"If you want to know someone, give him power." Tsar Roman had been rendered impotent as a prisoner in Constantinople and in 978, though technically still Czar, he voluntarily surrendered the power to his military commander Samuil. Though not a member of a royal family, Samuil proved born to rule. He came from the free southwestern lands {Macedonia}. His father Nikola was head of the Sredets komitat {administrative region}. During the tumultuous reigns of Peter and Boris, when invaders were harassing the Bulgarian outlands, Nikola's four sons zealously fought for Bulgaria's independence. After ten years of ceaseless battles they succeeded in liberating the northeastern territories. However, soon afterwards the sons Moses and David were killed in the battles with the Byzantines. The third son, Aaron, was accused of treason and was killed together with his family on Samuil's order. Only Aaron's son, Ivan Vladislav, was spared owing to the fervent pleads of Samuil's son Gavril Radomir.
Samuil continued to repulse Byzantine attacks. He persevered for almost four decades, though the Byzantine empire was at the height of its power. In the battle for the survival of his people and his state, Samuil gained the reputation of an able commander and politician and earned the love of his subjects. He was a restless, militant man, reads his description in a Byzantine chronicle. Indeed, for many years the Bulgarians took fortress after fortress in Thrace and around Adrianople. Much of the empire's western territories came under Bulgarian control. Samuil's horsemen went south all the way to Peloponnese and Corynth, and they unfurled his flag in Larissa, a key fortress for the control over Thessaly.
The Bulgarians were again victorious in the battle at Troyanovi Vrata. On 17 August 986 Emperor Basil II fled, leaving behind his treasure hoard and a supply train. Byzantine chronist John Geometres lamented over the defeat: "May those ominous trees and mountains vanish from the face of earth! The Istrum {Bulgaria} grabbed the crown from Rome. The Moesian {Bulgarian} arrows proved stronger than Byzantine spears..."
Elated by their victory, the Bulgarians won a series of battles. Strongholds like Vereia and Servia in southern Macedonia fell to their assaults. Samuil reached the Aegean coast when his troops overran the region of Drach. A successful campaign against the Serbs forced their prince to accept the patronage of the Bulgarian Tsar. That campaign marked the end of a tumultuous decade in Bulgaro-Byzantine relations. Under Samuil, Bulgaria was again established as a great power in the Balkans. "Samuil waged prolonged wars with the Greeks and drove them out of Bulgaria, so that in his time they did not even dare set foot on Bulgarian soil," a Byzantine chronicler wrote.
However, when Basil II recovered from the defeat at Trayanovi Vrata, he set out to put the internal affairs of the empire in order. In a new drive against Bulgaria, Tsar Roman was again taken captive and later died in prison in Constantinople. He was the last of Simeon's dynasty. In 997 Samuil had himself crowned as Tsar. His title was recognized by the Holy See. A brief suspension of hostilities with Byzantium allowed him to turn his efforts to the internal concerns of his state.
Samuil's state spread from the northeastern most Bulgarian territories to Southern Macedonia. The Boyars and their fortified towns submitted to Samuil's supreme authority. The nobles actively supported their Tsar in the fights with Byzantium, for they knew the advantages of unity. Samuil moved his capital from Sredets {Sofia} to Voden, to Prespa and finally to Ohrid, in reaction to the developments in the war with Byzantium.
In the newly erected palace in his last capital, Ohrid, Samuil developed and enforced the state system devised in Simeon's times. The Kav-Khan remained the highest dignitary, the Tsar's right-hand man. The Church was headed by a patriarch. In the heart of the state - the lands around Sofia and in Macedonia - fortified castles were erected to repel Byzantine attacks. Numerous churches, stone carvings and paintings in Ohrid, Prespa and Kostur testify to the Tsar's concern about the spiritual aspect of Bulgarian life.
Meanwhile, Emperor Basil II once again raised an army and started a new campaign against Bulgaria in 1001. Samuil fought fiercely but was forced to retreat and give away lands. Many of his nobles, like Krakra of Pernik, heroically defended their strongholds. Others chose to become traitors in order to survive. Disunity gradually depleted Samuil's state. The fatal moment came in the summer of 1014 when the Bulgarian army suffered a crushing defeat in a gorge of the Strumitsa river near the village of Klyuch in Macedonia. Upon victory, Emperor Basil II ordered the 14,000 Bulgarian prisoners blinded. One in every hundred men was left with one eye in order to lead the men home. At the sight of the blinded soldiers. Samuil suffered a heart attack and died. His son, Gavril Radomir, spent only a year on the throne before being killed by Ivan Vladislav, the man whose life he had once saved. When Tsar Ivan Vladislav was killed in a battle in 1018, his sons continued the resistance against Byzantium, but they lost the war, nothing could stop the Emperor from taking Ohrid. His cruelty won him the name of Bulgaroctonus: Slayer of the Bulgars; Bulgaria became part of the Roman empire.
Boris/Mihail's immunization worked! The new alphabet, all the churches built, the translation of the Bible into Bulgarian, they all not only unified the Bulgarians but also kept them from loosing their national identity during the Byzantine rule. When the Roman empire swallowed Bulgaria, the Bulgarians were one nation that could effectively oppose foreign rule.
Initially the Byzantine emperor issued an order that the tax system of the Old Bulgarian kingdom continue to be applied in the occupied Bulgarian lands. It was, undeniably, much fairer than its Byzantine analogue. The Bulgarian patriarchal was downgraded to an archbishopric. Called Ohridska, meaning 'of or belonging to Ohrida', it retained its autocephalous status. Hundreds of Bulgarian aristocracy retained their position of landlords in their feudal possessions. Moreover, the better part of the Bulgarian lands, comprising mainly the lands of Macedonia, was joined in administrative districts called 'Bulgaria themes'. Troops were recruited mainly from the Bulgarian population.
Only ten years later the Byzantine tax system was introduced into the Bulgarian lands, too. Strangers were appointed incumbents of the Ohrida archbishopric. The Bulgarian literacy, liturgy and traditions were subjected to ruthless persecution. The greed and selfishness of the Byzantine officials, commissioned to work in the Bulgarian lands, gradually ruined the local economy. To most of them the years of service there meant no more than a golden opportunity to make a fortune.
The Bulgarian aristocracy had slowly but consistently been removed from its lands. Many of them were sent on 'assignments' in other realms of the empire remote enough from the Balkans, while others were bribed to pass over to the Byzantines.
This situation gave rise to discontent among all Bulgarian population strata. Mass rebellions aimed at restoring the Bulgarian state broke out. The first one rose in Belgrade in 1040. It was headed by Peter Delyan, grandson of glorious Tsar Samuel, and it ended with his being proclaimed a Bulgarian Tsar. Peter Delyan reigned for two years {1040-1041} and succeeded in liberating a great part of the Bulgarian lands. The insurrection collapsed quickly when the Tsar was treacherously blinded by one of his relatives aspiring to the Bulgarian throne.
Another massive insurgence broke out in 1072. Its standard was raised by Georgi Voiteh in the town of Skopje. It took two years of fighting before it was crushed. In 1074-1078 and in 1084-1086 fresh revolts broke out in the areas of modern Silistra, Plovdiv and Nessebur. These were also put down by the Byzantine authorities.
At the end of the 11th century the Byzantine domains in the Balkans which, for nearly a century, had comprised chiefly Bulgarian lands, became the arena of fierce hostilities. Bulgaria, being in the middle of the crossroad or the world, had acted as a buffer since Khan Asparuh's times. Keeping everybody away from everybody else. Nomads, like the Khazars were kept away from the Byzantine empire, the Arabs were kept out of Europe, etc. But now, with Bulgaria gone, the buffer was gone:
The Normans were invading from the south and the knights of the First {1096-1097} and then the Second {1146-1147} crusade advanced along the trans- European route with swords drawn and fire blazing. Most frightful of all, however, were the renewed raids of the Nomads from the steppes, raids unseen in those lands since the 7th century. In times gone the Bulgarian state had reliably safeguarded not only Byzantium but also the whole of Europe against the raids of Nomads. The now emasculate Byzantine imperium was no longer in the position to effectively defend the territory of the empire, so the burden of safeguarding the metropolitan mainstays fell on Bulgarian shoulders. During the 11th century all attempts at organizing a liberation movement had stopped. The Bulgarians were busy organizing their life-and-death struggle to keep body and soul together. At the cost of numerous lives lost they managed to restrict, within certain limits, the advance of the crusaders along their mapped-out routes and to crush or beat off the raids of the Uzes, the Pechenegs and the Kumans. A paradoxical situation arose at the end of the 12th century. Formally Byzantium was the sovereign of the Bulgarian lands, but in some big provinces {Moesia, Dobrudja and Macedonia} Byzantine power was nominal. There ruled representatives of the Bulgarian aristocracy - harsh warriors who had been through dozens of battles. The population, inured to the privations of war and inspired by spurious accounts, supported them. Some fabulous chronicles told of how intelligent patriots wistfully imagined the Bulgarian kingdom by idealistically representing it as a piece of Eden.
The insurgent sea of patriotism pervades some of the political pamphlets which have come down to us, thanks to Khan Boris, in the form of Christian religious prophecies. Their spirit is of Messianic nature as it is sustained in them that out of the three kingdoms in the world - the Alemanic {German}, the Roman {Byzantine} and the Bulgarian, the first two would go to rack and ruin as they had departed from Christian canons and had lapsed into depravity. Resurrection and eternal life were awaiting the Bulgarian kingdom which would have the mission to redeem and, then, render imperishable the values of the Christian civilization.
In this atmosphere, at the end of the 12th century just a spark was needed to flare up a fresh liberation uprising.
