Maurice’s Balkan campaigns
For twenty years Emperor Maurice fought to hold the Danube frontier against the Avars of khagan Bayan and the Slavs. After peace with Persia in 591 his generals carried the war across the Danube and defeated the Avars in their own land, but in 602 the army, ordered to winter beyond the river, mutinied and overthrew him.
- Date
- 582–602year known · duration: ≈ 20 years
- Place
- Viminaciumapproximate locationtoday: near Kostolac, Serbia · Balkans and Anatolia
- Participants
- Maurice, Avars, Bayan I, Byzantine Empire
- Threads
- Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
- Also known as
- Maurice's Balkan campaigns; Siege of Sirmium; Осада Сирмия; Balkan campaigns of Maurice; Battle of Viminacium; Битва при Виминациуме
The war began before Maurice came to the throne. In 580 khagan Bayan bridged the Sava and laid siege to Sirmium, the empire’s main stronghold on the north-western Danube frontier. With the main Byzantine forces tied down in the war with Persia, the weak garrison held out for almost three years, until Tiberius II gave up the city in the winter of 581/582. The Avars spared the inhabitants but took their possessions and 240,000 solidi — the arrears of three years’ tribute; many refugees, as funerary inscriptions show, settled at Salona. In 583 the Avars took Viminacium and other Danube towns and advanced as far as Anchialus on the Black Sea, while Slav raiders reached Greece.
Only after the peace of 591 with Khosrow II, whom Maurice had helped to regain the Persian throne, could the emperor move his veteran eastern armies to the Balkans. From 593 the general Priscus crossed the Danube and fought the Slavs in their own lands, in present-day Wallachia, and in 599 Priscus and Comentiolus crossed the river near Viminacium and defeated the Avars in open battle in their homeland; several of Bayan’s sons fell.
In 602 Maurice ordered the army to spend the winter on the northern bank of the Danube. The soldiers mutinied and marched on Constantinople; Maurice was overthrown and killed, and Phocas took the throne. In the following decades the Danube frontier collapsed, and Slav settlement of the Balkans intensified, above all under Heraclius. The war is known chiefly from the history of Theophylact Simocatta.
Connections
Causes and preconditions
- The Avars settle in the Carpathian Basinbetween 567 and 568 · Western and Central EuropeThe enemy was the Avar khaganate established in the Carpathian Basin in 567–568
Related events
- Attila’s invasions of the Balkans441 – between 447 and 448 · Balkans and AnatoliaA century and a half earlier Attila’s Huns had taken the same Danube cities — Sirmium, Singidunum, Viminacium
- Revolt of Bahram Chobin and the restoration of Khosrow II589–591 · Middle East and Egyptafter Maurice helped Khosrow II regain the throne, the peace of 591 freed his armies for the Danube
- Avar–Persian siege of Constantinople29 June – 7 August 626 · Balkans and AnatoliaAfter Maurice’s fall the Danube frontier gave way, and in 626 the Avars and Slavs besieged Constantinople itself
Same participants
- Avar campaign against the Antes602 · Eastern Europevia Avars
Adjacent events in the thread
- Lombard invasion of Italy2 April 568 – 572 · Western and Central Europe
- Gregorian mission to the Anglo-Saxons597 · Western and Central Europe
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Gregorian mission to the Anglo-Saxons597
- Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britainbetween 410 and 449 – between 550 and 625
Eastern Europe
- Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv: the legendary founding of Kyivbetween 500 and 700
- Avar campaign against the Antes602
- Early Slavic cultures: Prague-Korchak, Penkovka and Kolochinc. 450 – c. 700
Middle East and Egypt
Africa
Central and Northern Asia
South Asia
- Varahamihira compiles the Pancha-siddhantikabetween 505 and 587
East Asia
- Soga no Umako builds Asuka-dera, Japan’s first great Buddhist temple588–596
- Sui conquers the Chen and reunites China22 January – between 2 February and 10 February 589
Southeast Asia and Oceania
- Chenla absorbs Funanbetween 550 and 600 – between 627 and 637
- The inscriptions of Purnavarman, king of Taruma in western Javabetween 400 and 600
- Gold pendant copying a coin of Antoninus Pius at Óc Eobetween 152 and 600
- Óc Eo, the port of Funanbetween 1 and 100 – between 601 and 700
North America
- Basketmaker III: pottery, beans and the bow on the Colorado Plateauc. 500 – c. 750
- The Late Woodland period in eastern North Americac. 500 – c. 1000
Latin America
- The burning of Teotihuacan’s ceremonial centrebetween 550 and 650
- The great drought of 563–594 and the crisis of the Mochec. 563 – c. 594
- Nazca culture and the Nazca Linesbetween 200 and 100 BC – between 500 and 800
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Maurice's Balkan campaigns
- Wikipedia (English): Siege of Sirmium
- Wikipedia (Russian): Кампании Маврикия на Балканах
- Wikipedia (Russian): Осада Сирмия
- Whitby M. The Emperor Maurice and His Historian: Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare. — Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
- Pohl W. The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822. — Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.
- Wikidata: Q805050