Foreign and Mercenary Soldiers
After the Bulgarians conquered the Avar Khanate in 804-805, Avar soldiers, who were now subjects of the Bulgarian crown, were recruited in the army, especially during the campaign against Nicephorus I in 811, when the Byzantines burned down the capital, Pliska. In the 9th-10th centuries the Bulgarians often resorted to the services of the Pechenegs, who were probably Bulgarian federates. When the Byzantines stirred the Kievan Rus' up against the Empire, the Bulgarian diplomacy in turn used the Pechenegs against Rus'.
During the Second Empire, foreign and mercenary soldiers became an important part of the Bulgarian army and its tactics. Since the very beginning of the rebellion of Asen and Peter, the light and mobile Cuman cavalry was effectively used against the Byzantines and later the Crusaders. For instance, fourteen thousand of them were used by Kaloyan in the battle of Adrianople. The Cuman leaders entered the ranks of Bulgarian nobility, and some of them received high military or administrative posts in the state. During the 14th century the Bulgarian army increasingly relied on foreign mercenaries, which included Western knights, Mongols, Ossetians or came from vassal Wallachia. Both Michael III Shishman and Ivan Alexander had a 3,000-strong Mongol cavalry detachment in their armies. In the 1350s, Emperor Ivan Alexander even hired Ottoman bands, as did the Byzantine Emperor.
Read more about this topic: Medieval Bulgarian Army
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, mercenary and/or soldiers:
“If one mistreats citizens of foreign countries, one infringes upon one’s duty toward one’s own subjects; for thus one exposes them to the law of retribution.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“The soldier here, as everywhere in Canada, appeared to be put forward, and by his best foot. They were in the proportion of the soldiers to the laborers in an African ant-hill.... On every prominent ledge you could see England’s hands holding the Canadas, and I judged from the redness of her knuckles that she would soon have to let go.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)