Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization

If it was war the Russians wanted, John I Tzimisces was only too happy to comply. Leading forty thousand troops on a lightning march, he surprised a Russian advance force near the Bulgarian capital of Preslav and wiped it out, then put the city under siege. After a few days of lobbing pots of Greek fire over the walls, the Byzantines smashed their way in, liberating the captured Bulgarian king.^* The furious prince of Kiev mustered a huge army, but a few months later John managed to surprise it as well, leaving forty thousand dead on the blood-soaked field. The humiliated prince withdrew from Bulgarian territory a broken man, leaving the ravaged country for the last time.† It didn’t remain free for long. Bulgaria had been a constant thorn in the imperial side ever since the terrible Krum had seemingly appeared out of nowhere several generations before, and John intended to end the threat once and for all. After a year spent forcing its main cities to submit, the emperor formally annexed Bulgaria, extinguishing the dynasty of Krum. Western Bulgaria still clutched a fragile independence, governed by four sons of a local governor collectively calling themselves the Sons of the Count, but they were surrounded and weak, and John left them in place as he turned to pressing business in the East.

The empire would undoubtedly have been better served if Tzimisces had finished the conquest of Bulgaria, but the emperor was deeply troubled by reports from Syria. The Fatimids of Egypt, by far the most dangerous of the Muslim powers, had largely filled the power vacuum left by the collapsing Abbasid caliphate and were now threatening imperial territory. After easily defeating a Byzantine army sent to check them, they put Antioch under siege in the fall of 972, hoping to absorb all of Syria. Clearly, the time had come to turn the Byzantine sword against the Saracen.

Leaving the president of the Senate (the same Basil Lecapenus who had enabled Nicephonus II Phocas to seize power) in charge of the city, John I Tzimisces marched out of the Golden Gate at the head of his army at the start of 974. Riding a powerful white charger, resplendent in his finest armor, with his “Immortals” streaming out behind, the emperor embarked on one of the most impressive military campaigns in the empire’s long history.^* Starting in the northern part of modern-day Iraq, he forced the panicked emir of Mosul to pay him a hefty tribute, reducing the second most powerful emirate to the status of a client state. Not bothering to conquer the now-defenseless Baghdad, Tzimisces turned south into Syria, where the Fatimid army besieging Antioch fled in terror at his approach. But John hadn’t raised his great army simply to watch his enemies momentarily retreat, and he surged down the Mediterranean coast. One by one the cities of Syria and Palestine fell. Baalbek, Beirut, and Damascus opened their gates, and the coastal cities of Tiberias, Acre, Caesarea, and Tripoli sent enormous tribute. No stronghold or fortress could resist the power of imperial arms—after three hundred years in abeyance, the Byzantine eagle had returned, and it wasn’t in a conciliatory mood. After triumphantly entering Nazareth, the city where Jesus had spent his childhood nearly a thousand years before, Tzimisces rode the short distance to Mount Tabor, climbing its slopes to visit the site of Christ’s transfiguration. Like Nicephorus Phocas before him, the emperor considered pressing on to Jerusalem but decided against it. His main aim had been to weaken the Fatimids, not to add territory to the empire. When the time came to restore the Holy City to Christian control, he would return, but that was a task for another day. Making the momentous decision to turn his victorious army around, Tzimisces made his luxurious way home.

Had the emperor extended his hand and returned Jerusalem to Orthodox control, he could have accomplished the great dream of the eastern Christians in Palestine. Instead, they would wait in vain for more than a century, while imperial power failed and the West launched the Crusades to restore the city to Christendom.

In the fall of 975, however, Byzantium still knew only triumph, and John I Tzimisces was content to haul the spoils of his campaign back to the capital, secure in the knowledge that he had made the empire stronger than it had been for nearly four centuries. On every side, its enemies were cowed and fleeing, and nothing seemed beyond the ambition of its grasp.^*