Footnote 34: Since Theodosius I., who died in 395, no reigning emperor had ever led an army in the field. [Sidenote: Persian successes, 613-17.] The military disasters of the first eight years of Heraclius’ reign were terrible. In 613 the armies of Chosroes began to attack central Syria: Damascus fell, and then the general Shahrbarz pushed southward into Palestine. In 614 the whole Christian world was seized with horror at learning that Jerusalem had been captured. Not only were 90,000 Christians slain in the Holy City, but—what was reckoned far worse—all the treasures of the church of the Holy Sepulchre fell into the hands of the fire-worshippers. Chief of them was the ‘Sacred Wood,’ the ‘True Cross,’ which the empress Helena, the mother of the great Constantine, had discovered in 327, and placed in her magnificent church. It was now carried into Persia, to be mocked by the blasphemous king Chosroes. This was not the end of the disasters of the empire. In 616 Shahrbarz forced his way across the sands of the isthmus of Suez, and attacked Egypt, the one Roman province which had not seen the horrors of war for three centuries. The unwarlike Egyptians submitted with hardly a blow; many of the heretical sects that swarmed in the Nile valley even welcomed the Persians as friends and deliverers. The loss of Egypt seemed a deathblow to the empire. It had been of late the chief source of revenue to the dwindling treasury of Heraclius, and on its corn the multitude of Constantinople had been wont to depend for their free dole of bread. This had now to be cut off, for the State finances did not permit of the provision being purchased elsewhere. In 617 the invasion of Asia Minor was resumed, and a Persian force seized Chalcedon, in very sight of the walls of Constantinople. The darkest hour had arrived. It is a great testimonial to the popularity of Heraclius that the series of misfortunes which we have related did not cost him his throne. Any sovereign less well-intentioned, and less esteemed, would have lost life and crown. [Sidenote: The Letter of Chosroes.] The direst moment of his humiliation arrived when, after the loss of Egypt, the overweening Chosroes sent him a formal letter, inviting him to lay down the sceptre which he could not wield. In language of arrogant condescension, which almost seems to have been borrowed from the letter of king Sennacherib in the Book of Kings, the Persian wrote:—