In the seventh century the relic of the Holy Cross was connected with an event of great importance. Chosroes II., King of Persia, began to make war against the Eastern Empire at the time when Heraclius ascended the throne; he captured the cities of Apamea and Edessa, and defeated the Greeks in several engagements; in June 614 his general Salbarus took Jerusalem with great slaughter. He laid waste the churches, and carried off to Persia, with the rest of the booty, the portion of the Holy Cross which was preserved there. The course of the war still remained unfavourable to the Greeks until Heraclius, having made peace with the Bulgarians, himself led the full strength of his army against the Persians in 621. The fortune of war changed, and the Greeks reconquered their lost territory, being aided in this by internal discord among the Persians. Chosroes was deposed and murdered in 628; his successor, Siroes, hastened to make peace with the Greeks, and restored to them the wood of the Holy Cross. At the end of the year Heraclius returned as victor to his capital, and at the beginning of the following year he set out for Syria, taking the Holy Cross with him. He brought it himself from Tiberias to Jerusalem,[732] where he handed it over to the Patriarch Zacharias on the 3rd May, if the traditional date be correct. Tradition further adds that, arrayed in his royal robes, he essayed to carry it upon his shoulders, but at the foot of the hill of Calvary he found himself unable to proceed further until, upon the advice of Zacharias, he laid aside his royal apparel. No festival in commemoration of the event was introduced in the East, although it was in the West.[733] With regard to the spread of these two festivals throughout the Church, we must call attention to a remarkable fact; the day of the discovery of the Holy Cross by Helena (14th September) naturally existed as a festival from the first in Jerusalem, from whence it soon spread throughout the entire eastern half of the Church, but in the West, although the discovery of the cross was already well known in the fourth century, the festival in honour of the event was not adopted, at least not at once.