"One thing they all shared, regardless of age, gender or skill, is cold determination. You could see it in their eyes," - The historian John Lasenos, A History of Rome 1198-1307
1234 - Upon the advent of the new campaigning season John III was forced to reflect on the fact that, while gains had been made, the war had dragged on longer than necessary. Functionally, the wars between the Romans and Bulgarians had always taken horrifically long, but this was almost always down to the fact that they controlled the Haemus [1], yet now this one dragged on simply because of the sudden arrival of the new Tsar Ivan II, alongside his following skill in evading crushing battle with the Romans.
John had had enough of the farce, and carved up the elite Lakonoi into two sectioned units; with 500 of the 5,000 remaining in Constantinople under the young Roman-Turk Kalanis, while the rest would depart from the City of the World's Desire under the leadership of their now middle-aged Commander, Andronikos Romanos. They had been assigned under Theodore Grypas and John Vatatzes, with the Emperor hoping that their reputation as 'demonic wolves' [2] would pay dividends.
By late February the war was back on at full speed, with Ivan II leading a formation of by-now battle-hardened [3] horsemen and accompanying infantry to batter several Pyrgos towers. The Romans had learnt from last time however, and had begun fortifying these towers as a hardened line of defense against any attempts to roll back the line; forgoing the continued expansion of the forts, as had been standard the previous years of the war, in order for this to function.
The two sides would come to blows firmly for the first time in months in a large-scale campaign surrounding Plovdiv. The city was more famously known, at least to the Romans, as Phlippopolis, and had become highly contested as the war dragged on into east Bulgaria. Constant rains, and the muddy work it made of the fertile Bulgarian black-soil of the area firmly bogged down any potential battles between the two sides into barely meaningful skirmishes over patches of waterlogged dirt. In such a time, Theodore was forced to deploy the whole Lakonoi force, spreading them out between the major towers in the rear to ensure that they weren't lost while the Romans were busy. The further slowness of this campaign was only made worse when Ivan simply vanished for a half-week, leaving control of his army to his loyal lieutenant Simeon, to be there at the birth of his second child, and second daughter, Beloslava.
It would be within the late year, November--after months of sheer fighting, that things would firmly end.
The departure of Ivan led the Romans under John Vatatzes into a false sense of security, as the skirmishes were quickly turning more and more into the Roman's favour over the middling months without Ivan's skilled repositioning tactics to level the playingfield. This would come to a head in mid-November, months in, when the detachment led by John carved into the Bulgarian line deeply during a more committed battle, as the rains ended and the lands dried up, with the Romans overextending. The sudden push by the rest of the Bulgarian army, this section being almost entirely medium cavalry, nearly destroyed the Romans--with only timely arrival of King Manuel and Theodore alongside their armies halting the issue.
The battle, known as the Bleeding of Plovdiv, dragged on for hours as each side pressed against the other; cavalry countering each others efforts, and infantry grinding against each other as arrows were exchanged across each side. It seemed as if it would go to the Romans when Theodore, a tall and powerfully built man in comparison to his more bookish brother, destroyed the head of the lieutenant Simeon with a mace-blow in full-view of the Bulgarian army.
What might have been a Roman victory at such a point quickly turned however, as Ivan II arrived at the head of his heavily armoured retinue and rolled up the Roman west-line like a carpet, the momentum sending King Manuel flying from his horse and into the drying mud--leaving him unable to command his troops and thus defend the Roman flank. As Theodore charged in, reorganizing his army with flourishes of his mace and loud booming voice--even as Manuel was regaining his footing--the Lakonoi appeared.
Andronikos was never one to sit back, impatient to do as John had tasked them to, so he had returned to aid Theodore in crushing the Bulgarians firmly. His arrival though had the opposite effect, as the Bulgarians--fearing the 'Wolves'--surged with a newfound need to crush the Romans quickly and reposition. Thousand of Romans died as they were crushed under boot, stabbed by spear and further on by the ravenous Bulgarians--John Vatatzes himself being impaled while leading his battleline, leaving him near death throughout the rest of the battle.
It seemed as if the Romans would finally lose in such a capacity as to render them unable to even defend their western border, this fate turned around when a loud yell of success was let out into the air of the battlefield. In the grasp of a Lakonoi horseman was the dripping head of Ivan II, his warrior-crown falling from it as the Romanised Turk shook it this way and that.
The Bulgarians broke.
The slaughter that ensued as the Lakonoi rushed in, pushing through the ranks of the beleaguered Romans, was outright horrific. Every remaining Bulgarian officer was killed, whether by clever, rope or worse. However, Lakonoi began to 'dig' in to the regular Bulgarian soldiery Theodore reacted angrily, notably berating the Lakonoi as 'naught but Barbarians in Roman armour', as the and his tired men pushed them back from killing the remains of the Bulgarian army.
Andronikos did not take the insult well, the hotblooded commander beginning a physical fight with the Prefect. Theodore had youth as well as size and strength on his side--but Andronikos was a Lakonoi, and a veteran at that. By the end Theodore had lost an eye [4] to an opening attack from Andronikos' cleaver--only managing to end the fight by shattering the aging Andronikos' right arm at the elbow with his mace.
This fight would end there, as both commanders called it off with a huff to deal with the matters at hand. Each surviving Bulgarian, roughly 1,500 men--verses the Roman's own combined 2,200 or so (this including the Lakonoi reinforcements)--would be imprisoned, alongside the reclamation of thousands of weapons and horses. The Western Army had been destroyed, there was no denying that. Less than even 10% of the army remained, as it had been whittled down over months of bogged down warfare over a single section of territory. It was disastrous; all that remained of the Western Army were exhausted men equipped in equipment that was falling apart on their very backs, in their very hands.
Had Ivan II not been killed in this battle, the Romans would have lost it all in the west. Yet that is not how it panned out. After outmaneuvering attempts by what remained of the Bulgarian nobility to crown the 4 year old Maria, firstborn child of Ivan II, with the aid of the Bulgarian Patriarch Joachim. On the 25th of December, during the Christmas Celebrations, Bulgaria was officially dissolved for a 3rd time [5] as the Patriarch Joachim, officially 'speaking' for the infant Maria would see himself demoted back to Archbishop of Bulgaria--and effectively hand control over the whole Tsardom to the Romans, as well as guardianship of Maria (who would stay at the court at Constantinople [6]) and Beloslava (who would be raised as a Churchwoman by Joachim from his position as Archbishop in Preslav).
What would follow would be the 'crowning' achievement of John III's reign, and would see the Bulgarians and Romans intertwined permanently.
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[1] Historically the Romans and Bulgarians were almost always at war with each other due to the needs of both of their states. However these wars often dragged on into stalemates because the Romans simply didn't have the capacity to waste troops trying to punch holes through the well-managed defense of the Haemus that the Bulgarian's managed. Such a defense was swept aside when Tsar Kaloyan failed twice in battering the Empire and was forced to give control of it over to the Romans.
[2] Likely in reference to the Turkish 'creation' myth, as the wolf Asena was seen as the 'mother' of all Turks. However the term came to refer to their brutality and pack-like mentality in which they looked to the Emperor as their leader and master, and brutalized anyone who dared get in the way of their duties to said Emperor. The Lakonoi were very much a cold tool for any Emperor to use, and always saw near-paganistic acts done against the enemies they were unleashed against. Although, notably, the Lakonoi spent a full period of 2 days in self-imposed prayer to 'cleanse' themselves following each battle.
[3] The Bulgarians have been battered on all fronts for the past few years, making veterans out of those who survived to fight another day. Such a veterancy would have a great affect on the Roman army following the Roman-Bulgarian war as they no longer had a 'homeland' to fight for per say, and would instead be 'annexed' into the Roman army following major reforms.
[4] Theodore would be nicknamed simply as 'Onéi', or 'One-eye', by the soldiery he led following this. It would become a defining feature, effectively prematurely 'aging' the young General and giving him both an air of superiority early, as well as an air of intimidation to those that stood in his way.
[5] Bulgaria was first dissolved by the Emperor John I Tzimiskes when he defeated the Rus' who had taken over Western Bulgaria, and forced the then-Tsar Boris II to abdicate in front of a crowd at Constantinople. While this technically dissolved the state, the Bulgarians continued to function in their eastern territories until they pulled together a new Tsar in Boris' last brother. Although, it was the efforts of the Bulgarian general, later Tsar, Samuel that saw the Bulgarian territory reclaimed... only for Basil II to firmly annex Bulgaria and truly dissolve the country by 1018. Functionally, in the minds of the Romans however, this is the 3rd time its occurred.
[6] Maria would later become the childhood friend, and later partner, of Heraclius--a match his father John III would not approve of, as due to the dynastic ties between the House of Grypas and Asen the two were cousins (albeit rather distant, being 4 generations removed). Upon John's early death, his uncle Theodore wouldn't pay much mind to the matter, and Maria would become the second Bulgarian Empress in a succession to her own distant cousin in John III's wife Theodora.