In 626 AD, the besieged City of Constantinople fell to a host of eighty thousand Avars bent on removing all Romano-Byzantine Imperial rule over Europe.

Constantinople Falls to the AvarsAn invading army sent by the Avar Khaganate was reinforced by large numbers of allied Slavs and the Sassanid Persians at Chalcedon, a nearby location on the mouth of the Bosphorus. From this peninsular bridgehead the Byzantine Capital was of course acutely vulnerable to attack.

But the fall of the City was in large part due to misfortune. Because two crushing setbacks befell the Byzantine defenders: the failure of their Greek Fire to subdue the Persian Navy, and the irreplacable loss of their iconic general, Heraclius and his brother Theodore during the recent campaign in Mesopotamia.

Nevertheless, early assaults by "the heathens" had been repelled because the defenders were fired up by the religious zeal of the Patriarch. But food shortages soon took their toll and ultimately the City was starved into submission. Because rioting began soon after the rations of the Imperial Guards were cut and the cost of bread raised from 3 to 8 folles.

Accompanied by the fall of Carthage and the conquest of Spain, Europe was being strangled into encirclement. Invading forces raced through southern Europe pausing only to burn the Greco-Roman literature that might have revived a future generation. With the bulwark of Constantinople removed, responsibility for the defence of a shrunken Europe had passed to the Franks.