Rus Attack on Constantinople (860): First Clash With Byzantium

The Rus attack on Constantinople in 860 was the first recorded military clash between the Rus, a people of largely Scandinavian origin who had settled along the rivers of Eastern Europe, and the Byzantine Empire. On 18 June 860 a fleet of about 200 ships appeared without warning in the Bosporus while Emperor Michael III was away fighting the Arabs. The raid terrified the capital, and the sermons of Patriarch Photios make it one of the best-documented events of early Rus history.

Background

By the mid-9th century, Scandinavian traders and warriors known as Rus or Varangians were travelling down the great rivers of Eastern Europe, the Volkhov, Dnieper and Volga, to reach Byzantium and the Islamic world. In 839 Rus envoys had already visited Constantinople and were sent on to the Frankish court.

Constantinople was then the largest and richest city in Christian Europe. In summer 860 it was poorly guarded. Michael III had led the army into Asia Minor against the Abbasids, and much of the fleet was also absent.

The attack

According to the Brussels Chronicle, a short Byzantine chronicle, the Rus arrived on 18 June 860 with 200 ships. The Venetian chronicler John the Deacon, writing around 1000, gives a figure of 360 ships. The attackers plundered the suburbs along the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara, burned monasteries and houses, and attacked the Princes’ Islands, where the deposed patriarch Ignatios was living.

The city’s population took refuge behind the massive Theodosian Walls and the sea walls. Photios, the patriarch, preached two sermons during and after the attack. He described the enemy as an obscure and savage people who had struck the city suddenly and without warning, and lamented the slaughter of civilians outside the walls.

The emperor hurried back once he heard the news. The Rus withdrew after several weeks, laden with booty. Some scholars date their departure to early August, but the exact end of the raid is not recorded.

Who were the attackers?

The identity and base of the raiders have long been debated. Photios calls them Rhos, an unknown people from the far north who had only recently become a threat. Most historians agree that their leaders were of Scandinavian origin, the same people the Slavs called Varangians, though their crews may have included Slavs and Finns.

Their starting point is less certain. Some scholars argue that they came from the Middle Dnieper, where Kyiv was emerging as a centre, and sailed down the river into the Black Sea. Others suggest a base in the north, around Staraya Ladoga and the later Novgorod, with a long journey along the river routes. A few have even proposed that the fleet came from the Crimea or the Sea of Azov.

The timing suggests good intelligence. The Rus arrived precisely when the emperor and his forces were far away in Asia Minor, which implies that they had learned about Byzantine movements, perhaps through traders who regularly visited the city.

How we know

The raid is unusually well documented for its time. The most important sources are two sermons by Photios, delivered to the people of the city during and just after the attack, which give an eyewitness impression of the fear and destruction. The precise date comes from the Brussels Chronicle, a brief Byzantine list of events discovered in a manuscript in Brussels and published in 1894. Later Byzantine historians, the Venetian chronicler John the Deacon and the Kyiv Primary Chronicle add further details, not all of them reliable.

The legend of the Virgin’s robe

Photios mentions a procession in which the robe of the Virgin Mary, one of the city’s holiest relics, was carried around the walls, followed by the enemy’s retreat. Later Byzantine and Rus writers expanded this into a miracle in which the robe was dipped into the sea and a storm destroyed the Rus fleet.

The storm story became part of the Primary Chronicle of Kyiv, which dates the raid to 866 and names Askold and Dir as its leaders. Modern historians treat the storm as legend and give priority to Photios and the Brussels Chronicle.

Aftermath

The raid led to the first contacts between the Byzantine Church and the Rus. In an encyclical letter of 867, Photios wrote that the Rus had accepted a bishop and become Christians. This early conversion was probably limited to a small group and did not last, but it foreshadowed later developments.

The episode began a long pattern of Rus raids and treaties with Byzantium, including the campaign attributed to Oleg of Novgorod in 907 and the trade agreements of 911 and 944. In later centuries many Rus warriors served the emperors directly in the Varangian Guard.

Timeline

• 839: Rus envoys visit Constantinople and the Frankish court.
• 860, spring: Michael III campaigns against the Abbasids in Asia Minor.
• 860, 18 June: The Rus fleet appears before Constantinople.
• 860, summer: Suburbs and islands are plundered; Photios preaches his sermons.
• 860, c. August: The Rus withdraw with their booty.
• 867: Photios reports that the Rus have received a bishop.

Why it matters

The raid of 860 announced the arrival of the Rus as a power in the Black Sea world. Photios’s eyewitness sermons provide some of the earliest reliable evidence about the Rus, and the encounter began relations that eventually led to the conversion of Rus to Byzantine Christianity in the late 10th century.