Count Belisarius (48 page)

Then an old merchant of the large Syrian colony resident at Ravenna came to him and said: ‘How is it that the Emperor Justinian has been able to spare forces for the conquest of Africa and of so much of your own dominions? It is surely because he first bought peace with the Persians, and thus could spare Belisarius, the commander of his Eastern armies, for service here in the West. If you were to persuade the Great King to cross the Euphrates in force, then Belisarius would soon be recalled to the East to deal with the new threat. For the Emperor has only this one general of genius, and must pass him up and down across his dominions like the shuttle across the web of a loom. King Wittich, send an embassy to the Great King and, at the same time, another embassy to Theudebert, King of the Franks. Let these embassies inform each monarch that the other has promised to make a flank attack in force against the Roman Empire.'

Wittich asked: ‘But how can any of us Goths go safely on embassies across the entire Eastern Empire? The Emperor's men would surely arrest my envoys. Moreover, none of us can speak the Persian tongue.'

The Syrian replied: ‘Send priests. They will not be suspected. Let them travel in the company of Syrians, who go everywhere, know every language, have friends in every land.'

Wittich embraced the idea. Willing priests were found, and Syrian
guides, the priest destined for Persia assuming the temporary rank of bishop for greater security. The two embassies went out by sea together, in two small boats, taking advantage of the tide on the next moonless night, and eluded our flotilla. At Ravenna there are tides, a common phenomenon on the shores of the Ocean but not seen elsewhere in the Mediterranean. (It has recently been observed that tides are regulated by the moon.) Only at certain hours can ships navigate the channel across the extensive shallows and enter the port; which is what protects Ravenna so securely against attack from the sea.

A month later, considering the matter again, King Wittich sent two more embassies, similarly composed, to the Moors in Africa, and to the Lombards, a Germanic race recently arrived on the farther bank of the Upper Danube, suggesting that they, too, should strike in concert with the Persians and Franks. The four embassies all succeeded in reaching their destinations. In every case but that of the Lombards the answer was: ‘Yes, we will strike, and soon.' The Lombards replied cautiously: ‘We will do nothing until we have news that the armies of the other nations are in motion; for we are at present the trusted allies of the Emperor.'

None of us would have suspected King Wittich of understanding world politics sufficiently to foment trouble on distant frontiers of our Empire; for no German had ever considered doing such a thing before. But he was hard pressed, and ready to accept the advice even of Syrians, whom usually he despised as lying Oriental heretics.

The year drew on; it was now the fifth since we had first landed in Sicily. Fiesole and Osimo both refused to capitulate. The Gothic garrisons being large and the defences strong, our only hope was to reduce these fortresses by famine. Belisarius did not allow his army to deteriorate and diminish during the siege, as Wittich had done with his before Rome. On the contrary, he employed these months in the training of his Italian levies, exercising them in continual manoeuvres; he made their rates of pay correspond with the skill that they had attained in the handling of arms and other military arts. He also raised several fresh battalions, providing officers from the ranks of the Household Regiment – among his ‘biscuit-eaters' there were numerous Thracians and Illyrians whose native dialect was a sort of Latin. But the new levies were no great improvement upon the Roman city troops. The Italian soil, once so prolific of heroes, has become exhausted in the course of centuries: the Italian has no stomach for a fight, for
all his bluster and boasting. Belisarius regretted that he could not use the Gothic prisoners that he captured, for they were strong, bold men, easily trained. Instead, they were being sent to the East and to Africa to fight for the Emperor there.

Of the siege of Osimo I can recall few incidents worth relating. Old soldiers have told me that their experience confirms mine: the incidents at the beginning of a campaign recur sharply to the memory, but as the years of war drag on a man notices less and less and becomes sluggish, so that his attention is not stirred except by some extraordinary sight.

There were frequent skirmishes that summer on the slope of the hill between the city walls of Osimo and our camp. The Goths would creep out at dusk to cut fodder for their horses, and our patrols would engage them; on moonlight nights there would be very sharp fighting. It was down that hill one morning, against a battalion of our infantry advancing in line, that the Goths suddenly rolled a huge number of wagon-wheels with long knives and sickles lashed to the hubs. By good luck not a man of ours was hurt; the Goths had miscalculated the direction of the slope, and the wheels swerved harmlessly away into a wood, from which we recovered them. It was on that slope too that, riding out one morning with my mistress, I was witness to an unforgettable sight. A number of Goths under an officer were out on the hill-side cutting fodder by daylight; and a company of Moors, dismounted, went out to stalk them, creeping up a grassy ravine. But the fodder-cutting party was a bait concealing an ambush: as the Moors emerged from the ravine with a loud yell, up sprang another party of Goths to meet them and there was a hand-to-hand tussle, many men falling on both sides. The officer in command of the fodder-cutting party, who was wearing gilded plate-armour but no helmet, was killed by an upward stab of a Moorish javelin in the groin – plate-armour, intended for mounted use, has a weakness at this spot. The Moor who had struck the blow uttered a cry of triumph and, seizing the corpse by its yellow hair, began dragging it off. Then a Gothic spear flew and nearly transfixed the Moor's two calves a few inches above each heel, as one skewers a hare's hind-legs with a twig for greater ease in carrying it home. But the Moor did not release his hold. He crawled slowly downhill like a caterpillar, arching and flattening out, dragging the corpse behind him. All this my mistress and I saw with our own eyes from the shelter of a holly tree. One of our
trumpeters now blew the Alarm, and a troop of Bulgarian Huns galloped past us up the hill to the rescue. The leading Hun picked up the Moor, javelin and all, and threw him across the back of his horse. The Moor would still not let go his corpse, which bumped and clattered along the ground as they rode back to safety.

Another memorable occasion was the fight at the cistern. This cistern was built on the steep ground to the northward of Osimo, close to the walls. It provided the garrison's chief, but not only, water-supply; it was fed by a small trickle of pure water and protected by a vault to keep the water cool. The Goths used to fill their pitchers at it by night, with a strong covering party posted all around. Five Isaurians now volunteered to destroy it, if they were provided with the necessary cold chisels, hammers, and crowbars, and protected while they worked. Early the next day Belisarius brought up his whole army and posted them in a circle at intervals around the wall. Long ladders were held in readiness, as if for an escalade. When the Advance was sounded and the attention of the Goths engaged, the five Isaurians would slip unobtrusively inside the cistern and begin their work of demolition.

The enemy waited quietly for the expected attack and held their fire until our men should be within easy range. The trumpets blew, there was shouting and shooting from our men, but the ladders were advanced only at a single point, 300 paces from the cistern; here the Goths came crowding up to repel the attack. In spite of this diversion the Isaurians did not escape notice as they scrambled up the rock and stole inside the cistern. The Goths realized that they were the victims of a ruse and made a furious sortie from the postern-gate close by, intending to capture the five men. Belisarius led an immediate counter-attack and held them off. It was bitter work, for the Goths were more numerous and had the advantage of the steep hill; but Belisarius's companions were sure-footed Isaurians and Armenian mountaineers, who loved this sort of fighting. Like them, Belisarius fought on foot, wearing only a buff-coat and armed with two javelins and a cutlass. He kept urging them to renewed efforts, though their losses were heavy. The longer the five Isaurians could work undisturbed in the cistern, he reckoned, the shorter would the siege be.

The Goths retreated about midday. As Belisarius rushed forward in pursuit a sentry on the neighbouring tower took a steady aim at him with a javelin; he cast, and the javelin came darting surely down. Belisarius
did not see it, for the sun was shining in his eyes from the south, immediately over the edge of the battlements. It was the spearman Unigatus, at Belisarius's side, who saved his life. Being a much shorter man than his master, he was already under the shadow of the wall and could see the javelin coming. He leaped forward and sideways, catching at it. The long head pierced his palm and cut all the sinews of the fingers, so that he was crippled in that hand for the rest of his life. But he said: ‘To save my lord Belisarius, I would gladly have interposed my breast.'

Belisarius went down into the cistern himself. Though the Isaurians had been hammering and heaving away with all their might at the big stone blocks, they had not succeeded in shifting so much as a pebble. It was the habit of the men of old to build not for a year, or even for a lifetime, but for ever. The stones were jointed so closely together and the interstices filled with so iron-hard a cement that it seemed a place hollowed out of the living rock. There was nothing else for it but to do what Belisarius had a natural repugnance against doing: he fouled the good water by throwing into the cistern the corpses of horses and quicklime and poisonous shrubs. The Goths, who were already reduced to eating grass, must now rely on a single well inside the fortifications and on rain-water from the house-roofs caught in tubs. But this was a year of drought, and no rain fell.

Fiesole yielded from famine in the month of August, and Belisarius displayed the captive leaders to the garrison at Osimo, hoping to persuade them to yield. Yield at last they did, for Belisarius offered them generous terms. He would not make slaves of them, but they must renounce their allegiance to King Wittich and swear loyalty to the Emperor Justinian, and also give up half their wealth to our men in lieu of plunder. By now they were angry with Wittich for abandoning them to their fate when his armies were still much more numerous than those of Belisarius – who was a soldier after their own hearts. They all volunteered to serve in the Household Regiment. They were picked men, and Belisarius enrolled them gladly. Thus the last of the fortresses southward from Ravenna had fallen to our arms.

Meanwhile King Wittich's nephew Uriah had been encamped at Pavia on the upper Po, prevented by the two Johns from marching to help his uncle at Ravenna. One day in June he heard good news – the embassy to King Theudebert had taken effect and 100,000 Franks had crossed the Alps and were marching to his aid through Liguria. These
Franks are Catholics in name only, and still retain many of their blood-thirsty old German customs; they have, moreover, a greater reputation for perfidy than any race in Europe. They are not horsemen, like the Goths and Vandals, their distant kinsmen, except that a few lancers accompany each of their princes and that every gau-leader is mounted as a mark of dignity. They are infantry, very brave and very undisciplined; and are armed with broadswords, shields, and their dreaded
franciscas
. These franciscas are short-handled, double-headed axes which, as they charge, they throw in a concerted volley; the blow from such an axe will shatter any ordinary shield and kill the man behind it.

Soon King Theudebert's forces reached the bridge-head over the Po at Pavia, which Uriah held; and the Goths welcomed them heartily. But the moment that the first battalions of the Franks had crossed unmolested, a dreadful surprise awaited Uriah. The Franks broke ranks and ran here and there, chasing Gothic women and children; and sacrificed those they captured, as the first fruits of war, by hurling them headlong into the river! This was an old custom of their pre-Christian days, but they justified it on Orthodox grounds: as the fitting treatment for Arian heretics who denied that Jesus Christ was the equal of His Almighty Father! Uriah's Goths were so taken aback by the horror of this sight that they fled away in a mad rush to their camp. Pursued with volleys of hurtling axes, they did not stop to defend the camp – there was a general stampede down the road towards Ravenna. They burst through Bloody John's outposts in their tens of thousands; and hundreds were shot down as they streamed past his camp.

Then Bloody John gathered his bodyguard together and galloped towards the Gothic camp, believing that Belisarius had made a surprise move through Tuscany, and that it was he who had routed the Goths. By the time that he had learned his mistake the Franks were swarming down the road; he fought a sharp engagement and was worsted. Abandoning his camp, with all his pillage of two years in it, he retreated to Tuscany. King Theudebert had won the whole western part of Liguria at a single stroke.

It had been a year of drought; and, because of the dangers of the time, farming activities had been interrupted throughout the north of Italy. The little corn that had been planted withered before it came to an ear, and the stocks in the granaries and barns had long ago been commandeered by King Wittich for his armies, or by the Milanese
who had revolted against him, or by the Herulians in their raids. Consequently, when the Franks had consumed the provisions which they found in the two captured camps, they were forced to subsist on the flesh of oxen cooked in the waters of the Po, which was running very low that year and was tainted with corpses. An army composed entirely of infantry has a narrower range of foraging than a cavalry army, and the Franks are heavy eaters. Thus they suffered great distress. When August came they were attacked by dysentery, and no less than 35,000 of them died.