Nikephoros Phokas was born in A.D. 912, somewhere in Cappadocia presumably, to the powerful Phokas family. We don't know much about his early life, but he joined the Byzantine army, presumably when he first became recognised as an adult. Somewhat concurrently, he married his first wife, Stephano, and gave birth to a son, Bardas. Stephano died and Nikephoros did not remarry for many years, reportedly being chaste. On the theme of family, Bardas eventually died as well in what seems to be training exercise of some sort; Nikephoros is reported to have become vegetarian in mourning for the loss of Bardas. Something we'll touch on more in time is that Nikephoros was drawn to the philosophy of ascetic monks, one wonders how much of this was in response to his personal tragedies as opposed to the rigours of his formative years.
The Phokas family had been out of political favour, due to a sort-of failed coup, for Nikephoros' life; they weren't ostracised, but the most plum jobs went to men of other families, such as to John Kourkouas. As such, Nikephoros and Phokades more broadly really appear onto the scene with by assisting Constantine VII Porphyrogennitos escape his life under the thumb of the Lekapenoi family with a (counter-?)coup on January 27th A.D. 945. Constantine VII now gives the empire's top military positions to the Phokades. Bardas Phokas, Nikephoros' father, becomes the empire's Domestic, Nikephoros himself is made strategos (general) of the Anatolikon Theme, and his two younger brothers, Leo and Constantine, are made strategoi of two smaller Themes. At the age of thirty three, Nikephoros is the second-most-important general in the Byzantine military. Disappointingly, we don't know what he did for the next ten years. Presumably, he commanded sections of his father's army and saw both defeats and victories in that time period. You see, Bardas Phokas wasn't a young man, becoming Domestic, as he did, at the age of sixty-seven. Whilst Bardas, certainly an impressive commander in his youth, saw some victories against the Hamdanids, Sayf al-Dawla, more on him later, managed to best the Byzantines in 952, 953 and 954. In the 953 battle at Marash, Constantine Phokas was captured; he would die shortly after in a prison in Aleppo with the Phokades aligning behind the viewpoint that he'd been poisoned and the Hamdanids claiming it was an unavoidable illness. Regardless of the truth, Bardas Phokas executed a number of Hamdanid prisoners and the war escalated to levels that seemingly neither side could back down from. However, Bardas wouldn't be the man to pursue this conflict, as Constantine VII replaced the seventy-seven year old Bardas with his forty-three year old son, Nikephoros whose conduct from 945-955 is unknowable, but must have been impressive enough to warrant the promotion.
To keep the narrative details slightly to the side for now, Nikephoros successfully reformed the military, oversaw victories on land and sea, and pursued a fundamentally winning strategy for the next seven to eight years, notably conquering Adata (Hadath) in A.D. 957 and the island of Crete in A.D. 961 and sacking the Sayf al-Dawla's capital of Aleppo at the end of A.D. 962.
Constantine VII had died in A.D. 959 and his son Romanos II took the throne in a peaceful transition of power. Romanos II would unexpectedly die at the age of twenty-five or so in A.D. 963. Theophano, Romanos II's wife, notably had given birth to two sons, who would eventually become the emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII, but, for now, they're six and two respectively. Here, Nikephoros returns home as the conquering hero with an army at his back and the royal family needs a regent. However, the eunuch Joseph Bringas is given that position. According to my simplified retelling of Leo the Deacon's history, Bringas had to allow Nikephoros to celebrate a triumph for his successes, but the popularity that Nikephoros gained during that made Bringas fearful. Bringas attempted to persuade Nikephoros' nephew, John Tzimiskes, the man who would some day cut off Nikephoros' head, to arrest him. John revealed the plot and Nikephoros was acclaimed emperor by his troops, marching to the capital to depose Bringas from the regency. Through a people's uprising to support their hero and Basil Lekapenos' long-standing and now well-armed grudge agaisnt Bringas, Nikephoros unquestionably becomes the emperor, managing to keep the limited blood off of his hands.Nikephoros would marry the young and beautiful Theophano, but they would have no children of their own.
Nikephoros came to power as the leading general of his day and now he would leverage the very considerable power of the state behind an enhanced and expanded military apparatus. Nikephoros would personally wield this power to conquer Cilicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, to practically subjugate the Hamdanids of Aleppo and to bring the sizeable Armenian principality of Taron into the empire via diplomacy, such was the pre-eminence of the Byzantines that Nikephoros built. During this time, Nikephoros comissioned and penned several military treatises to keep the empire's generals up-to-speed with the tactics and strategies that he'd led the development of; these treatises are a significant primary source for us to this day.
However, Nikephoros regrettably oversaw significant civil strife in the capital in response to several fatal accidents and the burden of his higher taxation, needed to fund his yearly campaigns. The specifics again will be discussed at a later time and also their significance for a judgement on Nikephoros' capability as a ruler of civilians rather than soldiers.
Soon after the conquest of Antioch, on the 11th December 969, John Tzimiskes and a number of co-conspirators, who'd also been spurned by Nikephoros' pride during his time as emperor, broke into the palace, via a small rowing vessel and a rope-hoisted basket and murdered him in his sleep. John Tzimiskes would become John I Tzimiskes; his notably good governance and extraordinary luck would put a bookend to the revenge of any of the Phokades and so Nikephoros died unavenged, but lauded by almost all in the Byzantine Empire for his accomplishments.
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