📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Saturday 4 July
A grislier anniversary than yesterday's chess. On 30 June 763, one of the bloodier battles of the early medieval Balkans was fought near Pomorie, the Black Sea town a lot of British expats now know as the quieter neighbour to Sunny Beach. It did not go Bulgaria's way.
What happened on this day
The background, briefly. After the Bulgarians were defeated at Marcellae in 756, Khan Vinekh surprised everyone by suing for peace, a decision that cost him both his throne and his life. His successor, Telets, had no such hesitation. He sent his heavy cavalry to loot the Byzantine border, and the emperor Constantine V answered in force: on 16 May 763 he sailed out of Constantinople with a large army and a fleet of 800 ships.
Telets did the sensible thing first, barring the mountain passes and taking the high ground near Anchialus. Then he did the rash thing. Impatient and over-confident, he came down to the lowlands to charge. The battle began at 10 in the morning and ground on until sunset, long and bloody, and when it was over the Byzantines had won, though at a terrible cost in soldiers and commanders. The Bulgarians lost heavily too. Many were taken prisoner, and Telets escaped the field only to be murdered in 765, blamed for the defeat.
Constantine V marched home in triumph and had his prisoners killed. Yet the victory led nowhere. The Byzantines never converted their advantage, and the long wars of the eighth century eventually ended in 792, at Marcelae, with a Bulgarian victory and the old treaty restored.
Why this matters for British expats
It is a useful thing to carry in your head on a beach holiday. The stretch of coast around Pomorie and Sunny Beach that fills with sunloungers every July was, twelve and a half centuries ago, a battlefield that helped decide who ruled the region. Bulgaria's history is not tucked away in museums. It is under the car parks and the promenades, and knowing the sand you are lying on once mattered this much makes the coastline feel older and stranger than the brochures ever let on.
Follow-on reading: the Shumen.UK cost-of-living tracker.
Sources and further reading
The course of the battle, the fleet of 800 ships and the fate of Khan Telets here are drawn from the Bulgarian Wikipedia entry on the battle, with the English Wikipedia article covering the same ground for anyone who would rather read it in English. Both lean on the medieval chronicler Nikephoros.