Siege of Singara

The Battle of Singara was fought in 348 between Roman and Sassanid Persian forces. The Romans were led in person by Emperor Constantius II, while the Persian army was led by King Shapur II of Persia. It is the only one of the nine pitched battles recorded to have been fought in a war of over twenty years, marked primarily by indecisive siege warfare, of which any details have been preserved.^[5][6] The Romans were decisively defeated, suffering heavy casualties.^[7]

Background

When Shapur II, who ascended to the rule of the Sassanid Empire in 309 (at the time an unborn infant), came of age and took in hand the administration of his kingdom, he dedicated himself to a lifelong mission of restoring his country's military power, and revenging its recent defeats sustained against the Romans and Saracens. After thoroughly subduing the Lakhmid Arabs rebellion in the south, he directed his attention towards Rome, his main enemy, in 337.^[8] Beginning by recapturing Armenia.^[9] he advanced in his first campaign against Constantius II in the following year, which was to achieve very little success. The war was desultory in the first stages; Constantius obtained some initial advantage, repelling Shapur from Armenia and successfully defending the Mesopotamian frontier; Shapur concluded a truce, but invaded again in 345,^[10] and besieged the crucial fortress city of Nisibis in 346. However, his efforts once more met little success (he had peviously besieged the city in 338).^[11]

Battle

Despite this, Shapur was not to relinquish his ambitions. In 348 he opened the campaign once more, crossed the Tigris, and captured Singara, a strongly fortified Roman outpost situated in the middle of the Mesopotamian desert, and difficult to relieve from the scarcity of water attending the march of an army of relief.^[12][13]

As soon as the fortress had fallen, Shapur proceeded to erect a strongly fortified, entrenched camp near the village of Hilleh, in which to meet Constantius II, who was advancing with a strong force to relieve Singara.^[14] Shapur's camp was located on the banks of a river (a tributary of the Tigris?), and the plain between the stream and some nearby hills became the scene of battle. With a part of his army Shapur met the Roman infantry in the level plain, while a reserve detachment was placed behind the hills, concealed from the Roman scouts. The veteran legions of Constantius advanced with martial discipline over the plain, and routed the Persians before the camp, scattering a force of cavalry which Shapur had committed from his reserves to stop the retreat. The defeated Persians fell back in disorder on the camp, hotly pursued by the Romans.^[15]

At this juncture Constantius, who was well-satisfied with his achievements for the day, sounded the retreat, thinking his troops were exhausted by the difficult fight in the heat of the sun, and to allow them the refreshments of food and sleep before attacking the strong defenses of Shapur's military camp on the morrow. But in the chaos of the pursuit of the fleeing Persians his commands went unheard (or were ignored), and the Roman legionaries advanced to storm the camp.^[16]

Unexpectedly, however, the Romans met complete success. The routed Persians, thinking themselves secure when they had retired on their fortifications, proved incapable of resistance, and were driven in a rout from this last bulwark. In the disorder of this second retreat Shapur's son, the crown prince of Persia, was taken captive by the Romans.^[17]

Shapur II, however, though his main force was defeated, had yet one resource left in the portion of his army which he had posted in reserve behind the hills, which had not engaged, and of whose existence the Romans were not yet aware. In the meantime the Romans, their military formations disordered in the chaos of the wild attack and pursuit, fell to plundering the enormous booty which fell into their possession with the camp. Night had already fallen before the Legions could regroup, and Constantius II was forced to wait anxiously for the dawn before ascertaining the extent of his victory.^[18]

But Shapur, taking full advantage of the unwearied state of his reserves and the chaos of the enemy, utilized the darkness of night to add the further ascendancy of surprise, and led his skilled archers to the very gates of the camp, before ordering the slaughter to begin. In the massacre which ensued of the unprepared Romans, the previous outcome of the battle was totally reversed. Losses were almost totally one-sided as the Romans around their campfires became sitting ducks for the skilled Persian archers, before being assaulted by masses of fresh enemy skirmishers. Constantius had the mortification of seeing the enemy snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and retreated in haste and disarray with the remnant of his defeated army back to the safety of the frontier fortress cities.^[19]

Outcome and Aftermath

Immediately in the aftermath of the battle, Constantius, incapable of revenging by any other means his mortified pride, retaliated his loss on the Persian crown prince, who was executed later in the Roman camp.^{[20] [21]}This did not facilitate an amicable settlement of the conflict, and the war dragged on several years later. Shapur, notwithstanding the extent of his victory, proved unable to utilize the event to any further advantage. Two years later, he became bogged down in a third siege of Nisibis, but was once more repelled with loss; he was then was obliged to break off the war to meet the threat of nomadic barbarian invasions in Sogdiana in the far east.^[22] The war resumed in 359 A.D. but ended with no conclusive result. In 363 it was taken up energetically by Julian, who died and suffered a decisive defeat. His successor, Jovian, was forced to cede extensive Roman territory in the disgraceful treaty of Dura, and thus Shapur's ambitions were at length accomplished.^[23]

See also

• Persian wars of Constantius II
• Siege of Amida

References