The government of Leontius was characterised by the unsteadiness which not unfrequently marks the administration of the ablest sovereigns who obtain their thrones by accidental circumstances rather than by systematic combinations. The most important event of his reign was the final loss of Africa, which led to his dethronement. The indefatigable caliph Abdul-Malik despatched a powerful expedition into Africa under Hassan; the province was soon conquered, and Carthage was captured after a feeble resistance. An expedition sent by Leontius to relieve the province arrived too late to save Carthage, but the commander-in-chief forced the entrance into the port, recovered possession of the city, and drove the Arabs from most of the fortified towns on the coast. The Arabs constantly received new reinforcements, which the Roman general demanded from Leontius in vain. At last the Arabs assembled a fleet, and the Romans, being defeated in a naval engagement, were compelled to abandon Carthage, which the Arabs utterly destroyed,—having too often experienced the superiority of the Romans, both in naval affairs and in the art of war, to venture on retaining populous and fortified cities on the sea coast. This curious fact affords strong proof of the great superiority of the Roman commerce and naval resources, and equally powerful evidence of the shameful disorder in the civil and military administration of the empire, which rendered these advantages useless, and allowed the imperial fleets to be defeated by the naval forces collected by the Arabs from among their Egyptian and Syrian subjects. At the same time it is evident that the naval victories of the Arabs could never have been gained unless a powerful party of the Christians had been induced, by their feelings of hostility to the Roman Empire, to afford them a willing support; for there were as yet neither shipbuilders nor sailors among the Mussulmans.
The Roman expedition, on its retreat from Carthage, stopped in the Island of Crete, where a sedition broke out among the troops, in which their general was killed. Apsimar, the commander of the Cibyraiot troops, was declared emperor by the name of Tiberius. The fleet proceeded directly to Constantinople, which offered no resistance. Leontius was taken prisoner, his nose cut off, and his person confined in a monastery. Tiberius Apsimar governed the empire with prudence, and his brother Heraclius commanded the Roman armies with success. The imperial troops penetrated into Syria; a victory was gained over the Arabs at Samosata, but the ravages committed by the Romans in this invasion surpassed the greatest cruelties ever inflicted by the Arabs; for two hundred thousand Saracens are said to have perished during the campaign. Armenia was alternately invaded and laid waste by the Romans and the Saracens, as the various turns of war favoured the hostile parties, and as the changing interests of the Armenian population induced them to aid the emperor or the caliph. But while Tiberius was occupied in the duties of government, and living without any fear of a domestic enemy, he was suddenly surprised in his capital by Justinian, who appeared before Constantinople at the head of a Bulgarian army (705).
JUSTINIAN RECOVERS THE THRONE
[698-711 A.D.]
Ten years of exile had been spent by the banished emperor in vain attempts to obtain power. His violent proceedings made him everywhere detested, but he possessed the daring enterprise and the ferocious cruelty necessary for a chief of banditti, joined to a singular confidence in the value of his hereditary claim to the imperial throne; so that no undertaking appeared to him hopeless. After quarrelling with the inhabitants of Cherson, and with his brother-in-law, the king of the Khazars, he succeeded, by a desperate exertion of courage, in reaching the country of the Bulgarians. Terbelis, their sovereign, agreed to assist him in recovering his throne, and they marched immediately with a Bulgarian army to the walls of Constantinople. Three days after their arrival, they succeeded in entering the capital during the night. Ten years of adversity had increased the natural ferocity of Justinian’s disposition; and a desire of vengeance seems henceforward to have been the chief motive of his actions.
The population of Constantinople had now sunk to the same degree of barbarism as the nations surrounding them, and in cruelty they were worthy subjects of their emperor. Justinian gratified them by celebrating his restoration with splendid chariot races in the circus. He sat on an elevated throne, with his feet resting on the necks of the dethroned emperors, Leontius and Tiberius, who were stretched on the platform below, while the Greek populace around shouted the words of the psalmist, “Thou shalt tread down the asp and the basilisk, thou shalt trample on the lion and the dragon.” The dethroned emperors and Heraclius, who had so well sustained the glory of the Roman arms against the Saracens, were afterwards hung from the battlements of Constantinople. Justinian’s whole soul was occupied with plans of vengeance. Though the conquest of Tyana laid open Asia Minor to the incursions of the Saracens, instead of opposing them, he directed his disposable forces to punish the cities of Ravenna and Cherson, because they had incurred his personal hatred. Both the proscribed cities had rejoiced at his dethronement; they were both taken and treated with savage cruelty. The Greek city of Cherson, though the seat of a flourishing commerce, and inhabited by a numerous population, was condemned to utter destruction. Justinian ordered all the buildings to be razed with the ground, and every soul within its walls to be put to death; but the troops sent to execute these barbarous orders revolted, and proclaimed an Armenian, called Bardanes, emperor, under the name of Philippicus. Seizing the fleet, they sailed directly to Constantinople.
Justinian was encamped with an army in Asia Minor when Philippicus arrived, and took possession of the capital without encountering any resistance. He was immediately deserted by his whole army, for the troops were as little pleased with his conduct since his restoration, as was every other class of his subjects; but his ferocity and courage never failed him, and his rage was unbounded when he found himself abandoned by every one. He was seized and executed, without having it in his power to offer the slightest resistance. His son Tiberius, though only six years of age, was torn from the altar of a church, to which he had been conducted for safety, and cruelly massacred; and thus the race of Heraclius was extinguished, after the family had governed the Roman Empire for exactly a century (610 to 711 A.D.).
ANARCHY
[711-717 A.D.]