first occasion in 907, the Russians had returned home laden with plunder, but on the second, which fell in 941, the Byzantine fleet had caught them at sea, and revenged the harrying of Thrace by sinking scores of their light boats, which could not resist for a moment the impact of the heavy war-galley urged by its hundred oars. [Illustration] Arabesque Design From A Byzantine MS. (_From "L’Art Byzantin." Par Charles Bayet. Paris, Quantin, 1883._) But the attack which John Zimisces had to meet in 970 was far more formidable than either of those which had preceded it. Swiatoslaf, king of the Russians, had come down the Dnieper with no less than 60,000 men, and had thrown himself on to the kingdom of Bulgaria, which was at the moment distracted by civil war. He conquered the whole country, and soon his marauders were crossing the Balkans and showing themselves in the plain of Thrace. They even sacked the considerable town of Philippopolis before the imperial troops came to its aid. This roused Zimisces, who had been absent in Asia Minor, and in the early spring of 971 an imperial army of 30,000 men set out to cross the Balkans and drive the Russians into the Danube. The struggle which ensued was one of the most desperate which East-Roman history records. The Russians all fought on foot, in great square columns, armed with spear and axe: they wore mail shirts and peaked helmets, just like the Normans of Western Europe, to whom their princes were akin. The shock of their columns was terrible, and their constancy in standing firm almost incredible. Against these warriors of the North Zimisces led the mailed horsemen of the Asiatic themes, and the bowmen and slingers who were the flower of the Byzantine infantry. The tale of John’s two great battles with the Russians at Presthlava and Silistria reads much like the tale of the battle of Hastings. In Bulgaria, as in Sussex, the sturdy axeman long beat off the desperate cavalry charges of their opponents. But they could not resist the hail of arrows to which they had no missile weapons to oppose, and when once the archers had thinned their ranks, the Byzantine cavalry burst in, and made a fearful slaughter in the broken phalanx. More fortunate than Harold Godwineson at the field of Senlac, King Swiatoslaf escaped with his life and the relics of his army. But he was beleaguered within the walls of Silistria, and forced to yield himself, on the terms that he and his men might take their way homeward, on swearing never to molest the empire again. The Russian swore the oath and took a solemn farewell of Zimisces. The contrast between the two monarchs struck Leo the Deacon, a chronicler who seems to have been present at the scene, and caused him to describe the meeting with some vigour. We learn how the Emperor, a small alert fair-haired man, sat on his great war-horse by the river bank, in his golden armour with his