceful relationship with his successors. The situation in the Balkans improved further under Basil I with the conversion to Christianity of the Bulgar Khan Boris, who took the Christian name Michael (852-889) and the title of Tsar (Caesar); a strong Christian, pro-Byzantine party developed at the Bulgar court. But during the reign of the Tsar Symeon (893-927), who was brought up in the imperial court at Constantinople and who had evolved
Map 5.4 Territorial losses and gains: 7th-10th centuries.
His own imperial pretensions, war broke out once more, a war which, with pauses, lasted until the 920 s, and which at one point saw Constantinople besieged by a powerful Bulgar army. When peace was restored, it was through the efforts of the Emperor Romanos I, previously a commander of the imperial fleet, who had seized power and who, along with his sons, shared the imperial position with the legitimate heir Constantine VII. The peace lasted into the late 960s under a succession of pro-Byzantine Bulgarian rulers.
One other zone was of importance to Byzantine rulers, as it had been to the emperors of the sixth century and before. The steppe region stretching from the plain of Hungary eastwards through south Russia and north of the Caspian was the home of many nomadic peoples, mostly of Turkic stock, and it was a fundamental tenet of Byzantine international diplomacy to keep the rulers of these various peoples favourably disposed towards the empire, achieved predominantly through substantial gifts of gold coin, fine silks, and imperial titles and honours. After the collapse of the Avar empire in the 630s, Constantinople had been able to establish good relations with the Khazars whose Khans, although converting to Judaism, remained a faithful ally of most Byzantine emperors, duly exploiting the Byzantine invitation to attack the Bulgars from the north, for example, when war broke out in this region, but serving also to keep the imperial court informed of developments further east. The
Khazar empire began to contract during the later ninth century, chiefly under pressure from the various peoples to the east who were set in motion by the expansion of the Pechenegs and allied groups. The Magyars (Hungarians) were established to the north-west and west of the Khazars by the middle of the ninth century, whence they established themselves in what is now Hungary, destroying local Slav kingdoms in the process, by the early tenth century. Both Khazars and Magyars served as mercenaries in Byzantine armies, particularly against the Bulgars, although the establishment by the later tenth century of a Christianised Hungarian kingdom on the central Danube posed a potential challenge to Byzantine power in the region, which became especially acute during the twelfth century. The Khazars remained important players in steppe diplomacy until the middle of the tenth century, when the growing power of the Kiev Rus’ finally brought about their destruction and replaced them in Byzantine diplomacy. The appearance of the Turkic Pechenegs (Patzinaks) during the late ninth century complicated this arrangement: the newcomers clashed with both the Khazars and the Magyars, establishing themselves in the steppe region between the Danube and Don. Their value to the empire as a check on both the Rus’ and the Magyars was obvious, particularly in the wars of the later tenth century, but they were dangerous and frequently unreliable allies. During the middle years of the eleventh century groups of Pechenegs began
Map 5.5 Territorial losses and gains: 11th-12th centuries.
To move into the Balkans, where they clashed with imperial troops. Until the period of civil wars after Manzikert in 1071, however, they were kept more-or-less in check; thereafter they ravaged and pillaged with little opposition until Alexios I was finally able to crush them in 1091.
World History
