Battle of Pliska: Krum destroys the army of Nikephoros I

Nikephoros I, who had seized the throne from Irene in 802, set out in 811 to crush Bulgaria, whose khan Krum had taken Serdica two years before. With troops from the Anatolian and European themes and the guard regiments, and accompanied by his son Staurakios and many dignitaries, he rejected Krum’s offer of peace while encamped at the frontier fortress of Markellai, crossed the mountains in July, defeated the Bulgarian forces, plundered and burned Pliska, seized the khan’s treasury and ignored a second plea for peace. Meanwhile Krum gathered all the men he could and blocked the mountain passes with wooden palisades. On the march back the Byzantines were caught in a narrow defile — most probably the Vărbitsa Pass — and at dawn on 26 July the Bulgarians fell on their camp. The first blow fell on the tents of the emperor and his commanders and on the guard regiments; fleeing soldiers drowned in a marshy river or died at the palisades. Among the dead were the emperor, the strategoi of the Anatolics and of Thrace, the commanders of the guard and many patricians.

Theophanes, who wrote a few years later, says that Krum displayed the emperor’s head on a pole for several days, then had the skull bared and covered on the outside with silver, and in his pride made the chieftains of the Slavs drink from it. Staurakios, gravely wounded, was proclaimed emperor but abdicated after ten weeks and died in January 812. Historians rank the battle among the worst defeats in Byzantine history. In 813 Krum routed Michael I at Versinikia and appeared before Constantinople; he died on 13 April 814 while preparing an assault on the city.