Byzantine Empire (395–1453)
Bulgarians, enemies of the Byzantine Empire
Date: 04/21/2013
Vasily II fielded Byzantine cataphracts against the Bulgarian cavalry, and the Rus armed with axes against the Slavic spearmen. The armies of the Byzantine Empire and the Bulgarian Kingdom had much in common in terms of military art; in all other respects they were the complete opposite of each other. For example, the rich literary heritage of Byzantium and numerous documents that have survived to this day contain more information about the Byzantine army than about any other medieval army. Bulgaria, on the other hand, left extremely few sources on the basis of which it would be possible to draw up a description of the armed forces of this country - it did not have any civil institutions or developed writing. What little is known today about her army is gleaned from written sources of Bulgaria's enemies - the Byzantines.
When the Bulgars arrived on the Danube in the 7th century, the men of this tribe were predominantly warriors. The Byzantines who fought with them noted the excellent training of the heavy Bulgar horsemen, who were equally skillful in using bows, spears and swords. The horse was a sacred animal among the Bulgars - anyone who mistreated his horse could be put to death. During the reign of Simeon I, the basis of the army continued to be heavy cavalry, the number of which is estimated at 12,000-30,000 horsemen. The Bulgarians were known for their ability to fight at night (“they see in the dark like bats,” wrote one chronicler) and for the ferocity with which they gave chase as soon as the enemy began to retreat. “When they put their enemies to flight, they are not satisfied, like the Persians, Byzantines and other nations, with pursuing them to a reasonable distance and plundering their camp, but instead they do not slacken the pressure until the enemy is completely destroyed.” The Byzantine chronicler known as Pseudo-Simeon describes the Bulgarian cavalry as "armoured with iron" - apparently meaning chain mail or scale armor - and notes that the horsemen were armed with swords, spears and bows, as well as maces.
The infantry of Simeon's army probably consisted of Slavs who inhabited the lands south of the Danube. It was a lightly armed force that used round shields, and whose main weapon was a spear. However, by the time of Tsar Samuil, the process of assimilation had gone so far that there were practically no ethnic differences between the soldiers of the Bulgarian army. The Bulgarian method of warfare had two distinctive features. The most important was the skillful use of terrain conditions, especially the Balkan mountain passes. The Bulgarians had many strongholds in the mountains and had extensive experience in transmitting signals to the main forces of their army about the approach of enemy troops. Detachments of the main Bulgarian army were given time to organize ambushes or to cut off the enemy’s escape routes. Each of these fighting methods was used successfully against Byzantine forces many times.
Another feature, which is repeatedly mentioned in Byzantine sources, was the use of a cavalry reserve, which could be brought into battle at the decisive moment. This cavalry unexpectedly attacked the enemy, even when he had already managed to break through the main Bulgarian positions. The use of this tactic led some eyewitnesses to believe that the Bulgarians were deliberately making a false retreat in order to then overthrow the enemy with a surprise cavalry attack. Although there is great doubt that the Bulgarian troops were so highly disciplined as to be able to use such tactics, it must be recognized that the cavalry reserve was an important integral part army and constantly waited for the moment when it would be possible to unexpectedly attack the enemy.
Today little is known about the command structure of the Bulgarian army. Sources report that during the time of King Samuel, he himself headed the center of his army, and both flanks were under the command of his two closest confidants. Under Belasitsa, the Bulgarian army supposedly numbered 20,000 men, with a strong reserve in its rear.
The Byzantine army of Basil II was one of the most effective in the Middle Ages. The basis of its power lay in the organization of its troops, which was the result of a long process begun in the 7th century, when Emperor Heraclius divided the empire's territory in Anatolia into military provinces, or themes. Each of them was supposed to provide him with a certain number of trained and armed soldiers during the war.
Over time, this byya system was extended to other areas of the empire in order to strengthen the defense of the eastern borders of Byzantium against Muslim invasions. The system of forming provincial corps also began to be used on the western borders of the empire, and by the end of the 9th century it was most likely universal. By the time of the death of Vasily II in 1025, all Byzantine Empire, with the exception of the lands around Constantinople itself, was divided into themes. These districts, four at a time, were united under the authority of a governor or strategist, who at the same time was also the commander of the provincial troops located in them. In some border regions, command of the troops was entrusted to special military leaders - duks, who headed the corps stationed in them (formed not only from local troops). Provincial corps were made up of both professional soldiers and local peasant militias, who received from states have small land plots. Both land and the duty to serve were inherited from father to son. Nevertheless, both professionals and militias received salaries. At that time, the basis of the army were the troops of the eastern themes, and the elite were the troops of the Anatolian theme.
Constantinople and its environs were not included in any of the themes. To defend the capital, the main field army was located in it - or quite close to it, as a rule, in Thrace and Bithynia. These regiments formed elite troops empires - tagmata. The cavalry joined the emperor during military campaigns or maneuvers to defend the capital when it was under threat, and acted alongside the infantry, which usually formed the garrison of the city. These troops acted in the front ranks of the Byzantine army fighting the Arabs and Bulgarians in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Taghmata consisted of professional soldiers - mercenaries, often foreign, who served in the army for a long time. Taghmata detachments were also stationed in the provinces, where they were under the command of their own officers rather than local dukes or strategos. Beginning with the reign of Basil II, the 11th century was characterized by an increase in tagmata units directly subordinate to the central government, and a corresponding decrease in the number of provincial contingents. The tagmata consisted mainly of cavalry, and the best troops in themes were also mounted. Byzantine horsemen, often heavily armored, were called cataphracts, and their horses were also armored. Byzantine cavalry used various types weapons, including two types of swords, and also included specially trained archers. For close combat, riders preferred the mace, some versions of which were so effective that they could apparently pierce the skull of an enemy's horse.
In Byzantium there was another type of army - the personal guard of the emperor. These units, as a rule, were very different from all other units of the Byzantine army. The Emperor needed elite warriors who would be unconditionally loyal to him, and who would not be influenced in any way by politics or family ties. Therefore, the emperor’s personal guard consisted almost entirely of foreign mercenaries, that is, people absolutely indifferent to the activities of any of the political and religious groups of Byzantium. It included Macedonians, Khazars, Georgians and even Arabs who served in these units in the 8th and 9th centuries. The most famous unit of the Imperial Guard was formed by Vasily II from 6,000 Russian soldiers sent to him by Prince Vladimir of Kiev - it became known as the Varangian Guard. The word "Varangian", as some historians believe, comes from the ancient German wara (oath, oath) and implies that they truly proved themselves to be loyal defenders of the emperors who hired them. The presence of these warriors armed with axes on the battlefield meant that the emperor himself was here. The guard, which consisted of Varangians under Vasily, was fundamentally different both in quality and in essence from the elite units consisting of foreign mercenaries under the previously reigning emperors.
The Varangian regiment took part in all the campaigns of Vasily II, starting with civil war, during which it was actually formed. At Chrysopolis, the Varangians surprised the rebel troops under the command of Kalokir Dolphin, general of Bardas Phocas, while they were feasting. They killed many and put the rest to flight. A few weeks later, the Varangians took part in the Battle of Abydos, during which Phocas’ troops were completely defeated and he himself was killed. In the 990s, the Varangians took part in Basil’s campaigns against the Fatimids, and then, between 1001 and 1018, they accompanied Vasily II in campaigns against Tsar Samuel in Greece and Macedonia. Written sources indicate that the guard was involved in these campaigns. This is also confirmed a large number Norwegian and Russian weapons of the 11th century, discovered by archaeologists in Bulgaria. When, after the Battle of Belasitsa, Vasily finally captured Samuel's capital in 1018, he divided the prisoners into three groups: one third for himself, a second for the Byzantine soldiers, and a third for the Varangians, indicating how highly he valued them.
In the same year, the Lombard aristocrat Melus of Bari, who rebelled against Byzantine rule in southern Italy, fought several battles with the imperial army. At Cannes, the captain of Italy, Basil Voyoan, whose army included the Varangians, met with the army of Melus, on whose side were mercenaries led by the Norman Gilbert Buate. The Lombards, who entered into battle with the Varangians, were overthrown and defeated, and Gilbert and many of his Normans were killed. In 1021, Vasily led the second expedition to Georgia, reporting on which, chroniclers mention the cruelty of the Rus, who were ordered to destroy countryside and kill local residents, and then they took part in the last decisive battle with the Georgians and Abasgians. The Varangians paid very well, and after a while a person who wanted to join the regiment had to fork out a fairly decent amount of gold. An applicant for admission to the Varangian regiment, having successfully made the long and dangerous journey to Constantinople, carrying a considerable amount of cash, probably also had to undergo special selection in order to meet the high requirements for recruits. Warriors who failed to join the guard could join other mercenary units.
The high fee for joining the regiment was justified by the opportunities on the way to obtaining a decent fortune in the future, since the salary paid to the Varangians and additional cash receipts turned out to be much higher than what they received in the Byzantine army. All soldiers who entered the service - including in detachments of foreign mercenaries and in the Varangian Guard - were included in special rolls compiled by a special department of the imperial government. Their salary of 30 or 40 nomism a month was much more than that of a good craftsman or soldier regular army could earn in a year. Nomisma - a coin containing about five grams of pure gold - retained its value for centuries. It was used as an international currency and circulated in regions as far away as Scandinavia. In addition to salaries, the Varangians had many other sources of income - they robbed the local population and captured trophies. In addition to the usual payments, upon the accession of a new emperor to the throne, the guards traditionally received the right to “raid” his chambers.
One of the Varangians, Harald Gardrada, accumulated such a large personal fortune that upon his return from Byzantium he was able to marry the daughter of the Grand Duke of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise. After this, he returned to his homeland of Norway and used his amazing wealth to finance a successful fight for the throne, and then the invasion of England. References to the athletic physique, appearance and belligerence of the Varangians are often found in Byzantine sources. The chronicler Skylitzes, who lived at the beginning of the 12th century, reports that the Varangians wore lush beards, mustaches and long thick hair. One of the chronicles of the mid-11th century contains a description of a warrior of the Varangian Guard: “Next to them stood foreign mercenaries, Tauro-Scythians - terrible and huge. The warriors were blue-eyed and had a natural complexion... the Varangians fought like crazy, as if burning with anger... they did not pay attention to their wounds...” The first Varangians who came to the aid of Vasily had their own weapons and equipment, however soon the Varangian Guard began to receive armor and weapons from the imperial arsenals, although according to tradition they used only personal swords. The Varangians also used the usual weapons of the Byzantine warrior - with the exception that they preferred single-edged battle axes on a long handle.
Historians know a lot about the weapons and organization of the Byzantine army, but little information has been preserved about how it fought, how combat training was carried out, and how the Byzantines used one or another weapon they had. The Varangians, for example, had shields, but how did they use them on the battlefield if their favorite weapon was a huge ax that had to be held with both hands? Perhaps some warriors used axes, while others shielded their comrades with shields? It is known that the Vikings of that time, who fought in Western Europe, used the “wall of shields” as the main combat formation, but there is no convincing evidence that the Varangian Guard acted in the same way. A similar situation arose with information about the cavalry. It is not known exactly which part of the Byzantine cavalry used bows and which used spears; there is no information on how the horsemen maneuvered on the battlefield. They may have started by shooting arrows at the enemy and then launched an attack. It is possible that first a massive attack similar to those carried out by European knights was carried out, and the Byzantine cavalry could use a looser formation.
Why this event 555 years ago is important for modern Russia, says writer Sergei Vlasov.
Turban and tiara
If we had been in the city on the eve of the Turkish assault, we would have found the defenders of the doomed Constantinople doing a rather strange thing. They discussed the validity of the slogan “Better a turban than a papal tiara” until they became hoarse. This catchphrase, which can be heard in modern Russia, was first uttered by the Byzantine Luke Notaras, whose powers in 1453 roughly corresponded to the prime minister. In addition, he was an admiral and a Byzantine patriot.
As sometimes happens with patriots, Notaras stole money from the treasury that the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI allocated for the repair of defensive walls. Later, when Turkish Sultan Mehmed II entered the city through these same unrepaired walls, and the admiral presented him with gold. He asked only one thing: to save his life big family. The Sultan accepted the money, and executed the admiral’s family before his eyes. The last one cut off the head of Notaras himself.
- Did the West make attempts to help Byzantium?
Yes. The defense of the city was commanded by the Genoese Giovanni Giustiniani Longo. His detachment, consisting of only 300 people, was the most combat-ready part of the defenders. The artillery was led by the German Johann Grant. By the way, the Byzantines could get into service the luminary of the then artillery - the Hungarian engineer Urban. But there was no money in the imperial treasury to build his supergun. Then, offended, the Hungarian went to Mehmed II. The cannon, which fired stone cannonballs weighing 400 kilograms, was cast and became one of the reasons for the fall of Constantinople.
Lazy Romans
- Why did the history of Byzantium end this way?
- The Byzantines themselves are primarily to blame for this. The Empire was a country organically incapable of modernization. For example, slavery in Byzantium, which they tried to limit since the time of the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great in the 4th century, was completely abolished only in the 13th century. This was done by the Western barbarian crusaders who captured the city in 1204.
Many government positions in the empire were occupied by foreigners, and they also took control of trade. The reason, of course, was not that the evil Catholic West was systematically destroying the economy of Orthodox Byzantium.
One of the most famous emperors, Alexei Komnenos, at the beginning of his career tried to appoint his compatriots to responsible government posts. But things didn’t go well: the Romans, accustomed to sybaritism, rarely woke up before 9 a.m., and got down to business closer to noon... But the nimble Italians, whom the emperor soon began to hire, began their working day at dawn.
- But this did not make the empire any less great.
- The greatness of empires is often inversely proportional to the happiness of its subjects. Emperor Justinian decided to restore the Roman Empire from Gibraltar to the Euphrates. His commanders (he himself never picked up anything sharper than a fork) fought in Italy, Spain, Africa... Rome alone was stormed 5 times! And what? After 30 years of glorious wars and resounding victories, the empire found itself in tatters. The economy was undermined, the treasury was empty, the best citizens died. But the conquered territories still had to be abandoned...
- What lessons can Russia learn from the Byzantine experience?
- Scientists name 6 reasons for the collapse of the greatest empire:
An extremely bloated and corrupt bureaucracy.
A striking stratification of society into poor and rich.
The inability of ordinary citizens to obtain justice in court.
Neglect and underfunding of the army and navy.
The indifferent attitude of the capital towards the province that feeds it.
The merging of spiritual and secular power, their unification in the person of the emperor.
How much they correspond to current Russian realities, let everyone decide for themselves.
We have a new national idea in Russia. Forgotten is Peter, who forcibly dragged Russia to Europe. The communists who built the most advanced industrial system have been forgotten. We, Russia, are no longer the despised, decaying Europe. We are the heirs of the spiritually rich Byzantium. The sovereign-spiritual conference “Moscow - the Third Rome” is being held in Moscow with pomp, Putin’s confessor is showing on the Rossiya TV channel the film “Byzantium: The Death of an Empire” (about the fact that 1000 years ago the damned West was plotting against the stronghold of spirituality), and the President Vladimir Putin states in his message to the Senate that “ sacred meaning» Korsun, in which, as is known, his namesake adopted the sacredness and spirituality of Constantinople by plundering the city and raping the ruler’s daughter in front of her parents.
I have a question: do we really want to be like Byzantium?
Then, if possible, for what exactly?
Because the country “Byzantium” never existed. The country that existed was called the Roman Empire, or the Roman Empire. Its enemies called it “Byzantium,” and this name itself is a blatant rewriting of the past undertaken by the propagandists of Charlemagne and Pope Leo III. The same “falsification of history” that actually happens in history.
The causes and consequences of this falsification should be discussed in more detail - this is important.
There is no Byzantine Empire. There is an Empire
At the end of antiquity, the word "empire" was a proper noun. This was not a designation of a method of government (there were no Persian, Chinese, etc. “empires” at that time), there was only one empire - the Roman one, it is the only one, just as sturgeon is of the same freshness.
It remained such in the eyes of Constantinople - and in this sense, it is significant that historians are confused about the date of the emergence of “Byzantium”. This is a unique case when a state seems to exist, but when it was formed is unclear.
Thus, the outstanding German Byzantinist George Ostrogorsky traced the beginning of “Byzantium” to the reforms of Diocletian, which followed the crisis of Roman imperial power in the 3rd century. “All the most important features of the establishment of Diocletian and Constantine dominated the early Byzantine period,” writes Ostrogorsky. At the same time, of course, Diocletian ruled the Roman, and not the “Byzantine” empire.
Other historians, such as Lord John Norwich, consider the date of the emergence of “Byzantium” to be 330, when Constantine the Great moved the capital of the empire to Constantinople, which he rebuilt. However, moving the capital is not the founding of an empire. For example, in 402 Ravenna became the capital of the Western Roman Empire - does this mean that the Ravenna Empire existed from 402?
Another popular date is 395, when Emperor Theodosius divided the empire between his sons Arcadius and Honorius. But the tradition of co-ruling two or even more emperors again goes back to Diocletian. More than once, two or more emperors sat on the throne in Constantinople: there could be many emperors, but there was always one empire.
The same thing - 476, which a thousand years later was proclaimed the end of the Western Roman Empire. In this year, the German Odoacer not only removed the Emperor of the West, Romulus Augustulus, but also abolished the title itself, sending the imperial insignia to Constantinople.
No one paid attention to this event because it did not mean anything. First, the Western emperors at that time were a long line of puppets in the hands of barbarian shoguns. Secondly, Odoacer did not abolish any empire: on the contrary, in exchange for insignia, he asked for the title of patrician in Constantinople, because if he ruled his barbarians as a military leader, then he could only rule the local population as a Roman official.
Moreover, Odoacer did not rule for long: the emperor soon entered into an alliance with the king of the Goths, Theodoric, and he captured Rome. Theodoric faced the same problem as Odoacer. The title "king" at that time was more of a military title, like "commander-in-chief". You can be the commander-in-chief of the army, but you cannot be the “commander-in-chief of Moscow.” While ruling the Goths as king, Theodoric de jure ruled the local population as the emperor's viceroy, and Theodoric's coins bore the head of Emperor Zeno.
The Roman Empire understandably took the de facto loss of Rome hard, and in 536 Emperor Justinian destroyed the kingdom of the Goths and returned Rome to the empire. This Roman emperor who codified Roman law in the famous Justinian Code, he was definitely not aware that, it turns out, he was ruling some kind of Byzantium, especially since he ruled the empire on Latin. The empire switched to Greek only in the 7th century, under Emperor Heraclius.
Constantinople's complete dominance over Italy was short-lived: 30 years later the Lombards poured into Italy, but the empire retained control over a good half of the territory, including Ravenna, Calabria, Campania, Liguria and Sicily. Rome was also under the control of the emperor: in 653, the emperor arrested Pope Martin I, and in 662, Emperor Constans even moved the capital from Constantinople to the West for five years.
All this time, neither the Roman emperors nor the barbarians who captured the western provinces doubted that the Roman Empire still existed; that an empire is a proper name, and there can only be one empire, and if the barbarians minted a coin (which they rarely did), then they minted it in the name of the empire, and if they killed a predecessor (which they did much more often than minted a coin), then they sent to the emperor in Constantinople for the title of patrician, ruling the local non-barbarian population as authorized representatives of the empire.
The situation changed only in 800, when Charlemagne sought a legal way to formalize his power over the giant conglomerate of lands he had conquered. In the Roman empire at that time, Empress Irina sat on the throne, which, from the point of view of the Franks, was illegal: imperium femininum absurdum est. And then Charlemagne crowned himself as Roman Emperor, announcing that the empire had passed from the Romans to the Franks - to the amazement and indignation of the empire itself.
This is approximately as if Putin declared himself President of the United States on the grounds that the elections in the United States seemed illegal to him, and therefore, the imperium over the United States passed from Obama to Putin, and in order to somehow distinguish the new United States from the old ones, he commanded the old United States its lawyers call it “Washingtonia.”
A little before the coronation of Charles, a fantastic forgery called “The Gift of Constantine” was born, which - in corrupted Latin using feudal terminology - reported that Emperor Constantine, having been cured of leprosy, in the 4th century transferred secular power over both Rome and the Pope to the Pope. over the entire Western Empire: a circumstance, as we see, completely unknown to either Odoacer, Theodoric, or Justinian.
So, this is important: “Byzantium” was not formed either in 330, or in 395, or in 476. It was formed in 800 in the minds of the propagandists of Charlemagne, and this name was the same blatant falsification of history as the obviously false Donation of Constantine. That is why Gibbon, in his great History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote the history of all Roman lands, including medieval Rome and Constantinople.
In Constantinople never, until the very last day, we never forgot for a second that there can be many emperors, but there can only be one empire. In 968, Otto's ambassador, Liutprand, was furious that his overlord was being called "rex", the king, and as early as 1166 Manuel Comnenus hoped to restore the unity of the empire through Pope Alexander, who was to proclaim him sole emperor.
There is no doubt that the character of the Roman Empire changed over the centuries. But the same can be said about any state. England in the time of William the Conqueror is completely different from England in the time of Henry VIII. Nevertheless, we call this state "England" because there is an unbroken historical continuity , a smooth function showing how a state got from point A to point B. The Roman Empire is exactly the same: there is an unbroken historical continuity showing how the empire of Diocletian turned into the empire of Michael Palaiologos.
And now, actually, the most important question. It is clear why "Byzantium" is a common term in Europe. This is a nickname invented by the Franks.
But why should ours, in Freudian fashion, declare themselves the successors not of Caesar and Augustus, but of the gnawed “Byzantium”?
The answer, from my point of view, is very simple. “Byzantium” itself looks like a respectable state. It turns out that a certain “Western Roman Empire” collapsed under the blows of the barbarians, but the Eastern one, “Byzantium,” lasted at least another thousand years. If we understand that the Orthodox state with its center in Constantinople was the full-fledged and only Roman empire, then exactly according to Gibbon happens: the decay and contraction of the empire, the loss of provinces one after another, the transformation of the great pagan culture into a dying state ruled by tyrants, priests and eunuchs .
The futility of Byzantium
What is the most amazing thing about this state? The fact that, having an unbroken historical continuity from the Greeks and Romans, speaking the same language in which Plato and Aristotle wrote, using the magnificent heritage of Roman law, being a direct continuation of the Roman Empire - it did not create, by and large, anything th.
Europe had an excuse: in the 6th-7th centuries it plunged into the wildest barbarism, but the reason for this was barbarian conquests. The Roman Empire was not subject to them. It was the successor to the two greatest civilizations of antiquity, but if Eratosthenes knew that the Earth was a ball, and knew the diameter of this ball, then on the map of Cosmas Indicoplova the Earth is depicted as a rectangle with paradise at the top.
We still read “River Backwaters,” written in China in the 14th century. We still read Heike Monogatari, which takes place in the 12th century. We read Beowulf and the Song of the Nibelungs, Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gregory of Tours, we still read Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle, who wrote in the same language spoken by the Roman Empire a thousand years before its formation.
But from the Byzantine heritage, if you are not a specialist, there is nothing to read. No great novels, no great poets, no great historians. If someone writes in Byzantium, then it is someone terribly high-ranking, and even better, a person from the reigning house: Anna Komnena or, in extreme cases, Michael Psellus. Everyone else is afraid to have their own opinion.
Think about it: a civilization existed for several hundred years, which was the successor to the two most developed civilizations of antiquity, and left behind nothing but architecture - books for the illiterate, the lives of saints, and fruitless religious disputes.
Screensaver of the film “The Death of an Empire. Byzantine lesson" by Father Tikhon (Shevkunov), shown on Russian TV
This monstrous decline in the intelligence of society, the sum of knowledge, philosophy, human dignity did not occur as a result of conquest, pestilence or environmental disaster. It happened as a result internal reasons, the list of which reads like a recipe for the perfect disaster: a recipe for what the state should never do under any circumstances.
Illegitimacy
Firstly, the Roman Empire never developed a mechanism for a legitimate change of power.
Constantine the Great executed his nephews - Licinian and Crispus; then he killed his wife. He left power over the empire to his three sons: Constantine, Constantius and Constant. The first act of the new Caesars was to kill two of their half-uncles along with their three sons. Then they killed both of Constantine's sons-in-law. Then one of the brothers, Constans, killed the other, Constantine, then Constans was killed by the usurper Magnentius; then the surviving Constantius killed Magnentius.
Emperor Justin, Justinian's successor, was crazy. His wife Sophia convinced him to appoint Sophia's lover Tiberius as his successor. As soon as he became emperor, Tiberius put Sophia behind bars. Tiberius appointed Mauritius as his successor, marrying him to his daughter. The Emperor of Mauritius was executed by Phocas, having previously executed his four sons before his eyes; at the same time they executed everyone who could be considered loyal to the emperor. Phocas was executed by Heraclius; After his death, Heraclius's widow, his niece Martina, first of all sent her eldest son Heraclius to the next world, intending to secure the throne for her son Heraklion. It didn’t help: Martina’s tongue was cut off, Heraklion’s nose was cut off.
The new emperor, Constans, was killed on a soapbox in Syracuse. It fell to his grandson, Justinian II, to fight the Arab invasion. He did this in an original way: after about 20 thousand Slavic soldiers, crushed by the taxes of the empire, went over to the side of the Arabs, Justinian ordered the slaughter of the rest of the Slavic population in Bithynia. Justinian was overthrown by Leontius, Leontius by Tiberius. Due to the well-known softening of morals, Leontius did not execute Justinian, but only cut off his nose - it was believed that the emperor could not rule without a nose. Justinian refuted this strange prejudice by returning to the throne and executing everyone and everything. Tiberius's brother, Heraclius, the best commander of the empire, was hanged with his officers along the walls of Constantinople; in Ravenna, high-ranking officials were gathered for a feast in honor of the emperor and killed to hell; in Chersonesus, seven of the noblest citizens were roasted alive. After Justinian's death, his successor, the six-year-old boy Tiberius, rushed to seek refuge in the church: he held on to the altar with one hand and held a piece of the Holy Cross with the other as he was slaughtered like a sheep.
This mutual massacre continued until the very last moment of the existence of the empire, depriving any power of legitimacy and making, among other things, marriages with Western ruling houses almost impossible, because each usurper was usually either already married, or was in a hurry to marry the daughter, sister or mother of the one he had killed emperor in order to give himself at least some semblance of legitimate rule.
The assault on Constantinople by the troops of Mehmed II.
To people with a superficial knowledge of history, it may seem that such bloody leapfrog was typical of any country in the Middle Ages. Not at all. By the 11th century, the Franks and Normans had quickly developed surprisingly clear mechanisms for the legitimacy of power, which led to the fact that the removal, for example, of the English king from the throne was an emergency that occurred as a result of the consensus of the nobility and the extreme inability of the above-mentioned king to rule.
Here's a simple example: how many English kings lost their thrones while underage? Answer: one (Edward V). How many Byzantine minor emperors lost their throne? Answer: everything. Semi-exceptions include Constantine Porphyrogenitus (who retained his life and empty title because the usurper Roman Lecapinus ruled in his name and married his daughter to him) and John V Palaiologos (whose regent, John Cantacuzene, was eventually forced to rebel and proclaim himself co-emperor).
If the Franks and Normans gradually worked out a clear mechanism of inheritance, then in the empire of the Romans anyone could always ascend to the throne, and very often the throne was transferred not by the army (then at least you would have an emperor who knew how to fight), but also by the maddened Constantinople mob, united by the wildest fanaticism With complete absence any outlook and foresight. This happened during the accession of Andronicus Komnenos (1182), when the mob massacred all the Latins in Constantinople, which, however, did not stop the same mob exactly three years later from hanging the deposed emperor by his feet and pouring a bucket of boiling water on his head.
Do we want to imitate?
Lack of a functioning bureaucracy
The chronic lack of legitimacy worked both ways. It allowed any rogue (even an illiterate drinking companion of the emperor like Vasily I) to take the throne. But it also prompted the emperor to fear any rival, periodically leading to total massacres and not allowing him to build what any state needs: a stable set of rules and a governance mechanism.
Such a set of rules existed in China, it can be expressed in two words: the examination system. A meritocratic system in which officials knew what their duty was. This concept of duty more than once or twice prompted Chinese officials to submit reports on corruption and abuses (for which they were cut off), and yes, the son of the first minister easily made a career, but at the same time he received an appropriate education, and if the level of his education and Decency did not correspond to the position held; this was perceived as a deviation from the norm.
England also created a similar system, it can be expressed in two words: the honor of an aristocrat. The Plantagenets ruled England in a complex symbiosis with the military aristocracy and parliament, and feudal Europe gave modern world one of his main legacies: the concept of a person’s honor, his inner dignity (this honor was originally the honor of an aristocrat), distinct from his position, condition and the degree of mercy of the ruler towards him.
The Roman Empire did not develop any rules. Its aristocracy was servile, arrogant and narrow-minded. She unlearned Greek and Roman culture, and never learned Frankish and Norman warfare. Not being able to build, for fear of usurpation, a normal state apparatus, the emperors relied on those who did not pose an immediate threat to power: that is, first of all, on the eunuchs and the church, which led to the dominance of that very famous Byzantine “spirituality”, about which is slightly lower.
Quasi-socialism
Despite the absence of a normal state apparatus, the empire suffered from severe overregulation, the origins of which again went back to the era of the Dominant and Diocletian’s Edict “On Fair Prices.” Suffice it to say that silk production in the empire was a state monopoly.
The catastrophic overregulation of the economy, combined with an ineffective state apparatus, gave rise to what is always born in such cases: monstrous corruption, and on a scale that had geopolitical consequences and threatened the very existence of the empire. Thus, the decision of Emperor Leo VI to transfer the monopoly on trade with the Bulgarians to the father of his mistress Stylian Zautze ended in a humiliating defeat in the war with the Bulgarians and the payment of heavy tribute to them.
There was one area in which anti-market regulation did not work: by unfortunate coincidence, it was exactly the area in which it was needed. The very existence of the empire depended on the existence of a class of small free farmers who owned plots in exchange for military service, and it was this class that disappeared due to the absorption of their lands by the dinata (“strong”). The most prominent of the emperors, for example Roman Lekapin, understood the problem and tried to fight it: but this was impossible, because the officials responsible for the return of illegally alienated lands were precisely the Dinates themselves.
Spirituality
About this wonderful state - with all its emperors slaughtering each other, with Stylian Zautza, with eunuchs and tyrants, with the Dinates squeezing land from ordinary peasants - we are told that it was very “spiritual”.
Oh yes. It was a mouthful of spirituality, if by it we mean the desire of emperors and mobs to slaughter heretics, instead of fighting enemies who threatened the very existence of the empire.
On the eve of the emergence of Islam, the empire extremely successfully began to eradicate the Monophysites, as a result of which, when the Arabs appeared, they en masse went over to their side. In the 850s, Empress Theodora launched a persecution of the Paulicians: 100 thousand people were killed, the rest went over to the side of the caliphate. Emperor Alexei Komnenos, instead of leading a Crusade that could have returned the lands to the empire without which it could not survive, found himself a more spiritual occupation: he began exterminating the Bogomils and the same Paulicians, that is, the tax base of the empire.
The spiritual Michael Rangave spent huge sums on monasteries, while the army rebelled without money and the Avars massacred his subjects by the thousands. The iconoclast Constantine V Copronymus successfully combined religious fanaticism with an ineradicable passion for pretty and made-up young men.
“Spirituality” was intended to replace the vacuum arising in connection with the chronic illegitimacy of power and the chronic incapacity of the state apparatus. The strife between Monophysites, Monothelites, iconoclasts, etc., the gigantic wealth given to monasteries, the categorical reluctance of the church to share it even in the face of an enemy invasion, the genocide of its own subjects on religious grounds - all this “spirituality”, in the most difficult military situation, predetermined the collapse empires.
The spiritual Byzantines managed to forget that the Earth is a sphere, but in 1182 a maddened crowd, in another attack seeking spirituality, massacred all the Latins in Constantinople: infants, tiny girls, decrepit old people.
Is this what we want to imitate?
Collapse
And, finally, the very last, most striking circumstance regarding the object of our enthusiastic imitation.
The Roman Empire disappeared.
This is an amazing, almost unprecedented case of the disappearance of a state that was located not somewhere out there, on the outskirts, but in the middle of the world, in living contact with all existing cultures. From all of them it could borrow, from all of them it could learn - and did not borrow, and did not learn anything, but only lost.
Ancient Greece has been gone for two thousand years, but we still, inventing wired communication at a distance, call it “telephone”, inventing heavier-than-air devices, we invent “aerodrome”. We remember the myths about Perseus and Hercules, we remember the stories of Gaius Julius Caesar and Caligula, you don’t have to be an Englishman to remember William the Conqueror, or an American to know about George Washington. In recent decades, our horizons have expanded: every bookstore in the West sells three translations of The Art of War, and even those who have not read The Three Kingdoms may have seen John Woo's Battle of Red Cliffs.
Hand on heart: how many of you remember the name of at least one Emperor of Constantinople after the 6th century? Hand on heart: if you remember the names of Nikephoros Phocas or Vasily the Bulgarian Slayer, then does the description of their lives (“Phocas executed Mauritius, Heraclius executed Phocas”) represent for you even a fraction of the interest that the description of the life of Edward III or Frederick Barbarossa represents?
The Roman Empire disappeared: it collapsed with amazing ease in 1204, when another infantile tyrant - the son of the overthrown Isaac Angel (Isaac killed Andronicus, Alexei blinded Isaac) - ran to the crusaders for help and promised them money that he had no intention of paying, and finally - in 1453. Usually, states disappeared in this way, isolated for a long time, faced with an unknown and lethal civilizational strain: for example, the Inca Empire fell under the blows of 160 soldiers of Pizarro.
But for a state, abundant, large, ancient, located in the center of the civilized world, theoretically capable of borrowing, to turn out to be so inert, vain and closed-minded, as not to learn, at least from a military point of view, anything, so as not to adopt the advantages of a heavily armed knight, a long bows, cannons, so as to forget even one’s own Greek fire - this is a case that has no analogues in history. Even technology laggards China and Japan were not conquered. Even fragmented India resisted the Europeans for several centuries.
The Roman Empire collapsed completely - and into oblivion. A unique example of the degradation of a once free and prosperous civilization that left nothing behind.
Do our rulers really want us to suffer the fate of a power centered in Constantinople?
So that we stew in our own juice, contemptuously bending our lips and considering ourselves the navel of the earth, while the world around us uncontrollably rushes forward, so that we consider the proof of our superiority not high technology, but mechanical birds singing at the throne of the emperor?
This is Freud in its purest form. That, wanting to imitate, our rulers want to imitate not the Roman Empire, but the disappeared, bureaucratic, lost prestige, knowledge and power, unable to even defend the right to self-name - “Byzantium”.
The high spirituality of the Roman empire, as is known, ended with the fact that even on the eve of its death, the fanatical crowd and the clergy who filled the power vacuum did not want to count on the help of the West. Islam is better than the West, they believed.
And according to their spirituality they were rewarded.
Less than 80 years after the partition, the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist, leaving Byzantium as the historical, cultural and civilizational successor Ancient Rome over almost ten centuries of the history of late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.
The Eastern Roman Empire received the name “Byzantine” in the works of Western European historians after its fall; it comes from the original name of Constantinople - Byzantium, where the Roman Emperor Constantine I moved the capital of the Roman Empire in 330, officially renaming the city “New Rome”. The Byzantines themselves called themselves Romans - in Greek "Romeans", and their power - the "Roman ("Roman") Empire" (in Middle Greek (Byzantine) language - Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων, Basileía Romaíon) or briefly "Romania" (Ῥωμανί α, Romania) . Western sources throughout most of Byzantine history referred to it as the "Empire of the Greeks" due to its predominance Greek language, Hellenized population and culture. IN Ancient Rus' Byzantium was usually called the “Greek Kingdom”, and its capital was Constantinople.
The permanent capital and civilizational center of the Byzantine Empire was Constantinople, one of the largest cities medieval world. The empire controlled its largest possessions under Emperor Justinian I (527-565), regaining for several decades a significant part of the coastal territories of the former western provinces of Rome and the position of the most powerful Mediterranean power. Subsequently, under the pressure of numerous enemies, the state gradually lost its lands.
After the Slavic, Lombard, Visigothic and Arab conquests, the empire occupied only the territory of Greece and Asia Minor. Some strengthening in the 9th-11th centuries was replaced by serious losses at the end of the 11th century, during the Seljuk invasion, and defeat at Manzikert, strengthening during the first Komnenos, after the collapse of the country under the blows of the crusaders who took Constantinople in 1204, another strengthening under John Vatatz, restoration empire by Michael Paleologus, and, finally, its final death in the middle of the 15th century under the onslaught of the Ottoman Turks.
Population
The ethnic composition of the population of the Byzantine Empire, especially at the first stage of its history, was extremely diverse: Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Copts, Armenians, Jews, Hellenized Asia Minor tribes, Thracians, Illyrians, Dacians, South Slavs. With the reduction of the territory of Byzantium (starting from the end of the 6th century), some peoples remained outside its borders - at the same time, new peoples invaded and settled here (Goths in the 4th-5th centuries, Slavs in the 6th-7th centuries, Arabs in the 7th-9th centuries, Pechenegs, Polovtsians in the 11th-13th centuries, etc.). In the 6th-11th centuries, the population of Byzantium included ethnic groups from which the Italian nation was later formed. Predominant role in the economy, political life and the culture of Byzantium in the west of the country was played by the Greek population, and in the east by the Armenian population. The official language of Byzantium in the 4th-6th centuries was Latin, from the 7th century until the end of the empire - Greek.
State structure
From the Roman Empire, Byzantium inherited a monarchical form of government with an emperor at its head. From the 7th century the head of state was more often called autocrat (Greek. Αὐτοκράτωρ - autocrat) or basileus (Greek. Βασιλεὺς ).
The Byzantine Empire consisted of two prefectures - East and Illyricum, each of which was headed by prefects: the Praetorian Prefect of the East and the Praetorian Prefect of Illyricum. Constantinople was allocated as a separate unit, headed by the prefect of the city of Constantinople.
Preserved for a long time old system state and financial management. But from the end of the 6th century significant changes began. Reforms are mainly related to defense ( administrative division to themes instead of exarchates) and the predominantly Greek culture of the country (the introduction of the positions of logothete, strategos, drungaria, etc.). Since the 10th century, feudal principles of governance have spread widely; this process led to the establishment of representatives of the feudal aristocracy on the throne. Until the very end of the empire, numerous rebellions and struggles for the imperial throne did not stop.
Two top military officers officials there were the commander-in-chief of the infantry and the chief of the cavalry, later these positions were combined; in the capital there were two masters of infantry and cavalry (Strateg Opsikia). In addition, there was a master of infantry and cavalry of the East (Strategos of Anatolica), a master of infantry and cavalry of Illyricum, a master of infantry and cavalry of Thrace (Strategos of Thrace).
Byzantine emperors
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476), the Eastern Roman Empire continued to exist for almost a thousand years; in historiography from that time on it is usually called Byzantium.
For ruling class Byzantium was characterized by mobility. At all times, a person from the bottom could make his way to power. In some cases it was even easier for him: for example, he had the opportunity to make a career in the army and earn military glory. Thus, for example, Emperor Michael II Travl was an uneducated mercenary, was sentenced to death by Emperor Leo V for rebellion, and his execution was postponed only because of the celebration of Christmas (820); Vasily I was a peasant and then a horse trainer in the service of a noble nobleman. Roman I Lecapinus was also a descendant of peasants, Michael IV, before becoming emperor, was a money changer, like one of his brothers.
Army
Although Byzantium inherited its army from the Roman Empire, its structure was closer to the phalanx system of the Hellenic states. By the end of Byzantium's existence, it became mainly mercenary and had a rather low combat capability.
But a system of military command and supply was developed in detail, works on strategy and tactics were published, and a variety of technical means, in particular, a system of beacons is built to warn of enemy attacks. In contrast to the old Roman army, the importance of the fleet, which the invention of “Greek fire” helps to gain supremacy at sea, greatly increases. Fully armored cavalry - cataphracts - was adopted from the Sassanids. At the same time, technically complex throwing weapons, ballistae and catapults are disappearing, replaced by simpler stone throwers.
The transition to the femme system of recruiting troops provided the country with 150 years of successful wars, but the financial exhaustion of the peasantry and its transition to dependence on the feudal lords led to a gradual decrease in combat effectiveness. The recruitment system was changed to a typically feudal one, when the nobility was obliged to supply military contingents for the right to own land.
Subsequently, the army and navy fell into ever greater decline, and at the very end of the empire’s existence they became purely mercenary formations. In 1453, Constantinople, with a population of 60 thousand inhabitants, was able to field only a 5 thousand army and 2.5 thousand mercenaries. Since the 10th century, the emperors of Constantinople hired Rus and warriors from neighboring barbarian tribes. Since the 11th century, ethnically mixed Varangians played a significant role in the heavy infantry, and the light cavalry was recruited from Turkic nomads.
After the era of Viking campaigns came to an end at the beginning of the 11th century, mercenaries from Scandinavia (as well as from Viking-conquered Normandy and England) flocked to Byzantium across the Mediterranean Sea. The future Norwegian king Harald the Severe fought for several years in the Varangian Guard throughout the Mediterranean. The Varangian Guard bravely defended Constantinople from the Crusaders in 1204 and was defeated when the city was captured.
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Start date: 395
End date: 1453
Useful information
Byzantine Empire
Byzantium
Eastern Roman Empire
Arab. لإمبراطورية البيزنطية or بيزنطة
English Byzantine Empire or Byzantium
Hebrew האימפריה הביזנטית
Culture and society
The period of reign of the emperors from Basil I of Macedon to Alexios I Komnenos (867-1081) was of great cultural significance. The essential features of this period of history are the high rise of Byzantinism and the spread of its cultural mission to southeastern Europe. Through the works of the famous Byzantines Cyril and Methodius, the Slavic alphabet- Glagolitic, which led to the emergence of the Slavs’ own written literature. Patriarch Photius put barriers to the claims of the popes and theoretically substantiated the right of Constantinople to ecclesiastical independence from Rome (see Division of Churches).
In the scientific field, this period is characterized by extraordinary fertility and diversity of literary enterprises. Collections and adaptations of this period preserve precious historical, literary and archaeological material borrowed from writers now lost.
Economy
The state included rich lands with a large number of cities - Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece. In cities, artisans and merchants united into classes. Belonging to the class was not a duty, but a privilege; entry into it was subject to a number of conditions. The conditions established by the eparch (city governor) for the 22 estates of Constantinople were compiled in the 10th century in a collection of decrees, the Book of the Eparch.
Despite a corrupt management system, very high taxes, slave-owning and court intrigue, the economy of Byzantium was for a long time the strongest in Europe. Trade was carried out with all former Roman possessions in the west and with India (via the Sassanids and Arabs) in the east. Even after the Arab conquests, the empire was very rich. But the financial costs were also very high, and the country's wealth caused great envy. The decline in trade caused by the privileges granted to Italian merchants, the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders and the onslaught of the Turks led to the final weakening of finances and the state as a whole.
Science, medicine, law
Throughout the entire period of the existence of the state, Byzantine science was in close connection with ancient philosophy and metaphysics. The main activity of scientists was in the applied plane, where a number of remarkable successes were achieved, such as the construction of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople and the invention of Greek fire. At the same time, pure science practically did not develop either in terms of creating new theories or in terms of developing the ideas of ancient thinkers. From the era of Justinian until the end of the first millennium, scientific knowledge was in severe decline, but subsequently Byzantine scientists again showed themselves, especially in astronomy and mathematics, already relying on the achievements of Arab and Persian science.
Medicine was one of the few branches of knowledge in which progress was made compared to antiquity. The influence of Byzantine medicine was felt both in Arab countries and in Europe during the Renaissance.
In the last century of the empire's existence, Byzantium played important role in the spread of ancient Greek literature in Italy during the early Renaissance. By that time, the Academy of Trebizond had become the main center for the study of astronomy and mathematics.
Right
The reforms of Justinian I in the field of law had a great influence on the development of jurisprudence. Byzantine criminal law was largely borrowed from Rus'.
In the first centuries of our era, wild warlike Huns moved into Europe. Moving west, the Huns set in motion other peoples who roamed the steppes. Among them were the ancestors of the Bulgarians, whom medieval chroniclers called Burgars.
European chroniclers, who wrote about the most important events of their time, considered the Huns to be their worst enemies. And no wonder.
The Huns - the architects of the new Europe
The leader of the Huns, Attila, inflicted a defeat on the Western Roman Empire, from which it was never able to recover and soon ceased to exist. Arriving from the east, the Huns settled firmly on the banks of the Danube and reached the heart of future France. In their army they conquered Europe and other peoples related and unrelated to the Huns themselves. Among these peoples there were nomadic tribes, about which some chroniclers wrote that they came from the Huns, while others argued that these nomads had nothing to do with the Huns. Be that as it may, in Byzantium, neighboring Rome, these barbarians were considered the most merciless and worst enemies. 
The Lombard historian Paul the Deacon was the first to report on these terrible barbarians. According to him, the accomplices of the Huns killed the Lombard king Agelmund and took his daughter captive. Actually, the murder of the king was started for the sake of kidnapping the unfortunate girl. The king's heir hoped to meet the enemy in a fair fight, but no matter what! As soon as he saw the army of the young king, the enemy turned his horses and fled. The royal army could not compete with the barbarians, raised in the saddle from an early age... This sad event was followed by many others. And after the fall of Attila’s power, the nomads settled on the shores of the Black Sea. And if the power of Rome was undermined by the invasion of Attila, then the power of Byzantium was undermined day after day by the vile raids of his “minions.”
Moreover, at first the relations between Byzantium and the Bulgarian leaders were wonderful. The cunning politicians of Byzantium thought of using other nomads in the fight against some nomads. When relations with the Goths worsened, Byzantium entered into an alliance with the leaders of the Bulgarians. However, the Goths turned out to be much better warriors. In the first battle they completely defeated the Byzantine defenders, and in the second battle the Bulgarian leader Buzan also died. Obviously, the complete inability of “their” barbarians to resist the “foreign” barbarians outraged the Byzantines, and the Bulgarians did not receive any promised gifts or privileges. But literally immediately after the defeat from the Goths, they themselves became enemies of Byzantium. The Byzantine emperors even had to build a wall, which was supposed to protect the empire from barbarian raids. This camp stretched from Silimvria to Derkos, that is, from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, and it was not for nothing that it received the name “long,” that is, long.
But the “long wall” was not a hindrance for the Bulgarians. The Bulgarians firmly established themselves on the banks of the Danube, from where it was very convenient for them to raid Constantinople. Several times they completely defeated the Byzantine troops and captured Byzantine commanders. True, the Byzantines had little understanding of the ethnicity of their enemies. They called the barbarians, with whom they either entered into an alliance or entered into mortal combat, Huns. But these were Bulgarians. And to be even more precise - kutrigurs.
Utigurs and Kutrigurs
Chroniclers who wrote about the people that modern historians identify as Proto-Bulgarians did not distinguish them from the Huns. For the Byzantines, everyone who fought alongside the Huns or even settled the lands left by the Huns became Huns themselves. Confusion was also caused by the fact that the Bulgarians were divided into two branches. One concentrated along the banks of the Danube, where the Bulgarian kingdom later arose, and in the Northern Black Sea region, while the other roamed the steppes from the Sea of Azov to the Caucasus, and in the Volga region. Modern historians believe that the Proto-Bulgarians actually included several related peoples - the Savirs, Onogurs, and Ufas. Syrian chroniclers of that time were more erudite than European ones. They knew very well what peoples were roaming the steppes beyond the Derbent Gate, where the army of the Huns, Onogurs, Ugrians, Savirs, Burgars, Kutrigurs, Avars, Khazars, as well as Kulas, Bagrasiks and Abels, passed through, about which nothing is known today. 
By the 6th century, the Proto-Bulgarians were no longer confused with the Huns. The Gothic historian Jordanes calls these Bulgarians a tribe sent “for our sins.” And Procopius of Caesarea tells the following legend about the split among the Proto-Bulgarians. One of the Hun leaders who settled in the country of Eulysia, in the Black Sea steppes, had two sons - Utigur and Ku-trigur. After the death of the ruler, they divided their father's lands among themselves. The tribes subject to Utigur began to call themselves Utigurs, and those subject to Kutrigur - Kutrigurs. Procopius considered both of them to be Huns. They had the same culture, the same customs, the same language. The Kutrigurs migrated to the west and became a headache for Constantinople. And the Goths, Tetraxites and Utigurs occupied the lands east of the Don. This division most likely occurred at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 6th century.
In the middle of the 6th century, the Kutrigurs entered into a military alliance with the Gepids and attacked Byzantium. The Kutrigur army in Pannonia numbered about 12 thousand people, and it was led by the brave and skillful commander Hinialon. The Kutrigurs began to seize Byzantine lands, so Emperor Justinian also had to look for allies. His choice fell on the closest relatives of the Kutrigurs - the Utigurs. Justinian managed to convince the Utigurs that the Kutrigurs did not behave like relatives: while capturing rich booty, they did not want to share with their fellow tribesmen. The Utigurs succumbed to the deception and entered into an alliance with the emperor. They suddenly attacked the Kutrigurs and ravaged their lands in the Black Sea region. The Kutrigurs gathered a new army and tried to resist their brothers, but there were too few of them, the main military forces were in distant Pannonia. The Utrigurs defeated the enemy, captured women and children and took them into slavery. Justinian did not fail to convey the bad news to the leader of the Kutrigurs, Hinialon. The emperor's advice was simple: leave Pannonia and return home. Moreover, he promised to settle the Kutrigurs who had lost their homes if they would continue to defend the borders of his empire. So the Kutrigurs settled in Thrace. The Utigurs did not like this very much, who immediately sent ambassadors to Constantinople and began to bargain for privileges the same as those of the Kutrigurs. This was all the more relevant since the Kutrigurs continually raided Byzantium from the territory of Byzantium itself! Sent on military campaigns with the Byzantine army, they immediately began to attack those who organized these campaigns. And the emperor had to use the best remedy again and again against the disobedient Kutrigurs - their relatives and enemies of the Utigurs. 
Heritage of Great Bulgaria
At the end of the century, the Kutrigurs preferred the Avar Khaganate, of which they became part, to the Byzantine emperor. And then in 632, the Bulgar Khan Kubrat, a kutrigur by origin, managed to unite his fellow tribesmen into a state called Great Bulgaria. This state included not only the Kutrigurs, but also the Utigurs, Onogurs and other related peoples. The lands of Great Bulgaria stretched across the southern steppes from the Don to the Caucasus. But Great Bulgaria did not last long. After the death of Khan Kubrat, the lands of Great Bulgaria went to his five sons, who did not want to share power with each other. The Khazars neighbors took advantage of this, and in 671 Great Bulgaria ceased to exist.
However, the peoples mentioned in Russian chronicles originated from Kubrat’s five children. From Batbayan came the so-called Black Bulgarians, with whom Byzantium had to fight and against whom the legendary Prince Igor went on campaigns. Kotrag, who settled on the Volga and Kama, founded Volga Bulgaria. From these Volga tribes such peoples as the Tatars and Chuvashs were later formed. Kuber went to Pannonia, and from there to Macedonia. His fellow tribesmen merged with the local Slavic population and assimilated. Alzek took his tribe to Italy, where he settled on the lands of the Lombard people who had adopted him. But the middle son of Khan Kubrat, Asparukh, is more famous. He settled on the Danube and in 650 created the Bulgarian kingdom. Slavs and Thracians already lived here. They mixed with Asparukh's fellow tribesmen. This is how it arose new people- Bulgarians. And there were no more Utigurs or Kutrigurs left on earth...
Mikhail Romashko
