On the 10th October 1352, a battle took place near the Thracian city of Didymoteichon, which marked the first important victory of the Ottoman Turks in Europe. The results of this military encounter contributed to definitive Ottoman settlement in Thrace and further territorial expansion in the south-eastern Balkans. In the first part of this paper, the author notes the historical background of this battle, which took place in the context of two military conflicts – the War of the Straits (1350 – 1355) between Genoa and Venice and the Byzantine Civil War (1352 – 1357). In the second part, he focuses his attention on the course of the battle of Didymoteichon and its military aspects.
Only very few medieval chroniclers from Central Europe reflected the beginnings of the Ottoman expansion in their works. The arrival of the Turks in Europe and the occupation of the first fortresses on the Thracian peninsula of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles are explained by these authors in a mono causal way - by the internal dispute of hostile candidates for the Byzantine throne and the desire for power of one of them. In his contribution, the author focuses on indicating the deeper connections and causes of the Ottoman arrival in Europe, which can be reconstructed in relatively detail based on the reports of contemporary Byzantine authors.
The paper is devoted to the controversial reign of the Byzantine Emperor Phocas (602-610), especially from the point of view of his foreign policy towards the Slavs and Avars. The author evaluates the contemporary and later sources and the latest archaeological evidence. Both types of evidence refute the frequently repeated view that the Byzantine defensive system on the Danube collapsed in the reign of this Emperor.
The fall of the Gallipoli fortress in 1354 has long been regarded as a pivotal moment in the Ottoman expansion into South-Eastern Europe. This study is divided into two parts: the first addresses the historical context surrounding this event, while the second focuses on the military-strategic dimensions of the Ottoman occupation. In particular, the author emphasizes the significance of the earlier settlement of Turkish mercenaries by Byzantine Emperor John Kantakouzenos on the Thracian peninsula of Chersonesos (Gallipoli) in 1352, which he argues played a more decisive role than previously acknowledged. The study concludes that, in the absence of adequate Byzantine army and naval power, Gallipoli had long served as a passive element of Byzantine defence. Its isolation by Ottoman forces—both by land and sea—after 1352 would have inevitably led to its fall, even without the impact of the major earthquake on March 1, 1354.
The expedition of the veteran of the First Crusade and the Prince of Antioch, Bohemond, against the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I. Komnenos (1081 – 1108) in 1107/1108 is considered to be a specific epilogue of the early crusade movement initiated by the Roman Pope Urban II at the council in Clermont, France, in 1095. At the same time, it represents another stage of the Byzantine-Norman wars, first taking place in southern Italy and after 1081 in the regions of Byzantine Epirus, Macedonia and Thessaly. In the second part of this study, the authors analyse the Bohemond‘s campaign of 1107/8 in detail and outline its results.
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The Epistola ad Paschalem II papam is the only preserved letter written in the context of the expedition led by prince Bohemond of Antioch against the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos in 1107 – 1108. This document, discovered and subsequently published in 1935 by Walther Holtzmann, is rightly considered the most important evidence of the increasing anti-Byzantine propaganda after the First Crusade. In the present paper, the authors focus on the textual tradition of this letter and the broader context and circumstances that led to its emergence. The second part of the paper consists of a comprehensive analysis of selected anti-Byzantine motives used in the letter and their subsequent comparison with other contemporary Latin reports containing anti-Byzantine propaganda.
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