On 29 July 1014, the day and month given by John Skylitzes, Byzantine troops led by Nikephoros Xiphias came down from the mountains behind the army of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, which held a wall across the pass of Kleidion, near today's village of Klyuch. The Bulgarians fled, and Emperor Basil II broke through the abandoned wall. Skylitzes writes that Basil then blinded about 15,000 prisoners, "as they say", and sent them back to Samuel, each hundred led by a man left with one eye; Samuel collapsed at the sight and died two days later. Historians doubt the figure, and the name Bulgar-Slayer came generations later. On this day in 1693 the French won at Landen.
The Battle of Kleidion, 1014: Basil the Bulgar-Slayer
29 July 1014 · 1012 years ago
For decades the emperor Basil II had waged a patient, grinding war against the Bulgarian state of Tsar Samuel. By 1014 Basil was closing in, and Samuel tried to halt the imperial advance by fortifying a narrow pass at Kleidion in the Belasica mountains.
Read the full story of The Battle of Kleidion, 1014: Basil the Bulgar-Slayer ›Also on this day
Landen, 1693. Near the village of Neerwinden, Marshal Luxembourg's French army defeated the allied army of William III. The Duke of Berwick, who fought on the French side, writes that Luxembourg's cavalry came in sight of the enemy on the 28th of July and that the battle was put off till "the next day, the 29th". The allied report in the London Gazette, datelined "July 30. N. S.", says that "On the 29th by break of day the Enemies whole Army came in sight of us", and Fortescue titles his plan "Landen, 19th (29th) July 1693". The Gazette says that the French were repulsed in all their attacks and the advantage lay with the allies until 4 in the afternoon, when the French took a village on the allied right and forced an entrenchment, and that the King "would never put on his Armour, though he was every where in the hottest of the Action". It puts the French at "above 80000 effective Men" and the allies at "not more than 45000"; Fortescue writes of "fifty thousand against eighty thousand". Berwick, captured that day by his uncle Brigadier Churchill, gives the allied loss as near 20,000 men and the French as at least 8,000; Fortescue gives about 8,000 French and about 12,000 allied killed, wounded and prisoners.1
