In the following year the centre of interest shifts from the south-east to the south-west. The Greek Emperor, Nicephorus Phocas, irritated against his vassal Peter, King or Tzar of Bulgaria, in that he had not exerted himself against the Magyars, who were raiding the Imperial dominions, turned for help, according to the approved Byzantine policy, to another neighbour, and commissioned Sviatoslav to march against Bulgaria. A large sum of Greek gold was conveyed to Kiev by an ambassador from the Emperor, and in return the Russian Prince set out for the Danube with a following of 60,000 men. The onset of the invaders was irresistible, and the Bulgarians scattered and fled, leaving their capital, Péréyaslavetz, and Dristr, a strongly fortified place on the Danube, in the hands of the conqueror. To complete the good fortune of Sviatoslav the Tzar Peter died at this critical moment, and the Russian Prince settled down in his newly-acquired city, undisputed master of Bulgaria. East and west his arms had been successful, but in the very heart of his realm he had left a dread and watchful enemy, who would not fail to take advantage of his absence. While his army was at quarters in the head city of the Bulgarians, his own capital was being besieged and closely pressed by the Petchenigs, that “greedy people, devouring the bodies of men, corrupt and impure, bloody and cruel beasts,” as the monk of Edessa portrays them; in which certificate it is to be hoped they were over-described. The folk in the beleaguered city, among the rest the aged Olga and the young sons of Sviatoslav, were in straits from want of food, and must have succumbed if one of their number had not made his way by means of a feint through the enemy’s camp, and carried news of their desperate condition to a boyarin named Prititch who was luckily at hand with a small force. On his approach the Petchenigs drew off, thinking that the Prince himself had returned with his army, and Kiev was relieved from the straits of famine. Sviatoslav meanwhile had learned of the danger which threatened his realm and household and hastened back from Bulgaria. Even this narrowly staved-off disaster did not open his eyes to the menace which these undesirable neighbours ever held over him and his, and he contented himself with inflicting a severe defeat on them and concluding a worthless peace. Possibly he found it hard to arouse among his followers any enthusiasm for a campaign against an enemy who had no wealthy cities to plunder or riches of any kind available for spoil. In any case he was bitten with the desire, to which rulers of Russia seem to have been periodically subject, of shifting the seat of his government to a fresh capital. Before his mother and his boyarins he declared his project of fixing his seat at Péréyaslavetz in preference to Kiev, and enumerated the advantages of the former. From the Greeks came gold, fabrics, wine, and fruits; from Bohemia and Hungary horses