The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World Volume VII Part 11

It is creditable to Justinian that he did not allow the ill-success of his lieutenant to lead to his recall or disgrace. On the contrary, he chose exactly the time of his greatest depression to give him the t.i.tle of "General of the East." Belisarius upon this a.s.sembled at Daras an imposing force, composed of Romans and allies, the latter being chiefly Ma.s.sagetse. The entire number amounted to 25,000 men; and with this army he would probably have a.s.sumed the offensive, had not the Persian general of the last campaign, Perozes the Mihran, again appeared in the field, at the head of 40,000 Persians and declared his intention of besieging and taking Daras. With the insolence of an Oriental he sent a message to Belisarius, requiring him to have his bath prepared for the morrow, as after taking the town he would need that kind of refreshment.

Belisarius contented himself, in reply, with drawing out his troops in front of Daras in a position carefully prepared beforehand, where both his centre and his flanks would be protected by a deep ditch, outside of which there would be room to act for his cavalry. Perozes, having reconnoitred the position, hesitated to attack it without a greater advantage of numbers, and sent hastily to Nisibis for 10,000 more soldiers, while he allowed the day to pa.s.s without anything more serious than a demonstration of his calvary against the Roman left, and some insignificant single combats.

The next morning his reinforcement arrived; and after some exchange of messages with Belisarius, which led to no result, he commenced active operations. Placing his infantry in the centre, and his horse upon either wing, as the Romans had likewise done, and arranging his infantry so that one half should from time to time relieve the other, he a.s.saulted the Roman line with a storm of darts and arrows. The Romans replied with their missile weapons; but the Persians had the advantage of numbers; they were protected by huge wattled s.h.i.+elds; and they were more accustomed to this style of warfare than their adversaries. Still the Romans held out; but it was a relief to them when the missile weapons were exhausted on both sides, and a closer fight began along the whole line with swords and spears. After a while the Roman left was in difficulties. Here the Cadiseni (Cadusians?) under Pituazes routed their opponents, and were pursuing them hastily when the Ma.s.sagetic horse, commanded by Sunicas and Aigan, and three hundred Heruli under a chief called Pharas, charged them on their right flank, and at once threw them into disorder. Three thousand fell, and the rest were driven back upon their main body, which, still continued to fight bravely. The Romans did not push their advantage, but were satisfied to reoccupy the ground from which they had been driven.

Scarcely was the battle re-established in this quarter when the Romans found themselves in still greater difficulties upon their right.

Here Perozes had determined to deliver his main attack. The corps of Immortals, which he had kept in reserve, and such troops as he could spare from his centre, were secretly ma.s.sed upon his own left, and charged the Roman right with such fury that it was broken and began a hasty retreat. The Persians pursued in a long column, and were carrying all before them, when once more an impetuous flank charge of the barbarian cavalry, which now formed an important element in the Roman armies, changed the face of affairs, and indeed decided the fortune of the day. The Persian column was actually cut in two by the Ma.s.sagetic horse; those who had advanced the furthest were completely separated from their friends, and were at once surrounded and slain. Among them was the standard-bearer of Baresmanes, who commanded the Persian left.

The fall of this man increased the general confusion. In vain did the Persian column, checked in its advance, attempt an orderly retreat. The Romans a.s.saulted it in front and on both flanks, and a terrible carnage ensued. The crowning disaster was the death of Baresmanes, who was slain by Sunicas, the Ma.s.sa-Goth; whereupon the whole Persian army broke and fled without offering any further resistance. Here fell 5000, including numbers of the "Immortals." The slaughter would have been still greater, had not Belisarius and his lieutenant, Termogenes, with wise caution restrained the Roman troops and recalled them quickly from the pursuit of the enemy, content with the success which they had achieved. It was so long since a Roman army had defeated a Persian one in the open field that the victory had an extraordinary value, and it would have been foolish to risk a reverse in the attempt to give it greater completeness.

While these events took place in Mesopotamia, the Persian arms were also unsuccessful in the Armenian highlands, whither Kobad had sent a second army to act offensively against Rome, under the conduct of a certain Mermeroes. The Roman commanders in this region were Sittas, the former colleague of Belisarius, and Dorotheas, a general of experience. Their troops did not amount to more than half the number of the enemy, yet they contrived to inflict on the Persians two defeats, one in their own territory, the other in Roman Armenia. The superiority thus exhibited by the Romans encouraged desertions to their side; and in some instances the deserters were able to carry over with them to their new friends small portions of Persian territory.

In the year A.D. 531, after a vain attempt at negotiating terms of peace with Rome, the Persians made an effort to recover their laurels by carrying the war into a new quarter and effecting a new combination.

Alamandarus, sheikh of the Saracenic Arabs, had long been a bitter enemy of the Romans, and from his safe retreat in the desert had been accustomed for fifty years to ravage, almost at his will, the eastern provinces of the empire. Two years previously he had carried fire and sword through the regions of upper Syria, had burned the suburbs of Chalcis, and threatened the Roman capital of the East, the rich and luxurious Antioch. He owed, it would seem, some sort of allegiance to Persia, although practically he was independent, and made his expeditions when and where he pleased. However, in A.D. 531, he put himself at the disposal of Persia, proposed a joint expedition, and suggested a new plan of campaign. "Mesopotamia and Osrhoene," he said, "on which the Persians were accustomed to make their attacks, could better resist them than almost any other part of the Roman territory, In these provinces were the strongest of the Roman cities, fortified according to the latest rules of art, and plentifully supplied with every appliance of defensive warfare. There, too, were the best and bravest of the Roman troops, and an army more numerous than Rome had ever employed against Persia before. It would be most perilous to risk an encounter on this ground. Let Persia, however, invade the country beyond the Euphrates, and she would find but few obstacles. In that region there were no strong fortresses, nor was there any army worth mention. Antioch itself, the richest and most populous city of the Roman East, was without a garrison, and, if it were suddenly a.s.saulted, could probably be taken. The incursion might be made, Antioch sacked, and the booty carried off into Persian territory before the Romans in Mesopotamia received intelligence of what was happening." Kobad listened with approval, and determined to adopt the bold course suggested to him.

He levied a force of 15,000 cavalry, and, placing it under the command of a general named Azarethes, desired him to take Alamandarus for his guide and make a joint expedition with him across the Euphrates. It was understood that the great object of the expedition was the capture of Antioch.

The allied army crossed the Euphrates below Circesium, and ascended the right bank of the river till they neared the lat.i.tude of Antioch, when they struck westward and reached Gabbula (the modern Jabul), on the north sh.o.r.e of the salt lake now known as the Sabakhah. Here they learned to their surprise that the movement, which they had intended to be wholly unknown to the Romans, had come to the ears of Belisarius, who had at once quitted Daras, and proceeded by forced marches to the defence of Syria, into which he had thrown himself with an army of 20,000 men, Romans, Isaurians, Lycaonians, and Arabs. His troops were already interposed between the Persians and their longed-for prey, Belisarius having fixed his headquarters at Chalcis, half a degree to the west of Gabbula, and twenty-five miles nearer to Antioch. Thus balked of their purpose, and despairing of any greater success than they had already achieved, the allies became anxious to return to Persia with the plunder of the Syrian towns and villages which they had sacked on their advance. Belisarius was quite content that they should carry off their spoil, and would have considered it a sufficient victory to have frustrated the expedition without striking a blow. But his army was otherwise minded; they were eager for battle, and hoped doubtless to strip the flying foe of his rich booty. Belisarius was at last forced, against his better judgment, to indulge their desires and allow an engagement, which was fought on the banks of the Euphrates, nearly opposite Callinicus. Here the conduct of the Roman troops in action corresponded but ill to the anxiety for a conflict. The infantry indeed stood firm, notwithstanding that they fought fasting; but the Saracenic Arabs, of whom a portion were on the Roman side, and the Isaurian and Lycaonian horse, who had been among the most eager for the fray, offered scarcely any resistance; and, the right wing of the Romans being left exposed by their flight, Belisarius was compelled to make his troops turn their faces to the enemy and their backs to the Euphrates, and in this position, where defeat would have been ruin, to meet and resist all the a.s.saults of the foe until the shades of evening fell, and he was able to transport his troops in boats across the river. The honors of victory rested with the Persians, but they had gained no substantial advantage; and when Azarethes returned to his master he was not unjustly reproached with having sacrificed many lives for no appreciable result.

The raid into Syria had failed of its chief object; and Belisarius, though defeated, had returned, with the main strength of his army intact, into Mesopotamia. The battle of Callinicus was fought on Easter Eve, April 19.

Azarethes probably reached Ctesiphon and made his report to Kobad towards the end of the month. Dissatisfied with what Azarethes had achieved, and feeling that the season was not too far advanced for a second campaign, Kobad despatched an army under three chiefs, into Mesopotamia, where Sittas was now the princ.i.p.al commander on the Roman side, as Belisarius had been hastily summoned to Byzantium in order to be employed against the "Vandals" in Africa. This force found no one to resist in the open field, and was therefore able to invade Sophene and lay siege to the Roman fortress of Martyropolis. Martyropolis was ill provisioned, and its walls were out of repair. The Persians must soon have taken it, had not Sittas contrived to spread reports of a diversion which the Huns were about to make as Roman allies. Fear of being caught between two fires paralyzed the Persian commanders; and before events undeceived them, news arrived in the camp that Kobad was dead, and that a new prince sat upon the throne. Under these circ.u.mstances, Chanaranges, the chief of the Persian commanders, yielded to representations made by Sittas, that peace would now probably be made between the contending powers, and withdrew his army into Persian territory.

Kobad had, in fact, been seized with paralysis on the 8th of September, and after an illness which lasted only five days, had expired. Before dying, he had communicated to his chief minister, Mebodes, his earnest desire that Chosroes should succeed him upon the throne, and, acting under the advice of Mebodes, had formally left the crown to him by a will duly executed. He is said by a contemporary to have been eighty-two years old at his death, an age very seldom attained by an Oriental monarch. His long life was more than usually eventful, and he cannot be denied the praise of activity, perseverance, fertility of resource, and general military capacity. But he was cruel and fickle; he disgraced his ministers and his generals on insufficient grounds; he allowed himself, from considerations of policy, to smother his religious convictions; and he risked subjecting Persia to the horrors of a civil war, in order to gratify a favoritism which, however justified by the event, seems to have rested on no worthy motive. Chosroes was preferred on account of his beauty, and because he was the son of Kobad's best-loved wife, rather than for any good qualities; and inherited the kingdom, not so much because he had shown any capacity to govern as because he was his father's darling.

The coins of Kobad are, as might be expected from the length of his reign, very numerous. In their general appearance they resemble those of Zamasp, but do not exhibit quite so many stars and crescents. The legend on the obverse is either "Kavdt" or "Kavdt" afzui, i.e. "Kobad," or "May Kobad be increased." The reverse shows the regnal year, which ranges from eleven to forty-three, together with a mint-mark. The mint-marks, which are nearly forty in number, comprise almost all those of Perozes, together with about thirteen others. [PLATE XXII. Fig. 2.]

CHAPTER XX.

_Accession of Chosroes I. (a.n.u.s.h.i.+rwari). Conspiracy to dethrone him crushed. General Severity of his Government. He concludes Peace with Rome, A.D. 533. Terms of the Peace. Causes Which led to its Rupture.

First Roman War of Chosroes, A.D. 540-544. Second Roman War, A.D.

549-557. Eastern Wars. Conquest of Arabia Felix. Supposed Campaign in India. War with the Turks. Revolt of Persarmenia. Third Roman War, A.D.

572-579. Death of Chosroes._

The accession of Chosroes was not altogether undisputed, Kaoses, the eldest of the sons of Kobad, regarding himself as ent.i.tled to the crown by right of birth, a.s.sumed the insignia of royalty on the death of his father, and claimed to be acknowledged as monarch. But Mebodes, the Grand Vizier, interposed with the a.s.sertion of a const.i.tutional axiom, that no one had the right of taking the Persian crown until it was a.s.signed to him by the a.s.sembly of the n.o.bles. Kaoses, who thought he might count on the goodwill of the n.o.bles, acquiesced; and the a.s.sembly being convened, his claims were submitted to it. Hereupon Mebodes brought forward the formal testament of Kobad, which he had hitherto concealed, and, submitting it to the n.o.bles, exhorted them to accept as king the brave prince designated by a brave and successful father. His eloquence and authority prevailed; the claims of Kaoses and of at least one other son of Kobad were set aside; and, in accordance with his father's will, Chosroes was proclaimed lawful monarch of Persia.

But a party among the n.o.bles were dissatisfied with the decision to which the majority had come. They dreaded the restlessness, and probably feared the cruelty, of Chosroes. It might have been expected that they would have espoused the cause of the disappointed Kaoses, which had a solid basis of legality to rest upon; but, apparently, the personal character of Kaoses was unsatisfactory, or at any rate, there was another prince whose qualities conciliated more regard and aroused more enthusiasm. Zanies, the second son of Kobad, had distinguished himself repeatedly in the field, and was the idol of a considerable section of the nation, who had long desired that he should govern them.

Unfortunately, however, he possessed a disqualification fatal in the eyes of Orientals; he had, by disease or mischance, lost one of his eyes, and this physical blemish made it impossible that he should occupy the Persian throne. Under these circ.u.mstances an ingenious plan was. .h.i.t upon. In order to combine respect for law and usage with the practical advantage of being governed by the man of their choice, the discontented n.o.bles conceived the idea of conferring the crown on a son of Zames, a boy named after his grandfather Kobad, on whose behalf Zames would naturally be regent. Zames readily came into the plot; several of his brothers, and, what is most strange, Chosroes' maternal uncle, the Aspebed, supported him; the conspiracy seemed nearly sure of success, when by some accident it was discovered, and the occupant of the throne took prompt and effectual measures to crush it. Zames, Kaoses, and all the other sons of Kobad were seized by order of Chosroes, and, together with their entire male offspring, were condemned to death. The Aspebed, and the other n.o.bles found to have been accessory to the conspiracy, were, at the same time, executed. One prince alone, the intended puppet-king, Kobad, escaped, through the compa.s.sion of the Persian who had charge of him, and, after pa.s.sing many years in concealment, became a refugee at the Court of Constantinople, where he was kindly treated by Justinian.

When Chosroes had by these means secured himself against the claims of pretenders, he proceeded to employ equal severity in repressing the disorders, punis.h.i.+ng the crimes, and compelling the abject submission of his subjects. The heresiarch Mazdak, who had escaped the persecution inst.i.tuted in his later years by Kobad, and the sect of the Mazdakites, which, despite that persecution, was still strong and vigorous, were the first to experience the oppressive weight of his resentment; and the corpses of a hundred thousand martyrs blackening upon gibbets proved the determination of the new monarch to make his will law, whatever the consequences. In a similar spirit the hesitation of Mebodes to obey instantaneously an order sent him by the king was punished capitally, and with circ.u.mstances of peculiar harshness, by the stern prince, who did not allow grat.i.tude for old benefits to affect the judgments which he pa.s.sed on recent offences. Nor did signal services in the field avail to save Chanaranges, the n.o.bleman who preserved the young Kobad, from his master's vengeance. The conqueror of twelve nations, betrayed by an unworthy son, was treacherously entrapped and put to death on account of a single humane act which had in no way harmed or endangered the jealous monarch.

The fame of Chosroes rests especially on his military exploits and successes. On first ascending the throne he seems, however, to have distrusted his capacity for war; and it was with much readiness that he accepted the overtures for peace made by Justinian, who was anxious to bring the Eastern war to a close, in order that he might employ the talents of Belisarius in the reduction of Africa and Italy. A truce was made between Persia and Rome early in A.D. 532; and the truce was followed after a short interval by a treaty--known as "the endless peace"--whereby Rome and Persia made up their differences and arranged to be friends on the following conditions: (1) Rome was to pay over to Persia the sum of eleven thousand pounds of gold, or about half a million of our money, as her contribution towards the maintenance of the Caucasian defences, the actual defence being undertaken by Persia; (2) Daras was to remain a fortified post, but was not to be made the Roman head-quarters in Mesopotamia, which were to be fixed at Constantia; (3) the district of Pharangium and the castle of Bolon, which Rome had recently taken from Persia, were to be restored, and Persia on her part was to surrender the forts which she had captured in Lazica; (4) Rome and Persia were to be eternal friends and allies, and were to aid each other whenever required with supplies of men and money. Thus was terminated the thirty years' war, which, commencing in A.D. 502 by the attack of Kobad on Annastasius, was brought to a close in A.D. 532, and ratified by Justinian in the year following.

When Chosroes consented to subst.i.tute close relations of amity with Rome for the hereditary enmity which had been the normal policy of his house, he probably expected that no very striking or remarkable results would follow. He supposed that the barbarian neighbors of the empire on the north and on the west would give her arms sufficient employment, and that the balance of power in Eastern Europe and Western Asia would remain much as before. But in these expectations he was disappointed.

Justinian no sooner found his eastern frontier secure than he directed the whole force of the empire upon his enemies in the regions of the west, and in the course of half a dozen years (A.D. 533-539), by the aid of his great general, Belisarius, he destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals in the region about Carthage and Tunis, subdued the Moors, and brought to its last gasp the power of the Ostrogoths in Italy. The territorial extent of his kingdom was nearly doubled by these victories; his resources were vastly increased; the prestige of his arms was enormously raised; veteran armies had been formed which despised danger, and only desired to be led against fresh enemies; and officers had been trained capable of conducting operations of every kind, and confident, under all circ.u.mstances, of success. It must have been with feelings of dissatisfaction and alarm not easily to be dissembled that the Great King heard of his brother's long series of victories and conquests, each step in which const.i.tuted a fresh danger to Persia by aggrandizing the power whom she had chiefly to fear. At first his annoyance found a vent in insolent demands for a share of the Roman spoils, which Justinian thought it prudent to humor but, as time went on, and the tide of victory flowed more and more strongly in one direction, he became less and less able to contain himself, and more and more determined to renounce his treaty with Rome and renew the old struggle for supremacy.

His own inclination, a sufficiently strong motive in itself, was seconded and intensified by applications made to him from without on the part of those who had especial reasons for dreading the advance of Rome, and for expecting to be among her next victims. Witiges, the Ostrogoth king of Italy, and Ba.s.saces, an Armenian chief, were the most important of these applicants. Emba.s.sies from these opposite quarters reached Chosroes in the same year, A.D. 539, and urged him for his own security to declare war against Justinian before it was too late. "Justinian,"

the amba.s.sadors said, "aimed at universal empire. His aspirations had for a while been kept in check by Persia, and by Persia alone, the sole power in the world that he feared. Since the 'endless peace' was made, he had felt himself free to give full vent to his ambitious greed, had commenced a course of aggression upon all the other conterminous nations, and had spread war and confusion on all sides. He had destroyed the kingdom of the Vandals in Africa, conquered the Moors, deceived the Goths of Italy by professions of friends.h.i.+p, and then fallen upon them with all his forces, violated the rights of Armenia and driven it to rebellion, enslaved the Tzani and the Lazi, seized the Greek city of Bosporus, and the 'Isle of Palms' on the sh.o.r.es of the Red Sea, solicited the alliance of barbarous Huns and Ethiopians, striven to sow discord between the Persian monarch and his va.s.sals, and in every part of the world shown himself equally grasping and restless. What would be the consequence if Persia continued to hold aloof? Simply that all the other nations would in turn be destroyed, and she would find herself face to face with their destroyer, and would enjoy the poor satisfaction of being devoured last. But did she fear to be reproached with breaking the treaty and forfeiting her pledged word? Rome had already broken it by her intrigues with the Huns, the Ethiopians, and the Saracens; and Persia would therefore be free from reproach if she treated the peace as no longer existing. The treaty-breaker is not he who first draws the sword, but he who sets the example of seeking the other's hurt. Or did Persia fear the result of declaring war? Such fear was unreasonable, for Rome had neither troops, nor generals to oppose to a sudden Persian attack. Sittas was dead; Belisarius and the best of the Roman forces were in Italy. If Justinian recalled Belisarius, it was not certain that he would obey; and, in the worst case, it would be in favor of Persia that the Goths of Italy, and the Armenians who for centuries had been subjects of Rome, were now ready to make common cause with her." Thus urged, the Persian king determined on openly declaring war and making an attack in force on the eastern provinces of the empire.

The scene of contest in the wars between Rome and Persia had been usually either Mesopotamia or Armenia. On rare occasions only had the traditional policy been departed from, and attempts made to penetrate into the richer parts of the Roman East, and to inflict serious injury on the empire by carrying fire and sword into peaceful and settled provinces. Kobad, however, had in his later years ventured to introduce a new system, and had sent troops across the Euphrates into Syria in the hope of ravaging that fertile region and capturing its wealthy metropolis, Antioch. This example Chosroes now determined to follow.

Crossing the great stream in the lower portion of its course, he led his troops up its right bank, past Circesium, Zen.o.bia, and Callinicus, to Suron, a Roman town on the west side of the river. As this small place ventured to resist him, Chosroes, bent upon terrifying the other towns into submission, resolved to take a signal revenge. Though the garrison, after losing their commandant, made overtures for a surrender, he insisted on entering forcibly at one of the gates, and then, upon the strength of this violent entrance, proceeded to treat the city as one taken by storm, pillaged the houses, ma.s.sacred a large portion of the inhabitants, enslaved the others, and in conclusion set the place on fire and burned it to the ground. It was perhaps in a fit of remorse, though possibly only under the influence of greed, that shortly afterwards he allowed the neighboring bishop of Sergiopolis to ransom these unfortunate captives, twelve thousand, in number, for the modest sum of two hundred pounds of gold.

From Suron the invading army advanced to Hierapolis, without encountering the enemy, who did not dare to make any resistance in the open field, but sought the protection of walls and strongholds. The defences of Hierapolis were in tolerable order; its garrison was fairly strong; and the Great King therefore prudently resolved to allow the citizens to ransom themselves and their city at a moderate price. Two thousand pounds of silver was the amount fixed upon; and this sum was paid without any complaint by the Hierapolites. Plunder, not conquest, was already distinctly set before the invader's mind as his aim; and it is said that he even offered at this period to evacuate the Roman territory altogether upon receiving a thousand pounds of gold. But the Romans were not yet brought so low as to purchase a peace; it was thought that Antioch and the other important towns might successfully defy the Persian arms, and hoped that Justinian would soon send into the field an army strong enough to cope with that of his adversary. The terms, therefore, which Chosroes offered by the mouth of Megas, bishop of Berhcea, were rejected; the Antiochenes were exhorted to remain firm; Ephraim, the bishop, was denounced to the authorities for counselling submission; and it was determined to make no pacific arrangement, but to allow Chosroes to do his worst. The Persian, on his side, was not slack or remiss. No sooner had he received the ransom of Hierapolis than he advanced upon Berhoea (now Aleppo), which he reached in four days.

Observing that the defences were weak, he here demanded twice the ransom that he had accepted from the Hierapolites, and was only induced to forego the claim by the tears and entreaties of the good bishop, who convinced him at length that the Berhoeans could not pay so large a sum, and induced him to accept the half of it. A few more days' march brought him from Aleppo to the outskirts of Antioch; and after an interval of nearly three centuries the "Queen of the East," the richest and most magnificent of Oriental cities, was once more invested by Persian troops and threatened by a Sa.s.sanian monarch.

A great calamity had fallen upon Antioch only fourteen years previously.

The entire town had been ruined by a succession of terrible earthquakes, which commenced in October, A.D. 525, and terminated in August of the ensuing year. All for a time was havoc and disorder. A landslip had covered a portion of the city, and in the remainder almost every house was overthrown. But the liberality of Justinian, the spirit of the inhabitants, and the efforts of the governor, had effaced these disasters; and the city, when the Persians appeared before it, was in most respects grander and more magnificent than ever. The defences were, however, it would seem, imperfect. The citadel especially, which was on the high ground south of the city, had been constructed with small attention to the rules of engineering art, and was dominated by a height at a little distance, which ought to have been included within the walls. Nor was this deficiency compensated by any strength in the garrison, or any weight of authority or talent among those with whom rested the command. Justinian had originally sent his nephew, Germa.n.u.s, to conduct the defence of the Syrian capital, while Buzes, an officer who had gained some repute in the Armenian war, was entrusted with the general protection of the East until Belisarius should arrive from Italy; but Germa.n.u.s, after a brief stay, withdrew from Antioch into Cilicia, and Buzes disappeared without any one knowing whither he had betaken himself. Antioch was left almost without a garrison; and had not Theoctistus and Molatzes, two officers who commanded in the Lebanon, come to the rescue and brought with them a body of six thousand disciplined troops, it is scarcely possible that any resistance should have been made. As it was, the resistance was brief and ineffectual.

Chosroes at once discerned the weak point in the defences, and, having given a general order to the less trusty of his troops to make attacks upon the lower town in various places, himself with the flower of the army undertook the a.s.sault upon the citadel. Here the commanding position so unaccountably left outside the walls enabled the Persians to engage the defenders almost on a level, and their superior skill in the use of missile weapons soon brought the garrison into difficulties. The a.s.sailants, however, might perhaps still have been repulsed, had not an unlucky accident supervened, which, creating a panic, put it in the power of the Persians by a bold movement to enter the place. The Romans, cramped for room upon the walls, had extemporized some wooden stages between the towers, which they hung outside by means of ropes. It happened that, in the crush and tumult, one of these stages gave way; the ropes broke, and the beams fell with a crash to the earth, carrying with them a number of the defenders. The noise made by the fall was great, and produced a general impression that the wall itself had been broken down; the towers and battlements were at once deserted; the Roman soldiers rushed to the gates and began to quit the town; while the Persians took advantage of the panic to advance their scaling ladders, to mount the walls, and to make themselves masters of the citadel. Thus Antioch was taken. The prudence of Chosroes was shown in his quietly allowing the armed force to withdraw; his resolve to trample down all resistance appeared in his slaughter of the Antiochone youth, who with a n.o.ble recklessness continued the conflict after the soldiers had fled; his wish to inspire terror far and wide made him deliver the entire city, with few exceptions, to the flames; while his avarice caused him to plunder the churches, and to claim as his own the works of art, the marbles, bronzes, tablets, and pictures, with which the Queen of the Roman East was at this time abundantly provided. But, while thus gratifying his most powerful pa.s.sions, he did not lose sight of the opportunity to conclude an advantageous peace. Justinian's amba.s.sadors had long been pressing him to come to terms with their master. He now consented to declare the conditions on which he was ready to make peace and withdraw his army. Rome must pay him, as an indemnity for the cost of the war, the sum of five thousand pounds of gold, and must also contract to make a further payment of five hundred pounds of gold annually, not as a tribute, but as a fair contribution towards the expense of maintaining the Caspian Gates and keeping out the Huns. If hostages were given him, he would consent to abstain from further acts of hostility while Justinian was consulted on these proposals, and would even begin at once to withdraw his army. The amba.s.sadors readily agreed to these terms, and it was understood that a truce would be observed until Justinian's answer should be delivered to Chosroes.

But the Great King, in thus formulating the terms on which he would be content to make peace, did not intend to tie his own hands, or to allow the Syrian cities before which he had not yet appeared to be quit of him without the payment of ransom. After visiting Seleucia, the port of Antioch at the mouth of the Orontes, bathing in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, and offering sacrifice to the (setting?) sun upon the sh.o.r.e, he announced his intention of proceeding to Apameia, a city on the middle Orontes, which was celebrated for its wealth, and particularly for its possession of a fragment of the "true cross,"

enshrined in a case which the pious zeal of the faithful had enriched with gold and jewels of extraordinary value. Received peacefully into the city by the submissive inhabitants, instead of fixing their ransom at a definite sum, he demanded and obtained all the valuables of the sacred treasury, including the precious relic which the Apamaeans regarded as the most important of their possessions. As, however, it was the case, and not its contents, that he coveted, while he carried off the former, he readily restored the latter to the prayers of the bishop and inhabitants.

From Apameia Chosroes returned to Antioch, and after witnessing the games of the amphitheatre and securing victory to the green champion because Justinian preferred the blue, he set out at last on his return to Persia, taking care to visit, upon his way to the Euphrates, the city of Chalcis, the only important place in Northern Syria that had hitherto escaped him. The Chalcidians were required not only to ransom themselves by a sum of money, but to give up to Chosroes the Roman soldiers who garrisoned their town. By a perjury that may well be forgiven them, they avoided the more important concession, but they had to satisfy the avarice of the conqueror by the payment of two hundred pounds of gold.

The Persian host then continued its march, and reaching the Euphrates at Obbane, in the neighborhood of Barbalissus, crossed by a bridge of boats in three days. The object of Chosroes in thus changing his return line of march was to continue in Roman Mesopotamia the course which he had adopted in Syria since the conclusion of the truce--i.e. to increase his spoil by making each important city ransom itself. Edessa, Constantina, and Daras were successively visited, and purchased their safety by a contribution. According to Procopius, the proceedings before Daras were exceptional. Although Chosroes, before he quitted Edossa, had received a communication from Justinian accepting the terms arranged with the Roman envoys at Antioch, yet, when he reached Daras, he at once resolved upon its siege. The city was defended by two walls, an outer one of moderate strength, and an inner one sixty feet high, with towers at intervals, whose height was a hundred feet. Chosroes, having invested the place, endeavored to penetrate within the defences by means of a mine; but, his design having been betrayed, the Romans met him with a countermine, and completely foiled his enterprise. Unwilling to spend any more time on the siege, the Persian monarch upon this desisted from his attempt, and accepted the contribution of a thousand pounds of silver as a sufficient redemption for the great fortress.

Such is the account of the matter given to us by Procopius, who is our only extant authority for the details of this war. But the account is violently improbable. It represents Chosroes as openly flying in the face of a treaty the moment that he had concluded it, and as departing in a single instance from the general tenor of his proceedings in all other cases. In view of the great improbability of such a course of action, it is perhaps allowable to suppose that Procopius has been for once carried away by partisans.h.i.+p, and that the real difference between the case of Daras and the other towns consisted in this, that Daras alone refused to pay its ransom, and Chosroes had, in consequence, to resort to hostilities in order to enforce it.

Still, no doubt, the whole conduct of Chosroes in enforcing ransoms from the towns after the conclusion of the truce was open to serious question, and Justinian was quite justified in treating his proceedings as a violation of his recent engagements. It is not unlikely that, even without any such excuse, he would shortly have renewed the struggle, since the return of Belisarius in triumph from the Italian war had placed at his service for employment in the East a general from whose abilities much was naturally expected. As it was, Justinian was able, on receiving intelligence of the fines levied on Apameia, Chalcis, Edessa, Constantina, and Daras, and of the hostile acts committed against the last-named place, with great show of reason and justice, to renounce the recently concluded peace, and to throw on the ill faith of Chosroes the blame of the rupture.

The Persian prince seems to have paid but little heed to the denunciation. He pa.s.sed the winter in building and beautifying a Persian Antioch in the neighborhood of Ctesiphon, a.s.signing it as a residence to his Syrian captives, for whose use he constructed public baths and a s.p.a.cious hippodrome, where the entertainments familiar to them from their youth were reproduced by Syrian artists. The new city was exempt from the jurisdiction of Persian satraps, and was made directly dependent upon the king, who supplied it with corn gratuitously, and allowed it to become an inviolable asylum for all such Greek slaves as should take shelter in it, and be acknowledged as their kinsmen by any of the inhabitants. A model of Greek civilization was thus brought into close contact with the Persian court, which could amuse itself with the contrasts, if it did not learn much from the comparison, of European and Asiatic manners and modes of thought.

The campaign of A.D. 540 was followed by one of a very different character in A.D. 541. An unexpected offer suddenly made to the Persian king drew him from his capital, together with the bulk of his troops, to one of the remotest portions of the Persian territory, and allowed the Romans, instead of standing on their defence, to a.s.sume an aggressive in Mesopotamia, and even to retaliate the invasion which the year before Chosroes had conducted into the heart of their empire. The hostile operations of A.D. 541 had thus two distinct and far-distant scenes; in the one set the Persians, in the other the Romans, took the offensive; the two wars, for such they in reality were, scarcely affected one another; and it will therefore be convenient to keep the accounts of them distinct and separate. To commence with.

I. The LAZIO WAR.--Lazica had been a dependency of Rome from the time when Tzath, upon his conversion to Christianity, professed himself the va.s.sal of Justin, and received the insignia of royalty from his new patron (A.D. 522). The terms of the connection had been at the first honorable to the weaker nation, which paid no tribute, admitted no Roman garrison, and was troubled by no Roman governor. As time went on, however, the Romans gradually encroached upon the rights of their dependants; they seized and fortified a strong post, called Petra, upon the coast, appointed a commandant who claimed an authority as great as that of the Lazic king, and established a commercial monopoly which pressed with great severity upon the poorer cla.s.ses of the Lazi. Under these circ.u.mstances the nation determined on revolt; and in the winter of A.D. 540-1 Lazic amba.s.sadors visited the court of Persia, exposed the grievances of their countrymen, and besought Chosroes to accept their submission, and extend to them the protection of his government. The province was distant, and possessed few attractions; whatever the tales told of its ancient wealth, or glories, or trade, in the time of Chosroes it was poor and unproductive, dependent on its neighbors for some of the necessaries and all the conveniences of life, and capable of exporting nothing but timber, slaves, and skins. It might have been expected, under such circ.u.mstances, that the burden of the protectorate would have been refused; but there was an advantage, apparent or real, in the position of the country, discovered by the sagacity of Chosroes or suggested to him by the interested zeal of the envoys, which made its possession seem to the Persian king a matter of the highest importance, and induced him to accept the offer made him without a moment's delay.

Lazica, the ancient Colchis and the modern Mingrelia and Imeritia, bordered upon the Black Sea, which the Persian dominions did not as yet touch. Once in possesion of this tract, Chosroes conceived that he might launch a fleet upon the Euxine, command its commerce, threaten or ravage its sh.o.r.es, and even sail against Constantinople and besiege the Roman emperor in his capital. The Persian king therefore acceded to the request of the envoys, and, pretending to be called into Iberia by a threatened invasion of the Huns, led a large army to the Lazic border, was conducted into the heart of the country by the envoys, received the submission of Gubazes, the king, and then, pressing on to the coast, formed the siege of Petra, where the Roman forces were collected. Petra offered a stout resistance, and repulsed more than one Persian a.s.sault; but it was impossible for the small garrison to cope with the numbers, the engineering skill, and the ardor of the a.s.sailants. After the loss of their commandant, Johannes, and the fall of one of the princ.i.p.al towers, the soldiers capitulated; Petra was made over to the Persians, who restored and strengthened its defences, and Lazica became for the time a Persian province.

II. The War in Mesopotamia.--Belisarius, on reaching the eastern frontier, fixed his head-quarters at Daras, and, finding that the Persians had no intention of invading Syria or Roman Mesopotamia, resolved to lead his troops into the enemy's territory. As his forces were weak in numbers, ill-armed, and ill-supplied, he could scarcely hope to accomplish any great enterprise; but it was important to recover the Roman prestige after the occurrences of the preceding year, and to show that Rome was willing to encounter in the open field any force that the Persians could bring against her. He therefore crossed the frontier and advanced in the direction of Nisibis, less with the intention of attacking the town than of distinctly offering battle to the troops collected within it. His scheme succeeded; a small force, which he threw out in advance, drew the enemy from the walls; and their pursuit of this detachment brought them into contact with the main army of Belisarius, which repulsed them and sent them flying into the town.

Having thus established his superiority in the field, the Roman general, though he could not attack Nisibis with any prospect of success, was able to adopt other offensive measures. He advanced in person a day's march beyond Nisibis, and captured the fort of Sisauranon. Eight hundred Persian cavalry of the first cla.s.s were made prisoners, and sent by Belisarius to Byzantium, where they were despatched by Justinian to Italy, where they served against the Goths. Arethas, the chief of the Saracens who fought on the side of Rome, was sent still further in advance. The orders given him were to cross the Tigris into a.s.syria, and begin to ravage it, but to return within a short time to the camp, and bring a report of the strength of the Persians beyond the river. If the report was favorable, Belisarius intended to quit Mesopotamia, and take the whole Roman force with him into a.s.syria. His plans, however, were frustrated by the selfish Arab, who, wis.h.i.+ng to obtain the whole a.s.syrian spoil for himself, dismissed his Roman troops, proceeded to plunder the rich province on his own account, and sent Belisarius no intelligence of what he was so doing. After waiting at Sisauranon till the heats of summer had decimated his army, the Roman general was compelled to retreat by the discontent of the soldiery and the representations of his princ.i.p.al officers. He withdrew his forces within the Roman frontier without molestation from the enemy, and was shortly afterwards summoned to Constantinople to confer on the state of affairs with, the emperor.

The military operations of the next year (A.D. 542) were comparatively unimportant. Chosroes collected a large army, and, repeating the movement of A.D. 540, made his appearance in Commagene early in the year, intending to press forward through Syria into Palestine, and hoping to make himself master of the sacred treasures which he knew to be acc.u.mulated in the Holy City of Jerusalem. He found the provincial commanders, Buzes and Justus, despondent and unenterprising, declined to meet him in the field, and content to remain shut up within the walls of Hierapolis. Had these been his only opponents the campaign would probably have proved a success; but, at the first news of his invasion, Justinian despatched Belisarius to the East, for the second time, and this able general, by his arts or by his reputation, succeeded in arresting the steps of Chosroes and frustrating his expedition.

Belisarius took up his head-quarters at Europus, on the Euphrates, a little to the south of Zeugma, and, spreading his troops on both banks of the river, appeared both to protect the Roman province and to threaten the return of the enemy. Chosroes having sent an emissary to the Roman camp under the pretence of negotiating, but really to act the part of a spy, was so impressed (if we may believe Procopius) by the accounts which he received of the ability of the general and the warlike qualities of his soldiers, that he gave up the idea of advancing further, and was content to retire through Roman Mesopotamia into his own territories. He is said even to have made a convention that he would commit no hostile act as he pa.s.sed through the Roman province; but if so, he did not keep the engagement. The city of Callinicus lay in his way; its defences were undergoing repairs, and there was actually a gap in one place where the old wall had been pulled down and the new one had not yet been built. The Persian king could not resist the temptation of seizing this easy prey; he entered the undefended town, enslaved all whom he found in it, and then razed the place to the ground. Such is the account which the Byzantine historian gives of the third campaign of Chosroes against the Romans, and of the motive and manner of his retreat. Without taxing him with falsehood, we may suspect that, for the glorification of his favorite hero, he has kept back a portion of the truth. The retreat of Chosroes may be ascribed with much probability to the advance of another danger, more formidable than Belisarius, which exactly at this time made its appearance in the country whereto he was hastening. It was in the summer of A.D. 542 that the plague broke out at Pelusium, and spread from that centre rapidly into the rest of Egypt and also into Palestine. Chosroes may well have hesitated to confront this terrible foe. He did not ultimately escape it; but he might hope to do so, and it would clearly have been the height of imprudence to have carried out his intention of invading Palestine when the plague was known to be raging there.

The fourth year of the Roman war (A.D. 543) opened with a movement of the Persian troops toward the Armenian frontier, consequent upon the desertion of the Persian cause by the Roman Armenians in the course of the winter. Chosroes in person once more led the attack, and proceeded as far as Azerbijan; but, the pestilence breaking out in his army, he hastily retreated, after some futile attempts at negotiation with the Roman officers opposed to him. Belisarius had this year been sent to Italy, and the Roman army of the East, amounting to thirty thousand men, was commanded by as many as fifteen generals, almost of equal rank, among whom there was little concert or agreement. Induced to take the offensive by the retirement of the Persian king, these incapable officers invaded Persarmenia with all their troops, and proceeded to plunder its rich plains and fertile valleys. Encountering suddenly and unexpectedly the Persian general Nabedes, who, with a small force, was strongly posted at a village called Anglon, they were compelled to engage at disadvantage; their troops, entangled in difficult ground, found themselves attacked in their rear by an ambush; Na.r.s.es, the bravest of them, fell; and, a general panic seizing the entire mult.i.tude, they fled in the extremest disorder, casting away their arms, and pressing their horses till they sank and expired. The Persians pursued, but with caution, and the carnage was not so great as might have been expected; but vast numbers of the disarmed fugitives were overtaken and made prisoners by the enemy; and the arms, animals, and camp equipment which fell into the hands of the Persians amply compensated all previous losses, and left Persarmenia the richer for the inroad.

The ravages of the pestilence having ceased, Chosroes, in the following year (A.D. 544), again marched westward in person, and laid siege to the city of Edessa. It would seem that he had now resolved not to be content with plundering raids, but to attempt at any rate the permanent conquest of some portion of the Roman territory. Edessa and Daras were the two towns on which the Roman possession of Western Mesopotamia at this time mainly depended. As the pa.s.sing of Nisibis, in A.D. 363, from Roman into Persian hands, had given to Persia a secure hold on the eastern portion of the country between the rivers, so the occupation of Edessa and Daras could it have been effected, would have carried with it dominion over the more western regions. The Roman frontier would in this way have been thrown back to the Euphrates. Chosroes must be understood as aiming at this grand result in the siege which he so pertinaciously pressed, and which Edessa so gallantly resisted, during the summer of A.D. 544. The elaborate account which Procopius gives of the siege may be due to a sense of its importance. Chosroes tried, not force only, but every art known to the engineering science of the period; he repeated his a.s.saults day after day; he allowed the defenders no repose; yet he was compelled at last to own himself baffled by the valor of the small Roman garrison and the spirit of the native inhabitants, to burn his works, and to return home. The five hundred pounds of gold which he extorted at last from Martinus, the commandant of the place, may have been a salve to his wounded pride; but it was a poor set-off against the loss of men, of stores, and of prestige, which he had incurred by his enterprise.

It was, perhaps, his repulse from the walls of Edessa that induced Chosroes, in A.D. 545, seriously to entertain the proposals for an arrangement which were made to him by the amba.s.sadors of Justinian.

Throughout the war their had been continual negotiations; but hitherto the Persian king had trifled with his antagonist, and had amused himself with discussing terms of accommodation without any serious purpose.

Now at last, after five years of incessant hostilities, in which he had gained much glory but little profit, he seems to have desired a breathing-s.p.a.ce. Justinian's envoys visited him at Ctesiphon, and set forth their master's desire to conclude a regular peace. Chosroes professed to think that the way for a final arrangement would be best prepared by the conclusion, in the first instance, of a truce. He proposed, in lieu of a peace, a cessation of hostilities for five years, during the course of which the causes of quarrel between the two nations might be considered, and a good understanding established. It shows the weakness of the Empire, that Justinian not only accepted this proposal, but was content to pay for the boon granted him. Chosroes received as the price of the five years truce the services of a Greek physician and two thousand pounds of gold.

The five years' truce seems to have been observed with better faith by the Persian than by the Roman monarch. Alamundarus indeed, though a Persian va.s.sal, regarded himself as ent.i.tled, despite the truce, to pursue his quarrel with his natural enemy, Arethas, who acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome; but Chosroes is not even accused of instigating his proceedings; and the war between the va.s.sals was carried on without dragging either of the two lords-paramount into its vortex. Thus far, then, neither side had any cause of complaint against the other. If we were bound to accept the Roman story of a project formed by Chosroes for the surprise and seizure of Daras, we should have to admit that circ.u.mstances rather than his own will saved the Persian monarch from the guilt of being the first to break the agreement. But the tale told by Procopius is improbable; and the Roman belief of it can have rested at best only upon suspicion. Chosroes, it is allowed, committed no hostile act; and it may well be doubted whether he really entertained the design ascribed to him. At any rate, the design was not executed, nor even attempted; and the peace was thus not broken on his part.

It was reserved for Rome in the fourth year of the truce (A.D. 549) expressly, to break its provisions by accepting the Lazi into alliance and sending them a body of eight thousand men to help them against the Persians.

Very soon after their submission to Persia the Lazi had repented of their rash and hasty action. They found that they had gained nothing, while in some respects they had lost, by their change of masters.

The general system of the Persian administration was as arbitrary and oppressive as the Roman. If the commercial monopoly, whereof they so bitterly complained, had been swept away, commerce itself had gone with it, and they could neither find a market for their own products, nor obtain the commodities which they required. The Persian manners and customs introduced into their country, if not imposed upon themselves, were detestable to the Lazi, who were zealous and devout Christians, and possessed by the spirit of intolerance. Chosroes, after holding the territory for a few years, became convinced that Persia could not retain it unless the disaffected population were removed and replaced by faithful subjects. He designed therefore, we are told, to deport the entire Lazic nation, and to plant the territory with colonies of Persians and others, on whose fidelity he could place full reliance.