The Emperor pushed the siege with energy, and plied the walls so vigorously with his engines that Licinius, aware that the capitulation of Byzantium could not long be postponed, crossed over into Asia to escape being involved in its fate. Even then he was not utterly despondent of success, for he raised one of his lieutenants, Martinianus, to the dignity of Cæsar or Augustus—a perilous distinction for any recipient with the short shrift of Valens before his eyes—and, collecting what troops he could, he set his fleet and army to oppose the crossing of Constantine when Byzantium had fallen. But holding as he did the command of the sea, the victor found no difficulty in effecting a landing at Chrysopolis, and Licinius’s last gallant effort to drive back the invader was repulsed with a loss of 25,000 men. Eusebius, in an exceptionally foolish chapter, declares that Licinius harangued his troops before the battle, bidding them carefully keep out of the way of the sacred Labarum, under which Constantine moved to never-failing victory, or, if they had the mischance to come near it in the press of battle, not to look heedlessly upon it. He then goes on to ascribe the victory not to the superior tactical dispositions of his chief or to the valour of his men, but simply and solely to the fact that Constantine was “clad in the breastplate of reverence and had ranged over against the numbers of the enemy the salutary and life-giving sign, to inspire his foes with terror and shield himself from harm.”[64] We suspect, indeed, that far too little justice has been done to the good generalship of Constantine, who, by his latest victory, brought to a close a brilliant and entirely successful campaign over an Emperor whose stubborn powers of resistance and dauntless energy even in defeat rendered him a most formidable opponent. ----- Footnote 64: _De Vita Const._, ii., 16. τὸ σωτήριον καὶ ζωοποιὸν σημεῖον, ὥσπερ τι φόβητρον καὶ κακῶν ἀμυντήριον. -----