In August 986, the Byzantine Empire suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of the Gates of Trajan, where Emperor Basil II’s inexperienced forces were ambushed by the Bulgarian army. This battle marked a pivotal moment in the Byzantine-Bulgarian wars, exposing the empire’s vulnerabilities and shaping Basil’s future as a military leader.
By Georgios Theotokis
The Battle of the Gates of Trajan in August 986 capped a decade of tremendous Bulgarian expansion in the Balkans that had commenced in 976 with the serious raids by the ‘Kometopouloi’ into Byzantium’s Balkan themes, particularly the ones of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Thessaloniki, Strymon and Hellas. The ‘Kometopouloi,’ or the “Sons of the Count” Nikola of Sredets (Serdica, modern Sofia), named David, Moses, Aron, and Samuil, had taken full advantage of the political turmoil in Byzantium that followed the death of Emperor John I Tzimiskes in 975, when an aristocratic rebellion erupted in the summer of 976 under Bardas Skleros, the victor of Arkadiopolis, that threw the empire into a protracted civil war lasting for three years. And because the bulk of the fighting unfolded in Anatolia, this left only inexperienced recruits to man the thematic forces in the Balkans.
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By 977, the youngest, most militant and most anti-Byzantine of the ‘Kometopouloi,’ Samuil, had emerged as the undisputed Bulgarian leader, responsible for orchestrating a series of successful military operations against imperial holdings in mainland Greece, from Thessaloniki to Thessaly. Little is known about Samuil’s actions before 986, but the sources confirm his triumphal capture of the Thessalian capital of Larissa that year. By 986, Bulgarian expansion in mainland Greece had thoroughly disrupted Byzantine thematic administration in the southern Balkans. Therefore, once Emperor Basil II (reigned, 976-1025) had managed to replace his great-uncle Basil Lekapenos by early 986, an imperial expedition against Sredets was in order.
Coronation of Basil as co-emperor, from the Madrid Skylitzes
Distrustful of the Anatolian thematic and tagmatic armies that had fought against him in the aforementioned civil war, Basil led an army against Sredets that comprised eastern Balkan thematic units and the European tagmata that amounted to some 15-20,000 men. However, it must be said that the emperor and his subordinate officers, including most of the troops under their command, were completely inexperienced in warfare.
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In late June or early July 986, the emperor marched his army on the military route that ran north-eastwards from Constantinople across Thrace to Adrianople, and then along the River Maritsa/Hebros via Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv) through the pass of Succi, guarded at its northern exit by the so-called “Gates of Trajan” and overlooked by two forts, before an army could cross over the passes to Serdica/Sredets. After leaving Philippopolis to march north-west through the densely wooded and rugged Sredna Gora Mountain Range, Basil assigned units under the former doux of Antioch, Leo Melissenos, to the key fortress of Stenos (Bulgarian: Shtipone; modern Ihtiman) that overlooked the narrow Succi passage leading to Sredets, to secure his lines of communications.
Map of the Battle of the Gates of Trajan – image by Kandi / Wikimedia Commons
The emperor was hoping to take the city by storm, but he was in for a surprise. The Bulgarians mounted a stiff resistance in the city’s ramparts, while Bulgarian reinforcements under Samuil had reached the city and occupied the slopes of nearby Mount Vitosa that dominated their southern approaches. After three weeks of fruitless assaults, the imperial army ran short of provisions, owing largely to the Bulgarians’ ‘scorched earth’ policy of burning crops and evacuating the cattle from the surrounding area. The siege was eventually abandoned when the defenders destroyed the Byzantine siege equipment in a night sally, apparently because the inexperienced Byzantine generals had deployed them too close to the city walls.
Basil ordered his army to break camp on August 15 and to prepare for a march back to Philippopolis via the Sredna Gora Mountains. Whenever the army was in enemy territory, it was assumed that it would encamp wherever it needed to stop, and the taktika provide extensive references to the procedure for selecting, laying out, and fortifying the encampment (Maur. Strat., V.1-5; Leo’s Taktika, XI; Const. Porph., Three Treatises, B.135-50; Camp. Org., §10). Scouts and guides preceded the main force and would locate suitable sites in a defensible location, with a good supply of water and forage for the horses and pack-animals, and adequate space for the different contingents to be accommodated. However, the taktika had a word of warning for the general, which applies to both battles at Trajan’s Gate and Myriokephalo:
Have it [your army] pass through the kind of terrain in which the troops will not be pressed tightly together because their formations are not wide enough for them to extend their flanks broadly. Such lines are more readily subject to sudden assaults of the enemy and are not effective at all. For, if the enemy, drawn up in a more extended front, should encounter the head [of your column] they will easily turn it to flight, just as, in the battle itself, they may readily encircle their opponents. (Leo’s Taktika, IX.30-31)
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The order of march varied according to the size of the army, the local topography, and whether the emperor was accompanying the army or not. The greatest attention was paid to the disposition of the mounted and infantry units, the baggage train, and the siege train that may accompany the army. The order would be modified, however, if the army was marching through hostile territory, if an attack or any ambushes were anticipated, and if they had to pass through rugged terrain, a defile, or through any other topographical obstacle.
Ruins of the fortress Gates of Trajan – Photo by Vassia Atanassova – Spiritia / Wikimedia Commons
As a rule, though, a column was always to be organized into a main body, baggage, flank, rear and vanguards (Maur. Strat., V.5, VII.12, IX.3-4, XII.B.17-20; Leo’s Taktika, IX.37; Const. Porph., Three Treatises, B.135-50; Camp. Org., §10). If the army had to pass through a narrow defile where the soldiers were to march only two abreast or even in single file, the cavalry should dismount and their horses, with the baggage, be placed in the centre, while “you [general] must send ahead a detachment of your army to occupy the mountain passes beforehand as well as those through narrow places, the so-called kleisourai. Otherwise, the enemy might get there first ….” (Leo’s Taktika, IX.37-51). Failure to follow these recommendations led to disasters for the imperial armies at the Gates of Trajan and Myriokephalo.
The sources confirm the retreat of the imperial army in panic from the outskirts of Sredets towards Philippopolis through the Sofia Basin and the old Roman road that followed the gorge between the Sredna Gora and Cherna Gora Mountains, with Bulgarian units from Sredets’s garrison monitoring their movements and harrying their rear throughout the first day. Demoralization among the imperial soldiers would have been rife, and it would only have increased by rumours of potential ambushes on their way, while a falling meteorite that lit the sky above the camp that night was interpreted as a bad omen. The sources do not provide any details about the imperial army’s formation or rate of march, but Leo the Deacon, who accompanied the army, confirms that the following day (August 16), the Byzantines displayed more concern for speed than security; panic was setting in!
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Map of Bulgaria in its largest extension during Samuil’s reign circa 1000. Map by Kandi / Wikimedia Commons
Basil and his army reached the fortress of Stenos around the late afternoon of August 16, and when the army renewed its march the following morning, they were advancing into the most rugged and wooded terrain of the Sofia Basin. Leo the Deacon confirms the haphazard fashion of the army’s march from Stenos to the pass known as ‘Trajan’s Gate’ further to the south, paying little attention to basic security measures recommended in the taktika, i.e., flank guards, advance reconnaissance units, and a force to hold the mountain passes ahead of the main army.
On the other hand, Samuil had wisely chosen to let the imperial army march until that part of the Sofia Basin, while he controlled the surrounding mountains south of Sredets (Vitosa and Lozenska Mountains), harassed the enemy troops, and denied his enemies the opportunity to forage for the supplies they so desperately needed. When it became obvious that the Byzantines were in a very difficult situation, “the Mysians [Bulgarians] attacked the Romans, killing huge numbers of men and seizing the imperial headquarters [tent?], riches, and plundering all the army’s baggage. [Leo the Deacon, X.8]” The eleventh-century Armenian historian Stephen of Tarōn adds that “the infantry contingent of Armenians surrounded king Basil behind and in front and took him across another mountainous route and extricated him to Macedonia [Philippopolis]. [Universal History, III.23]”
The Byzantine disaster at the Gates of Trajan can be attributed to a decisive factor: inexperience. Because of the civil wars that preceded the campaign against Sredets had unfolded in Asia Minor, Basil was reluctant to recall the battle-hardened tagmatic and thematic units from Anatolia because of their dubious loyalties. Therefore, the men and officers who accompanied Basil for this campaign lacked the discipline, training, and experience of their eastern counterparts.
On top of that, Emperor Basil was still a very inexperienced commander who took catastrophic decisions in several stages of the campaign: encamping too close to the fortifications of Sredets; failing to neutralise the Bulgarian garrisons at Mount Vitosa; and marching back to Philippopolis in such a haphazard manner that only invited a Bulgarian attack. Basil was still far off from the brilliant general he would become a decade later.
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Georgios Theotokis: Ph.D History (2010, University of Glasgow), specializes in the military history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He has published numerous articles and books on the history of conflict and warfare in Europe and the Mediterranean in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. His latest book is Twenty Battles That Shaped Medieval Europe. He has taught in Turkish and Greek Universities; he is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Byzantine Studies Research Centre, Bosphorus University, Istanbul.
In August 986, the Byzantine Empire suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of the Gates of Trajan, where Emperor Basil II’s inexperienced forces were ambushed by the Bulgarian army. This battle marked a pivotal moment in the Byzantine-Bulgarian wars, exposing the empire’s vulnerabilities and shaping Basil’s future as a military leader.
By Georgios Theotokis
The Battle of the Gates of Trajan in August 986 capped a decade of tremendous Bulgarian expansion in the Balkans that had commenced in 976 with the serious raids by the ‘Kometopouloi’ into Byzantium’s Balkan themes, particularly the ones of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Thessaloniki, Strymon and Hellas. The ‘Kometopouloi,’ or the “Sons of the Count” Nikola of Sredets (Serdica, modern Sofia), named David, Moses, Aron, and Samuil, had taken full advantage of the political turmoil in Byzantium that followed the death of Emperor John I Tzimiskes in 975, when an aristocratic rebellion erupted in the summer of 976 under Bardas Skleros, the victor of Arkadiopolis, that threw the empire into a protracted civil war lasting for three years. And because the bulk of the fighting unfolded in Anatolia, this left only inexperienced recruits to man the thematic forces in the Balkans.
By 977, the youngest, most militant and most anti-Byzantine of the ‘Kometopouloi,’ Samuil, had emerged as the undisputed Bulgarian leader, responsible for orchestrating a series of successful military operations against imperial holdings in mainland Greece, from Thessaloniki to Thessaly. Little is known about Samuil’s actions before 986, but the sources confirm his triumphal capture of the Thessalian capital of Larissa that year. By 986, Bulgarian expansion in mainland Greece had thoroughly disrupted Byzantine thematic administration in the southern Balkans. Therefore, once Emperor Basil II (reigned, 976-1025) had managed to replace his great-uncle Basil Lekapenos by early 986, an imperial expedition against Sredets was in order.
Distrustful of the Anatolian thematic and tagmatic armies that had fought against him in the aforementioned civil war, Basil led an army against Sredets that comprised eastern Balkan thematic units and the European tagmata that amounted to some 15-20,000 men. However, it must be said that the emperor and his subordinate officers, including most of the troops under their command, were completely inexperienced in warfare.
In late June or early July 986, the emperor marched his army on the military route that ran north-eastwards from Constantinople across Thrace to Adrianople, and then along the River Maritsa/Hebros via Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv) through the pass of Succi, guarded at its northern exit by the so-called “Gates of Trajan” and overlooked by two forts, before an army could cross over the passes to Serdica/Sredets. After leaving Philippopolis to march north-west through the densely wooded and rugged Sredna Gora Mountain Range, Basil assigned units under the former doux of Antioch, Leo Melissenos, to the key fortress of Stenos (Bulgarian: Shtipone; modern Ihtiman) that overlooked the narrow Succi passage leading to Sredets, to secure his lines of communications.
The emperor was hoping to take the city by storm, but he was in for a surprise. The Bulgarians mounted a stiff resistance in the city’s ramparts, while Bulgarian reinforcements under Samuil had reached the city and occupied the slopes of nearby Mount Vitosa that dominated their southern approaches. After three weeks of fruitless assaults, the imperial army ran short of provisions, owing largely to the Bulgarians’ ‘scorched earth’ policy of burning crops and evacuating the cattle from the surrounding area. The siege was eventually abandoned when the defenders destroyed the Byzantine siege equipment in a night sally, apparently because the inexperienced Byzantine generals had deployed them too close to the city walls.
Basil ordered his army to break camp on August 15 and to prepare for a march back to Philippopolis via the Sredna Gora Mountains. Whenever the army was in enemy territory, it was assumed that it would encamp wherever it needed to stop, and the taktika provide extensive references to the procedure for selecting, laying out, and fortifying the encampment (Maur. Strat., V.1-5; Leo’s Taktika, XI; Const. Porph., Three Treatises, B.135-50; Camp. Org., §10). Scouts and guides preceded the main force and would locate suitable sites in a defensible location, with a good supply of water and forage for the horses and pack-animals, and adequate space for the different contingents to be accommodated. However, the taktika had a word of warning for the general, which applies to both battles at Trajan’s Gate and Myriokephalo:
Have it [your army] pass through the kind of terrain in which the troops will not be pressed tightly together because their formations are not wide enough for them to extend their flanks broadly. Such lines are more readily subject to sudden assaults of the enemy and are not effective at all. For, if the enemy, drawn up in a more extended front, should encounter the head [of your column] they will easily turn it to flight, just as, in the battle itself, they may readily encircle their opponents. (Leo’s Taktika, IX.30-31)
The order of march varied according to the size of the army, the local topography, and whether the emperor was accompanying the army or not. The greatest attention was paid to the disposition of the mounted and infantry units, the baggage train, and the siege train that may accompany the army. The order would be modified, however, if the army was marching through hostile territory, if an attack or any ambushes were anticipated, and if they had to pass through rugged terrain, a defile, or through any other topographical obstacle.
As a rule, though, a column was always to be organized into a main body, baggage, flank, rear and vanguards (Maur. Strat., V.5, VII.12, IX.3-4, XII.B.17-20; Leo’s Taktika, IX.37; Const. Porph., Three Treatises, B.135-50; Camp. Org., §10). If the army had to pass through a narrow defile where the soldiers were to march only two abreast or even in single file, the cavalry should dismount and their horses, with the baggage, be placed in the centre, while “you [general] must send ahead a detachment of your army to occupy the mountain passes beforehand as well as those through narrow places, the so-called kleisourai. Otherwise, the enemy might get there first ….” (Leo’s Taktika, IX.37-51). Failure to follow these recommendations led to disasters for the imperial armies at the Gates of Trajan and Myriokephalo.
The sources confirm the retreat of the imperial army in panic from the outskirts of Sredets towards Philippopolis through the Sofia Basin and the old Roman road that followed the gorge between the Sredna Gora and Cherna Gora Mountains, with Bulgarian units from Sredets’s garrison monitoring their movements and harrying their rear throughout the first day. Demoralization among the imperial soldiers would have been rife, and it would only have increased by rumours of potential ambushes on their way, while a falling meteorite that lit the sky above the camp that night was interpreted as a bad omen. The sources do not provide any details about the imperial army’s formation or rate of march, but Leo the Deacon, who accompanied the army, confirms that the following day (August 16), the Byzantines displayed more concern for speed than security; panic was setting in!
Basil and his army reached the fortress of Stenos around the late afternoon of August 16, and when the army renewed its march the following morning, they were advancing into the most rugged and wooded terrain of the Sofia Basin. Leo the Deacon confirms the haphazard fashion of the army’s march from Stenos to the pass known as ‘Trajan’s Gate’ further to the south, paying little attention to basic security measures recommended in the taktika, i.e., flank guards, advance reconnaissance units, and a force to hold the mountain passes ahead of the main army.
On the other hand, Samuil had wisely chosen to let the imperial army march until that part of the Sofia Basin, while he controlled the surrounding mountains south of Sredets (Vitosa and Lozenska Mountains), harassed the enemy troops, and denied his enemies the opportunity to forage for the supplies they so desperately needed. When it became obvious that the Byzantines were in a very difficult situation, “the Mysians [Bulgarians] attacked the Romans, killing huge numbers of men and seizing the imperial headquarters [tent?], riches, and plundering all the army’s baggage. [Leo the Deacon, X.8]” The eleventh-century Armenian historian Stephen of Tarōn adds that “the infantry contingent of Armenians surrounded king Basil behind and in front and took him across another mountainous route and extricated him to Macedonia [Philippopolis]. [Universal History, III.23]”
The Byzantine disaster at the Gates of Trajan can be attributed to a decisive factor: inexperience. Because of the civil wars that preceded the campaign against Sredets had unfolded in Asia Minor, Basil was reluctant to recall the battle-hardened tagmatic and thematic units from Anatolia because of their dubious loyalties. Therefore, the men and officers who accompanied Basil for this campaign lacked the discipline, training, and experience of their eastern counterparts.
On top of that, Emperor Basil was still a very inexperienced commander who took catastrophic decisions in several stages of the campaign: encamping too close to the fortifications of Sredets; failing to neutralise the Bulgarian garrisons at Mount Vitosa; and marching back to Philippopolis in such a haphazard manner that only invited a Bulgarian attack. Basil was still far off from the brilliant general he would become a decade later.
Georgios Theotokis: Ph.D History (2010, University of Glasgow), specializes in the military history of the Eastern Mediterranean in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He has published numerous articles and books on the history of conflict and warfare in Europe and the Mediterranean in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. His latest book is Twenty Battles That Shaped Medieval Europe. He has taught in Turkish and Greek Universities; he is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Byzantine Studies Research Centre, Bosphorus University, Istanbul.
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Top Image: Bulgarians defeating their Byzantine enemies from the Madrid Skylitzes
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