Pechenegs II

972-1091 CE

From 972 to 1091 CE, the Pechenegs held the western steppe in an iron grip — their horse archers ambushing Sviatoslav in the Dnieper rapids and making his skull into a drinking cup, their raids bleeding Byzantine Thrace white generation after generation. They broke Rus' armies and threatened Constantinople's walls, masters of a world where only the swift survived — until Alexios Komnenos and his Cuman allies annihilated them at Levounion, and a nation vanished in a single afternoon.