Rendition video There were quite a few great feudal lords who looked at the crown with envy and who thought their rights over it were no less than those of the brothers. The two elder brothers were murdered by plotting boyars. The throne was taken by Kaloyan, who dealt with any resistance mercilessly. He was also helped by chance.
The reconstructed head of Tsar Kaloyan
In the fall of 1972 a medieval burial of an aristocrat was discovered during excavations in Veliko Tarnovo. One could not but be impressed by the enormous height of the man – nearly two metres – something quite unusual for that age. There was a heavy gold ring inscribed Ring of Kaloyan on his hand. The deceased was dressed in robes of purple, the colour of royalty in the middle ages, embroidered with pearls. The head was covered with a cap also decorated with gold, and there were red boots on his feet. The age of the deceased was presumed to be between 35 and 40.
Tests revealed the presence of many chrysalides and flies. This indicated that the deceased was not buried immediately’ as was customary for the age, but that the body had been exposed to the air. Plenty of chloride materials were also discovered around the body. These facts are veritably indicative that the burial was that of Tsar Kaloyan. According to his contemporaries he was an enormous man. He was murdered at 37. After his murder near Salonika, his body was salted (hence the chloride) and transported to Tarnovo within a week. There are traces of a healed wound on the skull made by an unknown weapon. The scar probably caused a pain so terrible it could have brought its bearer to the point of madness on occasion. And that was probably precisely the cause of the bouts of fury during which Kaloyan was capable of terrible cruelty, bouts that the annals have recorded.Instead of aiming their efforts at Palestine, as it was their Christian duty, the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade conquered Constantinople in 1204 and founded their own Latin Empire in the place of Byzantium. Kaloyan was quick to establish good relations with his new neighbours. He offered friendship and assistance but both were haughtily rejected. What was more, the crusaders declared the Bulgarians insurgents as they had split from Byzantium – whose very heirs they claimed to be. Full of contempt, the knights marched against the Bulgarians, with the decisive battle taking place by Adrianople in the spring of 1205. The Bulgarians succeeded in luring their enemy into a trap
. Count Louis of Blois was the first to give in to his temper and to lead the proud crusaders towards defeat. The knights who had recently triumphed over Byzantium suffered a complete fiasco. Their emperor, Baldwin I, count of Flanders, was captured and taken to Tarnovo. From that point on there is no sure information about his fate. Romantic legend has it that, as a good Frenchman, he seduced the wife of the sovereign and the jealous husband ordered him thrown from the castle walls on the rocks below. It is more probable that he died of a natural death in the prison, which was hardly a holiday villa, or was executed by order of the ruler.The defeat at Adrianople shook the Latin Empire. Kaloyan began to tear territories away from it piece by piece and soon the Bulgarian state became nearly as large as it had been before it fell under Byzantine rule. The boyars, however, also continued with their plotting. One of the plots was successful and the Bulgarian tsar was speared in his battle tent in a summer evening of 1207, while he was besieging the second largest city in the empire, Salonika. The Latins could heave a sigh of relief. The new tsar, who ascended to the throne as a relative of Kaloyan, was incompetent and soon squandered most of his predecessors’ acquisitions.
The crisis continued for a decade and ended with the restoration of the legitimate heir, son of Assen, to the throne. His rule, which continued from 1218 to 1241, was the apogee in the life of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom. In just a couple of years John Assen II managed to regain most of the Bulgarian territories. Unlike his aggressive predecessors, he preferred to rely on negotiations although he did not avoid wars when necessary. The peasants were relieved of the annual military campaigns. Relative order reigned in the administration. We have no information about activity of the Bogomils who had raised their heads during the preceding crisis. Even this suffices as a clear indication that if not social peace, then at least social calm existed.
The rise of the Bulgarian state was accompanied by the progressive decline of the Latin Empire. Two Greek states, fragments of old Byzantium, whetted their appetites to restore the old fame of the empire. These were the Nicaean Empire in Asia Minor and the Despotate of Epirus on the Balkans.
The ruler of the despotate, Theodore Comnenus, was concerned with the increase of Bulgaria’s power. He feared the emergence of yet another claimant for the heritage of the Latin Empire. That was why he attacked by surprise without declaring war. What was more, the two states had signed an agreement for eternal peace. The decisive battle took place by the village of Klokotnitsa in Thrace, in the year 1230. To encourage his army before the battle, John Assen ordered the peace treaty sullied by the despot of Epirus run through by a spear, which he showed to the army. The defeat of Epirus was catastrophic. The entire family of the despot fell prisoner (several years later the Bulgarian tsar fell in love with his daughter and married her. To do so, he had to divorce his incumbent queen, daughter of the Walachian ruler). The victor released all imprisoned soldiers: a humane act, which made an exceptionally strong impression on his contemporaries.
The victory at Klokotnitsa gave Bulgaria hegemony on the Balkans and made it into one of the most powerful states in Europe
. Its borders lay on the Black, the Aegean, and the Adriatic Sea. John Assen availed himself of the situation and achieved an official recognition of his royal title and patriarchal status for the head of the Bulgarian Church from the Emperor of Nicae. The tsar was a lucky man. True, he died before he had turned 50, but that was at the peak of his power. Only a year later the first destructive Tartar-Mongol raid passed through Bulgaria.
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