Heraclius: Encyclopedia II - Heraclius - The war against Persia

Heraclius - The war against Persia

When Heraclius took power, the Empire was in a desperate situation. Phocas's initial revolt had stripped the Danube frontier of troops, leaving the most of the Balkans at the mercy of the Avars. The Persian King Chosroes II, who had been an ally of Maurice, used his death as an excuse to launch a war against the Byzantines. Chosroes had at his court a man who claimed to be Maurice's son Theodosius, and Chosroes demanded that the Byzantines accept him as Emperor. The Persians had slowly gained the upper hand in Mesopotamia over the course of Phocas's reign; when Heraclius' revolt resulted in civil war, the Persians took advantage of the internal conflict to advance deep into Syria.

Heraclius offered peace terms to the Persians upon his accession, but Khosrau refused to treat with him, viewing him as just another usurper of Theodosius' throne. Heraclius' initial military moves against the Persians ended disastrously, and the Persians rapidly advanced westward. They took Damascus in 613, Jerusalem in 614 (damaging the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and capturing the Holy Cross in the process), and Egypt in 616. They made raids deep into Anatolia as far as Chalcedon, a town lying almost opposite of Constantinople across the Bosporous. At night, it was said, the people of Constantinople would see Persian watch-fires and their reflection on the water. The Persians were also in communication with the Avars.

The situation was so grave that Heraclius reportedly considered moving the capital from Constantinople to Carthage. But he remained in the East and worked on reorganizing the Byzantine military. He developed the idea of granting land to individuals in return for hereditary military service. The land so granted was organised into thema, a Greek word to describe a division of troops, and each theme was placed under the command of a strategos or military governor. This arrangement ensured the continuance of the Empire for hundreds of years and enabled Heraclius to reconquer lands taken by the Persians, ravaging Persia along the way.

Once he had rebuilt the army, Heraclius took the field himself in 621, the first emperor to campaign against a foreign enemy in person since Theodosius I. Confident that Constantinople was well defended, and unwilling to engage in a war of attrition over the lost eastern provinces, he marched across Asia Minor and invaded Persia itself. He would stay on campaign for several years. In 626, Constantinople itself was besieged by the Avars; but Persian attempts to cross the Bosporous and aid the Avars were repulsed by the Byzantine navy, and the Avars withdrew. Meanwhile, Heraclius acquired the assistance of the Khazars and other Turkic troops. Heraclius also exploited divisions within the Persian Empire, keeping the great Persian general Shahrbaraz neutral by convincing him that Chosroes had grown jealous of him and ordered his execution. At the Battle of Nineveh in 627, the Roman forces (without the Khazars who left Heraclius) defeated the Persians under Rhazates. In 629 he allied with the Ethiopians and began to win proinces he lost to Persia. The Ethiopians put tremendous military pressure on the Persians whos armies were no match for the fast moving Ethiopians, who were more than happy to crush Persia for an earlier invasion of the arabian pennisual that was Ethiopian controlled. When Chosroes still refused to make peace, Heraclius continued his campaign; as he approached the Persian capital of Ctesiphon, the Persian aristocracy deposed Chosroes. His successor made peace with Heraclius by restoring all the empire's former territories. The Persian Sassanid dynasty never recovered from this war; it took years for a strong king to emerge from a series of coups, and soon the Arabs overwhelmed the sinking state.

Heraclius took for himself the ancient Persian title of "King of Kings", dropping the traditional Roman imperial title of "Augustus". Later on, he styled himself as Basileus, the Greek word for "Emperor", and that title was used by the eastern Roman emperors for the next 800 years. Heraclius also discontinued the use of Latin as the empire's official language, replacing it with Greek. Although the empire called itself Roman throughout the rest of its history, it was in reality a Hellenic empire from Heraclius onward.

In 630, he reached the height of his power when he marched triumphantly into Jerusalem and restored the True Cross to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The war against Persia", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki