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This was the last of Justinian’s great wars; but the end of his reign was far from being peaceful or prosperous. It was especially noteworthy for the repeated inroads of the Huns and Slavs into the Balkan peninsula. The greatest raid was in 558, when the Cotrigur Huns under their khan Zabergan eluded the garrisons on the Danube, crossed the Balkans, and rode at large over the whole of Thrace. |Belisarius defeats the Huns.| One body of 4000 horse pushed their incursions up to the very gates of Constantinople, and so alarmed Justinian that he bade the aged Belisarius to buckle on his arms once more, and save the capital. The military resources of the empire were so scattered that Belisarius could only count on 300 of his own veterans, on the ‘Scholarian Guards’^[13] and a levy of half-armed Thracian rustics. By skilfully posting this small force, and inducing the Huns to attack his line exactly where it was strongest, he routed the barbarians, and returned in triumph from this his last campaign.