Leo VI The Wise - Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy

Leo VI's fortune in war was more mixed than Basil's had been. In indulging his chief counselor Stylianos Zaoutzes, Leo provoked a war with Simeon I of Bulgaria in 894, but was defeated. Bribing the Magyars to attack the Bulgarians from the north, Leo scored an indirect success in 895. However, deprived of his new allies, he lost the major Battle of Boulgarophygon in 896 and had to make the required commercial concessions and to pay annual tribute.

Although he won a victory against the Emirate of Tarsus in 900 in which the Arab army was destroyed and the Emir himself captured, in the west the Emirate of Sicily took Taormina, the last Byzantine outpost on the island of Sicily, in 902. Nevertheless, Leo continued to apply pressure on his eastern frontier, through the creation of the new thema of Mesopotamia, a Byzantine invasion of Armenia in 902 and the sacking of Theodosiopolis, as well as successful raids in the Arab Thughur.

Then, in 904 the renegade Leo of Tripolis sacked Thessalonica with his pirates – an event described in The Capture of Thessalonica by John Kaminiates – while a large-scale expedition to recover Crete under Himerios in 911–912 failed disastrously. Nevertheless, the same period also saw the establishment of the important frontier provinces (kleisourai) of Lykandos and Leontokome on territory recently taken from the Arabs. In 907 Constantinople was attacked by the Kievan Rus' under Oleg of Novgorod, who was seeking favourable trading rights with the empire. Leo paid them off, but they attacked again in 911, and a trade treaty was finally signed.