Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of the Modern World (9 page)

As we have seen, the Slavs poured out from the Avar empire, so their expansion has to be seen as having not simply the Avars’ blessing but also their encouragement and possibly even participation. In 615 the Slavs had even given a share of their plunder to the
kagan,
a fact that suggests they were acting as Avar surrogates. Moreover, they told the
kagan
that if he wanted more loot, he should actually provide Avar troops for the next attack.
⁶
From late 617 or early 618, specifically Avar forces (rather than their surrogates) swept into Roman territory and came within a few miles of Constantinople. The
kagan
’s plan seems to have been to first plunder and then extract protection money. In 623 the Avars broke a temporary truce and made an unexpected attack on Heraclius.

“The emperor was panic-stricken by this unforeseen event and fled back to the city,” Theophanes wrote. “The Barbarian captured all the emperor’s equipment and anything else he could seize, and then withdrew.” The towns of Thrace were all plundered.

By 626 Avar pressure for protection money was increasing, and they were threatening Constantinople itself. Another surprise attack brought them to the walls of the capital.

“His forces reached the Golden Gate, taking everything they could find outside the walls and in the suburbs, men and animals, as plunder,” wrote the anonymous author of the
Chronicon Paschale.

“They forced their way into the holy Church of Saints Cosmas and Damien in Blachernae, and into the Church of the Holy Archangel the other side of the city in the suburb of Promotus. They not only took the chalices and other church plate but also broke up the altars of the churches. They then removed everything, including their prisoners, across the Danube and there was no resistance.”

M
eanwhile in Asia, the Persian War—which had begun following Phocas’ revolution—continued to humble the empire. In 611 the Persians occupied Cappadocia and Antioch, and by 613 they had seized Damascus. The following year the Roman imperial system was dealt a double blow, one with both territorial and religious dimensions, when the Persian army captured Christianity’s most sacred city, Jerusalem.

With the loss of Jerusalem, the morale of the empire was irreparably damaged. Psychologically it was perhaps the single greatest blow of the Persian War. The Persian army slaughtered thousands of Jerusalem’s Christians and (according to the cleric Antiochus Strategus) took thousands more as captives to Mesopotamia, where “by the waters of Babylon” they “sat down and wept.”
⁷

Yet more Christians perished from heat and overcrowding in a makeshift prison established by the Persians, and age-old religious, ethnic, and cultural conflict reemerged between Jews and Christians, resulting in further Christian deaths. What’s more, the Persians seized and took back to Mesopotamia Christendom’s most holy relic, fragments of a wooden cross believed by the faithful to be the very one on which Christ had died.
⁸

From this point on, a dangerous spirit of defeatism seems to have taken root in the Roman Empire. Certainly the blame for the loss of Jerusalem was heaped not on the “evil Persians,” who were the “hated of God,” but on God himself, who had used the Persian army “as a rod of chastisement and as a medicine of rebuke” against the Romans.
⁹

What was happening to the empire was beginning to be seen as God’s will. Describing the scene as the Persian army moved in for the kill, Antiochus revealed the depths of Roman fatalism, which had by now reached almost apocalyptic levels.

“And as we knew not God nor observed His commandments, God delivered us into the hands of our enemies. The Lord has given over this Holy City to the enemy,” he wrote.

“The Persians perceived that God had forsaken the Christians and that they had no helper,” so with “increased wrath” they began to build in a circuit around the city great wooden towers “on which they placed catapults.

“The struggle lasted 20 days, shooting their catapults with such force that on the 21st day they broke down the city wall. At this, the evil enemy entered the city in great fury, like angry wild beasts and enraged serpents.

“The men defending the walls fled to hide in caverns, conduits and cisterns to save themselves; and the people fled in crowds to the churches and their altars and there they were slaughtered.

“For the enemy entered in great wrath, gnashing their teeth in violent fury; like evil beasts they roared, like lions they bellowed, like ferocious serpents they hissed, and slew all they found.

“Like mad dogs they tore with their teeth the flesh of the faithful, respecting no one, neither man nor woman, neither young nor old, neither child nor baby, neither priest nor monk, neither virgin nor widow.

“They destroyed persons of every age, slaughtering them like animals, cut them to pieces, mowed many down like cabbages, so that every individual had to drain the full cup of bitterness.”

After the city had fallen, Antiochus Strategus went on to describe what a group of fleeing Jerusalemites saw as they looked back at their city: “Once more, they raised up their eyes and gazed upon Jerusalem and its holy churches.

“A flame as from a furnace reached up to the clouds as it burnt.

“Then they fell to sobbing and lamenting loudly and all together. Some smote themselves on their face, others rubbed their faces in the dust, others strewed ashes on their heads, others tore their hair when they beheld the [Church of the] Holy Resurrection on fire. [The Church of] Sion [enveloped] in smoke and flames, and Jerusalem devastated.”

Soon the whole of Egypt and Libya as well as the Levant was in Persian hands, and in 616 a Persian army arrived on the eastern bank of the Bosphorus, less than a mile of water away from Constantinople.

Would the capital suffer the same fate as Jerusalem? Again the Romans saw what they believed to be their impending doom as the will of God—a punishment from on high for the conduct of their empire, especially for the sins of Phocas’ revolution. A group of Roman magnates sent a letter across the Bosphorus to the Persian king in which they virtually trembled with guilt and fear.

“Attacked by you as a reward for our sins, the affairs of the Romans have reached this sorry state of weakness,” they wrote.
¹⁰

They abjectly begged that “your most great majesty, your most peace-loving majesty”—referred to by the Romans in less awkward times as “the Hated of God”—might make peace “by the Grace of God” as soon as possible. “We also beseech your gentleness that you hold our most pious Emperor Heraclius as a true son of yours, for he is ready in all things to concede to Your Serenity due reverence and duty.

“For if you do this, you will acquire a double glory, first for fortitude in war and then for granting peace.

“We ourselves would enjoy your never-to-be-forgotten gift of tranquillity, and it would be an occasion for us to offer daily prayers for your life. As long as the Roman Empire lasts, your beneficence would never fall into oblivion among its recipients,” the magnates groveled.

T
he empire had indeed become humble in its desperation. The currency was on the verge of collapse, and soon the loss of territory also began to reduce food supplies for Constantinople. In 618 government bread distribution was stopped. Three-quarters of the empire had been lost: The Levant, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and most of Anatolia had fallen to Persia, while much of Thrace, Greece, and Italy had been overrun by Avar, Slav, and (in Italy) Lombard barbarians. With the Avar and Persian armies preparing for the kill, the virtually bankrupt Roman government, holed up in Constantinople, appealed to the Church in 622 to hand over its gold and silver treasures, its church plate and altar fixtures, to pay for the empire’s preservation. Something in the region of 200,000 pounds of gold (worth in modern terms around $32 billion) was collected, ostensibly to raise a new army against the Persians.

However, within a few months the Avars, who had no doubt heard of the emperor’s newfound “wealth,” forced the Romans to double their protection payments to 200,000 gold
solidi
per year.

By 626 Constantinople was completely surrounded. The situation appeared hopeless. The Avars and their Slav vassals were just outside the city to the west, while just across the Bosphorus to the east was the Persian army. They were in contact with each other and acted in concert.

The Avar
kagan
—also “the Hated of God” as far as the Romans were concerned—even offered the people of the capital a deal whereby they would lose their worldly wealth yet save their lives.

“If any of you in the city wish to leave it, with only your shoes and shirt, then let us make a pact and treaty with my friend Shahbaraz [the Persian general],” the
kagan
told a delegation of citizens.
¹¹
“If you cross over to him, he will do you no injury. Leave your city and your fortunes to me, for there is no other way for you to find safety, unless you turn yourselves into fish and escape by sea, or into birds and fly off through the air,” he warned.

But 626 was to be a temporary turning point in the fortunes of the empire, for in the end the Avar attack failed and the Persians were beaten back.

O
ver the next four years, Emperor Heraclius managed to retake all the lost lands of western Asia and North Africa. But the cost in cash and manpower of this twenty-five-year-long war had been massive for both the Roman Empire and Persia.

For the former it was a Pyrrhic victory, but for the latter it was a prelude to final catastrophe. From the 540s onward, the mounting cumulative effect of plague and barbarian attacks had caused financial problems that in turn had led to mutiny and revolution. That pivotal event—Phocas’ takeover—had furnished the Persians with the excuse to attack the empire at its weakest moment, and that very weakness had resulted in the length of the war and the empire’s temporary loss of territory. The immediate result was that by the end of the war in 630, both sides were exhausted militarily and financially.

C H A N G I N G  T H E  E M P I R E:
T H E  C U M U L A T I V E  I M P A C T
O F  T H E  P L A G U E  A N D
T H E  A V A R S

T
hough millions died from the plague, it would be an oversimplification to say that the disease alone brought the Roman Empire to death’s door. Its role was more complicated than that.

As we have seen, plague deaths reduced the tax base, and to compensate, the imperial government increased the rate of taxation. Along with Avar protection money demands, this played a crucial role in creating the difficult financial circumstances that destabilized the army, the empire, and the geopolitical status quo in the revolutionary events of 602.

In the period 541–602 there had been dozens of plague outbreaks, including four major epidemics. The empire’s population had shrunk by around a third, and its GNP had been reduced by at least 10 percent, possibly by as much as 15 percent.¹ By 602 it had therefore lost wealth equivalent to at least 30 million gold
solidi
due to plague. In addition to that, the empire had paid over the years a couple of million
solidi
in protection payments to the Avars, and over 5 million
solidi
had been lost as a result of Avar and Slav occupation of land in the Balkans.

Thus it was the cumulative effects of the plague and the Avars that led to the revolution of 602, the disintegration of the geopolitical status quo, and therefore the war with Persia. No doubt there would have been a war with the Persians at some point, but the particular circumstances of 602 determined its date, its nature, and in a way even its duration.

The Persian War cost the empire even more than the plague had directly. Over twenty or so years of warfare, the empire suffered total losses of an estimated 40 million gold
solidi
(equivalent today to around $80 billion). And the Avar advance in the west, which accompanied the Persian land seizures in the east, cost the empire a further 8 million or so gold
solidi.
Continuing losses from past plague in territories not taken over by Persians or Avars must have come to around 5 million
solidi.

In the last fourteen years of the Persian War (616–630), Roman wealth loss reached truly catastrophic proportions, averaging 3.5 million gold
solidi
per year (mostly due to Persian land seizure)—a loss of 70 percent of the empire’s annual imperial revenues.

Looked at in the long term, the ninety-year period 541–631 saw total losses of approximately 90 million gold
solidi.
The plague was directly responsible for more than a third of this. Losses in sources of wealth due to the Persian War (a war caused by partially plague-induced economic and political destabilization) came to an estimated 40 million. Military expenses in the Persian War totaled tens of millions of gold
solidi.
Avar protection-money payments came to about 5 million, while loss of wealth due to Avar/Slav land seizures totaled perhaps 13 million.