Battle of Arcadiopolis

The Battle of Arcadiopolis was fought in 970 between a Byzantine army under Bardas Skleros and a Rus' army, the latter also including allied Bulgarian, Pecheneg and Hungarian contingents. In the preceding years, the Rus' ruler Sviatoslav had conquered Bulgaria, and was now menacing Byzantium as well. The Rus' force had been advancing through Thrace towards Constantinople when it was met by Skleros' force. Having fewer men than the Rus', Skleros prepared an ambush and attacked the Rus' army with a portion of his force. The Byzantines then feigned retreat, and succeeded in drawing off the Pecheneg contingent into the ambush, routing it. The remainder of the Rus' army then panicked and fled, and suffered heavy casualties from the pursuing Byzantines. The battle was important as it bought time for the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes to settle his internal problems and assemble a large expedition, which eventually defeated Sviatoslav the next year.

In 965 or 966, a Bulgarian embassy visited the Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas at Constantinople to receive the annual tribute that had been agreed by the two powers as the price of peace in 927. Phokas, flush and self-confident from a series of victories against the Arabs in the East that had led to the recovery of Crete, Cyprus and Cilicia, refused to comply, and even had the envoys beaten up. He followed this up with a show of military strength, by sending a small force to raze a number of Bulgarian border posts in Thrace.

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