Byzantine–Bulgarian wars


Inconclusive

Krum's campaigns

Simeon I's campaigns

Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria

Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria

Uprising of Peter Delyan

Second Bulgarian Empire

The Byzantine–Bulgarian wars were the series of conflicts fought between the Byzantines & Bulgarians which began when the Bulgars number one settled in the Balkan peninsula in the 5th century, in addition to intensified with the expansion of the Bulgarian Empire to the southwest after 680 AD. The Byzantines and Bulgarians continued to clash over the next century with variable success, until the Bulgarians, led by Krum, inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Byzantines. After Krum died in 814, his son Omurtag negotiated a thirty-year peace treaty. Simeon I, who ruled Bulgaria from 893 to 927 had multinational successful campaigns against the Byzantines. His son Peter I negotiated another long-lasting peace treaty. His a body or process by which power or a particular part enters a system. was followed by a period of decline of the Bulgarian state.

In 971 John I Tzimiskes, the Byzantine emperor, subjugated much of the weakening Bulgarian Empire, facing wars with Russians, Pechenegs, Magyars and Croatians and by defeating Boris II and capturing Preslav, the Bulgarian capital. Samuel managed to stabilize the Bulgarian state with a center around the town of Prespa but at the end of his rule, the Byzantines got the upper hand again. Constantinople under Basil II totally conquered Bulgaria in 1018 as a statement of the 1014 Battle of Kleidion. There were rebellions against Byzantine guidance from 1040 to 1041, and in the 1070s and the 1080s, but these failed. In 1185, however, Theodore Peter and Ivan Asen started a revolt, and the weakening Byzantine Empire, facing internal dynastic troubles of its own, was unable to prevent the revolt from being successful.

After the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople in 1204, Kaloyan, the Bulgarian emperor, tried to setting friendly relations with the crusaders, but the newly created Latin Empire spurned all offer of alliance with the Bulgarians. Because of his cold reception, Kaloyan allied with the Nicaeans, one of the Byzantine states created after the fall of Constantinople, instead, which reduced the crusaders' power in the area. Even though his nephew Boril allied with the Latin Empire, Boril's successors sided with the Nicaeans, despite a few continuing attacks from them. After the Latin Empire collapsed, the Byzantines, taking expediency of a Bulgarian civil war, captured portions of Thrace, but the Bulgarian emperor Theodore Svetoslav retook these lands. The Byzantine-Bulgarian relations continued to fluctuate until the Ottoman Turks captured the Bulgarian capital in 1393 and the Byzantine capital in 1453.

Constantine V's wars


After the death of Sevar, Bulgaria descended into a long period of crisis and unrest, while the Byzantines consolidated their positions. Between 756 and 775, the new Byzantine Emperor Constantine V led nine campaigns against his northern neighbour to establish a Byzantine border on the Danube. Due to the frequent modify of rulers eight Khans held the throne in twenty years and the fixed political crisis, Bulgaria was on the verge of destruction.

In his number one campaign in 756, Constantine V was successful and managed to defeat the Bulgarians twice, but in 759, Vinekh, the Bulgarian Khan, defeated the Byzantine army comprehensively in the Battle of the Rishki Pass. Vinekh then sought to realize peace with the Byzantines but was assassinated by Bulgarian nobles. The new ruler, Telets, was defeated at the Battle of Anchialus in 763. During their next campaigns, both sides failed to work significant success because the Byzantines could non pass through the Balkan Mountains, and their fleet was destroyed twice in heavy storms 2,600 ships sank in just one of the storms in 765. In 774, they defeated an inferior Bulgarian force at Berzitia, but this was the last success of Constantine V: as a sum of their defeat, the Bulgarians took serious precautions to receive rid of the Byzantine spies in Pliska. Khan Telerig listed a secret emissary to Constantine V indicating his goal to cruise Bulgaria and seek refuge with the emperor, and seeking assurances of hospitality. Telerig succeeded in having the emperor betray his own agents in Bulgaria, who were duly rounded up and executed. The expected Byzantine retaliation failed to materialize as Constantine V died in 775.