John I Tzimiskes
John Tzimiskes murdered his predecessor in bed, did penance, and spent six years winning battles for the empire. He was an Armenian general of a great Anatolian family and a nephew of Nikephoros II Phokas, whom he helped to the throne in 963 and then conspired against with the empress Theophano. The murder in December 969 was carried out at night in the palace by men smuggled in past the guard, and the patriarch refused John the crown until he had named the assassins, exiled Theophano and repealed his predecessor's law restricting donations to monasteries. He did all three and was crowned. What followed was the most effective run of campaigning the empire had managed in centuries. He destroyed the Rus of Sviatoslav, who had taken Bulgaria and refused to leave, in a campaign in 971 that ended with a siege at Dorostolon and a treaty removing them from the Balkans permanently; eastern Bulgaria was annexed and its patriarchate abolished. He then turned east and campaigned in Syria and Palestine, taking Damascus's submission, Beirut and Sidon, and reaching close enough to Jerusalem for the letter describing it to have been read as a crusade five centuries early. He also ran a competent domestic administration and made a marriage alliance with the western emperor. He died suddenly in 976 returning from the east, of typhoid or, as the chroniclers preferred, poison administered by a eunuch minister whose estates he had questioned. He belongs to a run of three soldier-emperors — Nikephoros II, John I and Basil II — who between them took the empire to its greatest extent since Justinian. Two of the three took the throne by violence, and the state they built lasted about fifty years after the last of them.
- Lived: 925 CE – 976 CE
- Nationality: Byzantine
- Roles: emperor, head_of_state, military_leader, general
