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Pechenegs or Patzinaks also known as Besenyők, were a semi-nomadic steppe people of Central Asia that spoke a Turkic language. In the 8th and 9th centuries they inhabited the region between the lower Volga, Don and the Urals. The Pechenegs controlled much of the southwestern Eurasian steppes and the Crimean Peninsula during the 9th century.
The Pechenegs were kept as allies by the Byzantium who used them to fend off the more dangerous tribes like the Varangian Rus and Magyars. This was an old ploy used quite often by the Byzantines, to play off one enemy tribe against another potential enemy.
The Pechenegs, having been expelled from their former homeland by the Uz, another Turkic steppe people who also took most of their livestock and other possessions. They were also being pushed, by an alliance of the Oghuz, Kimeks and Karluks, who themselves were defeated by the Samanids. Driven further west 889 by the Khazars and Cumans, the Pechenegs in turn drove the Magyars 892 west of the Dnieper River.
In 894 the Bulgars went to war against Byzantium and early in 895, the Byzantine emperor Leo Grammaticus invoked the help of the Hungarians. The Magyars obliged him and sent an army, under the command of Levente, into Bulgaria. Levente conducted a brilliant campaign and occupied the Bulgarian capital, at the same time, a Byzantine army entered Bulgaria from the south. Caught in a vice of Magyar and Byzantine forces, the Bulgarian Tsar Simeon I soon realized that he could not fight a war on two fronts and so he quickly concluded an armistice with the Byzantines. In addition to this Simeon, in turn, employed the help of the Pechenegs, to help fend off the Magyars. The Pechenegs were so successful that they drove out the Magyars left behind in Etelköz Pontic steppes and forced them westward up the lower Danube, Transdanubia and towards the Carpathian Basin. Which the Magyars permanently settled 895-896 the regions of old Pannonia and Dacia. What would become the Kingdom of Hungary.
A Long-time menace to Kievan Rus, Pecheneg warriors ambushed and killed Sviatoslav I, Prince of Kiev in 972. According to the Chronicle of Bygone Years, the Pecheneg Khan made a chalice of Sviatoslav's skull.
After centuries of Balkan warfare involving the Byzantine Empire, Bulgars, Varangian Rus, and Magyars the Pechenegs were routed at Levounion by a combined Byzantine and Cuman army in 1061. Attacked again 1064 by the Cumans, many Pechenegs were slain or absorbed. After their besieging of Constantinople 1091, they were virtually annihilated by Emperor Alexius I. Later there were significant communities of Pechenegs settled in Hungary. However, the Pechenegs ceased to be a distinctive people and assimulated with neighboring tribes, like the Bulgars, Magyars and Gagauz.
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