Triumph (11 page)

‘They were of inestimable value complete, but for my needs the jewels could be detached and sold separately, Excellency, while the hilt alone—’

‘Yes, yes,’ Procopius interrupted. ‘We understand that, but why were you searched in the first place?’

‘Perhaps your General Constantinus thought anyone passing through from Ravenna to be a spy.’

‘Others were searched?’ Presidius, fat and sweating, nodded and looked set to gabble on when Flavius cut across him. ‘Constantinus did not search you personally?’

The response was a silly giggle, as if to say would a man of such stature stoop to such a task.

‘No, it was one of his officers. When he discovered my daggers he took them to show to the general.’

‘And they never came back?’

‘No. The officer who took them told me they were forfeit.’

Constantinus had been in Spoletum, sent there to delay the Goth approach to Rome, hastily withdrawn when it was obvious they were not going to allow themselves to be held up by unimportant outposts.

‘I asked for their return in Spoletum and again when I got to Rome. The general refused on both occasions.’

‘Without denying he had possession of them?’ Procopius asked.

‘He has them, alright,’ Presidius protested. ‘And while he keeps them I must beg to eat.’

‘God grant that every beggar I meet is as larded as you.’

Flavius had snapped at the man sarcastically, but the pleasure of that did nothing to allay what was a serious problem. His second in command had broken a rule for which other men had been hanged. Was this fat and sweating citizen telling the truth? And if he had robbed this fellow, how many more victims might there be, people too afraid to speak out against such an important person?

‘Ennes, take a file of my bodyguards and ask that General Constantinus join us.’

A glance around at the faces in the chamber, many shocked, others deeply curious as to what they were about to witness, did nothing to quiet the turmoil of his thoughts; they all knew what ‘ask’ meant. It was a command not a request, and he was not alone in wondering if force would be required to bring that about: Constantinus had his own personal guards.

He tried to hear other petitions but that was hard, made doubly so as rumours spread and the audience chamber began to fill up, which led to an order that no one else should be admitted other than Constantinus and his escort. If he was not looking forward to what was about to happen, the presence of Antonina, and the slight sneer that told him she knew of his forthcoming dilemma, did nothing to help. She had never tired of telling him his kindness to those conquered was mistaken.

The sound of studded sandals outside the chamber was loud but that was as nothing to the clatter on marble as Ennes entered with Constantinus, he surround by the armed men Ennes had taken with him. The impression given was of a prisoner being escorted and the
look of thunder on the handsome face of his second in command indicated to Flavius that he was furious.

‘Presidius, step forward,’ he shouted, as the party came to a halt before him, the guards falling to the side so that Constantinus was facing him, Ennes, sword drawn, at his side.

‘What is the meaning of this?’

‘I am obliged to ask you, General,’ Flavius said, indicating the citizen now trembling to one side, ‘if you know this man?’

The way Constantinus looked at Presidius annoyed Flavius, it being so full of disdain. ‘No, I do not and I would appreciate being told why I am being asked and why I have been dragged into your presence like some felon.’

‘An unfortunate choice of expression, Constantinus. His name is Presidius.’ That brought a flicker of eyelashes from the general. ‘He is now going to relate in your presence that complaint which he has brought to me.’

Presidius had to be prompted; faced with a powerful patrician his previous certainties came near to deserting him. But he got his tale out eventually, by which time Flavius had risen from the chair he had been using, descending from his own dais to stand before his fellow soldier, looking right into his eyes.

Constantinus might be listening to Presidius but he knew from where any decisions would come and the blue eyes were steady, the face growing increasingly defiant; if anyone knew the orders regarding respect to the citizens in conquered lands it was he, yet he was searching the black eyes before him for clues as to what would follow. In his attitude he confirmed to his commanding general that what was being related was true.

‘You, of all people,’ Flavius hissed, as Presidius came to a faltering halt. ‘The daggers, you have them?’

‘I do!’

Defiance not regret, Flavius reckoned, and that broke his rigidly held demeanour so that he positively barked, ‘Presidius would you be satisfied that they be returned?’

A stuttered yes was masked by Constantinus, who spoke in a firm voice. ‘You would have been better asking me if I am willing to surrender them, which I must tell you I will not.’

‘Damn you,’ Flavius shouted, ‘do you know what you face? I have executed men for much less. Am I to treat you in different manner because of your rank?’

It was as well Ennes was close; a hand went to the waist of the accused and his dagger came out in a flash of steel, this as he lunged forward. A flat swinging sword blade took him in the chest and checked him, before he was dragged into the arms of the men who had been his escort and his arms pinned.

Flavius, who had not flinched at what was clearly a bid to kill him, stepped forward to take off Constantinus his now useless dagger, his voice so low that only Ennes and those holding their prisoner could hear.

‘Surrender them willingly, pay a forfeit. Give me grounds for leniency.’

‘Since you’re going to kill me anyway, why bother?’

‘Killing me, as you just tried to do, was foolish.’

‘Better that than I grovel to a man I consider not much more than an Illyrian peasant.’

‘Like Justinian?’ A nod again, with an added sneer of superiority.

‘I do not want to execute you—’

‘That would not be out of love or regard.’

‘—but I must.’

F
ollowing the execution Flavius kept a careful eye on the mood of his army, as did Solomon, Photius and Procopius, the last probably to a greater and more telling extent, given his furtive sources, even if he gave a strong impression that he disagreed with the act of execution.

As far as they could discern the lower ranks approved – the law should be blind to eminence and birth – rankers had died for transgressing, so should generals. But it was amongst the echelons of the higher officers, where such things were held in some regard, that matters had to be more carefully assessed; these were men he dare not alienate as a body.

He hoped they, too, would see it as nothing but justice. This was seriously hampered in that quarter by the boasting of his wife, Antonina telling everyone who would listen a different version of the truth. The army second in command had been beheaded, not for a minor peculation but for the way he had insulted her, which was a gross exaggeration. If Constantinus had snubbed her invitations to dine and revel he had always been careful never to condescend to her; he knew her imperial connections as well as her husband.

Patently false as such statements were they could add fuel to a
suspicion that Flavius had been motivated as much by class revenge or perceived military jealousies as the need to apply impartiality when it came to treatment of the Italian natives. Listen and observe as he did, there was a limit to the accuracy with which he could discern dissatisfaction in those he met with daily; men seeking advancement in a world of imperial caprice knew too well how to hide their true feelings.

What they did hanker after, openly, was some form of action for a truce that had clearly been broken and in this their general was only too willing to oblige them. With troops to spare now and a city almost certainly immune to capture, flying columns of cavalry were sent out to induce extra discomfort in the breast of an opponent who had always had to keep one eye cast over his shoulder for either a defection or a new zone of conflict.

It was at his back that the real damage was being inflicted; John Vitalianus, known to be one of the most enterprising officers in the imperial army, at the head of two thousand cavalry, had been sent to ravage in Witigis’s very backyard, close to his capital of Ravenna. The old Roman province of Picenum was ripe for such a tactic, given it had a higher proportion of Goths within its borders than the rest of Italy.

With the main body of fighting men outside Rome, that left the aged, the infirm, the women and children and these John was busy enslaving, while at the same time sticking closely to the Belisarian creed in the way he cosseted the Italians to win them over to his cause. Naturally that had to be countered and Witigis was being forced to deplete his forces to deal with the threat, a fact reported to him by Procopius.

Flavius never asked him where he got the information he imparted, with such confidence, about what was happening in the Goth encampments. Nor did he question it, his secretary being only too adept at the game of planting or bribing informants.

‘Numbers?’

‘Three thousand cavalry under a leader called Ulitheus, uncle to Witigis, which shows how seriously he takes the matter. He has staked the family prestige on stopping Vitalianus.’

‘John will have to deal with it himself, which I trust him to do, as I cannot reinforce him but so far I cannot fault him.’

The man referred to, part of the most recent batch of reinforcements, had avoided any search for personal glory, a perennial risk with independent commands. He had stuck rigidly to the goal of strategically unnerving the enemy, declining to attack such Goth-garrisoned cities as Auximus and Urbinus, concentrating instead on their anxieties for what they considered their heartlands.

Flavius hoped he had found one senior officer he might be able to trust to be both obedient as well as enterprising for what was now going to be a more mobile and flexible form of warfare where he could not always be present to ensure that which was required in pursuit of the main object was executed as planned.

It seemed so when news came of the defeat of Ulitheus, indeed his own death at the hand of John Vitalianus, as well as the utter destruction of the forces he had led. With that came an even more encouraging outcome: the Italian citizens of Ariminum, a mere twelve leagues south of Ravenna, had invited the victor to enter and he had obliged, well aware that the occupation of a city so close to the Goth capital must bring on a serious response.

Witigis must have received the bad news at the same time as Flavius got the good. The Byzantine pickets set to watch the Goth camps were able to report that the enemy army was now making serious preparations to depart from a siege in which they had no hope of now succeeding, the aim to move due east to counter Vitalianus.

‘Do we let them go?’ asked Photius.

‘One more blow,’ was the response.

Flavius waited with increasing impatience for his enemies to begin to decamp, given he had no intention of facing their main force in a major battle and risking a reverse. He desired to restore the faith of his infantry in their own capability, so his action was planned to inflict maximum damage on a retreating enemy with as little risk as possible to his own men.

In any movement of a host the main cavalry arm took the lead and with the forces who had spent over a year on the Plains of Nero this was the case. Flavius waited until the horsemen were across the Milvian Bridge and on their way to rejoin Witigis, then led his own infantry in a sudden and swift attack on the remainder, to face an outnumbered foot-bound rearguard.

Initially they put up a stiff resistance before being forced to break and run. That sent the rear sections of the retiring main body into a panic, which affected those ahead of them and they began to rush for the bridge. Being a narrow causeway it became a bottleneck for a mass of men either in dread or merely desiring to get swiftly clear of an unwinnable fight. That soon turned to mayhem as terror spread to the entire Goth contingent, who in their sheer volume crowded the western approach, which prevented cavalry reinforcements from the east bank coming to their aid.

A massacre ensued: those that did not fall to the sword and spear either died in the crush on the bridge or drowned as they tried desperately to save their lives by jumping into the fast-flowing Tiber. When the action was over Flavius stood amongst a heap of corpses in total control of anything that might follow. He held the Milvian Bridge in force and even if Witigis had been eager to reverse matters the cost in blood, already great, was too much to risk, given his other concerns.

The siege of Rome was over and the battle for Italy could now resume.

Meeting the wishes of the Milanese delegation, a large force was sent by sea to land at Genoa, before proceeding to Ticinum. The Goth garrison there exited the city to fight them and were soundly defeated. Naturally Witigis, retiring towards Ravenna, was obliged to react by detaching a large body to march on Milan in an attempt to get there before the troops sent by Flavius, a hope in which he failed, meaning his men were committed to another siege and, given the stout walls and full storerooms, one as difficult as Rome.

Not that everything favoured Byzantium: if Flavius had more troops now there were never enough. In order to hold Liguria and the route to the coast fewer than four hundred men were left to enter Milan. They had been obliged to garrison an endless number of towns and cities in order to secure them should the forces of Witigis seek to sever the line of communication. To protect Milan itself, the citizens would need to aid the Byzantines in manning the walls.

Flavius was sure they would do so as long as matters progressed well in other places, most notably Ariminum. This was a stronghold Witigis dare not leave in Byzantine-cum-Roman hands, not that he could do so with all his forces. He too was obliged to denude his army of effectives; unoccupied towns on the road from Rome to Ravenna needed garrisons to stop them defecting to Belisarius, and they had to be of sufficient numbers to drive off any attack that came from the enemy forces that might be following in his wake.

Fortunately for Flavius, with small Byzantine forces still holding strategic places on the direct route to Ravenna, Witigis had been obliged to march his main force by a more circuitous route to avoid them and the check they could place on his progress. This allowed him to reinforce Ariminum with a strong body of Isaurian infantry under Ildiger, prior to the arrival of the main Goth host.

His orders to both the commanders were specific: infantry were
secure and effective behind walls, therefore Ildiger should take over the task of holding the city while John and his cavalry operated outside as a mobile force, able to snap at the Goths and disrupt their efforts to sustain the siege of Ariminum. The news that came from there told of dissension, not agreement.

‘John Vitalianus refuses to leave the city as ordered. He sends me to say that he has captured it and he will hold it for the empire.’

‘Not for his own personal glory?’ Flavius replied in a mordant tone.

There was no point in responding to say that this was in direct contradiction of a simple command and one Flavius had taken care should be given by Ildiger in writing, something that had become increasingly necessary. The senior officers who had arrived with his reinforcements were men of high rank and higher ambition who needed to be constrained by unequivocal instructions.

Flavius now had to conclude that the faith he had placed in John was proving to be misplaced and as he looked around at a now more crowded assembly he had to wonder who else would be as likely to act on their own initiative, which brought on a problem he had not yet encountered. Prior to his North African campaign, Flavius had persuaded Justinian to break with tradition and give him sole command of the forces he led and this had carried on once he crossed to Sicily and eventually to the Italian mainland.

For too long the armies of the Eastern Roman Empire had been hampered in battle by the habit of appointing two generals as conjoint commanders of its forces in the field, and that extended to actual battle. Emperors were imbued with a keen sense of history and harked back to Republican times when the joint consuls had led the legions.

Added to that they feared that any one military leader should be
too successful because the imperial past was littered with occasions when this had led to rebellion and, on several occasions, to outright usurpation. Dividing the command militated against any notion of individual glory, the unfortunate concomitant of this being division and confusion in situations that demanded clarity and action. Constantinople had lost too many battles because two men faced with the need for quick decisions could not agree.

The other distaff side of command division was that in which John was now engaged, acting on his own initiative and ignoring the greater strategic concern, this being another commonplace in a situation of dual authority in the field. The disobedient transgressor could usually assume that one general would agree with him, if for no other reason than contrariness.

Added to which, if he was of high enough personal rank and well connected within the ranks of the imperial bureaucracy, as was John Vitalianus, he could appeal above the heads of both to the Emperor himself. Control, always difficult and made more so by the execution of Constantinus, was about to get many times more complex.

‘I retired south to Ancon,’ Ildiger concluded, ‘which has been prepared for a stout defence.’

‘You have done as well as you could,’ was the reply, there being no other that would serve, except the man might have given a more satisfactory response if he had said he stuck his sword through John’s vitals. Flavius then addressed his assembled officers with another obvious truth.

‘The actions of John Vitalianus we must accommodate since they cannot be altered. It is vital that Witigis does not retake Ariminum, because if he does we will be required to reverse that prior to any move on Ravenna. Let us hope our miscreant can hold.’

If the man being spoken of was not an obedient subordinate he was a competent one. Vitalianus had arrived in Italy with a reputation for military effectiveness that was known even to his enemies, which made it doubly necessary that Witigis soundly beat him. As Ildiger was reporting to Flavius, the Goth King was surrounding the city and building the siege tower by which he intended to capture it, a sight which induced panic in a population now regretting their eagerness to surrender to Byzantium.

A lesser man might have wilted; not Vitalianus who had arrogance and self-belief to spare as well as a physique that could have stood as the template for the pure warrior. Tall, broad of shoulder while slim of waist, he had an Adonis countenance and a captivating manner, these being attributes that had impressed Flavius as much as anyone. His demeanour, with a huge Goth force outside the walls, was to behave as if he had been granted some special purpose from God and that calmed the frayed nerves of those who now needed to rely on him.

Yet even the dullest mind knew the city could not be held forever, it required to be reinforced by the main army and John acted accordingly; thwart any quick attempt on the walls and Witigis would be forced to seek to starve him out and that took time. He watched the building of the Goth tower with a sanguine air and that held even as it was realised the machine was not to be dragged to the walls by oxen, as had happened outside Rome, but pushed by human agency. Men inside the structure would therefore be immune to archery so a different method of countering this gambit had to be contrived.

Like all such war-making machines the siege tower suffered from a flaw: once set on a course it could not be manoeuvred to left or right nor advance swiftly, which told the defenders at which point they needed to mass in order to oppose the attack. In an unusual move the Goths dragged it forward, not as was common at first light, but well
past the noon meridian, to stop some distance short of the walls to await the following dawn. It was then surrounded with a strong body of guards.