Count Belisarius (44 page)

T
HE
news that had come from Africa in the spring of this year was gloomy indeed. Solomon had recently sent a column of Imperial troops against Stotzas from Numidia, but Stotzas had persuaded them to join in the mutiny, in spite of the prestige that he had lost through his defeat by Belisarius. Except for the towns of Carthage and Hippo Regius and Hadrumetum, the whole Diocese was lost to Justinian again. However, it was one thing to be the ring-leader of a successful mutiny and another to govern a Diocese: Stotzas found that he had little authority over his men, who complained that he did not provide them with regular rations or pay or attend to their comforts, and that they were little better off now than before. Later in the year we heard that Justinian had sent his nephew Germanus to proclaim an amnesty in his name to all deserters; and that the mutineers considered the offer a very handsome one, since it included back pay for all the months of the mutiny. Stotzas's forces were now gradually melting away. At last we heard that Germanus had defeated Stotzas and his Moorish allies in the field, and that Stotzas had fled to the interior of Morocco in the company of a few Vandals; and that all was quiet again, though the whole Diocese was greatly impoverished. Belisarius wrote to Germanus, suggesting that he send him as reinforcements the Herulians and Thracian Goths who had been among the mutineers; in Italy there were no laws forbidding the Sacraments to Arians, and he could make good use of these brave men.

At Rome there was plain famine now. The distressed citizens came again to plead with Belisarius to fight another pitched battle, and so end the siege, one way or the other, at a single stroke. They even told him: ‘Our misery has become so profound that it has actually inspired us with a sort of courage, and we are ready, if you insist, to take up arms and march with you against the Goths. Rather die under the merciful sword-stroke or lance-thrust than from the slow and tearing pangs of hunger.'

Belisarius was ashamed to hear so degrading an avowal from the mouths of men who still bore the proud name of Romans. In dismissing
them he said that if they had volunteered twelve months previously to learn the business of fighting, by now he might have good use for them: as it was, they were useless to him. Belisarius was aware that the Goths were in a very difficult position themselves – the pestilence had spread to their camps, which were insanitary, and destroyed many thousands of them. There had also been a breakdown in their food-supply from the north, owing to floods and mismanagement. But his own position was worse; and if the relieving force that was rumoured to be on its way did not soon arrive he was lost.

He now took the bold step of secretly sending out two columns, of 500 good troops and 1,000 Roman levies each, to surprise and occupy the fortified towns of Tivoli and Terracina. If both actions were successful he would not only have decreased his ration-strength but turned from besieged to besieger: Tivoli and Terracina commanded the roads by which food-convoys were now reaching the Goths. He urged my mistress Antonina to leave Rome with the force sent against Terracina, and from there continue to Naples and hurry the reinforcements forward to him as soon as they arrived. In reality he was anxious for her health, because her great exertions and the badness of the food had weakened her greatly; and she had frequent fainting fits. Besides, to be the only woman in a besieged city is no happy fate. After some hesitation she agreed to go, resolved by whatever means to revitual the city before another month had passed.

On the last night of November we slipped out of the city, 1,500 of us, by the Appian Gate. I, for one, was so happy to be away that I began to sing a Hippodrome song, ‘The Chariots Fly', forgetting the order of silence; an officer struck me roughly over the shoulder with the flat of his sword, and I ceased singing in the middle of my verse. We passed the aqueduct fortress in safety, the Goths having abandoned it because of the pestilence; and a few days later we occupied Terracina without incident, for the small Gothic garrison fled at sight of our banner. We filled our bellies in this place, eating cheese and butter and fresh sea-fish for the first time for many months.

My mistress and I and Procopius the secretary, who came with us, set out from Terracina with an escort of twenty soldiers; yet we reached Naples with more than 500! Our way had taken us past the encampment of those cavalrymen who had deserted at the Mulvian Bridge long before. A number of other deserters had since joined them there. When my mistress offered them all a free pardon, they fell in
behind her. And at Baiae we found a number of our wounded, who had been sent to take the waters there, now sufficiently recovered to be able to fight again. But Naples – where the volcano Vesuvius was rumbling ominously, and scattering the ashes that induce such fertility in the vineyards that they fall upon – Naples had happy news for us. A fleet had just arrived from the East with 3,000 Isaurian infantry on board, and was anchored in the bay; and, besides this, 2,000 cavalry under Bloody John had landed at Otranto and were moving up towards us by rapid marches.

Soon our army of 5,500 men was ready to march to the relief of Rome. We had collected great quantities of grain and oil and sausages and wine to take with us. Bloody John had assembled a large number of farm-wagons, requisitioned with their teams in his passage through Calabria; we loaded the grain on these. John undertook to escort the convoy into Rome along the Appian Way – if the Goths attacked, the wagons would provide him with a useful barricade in the barbarian style. My mistress took command of the Isaurian fleet itself, storing all the other provisions in it. The weather being fine, we sailed to Ostia at once, agreeing to meet John there four days before Christmas Day.

At the mouth of the River Tiber is an island two miles long and two miles broad. On the northern side is the strongly fortified Port of Rome, connected with the city by a good road along which, in times of peace, barges are drawn up the current by teams of oxen. On the southern side is Ostia, which was once of greater importance than the Port of Rome, but has long lost its trade and declined to a mere open village. This is because the road from here to Rome is unsuitable as a towpath: it was found cheaper to tow goods up the river in barges than to haul them along the road in wagons. Besides, the harbour of Ostia had grown too shallow for convenient use, a great quantity of silt having been carried down the river and retained by the artificial island built at the harbour mouth. However, the Goths now held the Port of Rome, and Ostia was the only other port in the neighbourhood; so to Ostia we went, and found it undefended.

Meanwhile Belisarius, informed of the approach of the convoy, decided to deal the Goths a heavy blow to the northward, in order to distract their attention from what was happening on the river. One early morning, therefore, he ordered a thousand light cavalry under Trajan to ride out from the Pincian Gate against the nearest Gothic camp and shoot arrows over the palisade, inviting a skirmish. The Gothic
cavalry soon gathered from the other camps. Trajan retired, according to orders, as soon as they charged, and was pursued back to the city walls. This was only the beginning of the battle. The Goths did not know that our men had been busy in the night removing the buttressed wall with which the Flaminian Gate had long been blocked from inside. From this unexpected quarter burst Belisarius himself at the head of his Household Regiment and, forcing his way through an intervening outpost, charged their confused column in the flank. Then Trajan's men turned about, and the Goths were caught between the two forces. Very few escaped.

King Wittich was greatly disheartened by this battle and by the messages that now reached him from some of his spies in the city. For my mistress had caught a ring of them just before she left, and Theodosius, who took over this work in her absence, forced them by threats of torture to send out letters containing misleading news. According to these letters, the vanguard of an enormous army – at least 60,000 men – was advancing from Naples. Wittich's own forces had been reduced by battle and sickness to 50,000 men; two large convoys of grain that he needed urgently had been captured by the Tivoli garrison; desertions became frequent. He decided to sue for peace.

Accordingly, he sent three envoys to Rome. Belisarius admitted them as before, blindfolded, and had them speak their messages in the Senate House before him. Their spokesman, a Roman friendly to the Goths, stated King Wittich's case ably and at some length. The whole question at issue, he said, was whether the Goths had a right in Italy or not. If they had a right, as he could prove, then Justinian was acting unjustly in sending an army against them, not having himself been injured by them in any way. The facts were as follows. Theoderich, their former king, who had patrician rank at Constantinople, had been commissioned by the then Emperor of the East to invade Italy and seize the government from the hands of certain barbarian generals who had deposed his colleague, the Emperor of the West. This commission Theoderich had successfully undertaken; and in all the long years of his reign had preserved the Italian Constitution in its entirety. He had made no new laws nor repealed any old ones, leaving the civil government entirely in the hands of Italians, and acting merely as commander-in-chief of the forces which protected the country against Franks, Gepids, Burgundians, and similar barbarians. Moreover,
though Arians, Theoderich and his successors had behaved with noble tolerance towards the Orthodox Christians and shown veneration for their shrines; and it would therefore be ridiculous to pretend that the present inexcusable invasion was a war of religious liberation.

Belisarius replied: ‘Theoderich was sent to Italy to win back the country for the Emperor of the East, surely, not to seize it for himself? It would have been no advantage to the then Emperor that Italy should be governed by this barbarian usurper as opposed to that.'

The envoy said: ‘Let that pass. Sensible men do not argue about dim historical incidents. But I have come to tell you this: that if you consent to withdraw your army from Italy, my royal master will freely cede to your Emperor the whole fruitful island of three-cornered Sicily.'

Belisarius laughed and replied scornfully: ‘Fair is fair. And we will freely cede to you the whole fruitful island of three-cornered Britain, which is much larger than Sicily and used to be a source of great riches to us – before we lost it.'

‘Suppose that my Master agrees to let you keep Naples and the whole of Campania?'

‘My orders are to reconquer Italy for its rightful owner, and I propose to carry them out. I am not empowered to make any arrangements that would prejudice the Emperor's claim to the entire peninsula and all its dependencies.'

‘Will you agree to a three months' armistice while King Wittich sends proposals for peace to Constantinople?'

‘I shall never stand in the way of an enemy who genuinely desires to make peace with his Serene Highness, my Master.'

An armistice was agreed upon, therefore, and an exchange of hostages. But before it was ratified Belisarius heard of our arrival at Ostia by land and sea. He could not restrain himself, but rode out one night at dusk with a hundred men to welcome his Antonina. He passed safely through the Gothic lines and dined with us that night in our entrenched and barricaded camp. He promised that as we came up the road the next day with our wagons, he would, if necessary, sally out to our assistance. At midnight he rode back again, eluding the enemy outposts as before.

In our pleasure at seeing him and hearing his account of the fight outside the Flaminian Gate, we had omitted to tell him of our transport difficulties. I was present with my mistress at a council of war the
next morning when these difficulties were discussed. The Ostia road was a neglected, muddy track, and the wagon oxen were so worn out by their long forced march from Calabria that they were still lying half-dead where they had halted the night before, unable even to eat the cut grass that their drivers had spread before them. Neither whip nor goad would persuade them to haul wagons that day.

It was my mistress Antonina who made the suggestion that we should load the corn on our smaller rowing-galleys, board them in against enemy arrow or javelin attack, and fit them with very wide sails. The wind was steady from the West and, with the help of oars at the bends of the river, it should not be impossible to make progress against the current as far as the city. The cavalry could follow along the bank and occasionally haul on ropes where sail and oars both failed to carry a boat upstream.

The plan was successful: after an all-day voyage the boats reached Rome safely at dusk. The Goths had offered no hindrance, not wishing to prejudice the signing of the armistice. The wind remained steady, and the boats returned to Ostia on the next day for a further cargo. Within a few days the whole of the stores had been conveyed into Rome, the famine was at an end, the fleet had returned to winter at Naples, and the armistice, which bound both sides to refrain from ‘all acts or threats of force whatsoever', was signed and sealed. Wittich's ambassadors then set out for Constantinople; but Belisarius sent a letter to Justinian urging him to pay no attention to their proposed terms unless these amounted to a capitulation.

Hildiger, my mistress's son-in-law, arrived from Carthage on New Year's Day with what was left of the Herulians and Thracian Goths – 600 vigorous, shame-faced men. Belisarius welcomed them without any taunting reference to their part in the mutiny. On the same day the Gothic garrison abandoned the Port of Rome, Wittich being unable to keep this place provisioned; the Isaurian force which we had posted at Ostia occupied it. The Tuscan city of Civita Vecchia was abandoned by its garrison for the same reason, and likewise occupied by us. Wittich protested that this was a violation of the armistice, but Belisarius ignored the protest; for neither arms nor threats had been used on his side. He now sent a large cavalry column under the command of Bloody John to winter near the Fucine Lake, about seventy miles eastward from Rome; John was to remain there quietly until further orders, exercising the troops in archery and rapid manoeuvre.
If the Goths broke the armistice he would be in a position to do them a great deal of harm.