While Syria was falling before the Saracens, the lot of Persia had been even worse; after a great battle lasting for three days at Kadesia, the Sassanian empire had succumbed before the Moslem sword. Its capital Ctesiphon was sacked and destroyed, and Yezdigerd, the last of its kings, fled eastward to raise his last army on the banks of Oxus and Murghab (636). Arab hordes working up the Euphrates began to assail the Roman province of Mesopotamia from the south, at the same moment that the conquerors of Syria attacked it from the west. Heraclius made one last attempt to save north Syria and Mesopotamia by sending an army under his son and heir Heraclius Constantinus to endeavour to recover Antioch. After some slight show of success at first, the young Caesar suffered a fatal defeat in front of Emesa, and retired from the scene, leaving Mesopotamia with all its time-honoured strongholds, Daras, Edessa, and Amida, a prey to the irresistible enemy (638-9). With the fall of the seaport of Caesarea in 640 the Romans lost their last foothold south of the Taurus, and Asia Minor itself now became exposed to invasion. Before he died of the dropsy, which was the bane of his declining years, the unfortunate Heraclius was destined to see one more disaster to his realm. [Sidenote: Saracens conquer Egypt, 640.] In 640 the Saracens, now headed by Amrou, crossed the desert of Suez and fell upon Egypt. They beat the Roman army in the field, captured Memphis and Babylon, and then received the homage of all upper and central Egypt. The population was very largely composed of heretical sects who received the Moslems as deliverers from orthodox oppression, and Mokawkas the Coptic governor of the province surrendered long ere the situation had grown desperate. It was only about Alexandria, where the Greek orthodox element was strongest, that any serious resistance was made. But the great seaport capital of Egypt held out very staunchly, and was still in Christian hands when Heraclius died on Feb. 10th, 641, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. Thus ended in misery and failure the man who would have been hailed as the greatest of all the warrior emperors of Rome if he had died but ten years sooner. He had saved the empire at its darkest hour, and won back all the East by feats of arms such as have seldom been paralleled in all history. But he won it back only to lose again two-thirds of the rescued lands to a new enemy, and ungrateful after-ages remembered him rather as the loser of Jerusalem and Antioch than as the saviour of Constantinople. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIII THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE VISIGOTHS A.D. 603-711