Count Belisarius (20 page)

The Persians held their positions all the morning, until they heard the bugles blowing from the fortifications as a signal for the ration men to fetch the midday meal up to the trenches. As soon as Firouz calculated that the distribution of food was about to start, he launched the attack. Persian soldiers are accustomed to eat in the late afternoon, and consequently do not feel hungry until the sun is low in the sky, whereas the call of the Roman appetite comes when the bugle sounds at midday. However, Belisarius had anticipated a midday attack, and advised the troops to fill their bellies well at breakfast; so they fought none the worse. The Persian cavalry advanced to within bowshot of the Roman cavalry on the wings and began to shoot; and a mass of foot-archers also pressed forward into the re-entrant and began firing clouds of arrows at the Roman infantry and at the light cavalry in the trench-angles. These foot-archers moved forward in parallel single files, with a single pace's interval between files. As soon as the man at
the head of each file had fired one arrow he retired to the rear and then gradually came again to the head of the file; and by this means a steady stream of arrows was maintained. They greatly outnumbered our own archers, but they suffered from three great disadvantages. First, the stiff bows that Belisarius's recruits were using had a greater range than their own lighter ones; next, the wind was blowing from the west, so that their arrows lost speed and fell short; lastly, they were being fired at from the front and both flanks and were tightly enough packed to make the most random Roman shooting effective. The pressure of fresh troops from behind urged them farther forward than they wished, and though this brought them into closer range, they lost the more heavily. A half-hearted attempt on the part of their spearmen to capture two of the bridges simultaneously failed; the javelin men drove them off. But, an hour or two later, both sides having exhausted their missile weapons, there were desperate battles at the bridges all along the line with lance and spear, and attempts to cross the trenches with planks. Belisarius broke one dangerous thrust with dismounted cavalry – the right-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, now recalled this side of the trench.

At last the attackers gained a slight advantage against Boutzes's Thracians on the left. They forced one of the bridges and managed to deploy on the other side. The enemy troops engaged were Saracen auxiliaries, well mounted and savage. Boutzes fought vigorously, but the issue was in doubt until the left-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, who, like the right-hand squadron, had now been recalled across the trench, galloped to their aid. They had just been provided with a supply of Persian arrows that a crowd of boys from the town had been hurriedly collecting from all sides and tying up in bundles of forty. The Saracens were driven back across the trench with great slaughter, and had no time to reform before Pharas and his half-squadron of Herulians unexpectedly charged them in the rear from the hill. It is said that Pharas's men did more damage, proportionately to their numbers, than any other force on the field that day. They were using their broadswords now, and between them and Boutzes's Thracians and the Massagetic Huns, the Persian cavalry of that wing lost 3,000 men. The survivors broke back to the main body; but Boutzes had no instructions as to pursuit and returned dutifully to his trench.

Belisarius immediately recalled the Massagetic Huns and Pharas's
men. He embraced Pharas and completed the blood-brotherhood ceremony by allowing Pharas to suck an arrow-graze on the back of his hand. These fine fighters were now urgently needed on the other flank, where Firouz had just sent ‘The Immortals' – the Royal Heavy-cavalry Corps, 10,000 strong – to break the defences at all costs. The Immortals succeeded in forcing two bridges. Our cavalry there, Armenians for the most part, then retreated slowly, but, according to instructions, diagonally away to the right. This left a clear field for a strong Roman counter-charge from the centre. The right-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, now remounted and joined by their compatriots fresh from their victory on the left wing, and by Pharas's Herulians, and by Belisarius's own incomparable Household Regiment, broke into a canter, and then into a gallop. Such was the weight of this charge, which caught the Persians in the flank, that it drove right through the column, breaking it into two unequal halves.

The Persian General commanding on this wing was one-eyed Baresmanas, a cousin of King Kobad's. He was riding comfortably along with his staff in the rear of what he thought was a victorious pursuit of the crumpled Roman right; when suddenly, from his blind side, he heard wild shouts and cries, and the Massagetic Huns were upon him with their short, tough lances and whirling broadswords. These Huns had good reason to hate Baresmanas, for he was the general who had dispossessed them of their grazing lands in the far east. In revenge they had made a journey of many hundreds of miles and taken service in the Roman army. Their leader Sunicas drove with his lance at the Grand Standard-bearer, who was some strides ahead of Baresmanas, and caught him under the spole of his raised arm, so that the crimson standard embroidered with the Lion and Sun dipped suddenly and fell. A yell of rage and alarm from the rear halted the leading Immortals when they saw that their Grand Standard was down; they rushed back to the rescue. But it was too late. Sunicas, drunk with glory, had sought out Baresmanas himself and killed him with a lance-thrust in the side, and at that sight the Persians in his rear turned to flight. The main body of Immortals was now surrounded, for the Armenians had recovered and were fighting fiercely again; and 5,000 of these noble Persians fell before the day was ended.

Soon the unprotected Persian centre broke and streamed back towards Nisibis; and the Persian infantry recruits confirmed Belisarius's poor opinion of them by throwing away their great shields and their
spears as the Roman main body rushed after them. The Roman recruits, though only trained in random archery, picked up the fallen spears and played at being spearmen; the Persian ranks were in such disorder that even this awkward spear-pushing turned their retreat into a rout.

But Belisarius did not allow the pursuit to be pressed beyond a mile or so, because it was always a principle with him not to pursue a beaten enemy to the point of despair; which had been a maxim also of Julius Caesar's. He thus preserved the victory unmarred. It was the first time for more than a hundred years that the Romans had decisively defeated a Persian army; and he had fought with a great numerical disadvantage. The Great Standard of Baresmanas, spotted with blood, was picked up from the battlefield, and Belisarius sent it to Justinian together with his laurelled dispatches announcing the victory.

The Persian Army did not recover from its surprise and shame for a long time. Only skirmishes took place for the rest of the year on this part of the frontier, since Belisarius could not risk an attack on Nisibis or even another attempt to rebuild Mygdon castle. As for Firouz, Kobad accused him of cowardice and deprived him of the golden fillet that he wore in his hair as a sign of exalted rank.

*

To tell more particularly of the Huns. There are many nations of them, and they occupy all the wild land to the northward of the Roman and Persian Empires from the Carpathian mountains as far as China. There are White Huns and Massagetic Huns and Herulian Huns and Bulgarian Huns and Tartars and many more. All have the same general customs, except that the Herulians have lately professed Christianity. Huns are wheat-coloured, with crooked, sunken eyes (always red with wind and dust), insignificant noses, fat cheeks, lank black hair which they wear shorn in front, plaited at the ears, and hanging long behind, shrunken calves, powerful arms, small feet turned inwards. They navigate the desert, like sailors the sea, in long caravans of black-hooded wagons. Their horses can gallop twenty miles without a halt, and cover 100 miles in a single day. Upon some wagons they tie great wicker-baskets covered with black felt, in which they store the whole of their household treasure; and upon others they tie bell-shaped tents of the same construction, which are their only homes. They drive from pasture to pasture as the seasons change; going in a
year, it may be, a distance equivalent to that from Constantinople to Babylon and back. Each tribe and every clan of each tribe has its own hereditary pastures. Most of their wars are due to disputes about grazing rights. In the summer they set their faces to the North, following the snow-bird; in the winter they return to the South. They do not till the ground, but obtain corn either as barter or as tribute from their settled neighbours. Their chief refreshment is mares' milk, which they call
kosmos
and drink either fresh, or as buttermilk, or as whey, or as the intoxicating
kavasse
. Plain water they abhor. They eat all meats, but only game and horse-flesh is of their own supplying, for swine or oxen would die in the cruel winds of the steppes where they travel. They cure meat by drying it in the sun and wind, without salt. That they eat horse-flesh makes them detestable to civilized people.

The Huns wear fox-skin caps and for warmth in winter two long fur coats, the one with the hair turned outwards, the other with the hair turned inwards. A man's rank is shown by the sort of fur that he wears: the common person wears dog's or wolf's skin, but the nobleman sable. Their breeches are of goatskin. They carry gerfalcons on their fists for hawking, by which means they obtain a great quantity of wild geese and other game. Their other chief sport is wrestling from horse-back. They are very quarrelsome; yet, when two men fight, no third man dares intervene to part them, not even a brother or father of either man. Murder is punished by death (unless the murderer was intoxicated at the time), and so are fornication, and adultery, and theft, and the making of water upon a camp-fire, and even lesser offences, unless these are committed outside the clan or tribe or confederation of tribes, in which case all is permissible. Their personal habits are most filthy, and they do not wash, but smear their faces with horse-tallow. They worship the blue sky and employ magicians and, for fear of evil spirits, no sick man of them may be visited by any but his servants. They are terrified of thunder and lightning, and hide in their tents during storms. Marriage with them is by capture or pretence of capture, and a son inherits and marries all his father's wives except his own mother. Their weapons, as I have told, are light bows and arrows, and tough lances and curved broadswords. In battle the nobler men wear leather coats armoured in front with overlapping plates; but not behind, because they consider this cowardly. They talk an almost unintelligible language, piping like birds.

For the most part they live in disharmony, tribe with tribe and clan
with clan, but occasionally a single nobleman rises to be a prince having many clans subservient to him, and is called a Cham. It is when a Cham arises that the two Empires must beware of raids over the frontier.

So much for the Huns.

T
HIS
victory was the occasion of my mistress Antonina's journey to Daras: the Empress Theodora sent her there to Belisarius with a letter of personal congratulation and presents. As was natural, the Emperor Justinian also sent a letter and presents, but he was unaware that Theodora was doing the same, for she had not taken him into her confidence. The two missions sailed independently. Justinian's presents were a ceremonial robe exquisitely brocaded in heavy thread of gold and pearls; and an illuminated missal bound in carved ivory; and a valuable relic – the authentic begging-bowl of the blind St Bartimaeus, whom, according to the Evangelist Mark, the Saviour restored to sight. This bowl, which had come to Justinian from the treasures of a monastery lately dissolved on account of its immorality, was of olive wood, silver-grey with age. It was not adorned, as these relics usually are, with precious metals and jewels, but was a simple begging-bowl of the sort that beggars still commonly use on our church-porches and in our Squares. Around the rim had been carved at some time or other the Greek words ‘Poverty and Patience'. In the letter, written in Justinian's own hand, there was great praise for Belisarius's skill in battle and his loyalty to the Imperial cause, and an encouragement to repeat his glorious deeds, blessed by God, if ever the heathen Persian dared again to violate our frontier. But at the same time Justinian counselled the utmost economy in fighting men: while the present poverty in soldiers continued, the injunction to patience carved on the holy relic must be observed religiously.

Justinian's envoy on this occasion was Narses, the Court Chamberlain. Off Lesbos, the ship in which he sailed overtook the one in which my mistress and I were, and he courteously invited her to join forces with him. Narses was a dwarfish and repulsively ugly figure; a native of Persian Armenia, he was reputedly the cleverest man in Constantinople and, of course, a eunuch. My playful mistress, to relieve the tedium of the journey, which occupied three weeks, began teasing Narses as ‘a traitor to his sex'. For, as I overheard her one night whispering to her tiring-maid, Macedonia: ‘He shows none of the usual
traits of a eunuch – luxury, sentimentality, timorousness, and argumentative religiosity. He betrays not the least inclination to comb my fine auburn hair or fondle my pretty feet, and even seems to have no envy of my good looks; which is the most outstanding trait of all in a eunuch.' (I have omitted to mention that, not merely by virtue of expensive embellishments at the hands of hairdresser, chiropodist, manicurist, and the rest, but in her own natural right, my mistress was now known as one of the three most beautiful women in Constantinople; and the first place was, of course, unattainable, being reserved for the Empress.) Narses talked very practically on the problem of frontier defence, and recruiting, and the commissariat problem; and when he addressed the escort of Guards he gave clear, abrupt orders in a very good imitation of a military voice, which made my mistress smile a little. Her smile offended him, and he said so frankly.