the Romans confessed, that their starving army was fed and
dismissed by the liberality of a foe. His empire extended over Hungary,
Poland, and Prussia, from the mouth of the Danube to that of the Oder;
and his new subjects were divided and transplanted by the jealous policy
of the conqueror. The eastern regions of Germany, which had been
left vacant by the emigration of the Vandals, were replenished with
Sclavonian colonists; the same tribes are discovered in the neighborhood
of the Adriatic and of the Baltic, and with the name of Baian himself,
the Illyrian cities of Neyss and Lissa are again found in the heart of
Silesia. In the disposition both of his troops and provinces the chagan
exposed the vassals, whose lives he disregarded, to the first assault;
and the swords of the enemy were blunted before they encountered the
native valor of the Avars.

The Persian alliance restored the troops of the East to the defence of
Europe: and Maurice, who had supported ten years the insolence of
the chagan, declared his resolution to march in person against the
Barbarians. In the space of two centuries, none of the successors of
Theodosius had appeared in the field: their lives were supinely spent in
the palace of Constantinople; and the Greeks could no longer understand,
that the name of _emperor_, in its primitive sense, denoted the chief of
the armies of the republic. The martial ardor of Maurice was opposed
by the grave flattery of the senate, the timid superstition of the
patriarch, and the tears of the empress Constantina; and they all
conjured him to devolve on some meaner general the fatigues and perils
of a Scythian campaign. Deaf to their advice and entreaty, the emperor
boldly advanced seven miles from the capital; the sacred ensign of the
cross was displayed in the front; and Maurice reviewed, with conscious
pride, the arms and numbers of the veterans who had fought and conquered
beyond the Tigris. Anchialus was the last term of his progress by sea
and land; he solicited, without success, a miraculous answer to his
nocturnal prayers; his mind was confounded by the death of a favorite
horse, the encounter of a wild boar, a storm of wind and rain, and the
birth of a monstrous child; and he forgot that the best of omens is to
unsheathe our sword in the defence of our country. Under the pretence
of receiving the ambassadors of Persia, the emperor returned to
Constantinople, exchanged the thoughts of war for those of devoti