Authors: Stephen Dando-Collins
The Visigoth leaders were made uneasy, despite the successes of the past few months. According to Claudian, a council of war was convened at Alaric’s camp by Visigoth chieftains. Many were elderly, with some using spears as walking sticks. Most bore the scars of battle, and all were long-haired and clad in garments of animal fur. All were aware that Alaric was intent on pressing south and taking Rome. When he was made king of his people six years earlier, Alaric had made a vow to the River Danube, which he and his forefathers considered sacred. That oath was “that he would never unbuckle his breastplate until he had marched in triumph through the Forum” in Rome. [Ibid., 81–3] Now, Alaric proposed to fulfill that vow.
At the meeting of the Visigoth senate, the most elderly tribal leader came to his feet. Like him, the older men here had participated in the rout of the emperor Valens’ Roman army at Adrianople twenty-three years before, when Alaric was just 8 years old. This same warrior chief had given Alaric his first bow and arrows when he was a boy. In times past, the old warrior had counseled Alaric to observe the treaty with Rome and keep the peace. Now, in grave tones, he warned the young king that he had pushed his luck, and that of his people, further than was prudent.
It was time to collect their spoils and go home, the Visigoth elder said, while the approaching legions were still far off. Wait any longer, he cautioned, and their people could be trapped in Italy. No one had succeeded in taking Rome; it was said that in
the city’s defense the gods hurled thunderbolts from her walls. It was folly even to consider it. Further, he reminded Alaric that in the not so distant past, a Roman army under Stilicho had inflicted a severe defeat on the Visigoths in Greece. “If you are not afraid of the gods,” said the old man, “beware the might of Stilicho.” [Claud.,
TGW
, 469–515]
Alaric was furious. Declaring the old man a coward, he reminded the other leaders that he had never been defeated, and never took a backward step. He intended to either conquer Italy or to die there. Even now, he said, Italian blacksmiths in occupied towns were being forced to forge weapons that the Visigoths would use against Stilicho and his Roman troops. The gods had told him to conquer Italy, he said, and he would not defy Heaven’s rule—there would be no retreat from Italy. Equally unwilling to defy their gods, the Visigoth leaders on the council of war backed their king. Then, “exhorting them to combat,” Alaric “made ready his army to take the road [west],” to meet and defeat the approaching legions. [Ibid. 518–52]
By the beginning of April, Alaric had concentrated his forces at the town of Pollentia, today’s village of Pollenza. On the Tanaro river, Pollentia straddled the main paved Roman military highway that led from Turin to Asti and on to Milan. Clearly, it was Alaric’s intention to intercept and destroy the Roman reinforcements marching from Gaul before they could reach Stilicho.
Once the Visigoths had pulled out of the encirclement of Milan, Stilicho could venture out of the city and march west with the hope of linking up with the legions coming from Gaul. But he had to do it before the Visigoths attacked the column. Addressing his legions at Milan before he set out, he told them it was time to exact vengeance. “Wipe out the disgrace which the encirclement of your emperor by his foes has brought on you, and let your swords end the shame which the defeat on the Timavus and the enemy’s passage of the Alps has caused to Rome.” Rome’s enemies were watching, he said—the fierce tribes in Britain, the Germans beyond the Rhine, the barbarians north of the Danube. “The empire’s frame is tottering. Let your shoulders support it. A single battle, and all will be well. Just one victory, and the world’s peace will be assured.” [Ibid., 562–73]
Sending a similar message to be read to the auxiliaries, Stilicho gave his invigorated troops the order to prepare to march. He now dispatched Honorius under escort to Ravenna, on the east coast of Italy, from where the young emperor could escape by ship if the campaign went against the Romans. Stilicho himself combined some of
the legionary and auxiliary troops that had garrisoned Milan, the 3rd Italica Legion, which had by now arrived from Raetia, and the king of the Alans and his cavalry; on the eve of Easter, “at full speed he advanced his army, clamorous for battle,” to the southwest, on the heels of the enemy. [Ibid., 560–61]
It was April 6, Easter Sunday, when Stilicho chose to engage in battle with the enemy. The Visigoths may have felt Christian Romans would not fight during an important religious festival, but Stilicho had no scruples about fighting at Easter. The two armies formed up on the plain outside the vast Visigoth camp. It is unclear whether Stilicho had by this time managed to link up with the three legions that had been marching from the west to reinforce him, but it is likely, for he took the initiative and lined up outside the Visigoth camp in battle order. His formation was a standard one, with infantry in the center and cavalry on the wings. It seems, from his later battle tactics, that he placed the majority of his legionaries in the front rank, with auxiliaries behind them. [Claud.,
SCH
, 220–21]
Flavius Vegetius Renatus, a senior adviser to the emperor Valentinius II just a decade or so earlier, described the nature of the disposition of the cavalry and infantry in the battle line during this time. The heavy cavalry, those troopers wearing armor from head to toe and whose horses were also armored, stood next to the infantry with their massive spears projecting well out in front of them, together with the lancers, who were equipped with four or five lances. Light cavalry—the horse archers and troopers without any armor—occupied the extremities of the wings. The task of the infantry line, said Vegetius, was to stand its ground and repulse or break up the enemy attack. [Vege.,
III
] The heavy cavalry’s role was to stay with the infantry and protect its flanks. At the same time, the light cavalry was to gallop forward and surround the enemy’s wings and disorder them. [Ibid.]
Stilicho posted the Alani cavalry in his rear as a reserve. But the men of the cavalry were to play a key role in his battle tactics, for Stilicho planned to use them in a maneuver designed to capture Alaric alive. At the Romans’ final council of war this secret plan was shared with the king of the Alans, who, according to Claudian, was short in stature, “but great was his soul, and anger blazed fiercely from his eyes.” He was covered in battle scars, and a spear wound had left a particularly savage scar on his face. [Claud.,
TGW
, 581–5] When he left the conference with Stilicho, the king of the Alans knew precisely what he had to do, and he was determined not to fail the Roman general, just as he was determined to throw off
the accusation of treachery leveled at him after the Alans had been implicated in the uprising in Vindelicia the previous year. [Ibid., 590–93] Alani heavy cavalry took their position in the rear, probably joining a legion assigned by Stilicho to his reserve. That legion, like all by this time, would have numbered little more than 1,000 men.
The Notitia Dignitatum illustrates how the legions were equipped at this time. They wore pants and boots, and were attired in tunics that were in some cases white, in others red. Some wore light chain-mail armor. Their helmets were like those of firemen today. While archaeological finds from earlier centuries indicate that Roman helmets were then lined with felt, by the fourth century it had become the habit for Roman soldiers to wear a conical felt cap under their helmets for comfort.
The weapons carried by Stilicho’s legionaries were a handful of javelins, a sword that was longer than the old gladius short-sword, a dagger, and as many as three battleaxes of differing design, some double-headed, jammed into the belt. Their shields were wooden, oval, almost flat, and bore a painted unit emblem as in the past.
On the other side, Alaric deployed long-haired, bearded Visigoth infantry with spear, sword, and wooden shields that were sometimes oval and sometimes oblong. Few of the Visigoths wore armor or helmets. Alaric’s cavalrymen were likewise unarmored, and were equipped with spear, shield and sword. Some leaders, including Alaric himself, wore Roman armor and helmet. As the Visigoth men poured from their camp to form battle lines, their women and children waited in the camp to enjoy the spoils of another anticipated victory, while thousands of chained Roman prisoners in the camp prayed for Roman success.
Rome’s armies no longer charged the enemy as in the day of Julius Caesar—who had been fiercely critical of Pompey the Great’s decision to have his army stand firm to receive Caesar’s charge at Pharsalus in 48
BC
. As Vegetius indicates, by the time of the Battle of Pollentia it was the norm for the legions to stand and receive an enemy charge. So it would appear that this is how the battle outside Pollentia opened, with the Visigoths charging the stationary Roman army and the two front lines becoming locked together.
It was soon heavy going for Roman troops fighting in the center. As legionaries in “wearied ranks” began to flag, Stilicho ordered whole cohorts out of the battle line, throwing in waiting auxiliaries of the second line to replace them. Among those now brought into the fight against the Visigoths were units of Goth auxiliaries. The poet Claudian would gloat over this move by Stilicho: “Thus he cunningly weakens
the savage tribes of the Danube by opposing one tribe against another.” This, in Claudian’s opinion, meant that either way barbarians would perish in battle for Rome’s sake. [Claud.,
SCH
, 220–23]
Once battle had been under way for a time and the Roman and Visigoth warriors were shield to shield, Stilicho, positioned behind the lines, spotted Alaric, mounted, and with a strong horse-guard, on the opposite side of the battlefield. It was then that Stilicho ordered a particular trumpet call to be sounded. This was the signal that the Alans had been waiting for. Led by their diminutive, battle-scarred king, the armored Alani cavalrymen kicked their horses into motion and, with their standards flying in the wind, came charging around from behind the Roman army and swept into one flank of the Visigoth army.
Carried by momentum and received with surprise, the Alans cut their way through opposing troops toward Alaric and his escort. The Alans were desperately close to achieving their goal when, in his enthusiasm, their king pressed too far ahead of his men, and was surrounded by Goths with hacking blades. Before the eyes of his men, the king was toppled from his steed and killed. His death threw his followers into confusion. Many turned away from the fight. “The entire host would have reeled had not Stilicho swiftly gathered a legion, and hurrying to the spot, rallied the cavalry to the fight with infantry support,” said Claudian. [Claud.,
TGW
, 594–7]
“The rash Alan chief [had] upset his carefully laid scheme,” said Claudian of Stilicho’s plan to capture his opposite number. “All but a prisoner,” Alaric managed to escape, and galloped from the battlefield. [Claud.,
SCH
, 224–5] The Visigoth king rode back to his camp. There, gathering what pack animals he could, he had them loaded with valuables, then fled east with his entourage. Thousands of Visigoth fighting men did the same, leaving their wives and children behind. Stilicho’s troops swept into the camp, where they took the Visigoth non-combatants prisoner and released from their chains throngs of Roman captives, who planted “thankful kisses on their deliverers’ bloodied hands and hurried back to their long-lost homes and their dear children.” [Claud.,
TGW
, 616–19]
The Visigoths hoped their retreat would be aided by the Roman troops pausing to loot the enemy camp of its spoils, for the invaders had brought all their valuables to Italy with them. But, says Claudian, the majority of the Roman troops gave chase, ignoring Visigoth carts laden with gold and silver. To further slow the pursuit and speed their escape, the Visigoths discarded their war trophies along the highway in
their wake—everything from Greek mixing bowls to life-size statues looted from Corinth in Achaea before that famous Greek city was burned by Alaric’s hordes. In desperation, Visigoth leaders threw away scarlet robes that had belonged to the Roman emperor Valens and which they had looted from his baggage at Adrianople more than two decades earlier. None of these things tempted Stilicho’s men, said Claudian, for these things were connected with past Roman defeats and were considered “ill-omened.” [Ibid., 613]
After weeks of retreat, Alaric was able to regroup a number of his men and make camp in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains in central Italy. Stilicho hung back, keeping watch on the Visigoth encampment but not surrounding it, and posting troops at every point to warn him of enemy movements. According to Claudian, Alaric, bitter at his defeat at Pollentia, had initially considered marching over the Apennines to Rome. [Claud.,
SCH
, 291–2] But once his youthful temper had cooled he decided to find a route across the Alps into Raetia, or even Gaul. Yet each time his scouts ventured in one direction or another they ran into Roman patrols, as if Stilicho could read Alaric’s mind, and were forced to turn back. [Ibid., 231–41]
There, as the heat of summer beat down on Italy, without fodder, Alaric’s horses were forced to eat leaves and tree-bark. Disease raged in the Visigoth camp. Alaric’s followers berated him, complaining that they had lost all their worldly goods, and that their wives and children were prisoners of the Romans. Yet, he felt the same loss—Alaric’s own wife and children had been captured, and his wealth had also been taken. [Ibid., 296–7] The warriors urged him to do battle with the Romans once more, but he would not venture to fight Stilicho again.
Disillusioned with their king’s leadership, whole sections of Visigoth infantry and squadrons of cavalry began to desert Alaric, going over to Stilicho or heading for Pannonia. Some of his most senior commanders went with them. Alaric rode after deserters, at one moment cursing them, at another imploring them to stay faithful to him, and reminding them of their past glories together, even offering to let them kill him as an alternative to turning their backs on him. But they ignored him, and rode on. [Ibid., 250–55]