They were now on the Syrian side of the desert, about a hundred miles to the east of Damascus. Early next morning, Khâlid fell on the astonished tribes in the neighbourhood, scattering terror all around, and securing submission either willingly or by the sword. Tadmor, after a slight resistance, yielded. Then fetching a circuit, he skirted the Haurân within sight of Damascus, and emerged at Adzraât. Having achieved this marvellous journey in the course of a few weeks, and reopened communications with the south, he sent tidings to Abu Bekr of his safety, with the Fifth of the spoil he had taken by the way. He was now close to the combined army of the Moslems, which still lay inactive on the Yermûk; and he effected a junction with them in the month of June, or perhaps July.[164]
The two armies compared.
Fresh reinforcements from the Emperor, under the renowned Armenian general Bahân (the same who discomfited the other Khâlid), had just arrived and raised the flagging spirit of the Romans. Their army, we are told, numbered 240,000 men, of whom a great body are stigmatised as felon-prisoners released for the occasion, and others are said (like those of the Persians) to have been chained together that they might not run away, or in token that they were bound to die. The idea, no doubt, is fanciful and cast in the contemptuous style of Mussulman tradition. But so much we may readily accept, that the army with which Heraclius sought to stay the tide of Saracen invasion, must needs have been very large.[165] We may also believe that though devoid of union, loyalty, and valour, it was well appointed, and elated by its achievements in the Persian war, of which many veterans were still present in the ranks. In discipline and combined movement, and in the weight and style of his equipment, the Roman, no doubt, surpassed the Arab. But the armament of the Roman did not so greatly excel as to give him a material advantage. It had no analogy, for example, with the superiority which in these days crushes the barbarian before the sanguinary appliances of modern art and science. It is strange to reflect how a single Gatling might have changed the day and driven Islam back to wither and die in the land of its birth. On the other hand, the Bedouin horse excelled in celerity and dash. Their charge, if light, was galling, and so rapidly delivered that, before the surprise was recovered from, the enemy might be out of sight. The Romans, it is true, had themselves Bedouin auxiliaries, as numerous, perhaps, as the whole Moslem army. But the spirit of the two was widely different. The fealty of the Syrian Arab was lax and loose. Christian in name, the yoke of his faith sat (as it still sits) lightly on him. Indeed, throughout the empire, Christianity was eaten up of strife and rancour. With Bahân came a troop of monks and bishops, who, bearing banners, waving aloft their golden crosses, and shouting that the faith was in jeopardy, sought thus to rouse the passion of the army. But the passion roused was too often the scowl of hatred. Bitter schisms rent the Church, and the cry of the Orthodox for help would strike a far different chord than that of sympathy in the Eutychian and Nestorian breast. Lastly, the social and ancestral associations of the Syrian Bedouin, while alien from his Byzantine masters, were in full accord with his brethren from Arabia; and of this instinctive feeling, the invaders knew well how to take advantage. With these lukewarm and disunited multitudes, compare now the Moslem force in its virgin vigour, bound together as one man, and fired with a wild fanatical zeal to ‘fight in the ways of the Lord,’ and so win at once heavenly merit and worldly fortune;—their prize, the spoil of the enemy, and the fair maidens of Syria ravished from their homes; or, should they fall in battle, the reward of the martyr, heaven opened and beautiful virgins, black-eyed Houries, beckoning, with all the wanton graces of paradise, to their warm embrace.[166] Of warriors nerved by this strange combination of earth and heaven, of the flesh and of the spirit, of the incentives both of faith and rapine, of fanatical devotion to the Prophet and deathless passion for the sex, ten might chase a hundred half-hearted Romans. The forty thousand Moslems were stronger far than the two hundred and forty thousand of the enemy.
The Moslems paralysed by separate commands.
The Roman army, swollen by the battalions of Bahân, and spreading over the plain, began to overlap the Moslems and force them back into a straitened place. But with Khâlid’s energy, things soon began to mend. In a series of encounters, the enemy, being worsted, retired behind the intrenched ravine. But in other ways the situation remained the same. The five battalions of the Moslem host were separately pitched; the conduct of public prayer (mark of supreme command) was separate in each; the attacks were separately made; and so, from want of combination, they failed in delivering a decisive blow. The issue hung fire. A month passed, and Khâlid became impatient. To secure success, command must be vested in a single hand. He saw the fault, and set himself to remedy it.
Khâlid obtains supreme command for a day.
Opportunity soon offered. Unusual preparation and busy movement on the Roman side led to a council of the Moslem chiefs, and Khâlid laid his views before them. The Caliph, it was true, had given to each a separate and distinct command to meet the separate Roman armies. But the field had changed, and Abu Bekr would surely now approve the assumption of absolute command by a single general. The merit in the Caliph’s eyes would be the same for all; the merit in the sight of the Lord, the same. ‘Come now,’ he added, to disarm their jealousy, ‘and we shall vary the supreme command, each taking it in succession for the day, and, if ye will, let the first be mine.’ The success of Khâlid in Irâc added weight to his words. The proposal thus adroitly made was unanimously agreed to. The Chiefs expected that, when the occasion passed, the old system would be reverted to. But the change, once made, stood good; and the supreme command in Syria was thenceforward vested in a single hand.[167]
A Roman general gained over by Khâlid.
Meanwhile Khâlid had sown dissension in the enemy’s camp, and gained over at least one of their leading officers. The facts are obscure, and the episode, as told by tradition, strange. But so much appears, that a general, Jâreja by name, perhaps of Arab blood and imbued with Bedouin sympathies, was persuaded by Khâlid to embrace his cause, and to promise that, at the decisive moment, he would leave the Roman and join the Moslem side.[168]
Moslem army arranged in battalions.