Sviatoslav the Conqueror
The peaceful diplomacy Olga pursued would come to an abrupt end. Some time in the early 960s her son, Sviatoslav, assumed the position of kniaz (prince) of Novgorod, moving to Kyiv some time later to become the Great Prince.
Resisting his mother s insistence to convert to Christianity—“my followers will laugh at that”—Sviatoslav threw himself into a career of battle and conquest, helped by the full coffers which his mother had amassed. He adopted the Sarmatian method of stealth and rapid advance, as well as their code of chivalry. Disdaining ambushes and surprise attacks, however, he always sent an envoy ahead of him with a simple message—“I march on you.”When Prince Sviatoslavhad grown up and matured, he began to collect a numerous and valiant army. Stepping light as a leopard, he undertook many campaigns. Upon his expeditions he carried with him neither wagon nor kettles, and boiled no meat, but cut off small strips of horseflesh, game or beef and ate it after roasting it on the coals. Nor did he have a tent, but he spread out a horse-blanket under him, and set his saddle under his head; and all his druzhina did likewise. He sent messengers to the other lands announcing his intention to attack them.31
We know more about Sviatoslavs campaigns than those of his predecessors. Trained by his father s commander Sveneld who would accompany him on his military exploits Sviatoslav first moved to secure the eastern trade routes. In 964 the 21- year-old prince moved against the Viatichi tribe along the Oka and Volga rivers, the only Slavic tribe still independent from Kyiv.32 Defeating the tribe and imposing tribute, Sviatoslav advanced south along the Volga River and attacked the Bulgars, capturing their capital Bolgary. He next devastated the land of the Finno-Ugric Burtas and continuing south stormed the Khazar fortress of Sarkel.
With his rear secured, Sviatoslav now advanced on the main prize, the wealthy Khazar capital Itil. He was met by their main army under the Kaghan himself, which had moved to block his way to the capital city, and in a pitched battle the Khazars suffered a heavy defeat. Itil and the city of Samandar on the Caspian Sea were looted and devastated, with much of the urban population expelled and dispersed. Writing in the 970s the ContemporaryMuslim geographer ibn-Hawqal left a brief account of the war which he confirms took place during 964-66.Today not a trace remains of Bulghar, nor of Burtas, nor of Khazar because the Rusians destroyed them all, took from them all their lands and made them their own. Those who survived fled to neighboring cities in order to remain close to their homes in the hope that they would make peace with the Rusians and submit to them.33
Perhaps the destruction was not as great as ibn-Hawqal described, since the Khazar Kaghanate was obliterated only some 2-3 years later during a second attack from Rus. Also, the Volga Bulgars recovered from their defeat and remained a prosperous trading society for a few centuries to come. Wishing to control all the trade in the area, Sviatoslav next turned his attention to the northern Caucasus and the lower Don region, where he defeated and subjugated the Iasy and the Kasogians.34 These steppe tribes would have an important impact on the military formations and strategies of Rus, particularly on the cavalry and the introduction of lancers and mounted archers.
Having secured the Caspian and Caucasus trade routes Sviatoslav returned to Kyiv with much booty, but he would soon be provided with an opportunity to gain an even richer prize. The Bulgarian Emperor Symeon I had conquered a large part of the Balkans and following his death in 927 from a heart attack he was succeeded by Tsar Peter I, who proceeded to sign a victor s peace treaty with Emperor Romanus I. Constantinople was compelled to recognize Symeons crowning and the title aBasileus Bulgarias” (Emperor of the Bulgarians), Bulgaria was granted a Patriarch with full independence for the Bulgarian Church, and on 8 October, 927 Peter married the Roman Emperor s granddaughter Maria Lekapena.
Upon his granddaughter ,s marriage Emperor Romanus arranged for payments to be made to the Bulgarian Emperor, probably to last only his granddaughter s lifetime so she could live in some comfort amongst the barbarians. In any case when the payments ceased Peter sent emissaries to Constantinople in 965 demanding their restitution. The new Roman Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (963- 69) refused to pay the tribute, perhaps taking advantage of the fact that the Bulgarian Empire had been divided into an eastern kingdom under Peter and a western kingdom under Shishman. When Peter s envoys appeared before Nikephoros II, they were dismissed insultingly by the Emperorwho, turning to his father Bardas, asked rhetorically, “Did you unawares beget me as a slave? Shall I, the revered Emperor of the Romans, be reduced to paying tribute to a most wretched and abominable peoples?”35 The ambassadors were then slapped in the face and sent back with a declaration of war.Not waiting for a response, Emperor Nikephoros moved his troops towards Bulgaria seizing border strongholds along the way. The bulk of his army, however was in the Middle East fighting Muslims, and rather than risk his limited manpower in the narrow mountain passes (or withdraw men from the Middle East), Nikephoros hit upon a scheme. He had heard of Sviatoslav s victorious campaigns in the east against his Khazar allies, and he recalled that in the time of Sviatoslav s father Igor, Constantinople had signed a peace treaty with Rus. To take the pressure off his troops in Europe he decided to send Kalokyres, the son of the ruler of Cherson in the Crimea, to Kyiv, with a proposal.36 For the payment of a substantial amount of gold, Sviatoslavwould attack Bulgaria from the north and occupy as much land as he could. As described by Leo the Deacon: “he sent him (Kalokyres) to the Tauroscythians (who are usually called Rusians in their proper language) to distribute to them the gold that he entrusted to him, a sum of 15 kentenaria (1500 lbs.) and to lead them to Mysian (Bulgarian) territory to conquer it.”37
The passage seems to hide more than it reveals.
Did Kalo- kyres bring the gold with him to pay Sviatoslav in Kyiv, as the passage suggests? If so, this would have been a premature move since there was no guarantee of Sviatoslav’s success—he could have been defeated by the Bulgarians at the outset. The payment is also contradicted by a later passage from the same source.As for Sviatoslav, the leader of the Rus army, he (the next emperor, John Tzimiskes-see below) decided to negotiate with him; and he sent ambassadors to tell him that he should take the pay promised by the Emperor Nikephoros for attacking the Mysians (Bulgarians), and should return to his town territory and the Cimmerian Bosporos (the Strait of Krech).38
In any case Sviatoslav, together with by now his firm friend Kalokyres, developed a plan for the Eastern Roman Empire. Sviatoslavwould conquer Bulgaria and claim it as his own, proceed to defeat the Romanian army and install Kalokyres as Emperor. The “passionate and bold, courageous and active” prince, as Leo the Deacon described him, then proceeded to raise an army to march into Bulgaria. We do not know the size of his forces but Leo the Deacons claim that Sviatoslav assembled an army of60,000 men, not counting the service units, is certainly an exaggeration.39 The armed forces at Sviatoslav’s disposal were essentially those which he had inherited from his father, and consisted of three main parts. The closest to the prince was his personal “druzhina” or comrades-in-arms. These were his mounted retainers, the regular or standing part of the entire host hand-picked by the prince himself, with the senior members or the boyars serving as civil administrators and “voivodas” or army commanders. In battle the “druzhina” fought as a unit and acted as the princes bodyguard, while in peacetime they were responsible for maintaining order in the main cities where the prince had a seat.
The second and main part of the army was the “polk,” which consisted of tribal warriors who had volunteered to serve the prince in time of war.
The largest unit was the “tysiacha” or a thousand men commanded by a “tysiatsky,” which in later years would become the title of an army commander and senior administrator. The thousand-man units were divided into “sotni” or companies consisting of a hundred men led by a “sotnik,” and these were sub-divided further into “desiatini” or squads of ten men led by a “desiatnik.” These ten-man squads usually consisted of related clansmen and formed the basic fighting unit of a company. If one of them was killed or wounded the rest would stand their ground to the last man, if need be in order to recover the wounded man or his dead body. The princes army would be “topped up” by hired mercenaries, Varangian infantry and Turkic or Sarmatian cavalry, as the need arose. Later, prairie nomads seeking protection against invading Turkic tribes would seek refuge in Rus and settle as border guards in the southern prairie regions. The equipment and weapons varied depending on the type of unit. The princes druzhina were highly trained fighting men and were supplied from the princes treasury with weapons such as lances, broadswords, battleaxes and maces. The defensive equipment consisted of conical helmets, chain mail or plate armor, and shields suitable for horseback. The Varangian mercenaries carried similar arms at their own expense, while the tribesmen equipped themselves with traditional spears, axes and broadswords. After a battle the victors would arm themselves with the enemy’s weaponry and equipment, should superior weapons also be captured. Archerywas Widelypracticed, and Rusian archers would become proficient with the composite bow, as witnessed by the invading Crusader knights in the 12th and 13th centuries. Everyinfantryman carried a kite-shaped shield that reached down to his feet and protected most of his body.Sviatoslav arrived on the Danube towards the end of 968 where he was met by a hostile Bulgarian force as he was disembarking on the Istra River near Dorostolon (now Silistra).
Once on shore the men of Rus raised their great shields, drew their swords and charged, cutting down the Bulgarian ranks.40 Many of Sviatoslav’s men had come from their conquests in the east and were battle-hardened veterans. Unable to withstand the assault the Bulgarians withdrew to the fortress of Dorostolon, which soon fell along with other towns along the Danube. The method of attack which became known as the Rusian Charge, probably developed by Sviatoslavhimself, was to use the entire infantry in a powerful first-strike assault on the enemy’s forces with intimidating war-cries and a loud clashing of broadswords on the long shields. The idea was to break the enemy formations and send him into an irreversible retreat where he would suffer heavy casualties and be destroyed. Should the initial charge fail the Rusian infantry would still continue to press the attack, failing which it would retire to a defensive position. Pereyaslavets on the Danube delta was next to fall to the Rusian army and Sviatoslav proceeded to occupy most of eastern Bulgaria. On hearing of the defeats the East Bulgarian ruler Peter suffered what seemed to be an epileptic stroke and died on 30 January, 969, in the capital Preslav. The rest of the Bulgarian forces went over to Sviatoslavwho announced that all of Bulgaria was now a part of his domain, with Pereyaslavets as the capital.The Bulgarian defection raises an interesting question which is often overlooked—the role played by two popular heretical movements, the Paulicians and the Bogomils. The less aggressive of the two, the followers of the priest Bogomil (Theophilus), who preached just before Sviatoslav’s invasion, would certainly not have sided with Tsar Peter and the Orthodox Church. Indeed they may have been involved in Sviatoslav s victories and the rapid occupation of eastern Bulgaria. The Bogomils, like the Paulicians, were Menachean dualist Christians with their own interpretation of the New Testament. The Judaeo-Christian tradition holds that the whole world, both the visible and the invisible, is the creation of God, who is the source of all perfection and is both all-powerful and all-merciful. These essential characteristics of God become inconsistent when confronting the actual world, particularly the one which existed duringBogomils time. Suffering, injustice, and oppression of the poor by the rich was widespread, with the peasantry under the exploitative power of the big landlords, which included many Orthodox bishops of the Church. Clearly God could not be both, and although he was merciful and the creator of the invisible world (including the human soul) he had no power in the world of matter This was in radical opposition to the Judeo-Christian resolution of the problem, which taught that God gave man free will, and evil was due to man’s disobedience of Gods will. The Bogomils also believed that the world was created by Satanael, the first son of God who had been rejected with his angels by his Father because he revolted against him. Satanael also created Mans body, but the soul was the product of God the Father. To save the human race God send his second son—the Word—into the world. He entered Mary s body through the ear, was born and taught men how to defeat Satanael and his world. Through his suffering (which wasn’t real since He was Son of God) he liberated man, deprived Sa- tanael of his divine nature and took his place on the right side of God the Father. Bogomils rejected the Mass, the Sacraments, and all images including the cross, and only accepted the New Testament and the Psalms, the Old Testament being the work of Satanael. Marriage and human procreation—indeed the entire human body—was seen as unclean and the work of Satan, seeking to tempt the soul to sin.
The Bogomils were great proselytizers and traveled from village to village, discreetly spreading their heretical views. The Church, they stressed, had lost the right to claim true Christianity due to immoral behavior such as idleness, drinking and robbery of the village people. At first, on entering a village they would try not to draw excessive attention to themselves, as commented by Cosmas, a contemporary Orthodoxpriest:
In appearance the heretics are lamb-like, gentle, modest and silent, and pale from hypocritical fasting. They do not talk idly, nor laugh loudly, nor give themselves airs... outwardly they do everything so as not to be distinguished from Orthodox Christians.... Wherever they meet any simple or uneducated man, they sow the tares of their teaching, blaspheming the traditions and rules of the Holy Church.
Their main appeal, however, Iayin a moral and ethical criticism of the Church and a denunciation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, as well as in a message of civil disobedience. As Cosmas comments: “They teach their own people not to obey their lords, they revile the wealthy, hate the Tsar, ridicule the elders, condemn the boyars (the military aristocracy), regard as vile in the sight of God those who serve the Tsar, and forbid every servant to work for his master.”41 It is likely that their civil disobedience took a more active form when they saw the established order of the Tsar and the Church collapse under the pagan invasion.
Alarmed at Sviatoslav’s victories, the Roman Emperor Nikephoros Withdrewhis forces to the defense of Constantinople (“since he was always careful and vigilant throughout his entire life”), mounting catapults on the walls and stretching the giant chain to block the Golden Horn. He realized that he couldn’t defeat Sviatoslav’s combined force and that his plans had gone awry. He only intended the Rus army to attack and weaken Bulgaria, not expecting that Sviatoslavwould conquer a large part of the country and gain control of the Bulgarian forces. There was another option open to Nikephoros and this was to attack Rus itself, while the bulk of its army was busy in Bulgaria. This would weaken Sviatoslav’s position and buy Nikephoros time until more forces could be withdrawn from the Middle East, especially since news arrived that Antioch had been recaptured from the Muslims by the Imperial forces. Eastern Roman Emperors had long realized it was important to not only keep good relations with the Khazars but also with the Pechenegs, who in an emergency could play a strategic role. The Imperial policy is revealed by Emperor Constantine Por- phyrogenitus in a secret testament to his son:
So long as the emperor of the Romans is at peace with the Pechenegs, neither Rus nor Turks can come upon the Roman dominion by force of arms, nor can they exact from the Romans large and inflated sums in money and goods as the price of peace, for they fear the strength of this nation which the emperor can turn against them while they are campaigning against the Romans. For the Pechenegs, if they are leagued in friendship with the emperor and won over by him through letters and gifts, can easily come upon the country both of the Rusians and the Turks, and enslave their women and children and ravage their country.42
Now Sviatoslav learned that taking advantage of his absence the Pechenegs had laid siege to Kyiv and were devastating the surrounding countryside. This was the first time the Pechenegs had invaded Rus and they were most Certainlyprompted to do so by Constantinople. Hurrying back to Kyiv Sviatoslav arrived with his main force and lifted the siege, driving the Pechenegs back into the steppe.
His mother Olga was on her deathbed and Sviatoslav lingered in Kyiv until her death, followed by the Christian burial she had insisted upon. Leaving his three sons to govern in his stead he left a few months later for Bulgaria with the intention of moving his capital from Kyiv to Pereyaslavets.43 Before leaving he made his intentions clear:
I do not care to remain in Kyiv but should prefer to live in Pereyaslavets on the Danube since that is the center of my realm where all riches are brought together; gold, silks, wine, and various fruits from Greece, silver and horses from Hungary and Bohemia, and from Rus furs, wax, honey and slaves.44
On returning to Bulgaria, Sviatoslav discovered that during his absence Nikephoros had opened negotiations with the Bulgarian boyars, hoping to win them over as their protector. On the IOth ofDecember 969, however, he was assassinated in his sleep on John Tzimiskes’ orders who, on the next day, was proclaimed Emperor. Forty-five years old and born in Armenia, he was an able commander and administrator, and though extremely short of stature he is described by Leo the Deacon as broad-shouldered and of great strength, with blond hair thin at the forehead and a red moustache.
Sviatoslav’s second Bulgarian campaign opened in the summer of969, when he appeared in the mouth of the Danube with fresh forces. Did he leave most of his force behind in Bulgaria when he returned to Kyiv or had he taken his men with him to counter the Pecheneg threat? Imperial sources are silent on the point. Since he intended to return to Bulgaria he had probably left some of his army to garrison the captured towns and cities, particularly Pereyaslavets which he had made his new seat. Now, with fresh reinforcements Sviatoslav continued the conquest of Bulgaria. The Princes first objective was the Bulgarian capital Preslav where, arriving with his men, he was met by the defenders, who had sortied from the city walls.45 In typical fashion, disdaining the advantage of surprise Sviatoslav had sent his usual message, “I march on you” much to his enemies’ surprise, who began to reinforce the defenses. A battle and a “great carnage” followed with the Bulgarians beginning to gain the upper hand. Then rising in his stirrups and with the famous words “Here is where we fall! Let us fight bravely, brothers and comrades,” Sviatoslav charged the Bulgarian ranks, followed by his men. The tide of battle turned and towards evening the Rusians had gained the upper hand, routing the enemy and breaking into the city by storm. With Preslav secured Sviatoslav headed south across the Haemus Mountains capturing the strategic city of Philipoli s (modern Plovdiv) in late autumn. Not waiting until spring, Sviatoslav continued along the Marica River and invaded Imperial territory. The important communications center of Adrianople fell and the road to Constantinople lay open. Even the great Bulgarian Tsar Simeon had not penetrated so deeply into Imperial territory, and so close to the imperial capital. All of eastern Bulgaria and Thrace were now in Sviatoslavs hands, conquered with an army of between ten and twenty thousand men, contrary to Leo the Deacons claim of a much larger force. Sviatoslav was an able tactician who knew how to inspire his men, the hallmarks of a great leader.46