Battle of Pliska (811): Khan Krum Destroys a Byzantine Army

The Battle of Pliska, fought on 26 July 811 in a pass of the Balkan Mountains, was a catastrophic defeat for the Byzantine Empire at the hands of the Bulgarians. Khan Krum ambushed the retreating army of Emperor Nikephoros I, who had just sacked the Bulgarian capital of Pliska, and killed the emperor along with much of his force. The victory made Bulgaria a feared power in south-eastern Europe and gave rise to the grim story of Krum’s skull cup.

Background: Byzantium and Bulgaria

The Bulgarian state south of the Danube had been founded in the 680s, as described in Founding of the First Bulgarian Empire. For more than a century it fought frequent wars with Byzantium over the lands of modern Bulgaria and Thrace.

Around 803 Krum became khan. He first expanded north-west, helping to destroy what remained of the Avar state after its defeat by Charlemagne’s Franks. He then turned south. In 809 he captured Serdica (modern Sofia), an important Byzantine fortress, and according to Theophanes killed its garrison of some 6,000 men.

Nikephoros I had come to power in 802 by overthrowing Empress Irene. An experienced financial administrator, he reformed taxes and resettled Christians from Asia Minor in the Balkans to strengthen the frontier. Krum’s raids threatened this policy, and Nikephoros resolved to crush Bulgaria.

The invasion of 811

In spring 811 Nikephoros assembled a large army, drawing troops from both the European and Asian provinces, and was joined by his son and co-emperor Staurakios. The army gathered at Marcellae, a frontier fortress near modern Karnobat. Krum, alarmed, offered peace, but the emperor refused.

In July the Byzantines crossed the Balkan Mountains and defeated the Bulgarian forces sent against them. Byzantine accounts claim that a Bulgarian force of 12,000 men and then a larger relief force, said to number 50,000, were defeated, figures that modern historians consider exaggerated. Around 20 July the army reached Pliska, which was poorly defended.

The Byzantines sacked the town, burned Krum’s wooden palace and seized his treasury. Sources hostile to Nikephoros accuse him of brutality towards the population and of greed in hoarding the spoils. Krum again asked for peace and again was refused.

The ambush in the pass

Rather than pursue Krum further, Nikephoros began to withdraw south towards Byzantine territory. His route led through a narrow, wooded pass in the Balkan Mountains. Krum used the time the Byzantines had spent at Pliska to block the pass at both ends with wooden palisades and to gather his forces, including Slavs and, according to one source, Avar allies.

When the Byzantines realised they were trapped, discipline began to break down. Before dawn on Saturday 26 July 811 the Bulgarians attacked the imperial camp. Nikephoros was killed in the fighting, along with many senior commanders and court officials. Soldiers who fled ran into a marshy river and the burning palisades, where many more died.

Staurakios was seriously wounded, probably in the spine, but was carried out of the pass to Adrianople. The exact location of the battle is uncertain. The Varbitsa pass is the most widely cited candidate, but other passes in the eastern Balkan range have also been proposed.

Key people

• Krum (khan c. 803-814) was the ruler who turned Bulgaria into a major regional power. He is also credited with the earliest Bulgarian law code, known only from a much later Byzantine summary.
• Nikephoros I (emperor 802-811) was a capable but unpopular administrator. Writers such as Theophanes, who disliked his tax policies, portrayed his death as divine punishment.
• Staurakios (emperor 811) survived the battle but never recovered; he abdicated in October 811 and died in 812.
• Michael I Rangabe, Nikephoros’s son-in-law, replaced Staurakios as emperor.

The skull cup

Theophanes the Confessor, writing within a few years of the battle, says that Krum cut off the emperor’s head, displayed it on a pole, and then had the skull lined with silver. He used it as a drinking cup and made the Slav chiefs drink from it in toasts.

Making cups from the skulls of defeated enemies is recorded among several steppe peoples, so the act would not have been unique. Because only one source reports it, historians cannot verify the story, but most regard it as plausible rather than invented. It has made the battle one of the best-known episodes of early medieval Balkan history.

Consequences

The defeat was a shock to Byzantium. Nikephoros was the first emperor to die in battle since Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. His death and the incapacity of Staurakios caused a political crisis that ended with Michael I on the throne.

Krum pressed his advantage. In 812 he captured the Black Sea port of Mesembria (modern Nesebar), and on 22 June 813 he defeated Michael I at the Battle of Versinikia near Adrianople. Michael was deposed, and Krum advanced to the walls of Constantinople. He could not take the city, but he ravaged Thrace and carried off thousands of captives.

Krum died suddenly on 13 April 814 while preparing a new attack on the capital. His successor, Omurtag, made a thirty-year peace with Byzantium around 815-816.

Sources and debates

Almost everything known about the campaign comes from Byzantine writers. The main account is the Chronographia of Theophanes the Confessor, a monk who completed his chronicle within a few years of the battle. Theophanes strongly disliked Nikephoros for taxing monasteries and Church lands, and he presents the emperor’s death as a punishment for arrogance and greed. His figures and his portrait of the emperor must therefore be read with care.

A second, shorter text, often called the Chronicle of 811, survives in a later manuscript and was published by the Bulgarian historian Ivan Dujčev in 1965. It adds vivid details about the panic in the Byzantine camp, the burning barriers and the soldiers who drowned in a river while trying to escape. Its author and date of composition are uncertain, but it appears to draw on eyewitness reports.

No Bulgarian narrative of the battle survives. Historians still disagree about three main questions: the exact pass where the ambush took place, the size of the Byzantine army, and whether Nikephoros was as reckless as his critics claimed. Some modern scholars argue that he was a careful commander who was undone mainly by Krum’s skilful use of terrain.

Pliska today

The site of Krum’s capital lies near the modern town of Pliska in north-eastern Bulgaria. It is now a national archaeological reserve. Visitors can see the remains of the stone walls of the inner fortress, the palace complex and the Great Basilica, a large church built after Bulgaria’s conversion to Christianity in the 860s. The wooden palace burned by Nikephoros was later replaced by stone buildings, whose foundations are still visible.

Timeline

• 809: Krum captures the Byzantine fortress of Serdica (Sofia).
• 811, spring: Nikephoros I assembles his army at Marcellae.
• 811, c. 20 July: The Byzantines sack Pliska and burn Krum’s palace.
• 811, 26 July: Bulgarian dawn attack in the mountain pass; Nikephoros I is killed.
• 811, October: Staurakios abdicates; Michael I Rangabe becomes emperor.
• 812: Krum captures Mesembria.
• 813, 22 June: Bulgarian victory at Versinikia; Krum advances to Constantinople.
• 814, 13 April: Death of Krum.

Why it matters

The Battle of Pliska showed that Bulgaria could not be destroyed by a single campaign and that it could defeat the full might of the Byzantine army. It secured the First Bulgarian Empire’s place as a major Balkan power, a position that reached its height a century later under Simeon the Great. In Bulgarian memory, Krum’s victory remains a defining moment of national history.