The Eagle & The Bear

The Byzantines End Rus Dreams of Supremacy

Years of war had collapsed the Bulgarian state and Sviatoslav seemed poised to absorb the region. Sviatoslav’s domains briefly stretched from the Adriatic to the Caspian, a juggernaut was forming across Eastern Europe. Emperor John Tzimiskes, responding to Rus attacks & threats, led the Byzantine military in a lightning campaign to neutralize this emerging threat. The Byzantine military had been honed in decades of war against the Emirates of Syria & Iraq and now turned its fearsome gaze west toward the hordes of Sviatoslav. The Byzantine military, machine-like in its discipline & professionalism, would prove its reputation in a final, bloody confrontation with the fearsome & aggressive warriors of the Rus.

The Siege of Dorostolon was the savage conclusion of this struggle for supremacy in the Balkans. Sviatoslav’s army had been reduced from 60,000 to 30,000 men. No longer able to dictate the course of the campaign, stinging from the loss of Pereyaslavets, and the departure of his now unaffordable Pecheneg mercenaries, Sviatoslav reorganized at the impressive fortress.

Tzimiskes arrived at the fortress with an army of equivalent strength. (15,000 infantry & 13,000 cavalry) Sviatoslav gave battle on a field 12 miles from the fort. Rus and Byzantine infantry traded blows into the evening, finally, the Cataphracts, Byzantium’s famed corps of heavy cavalry, charged & won a costly victory.

The Rus shield wall broke and many were cut down in the pursuit, but most reached safety. Unable to break the Rus in open battle, Tzimiskes settled in for a siege. A Byzantine flotilla of 300 ships, equipped with Greek Fire, sailed down the Danube and completed the encirclement of the Rus army. Feeling the effects of starvation, the Rus had to act, and a series of bloody engagements unfolded on the fields surrounding the fortress. The fighting was fierce as the Byzantines sought to break Sviatoslav below the walls and the Rus tried to claw their way to safety.

Desperate to regain the support of their gods, the Rus drowned children and prisoners in the Danube. This did not improve their situation. At one point in the siege, 2,000 Rus warriors successfully slipped past the Byzantine naval blockade in their canoes.

Henryk Siemiradzki: Svyatoslav's Warriors sacrificing prisoners to the Pagan gods during the Siege of Dorostopol.

After finding food and supplies the Rus returned to Dorostolon. On the way back they chanced upon some Byzantine cavalry watering their horses and ambushed them, killing many. This small victory buoyed the Rus and Tzimiskes was livid with his soldiers for their inattentiveness.

Successive sallies by the Rus continued to take their toll on both armies. Tzimiskes’s relative, Ionnes Kourkouas, was killed repelling a Rus attack on the Byzantine siege engines. The Rus hung his severed head from the walls. Anemas, son of the recently conquered Cretan Emir, returned the favor. When a Rus detachment charged out of the fortress Anemas cut down Ikmor, the Rus second-in-command. Byzantine sources claim Ikmor assassinated Anemas’s father during the siege of Chandax, where he served as a mercenary. Apocryphal or not, the tale demonstrates the already deep connections between the Rus and Byzantine worlds in the 10th century.

The next day Sviatoslav led an assault at sunset, hoping to overwhelm the Byzantines and make a break for safety. Anemas rode forth and slashed Sviatoslav on the neck. Sviatoslav was thrown from his horse by the powerful sword stroke, but his armor saved his life. The Druzhina came to the aid of their king and swarmed Anemas. Anemas killed several of Sviatoslav’s elite warriors before falling under a hail of axes and swords. The Rus then continued with their attack but were repulsed with heavy losses.

The Fortress at Dorostolon

Sviatoslav’s army was broken, starving, bloodied, and surrounded. After 65 days of fighting, Sviatoslav met with Tzimiskes to discuss the terms of his surrender. Leo the Deacon was present for the meeting between the legendary leaders and wrote down his recollections:

“Sphendosthlavos arrived sailing along the river in a Scythian light boat, grasping an oar and rowing with his companions as if he were one of them. His appearance was as follows: he was of moderate height, neither taller than average nor particularly short; his eyebrows were thick; he had grey eyes and a snub nose; his beard was clean-shaven, but he let the hair grow abundantly on his upper lip where it was bushy and long; and he shaved his head completely, except for a lock of hair that hung down on one side, as a mark of the nobility of his ancestry; he was solid in the neck, broad in the chest and very well articulated in the rest of his body; he had a rather angry and savage appearance; on one ear was fastened a gold earring, adorned with two pearls with a red gemstone between them; his clothing was white, no different from that of his companions except in cleanliness.”¹

The meeting of Sviatoslav with Emperor John Tzimiskes, painting by Klavdy Lebedev

The terms of Sviatoslav’s surrender were lenient considering his dire circumstances. Sviatoslav renounced his claims on the Balkans and Southern Crimea, agreeing to stay west of the Dnieper River. In return, Tzimiskes provided food and supplies to the Rus. Sviatoslav blamed his failure on the Pechenegs who abandoned him as his campaign unraveled.

After Sviatoslav withdrew, his army wintered on Berezen Island at the mouth of the Dnieper. Conditions were bleak and famine stalked his warriors. Fearing the ambitious Sviatoslav would break this treaty too, Tzimiskes suggested the Pecheneg Khan Kurya attack him at the rapids. Sviatoslav, ignoring the warnings of the warlord, Sveneld, pushed to the Dnieper Rapids in early 972. Kurya fell on the weakened Rus and Sviatoslav was killed with many of his remaining warriors. The Primary Chronicle says that Kurya made Sviatoslav’s skull into a chalice.

Sviatoslav’s early death and disaster in the Balkans marred his legacy. Although his conquests broke the arch-rival of the Rus, the Khazars, most of his best warriors died in the Balkans or on the Dnieper. The regencies he set up for his three young sons also led to trouble. The fractured political landscape of the Rus after Sviatoslav’s death would lead to a devastating civil war and only with the victory of Vladimir the Great would the Rus again return to the world stage.

Rus defeat would prove consequential not only in the contest for political control of the Balkans but by cementing Byzantium’s rule as the cultural & religious center of Eastern Europe. The failure of Sviatoslav’s bid for empire and his premature death doomed his reign as one last gasp of pagan power, rather than the birth of a new superpower. Vladimir, after uniting the Rus, found the paganism of his father isolating. If there were any spirits inhabiting the idols he erected in Kiev, he soon abandoned them. Vladimir converted to the Christianity of his grandmother, Saint Olga, and brought his realm further into the cultural & religious orbit of Constantinople. This conversion was a prerequisite for his marriage to Anna, the sister of Emperor Basil II, a coveted bride who would raise his legitimacy at home and abroad. Anna was also his reward for sending 6,000 Rus warriors to Basil to aid him in his fight against Anatolian rebels. These men proved indispensable and Basil would make these warriors into an elite regiment within the Byzantine army, drawing his personal bodyguard from their number, an honor the Varangian Guard maintained for hundreds of years.

If shrewd political maneuvering motivated Vladimir’s conversion, he proved an enthusiastic convert, erecting churches across his realm and firmly rooting the new faith in his lands. The faith Vladimir adopted remains the majority faith of the descendants of the Rus and Saint Vladimir the Great is a much-revered leader. His father, Svaitoslav, whose hopes of empire were shattered at Dorostolon, lives on as an aborted dream in the shadow of the cross.

1. From The History of Leo the Deacon