Crossbow fire from Song Dynasty troops soundly defeats the war elephant corps of the Southern Han at Shao.

The Southern Han state is forced to submit to the Song Dynasty, ending not only Southern Han rule, but also the first regular war elephant corps employed in a Chinese army that had gained the Southern Han victories throughout the tenth century.

The Bulgarians, now under Kievan sponsorship, attack the empire in 971, and Emperor John leads his forces against their capital, captures the puppet tsar installed by Sviatoslav, and forces them to recognize Constantinople’s suzerainty.

Following their success at Preslav, …

…Tzimiskes' forces proceed to lay siege to the northern fortress of Dorostolon, where Sviatoslav had been forced to flee.

The imperial army is reinforced by a fleet of three hundred ships equipped with Greek fire.

There are several engagements before the walls of the city, which demonstrated to the Greeks that the Rus' lack skill in cavalry warfare.

Among the casualties are the Emperor's relative, Ioannes Kourkouas (whose severed head is displayed by the Rus from one of the towers) and the second-in-command in Sviatoslav's army, a certain Ikmor (who is killed by Anemas, a son of the Cretan emir, in revenge for Ikmor's assassination of his father during the Empire’s siege of Crete).

The Rus' and their Bulgarian allies are reduced to extremities by famine.

In order to appease their gods, they drown chickens in the Danube, but the sacrifices fail to improve their position.

As their hardships become intense, two thousand Rus' warriors (including some women) sally out at night, defeat an imperial force and go in search of supplies to the Danube; they later rejoin the besieged.

The Rus' feel they cannot break the siege and after sixty days agree to sign a peace treaty with the Empire, whereby they renounce their interests towards the Bulgarian lands and the city of Chersonesos in Crimea.

Svyatoslav bitterly remarks that all his allies (Magyars, Pechenegs) had betrayed him during this decisive moment.

He is allowed to evacuate his army to Berezan Island, while the Greeks enter Dorostolon and rename it Theodoropolis, after the reigning empress Theodora.

The Greek emperor returns to Constantinople in triumph after Sviatoslav had come to terms and set out for Kiev.

Far from liberating Bulgaria as he had claimed, John brings along Boris II and his family, together with the contents of the Bulgarian imperial treasury in 971.

In a public ceremony in Constantinople, Boris II is ritually divested of his imperial insignia and is given the imperial court title of magistros as compensation.

The Bulgarian lands in Thrace and lower Moesia now become part of the Empire and are placed under imperial governors.

Bisutun will maintain good relations with the Buyids for the rest of his reign.

He has married a daughter of 'Adud al-Daula, the eldest son of Rukn al-Daula, and in 971 the Caliph al-Muti, who is a Buyid puppet, confirms upon Bisutun the title of Zahir al-Daula.

The corpse of the popular cult figure Saint Swithin, a ninth-century English Bishop of Winchester, had been buried out of doors, rather than in his cathedral, apparently at his own request, so that the "sweet rain of heaven" could fall on his grave.

Following persistent reports of miracles at his original grave, in 971 it was decided to move his body to a new indoor shrine, and it is said that the ceremony was delayed by forty days of torrential rain, a sign of Swithun's displeasure at the move.

Swithun, unsurprisingly, is regarded as one of the saints to whom one should pray in the event of drought.

Sviatoslav, in the spring of 972 returning with a small retinue from his successful campaign against the Bulgarian Empire to Kievan Rus, is ambushed and killed by the Pechenegs (a Turkic people) near the cataracts of the Dnieper River.

According to the Primary Chronicle, the Pecheneg Khan Kurya makes a chalice from his skull, a traditional steppe nomad custom.

The greatest of the Varangian princes of early Russo-Ukrainian history, Sviatoslav is to be the last non-Christian ruler of the Kievan state.

His three heirs will in 976 initiate a civil war for their father’s vacant throne.

Otto I, German king from 936 and Holy Roman emperor from 962, has consolidated the German Reich by his suppression of rebellious vassals and his decisive victory over the Hungarians.

His use of the church as a stabilizing influence has created a secure empire and stimulated a cultural renaissance.

As in France under the Carolingian monarchs, German Jews are generally under the Emperor's protection and, although favorably treated, are regarded as possessions of the Emperor.

The burghers or feudal barons are generally hostile to Jews, but in Germany the Emperor, for the most part, controls the situation, and German Jews are neither expelled nor forcibly converted.

Because Jews are prohibited from owning land, commerce is the only occupation open to them.

In the individual towns, the Jews are offered privileges, usually through a contract whereby they will be protected by the crown in return for financial fealty.

Boleslav's daughter Dobrawa had in 965 married the pagan Piast prince Mieszko I to strengthen the Bohemian-Polish alliance, and has helped bring Christianity to Poland.

Boleslav's wife may have been Biagota.

He is succeeded in 972 by his oldest son Boleslaus the Pious.

Much of Mieszko’s military activity is along the Baltic coast, in the territory later called Pomerania, fighting with the tribes of Wieletes and Volinians south of the Baltic Sea, and their ally, the Saxon count Wichman.

He defeats Dietrich of Haldensleben, the first Margrave of the Northern March, at Cedynia in 972.

Dietrich, a harsh overlord, had helped Adalbert, Archbishop of Magdeburg, plot the downfall of Count Gero of Alselben.