High Middle Ages · Europe · War

1091

Battle of Levounion

April 29, 1091

Alexios I Komnenos, with Cuman allies, annihilated the Pecheneg horde that had been devastating the Balkans for years. The victory, unusually total for Byzantium, ended the Pecheneg threat permanently and stabilized the European frontier just as the emperor turned his attention east toward the Turks beyond Anatolia. The Pechenegs as a distinct people effectively ceased to exist after the battle, absorbed into the empire's borderlands.