The battle raged fiercely from dawn till dark. In the night Licinius fled, leaving twenty thousand of his soldiers dead upon the field, and abandoning his camp and all his magazines. Gathering recruits as he retreated, he made another stand on the plains of Thrace. Constantine, who had vigorously pursued, again attacked him, and nearly annihilated his army. From a force of a hundred and thirty thousand men, scarcely three thousand escaped. Licinius fled to the mountains of Macedonia, and sued for peace. Constantine, out of regard to hissister Constantia, treated his brother-in-law generously. He, however, wrested from him nearly all his domains in Europe, leaving him sovereign only in Asia and Egypt.
Eight years of comparative tranquillity passed away, when the two emperors again found themselves in arms against each other. Licinius, though an infirm old man, displayed on the occasion amazing energy. He assembled on the fields of Thrace a hundred and fifty thousand infantry and fifteen thousand horse. The Bosphorus and the Hellespont were crowded with his fleet of three hundred and fifty galleys, with three banks of oars. Constantine met them with a hundred and twenty thousand horse and foot and two hundred transports. There was another of those awful scenes of blood and woe called a battle. How faintly can imagination picture the scene!—two hundred and eighty-five thousand men hurling themselves against each other in the most desperate hand-to-hand fight; the cry of onset, the clangor of weapons, the shrieks of death. In a few hours, thirty thousand of the troops of Licinius were dead in their blood. The monarch himself, with the disordered remainder of his troops, fled wildly to Byzantium.
There was a long and cruel siege. Constantine was victorious: the world was again under one monarch, and he a nominal Christian. This extraordinary man issued a decree to his subjects, especially to those of his newly-conquered Eastern empire, assuring them of his conviction that the God of the Christians, the true and Almighty God, had given him the victory over the powers of paganism, in order that the worship of the true God might he universally diffused. He also issued the following prayer:—
“I invoke thy blessing, O Supreme God! Be gracious to all thy citizens of the Eastern provinces; bestow on them salvation through me, thy servant. And well may I ask this of the Lord of the universe, Holy God; for by the guidance of thy hand have I undertaken and accomplished salutary things. Thy banner, the cross, everywhere precedes my armies: whenever I advance against the enemy, I follow the cross, the symbolof thy power. Hence I consecrate to thee my soul imbued with love and fear. Sincerely I love thy name; and I venerate thy power, which thou hast revealed to me by so many proofs, and by which thou hast confirmed my faith.”
This would be deemed extraordinary language to appear in the proclamation of any, even of the most Christian monarch of the present day. How much more remarkable must it have seemed coming from a Roman emperor just emerging from paganism, and addressed to the whole Roman world!
It was the wish of Constantine that Christianity might be the recognized religion of the empire, and that all his subjects might be united in the worship of the one true God. Still he favored perfect toleration. Yet Christianity was every way encouraged. Distinguished Christians were placed in the highest offices of state. Chaplains were appointed in the army. Though no compulsion was exercised, all the soldiers were invited and encouraged to attend public worship.
The city of Rome for a long time had ceased to be the only capital; and Constantine chose, with great sagacity, Byzantium, at the mouth of the Bosphorus, as the new capital, giving it the name of Constantinople, after himself. This imperial city enjoyed a very salubrious clime, and occupied a position, for the accumulation of wealth and the exercise of power, unsurpassed by that of any other spot upon the globe. It was situated upon an eminence which commanded an extensive view of the shores of Europe and Asia, with the beautiful Straits of the Bosphorus flowing down from the Black Sea on the north, emptying into the Sea of Marmora, and thence descending through the Dardanelles, or Hellespont, to the Mediterranean on the south. These were avenues of approach through which no foe could penetrate. The city was favored with a harbor, called the Golden Horn, spacious and secure. The site of Constantinople seems to have been designed by Nature for the metropolis of universal European dominion.
The wealth, energy, and artistic genius of the whole Roman empire were immediately called into requisition to enlarge and beautify the new metropolis. The boundaries of the city weremarked out fourteen miles in circumference. Almost incredible sums of money were expended in rearing the city walls, and in works of public utility and beauty. The forests which then frowned unbroken along the shores of the Euxine Sea afforded an inexhaustible supply of timber. A quarry of white marble, easily accessible, upon a neighboring island, furnished any desired amount of that important building-material.
The imperial palace soon rose in splendor which Rome had never surpassed. With its courts, gardens, porticoes, and baths, it covered several acres. The ancient cities of the empire, including Rome itself, were despoiled of their noble families, who were persuaded to remove to the new metropolis to add lustre to its society. Magnificent mansions were reared for them. The revenues of wide domains were assigned for the support of their dignity. Thus the splendors of decaying Rome upon the Tiber were eclipsed by the rising towers of Constantinople upon the Bosphorus.
Few men have been more warmly applauded, or more bitterly condemned, than Constantine. Fifteen centuries have passed away since his death, and still he is the subject of the most venomous denunciation and the most impassioned praise. He was in person tall, graceful, majestic, with features of the finest mould. Intellectually he was also highly endowed. None of the ordinary vices of the times stained his character. Conscious of his superior abilities, and sustained by the popular voice, he pursued a career to which we find no parallels in history.