Fortunately for the defenders, the soldiers of the capital numbered some 12,000 and consisted of cavalry - normally a well-trained arm of the Greco-Roman army at the time. Adding no small bonus was the Patriarch of Constantinople whose cries for religious zeal among the peasantry around Constantinople was made ever more effective by the fact that they were facing heathens. Consequently, every assault became a doomed effort. When the Avar fleet and the Persian fleet were sunk in two different naval engagements, the attackers panicked and fled abandoning the siege apparently under the belief that divine intervention had won the day for Byzantium.