Nikephoros II Phokas was among the outstanding soldiers of his generation, a general so feared by his enemies that they called him the pale death of the Saracens1. He won back the island of Crete after more than a century in Arab hands, rolled the frontier forward in the east, and rose to the throne itself, only to fall to a murder in his own palace.
The reconquest of Crete
For over a century the island of2 Crete had been an Arab pirate base, a scourge of the Aegean. In 960 and 961 Nikephoros led a great expedition against it3, landing an army and laying siege to the fortress of Chandax. When the city fell, the long Arab hold on Crete was broken and the sea lanes of the empire were made safe, his most famous achievement.
War in the east
Nikephoros then carried the war into the eastern frontier lands, campaigning in Cilicia and Syria against the Arab emirates. He was a master of the hard, methodical warfare of sieges and raids that the frontier demanded, and under him the empire pushed its border steadily forward4, recovering ground lost for centuries.
Emperor and victim
In 963 the army raised Nikephoros to the throne.2 As emperor he went on fighting and building the empire's strength, and his generals took the great city of2 Antioch in 969. But he was austere and unloved, his heavy taxes resented2, and later that same year he was murdered in his palace in a coup led by his nephew and former lieutenant, John Tzimiskes3, who took the throne in his place.
The measure of the man
Nikephoros was a soldier before all else, perhaps the finest general the empire produced in his century. His conquests in the east and at sea began the great Byzantine recovery that5 Basil II would carry to its height. That so great a warrior fell not in battle but to a palace plot is one of the ironies of Byzantine history.
Meet the other great commanders of the Byzantine Empire, or measure them against the world's best in the greatest military commanders.