6 – The Pecheneg Khanates (860 – 1091)
The Pechenegs were another group of semi-nomadic Turkic people who migrated from Central Asia. They were forced to leave the homeland after harassment by tribes including the Karluks, Kimaks and Oghuz Turks. Their migration possibly began towards the end of the eighth century although it may have been a few decades later. They invaded the homeland of the Hungarians and forced them to leave; by 860, they had settled along the Kuban and Donets Rivers.
Soon after they settled in Europe, the Pechenegs allied with Byzantium; the Byzantines used them to deal with tribes such as the Magyars and the Rus’. However, the Pechenegs were once against forced to leave; this time by the Uzes, but their old tormentors, the Oghuz, Kimaks, and Karluks also pestered them.
The Pechenegs decided to bully someone else, so they drove the Magyars west of the Dnieper River by the early 890s. Then they helped Tsar Simeon I of the Bulgarian Empire to fend off the Magyars; the Pechenegs were very successful in this endeavor as they forced their enemy to the Pannonian Plain where the Magyars eventually settled and founded the Hungarian state.
The Pechenegs spent most of the rest of their history in a succession of wars and alliances with the Kievan Rus’. Examples include the full-scale war declared by Igor of Kiev on the Pechenegs in 920 and the siege of Kiev in 968. They ambushed and killed Prince Sviatoslav I of Kiev four years later. The Russian Primary Chronicle alleges that the Pecheneg leader, Khan Kurya, used Sviatoslav’s skull as a chalice; it was seemingly common practice at the time.
The Pechenegs began to lose their influence and suffered defeats to Vladimir I of Kiev in the late tenth century and to Yaroslav I the Wise in 1036. Eventually, the Pechenegs simply made too many enemies. Throughout the eleventh century, they fought the Bulgarians, Kiev Rus’, Byzantines, Magyars, and Khazars.
Eventually, the Pechenegs ceased to be an independent kingdom after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Levounion in 1091. They lost most of their army of 80,000 men when up against a combined force of Byzantines and Cumans. While the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, recruited the remaining Pechenegs, who settled in modern-day Macedonia, most of them were slain in an attack by the Cumans in 1094. Another heavy defeat to the Byzantines took place at the Battle of Beroia in 1122. Ultimately, the Pechenegs in the Balkans lost their national identity and were assimilated into other kingdoms.