The Effects Of And Strategies Against The New Coronavirus

The medical aspect of this fight is best left to sources that can make qualified statements. But the dangers of coronavirus are clear: it’s a very contagious disease that is mild in most cases, but extremely threatening to the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. Besides the lopsided mortality rates, which increase significantly with age, the new coronavirus also causes a very high number of hospitalisations, usually due to severe pneumonia. These hospitalisations greatly exceed what any healthcare system on Earth can handle at any given time – in terms of ICU beds, ventilators, doctors required to staff the units etc. Once hospitals collapse, the mortality rate skyrockets – both because coronavirus patients who could be saved in an ICU are left without medical care, and because people getting injured or sick from other ailments would have no access to medical help. Ultimately, the “do nothing” and “mitigation” strategies would result in millions of people dying. Should you wish to dig into the data, we can warmly recommend this fantastic piece by Tomas Pueio.

This only leaves one workable strategy: suppression. That is to say, extreme social distancing to deprive coronavirus of the opportunity to spread quickly, ideally bringing the number of sick people at any given time below ICU bed capacity. While of a more uncertain impact, this could also place selective pressure on the virus to favour less lethal and less noticeable strains. In order to work, however, suppression requires participation from the whole of society, as well as extensive economic mobilisation. The fight against coronavirus will not be won by doctors alone – the entire world will have to mobilise in order to sustain them.

We are at war. This is not just a metaphor: suppressing a pandemic is functionally very similar to fighting a war. Just like in wartime, there is a physical space of concentrated effort – in this case, hospitals, where loss of life is the norm. Just like during a war, sustaining this physical effort requires a complex logistical supply chain that includes coordinated production and distribution of essential equipment, like ventilators and face masks. The civilian population is also asked to make sacrifices – in this case, by staying indoors and following government directives. There is one major difference between a war and a pandemic, however. During a war, industrial production is maximised. The opposite happens during a pandemic, because the lockdown inevitably results in lower output.

The European Union has introduced a sweeping set of countermeasures – which are a good start, but only a start. As we look into what has already been done, remember that this is just the beginning of a drawn out effort that can only work if we act together. Suppressing coronavirus will change the European Union (and likely the world) in ways we cannot fully anticipate, and the pandemic is expected to trigger the worst economic recession since 1945, further increasing the complexity and fluidity of the situation. This is a world-upending, historical moment of rare magnitude, and we must all rise up to the challenge. Make no mistake: this will be a very long fight – but it’s one we can win together.

What The EU Has Already Done Against Coronavirus

The EU has a checkered record when it comes to dealing with crises. This is a product of its institutional set up and small mandate: the EU is built as a leadership avoidance scheme, which gives every Member State the breathing ground they need to come to bargains with one another, and have confidence that such bargains will be respected. This is great for wider European integration, but terrible in times of crisis, where clear leadership, fast decision-making, and an unequivocal chain of command are essential to response coordination.

However, the EU has learnt its lesson since its abysmal handling of the Euro debt crisis in 2012, where only the help of the Federal Reserve kept the Eurozone away from the abyss, as we detailed here. The measures being undertaken today at a European level are the right ones, and compatible with the small mandate of the Commission, they also display a refreshing dynamism.

First, the EU set up a Corona Response Investment Initiative, freeing up €25 billion that will shore up national healthcare systems, and shield workers and companies from the economic fallout of the suppression measures. It also allocated funds to vaccine research, as well as research of treatments that might make the pandemic more manageable. Additionally, the Commission has triggered the Stability Pact’s General Escape Clause, and greatly relaxed State aid rules. This will allow Member States to pump as much money into the economy as needed in order to fight coronavirus, bail out companies, and shield workers from the economic fallout.

These financial measures are paired with logistical and industrial interventions: the European Commission is coordinating, and massively ramping up, joint industrial production of all essential medical equipment, like face masks and ventilators. It has also forbidden exporting these products to third countries – with the exception of the United Kingdom, which is great news for London, since Britain only possesses 5,000 ventilators and lacks the domestic capacity to build more. Brussels is also setting up a common stockpile of all this essential equipment, to hand out to Member States to make sure that no one runs out. Once treatment and a vaccine are available, these will also be made a part of this common stockpile.

Further, the EU is also moving to ensure that the 300,000 EU nationals currently stuck outside the EU can make it back home safely, by pressuring other countries into keeping a select few airports open for emergency return flights, and ensuring the smooth functioning of the internet at a time of surging traffic through deals with Netflix, YouTube, and others.

However, the real centerpiece of the wider European effort to fight the new coronavirus comes from the ECB. It’s the so called “bazooka”.

Deploying The Bazooka

Following an embarrassing gaffe by Christine Lagarde, and after the global nature of the threat became evident, the European Central Bank introduced the so-called Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme, also known as PEPP or, informally, the bazooka. This is the single largest measure so far at a European level. It’s an emergency €750 billion package to buy government and  company debt across the Eurozone. What this means in practice is that the ECB will guarantee Member States’ liquidity, so that whatever amount of money they spend to fight coronavirus will be backed up by the might of the ECB. The extension to private debt also means the ECB will be playing a hands-on role in protecting companies and ordinary people from the inevitable economic recession that will result from suppression measures.

There is no time-frame from when this will end, except that it will in any case last to the end of 2020 at a minimum. The timing of the maneuver is up to the ECB’s judgement. Ultimately, the pace of the fight against the pandemic, as well as the stimulus required to kickstart the economy after the outbreak , will determine how long this massive purchase of assets will go on. One thing is certain – this is a watershed in the history of the European Central Bank. Not even Draghi’s famous “whatever it takes” statement extended this far. In all the doom and gloom about the slow progress of European integration, we must also acknowledge that the progress done since 2012 is clearly on show here. This level of interventionism places the ECB much closer to a traditional central bank. There is free talk now of the PEPP helping guarantee jobs and companies as well as currency stability, after all. This may not have formally expanded the the Bank’s mandate, but in practice, it already has.

The Central Banks To The Front

This is a global pandemic, and as such it naturally warrants a global response. We have already witnessed a number of efforts at international cooperation against the new coronavirus, with varying degrees of success. For example, countries are trading doctors and task forces, ventilators and face masks, and the global scientific community is focusing on vaccine research. But what about financial and economic mobilisation?

Here, too, the EU does not operate in a vacuum. The ECB’s bazooka, in particular, is not an isolated measure: it is part of a wider effort by several central banks to guarantee that the global economy will survive the pandemic, and keep the machine of health and research running. The US Federal Reserve, the ECB, and the central banks of Japan, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Canada, are coordinating financial action in this respect. The reader might ask, why these central banks in particular, and what it is they are doing exactly. The answer lies in the lessons learnt during the Great Recession of 2008, and the Eurozone debt crisis of 2012. In that occasion, the Federal Reserve provided liquidity to other central banks – and in the latter case, particularly the ECB. These are currency swap lines, so called because the liquidity is denominated in multiple currencies. In effect, the Federal Reserve acted as the lender of last resort for other central banks. This was part of a “backroom deal”, and not widely publicised – American public opinion was vehemently against it, pushing the Obama administration to operate discreetly.

Today, these currency swap lines have been expanded. The same central banks that tried them out in 2008 and 2012 are now leaning on them even more strongly. What consequences this will have on world finance in the long term is hard to foresee, but in the immediate, the strategy is clearer: these measures prevented a heart attack of the world economy both in 2008 and 2012. The hope is that they will do so again.

European Coronabonds

Talk of coronabonds has also greatly intensified over the past week, with Commissioner Gentiloni quite open that the proposal is on the table. Fiscally conservative countries like the Netherlands and Germany have opposed any sort of financial risk-sharing at a EU level for years. They remained so even at the height of the Euro debt crisis in 2012, with Merkel famously saying that risk-sharing would not happen in the EU “for as long as I live”. This opposition to joint bonds has not dissipated, but the reality of the pandemic has significantly weakened it. Merkel is allegedly open to the idea of coronabonds. The Netherlands are still looking for an alternative solution they could table. However the rapid evolution of the pandemic makes the adoption of coronabonds increasingly likely. Italy and Spain are the hardest-hit countries, but almost every Member State is weeks behind them in the curve of contagions. As such, things will get worse at a European level before they get better.

Total War Against The Coronavirus

As should be apparent from everything we have outlined thus far, these are extraordinary measures that might have appeared radical only a short time ago. Now, they have become widely accepted – to varying degrees – as the correct measures to fight the global pandemic. But what happens after the world emerges victorious from the pandemic – however long that might take?

They will likely roll back some of these measures, though perhaps not all the way. Others will remain in place. Every major crisis in the past century or so has resulted in fundamental changes at an institutional and policy level. It was the Great War that first introduced the managerial State we are familiar with in the 21st Century, introducing a level of government intervention in the economy that would have been unthinkable before 1914. The Great Depression fundamentally reshaped the way statesmen thought about world trade, and the Second World War provided the shock that ushered in the contemporary global order. The Great Recession of 2008 has defined early 21st Century political culture, from the rise of the far right to the quasi-institutionalisation of currency swap lines between central banks. It is hard to see how a global pandemic of this magnitude could fail to do the same. It’s a historic moment that will lead to a profoundly changed conception of European institutions and their mandate. For better or for worse, we do not yet know. What we do know is this: there’s no going back.

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Broken treaties: the events leading to the conflict

The first Mithridatic war had ended badly for Pontus – its armies soundly smashed by Rome, saved from total destruction only by other conflicts attracting the Republic’s attention. Mithridates had assumed he could push Rome from Greek-speaking lands before they could muster a reaction, but this backfired catastrophically: now Rome was free to cement its hegemony in Greece and western Anatolia. The King of Pontus was declared a friend of Rome in the peace treaty, which was a common trap, as such a declaration demanded an extremely punitive reaction should such a person act against the Republic in the future.

After his crushing defeat in the first war, he significantly altered his military organisation, favouring a combination of skirmishing and cavalry tactics rather than the hoplite style formations, long since proven ineffective against Roman legions in anything other than perfect circumstances. Tensions in the region also came from neither Mithridates nor Murena (Sulla’s lieutenant left to deal with Anatolia) fully respecting the treaty, itching for an excuse to resume fighting. In addition to all this Mithridates, in a fit of paranoia, had his eldest son executed on the suspicion that he wanted to usurp the throne. Not content, he  then started openly suspecting his general Archelaus, who defected before he met the same fate. Archelaus then informed Murena of Mithridates’ military preparations and encouraged a pre-emptive strike.

The Second War

Murena apparently followed Archelaus’ suggestions, as he suddenly marched into Cappadocia and sacked Comana, wiping out much of Mithridates’ cavalry in the process. The war so began, but the King didn’t respond with force – in order to buy time, he instead officially protested Murena’s breaches of the treaty. During this time, the Roman general began raiding Pontus itself, looting 400 villages before a representative of the Roman senate could come and order him to stop. However, this didn’t stop the conflict. The representative also said that the halt order had not been put in written form, through an official decree. Murena apparently took this as tacit permission to continue, with Mithridates thinking the same.

When Murena came across the Halys river again, Mithridates had gathered an army and completely routed Murena, pushing him into the mountains and then out of Cappadocia. Sulla, furious at Murena, sent a tribune named Gabinius both to threaten Murena into standing down and to secure peace with Mithridates, who now held the upper hand. He insisted on gaining more territory in Cappadocia, tying its king Ariobarzanes to his dynasty by betrothing his daughter to him. Thus ended the second Mithridatic War, with a modest victory but a substantial propaganda boon for the King of Pontus.

The Third War: Good Omens for Mithridates

After the second war, Mithridates made efforts to establish peace with Rome. He tried to get the treaty agreed with Sulla formally ratified, even being willing to give Ariobarzanes the rest of his land back to secure it. Unfortunately for Pontus, by the time his emissaries arrived, Sulla was dead, and the senate was completely uninterested in discussing the matter. Mithridates likely considered this a statement of hostility. The Roman lack of interest started the Third War, as Mithridates soon had his son in law, Tigranes II of Armenia, invade Cappadocia. This invasion however resembled more a massive raid than an attempt at conquest, as Tigranes primarily wanted to capture people he could use to populate his new city of Tigranocerta. Rome immediately recognised Mithridates himself as the cause of this attack – a fact, it seems, made deliberately obvious by the King.

In preparation of the proper conflict he secured the help, or at least neutrality, of regions surrounding the Roman Republic, and massively expanded his army. Leading up to the third war were negotiations between Mithridates and Sertorius, the rebel governor of Hispania, conducted via the pirates of the Mediterranean. They agreed that in exchange for support, once in power Sertorius would recognise Mithridates’ right to rule all of Anatolia except for the existing Roman province of Asia. The King of Pontus then allowed one of Sertorius’ generals sent to aid him to essentially act as governor in the name of the latter’s rival government. Finally, Mithridates tried to ensure the neutrality of Egypt via a royal marriage, and began building his military strength in earnest, drilling his troops in the hope of matching Roman discipline, stripping luxuries and gilding in order to make room for military equipment on his ships. In total, Mithridates managed to gather an impressive force of around 140,000 infantry and 16,000 cavalry, between his own well trained forces and those of various mercenaries and barbarian tribes he managed to rally to his banner.

The King of Pontus then opened hostilities in style, with an elaborate slaughter of horses sent rushing over a cliff pulling a chariot, as well as a great fire sacrifice. These theatrics were deliberately engineered to appeal to all his followers, matching similar rituals to the gods performed by ancient Greeks, Scythians and Persians.

The real war then began. Mithridates marched his army into Paphlagonia using the failure to ratify the treaty of Dardanus by Rome as his casus belli. He then quickly took Bithynia, which willingly surrendered to him. At Chalcedon, he conducted a slaughter of Roman civilians and their Hellenic allies trapped outside by the cowardly governor Cotta, though this time he did not continue the practice of murdering prisoners after the battle. Against this seemingly unstoppable force was one of Sulla’s proteges, Lucius Lucullus, with a severely outnumbered force of around 30,000 men and 2500 cavalry. To make things worse, two of his five legions were the tough but frequently mutinous “Fimbrian” legions.

The Third War: Bad Omens for Mithridates

The King of Pontus was in a very strong position. As such, Mithridates attempted to bring Lucullus to battle at Otryae, but an apparent meteor strike spooked both generals, who viewed it landing between their armies as an omen that they shouldn’t fight on that day. From here, things started to rapidly go south for Mithridates. He moved on the city of Cyzicus and laid siege to it while attempting to convince the defenders that Lucullus’ approaching army was that of his son in law Tigranes II. Also, during this siege Mithridates received the news that Sertorius had been murdered and Pompey’s legions were wiping out what resistance was left in Hispania.

One of Mithridates’ Sertorian advisors, Lucius Magius, suggested allowing Lucullus to camp wherever he wanted as he claimed to be able to bring about the defection of the two Fimbrian legions. The failure of this gambit effectively handed Lucullus the mountain passes which both armies relied on for foraging, limiting Mithridates to naval resupply. With this change in circumstances, Mithridates resorted to trying to storm the city before winter set in and his army starved. He had by, this point, built huge siege engines to attack both the land and sea walls of Cyzicus. However they weren’t enough, and the assault was repelled by the city’s forces, helped by chance. While Cyzicus’ citizens desperately tried to plug a breach in their walls, a major gale destroyed or toppled many of Mithridates remaining siege engines. This was perceived by both sides as divine intervention, with the people of Cyzicus making sacrifices in the gods’ honour.

Mithridates’ advisors encouraged him to retreat, but the King refused, insisting on redoubling their efforts, building more siege engines and tunnels to try to break into the city. This fateful decision was partly due to hearing about the start of the third servile war, along with the successes of his general Eumachus in southern Anatolia and the massacres that came to signify his forces’ advances. While his generals tried to conceal the extent of his food problem, Mithridates eventually discovered that his soldiers were resorting to every desperate measure: from eating weeds and pack animals to cannibalism of dead comrades in the most extreme cases. A plague soon followed.

In response to these crises, Mithridates tried to send some of his forces and all of his cavalry on a long route around the mountains in the hope of preserving them, however Lucullus managed to catch this contingent, consisting heavily of ill or injured troops, and proceeded to march the survivors back, parading them in front of Mithridates’ remaining army. This humiliation was made worse upon hearing that the Galatians, who were allied to Rome out of hatred for Mithridates’ murders of their leading families, had pushed Eumachus out of southern Anatolia. Further demonstrating that when it rains it pours, another major storm wrecked Mithridates’ new siege towers, demoralising his remaining forces.

Mithridates’ attempt to retreat at this stage was catastrophic, and his effort to distract Rome with ships filled with gold failed, with the Romans capturing the gold before it could even be embarked. His remaining forces suffered atrocious casualties both from drowning and the pursuing Romans, with the survivors seeking refuge in Lampascus. Mithridates did succeed in evacuating his troops and the locals from the subsequent Roman siege, by directing his pirate allies to evacuate them by sea. However, the navy he left in the Hellespont took severe casualties from yet another major winter storm.

Lucullus proceeded to mop up Mithridates’ remaining forces in the region, which included capturing the traitor Varius. His armies in Bithynia enacted comparable reprisals to the  atrocities conducted on Romans by Mithridates. However, due to the incompetence of his second in command Voconius, Mithridates himself was able to escape, albeit having lost nearly his entire land force. Lucullus then marched into Pontus, where he successfully defeated Mithridates and sent him fleeing to Tigranes while he fully occupied Pontus itself. He soon moved to fighting Tigranes, but the battles were largely inconclusive, with Lucullus being hamstrung by his mutinous troops which prevented him fully exploiting his victories.

The tide finally seemed to turn in favour of Mithridates. Whilst in Armenia, he took advantage of Lucullus’ temporary halt, and managed a surprise attack to regain control of Pontus, while Lucullus was undermined by a political conspiracy involving Clodius Pulcher and Pompey. This forced the general to retreat and allowed Mithridates to consolidate his gains. As a result of these setbacks, Lucullus was removed from command, supplanted by Pompey.

Pompey moved quicker than Mithridates, using a night attack calculated to make Mithridates’ archers believe his men were closer than they actually were, and managing to catch and route Mithridates’ army, driving the survivors back towards Armenia. This time, however, Tigranes refused to protect him. Mithridates was now forced to flee towards the Bosporan kingdom with Pompey on his tail. While the Iberi and Albanoi tribes tried to delay the Roman forces, Pompey burned them out of their forests as a response to their guerrilla tactics. After losing track of Mithridates he turned to deal with Tigranes.

The Death of Mithridates

Tigranes surrendered when Pompey attacked his stronghold of Artaxata, surrendering Syria, Phoenicia and Mesopotamia in exchange for being forgiven and allowed to rule Armenia as a friend of Rome. Meanwhile, Mithridates managed to stabilize his situation. After escaping to the Bosporan kingdom, he took control of the region after his son Machares committed suicide, and proceeded to purge those he considered treacherous, including one of his other sons. He then tried to ask Rome for a conciliation, but Pompey rejected Mithridates’ overtures for peace while he was securing the Levant.

With no options left, he prepared a desperate plan to lead an army all the way to Italy, but the heavy preparations incited revolts and mutinies within the kingdom. The most significant was that of his son Pharnaces, who usurped him in his rebellion. At this point Mithridates committed suicide, rather than risk being handed to Pompey. Having purposefully cultivated an immunity to poison, this relatively painless method failed. He asked his bodyguard Bituitus to kill him by the sword – Bituitus “rendered the king the service that he desired”.

Conclusion

The decades-long struggle with Mithridates threatened Roman dominance in Anatolia and Greece – crucial regions for the soon-to-be Empire. After a long effort, the costly wars ultimately led to Mithridates’ suicide, when the Romans, helped by chance and Pompey, ground down his supporters and subdued his allies. After the dust settled, the Romans were left in total control of Anatolia and the Levant, finally enjoying stability in the area, now having a border with Parthia. Mithridates’ son Pharnaces would later try to recover his empire, only to be defeated by one Julius Caesar.

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The Beginning

When Simeon I of Bulgaria ascended to the Bulgarian throne in 893 AD, he found himself at the head of a country in transition. The cultural union of Bulgars and Slavs was relatively recent, as was Bulgaria’s conversion to Christianity. At the same time, this conversion had opened new opportunities for the young country as well as an unexpected source of prestige: through the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, religious and liturgical texts could now be written in what became known as Old Slavonic. Thousands of clergymen took up residence in the monasteries established on the shore of Lake Ohrid, in present-day Macedonia (FYROM), allowing the Bible to be read, and mass to be held in a language close to the vernacular of much of the Balkans.

Simeon I himself had received considerable preparation for his role, studying in Constantinople and thus growing to admire Greek and Latin literature, the Eastern Roman achievements in the realms of administration, and the legacy of Rome in general. Upon his ascension, he set out to turn Bulgaria’s then-capital, Preslav, into a center of culture, arts and craftsmanship that soon eclipsed all competitors in splendor, save for Constantinople itself. With the resulting trade of glass and ceramics came the clergymen as well, spreading Old Slavonic – and with it, Bulgarian prestige and cultural hegemony – to Kievan Rus, Moravia and beyond.

The meteoric rise of Bulgaria placed considerable pressure on all the neighbors it had not yet conquered, first and foremost the Eastern Roman Empire. Relations between the Eastern Romans and the Bulgarians had not always been hostile. The two powers had also enjoyed periods of peace and alliance, most notably during the Second Arab siege of Constantinople. The Umayyad had campaigned against Byzantium for more than twenty years, slowly occupying its territory and then besieging the capital. In August 718 AD, the Bulgarian army had come to the rescue, breaking the siege and destroying the Arab army and thus preventing an Arab invasion of Southeastern Europe.

The Rise of the First Bulgarian Empire

Under Simeon’s reign, tensions between the two raised considerably. A trade dispute over commerce through Thrace led to a war in which the Eastern Romans and the Magyars attacked Bulgaria from two sides. Bulgaria, with help from its Pecheneg allies and under the brilliant military leadership of Simeon, inflicted such a catastrophic defeat on the Magyars that these left the steppes en masse to migrate to the Pannonian basin, where eventually they founded the Kingdom of Hungary. The Byzantines were defeated in turn, and the subsequent peace recognised significant Bulgarian territorial aggrandisement, as well as dominance over trade in the Balkans and reception of an annual tribute from the coffers of Constantinople.

The unilateral Byzantine withdrawal from payment of this tribute would precipitate the events that would ultimately result in Bulgaria declaring itself a direct successor of the Roman Empire. It is to be noted that Simeon himself had manipulated the Byzantine Emperor Alexander into withdrawing from the tribute. Simeon’s ambition was to conquer Constantinople, the city where he had studied in youth, and be crowned there as the Tsar, or Emperor, of a joint Bulgarian-Roman Empire.

Before these plans could come to fruition, however, Alexander died, with a regency council left to take care of his underage son, Constantine VII. Simeon marched south unopposed, and all attempts to placate him with letters and promises came to naught. So it was that in 913 A.D., Simeon I of Bulgaria was crowned “Emperor and Autocrat of all Bulgarians and Romans” outside the walls of Constantinople by none other than Nicholas Mystikos, who was the Orthodox Patriarch as well as the imperial regent. The new Tsar returned to Preslav in triumph, accompanied by his army and his sons, having seemingly accomplished his grandest dream.

The Decline of the Bulgarian Empire

In effect, this new arrangement would not endure for long. Regency in Constantinople came to an abrupt end after a palace coup resulted in the ascension of Constantine VII’s mother as Empress. In the resulting war, Simeon’s successful campaigns nearly brought the Eastern Roman Empire crashing down. However, after a period of stunned acceptance, the Byzantines fought back, refusing to recognize the Bulgarian imperial title and rallying behind their crown. The devastating wars lasted for over a decade, and saw the utter annihilation of a key ally of Constantinople, Serbia, which came under Simeon’s rule, as well as the crippling of the Byzantine armies in 917.

The war finally abated in 924 A.D. with both sides driven to utter exhaustion by the comprehensive economic damage and the catastrophic cost paid in blood. After intense negotiations, the Emperor in Constantinople reclaimed the title of Emperor of the Romans, while Simeon’s title was reduced to that of “Emperor of the Bulgarians“. Byzantine recognition of the imperial dignity of the Bulgarian monarch and the patriarchal dignity of Bulgaria’s patriarch was again confirmed at the conclusion of peace and a Bulgarian–Byzantine dynastic marriage in 927, after Simeon’s death.

Simeon may not have realised his personal ambition in the pursuit of Roman-ness, but Bulgaria could well and truly claim affinity to Rome by the time the war came to a close. At the height of its power, the Bulgarian empire spread from the Danube Bend to the Black Sea and from the Dnieper River to the Adriatic Sea. As a consequence of the adoption and development of Old Slavonic, Bulgaria became the cultural, linguistic and religious center of Slavic Europe. Its capital, Preslav, was clearly designated by Bulgarian literature as the Third Rome, and quickly became one of the richest cities on the continent.

Like so many other self-designated successors of Rome, however, the Bulgarian Empire would not last. The Byzantines eventually recovered from the turbulence at the turn of the millennium, and in 1014, under Basil II, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Bulgarians at the Battle of Kleidion. By 1018, the last Bulgarian strongholds had surrendered to the Byzantines, leading to full incorporation of Bulgarian lands into the Eastern Roman Empire.

The legacy of Preslav’s rule, however, would outlast its political suzerainty, leaving a distinct cultural, linguistic and religious imprint that shaped all subsequent Slavic polities and which endures to this day.

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