Unquestionably, too, this decentralisation tended towards general efficiency. It was more than one man’s task, whatever his capacity, to hold together the Empire as Diocletian found it. Gaul was ablaze from end to end with a peasants’ war. Carausius ruled for eight years in Britain, which he temporarily detached from the Empire, and, secure in his naval strength, forced Diocletian and Maximian, much to their disgust, to recognise him as a brother Augustus. This archpirate, as they called him, was crushed at last, but whenever Constantius crossed into Britain it was necessary for Maximian to move up to the vacant frontier of the Rhine and mount guard in his place. We hear, too, of Maximian fighting the Moors in Mauretania. War was thus incessant in the West. In the East, Diocletian recovered Armenia for Roman influence in 287 by placing his nominee, Tiridates, on the throne. This was done without a breach with Parthia, but in 296 Tiridates was expelled and war ensued. Diocletian summoned Galerius from the Danube and entrusted him with the command. But Galerius committed the same blunder which Crassus had made three centuries and a half before. He led his troops into the wastes of the Mesopotamian desert and suffered the inevitable disaster. When he returned with the survivors of his army to Antioch, Diocletian, it is said, rode forth to meet him; received him with cold displeasure; and, instead of taking him up into his chariot, compelled him to march alongside on foot, in spite of his purple robe. However, in the following year, 297, Galerius faced the Parthian with a new army, took the longer but less hazardous route through Armenia, and utterly overwhelmed the enemy in a night attack. The victory was so complete that Narses sued for peace, paying for the boon no less a price than the whole of Mesopotamia and five provinces in the valley of the Tigris, and renouncing all claim to the sovereignty of Armenia.