In order to successfully counter the rebel, however, Basil and his leading minister, the "parakoimomenos" Basil Lekapenos, had been forced to recall the general Bardas Phokas the Younger, the nephew of Emperor Nikephoros II, from exile in 978 and appoint him in command of the eastern armies. After his victory over Skleros, Phokas and his adherents now began plotting to overthrow the emperor. The conflict did not break out immediately, but both sides settled in what the historian Mark Whittow terms a "cold war". In 985, the emperor moved first by sacking or demoting a number of eastern generals loyal to the Phokas clan: Bardas Phokas himself was demoted to "doux" of Antioch and Eustathios Maleinos was discharged from the army. In 986, however, after the humiliating defeat of Basil himself by the Bulgarians at the Gates of Trajan and the return of Skleros from exile in Baghdad, the emperor was forced to re-appoint Bardas Phokas as commander-in-chief of the East. Phokas soon tricked Skleros into a meeting and placed him under arrest, but now the decisive conflict over the throne was inevitable: on 15 August or 14 September 987, in Maleinos's house in the Charsianon theme, the assembled leading aristocratic families proclaimed Phokas as emperor.