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150 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE Lombards were overrunning Italy and the Visigoths were recovering the southeastern coast of Spain, the Persians and northern barbarians nearly destroyed the Empire. Justinian's immediate successor discontinued the tribute paid to the Avars and also rushed into a war with Persia (572-591). Both acts had dire consequences. The Persians took Antioch and other Syrian cities and captured nearly three hundred thousand prisoners. When news came that they had also seized a city supposed to" be impregnable, where the Byzantines had stored a vast amount of treasure, the emperor went insane. The interval before the next Persian war was filled with wars with the northern barbari- ans, and when the Emperor Maurice ordered his troops to winter north of the Danube, he lost his throne. During the following reign of terror of the monster, Phocas (602-610), the whole Empire seemed in a state of anarchy, and at first there was no improvement under his successor, Heraclius. Another war with the Persians (603-628) had begun and the Persians were even more successful than before, taking Damascus and Tarsus as well as Antioch and occupying Egypt as well as Syria and Palestine, carrying off the holy cross from Jerusalem, and penetrating Asia Minor to the island of Rhodes and the city of Chalcedon. Moreover, Heraclius came near losing both his life and his capital in an ambush which the khagan of the Avars laid when they were holding a conference just outside Constantinople. The em- peror, with his crown under his arm, barely escaped inside the walls, and the next year the city mob had to go without its free bread. A little later Heraclius became so discouraged that he was on the point of abandoning Constantinople and return- Temporary ing to his native Africa. But the people pleaded under w * tn him and the Church offered its treasures to assist in prosecuting the war. He then engaged for six years in a series of victorious campaigns in the East. Meanwhile, in 626 the Avars, Gepidse, Bulgars, Slavs, and other barbarians besieged Constantinople from the Euro- pean side in cooperation with the Persians operating from