Anchialos

Anchialos was an old town of Haemimontus, on the shore of the Gulf of Burgas and on the coastal road from Varna to Sozopol and Constantinople. Its name entered Bulgarian history with the fame of one of the First Empire's greatest victories. On 20 August 917, by the river Acheloos near the town, Simeon's forces routed an overconfident Byzantine army that could not remember when it had last invaded Bulgaria. Few escaped, led by the commander Leo Phokas, who reached Mesembria, where ships were probably waiting for them.

In the first years of the Second Empire Anchialos was a Byzantine forward post. Around 1190 the Byzantines recovered Varna and Anchialos, renewed their walls and towers and garrisoned them strongly; on one of his campaigns Isaac II Angelos sent his son-in-law Andronikos Kantakouzenos to Anchialos to guard the coast. In 1191 or 1192 the Bulgarians took Varna and then Anchialos, and the peace of 1201 gave Kaloyan the whole coast up to the Balkan range. During the wars with the Latins, crusader detachments passed by Anchialos on their way to Agathopolis and Constantinople.

In 1263, together with Mesembria, the town passed under Byzantine rule. The loss of the two ports was Bulgaria's main grievance against the empire, and when in 1268 Michael VIII offered the widowed Constantine Tikh the hand of his niece Maria, he promised Mesembria and Anchialos as her dowry.

At the start of the fourteenth century Theodore Svetoslav took the offensive in south-eastern Thrace. In 1304 he defeated the Byzantine army at the river Skafida, not far from Anchialos, and probably then — or at the latest the following year — recovered the two Black Sea towns.

The coast between Sozopol and Anchialos was also a stage for diplomacy. In late 1328 or early 1329 Tsar Michael III Shishman and Andronikos III met at Krimni, between the two towns, and concluded a "firm and everlasting peace and alliance". It did not last: as soon as he heard of Michael's death at Velbazhd in 1330, Andronikos III marched against Bulgaria and with little effort took Anchialos, Mesembria, Aytos, Ktenia, Rusokastro and Yambol.

Ivan Alexander recovered the coast in the first months of his reign, and after the victory at Rusokastro Byzantium recognised Bulgarian rule over Anchialos and Mesembria in 1332. The town remained mixed, with a large Greek population — and a Venetian trading colony. From 1337 there survives a Gospel book written in Greek at Anchialos by the monk Methodios Gemistos, who modestly calls himself sinful, careless and wholly unlettered. In his note he dates the book to the reign of Ivan Alexander and his son, "the most pious tsar Ivan Asen" — one of the proofs that Ivan Asen was proclaimed co-ruler while still young.

In 1364 the last Bulgarian-Byzantine war broke out. John V Palaiologos launched a surprise campaign along the coast and took Anchialos before failing beneath the walls of Mesembria. Two years later, on 21 October 1366, the fleet of Amadeus VI of Savoy took Anchialos and Mesembria, and in the agreement that followed both towns were ceded to Byzantium. From then on Anchialos remained Byzantine until 1453, when Mehmed II, on his way to Constantinople, conquered it together with Mesembria.