Maurice's Balkan Campaigns

Maurice's Balkan campaigns were a series of military expeditions conducted by the East Roman (Byzantine) emperor Maurice (reigned 582-602) in an attempt to defend the Balkan provinces of the East Roman Empire from Avars and Slavs. Maurice was the only East Roman emperor, except for Anastasius I, who did his best to implement determined Balkan policies during Late Antiquity, paying adequate attention to the safety of the northern frontier against barbarian incursions. During the second half of his reign, the Balkan campaigns were the main focus of Maurice's foreign policies, as a favourable peace treaty with Persia in 591 enabled him to shift his experienced troops from the Persian front to the region. The refocusing of Roman efforts soon paid off: the frequent Roman failures before 591 were succeeded by a string of successes afterwards.

Although it is widely believed that his campaigns were only a token measure and that Roman rule over the Balkans collapsed immediately after his overthrow in 602, Maurice was in fact well on his way to forestalling the Slavic landfall on the Balkans, nearly preserving the order of Late Antiquity there. His success was only undone over ten years after his overthrow. Retrospectively, these campaigns were the last in the series of classical Roman campaigns against the Barbarians on the Rhine and Danube, effectively delaying Slavic landfall on the Balkans by two decades. With respect to the Slavs, these campaigns had the typical trait of Roman campaigns against unorganized tribes and of what we now call asymmetric warfare.