Having fought the Romans separately for over a decade, the Avars and Persians now join forces to strike Constantinople together and finally destroy their arch enemy.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to A history of Romania.

Season 2, Episode 7: The Queen of Cities

Last time, we saw the Romans suffer blows from all sides: the Persians captured their eastern provinces, the Slavs carved out enclaves for themselves in the Balkans, and the Avars sought to capture the emperor himself. But the Romans survived this decade of crisis and even managed to strike back, with emperor Herakleios personally leading an army into Persia to sack several cities, including a palace of the King of Kings. The Persian leader was humiliated and infuriated, and so reached out to the Avar khagan to put a definite end to the Roman empire. In 625, the two men agreed to jointly attack Constantinople – the Avars from the West and the Persians from the East. Together, they would strangle the empire’s beating heart, and then dismember its various parts to divide as spoils.

The Avars had lots of experience fighting the Romans, but they had never tried to take a city as huge as Constantinople. So, for this final push in a decades-long war, the khagan decided to draw upon all his available forces: his Avar riders, the Bulgar nomads loyal to him, the Slavic chieftains which he nominally led, and, quite unusually, even his agrarian subjects. As we saw in episode four, most of the population of the khaganate were farmers, and these agrarian communities never fought in Avar campaigns; spoils and glory were reserved for the ruling class. But for this campaign, the khagan wanted to assemble an immense army to terrorize and demoralize the inhabitants of Constantinople. So, he broke with precedent and demanded recruits even from the farming communities of his realm, whether they were Slavic, Romanic, or Gepid.

We don’t know exactly how the khagan prepared for this upcoming invasion. I imagine that those same Avar riders who regularly came to villages to collect tribute now came to call up their farmers to fight. They might’ve ridden across the land at winter’s end before the thawing snows turned the tracks to mud, and told the village elders to have their men ready to march in a few weeks. Such a buffer would allow these farmers to plant their spring crops before heading out on a summer campaign, ensuring that the Avars would still get their yearly tribute in the autumn. The village elders might’ve objected amongst themselves, but in the end, they had little choice; if they didn’t want their homes to be burned and their families to be butchered, they had to send their men to fight this foreign war.

But these men were farmers who had never picked up a sword; much as their fathers and grandfathers, their tools were the plough and sickle, and they knew nothing of warfare. Yet they now had no choice, and as they rushed to complete the spring planting, they must’ve also sought to prepare themselves for the coming campaign. I imagine the village blacksmith making as many spearheads as possible with whatever iron he had on hand, since those were the easiest weapons to produce; and I picture those who weren’t lucky enough to get a proper weapon grabbing their sickles and axes – anything to stand between them and the enemy – while their wives prepared food for the weeks of marching that lay ahead, packing bread and cheese and dried meat.

On the appointed day, Avar riders came back to the village, and these reluctant recruits – from teenagers whose mustache had just sprouted to men welcoming their first grey hairs – said goodbye to their families, knowing full well that they may never return. They then set off, flanked by Avar riders, and marched through mountain passes, down river valleys, over plains, and towards the Danube, gradually coalescing with other groups from across the Carpathian Basin. As they made camp every night, Romanic farmers would’ve heard Gepid and Slavic men talking by the next campfire, every one of them knowing they were heading towards the heart of the Roman empire.

Most of them would’ve never seen Constantinople, and only known it through rumour. But the khaganate was home to numerous Roman prisoners of war, and there might’ve been one amongst them who had once been to the Queen of Cities. Sitting around the campfire, he could’ve told his companions how he had once walked along the Mese, the city’s main road which was twenty-five meters wide and lined with more shops than you could count. Strolling along it, you could see magnificent churches like that of the Holy Apostles, bustling squares like the Forum of Theodosius, the Senate house where the aristocracy continued ancient traditions, and the Hippodrome where charioteers – eight abreast with four horses each – regaled tens of thousands of people.

Indeed, in the early seventh century, Constantinople was the largest city in the world, numbering six hundred thousand people. Its social center was the Forum of Constatine, a circular market ringed by porticoes and embellished with bronze statues. In the middle of this great marketplace stood a statue of Constantine nearly thirty-five meters tall, and it’s here that every year on May 11, the Romans celebrated the founding of their city.

Ever since that day almost three hundred years ago, Roman emperors had made their home in the Great Palace at the eastern tip of the city along the coast. And just outside their imperial enclosure lay the Hagia Sophia, a resplendent church built during the reign of emperor Justinian.

Its beauty would’ve been hard to describe, even for those who had visited it. Its exterior was covered with white marble that made it shimmer amidst the surrounding brick and wood buildings, and rendered it visible even from the sea. The structure was topped with a massive dome fifty-five meters high resting on forty arched windows, and the light streaming through them made the dome seem to hover in the air. Down below, green and white and purple marble came together in beautiful mosaics, while gold and silver vessels adorned the galleries, and purple textiles woven with gold draped the walls. Even the floor had been carefully decorated, with different coloured marbles marking positions during the liturgy, with observers comparing the sight to “the constantly flowing waters of a river.”

At the end of the Hagia Sophia was the bishop’s seat, where the patriarch of Constantinople sat and crowned emperors. The steps leading to the altar were made of silver, and the altar itself combined gold, silver, pearls, glass, and gems. The anonymous writer of the Story on the Construction of the Hagia Sophia relates: “Who can behold the beauty of the holy altar table and not be amazed? Or who can comprehend it as its many colours and brilliance change, so that it appears sometimes gold, in other places as silver, elsewhere gleaming with sapphire – radiating and, in a word, sending out seventy-two colours according to the nature of the stones, pearls, and all the metals?”

These were the riches that the khagan wanted to take from the Queen of Cities; all that gold in the churches, all those silks in noble’s houses, all those wares in the markets. Constantinople was, literally, the greatest prize in the world, and to pillage it would win the khagan unmatched glory; he was marching towards the pinnacle of his reign, and the energy among his followers must’ve been intoxicating. But there was much less enthusiasm among the Romanic farmers who had been called up to fight for him, let alone the Roman prisoners who had been pressed into service. They felt much more kinship with the empire than with the khaganate. For them, Constantinople wasn’t a prize to be won, but the seat of the emperor, who was the viceroy of God on Earth and the protector of Christians like themselves. Yet here they were, forced to march alongside the Avars on their way to strangle the heart of the empire.

The Avar vanguard arrived in the outskirts of Constantinople on June 29, 626, driving farmers inside the walls and preventing any crops from being harvested. This was a blow to the inhabitants, but the capital had known of the attack for months and had provisioned itself with as many supplies as possible. The defense was led by Bonos, the emperor’s magister militum and the regent of his teenage son. Herakleios, meanwhile, had taken a field army and headed to Anatolia to strike the Persians before they could reach the city. The emperor defeated one advancing army, but a second one under a man named Shahrbaraz successfully made it to the Bosphorus. The Persian general occupied the town of Chalkedon just opposite Constantinople, and burned its residences and churches to intimidate the capital’s population.

The emperor couldn’t spare a field army for the other side of the Bosphorus, so the Avars advanced unopposed; a month after the vanguard appeared before the city’s walls, the khagan himself arrived with the main army on Tuesday, July 29. Estimates vary, but the combined force of Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Gepids, and Romanics was somewhere between thirty and eighty thousand, a dismaying sight for the garrison. Bonos sent ambassadors to convince the khagan not to attack, but the Avar ruler refused; he would only accept the city’s surrender. After sending away the messengers, he lit fire signals to contact Shahrbaraz across the Bosphorus; by coordinating their actions, they were sure to breach the city’s defenses, or, at the very least, starve it into submission.

This was the first time that a foreign army had besieged Constantinople, and the Romans did everything to protect their city. The patriarch walked along the walls with an image of Christ and placed icons of the Virgin Mary on the gates to force the enemy to attack them and thus anger God. Indeed, this war had taken on divine significance. As we saw last episode, the Persian King of Kings had taken the True Cross from Jerusalem, while Herakleios had extinguished the sacred fire at Azar Goshnasp. In addition, the emperor had issued a new silver coin bearing a cross and the words: Deus adiuta Romanis, meaning “God help the Romans”, which was the battle cry of the imperial army. The Romans had brought all their strength to bear, and were now beseeching their God to bolster their defenses.

The khagan spent a couple of days intimidating the Romans with his massive force, and then, on Thursday, July 31, he ordered a full assault of the city. Sources tell us that unprotected warriors were used in the front ranks, while armoured infantry followed behind – not to support them, but rather to prevent them from retreating. Indeed, these front ranks had good reason to turn back in the face of the Theodosian Walls. The fortification complex protecting the city began with a dry moat twenty meters wide and ten meters deep, which was overlooked by a wall as tall as a man. Attackers would have to run into the ditch while dodging arrows, then pile ladders on the far side to clamber up the slope and scale the wall as the defenders threw down stones and waited for them with swords drawn. If the attackers made it across the trench unscathed and succeeded in climbing the stone wall, they would face another wall nine meters tall, and behind it, an additional wall that stood twelve meters high. Each obstacle was overlooked by another fortification, such that attackers could never find cover. Defenders had clear views from sixty-two towers which dotted the outer wall, and ninety-six towers on the inner wall. The front ranks had a nearly impossible mission.

What’s worse, the khagan had ordered the assault before any siege engines had been built, meaning that this attack relied entirely on foot soldiers. Of course, these men were not the khagan’s prized Avar riders, nor even his Bulgar allies, but Slavic, Gepid, and Romanic individuals who had been forcibly drafted into the army. None had armour and few had the luxury of a shield; their only hope of survival was to move quickly and hope luck would not put an arrow in their chest. Prodded by swords at their backs, these men ran towards the wall as fast as they could – but many died in the moat, and none made it over the top. On that Thursday in July, thousands died before the khagan called off the assault at sunset.

The next day, Friday, August 1^st, the siege engines were ready and the khagan ordered a second attack. Catapults shot stones and flaming projectiles at the garrison, rams headed for the gates, and giant siege towers whose platforms projected over the walls slowly made their way across the field. At the same time, the Slavs who had brought their canoes launched them into the Golden Horn and maneuvered in the shallows where the larger imperial ships couldn’t sail. Yet the Romans repulsed this attack by sea and, on land, they set several siege towers on fire. As the sun set a second time, the khagan was once again forced to call off the attack.

The next morning, the Avar ruler asked for a meeting with the defenders. The city had not been as easy to take as he’d hoped; his massive army hadn’t intimidated the Romans into surrender, and his frontal assaults hadn’t overwhelmed the defenders; the tactic he now chose was to convince the leaders of the garrison that resistance was futile. At the meeting, the khagan was accompanied by three Persians sent by Shahrbaraz, while the Romans sent three senior officials and the patriarch’s second-in-command. In the presence of the imperial delegation, the khagan casually mentioned to his Persian counterparts how his Slavic sailors would transport their troops to this side of the Bosphorus. He then turned to the Romans and proposed that, instead of suffering a brutal sack, the inhabitants of Constantinople should leave their goods behind and offer themselves to the Persians with only the clothes on their backs. Afterwards, he would politely plunder the capital. In his view, this was a merciful deal; he was going to prevail either way, and if the Romans took his deal, they would at least keep their lives.

This proposal perfectly suited both the khagan and the Kings of Kings. The Persians would deal a deathblow to their archnemesis, keep all of their eastern provinces, and resettle the inhabitants of Constantinople in their empire; meanwhile, the khagan, who didn’t care about ruling Constantinople – nor even the Balkan provinces – would get the riches and glory from capturing the greatest city on Earth.

The Romans obviously refused the khagan’s deal, and the meeting led nowhere. But in a brazen move, imperial soldiers captured the three Persian delegates as they were crossing the Bosphorus. One envoy was sent back to the khagan with his hands cut off and with the second one’s head tied around his neck; and the third delegate was executed on a boat within sight of Shahrbaraz’s camp. It was a defiant gesture that sent a clear message. This war had been ongoing for 24 years – an entire generation had grown up in its bloodshed – and the Romans weren’t about to give up now and accept the dismemberment of their state; they would either save their ancient empire, or die as martyrs.

After the meeting, the khagan maintained pressure on the Romans by launching attacks on the walls two more days in a row – yet the defenders held firm. Trumpets blared, fires flew across the sky, swords and shields rang out, and thousands more died with every frontal assault. The Avar heavy cavalry, of course, stayed safely out of arrow range; they could do nothing in a siege except force their subjects to advance and stop them from retreating.

On Monday, August 4, it was time to enact the plan which the khagan had discussed with the Persians, namely of linking their forces. Slavic canoes launched into the Golden Horn, succeeded in evading imperial ships, and made it to the other side of the Bosphorus. There, they boarded between three to four thousand Persian soldiers and turned around. Up till now, Shahrbaraz hadn’t been able to directly threaten the city; the Persians had no navy, and the main point of their presence was to isolate the capital and intimidate its inhabitants from across the Bosphorus. But if he could get his seasoned soldiers to the European side of the straits, then they might just make the difference that would break the Roman defenses. Yet as the Slavic boats were heading back west, they were intercepted by the Roman fleet, which rammed and shot at them; hundreds of canoes were sunk, and thousands of Persian soldiers drowned with their armour weighing them down. It was a grievous blow to the besiegers.

By this point, the siege of Constantinople had been ongoing for a week, and the Avar army was beginning to run out of food. Just like at Thessaloniki, the khagan could only field his army against a city for a limited time before its enormous numbers exhausted its supplies. With the Avar riders having cleared the pastures around the capital and the subject peoples subsisting on the last bits of food they’d brought with them, the khagan knew that he had to breach the walls within the next day, or abandon the whole enterprise. His last chance lay with a naval attack on the poorly protected shore of the Golden Horn; the plan was for Slavic rowers to transport heavily armed Bulgars around the peninsula and land them inside the city.

And so, on Wednesday, August 6, the khagan ordered his subjects into the water. So many canoes launched into the sea that observers in the city said the Golden Horn looked like dry land. The Romans had biremes and triremes, but they were far outnumbered by the enemy force, and couldn’t face them directly. The Slavic fleet dominated the straits, and soon a fire signal was lit, ordering them to begin the final assault. But this signal didn’t come from the khagan; in fact, it was a ruse by the Romans who imitated an Avar signal to get the Slavs to attack early. And so, when the Slavs approached the city, imperial ships were ready for them; biremes and triremes rammed their small canoes, and archers massacred their sailors from above. Some Slavic rowers jumped into the water, hid themselves under their overturned boats, or dove away, and some even swam to the other shore of the Bosphorus to disperse in the hills. But most of the force died in the Golden Horn – shot, drowned, or crushed.

The khagan watched the battle and debacle from a nearby hill. He was absolutely enraged, and when the survivors of the slaughter returned to land, he ordered his warriors to kill them all, every single one. Their Slavic compatriots were outraged, but stood no chance against the heavily armed and armoured Avar cavalry, and so the evening sun presided over yet another massacre.

This butchery appalled all of the khagan’s subjects, and the remaining Slavic chieftains now refused to follow any more orders. And so, with one reactive act of cruelty, the khagan lost the support of most of his army; and as he stood there surrounded by seething subjects, he knew he had failed. A few hours later, the khagan gave orders to abandon the siege.

During the night of Thursday, August 7, the Avar army burned its siege engines, and the next morning, the great host began marching back towards the Danube. Before he left, the khagan sent a delegation to the Romans stating that he wasn’t retreating due to fear, but to a lack of food; he assured them that he would soon be back after his army was fed. The magister militum Bonos responded that he was only authorized to negotiate during the siege; but now that the siege was lifted, an imperial army would follow the Avars, and the emperor would negotiate a peace in their homeland.

At first, the great fires of the burning siege engines led the Persians to think that the city had fallen, but Shahrbaraz soon realized the truth. He thus abandoned Chalkedon and began the long march East, finally freeing Constantinople of all threats.

It had been a harrowing week for the Romans, but they’d stood firm as the world closed in on them, and in the end, triumphed over their enemies. The patriarch announced that the Virgin Mary had asked Christ to help his chosen people, and He had come to their aid. This was more than a military victory; it was a divine vindication of their cause. The patriarch added a few lines to the Akathist Hymn sung during liturgical service, and from them on, it was sung every August 7, which became a holy day to celebrate the liberation of the city from barbarian oppression. And in thanks for her protection, the Virgin Mary now became the patron saint of Constantinople.

As the Romans rejoiced, the Avar host marched North, with only the threat of force preventing the khagan’s resentful subjects from breaking away. As farmers from Romanic villages paused every night on their way back home, they couldn’t help but notice that there were fewer of them around the campfire than a week ago. Brutal frontal assaults on the walls of Constantinople had killed fathers, sons, and cousins who’d come together from their villages. Among those who survived, many were wounded, and some, for the rest of their lives; a lifelong limp from an arrow to the ankle, a broken bone from a stone thrown from the battlements, or blind eyes from burning pitch poured over the walls. With summer drawing to an end, these men would have to harvest the ripening grain which the Avars would soon demand as tribute. But their injuries would prevent many among them from driving a plough, or swinging a hammer, or seeing their hearthfire. Life in the village would never be the same.

While these farmers thought about the coming harvest, Slavic chieftains and Bulgar military leaders were thinking about a different future. The khagan’s preeminent position rested on his ability to bring victory and plunder, yet he had now been defeated, and what’s worse, he’d lashed out at the subject peoples who had fought and died for him. If the khagan could not bring victory – and if he turned against his own subjects – then why would anyone follow him? There was nothing to gain, and everything to lose.

Next time, in the aftermath of the siege, civil war will come to the khaganate as these disgruntled subjects seek to throw off the Avar yoke.

Before we end today, I wanted to share that some listeners have reached out to ask how they can donate to support the show. I’ve set up a donation link on the website, which I’ve also included in the podcast description. If you’d like to support my work and are able to donate, I would be immensely grateful. Thank you to those who have already donated; your support will help cover website costs and is a fantastic vote of confidence for continuing this project. For those who would like to support the show in other ways, you can always rate the podcast wherever you’re listening, and also write a review; it’ll let others know what you think and help more people discover the show. Thank you to everyone for listening and accompanying me on this journey. I’ll see you in two weeks.