Count Belisarius (23 page)

On the following morning a number of officers came to Belisarius and informed him that his courage and loyalty were being called in question by their men, who could no longer be restrained from challenging the enemy. If he still attempted to hold them back there was likely to be a mutiny.

Belisarius was astonished. He explained that he must obey Justinian's explicit orders to avoid all unnecessary wastage of troops. The Master of Offices supported him in his view; but they were both argued down.

Then Belisarius ordered the bugles to be blown for a general assembly, and addressed the troops as follows: ‘Men of the Imperial and allied forces! What dog has bitten you that you have sent your officers to me with so mad a request? Do you not know when you are well off? Here are the Persians, who came into our territory with no less an intention than that of sacking the great city of Antioch, now forced by our prompt action to retreat, empty-handed and chagrined, back to Persia. “Do not spur a willing horse” is a proverb of proved merit, as you horsemen know, and it has appositeness here, especially when linked with the proverb “Leave well alone”. So much for worldly wisdom; but let me further remind you in your Christian enthusiasm that the Scriptures strictly enjoin us “Thou shalt not kill!” This is interpreted, I hasten to say, as an injunction only against wanton slaughter, since otherwise we should be forbidden to serve as soldiers, even in defence of our country. But I must ask you to decide whether the battle which you wish to fight does not come under this very heading of wanton slaughter; for I can see no good reason for it myself. The most complete and happy victory is this: to confound one's enemy's plans while suffering no material or moral loss oneself. And such a victory is already ours. If we force a fight on the Persians we shall not hasten their departure by a day, even if we are victorious; whereas if we are defeated… Here I must ask you to remember that
Providence is kinder to those who fall into dangers not of their own choosing than to those who deliberately seek them out. We cannot afford to be defeated, remember! One last word: you know how even a rat will fight fiercely when cornered, and these Persians are by no means to be despised as rats. Moreover, this is Easter Saturday and all of you but those of the Arabians, who worship demons, and those of the Massagetic Huns, who worship the Blue Sky, have fasted since early last night and must keep your fast for twenty-four hours. Fasting men do not fight at their best, especially on foot. I refrain from reminding you infantrymen that you have marched three hundred miles in twenty days – a magnificent but exhausting feat – and that a number of the slower battalions are still on their way.'

But they would not listen to him and howled ‘Coward' and ‘Traitor' at him – cries in which even some of his officers joined.

He changed his tone and told them that he was delighted at their confidence and courage, and that if some good angel was perhaps prompting them to offer battle, it would be impious for him to check them; and that they could count on him to lead them vigorously against their hereditary foes.

He hurried out from Sura and caught up with the Persians at midday; and by harassing their rear-guard with constant arrows forced Azareth to turn about and fight. The river was on the Roman left; and on the opposite shore, a little down-stream, was the Roman trading city of Callinicum. Between the shrunken river and the great sloping banks which restrain it in the season of floods was a space of a few hundred yards; here the battle was fought.

It was a very bloody battle, and began with the usual exchange of arrows. Belisarius had put his infantry on the left, with the river providing a defensive flank, and King Harith of the Arabs, on the extreme right, on the rising bank. He took the centre himself with his cavalry. Azareth opposed the Saracens to King Harith's Arabs, who are of the same stock, and engaged the centre and right himself. The Persians fired two arrows to every one of the Romans; but, the Roman bows being much the stiffer and the more tightly strung, and the Persian armour being more for display than for defence, twice as many Persians fell as Romans in these exchanges.

The afternoon was drawing on, and neither side had the advantage, when Azareth suddenly led two squadrons of his best cavalry up the bank against King Harith. The Arabs turned to flight, which is the
usual tactics of these desert fighters when charged, and thus left the Roman centre exposed. Azareth, instead of pursuing the Arabs, swerved round against the rear of the Roman centre – and broke it. A few cavalry squadrons, notably the Massagetic Huns and Belisarius's Household cuirassiers, held their ground and inflicted heavy losses on the enemy; but the rest dashed for the river and swam out to a group of sandy islands near the shore, where they were safe from pursuit. The Arabs made no attempt to retrieve the battle, but rode hurriedly back to their tents in the desert.

The Roman infantry consisted partly of those raw recruits from the south of Asia Minor whom Belisarius had trained in archery, and partly of trustworthy spearmen. The former were cut to pieces without making any attempt to use the swords which they carried; and they could not swim. These were the men who at Sura had been the loudest in their clamour for a battle. But Belisarius rallied the spearmen and formed them up in a semicircle with their backs to the river; and, with the survivors of his own squadron, dismounted, he warded off the Persian attacks until nightfall. They were only 3,000 men against the whole Persian army, and faint for want of food; but the front rank, kneeling on one knee, formed a rigid, unyielding barricade with their shields, from behind which their comrades fought with spears and javelins. Again and again the Persian cavalry charged, but Belisarius made his men clash their shields together and shout in unison, so that the horses reared up and threw everything in confusion.

When night fell the Persians withdrew to their camp, and a freight-boat from Callinicum ferried Belisarius and his comrades in batches across to the islands, where they spent the night. On the next day more boats appeared, and what remained of the Roman Army was transported to Callinicum, the horses swimming. The Easter Feast was celebrated there, but with little jubilation: the more ignorant and foolish Christians accounting for their defeat by saying that God died each Crucifixion Day and remained dead on the next day, until His Resurrection at Easter; and that therefore the battle should have been postponed for a day – for God, being dead, could not help them. This Belisarius wrote to my mistress in a letter, mocking at the would-be theologians.

The Persians stripped the Roman dead and their own, who were no less numerous. The detachment that had suffered most on our side was the Massagetic Huns: only 400 of their 1,200 survived, and most of
these were wounded. Belisarius had lost one-half of his Household Regiment, which had consisted of 3,000 men. He waited for the rest of his infantry to arrive and then returned with them to Daras; his total losses were some 6,000 men.

Azareth returned to Persia and claimed a victory, but Kobad, before praising him, instructed him to ‘resume the arrows'. It is a Persian custom that, when any military expedition sets out, each soldier deposits an arrow in a heap. These arrows are then bound together in bundles and kept under seal in the Treasury. When the campaign is over the survivors ‘resume arrows'; and by seeing how many of these remain may calculate their losses. Seven thousand arrows remained unclaimed, so Kobad dismissed Azareth from his command with disgrace. The King of the Saracens also was blamed for his foolish advice, and the annual subsidy that he had long been drawing was discontinued.

Belisarius wrote a dispatch to Justinian, excusing himself for his losses, and the Master of Offices sent a confirmatory dispatch, explaining exactly what had happened and praising Belisarius's courage; so Justinian continued to place confidence in him. But my mistress wished that this senseless war were over, which could easily have been settled by the payment of a few thousand gold pieces and a few courteous phrases from the rulers of the opposing Empires. She must have shown her anxiety on Belisarius's behalf more plainly than she intended; for Theodora now persuaded Justinian to recall Belisarius, on the ground that a capable soldier was needed in the City as a protection against the increasing mob-violence of the Blue and Green factions. Sittas was appointed to deputize for him on the frontier.

So Belisarius returned, bringing his Household Cavalry with him; and married my mistress on the feast of St John the Baptist at St John's Church. It was an occasion of great pomp and joy, Justinian himself acting at the altar the part of my mistress's parent; for she had no male relatives surviving. Theodora settled upon her an extensive city property, with a huge annual rent-roll: she held that a woman who is beholden to her husband for every copper she spends is little better than a slave. My mistress warned Belisarius that in future she would accompany him on his campaigns, as Antonia the Elder had once accompanied the famous Germanicus in his campaigns across the Rhine, to their mutual comfort and the great advantage of Rome. To remain tamely at Constantinople in ignorance of what might be happening
to him on some distant frontier and to be exposed to wild rumours of his defeat and death – this was a torture that she refused to bear again.

They occupied a great suite at the Palace, where there is room for everyone.

I
T
was ten years before Belisarius returned to the Persian frontier. Of what happened in the East during his absence, especially the further misfortunes that overtook our dear Antioch, I promise you a round account when my story reaches that point. Meanwhile a few words will suffice. King Kobad died, shortly after Belisarius's recall, at the age of eighty-three, but not before ordering a further invasion of our territories. His forces were so strong that in Roman Armenia our soldiers were obliged to retire into their walled cities while the Persians laid the country waste. The succession to Kobad's throne was then disputed by three claimants. These were Khaous, the legitimate heir; one-eyed Jamaspes, the second in age, as regent on behalf of his infant son (himself debarred because of his deformity); and Khosrou, the youngest, whom Kobad had nominated in his will. Khosrou was acclaimed by a vote of the Grand Council and duly crowned. He soon destroyed his brothers, who revolted against him, and all their male heirs. But he did not feel himself secure upon the throne, even after this massacre, and decided to come to terms with Justinian.

These twin eyes of the world therefore synoptically signed a peace, named ‘The Eternal', under which all territory whatsoever conquered by either side during the late wars should be restored, and Justinian should pay Khosrou a large sum for the perpetual maintenance of the Persian garrison at the Caspian Gates – some 800,000 gold pieces – and, without dismantling the fortifications of Daras, agree to withdraw his advanced headquarters to Constantina, which was less dangerously close to the frontier. There was also a curious condition: that the pagan philosophers who had fled to the Persian Court from Athens when Justinian closed the University there, four years previously – poor Symmachus was among their number – should be allowed to return temporarily to the Roman Empire, without fear of persecution, for the purpose of setting their affairs in order and of collecting a library of the pagan Classics for Khosrou's own edification. Justinian agreed to this, content that he had dealt the Old Gods their death-blow not only at Athens but throughout his dominions: he had
everywhere converted their venerable temples into Christian churches and sequestrated their treasures.

So much for Persia. But Theodora was right in anticipating trouble from the factions, and Justinian in consenting to the recall of Belisarius – but for whom, as I shall show, he would certainly have lost his throne and almost certainly his life.

Must I repeat what I have already said about the virulence of the hatred between the Blues and Greens? Preoccupied now by increasingly bitter disputes as to the nature of the Son, they were engaged in justifying a Gospel prophecy. For, according to the Evangelist Matthew, Jesus told His twelve Apostles, when He first sent them out preaching Christianity: ‘Do not think that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's foes shall be the members of his own household.' So it was in many a Christian household in the City. Son and daughter perhaps wore the Blue favour, and were Orthodox two-nature people, while father and mother and daughter-in-law wore the Green and maintained the single nature. They threw kettles of boiling water at one another as they sat at meals, or poisoned the wine; and blasphemed most learnedly. If the Greens set up a statue of a victorious charioteer and inscribed it: ‘To the glory of Such-and-Such, winner of the Foundation Stakes, and the greater glory of Christ single-natured', the Blues would gather together at night and deface the inscription, then behead the statue and paint it blue; however, the Greens would perhaps retaliate by attempting to set fire to some wine-shop or other which the Blues used as their headquarters. It was not safe to be out in the streets after dark, not for physicians hurrying to attend the sick, nor for priests going at a more leisurely pace to administer the last Sacrament to the dying, nor for midnight adulterers, nor even for the poorest sort of outcasts. Gangs of young coxcombs ranged the streets at night, murdering and robbing indiscriminately; and the police were either bribed or terrorized into inertness. The war was even waged against the dead. Holes were bored at night in the tombs of departed factionists, and through them were dropped lead tablets of execration: ‘Sleep unsoundly, vile Blue [or Green] until Judgement Day, dreaming of Green [or Blue] victories, and awake only to be damned to everlasting perdition!'