Bulgaria’s second empire crushed Latins at Adrianople
Between 1185 and 1396 the Second Bulgarian Empire revived Balkan power after more than a century and a half of Byzantine rule. Under Kaloyan and Ivan Asen II it dominated the peninsula, and Kaloyan’s victory at Adrianople in 1205 stunned the brand-new Latin Empire founded by crusaders.
Contemporaries usually just said Bulgaria; under Kaloyan the state was sometimes styled a realm of Bulgarians and Vlachs, and thirteenth-century Arabic chronicles called it Wallachia, though Pope Innocent III and the Latin emperor Henry wrote simply of Bulgaria in official letters. Modern historians add “Second” to separate it from the First Empire, which Basil II conquered in 1018. Tarnovo shone as a cultural hub in the fourteenth century.
Under Basil’s successors, Pecheneg invasions and rising taxes fed big revolts in 1040–41 and again during the 1070s and 1080s. Isaac II Angelos’s levy for his wedding in 1185 finally pushed brothers Theodore and Asen of Tarnovo into rebellion. While Byzantium fought Normans who had sacked Thessalonica, its second city, the rebels raided northern Thrace from Moesia.
Isaac’s second campaign stalled when his army wintered in Sofia; early in 1187 a failed siege of Lovech ended in an armistice that recognised Bulgarian independence in practice. Over the next four years Ivan Asen’s habit of striking fast in scattered places won Sofia and Niš, opening the road to Macedonia.
After Asen’s death the youngest brother, Kaloyan, sought international recognition and revenge for Basil’s blinding of 14,000 of Emperor Samuel’s soldiers, styling himself Romanoktonos, the Roman-slayer. Until 1256 Bulgaria stayed the leading Balkan power, and Ivan Asen II later broke Epirus to make it regional hegemon. Distinctive art and letters flourished under Byzantine stylistic influence until the Ottoman advance ended the tsardom in 1396.
Source: Second Bulgarian Empire
