The newly founded Slav states of the…

The position of the Slavs and Daco-Romanians in the region of present Romania is enhanced when the rulers of the first Bulgarian empire extend their control over Dacia following Charles's crushing defeat of the Avars between 791 and 796.

The reign of Kardam represents the restoration of order in Bulgaria, which had suffered from a rapid turnover of rulers and had been repeatedly defeated by the Empire in the third quarter of the eighth century.

Kardam has not only stood his ground against Constantine VI (who is trying to emulate his much more successful grandfather and namesake Constantine V), but he may have succeeded in precipitating a crisis at the imperial court, where Constantine VI's repeated failures have undermined the emperor's position and he is dethroned by his mother Irene in 797.

Kardam probably does not long survive his opponent, as he is not heard of after 796 and was already dead in 803.

The ambitious Irene, her role as regent having ended, orders her son captured and imprisoned.

Constantine can only flee for aid to the provinces, but even there participants in the plot surrounded him.

Seized by his attendants on the Asiatic shore of the Bosporus on July 17, Constantine is carried back to the palace at Constantinople.

On August 15, Irene’s orders are carried out; Constantine’s eyes are gouged out, and his mother is declared first Empress regnant of Constantinople.

It is unknown when exactly Constantine died; it was certainly before 805, but he very likely died of his wounds shortly after being blinded.

He was buried in the Monastery of St. Euphrosyne, which Irene had founded.

Harun ar-Rashid, since his assumption of control of the ‘Abbasid caliphate, has had to grapple with near-continuous disturbances in the extreme eastern and western reaches of his domains, as well as revolts in Syria itself by pro-Umayyad tribes.

He also champions “jihad,” or holy war, against the Romans.

The caliphal forces invade imperial territory in 797, advancing to Ancyra.

Coenwulf's kin may have been connected to the royal family of the Hwicce, a subkingdom of Mercia around the lower river Severn.

It appears that Coenwulf's family were powerful, but they were not of recent Mercian royal lineage.

A letter written by Alcuin to the people of Kent in 797 laments that "scarcely anyone is found now of the old stock of kings".

Eardwulf of Northumbria had, like Coenwulf, gained his throne in 796, so Alcuin's meaning is not clear, but it may be that he intended it as a slur on Eardwulf or Coenwulf or on both.

Alcuin certainly holds negative views of Coenwulf, regarding him as a tyrant and criticizing him for putting aside one wife and taking another.

Alcuin writes to a Mercian nobleman to ask him to greet Coenwulf peaceably "if it is possible to do so", implying uncertainty about Coenwulf's policy towards the Carolingians.

China’s Tang emperor forges an alliance in 798 with a Muslim chieftain in the west and enlists the support of the Tai kingdom of Nanzhao against the belligerent Tibetans.

This alliance begins to turn the tide of intermittent battle against the Tibetans.

Obotrites led by Thrasco (or Drożko) and Franks led by legatus Eburisus defeat the Nordalbingian Saxons in the Battle of Bornhöved (or "battle on the Swentana river"), part of the effort by the Frankish emperor, Charles, to conquer and convert Old Saxony.

Danes had settled the northern part of Holstein, Slavic Obotrites the eastern part (Wagria), and Saxons from the south had migrated into western Holstein in the process of the migrations that occurred during sixth and seventh centuries onto the territory.

According to the chronicle, the Saxons lost four thousand warriors and were forced to flee the battlefield.

The victory of Charles in the battle finally breaks the resistance of the Nordalbingian Saxons to Christianization.

Charlemagne decides to massacre the Nordalbingian Saxons or deport them: their areas in Holstein become sparsely populated and are handed over to the Obotrites.

The caliph uses the threat of his superior army to force Irene—who has deliberately kept the imperial forces weak to forestall revolts against her—to reinstate the payment of tributes agreed to by the truce that had concluded the war of 778-83.

A Frankish Jew named Isaac, an interpreter for Charlemagne, king of the Franks and Lombards, is sent in 797 on a diplomatic mission to Harun al Rashid.

Although the two other members of the mission, Lantfrid and Sigimund, had died en route, Isaac succeeds in carrying out the mission to Baghdad.

He is also credited with establishing contact between the rabbis of France and the Geanim, the Jewish leaders in Babylonia.