The armies of Bulgaria and Byzantium, led by the two rulers, met at the northern foothills of the Belassitsa Mountains, not far from the present-day town of Petrich. The front attack brought the Byzantines no success, so they used roundabout paths, appeared in the Bulgarians' rear and routed the army. Basil had his revenge for the defeat at Trayanovi Vrata, but he was not satisfied.

In order to break the morale of the Bulgarians and make them give up all further resistance, he ordered all 14,000 Bulgarian soldiers taken prisoner to be blinded and sent them back to Samuil in Prespa through the winter blizzards. He had left one soldier with one eye in every 100 blinded men to show them the way. For his cruelty which had no equal even in those cruel times, Basil II was nicknamed Bulgaroctonos — Slayer of the Bulgarians.

After Samuil's death, Bulgaria resisted for another four years and it was only at the end of 1018 that Byzantium conquered the whole of the country. This was the end of the First Bulgarian Kingdom, which had existed for three and a half centuries. The Bulgarian people fell under foreign domination which sharply deteriorated their political and economic situation.

To make things worse, new nomad tribes started invading the Bulgarian lands during the 11th and 12th centuries -Usae, Pechenegs and Rumanians. They were powerless before the impregnable Byzantine strongholds, but they brought death and ruin to the defenceless Bulgarian peasants. The West-European crusaders who passed through Bulgaria on their way to Jerusalem also brought countless misfortunes to the Bulgarians, because after the split between the Roman Curia and the Constantinople Church in 1054 the crusaders started treating the Eastern Orthodox Christians almost as heretics.

The conquerors also had their problems with the conquered Bulgarians. In 1040 Samuil's grandson Peter Delyan raised a mass uprising which proved a tough job for the Byzantines to suppress. In 1072 another mass uprising broke out, this time near Skopje, under the leadership of Georgi Voiteh. The insurgents had the support of the Serbian ruler, but after months of bloody battles they were defeated by the numerous troops of the Emperor.

Then a series of armed mutinies broke out in 1074, 1079 and 1084 in the Danubian towns of Bulgaria and in Sofia, Mesembria, in the region of Plovdiv. The Bogomils, who had earlier waged a fierce struggle against the Bulgarian clerical and secular aristocracy, manifested themselves as ardent patriots and fighters against foreign oppression.

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