to three formidable bodies. [94] The first army
of fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the
golden spears, was destined to march against Heraclius; the second
was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of his brother
Theodorus; and the third was commanded to besiege Constantinople, and
to second the operations of the chagan, with whom the Persian king had
ratified a treaty of alliance and partition. Sarbar, the general of the
third army, penetrated through the provinces of Asia to the well-known
camp of Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred
and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he impatiently
waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the opposite side of the
Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June, thirty thousand Barbarians, the
vanguard of the Avars, forced the long wall, and drove into the capital
a promiscuous crowd of peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore
thousand [95] of his native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of
Gepidae, Russians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the
standard of the chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations,
but the whole city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the
suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers; and the
inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of the European
and Asiatic shores. In the mean while, the magistrates of Constantinople
repeatedly strove to purchase the retreat of the chagan; but their
deputies were rejected and insulted; and he suffered the patricians to
stand before his throne, while the Persian envoys, in silk robes, were
seated by his side. "You see," said the haughty Barbarian, "the proofs
of my perfect union with the great king; and his lieutenant is ready to
send into my camp a select band of three thousand warriors. Presume no
longer to tempt your master with a partial and inadequate ransom your
wealth and your city are the only presents worthy of my acceptance. For
yourselves, I shall permit you to depart, each with an under-garment and
a shirt; and, at my entreaty, my friend Sarbar will not refuse a passage
through his lines. Your absent prince, even now a captive or a fugitive,
has left Constantinople to its fate; nor can you escape the arms of
the Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like birds,
unless like fishes you could dive into the waves." [96] During ten
successive days, the capital w