Khan Krum pushed three Byzantine emperors off their thrones in three years
Between 811 and 813, a Bulgar khan whose origins nobody knows killed one Byzantine emperor in battle, saw a second abdicate from his wounds and routed a third, who became a monk. Krum then camped before the walls of Constantinople and began gathering siege towers and rams to take it.
Nobody knows Krum's family. Born sometime in the mid-700s, he took power in Bulgaria at some point between 796 and 803, by means that are equally obscure. His name may derive from an Old Turkic word for ruler. Around 805 he destroyed what was left of the Avar Khaganate and pushed north toward the Tisza, giving Bulgaria a shared border with the Frankish Empire. By his death his territory had doubled, reaching from the middle Danube to the Dnieper.
Byzantium was the main rival. After Krum took the city of Serdica in 809 and broke his promise of safe conduct to its garrison, Emperor Nikephoros I led a huge army north in 811. It avoided the mountain ambushes and seized and plundered the Bulgar capital Pliska on 20 July. Krum armed everyone he could, women and peasants included, and waited in the passes. On 26 July the retreating Byzantines were trapped in the Varbitsa Pass and destroyed; Nikephoros died, and his son Staurakios, badly wounded, soon abdicated.
The next emperor, Michael I, rejected Krum's offer to restore an old peace treaty and marched out in force. After a two-week standoff at Versinikia in June 813 his army broke at the first charge, and Michael was forced out to become a monk. His successor Leo V opened talks while planning to have Krum killed at an unarmed meeting; Krum escaped wounded, and in fury took Adrianople with 10,000 defenders, among them the parents of the future emperor Basil I. He was preparing a full assault on Constantinople when he died on 13 April 814.
Krum was also a lawgiver. He issued the first known written Bulgarian law code, which guaranteed support for beggars and protection for the poor while punishing drunkenness, slander and robbery harshly. Remembered as stern but fair, he pulled Slavs and Bulgars into one centralised state.
Source: Krum
