The text known as the Chronicle of 811 is sometimes called the Duj č ev F ragment, named for its first editor. It is a brief text of several thousand words describing the invasion of Bulgaria led by Emperor Nikephoros I (803– 811). The text is anonymous, although there has been a debate among scholars regarding whether the Chronicle of 811 and the text known as the Scriptor Incertus de Leone Armenio are both fragments of the same, now lost, chronicle. The current prevailing view is that the texts were separate and not written by the same person.

The date of the text's composition is a matter of speculation and debate. A reference to the baptism of the Bulgarians in the final paragraph of the text leads some scholars to believe that it must have been written after 865, but this is dismissed as a later addition by others. For details on the debate see the bibliography below.

The text describes the invasion of Bulgaria by Nikephoros I. In this campaign, an initially successful Nikephoros sacked the capital of the Bulgarian Khan Krum at Pliska. According to the text, Nikephoros's overconfidence led him to allow lax discipline among his soldiers and wantonly destructive pillaging. Krum counterattacked the Byzantine camp when Nikephoros's soldiers were still asleep. Nikephoros was killed in this attack, his son Staurakios was mortally wounded, and the majority of his army was slaughtered. The author makes this episode a morality tale with strong religious overtones during which Nikephoros is judged harshly for his lack of prudence and moderation. The story is distinctly elegiac and ends with a lamentation for the dead, especially the young military elite of the empire.

Manuscripts, Editions, and Translations

Manuscript

This text is known from one thirteenth- century manuscript, Vaticanus Graecus 2014. In the manuscript it appears after two histories of the sieges of Constantinople in 626 and 717 and is followed by brief accounts of the lives of the empresses Irene and Theodora, and the emperor Theophilos.