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>Having crushed the Bulgarians, Basil exerted his vengeance by cruelty - he was said to have captured 15,000 prisoners and blinded 99 of every 100 men, leaving one one-eyed man in each cohort to lead the rest back to their ruler. Samuel was physically struck down by the dreadful apparition of his blinded army and died two days later, on 6 October 1014, after suffering a stroke. Although the mistreatment of the Bulgarian prisoners may have been exaggerated, this incident helped give rise to Basil's Greek epithet of Boulgaroktonos, meaning "the Bulgar-slayer", in later tradition.
What the fuck was his problem? In all honesty while being exceptionally cruel this is actually a pretty sound strategic move as now these blind soldiers, useless in combat, now had to be cared and provided for by other Bulgarians. What are other examples of strategically sound brutality in history? Also discuss the fact this dude's name is Basil.
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The Golden Horde in 1346 catapulted the bubonic plague-infested corpses of their own men over the walls of Kaffa, in the Crimean Peninsula. It crippled the city and (it's speculated) brought the Black Death right to Europe's doorstep.
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>>2029851
That's probably not a very big reason for the Black Death in Europe
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>>2029861
>plague literally tossed onto a trade city that was a colony of Genoa were the plague was first found in Europe.
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>>2029757
He did literally nothing wrong
Dirtbags got what was coming to them
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>>2029757
Calm down there is a very good chance that never happened.
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>>2029757
> It's a Bulgarians dindu nuttin
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Fuck people really were edgelords back then huh?
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>>2029757
>Also discuss the fact this dude's name is Basil.
Basil may sound like a silly name, but it is actually just shorthand for Basileos, which meant emperor or king in Greek. Nobody would have called him Basil at the time. It's like how we call emperors Diocletian, Gratian and Constantine. Their names were actually Diocletianus, Gratianus and Constantinus.
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>>2031915
Basil "Bulgarians on the slack get the rack" II knew what was up.
Had to be done
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>>2031926
What about Alexios "Pechenegs being daft get the shaft" Komnenos? Do you consider him decent?
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>>2031955
Yea
The biggest mistake was not finishing the job
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>>2029757
>he was said to have captured 15,000 prisoners and blinded 99 of every 100 men, leaving one one-eyed man in each cohort to lead the rest back to their ruler.
they just straight made shit up back then didn't they
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>>2031969
>he thinks that this sort of shit is an exaggeration
It actually isn't that absurd. Byzantium was well known for blinding people it saw as usurpers, and the Bulgarians famously were a bunch of tribals who seized Byzantine land south of the Danube and proclaimed themselves an Orthodox empire to rival that of Constantinople. Blinding was a fairly traditional punishment (aside from beheading) accorded to enemies of the state.
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In all fairness blinding was a very common method of punishment in Byzantium. Keep in mind relations between the two sides had been shitty since their inception. The byzzies thought the bulgars were a bunch of Barbarians squatting on rightful clay (and the fact they may have turned an emperors skull into a drinking cup didn't help) while the Bulgarians wanted an empire with Constantinople part of it.
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14,000 blinded men meant a massive economic burden that would cripple any family they return back to.
Rather than simply kill the 15,000 he impoverished the Bulgarians with this one move. Rather than being healthy productive members of society, they would be dependent on the charity of others to survive.
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>>2032204
If only Libertarianism had been invented back then the Bulgarians could have just left the 14,850 blind men to fend for themselves and not wasted any precious resources carrying for them.
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