Medieval Bulgarian army

Medieval Bulgarian army
Khan Krum feasts with a skull cup made of Emperor Nicephorus Is head following the victory in the battle of Pliska.
Leaders	Bulgarian Emperor (Commander-in-chief)
Dates of operation	632/680  – 1396/1422 AD
Active regions	Balkans, Central Europe - Pannonia, Pontic–Caspian steppe
Size	c. 12,000 up to 15,000[1][2]
Part of	Bulgarian Empire
Allies	Byzantine Empire, Slavs, Pechenegs, East Franks, Cumans, Empire of Nicaea
Opponents	Byzantine Empire, Khazars, the Caliphate, Avars, Franks under Carolingian Empire and Kingdom of the East Franks, Magyars and Principality/Kingdom of Hungary, Medieval Serbian states, Duchy/Kingdom of Croatia, Pechenegs, Kievan Rus', Latin Empire, Despotate of Epirus, Kingdom of Thessalonica, Empire of Trebizond, the Mongol Golden Horde, Republic of Genoa, Ottoman Empire and others
Battles and wars	the wars of the Bulgarian Empire

The medieval Bulgarian army was the primary military body of the First and the Second Bulgarian Empires, and some Puppet states of the former, like the Despotate of Dobruja. During the first decades after the foundation of the country, the army consisted of a Bulgar cavalry and a Slavic infantry. The core of the Bulgarian army was the heavy cavalry, which consisted of ca. 12,000 heavily armed riders. At its height in the 9th and 10th centuries, it was one of the most formidable military forces in Europe and was feared by its enemies. There are several documented cases of Byzantine commanders abandoning an invasion because of a reluctance to confront the Bulgarian army on its home territory.^[3][4][5]

The army was intrinsically linked to the very existence of the Bulgarian state. Its success under Tsar Simeon I the Great marked the creation of a wide-ranging empire, and its defeat in a prolonged war of attrition in the early 11th century meant the end of Bulgarian independence. When the Bulgarian state was reestablished in 1185, a series of capable emperors achieved a remarkable string of victories over the Byzantines and the Western Crusaders, but as the state and its army fragmented in the 13th and 14th centuries, it proved unable to halt the Ottoman advance, which resulted in the conquest of all of Bulgaria by 1396/1422. It would not be until 1878, with the Liberation of Bulgaria, that a Bulgarian military would be restored.