We begin this season’s narrative on the Danube where periodic raids by the Romans and Slavs simmer along the frontier—until an unexpected spark triggers a conflagration that engulfs the entire eastern Mediterranean.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 2, Episode 5: On the precipice

Last time, we finished setting up season two by looking at the daily life of the farmers who made up most of the population of the khaganate. Today, it’s time to start the story.

The rural communities which lived inside the Carpathian Basin were mostly insulated from the tensions between the Avars and the Romans, but those who lived between the mountains and the Danube River were in a precarious position. You see, though the Avars and Romans had agreed that the river was the boundary between their two realms, the emperor reserved the right to campaign against any Slavic tribes who raided the empire. Slavic raiders were no longer stopped – or even intimidated – by the staggered forts along the frontier; they regularly bypassed them and infiltrated the Balkan hinterlands, and although they couldn’t capture the walled cities of the region, they caused chaos in the countryside.

Accordingly, emperor Maurikios reckoned that the only way to protect the citizens of the Balkans was to strike the Slavs before they crossed the Danube. By attacking them in their home villages beyond the river, the emperor felt he could deal with the root of the problem while also weakening the khagan by eliminating some of his key allies.

The Romans had undertaken several such campaigns against the Slavs in the last decade of the 6^th century. The imperial army was able to kill three important war leaders and to devastate Slavic villages; soldiers stole their goods and provisions, burned their homes and fields, felled trees, and enslaved anyone who wasn’t killed or who didn’t manage to escape. It was a scorched earth doctrine that was meant to wipe out the Slavic military threat by uprooting their civilian communities.

These lands between the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube River were technically under the suzerainty of the khagan, but he let the Slavic communities living there operate independently as long as they didn’t go against his interests; and he didn’t much care if the Romans bled themselves trying to subdue them; the khagan’s main concern was to maintain absolute control of the plains inside the Carpathian Basin where his warriors’ families lived.

During one campaign in 595, an imperial army was camped at Novae, upstream from the Iron Gates. These are the rapids where the Carpathian Mountains meet the Danube River, and camping west of them means that the imperial army was inside the Carpathian Basin and could’ve easily marched onto its plains. Accordingly, the khagan sent envoys to the Roman commanding officer to tell him that his soldiers were on his land and their presence violated the treaty the emperor had signed. The general retorted that, in fact, he was still on Roman land – even here on the north bank of the river – because this was Trajan’s old Dacia. Even three centuries after the abandonment of the province, the Romans clearly still held a claim to the land. But the imperial general had no intention of recapturing the province, and the khagan didn’t want to start a war. So, neither side pushed the point, and after this tense encounter, the imperial army moved off towards Slavic lands, while Avar scouts followed them at a safe distance.

During their campaigns north of the Danube, the Romans were sometimes helped by natives of the region who weren’t Slavs. For instance, the contemporary historian Theophylaktos Simokattes recounts that in one campaign, a local Gepid offered to give information to the imperial army. This individual had been born a Christian, but now lived amongst the Slavs, spoke their language, and could even sing a few Avar songs. This Gepid man is a great example of the diverse ethnic context north of the Danube, as the people living in the region were often bilingual and couldn’t be defined by just one aspect of their identity.

This Gepid was so respected by the Slavs that their war leader Musucius had given him command of 150 canoes and their crews. But in exchange for “splendid gifts and … glorious promises,” this Gepid was willing to betray his neighbours, and the information he shared with the imperial army actually allowed it to surprise and capture Musucius. In this way, the Slavs lost one of their most important chieftains.

The imperial army also sometimes secured help from Romanic communities in the region. The Slavs regularly enslaved Roman provincials during their raids and brought them back north of the Danube. After a few years – our sources don’t mention an exact number – these enslaved individuals were given the choice of paying their own ransom and returning to their people, or of gaining their freedom and living amongst the Slavs as friends and neighbours who served the community. Many provincials decided to stay, since they could live as free farmers without having to pay rents or taxes and without having to recognize the authority of some governor or general like they did in the empire.

The military manual the Strategikon states: “The so-called refugees who are ordered to point out the roads and furnish certain information must be very closely watched. Even some Romans have given in to the times, forget their own people, and prefer to win the good will of the enemy. Those who remain loyal ought to be rewarded, and the evildoers punished.” The text makes it clear that, even if a person was born in the empire and had been kidnapped, their loyalties were suspect if they chose to live as a free person north of the Danube.

Indeed, imperial commanders had to be careful who they trusted, because even helpful guides could in fact be infiltrators employed by enemies. The Strategikon notes: “The commanding officers of the tagmata should be entrusted with the responsibility for capturing spies or scouts. Each officer should announce to his men that on the next day about the second or third hour, a trumpet will sound. Everyone, soldier or servant, must immediately go into his own tent. Anyone who dares to be found outside the tents will be punished. … One of two things will result: the arrest of a stranger standing outside because he will not know where to go, or he may be bold enough to enter the tent of one of the squads, will be recognized as a foreigner, and handed over to the commander. Everyone caught in this manner must be detained, whether they appear to be Romans or foreigners, and they should be interrogated to find out their true status.”

Clearly, there were people north of the Danube who “appear[ed] to be Romans” and were so similar to imperial soldiers that special tricks and interrogations had to be employed to distinguish them. Such individuals could only be former citizens who now lived outside of the empire, or Romanic communities who maintained Roman traditions in their villages. Indeed, as we saw in episode three, Romanic individuals continued to speak a dialect of Latin, which could lead them to be mistaken for provincials from Moesia. And just as importantly, these Romanic communities had preserved their Christian beliefs and rites down through the generations, which made them resemble their coreligionists in the empire.

You see, imperial missionaries had been active north of the Danube in the 4^th century, and we know that local priests communicated with imperial bishops through letters at least until the arrival of the Huns. In the following century, links between the clerics inside the empire and those outside of it were weakened, but they were never severed. The Roman forts on the north bank of the Danube served as points of contact; they had their own places of worship and acted as centers of trade for religious objects. Archeologists have found numerous Christian pieces north of the Danube dated from the 5^th to the 7^th centuries, including pottery made or scratched with Christian symbols, amulets with Christian inscriptions, molds for bronze crosses, and liturgical chalices and vases. The more complex pieces were imported from the empire, but a substantial number of these religious objects were produced locally, which speaks of a vibrant Christian community in the Carpathian Mountains.

We actually have a precious insight into the religious practices of these communities from a Frankish mission which travelled through the Carpathian Basin in the late 8^th century. That’s nearly two centuries after our current point in the story, and we’re not going to skip ahead, but this later mission reveals something about the present situation now in the early 7^th century.

When these Frankish clergymen passed through the region, they encountered local priests who they described as “clericis illiteratis,” meaning illiterate clerics. The term seems paradoxical because a Christian priest must be literate to be able to read from the Bible to his congregation. And so, the question arose: since these priests were illiterate and couldn’t draw directly from the Bible, were their actions illegitimate? Were the baptisms they performed on the faithful invalid because they hadn’t read from Scripture? The Frankish missionaries conducted an ad hoc synod and concluded that, even if these local priests couldn’t read and didn’t use the necessary Latin formulas accompanying the sacraments, their baptisms were still legitimate because they used water and appealed to the Holy Spirit.

This account of the Frankish mission tells us quite a bit about popular Christianity north of the Danube. It seems that, centuries after the last Roman missionaries preached in the region, the local priests had lost the ability to write and read. This loss is quite understandable given how hard it would’ve been to preserve a codex of the Bible in good condition in a rural setting, especially if you didn’t have the resources to copy it and create a new, fresh duplicate when the old one deteriorated. So, lacking textual references, these priests passed on their knowledge to the next generation verbally, teaching them the tenets and rituals of the Christian religion through practice and repetition, generation after generation. This oral transmission of knowledge necessarily created some discrepancies with official teachings, and some incantations were forgotten. But the basic tenets remained. As the Frankish missionaries found, these priests operating near the Carpathian Mountains still performed the sacraments in the way they were intended.

This continuity of practice can also be seen in linguistics. Some of the most fundamental Christian words – like cross, faith, baptize, and God – are preserved in Romanian from the Latin terms used in the empire. However, many words relating to church structure weren’t preserved; for instance, Romanian is the only Romance language for which the words “monk” and “abbot” don’t come from Latin, because, unlike in the West, those positions disappeared after the imperial era. Indeed, the Romanic communities of the Balkans didn’t have a hierarchical church structure during these centuries, but instead maintained their Christian faith in a much more organic and egalitarian way.

By continuing to practice Christianity, these Romanic communities also perpetuated some non-spiritual practices associated with the faith. Indeed, religion affects all aspects of life, like what holidays people celebrate, what foods they eat at different times of the year, what clothes they wear, and how they behave. And so, by continuing Christian practices, these communities also maintained some traditions that had evolved in the empire, which is why they could “appear to be Romans” to imperial soldiers marching through the area. As the Strategikon hints, their language, beliefs, and customs were so similar to those of citizens living in the Balkans, that Romanic individuals could only be differentiated from imperial subjects through interrogation.

Deployment to the theatre north of the Danube was unattractive to imperial soldiers because of all these nuanced groups living in the area and because of the harshness of the environment. It wasn’t like fighting the Persians in the East where you knew who your enemies were and could get some pricey plunder from prosperous cities. No, in the Balkans, the pillage you’d get from some remote village was nothing to brag about, and you had to be constantly vigilant since you didn’t know who to trust; was your guide a kidnapped citizen who was grateful for the rescue and willing to help? Or a refugee who chose to live amongst the Slavs and was spying for them? Or a Romanic descendant of former provincials who was just looking out for his own community?

To add to this anxiety, the units fighting north of the Danube often lacked supplies. You see, the Balkans weren’t productive enough by themselves to pay for the numerous soldiers and fortifications along the Danube; the military units on this frontier depended on tax revenue collected in the rich provinces of the East. The problem was that, in the late 6^th century, the imperial treasury wasn’t doing too well, and there weren’t enough funds to fully equip the Danubian units.

To combat the lack of supplies in the Balkans, the emperor had once told the army to spend the winter beyond the river and live off food stores captured in Slavic villages. The soldiers had nearly mutinied at the news and forced their commander to march them back across the Danube. The general had little choice, and he put his troops in winter quarters in the forts along the frontier.

Even when soldiers did pilfer Slavic villages for food and goods, they weren’t allowed to take everything. When they found products stolen from imperial provinces, they couldn’t keep them for themselves, since precious goods had to be sent to the emperor to replenish the imperial treasury. The soldiers reluctantly obeyed such orders, but their resentment towards their superiors grew with each such incident.

Tensions further flared when the general in charge of the Danubian army announced that only a third of the salary would be paid out in money; the rest would come in the form of weapons and clothing. Upon learning of this change, the soldiers threatened to turn their swords against their general. A tense standoff followed, and the mutiny was only diffused when the commander agreed that disabled veterans would be cared for and that the children of fallen soldiers could take their positions on the muster roll. Though this compromise dampened the fire raging in the ranks, bitterness remained, and the flames of resentment continued to simmer.

For the last decade of the 6^th century, command of the Danubian army had oscillated between a general named Priscus and the emperor’s brother, named Petros. The emperor switched between them whenever he disagreed with their conduct, and in the year 602, it was the emperor’s brother, Petros, who was at the helm of the army.

As the leaves were falling, the general was making plans to march his army south to spend the winter in the forts along the Danube. Yet a letter from the emperor arrived ordering him to stay in enemy territory and to continue his offensive through the cold months. The Slavs had suffered grievous losses over the passed few campaign seasons, and the emperor wanted to press the advantage, especially since the winter landscape made it harder for Slavic warriors to find cover and employ their favourite ambush tactics. The emperor also wanted Petros’ army to survive the winter by foraging in the region and plundering provisions from Slavic settlements, as opposed to using supplies stored in the forts south of the Danube, since the imperial treasury was straining to pay all of its expenses.

As you can image, the soldiers were outraged at the order. How many times would the emperor take advantage of them? They’d done their duty and devastated the Slavs, but their superiors wouldn’t even let them recover from the exhaustion of the year’s campaign; they would have to face months of cold and hunger huddled around a campfire, pursue Slavic warriors in the biting cold, and then look forward to nothing but another year of campaigning. No, the soldiers would not obey such an order, and they would certainly not negotiate with the emperor’s brother.

Instead, they lifted one of their own centurions on a shield and declared him their emperor; the man’s name was Phokas, and he was determined to take out the army’s grievances on the government. As soon as Petros heard the news, he fled the camp and went to inform the emperor that his Balkan army was set to march straight for Constantinople.

Emperor Maurikios tried to rally a defense of the city. But besides the chariot racing factions who he convinced to guard the walls, he found little support; the empire’s financial troubles and his measures to combat them had made him unpopular with the capital’s inhabitants. Realizing he couldn’t hold the city, Maurikios was forced to flee across the Bosphorus dressed as a commoner, stripped of all his dignity and authority.

A day later, Phokas was crowned emperor by the patriarch, and entered the capital without a fight where he was acclaimed by cheering crowds. It was a surprisingly bloodless coup. That is, for about four days. You see, the new emperor felt he couldn’t allow the previous one to survive, and so his agents tracked down Maurikios and captured him. A heinous scene followed as Maurikios was forced to watch his five sons be killed in front of him before he himself was beheaded. The heads of Maurikios and his sons were then displayed in the capital, and a purge of the administration followed.

This cruel and unnecessary slaughter shocked the inhabitants of the capital, and their enthusiasm for their new emperor immediately dissipated. What’s more, the murder of Maurikios and his sons didn’t actually bring Phokas any legitimacy, because this marked the first homicidal succession in the history of the eastern Roman empire.

As the Romans were reeling from this horrifying act, news arrived that the Persians had started an offensive in the East. You see, the Persians had been enemies of Rome for centuries, but Maurikios had helped the current Persian ruler, Khusrow II, regain his throne after a difficult civil war. The idea had been for the Roman empire to establish a lasting peace with the Persians while also gaining some territorial concessions from a grateful ruler. And indeed, Khusrow had rewarded Maurikios with some land, signed a “perpetual peace,” agreed to an alliance, and was even adopted by the emperor as a symbolic son.

But when Khusrow learned of Maurikios’ murder, he invaded the Roman empire. The reason he gave was to ostensibly avenge the death of his adoptive father. His real goal, of course, was to exploit the change in leadership and the empire’s unstable position to rebalance the scales of their relationship.

Phokas was thus forced to transfer units from the Balkans to deal with the Persians. To ensure that the Avars wouldn’t attack the weakened Danube frontier, he sent envoys to the khagan offering to increase his subsidies. In 604, the yearly sum rose from 120,000 to 140,000 soldi. The Avar ruler was quite pleased. As we saw in episode two, he wasn’t looking to declare war at every opportunity; no, for him, war was a tool to gain riches and maintain his prestige economy with himself at the top of the hierarchy. So he was happy not to have to fight for an increase in subsidies; he could just sit in his yurt as the chests rolled in, and watch the Romans bleed themselves by fighting the Persians.

Unfortunately for the Romans, the war with the Persians wasn’t going well. Though imperial armies resisted bitterly, the invaders made advances in Armenia and Mesopotamia, and for the first time in these ongoing conflicts, the Persians weren’t just sacking cities, they were occupying them. You see, for the passed few centuries, the border between these two empires had remained largely unchanged. The kingdom of Armenia to the north was alternatively vassalized by either side, while chieftains in the deserts of Arabia to the south were given subsidies to fight as auxiliary forces. The main area of contention lay in the middle along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and although the two sides had traded some forts and cities in their bouts of recurrent warfare, the frontier remained largely the same, since neither side had the resources to conquer and integrate the provinces of the other. This time, however, it seemed that Khusrow was determined to change the game. He didn’t want to just gain a few positions through a treaty; he wanted to push as far as he could into the empire – and keep what he’d taken.

Meanwhile, the domestic situation was only worsening for the Romans. With Phokas driving the empire to ruin and his legitimacy almost non-existent, the exarch of North Africa rebelled in 608 to put his son, Herakleios, on the throne. The exarch sent an army into Egypt, and now that dissidents finally had someone to rally around, supporters of the exarch sprang up all across the empire.

As Romans fought Romans, the Persians took more territory from the eastern provinces. And as Phokas was faced with a civil war in addition to a foreign invasion, he diverted even more imperial troops from the Danube frontier.

For their part, the Avars were watching the situation with great interest. In 610, their khagan died and was succeeded by his younger brother. We don’t have details about the succession; we don’t even have this younger brother’s name. But what we do know is that this new khagan had to consolidate his position against any potential contenders to the throne, and the best way to do so was to prove himself as a military leader and to bring in plenty of loot for his followers. And as this new khagan looked on the other side of the Danube, what he saw were Roman positions that were woefully and enticingly understaffed.

Next time, we’ll see the khagan gather his forces for a grand campaign against the empire – and we’ll see Roman fortunes dip even further as enemies abound on all sides.