Khusro’s War of Revenge

The circumstances leading to war are enumerated—(1) gathering crises in the Balkans, Italy, and Armenia, and (2) Persian dissatisfaction with the current line of the frontier in the west. The November 602 coup of Phocas and execution of the Emperor Maurice, who had restored Khusro II to the Sasanian throne in 591, provided Khusro with a perfect pretext for going to war. The focus is then on Persian strategy. The main offensive thrusts alternated between the Mesopotamian and Armenian theatres of war in a first phase (603–5) which saw the outer defences of the Roman Empire breached. After a year’s pause, the offensive was renewed on a larger scale, simultaneous pushes being made in both theatres of war from 607, which brought Persian armies to the inner line of Roman defence on the Euphrates in 610.

Persian Breakthrough

The Persian breakthrough into northern Syria (610) and Asia Minor (611) is attributed in part to disruption occasioned by the final stage of the Heraclian revolution. The foreboding induced by the Persian advances can be gauged from the Lives of two contemporary holy men. Two Roman failures—the escape of the raiding army of Shahen, which had been trapped in Caesarea in Cappadocia (611–12), and the defeat of Heraclius by Shahrbaraz outside Antioch (613)—marked the end of a first Roman fightback. Then came the sack of Jerusalem (May 614) which shook the Christian world. The circumstances (a riot-cum-pogrom which killed members of the Persian control commission) and consequences (execution of the pogrom leaders, deportations, and a Roman propaganda campaign) are re-examined. The extension of Persian direct rule over Palestine is dated two years later.

Heraclius’ First Counteroffensive

The second decisive moment of the war came in 624, when Heraclius sent off a diplomatic mission to the khagan of the Turks in central Asia and himself led a small, hardened expeditionary force deep into Transcaucasia and beyond. Speed of movement and surprise played key parts in the series of victories he won over pursuing armies in 625, after disrupting Khusro’s mobilization and sacking the fire temple of Adur Gushnasp at modern Takht-I Sulaiman in 624. The Romans benefited in several ways from this first counteroffensive: (1) the troops gained in confidence with each success; (2) serious damage was done to Persian resources by widespread raiding; (3) volunteers were raised from the Christian peoples of Transcaucasia; and (4) the Turks agreed to come into the war on the Roman side. After learning this from Turkish emissaries in Albania late in 625, Heraclius set off on the long march home.

Khusro’s Fateful Decision

The first decisive moment in the war came in winter 615–16, when Khusro rejected a grovelling plea for peace made by the Senate, based on terms discussed by Heraclius and Shahen at a summit meeting on the Bosporus in 615. This was tantamount to a decision to liquidate the Roman Empire, which made sense in the context of the threat posed by the Turkish khaganate in the east. The following five years saw the Persians take over Palestine (616), raid Asia Minor (617), and conquer Egypt (619). In Palestine they reintroduced controls on Jewish immigration into Jerusalem and designated the Ghassan their chief clients among the neighbouring Arab tribes.

The Difficult Road to Peace

The news of Khusro’s fall finally reached Heraclius on 3 April 628, marking the end of the war. There followed two years of negotiations with three successive Persian regimes. The threat from the Turks strengthened the Roman position until their sudden disappearance in 629. Under the terms finally agreed with Khusro’s daughter Boran, the Persians disgorged all his conquests and accepted the pre-war frontier. Victory was celebrated in Constantinople, when Heraclius’ final dispatch was read out in St Sophia (15 May 628). Two triumphal ceremonies were staged, the first at Constantinople on the occasion of Heraclius’ return in June 628, the second at Jerusalem on 21 March 630, when Heraclius brought back the fragments of the True Cross taken by the Persians in 614 from Calvary in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. Close attention is paid to the texts and works of art which commemorated the victory.

Heraclius’ Second Counteroffensive

A calm interlude followed. Back in Constantinople, Heraclius took stock and prepared for a joint Turkish-Roman offensive planned for 627. The Turks seem to have struck first, invading with a huge host of their own. They broke through the Persian defences at the Caspian Gates, occupied Part’aw, the regional capital of Albania, and marched west into Iberia. There, before the walls of Tiflis, Heraclius and the khagan staged a ceremonial meeting and agreed on a plan of action. The two armies besieged Tiflis and devastated the country around. At the approach of winter, they parted, the Turks withdrawing across the Caucasus, the Romans embarking on a bold march across the Zagros. After defeating a pursuing Persian army near Nineveh, Heraclius struck south. His presence in the metropolitan region helped precipitate a coup against Khusro, timed to coincide with his return march across the Zagros on 24 February 628.

Conclusion

News about the war and its outcome percolated into the surrounding world, with dramatic effect in the Far East and Arabia. Explanations for Persian success and Roman resilience in the first two phases are not hard to find (in the spheres of material and ideological resources), but the sudden reversal of fortunes in the 620s is more problematic. Persian overstretch and war-weariness, brought to a head when the Turks intervened in the north, were a key factor, but greater weight should probably be placed on the generalship of Heraclius and the military qualities of his highly trained troops. As for the effects of the war, neither of the great powers was so debilitated as to become easy prey for the rising power of Islam. Hard-fought set-piece battles were needed to bring about the destruction of the one and the amputation of the Levant and Egypt from the other.

Climax of the War

The initiative swung back to the Persians in 626. Two Persian armies attacked, Shahrbaraz driving Heraclius from Lake Van back to the Anatolian plateau, Shahen advancing across Transcaucasia. Shahrbaraz pressed on to the Bosporus, for a planned joint attack with the Avars on Constantinople. In the event, the Persian contingent was intercepted on the Bosporus, which left siege operations entirely in Avar hands. The huge host which they had assembled assaulted the city for ten days (29 July–7 August), deploying a full array of siege engines by land and Slav naval forces on the Golden Horn, but they could not breach the defences and withdrew on 8 August. Meanwhile, the Turks had invaded the Persian north-west across the Caucasus, and Heraclius, who had veered north on reaching Anatolia, had intercepted and destroyed Shahen’s army.

Introduction

It was not a war to end all wars. It was not a war to destroy or truncate the Roman Empire in the east. The Persian aim at the outset was not even regime change, merely restoration of an ousted regime. But the fighting went on and on. There was a steady escalation in its scope and intensity with the passing years. After a decade of conflict, foreboding came upon contemporaries. The saints were plainly withdrawing their favour from mankind. God was turning his face from the present generation. The world and all things in it were being troubled because of man’s sinfulness, and those few who strove to squeeze out desire, ambition, envy, and other human feelings from their lives should withdraw and pray for a softening of God’s anger. For one distant observer, far to the south of the Fertile Crescent, where the two belligerent great powers were engaged in combat, the war presaged the end of time. The last days were at hand, when the earth would shake and the seas boil, when the sky would be torn apart and the stars scattered, when men would come face to face with the creator and manager of all things....

Opening of the Battle for Survival

In this chapter the spotlight is on Heraclius who trained his troops in Bithynia before leading them against a Persian army in northern Asia Minor (622). He was forced to break off the campaign in midsummer after a minor success because of news from the west. It is not known whether the Avars were inspired directly by the Persians, but they had taken up arms and laid siege to Thessalonica, already under pressure from their Slav subjects. They had to be bought off that year, and, again, at huge cost (an annual tribute of 200,000 solidi), in 623 after a failed attempt to capture Heraclius when he was lured from Constantinople on the pretext of signing a peace treaty. The Persians continued to push forward by land and sea in 623.