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Svyatoslav, seeing the field clear of his enemies, returned in 970, and in March of that year sacked and occupied Philippopolis. The Russians retired north of the Balkan range, but the Greeks followed them. John Tzimisces besieged them in the capital Preslav, which he stormed, massacring many of the garrison, in April 972.
The Emperor Nikiphóros was by now aware of the danger he had imprudently conjured up, and made a futile alliance with eastern Bulgaria; but in January 969 Peter of Bulgaria died, and in December of the same year Nikiphóros was murdered by the ambitious Armenian John Tzimisces, who thereupon became emperor.
Western Bulgaria included Macedonia and parts of Thessaly, Albania, southern and eastern Serbia, and the westernmost parts of modern Bulgaria. It was from this district that numerous anti-Hellenic revolts were directed after the death of the Emperor John Tzimisces in 976. He was as capable and energetic, as unscrupulous and inhuman, as the situation he was called upon to fill demanded.
The Paulicians who in the ninth century had formed a politico-religious community on the confines of the empire, were deprived of their political power by Basil I in 872; while in 969 John Tzimisces transferred a portion of them from their settlements in Asia Minor to the district of Philippopolis in Thrace.
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