It ended suddenly when the Bulgars, taken by surprise, panicked and fled; some 15,000 were captured. It was now that Basil meted out the punishment for which he is chiefly remembered. Of each hundred prisoners, ninety-nine were blinded; to one man a single eye was left, that he might conduct the remainder to the presence of their king. At the beginning of October the dreadful procession shuffled into the Tsar’s castle at Prespa. At the sight of his once-splendid army Samuel, already a sick man, collapsed in a fit of apoplexy, dying two days later. The Bulgars fought on until February 1018, and soon afterwards Basil made his formal entry into their capital. He was now sixty: after thirty-two years his task was accomplished. For the first time since the arrival of the Slavs the entire Balkan peninsula was under Byzantine control. In war Basil II – called Bulgaroctonus, the Bulgar-Slayer – had been merciless and brutal; with the coming of peace he proved moderate and understanding. The Bulgars were no longer his enemies; they were his subjects, and as such they deserved every consideration. Taxes were kept deliberately, low, and payable not in gold but in kind. The Patriarchate was downgraded to the status of an archbishopric