Book II THE GREAT POWERS OF EUROPE
CHAPTER II
Excursion into the West
The sudden disappearance of their terrible ruler took the Bulgars by surprise. Krum left a son, called Omortag; but Omortag was young and inexperienced. [1] It seems that the Bulgar aristocracy took advantage of Krum’s death to revolt against his dynasty. We hear of three bоyars that wore the crown about now: Dukum, who almost at once died, Ditzeng and Tsok, the latter two both cruel men who persecuted the Christian prisoners from Adrianople. But no more than that is known of them. Probably they were only the leaders of rebel factions and parties that for a short while controlled the government at Pliska. [2]
In any case, their rule was brief. Well before the end of 815, Omortag was firmly seated on his father’s throne. His first action was to make peace with the Empire. He had not had experience as a warrior himself; it would be wiser to rest upon his father’s laurels and to use their
1. The forms Ὠμορτάγ, Ὠμουρτάγ, Ὠμυρτάγ, and Ὠμουρτὰγ occur in his inscriptions. The Greeks call him Ματράγων, Μοραάγων, and Ομβριτάγος (twice in error Κρυτάγων and Κουτράγων); the Latins, Omortag and Omartag. See Zlatarski, op. cit., pp. 292—3. That Omortag was Krum’s son (not brother, as Dvornik (op. cit., p. 39) says) is definitely stated by Theophylact, Historia XV Martyrum, p. 192, and implied by Malamir’s Shumla inscription (see below, p. 295). Theophylact (loc. cit.) makes Omortag directly succeed Krum; and Theophanes Continuatus (p. 217) implies so.
2. Tsok is only mentioned in the Menologium of Basil II as having succeeded Krum and persecuting Christians (Menologium, pp. 276-7); Dukum, who died, and Ditzeng, who persecuted Archbishop Manuel, are only mentioned in a fourteenth-century Slavonic prologue to the Menologium, p.392 (see Bibliography). Tsok, however, is probably the Tsuk that appears in a very mutilated inscription found near Aboba dated 823/4 (Aboba-Pliska, pp. 226-7)—the sense is undecipherable; it may record Omortag’s triumph over the usurper. I am inclined to believe with Loparev (Dvie Zamietki, p. 318) that all three were merely military leaders, and not to identify Ditzeng with Tsok (as Bury does, op. cit., p. 359) or Dukum with Tsok (as Zlatarski, op. cit., pp. 424-5).
71
72
reputation in securing beneficial terms. He appears to have instituted preliminary negotiations that amounted to nothing [1]; the Emperor Leo was contemplating a campaign against the weakened Bulgars—a monk Sabbatius, prompted no doubt by the devil, had promised him a victory against them were he to reintroduce iconoclasm. [2] But this brilliant campaign never took place. Instead, some time in the winter of 815-16 the Khan and the Emperor concluded a Thirty Years’ Peace.
The Imperial historians barely noticed the treaty; but the Khan was pleased with his diplomacy, and caused the terms to be inscribed on a column in his palace at Pliska. The column is overturned and chipped now, but it still tells how the Sublime Khan Omortag, wishing for peace with the Greeks, sent an embassy to the Emperor (τὸν βασιλέα), and how the peace was to last thirty years. The frontier was to run from Develtus, between the two rivers, and between Balzene and Agathonice to Constantia and to Macrolivada and to the mountains—the name of the range is mostly erased. Secondly, the Emperor was to keep the Slav tribes that had belonged to him before the war; the others, even though they might have deserted, were to belong to the Khan and be sent back to their various districts. Roman (Imperial) officers were to be bought back at a special tariff according to their rank, common people were to be exchanged man for man, and there was a special arrangement for Imperial soldiers captured in deserted citadels. [3]
1. If Bury is right (op. cit., p. 360) in placing the much-mutilated Eski Juma inscription (Aboba-Pliska, p. 228) here, it vaguely suggests negotiations.
2. Genesius, p. 13: Theophanes Continuatus, p. 26, and in more detail in the Epistolae Synodicae Orientalium ad Theophilum, p. 368. This may refer to Leo’s 813 campaign, which was successful, but I think it belongs a little later.
3. The Suleiman-Keui inscription, which has been the subject of an article by Zlatarski (see Bibliography), gives the reasons for my view of the treaty and the Great Fence in Appendix VI. The Greek historians, Genesius, p. 41, and Theophanes Continuatus, p. 31, mention that a thirty-year peace was concluded—Genesius mentioning Omortag (Motragon) by name.
73
These latter terms were what might have been expected—the Bulgars winning on that deserter clause that had ruined Krum. But the frontier needs elucidation. The two rivers were probably the Tundzha and the Choban-Azmak; Baltzene is unknown; but Agathonice has been identified as the village of Saranti, while Constantia is the village of Kostuzha, both near Kavalki and the Sakar mountains. Macrolivada was the present village of Uzundzhova, near the junction of the western River Azmak with the Maritsa. [1] The semi-nameless mountain range was almost certainly the Haemus; that is to say, at Macrolivada the frontier turned sharply to the north, to the Haemus and to the Danube, leaving Philippopolis and Sardica outside the frontier. This was, as Omortag said, the old frontier, [2] the frontier which Tervel had won exactly a century ago; indeed, the whole treaty was in the main a recapitulation of the famous treaty of 716. But there was a difference. Omortag had advanced as far as he wished on the side of Thrace. His main interests were elsewhere; he only wanted to safeguard this frontier. Accordingly the Bulgars dug a great ditch and on its northern side built a great rampart all the way from the neighbourhood of Develtus to Macrolivada. All along this earthen wall, called by the Greeks the Great Fence, and now known as the Erkesiya, Bulgar soldiers kept a constant watch.
But so vast a work could not be carried on with hostile forces just across the frontier. It is almost certain that some clause in the treaty provided for the erection of such a ‘fence’ without interruption from the Imperial forces. It is noticeable that, of the great Imperial fortresses that guarded the frontier before the war, only Mesembria and Adrianople, both of them commercial as well as military
1. Identified by Zlatarski, Izviestiya, pp. 67-8: Shkorpil’s identification of Constantia (Aboba-Pliska, loc. cit.) with Kostenets, near Trajan’s Gate, is unlikely and unsupported by any evidence.
2. ’ περὶ τῆς παλαιῆς ἱνα ἐστίν . . . κτλ. ’
74
metropoles, were re-occupied and rebuilt by the Emperor. The other fortresses—Anchialus, Develtus, Philippopolis and Sardica—though they were not handed over to the Bulgars, [1] were left deserted, and were easily annexed by the Khan a few decades later. Already the Great Fence intercepted the main road from Adrianople to Philippopolis; and the isolation and desertion of the two western fortresses enabled Omortag to dispense with a ‘fence’ along this western boundary of his Balkan kingdom. Probably even now Bulgar statesmen were contemplating expansion on that side; a ‘fence’ built to-day, tomorrow would be useless. [2]
To mark the solemnity of the peace-treaty, both the Khan and the Emperor agreed to pledge their word according to the rites of the other’s faith. To the scandal of the pious Christians of Constantinople, the Emperor, the Viceroy of God, poured water on to the earth, and swore on a sword and on the entrails of horses and sacrificed dogs to the false idols of the Bulgars. It was almost worse when the heathen ambassadors fouled by their touch the Holy Gospels and called on the name of God. Men were not surprised when plagues and earthquakes followed on the heels of these monstrous impieties. [3]
Omortag, however, was genuinely for peace in the Balkans. Bulgaria’s existence had been guaranteed by the weapons of Krum; it was time now to enjoy the gifts of civilization that the nearness of Byzantium would give. Throughout his reign the Thirty Years’ Peace was faithfully kept by the Khan. Only once did the Bulgar armies
1. See Appendix VI.
2. For about half a mile, near Bakadzhik, there is a second ‘fence’ a little to the south, curving in front of the other, known as the Gypsy Erkesiya—the legend being that the ‘Tsar’s’ troops were called away and they ordered the gypsies to carry it on; but the gypsies carelessly diverted the direction, which the soldiers corrected when they returned (Aboba-Pliska, pp. 542-3).
3. Ignatius, Vita Nicephori, p. 206: Genesius, p. 28: Theophanes Continuatus, p. 31. See Zlatarski, Istoriya, pp. 434—4.
75
march southward from the Great Fence; and that was to help an Emperor.
In the year 823 the Emperor Michael II was beleaguered in Constantinople by the army and the fleet of the arch-rebel Thomas, so desperately that he even was arming the Saracen captives in the city. In his straits he would welcome anyone to help him. It was here that the Khan intervened. Some said that Michael sent to Pliska asking for aid, which was granted him. Others told a longer story; it was Omortag that began the negotiations, asking to be allowed to intervene. Michael refused; he could not, he said, employ heathens to shed Christian blood. But his refusal was put down by gossip to economy; the Bulgars wished to be paid—and, in any case, it would be a violation of the Thirty Years’ Peace. But Omortag thought the opportunity for interference and for plunder too good to be missed; he crossed the frontier all the same—and Michael assuredly was privy to it, forgiving the breach of the treaty in return for the help, and granting him freely what booty he could obtain. The Bulgar army crossed the Fence and marched past Adrianople and Arcadiopolis towards the capital. The rebel Thomas learnt of their coming; reluctantly he drew his troops away from the siege and went out to meet the new foe. The Bulgars waited for him at Ceductus, the aqueduct where the Empress Procopia had waved farewell to her hapless husband before the field of Versinicia. At the battle of Ceductus the rebels were badly beaten; the bulk of Thomas’s army was destroyed. The Bulgars made their way back to the north laden with spoils. And Michael was saved. [1]
Omortag utilized this rare Balkan peace to create other
1. Georgius Hamartolus, p. 796: he says that Michael asked for Bulgar help. Genesius, pp. 41-2, and Theophanes Continuatus, pp. 64-6, give the longer story, the Continuator adding the touch about Michael’s economical motive in refusing aid.
76
buildings beside the Great Fence. It was probably in the last years of his father’s and the first years of his reign that the palace of Pliska, whose ruins we can trace to-day, was built. The great quadrilateral camp some two miles by four, surrounded with its rough rampart and pierced with eleven gates, probably dates from the early years of the Bulgar occupation. But the town had twice been destroyed by the Emperor during the wars of Krum; the present inner citadel probably post-dated these wars. It consisted of a trapezium-shaped fortification, with circular bastions at the four angles, double rectangular bastions guarding the four gates, and eight other bastions. Inside was the dwelling-place of the Khans, a great hall, almost square but trisected with columns, and with an apse for the throne, raised above the ground on a high substructure. It was no doubt in this hall that Krum placed the columns and sculptures that he carried off from the Palace of Saint Mamas. Close to the palace stood the heathen temple of the Khans, later to atone for its past by becoming a Christian church. [1]
But one palace only was insufficient for the glory of the Sublime Khan. At Transmarisca, on the Danube, where the modern Turtukan still guards one of the easiest passages across the river, Omortag made a house of high renown, [2] a strong palatial fortress to watch the northern approach to his capital. He was still living at his old palace at Pliska at the time [3]; and, with morbid symmetry, half-way between his two earthly halls he built a third house where he should lie for eternity—a splendid sepulchre, whose erection he commemorated on an inscribed column, that later builders determined to utilize;
1. Aboba-Pliska, pp. 62 ff, 132 ff. This palace was almost certainly built—probably by Greek artisans—in the early ninth century.
2. ‘ Ἐπ(οίη)σεν ὑπέρφ(η)μον (οἶ)κο[ν] (εἰ)ς τὸν Δανοῦβιν. ’
3. ‘ (εἰ)ς τὸν παλ(αι)ὸν (οἶ)κον αὑτου μέν(ων). ’
77
and now the heathen monarch’s sentiments are to be read in one of the churches of Tirnovo. [1]
In the autumn of the year 821 the Khan built another fortress-palace, farther to the south of Pliska, guarding the approaches from the Great Fence. Again he recorded his creation on a column that was found at the village of Chatalar. [2] ‘The Sublime Khan Omortag,’ it says, ‘is divine ruler [3] in the land where he was born. Dwelling in the camp of Pliska [4], he made a palace [5] on the Tutsa and increased his power [6] against the Greeks and the Slavs. And he skilfully made a bridge over the Tutsa. [7] . . . And he set up in his fortress four columns, and between the columns two bronze lions. May God grant the divine ruler that he press down with his foot the Emperor so long as the Tutsa flows and the enemies of the Bulgars are controlled [8]; and may he subdue his foes and live in joy and happiness for a hundred years. The date of the foundation is in Bulgarian shegor alem, and in Greek the fifteenth indiction.’ The name by which Omortag knew this palace, which he founded in September 821,
1. For the Tirnovo inscription see Aboba-Pliska, p. 553: Uspenski, O Drevnistyakh Goroda Tyrnova, pp. 5 ff.: Jireček, op. cit., 148 ff.: Bury, op. cit., pp. 366-7: Zlatarski, Istoriya, pp. 325-30, 444—7. Uspenski, Jireček (rather incorrectly), and Zlatarski all give the full text. Uspenski places the tomb at the mound of Mumdzhilar, but Zlatarski, more convincingly, at the village of Ikinli-fount, on the present Roumanian frontier.
2. For the Chatalar inscription see Aboba-Pliska, pp. 546 ff.: Bury, op. cit., pp. 368-9: Zlatarski, op. cit., pp. 319-25, and esp. pp. 441-4.
3. ‘ ὲκ θεού ἄρχ(ω)ν ’.
4. ‘ τ(ῆ)ς πλ(ύ)σκας τὸν κά(μ)πον ’.
5. ‘ αὐλ(ὴ)ν ’.
6. Zlatarski’s reading, ‘ Μείζω ἐποίησε ’ makes much more convincing sense than Uspenski’s ‘ ἐπῆγε, ’ or Bury’s ‘ ἔδειξε. ’ Zlatarski professes to be able to read the ‘Μ.’
7. After Tutsa there follows ‘ Μετ . . . ’ Uspenski reads ‘ μετ[ηνεγκεί ’; Bury accepts it very doubtfully. Zlatarski reads ‘ μετ[όπισθεν τὴν αὐλὴν. ’ This seems to me to be too long, though better sense.
8. According to Zlatarski, who reads:
‘ κ(αὶ) [ἑ] (ω)ς [ἀντιστά
τοὺς πολ[λ]οὺς Βουλγάρ(ου)ς ἐπέ[κη. ’
I am doubtful about it, but Uspenski reads even more dubiously:
‘ καὶ [δ]ωσ[η αἰχμαλώ
τοὺς κτλ. ’
78
has not come down to us; probably it was some Bulgar equivalent of the phrase ‘of high renown.’ But soon it came to be called by its Slav name, and to feature in Balkan history as Preslav, Great Preslav, the glorious. [1] The words of the inscription show clearly that Preslav was intended to awe the Slavs of the southern frontier and the Greeks, the Emperor and his subjects, that lived beyond. Furthermore, they show that the Emperor, despite the Thirty Years’ Peace, was still the Khan’s traditional foe, the foe whom most he feared and most he longed to subdue.
At the moment, however, the Khan was at peace with the Empire—was even borrowing from it the trappings of his culture. The inscriptions in which he glorified his works were written in Greek, not the elegant Greek such as was used by the citizens of Constantinople, but a rough, ungrammatical language—written no doubt by captives who had, forcibly or from their own choice, remained on in the Khan’s dominions. Greek was still the only language in Eastern Europe that possessed an alphabet; for writing, Greeks or natives of the Greek-speaking Empire had to be employed. These scribes of the Khan, in the middle of the Bulgar formulae, add to the title the Sublime Khan, ‘ κάννας ὐβιγη, ’ the Imperial formula ὁ ἐκ θεοῦ ἄρχων, the divine ruler—though the Khan was far from approving of the Christian God. [2] The architects of the new palaces were also probably Greeks. Of the Danubian palace no traces have been unearthed, and the original buildings of Preslav are lost beneath the later ruins; but Pliska shows very markedly the influence of Byzantine
1. Preslav is a fair translation of the Greek ‘ ὑπέρφημος ’ or ‘ πάμφημος ’ that occur on the Bulgar inscriptions.
2. They, of course, only gave him the title of ‘ ἄρχων, ’ ‘ Βασιλεύς ’ was reserved for the Emperor, and ‘ ῥήξ ’ for Western rulers. The formula does not mean that the Khan paid any respect to the Christian God; it is purely a formula.
79
architecture, suggesting both the Triconchus and the Magnaura in the great Imperial Palace. [1]
But though he encouraged Greek artisans, Omortag firmly discouraged their religion. Christianity was creeping in to Bulgaria in a manner most alarming to him; he could not but regard it as a subtle means of propaganda on the part of the Emperor, the viceroy of the Christian God. It was only later that the Khans realized from their dealings with the West that one could be Christian without necessarily obeying the Basileus. There was another self-appointed viceroy, who dwelt in Italy; and in the north there were Christians who sometimes doubted the viceroyalty of either. Accordingly, Omortag persecuted Christians, as he would have persecuted Imperial spies. The Imperial captives must have propagated Christianity fairly widely, and among the Slavs (though not among the warlike Bulgars) there must have been many converts. Already under Krum and during the brief reigns of the rebel bоyars the Christians had suffered much. Krum had deported the Christians of Adrianople, with many hardships, to beyond the Danube; though, on the whole, he was fairly tolerant. Ditzeng mutilated the arms of the Archbishop Manuel. Tsok was far more uncompromising; he was said to have ordered the Christian captives, lay as well as clerical, to renounce their faith, and when they refused to have slain them all. Omortag, though less violent, was equally minded. Under his rule the maimed Archbishop Manuel finally met his death [2]; and he was
1. The rather different, almost Iranian, spirit of the stele of the horseman found at Madara is probably due to an Armenian artist.
2. Ditzeng’s persecution is mentioned in the Slavonic Prologue (loc. cit.), Tsok’s in the Menologium (loc. cit.). The author of the Menologium says that Manuel had his arms cut off and was killed by Krum; whereupon the Bulgars, in disgust, strangled their inhuman ruler. This may refer to Ditzeng’s mutilation of his arms, and to the sudden fall of Ditzeng or another of the boyar Khans, the pious author having muddled and united the stories to give them a moral tone. That Manuel was actually killed by Omortag is stated in Theophanes Continuatus, p. 217.
80
also probably the Khan who, according to Theodore of Studium, ordered all Christians to eat meat in Lent. Fourteen refused; so Omortag killed one as an example and sold his wife and children into captivity. But the rest remained obdurate, so all were slain. [1] Even a captive called Cinamon, whom Krum had given to Omortag, and to whom Omortag was deeply attached, was thrown into prison for his persistency in remaining Christian, and remained there till Omortag’s death. [2]
Both these architectural and these anti-Christian activities were part of the same policy, the aggrandisement of the power and prestige of the Khan. In this Omortag carried on his father’s work, and, like Krum, probably furthered it by encouraging the Slavs against the Bulgar aristocracy. There is no more evidence for the internal state of Bulgaria under Omortag; but it seems that in the Balkans the two races were by now mixing. In the lower classes the Slavs were easily able to absorb the few Bulgars; it was only in the upper classes that there was still a distinction. The Bulgar nobility, the almost feudal military caste, was untainted, while the Slav nobility, brought forward by Krum, was a court nobility with no hereditary basis, made or marred by the whim of the Khan. Of the state of affairs beyond the Danube we know even less. Here there was not the same solid Slav background. On the plains of Wallachia and Bessarabia, and in the mountains of Transylvania, there was a conglomeration of mongrel tribes—Slavs, Avars, and Vlachs—clinging in places to the Latin speech and culture left behind by Trajan’s Dacian colonists, but wild and disorganized. Over these peoples the Khan ruled, it seems, by a system of military outposts that controlled the districts
1. Theodore Studites, Parva Catechesis, pp. 220 ff.
2. Theophylact, op. cit., pp. 193 ff.
81
around; and where possible, as in Bessarabia, a Great Fence guarded the frontier. [1]
It was to these northern frontiers that Omortag directed the attention of his diplomacy and his arms. A memorial tablet set up by the Khan tells of his servant the zhupan Okorses, of the family of Tzanagares, who met his death in the waters of the Dnieper when proceeding to the Bulgar camp. [2] Things had changed on the Steppes since two centuries ago the sons of Kubrat had spread Bulgarias from the Danube to the Volga and the Kama. The Khazar power was declining, and fierce new tribes were pouring in from the east. About the year 820 the Magyars advanced beyond the River Don, striking for ever a wedge between the two great Bulgar stems. It was against this danger that the army which Okorses never reached went out beyond the Dnieper. It achieved its objects. For a few more years the Magyars stayed outside of the frontier.
But the main scene of Omortag’s foreign policy lay further to the west, where the Bulgar frontier ran from the fortress of Belgrade up the River Theiss. Over this frontier lay the struggling kingdom of Croatia, and its oppressor the great power of the West, the Frankish Empire. The rule of the Sublime Khan lay heavily on the tribes that lived in this corner of his dominions, and they determined to search for relief.
In the year 818 the Emperor Louis the Pious was holding his Court at Heristal; and amongst the embassies that waited on his pleasure was one from the Slavs of the Timok (just south of Belgrade) and the Abodriti, a Slav race to the north of the Danube, just opposite. These tribes had
1. Aboba-Pliska, pp. 524-5. Rivers seem to have been able to take the place of fences. Actually in Omortag’s day the Theiss and the Dnieper appear to have been the frontiers. In the Responsa Nicolai, Chapter xxv., we learn how much the Bulgars valued their entrenchments.
2. Aboba-Pliska, p. 190: Zlatarski, Edin ot Provadiiskitie Omortagovi Nadpici, pp. 94-107.
82
revolted from the Khan and wanted help. Louis was not sure what policy he should adopt in the East; so the Timocians, in despair, threw in their lot with Liudevit, the Prince of Pannonian Croatia, who also was represented at Heristal and who seemed likely for a moment to found a realm free from Frank and Bulgar alike. [1] But Liudevit’s triumphs were ephemeral; by 823 he had died in exile, and his country was in the hands of the Franks. Omortag was alarmed by the growth of Frankish power. He had, it seems, reconquered the Timocians; but the Abodriti and the Predenecenti (the Branichevtzi, just across the Danube to the Abodriti) were airing their independence and intriguing with the Franks. [2] He decided that he must free his hands to deal with them by coming to an arrangement with the Western Emperor. In 824, for the first time in history, a Bulgarian embassy made its way to Germany, bringing a letter from the Khan to propose a delineation of the frontier. [3]
Louis, with his customary caution, sent the embassy back accompanied by his own legates, including the Bavarian Machelm, to find out more about this country of Bulgaria. Meanwhile, he received another embassy from the rebel Slav tribes. Late in the year the Bulgarian ambassadors returned—with Machelm, no doubt, who by now had informed himself as to the state of Bulgaria. But Louis was leaning towards the rebels now; he kept the Bulgars waiting nearly six months before he received them at Aachen, in May. The audience was unsatisfactory; the embassy was dismissed with a very ambiguous letter to the Khan. Omortag patiently tried once more. In 826 a third embassy reached the Emperor, and requested him either to agree to regulate the frontier at once, or,
1. Einhard, Annales, pp. 205-6. Liudevit was, it seems, secretly supported by the Eastern Emperors (Dvornik, op. cit., p. 49).
2. Ibid., p. 209, in 823.
3. Ibid., p. 212.
83
anyhow, to come to an undertaking that each Power would keep within its own borders—the Khan was determined that his rebel Slavs should not go flirting with the Franks. But yet again Louis was non-committal. He professed to have heard a rumour that the Khan had died, and sent to the Eastern frontier to find out more about it. But no news was forthcoming; so Louis dismissed the Bulgar ambassador without any answer. [1]
Omortag’s patience was exhausted. In 827 he invaded Frankish Croatia. His boats sailed from the Danube up the Drave, spreading destruction. The Slavs and other tribes on its banks were cowed into submission, and agreed to accept Bulgar governors. [2] His attack took the Franks by surprise. In 828 Baldric of Friuli, the governor of the frontier, was deposed for his incompetence in permitting the Bulgar invasion, [3] and that same year the young King Louis, the German, led an expedition against the Bulgars. [4] But he achieved nothing; in 829, as in the previous two years, the Bulgars devastated Pannonia once more. [5] The Khan had asserted his power in a very definite manner; the German court was better informed now. The war dragged till after Omortag’s death; peace was concluded in 832, to the satisfaction of the Bulgars. [6] Their frontier was guaranteed, and their position and prestige among the Slavs was assured.
We are only told definitely of the Bulgar campaigns on the Drave; but Bulgar armies had also been operating on land. Another memorial was erected by Omortag for his tarkan, Onegavon, of the family of Kubiares, who was on his way to the Bulgar camp when he was drowned in the waters of the Theiss. [7]
1. Einhard, Annales, p. 213: Astronomus, Vita Hludovici, pp. 628-9: Fuldenses Annales, p. 359.
2. Einhard, p. 216.
3. Ibid., Ioc. cit.
4. Fuldenses Annales, p. 359.
5. Ibid., p. 360.
6. Annalista Saxo, p. 574.
7. Aboba-Pliska, pp. 190-1.
84
Omortag did not long survive his tarkan. When he built his tomb he caused to be written the words: ‘Man dies, even though he lives nobly, and another is born; and let the latest born, seeing this, remember him who made it. The name of the Prince is Omortag, the Sublime Khan. God grant that he live a hundred years.’ [1] But God did not grant the Khan so lengthy a life. He died in 831, [2] after a reign of fifteen years—a short reign for a Bulgar ruler; but in its course he had shown the world, the West and the East alike, that Bulgaria was now to be numbered among the great Powers of Europe.
Three sons survived Omortag, called Enravotas, Svinitse, and Malamir. It was the youngest, Malamir, that succeeded to the throne; his mother must have been the Khan’s favourite wife. [3] A veil of mystery hangs over Malamir’s reign; all its happenings and their dates can only be completed by conjecture. It is even possible that the reign was two reigns, and that Malamir, after five years, gave place to a Khan Presiam. [4] But that is unlikely. It seems, on the other hand, that Malamir reigned for twenty-one years, years of the highest importance in the history of Bulgaria.
Malamir’s reign opened in peace. The Thirty Years’ Truce with the Empire had still some fifteen more years to run; while in Pannonia the Franks had been awed by Omortag’s invasions. Of Bulgarian history during these peaceful years we know nothing. Even inscriptions are very rare. All we learn from them is of the death from illness of a boyar called Tsepa, and that the Kavkan
1. The Tirnovo inscription, closing words. See p. 77.
2. I accept Zlatarski’s date for his death—Istoriya, p. 317, Izviestiya, p. 34. See Aboba-Pliska, p. 236.
3. Theophylact, op. cit., p. 192.
4. I discuss the Malamir-Presiam problem in Appendix VIII.
85
Isbules, who appears elsewhere as the Khan’s chief general, built for Malamir an aqueduct at his own expense, whereat the Khan gave a series of feasts to his aristocracy. Probably Malamir was engaged in adding to his father’s new fortress of Preslav, and the aqueduct was needed to supply the growing city. [1]
This opening peace lasted satisfactorily for five years; but in 835-6 a diplomatic crisis faced Bulgaria and the Empire. The Thirty Years’ Peace required, it appears, confirmation at every decade. In 825-6 this had been effected without difficulty; Omortag had been giving his attention then to the middle Danube, while the Emperor Michael II was fully engaged with religious problems at home. But by the end of the second decade certain problems forced themselves on the Khan’s and the Emperor’s notice. When Krum captured Adrianople in 813 he had transported ten thousand of its inhabitants to a spot beyond the Danube, which soon acquired the name of Macedonia—for Adrianople was the capital of the Macedonian theme. [2] There they still lived, now numbering twelve thousand, enjoying, it seems, a certain degree of self-government and electing their chief magistrate. But they were restive in their exile; its discomforts and periodical persecutions made them long for their old homes. The Khan, however, wished to keep them. No doubt the skilled artisans that must have been amongst them were of great value to him in manufacturing luxuries for his court. It was only with the greatest difficulty that Cordyles, the governor of these Macedonians, made his way to Constantinople, to persuade the Emperor Theophilus to send ships to the Danube to rescue them. They had already once tried to escape across Bulgaria; but
1. Aboba-Pliska, pp. 191, 230-1. Uspenski, Zlatarski, and Bury all agree in translating the obscure word ‘ ἀνάβρυτον ’ as aqueduct.
2. See above, p. 65.
86
without Imperial help they were doomed to failure. Theophilus, however, waited for the temporary break in the Truce before taking action, but in 836 he sent some ships to the Danube. The ‘Macedonians’ moved down the river to meet the ships and began to cross one of the northern tributaries of the river—probably the Pruth. [1] The local Bulgar governor determined to check them and crossed over to attack them, but was beaten with great loss; and the Macedonians triumphantly effected their crossing. The Bulgars then called in to their aid the Magyars, whose power now extended to the Bulgar frontier. [2] The Magyars came gladly; numbers of them presented themselves before the Macedonians’ camp demanding the surrender of all their belongings. The demand was refused, and in the battle that followed the Macedonians again, by the help of St. Adrian, were victorious. And so they passed on safely to the ships and Constantinople, after more than twenty years in exile. [3]
The Bulgars had played an unimpressive part in this episode. They were too busy elsewhere. Malamir, like Theophilus, intended to g