Byzantine Military: The Battle of Anchialus

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The Battle of Anchialus

The Bulgarian conquest of the Roman Balkans.

Battle of Anchialus (708AD)

Background

With the decisive Bulgarian victory Battle of Ongal in 680AD around the Danube delta area, the Eastern Roman Empire agreed to the creation of the First Bulgarian Empire on soil long controlled by Rome.

Justinian II came to the throne in 685 shortly after the defeat by the Bulgarians. Justinian was keen to restore the greatness of the Empire.

After a preliminary strike against the Arabs in Armenia,Justinian managed to augment the sum paid by the Umayyad Caliphs as an annual tribute, and to regain control of part of Cyprus.

Justinian took advantage of the peace in the East to regain possession of the Balkans, which were before then almost totally under the heel of Slavic tribes.In 687 Justinian transferred cavalry troops from Anatolia to Thrace. With a great military campaign in 688–689, Justinian defeated the Bulgars of Macedonia and was finally able to enter Thessalonica, the second most important Byzantine city in Europe.

Justinian II

Justinian strengthened the thematic military organization of the Empire. As part of that plan the Emperor sought to protect the rights of peasant freeholders who served as the main recruitment pool for the armed forces of the Empire. There had been steady attempts by the aristocracy to acquire their land. This action to improve the military also put him in direct conflict with some of the largest landholders in the Empire.

Justinian was deposed in 695. His tongue was slit and his nose cut off. He was exiled to Cherson in Byzantine Crimea.

Years later Justinian approached Kahn Tervel of Bulgaria. Trevel agreed to provide all the military assistance necessary for Justinian to regain his throne in exchange for financial considerations, lands located between Stara Zagora, Sliven and the Black Sea, the award of a Caesar's crown, and the hand of Justinian's daughter, Anastasia, in marriage.

In 705, with an army of 15,000 Bulgar and Slav horsemen Justinian appeared before the walls of Constantinople. Unable to take the city by force, he and some companions entered through an unused water conduit under the walls of the city, roused their supporters, and seized control of the city in a midnight coup d'état.

The Bulgarian army returned home with their payment leaving Justinian to take a bloody revenge on his enemies.

The modern day town of Pomorie, Bulgaria sits on the old Roman city of Anchialus.

The Battle

It is a rule that no good deed goes unpunished. After disagreements with the Bulgarian Kahn, Justinian attacked his ally. Now that he was in a stronger position the Emperor wanted to re-take the lands lost by in his deal with Tervel.

There are no real numbers or even much detailed information on the campaign. But this must have been a major effort because the Emperor himself led the troops into enemy controlled territory. Tervel had shown up at Constantinople with 15,000 men to support Justinian's claim to the throne. We must assume that Justinian would invade Bulgaria with at least an army of that size and perhaps one even larger.

J.B. Bury says the Roman force moved to the fortress of Anchialus by both land and sea. Most of the troops appear to have been cavalry. There is no mention of a battle or enemy contact on the march to the Roman held fortress.

The Romans appear to have been lulled into a sense of safety. Perhaps locals told them that there were no enemy troops in the area. In any case, Justinian has to get full blame for a lack of proper scouting and for not building a proper fortified base camp.

While Justinian's soldiers were meandering about in disorder gathering food, Tervel and his cavalry charged the outermost Roman troops. At the same time the Bulgarian infantry attacked the camp. The Romans were surprised and confused; most of them perished in the battle or were captured as well as many horses and arms.

The Emperor fled to the fortress with what troops that were left. He held out in the fortress for three days with his men. Seeing no other solution, he had the horses disabled so they would be of no use to the Bulgarians and then boarded the Roman ships waiting offshore and returned to Constantinople.

It was a total Bulgarian victory.

Afterwards

Three years later in 711 the rebel Emperor Philippicus captured and executed Justinian.

The Bulgarian victory secured the new territorial gains for centuries. In 717 Emperor Leo III made a plea to Tervel for help in the second Siege of Constantinople by the Arabs. Relying on the treaty of 716 and Tervel agreed. The first clash between the Bulgarians and the Arabs ended with a Bulgarian victory. The Bulgarians slaughtered some 22,000 Arabs in the battle and stopped the Muslim invasion of Europe. Khan Tervel was called the Savior of Europe by his contemporaries.

J.B Bury - History of the Later Roman Empire (1889)

(Battle of Anchialus)

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Justinian The Great and Theodora

Emperor 527 to 565. Justinian was the last Roman Emperor to speak Latin as a first language. Justinian's reign is marked by the ambitious but only partly realized renovatio imperii, or "restoration of the Empire". His general Belisarius conquered the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa, extending Roman control to the Atlantic Ocean. Subsequently Belisarius, Narses, and other generals conquered the Ostrogothic Kingdom, restoring Dalmatia, Sicily, Italy, and Rome to the Empire after more than half a century of barbarian control. The prefect Liberius reclaimed most of southern Iberia, establishing the province of Spania. Under his rule there was a uniform rewriting of Roman law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is still the basis of civil law in many modern states. His reign also marked a blossoming of Byzantine culture, and his building program yielded such masterpieces as the church of Hagia Sophia.

Maurice

Emperor from 582 to 602. A prominent general in his youth, Maurice fought with success against the Sassanid Persians. Once he became Emperor, he brought the war with Persia to a victorious conclusion: the Empire's eastern border in the Caucasus was vastly expanded and for the first time in nearly two centuries the Romans were no longer obliged to pay the Persians thousands of pounds of gold annually for peace. Maurice campaigned extensively in the Balkans against the Avars – pushing them back across the Danube by 599. He also conducted campaigns across the Danube, the first Emperor to do so in over two hundred years. In the West, he established two large semi-autonomous provinces called exarchates, ruled by exarchs, or viceroys, of the Emperor. Maurice established the Exarchate of Ravenna, Italy in 584, the first real effort by the Empire to halt the advance of the Lombards. With the creation of the Exarchate of Africa in 590, he further solidified the empire's hold on the western Mediterranean.

Heraclius

Emperor 610 to 641. Heraclius' reign was marked by several military campaigns. The year Heraclius came to power the Empire was threatened on multiple frontiers. Heraclius immediately took charge of the ongoing war against the Sassanid Persians. The first battles of the campaign ended in defeat for the Byzantines; the Persian army fought their way to the Bosphorus. However, because Constantinople was protected by impenetrable walls and a strong navy, Heraclius was able to avoid total defeat. Heraclius drove the Persians out of Asia Minor and pushed deep into their territory, defeating them decisively in 627 at the Battle of Nineveh. Soon after his victory he faced a new threat of the Muslim invasions. In 634 the Muslims invaded Roman Syria, defeating Heraclius' brother Theodore. Within a short period of time the Arabs would also conquer Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt.

Irene of Athens

Irene of Athens Byzantine Empress Regnant from 797 to 802. Prior to becoming Empress regnant, Irene was empress consort from 775 to 780, and empress dowager and regent from 780 to 797. It is often claimed she called herself basileus 'emperor'. In fact, she normally referred to herself as basilissa, 'empress', although there are three instances of the title basileus being used by her. Irene was born to the noble Greek Sarantapechos family of Athens. She married Leo IV in 769. Upon Leo's death she became regent for the future Constantine VI. Irene was almost immediately confronted with a conspiracy against her close to home and in Sicily. Irene withstood an invasion by a large Arab army. She subdued the Slavs of the Balkans and laid the foundations of Byzantine expansion and re-Hellenization in the area. Irene's most notable act was the restoration of the Orthodox veneration of icons (images of Christ or the saints). Pope Leo III, who needed help against enemies in Rome and who saw the throne of the Byzantine Emperor as vacant (lacking a male occupant), crowned Charlemagne as Roman Emperor in 800.

Nikephoros II Phokas

Emperor from 963 to 969. His brilliant military exploits resulted in the conquest of Cilicia and the re-conquest of the island of Cyprus from the Muslims. He conducted raids into Upper Mesopotamia and Syria. In the West he lost Sicily completely to the Muslims and faced Magyar raids deep into the Balkans. He was assassinated in his apartment on December 11, 969. On the night of the assassination the Empress Theophano suspiciously left the Imperial bedchamber, leaving the doors unbolted. General John Tzimiskes entered, killed the Emperor, and then declared himself Emperor. It was thought the General and the Empress had been lovers.

Basil II - The Bulgar Slayer

Emperor 976 to 1025. Basil oversaw the stabilization and expansion of the Byzantine Empire's eastern frontier, and above all, the final and complete subjugation of Bulgaria, the Empire's foremost European foe, after a prolonged struggle. For this he was nicknamed by later authors as "the Bulgar-slayer" by which he is popularly known. At his death, the Empire stretched from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and from the Danube to the borders of Palestine, its greatest territorial extent since the Muslim conquests four centuries earlier.

John II Komnenos and Irene of Hungary

Emperor from 1118 to 1143. The greatest of the Komnenian emperors. In the course of his twenty-five year reign, John made alliances with the Holy Roman Empire in the west, decisively defeated the Pechenegs in the Balkans, and personally led numerous campaigns against the Turks in Asia Minor. John's campaigns fundamentally changed the balance of power in the east, forcing the Turks onto the defensive and restoring to the Byzantines many towns, fortresses and cities right across the peninsula. In the southeast, John extended Byzantine control from the Maeander in the west all the way to Cilicia and Tarsus in the east. In an effort to demonstrate the Byzantine emperor's role as the leader of the Christian world, John marched into Muslim Syria at the head of the combined forces of Byzantium and the Crusader states.

Constantine XI Palaiologos

The Last Emperor of the Romans 1449 to 1453. Constantine faced the siege of Constantinople defending his city of 60,000 people with an army only numbering 7,000 men against an Ottoman army of over 80,000. He personally led the defense of the city and took an active part in the fighting alongside his troops in the land walls. At the same time, he used his diplomatic skills to maintain the necessary unity between the Genovese, Venetian and the Greek troops. When the city fell to the Turks he tore off his imperial ornaments so there would be nothing to distinguish him from any other soldier and led his remaining soldiers into a last charge where he was killed.