For the first eight years of his reign Leovigild was forced to fight hard with enemies on all sides, before he could win a moment for repose. His first blows were struck against the Imperialists, who had gone forth from Cordova and Cadiz and conquered the whole of Andalusia. [Sidenote: Wars of Leovigild, 570-80.] After winning several battles in the open field, and storming Baza and Assidonia, he drove the Romans within the walls of Cordova. This great city, defended by a strong garrison and a fanatically Catholic population, kept the king at bay for a whole year; but in 571 it was betrayed to him by its Gothic inhabitants and fell, after having been more than twenty years in the hands of the Imperialists. The East-Roman power now shrank back behind the Sierra Nevada, and comprised nothing more than the coast-strip from Lagos to Carthagena. Leovigild then turned against the Suevi, who had seized the valley of the middle Douro, and were pushing into the very heart of the peninsula. They had lately been converted to Catholicism, and were welcomed by the provincials of central Spain, who hoped to gain an orthodox instead of an Arian master. But Leovigild beat the Suevic king Theodemir in the field, stormed his fortress of Senabria, and compelled him to do homage. For two years more Leovigild was occupied in putting down sporadic rebellions of the Roman provincials in all the more remote and mountainous corners of Spain—especially in Cantabria, on the shores of the Gulf of Biscay, and among the Murcian mountains in the South. He captured and put to death Aspidius and Abundantius, the chief leaders of these revolts, and punished their followers by wholesale executions. At last, after eight years of war, the whole of the ancient Visigothic dominions, save the towns on the Andalusian coast, were once more subdued and under control (576).