Triumph

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Following 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.

Daylight would bring the expected attack and over a short distance, now the tower was well forward. The sole impediment was a shallow ditch, which lay a short distance from the outer wall. This would be filled with bundled faggots so the tower could be wheeled right abreast of the masonry at a height greater than the parapet on which stood the defenders. It was essential that be stopped.

As darkness fell John led out his men, not for battle, given they were armed with shovels not swords and spears, there being no intention to take on the strong body of men protecting the tower and induce them into leaving their posts for a fight. If they did, an immediate withdrawal would be necessary for the unarmed men, which led to a nervous period of waiting.

Once he was sure the Goths were going to stick to the task they had been given, John had his men set to work, the task to seriously deepen the ditch – but he had another ploy in mind. The spoil from the excavation was placed at the base of the wall to create an earthwork, one deep enough to prevent the tower from pressing hard upon the stonework even if it could cross the ditch. The sight of those continually moving torches, and no doubt the sounds they heard, eventually made the Goths curious enough to come forward to investigate, albeit cautiously, fearing a trap. It was too late, John had what he wanted and retired unmolested.

The first sight of the morning was of Goth warriors’ being hung from the front of the tower. It was assumed to be the leaders of the guards that had failed to detect what was happening the night before, now plain for all to see in the dark disturbed earth. Executions complete, the horns were blown and the enemy began their advance, sending forward strong raiding parties who braved the arrow fire from above to throw their tied piles of wooden faggots into the ditch.

John Vitalianus had a strong body of standard Byzantine cavalry but they were not bucellarii, which left him short of trained archers and so unable to prevent this taking place. Even with casualties the ditch was quickly filled to overflowing, this as the tower itself crept forward to the sound of extensive yelling and shield bashing, the men providing the momentum immune to fire from catapults or the inexperienced bowmen on the parapet.

John, still as calm as he had been hitherto, was smiling as if he knew exactly what was about to happen. As the front wheels of the tower began to edge onto those piled faggots the whole assembly dipped forward, the weight being too great for that which was supposed to support it. This meant the warriors on the very top level, the men who were to launch the first attack, hitherto hidden, became exposed and they were now close enough to be assailed by light javelins if not heavy spears.

The archers too had a target; they might not be fully competent but at the range at which they were now firing they could barely miss, and such was the velocity the arrows penetrated the kind of lamellar armour worn by their enemies. Witigis brought up a mass of men to push but even as he got the rear wheels of the tower onto the faggots he came up against the earth piled up the previous night. This left a gap too wide to cross by jumping and now the wooden structure was being assailed by flaming torches.

Having invested his whole aim in that tower Witigis had no choice but to begin to withdraw; he was losing men to no purpose and the framework of his siege engine was beginning to smoulder despite the amount of water being used to supress the flames. Ropes appeared and slowly the tower was pulled backwards, which told John Vitalianus that Witigis obviously wanted to employ it again, no doubt when he had created the means to get it up against the walls.

John was quick to react and lucky that the horses he needed were saddled and ready. Gates opened, he led his mounted men out to engage, using the faggots that had failed to support the tower as a swift means of crossing the ditch. As generally happened with a force moving away from a fight, the Goths evinced little stomach for the battle and paid a high price for their lack of will. Witigis sent more men forward to rescue the tower and they too, having two tasks not one, suffered heavily even if they were successful.

Days passed during which every eye in the city awoke to observe the tower as the sun rose. If it moved the attack was to be renewed – if not, the tactics of starvation would be used to retake Ariminum. It seemed plain that was the outcome and that was underlined when Witigis was seen to be sending away warriors to other duties.

John knew the time had come to communicate with Flavius Belisarius and demand that he be relieved. It did not occur to him that he had ever exceeded his orders and nor did he now feel the need to be humble. As a patrician and a man well connected in Constantinople he felt no requirement to employ excessive deference to his titular commander. The needs of the campaign were obvious to the dullest tactician. This city must be held, so let Flavius do that which was required.