Nikephoros I

750 – 811 · Generation XVIII · Emperor (r. 802–811)

Nikephoros (AD 750 – 811). Emperor (r. 802–811). Died at Battle of Pliska. A Greek from Seleucia in Isauria, he served Irene as General Logothete — her finance minister — before heading the palace conspiracy that removed her, and was crowned by Patriarch Tarasios in the Hagia Sophia. He governed with an accountant's rigour, resettling soldiers and peasants from Asia Minor into Thrace, Macedonia and Greece and enforcing a fiscal discipline that earned him lasting resentment. He put down the revolts of Bardanes Tourkos and the patrician Arsaber, faced down Theodore the Stoudite over the limits of imperial authority in the church, and concluded the “Pax Nicephori” with Charlemagne while refusing to concede him the imperial title. Against the caliph Harun al-Rashid he withheld tribute and courted war, suffering a severe defeat at Krasos in Phrygia.

Children

Prokopia (770 – 813)
Staurakios (790 – 812)