Triumph

CHAPTER SIX

The King of the Goths was not inclined to be idle either; he reacted to his reverse by sending a large force to take the Roman harbour at Portus, the place where incoming ships bearing food were unloaded, their cargo being brought upriver by barge, this a signal to Flavius that nothing had happened to dent his determination to retake Rome. Starvation would be added as a weapon, while the carrot was being dangled, inviting the defending forces to redress this ploy, which would bring them into the open in conditions which favoured their enemies.

Witigis still lacked the troops required to completely surround Rome and he had to maintain pressure where he could, yet if it was still not a full-blown siege, the action made matters more difficult for the defenders. A heavily garrisoned Portus under Goth control required that supplies, for both the army and the city, had to be landed at Antium, ten leagues further south. If that as a distance did not sound great, it imposed a huge burden, given it required a minimum two-day journey, the employment of a large number of waggons and oxen as well as a strong escort.

In response, Flavius ordered that the women and children be evacuated to Naples, and if many sought to dodge this edict – the prostitutes and dancing girls flatly refused to budge – the maternal were happy to join, with their dependants, a well-supplied column and move to a region where food would be plentiful and the risk of Gothic wrath, which would be terrible if they did retake Rome, was a distant one. As to a military reaction, they had already been considered and the necessary moves put in place.

With them went another reply from Flavius to his wife; Antonina had moved to Naples and was expected by her husband to remain there until Rome was secured. That this did not sit well was evidenced by the stream of complaints that came winging north, insisting her place was at his side. It was no use pointing out the dangers; had she not risked those in North Africa?

Flavius would have liked to remind her that her presence on that campaign had not been his idea, and also that wives accompanying generals of armies engaged in conquest was far from common. To do so he would have had to allude to the truth; it was at the instance of Theodora that her friend Antonina sail for Carthage with her husband, and if at the time Flavius had wondered at the reason for such a request, he was eventually disabused by Procopius.

Antonina and Theodora were bosom friends from their days working in those taverns so beloved of Justinian. When the latter had moved into the imperial palace as wife to the then co-emperor, Antonina had been granted an apartment of her own so they could remain close. It was a gloomy thought on which Flavius spent much time in reflection; the way he and she had been brought together, sucking him into a marriage that at the time had seemed to him a gift from God.

Older than him and previously married, Antonina already had a son in Photius who, delightfully, had treated him from the very beginning as if he was his real father. His wife was vastly more experienced in so many ways than her paramour, not least in the bedchamber, a fact in later consideration being not one to dwell on. If Theodora had been no saint it was reasonable, if uncomfortable, to assume the same applied to her close friend.

Scales had covered his eyes and Flavius too often recalled the day they were frayed by his secretary. Procopius had risked his own position to tell him of two truths: that Antonina had a passion for Theodosius and secondly and no less disturbing, she was in constant communication with the Empress. In effect he thought she was spying on him.

‘I’d rather have Witigis sharing my Roman villa than you, my dear.’

These whispered sentiments were expressed as he affixed his seal to the latest missive telling Antonina she must stay in Naples. To have her in Rome would mean facing the demons of the knowledge he had, too much of a distraction for an army commander trying to win a desperate battle.

The seven palisaded camps Witigis had set up to invest Rome might seem formidable, and in normal circumstances could have been so. What the Goth could not calculate for was the nature of the man and the army he faced. Even many of those who had not been personally trained by Flavius Belisarius had fought with him for several years now, the junior commanders included, though that did not always apply to his immediate subordinates, men whose views required to be accommodated.

Given he knew his men well and they trusted him, this allowed Flavius a flexibility denied to any contemporary general. Nowhere did that hold more true than within his own comitatus, the bucellarii component forming a unit he had first brought into being, marrying the abilities of the Sassanid heavily horsed and armoured cataphracts with the fast-riding archery tactics of the Huns.

There were light cavalry too, but men so well taught and their leaders so experienced they acted with a different state of mind to those they generally opposed. If they charged, which they were eager to do, it was with a specific aim in mind, to either rout a fleeing enemy or, more often, to break up any infantry attack. That achieved they would quickly re-form and get back to the position from which they set out, to remain a cohesive asset to their general.

With their siege equipment destroyed and seemingly at a loss to conjure up any variation of tactics, Flavius calculated Witigis was not planning any immediate assaults. This presented a window in which the Goths would remain in their camps until their king was ready for another bout, and they were far enough apart to allow for each to be tested in turn.

It was necessary to order the walls to be cleared on the day of his first sortie. A parapet crowded with the now mainly male citizens of Rome would merely alert the enemy to the fact of impeding action. Nor were there trumpets; Flavius sent two centuries of his men out of the Porta Salaria with orders to occupy the crown of one of the many vine-covered hills that dotted the landscape and sat within close proximity to one of the Goth camps.

The reaction was as had been anticipated; the enemy quickly gathered to repel this act of impudence, and since the Byzantines seemed in no way alarmed by this, they formed up five-hundred strong for an assault with time on their side. Just before noon they came, to be greeted by a hail of arrows that decimated their formations and broke apart their unity.

In the slight confusion that followed the Goths had to hastily re-form to repel a mounted assault by the Byzantine light cavalry, men who, once they had inflicted enough casualties, withdrew back to the crown of the hill. Flavius had taken much trouble to scrutinise the Goth approach to fighting, habits they would have evolved over several decades, perhaps even a whole century, his conclusion being they lacked flexibility. Repulsed once, they employed exactly the same tactic when they renewed their advance, usually to suffer exactly the same reverse.

Their battle tactics depended on getting close to their enemies, where their individual skills with sword, spear and axe would allow them to impose themselves and bring about victory. Yet without sufficient archers of their own they could not advance against a body of men overly supplied with that weapon and imbued with the proficiency to employ it.

The cavalry that hit them next did the most telling damage; the bucellarii first rode to just out of spear-casting range and, still moving, began to pick off individual targets, most notably the various junior commanders, which did nothing for the cohesion of what men remained. Arrows exhausted, his heavy cavalry made no attempt to drive home the advantage they had gained; they too retired to join with their comrades, arrows also too far depleted, in a well-ordered retreat to the Porta Salaria.

The enraged Goths, now reinforced from their camp, naturally followed as fast as they could, to run straight into a barrage of missiles: stones, from pebbles to head-removing rocks, as well as flaming tar-soaked wads from every catapult the city possessed. For those who survived that and came too close, there was another hail of arrows to drive them off.

Like some omen that manifested itself to celebrate such a success, the next day brought a body of two thousand reinforcements, cavalry and barbarian foederati, every one of them an experienced horse archer. These men had been on the way before he wrote to Justinian and they came with assurances that more would follow. The commanders who led them, Martinus and Valerian, fitted seamlessly into the structure of the army yet within their arrival lay the seeds of a problem that Flavius did not appreciate until it became too pronounced to easily counter.

This being hidden for now, it became a regular occurrence to send out parties of mounted archers to prick the Goths into a reaction and one that always cost them dearly, this while Flavius reckoned his own losses to be calculable on one hand. Witigis tried to respond in a like manner, sending forward through the cultivated fields and vineyards a five-hundred strong force to occupy a hilltop just out of catapult range of the walls.

They barely had time to settle before Flavius sent out a party double their number to contest their possessions, not pressing any attack to drive them by main force from the summit of the mound but hammering them with such a degree of archery that they were compelled to withdraw. Now caught in the open and in retreat the Goths fell to the heavy cavalry, who at first plagued them with more arrows and then got amongst them to do slaughter.

A good half of their number failed to make it back to their camp and the haul in both horses and armour was substantial, so much so that Flavius began to gift many of his foot soldiers their own mount, initiating training in cavalry manoeuvres to ensure they understood his basic tactics, given he suspected that if victory came to him, it would be with the clever employment of cavalry.

‘He cannot understand,’ opined Photius, with a degree of astonishment. ‘Is it not folly to make the same mistake over and over?’

The youngster and his stepfather were watching from the walls a repeat of what had previously occurred; Witigis had once more sent forth a body of troops to tempt the defenders. They had eagerly accepted the bait and delivered another crushing defeat that left the fields and hedgerows dotted with Goth bodies and brought another large equine haul into Rome.

‘He must be under pressure from his nobles,’ Flavius replied, using words that within days would come back to bite him. ‘Sometimes it is impossible for a man in command of an army to be seen to do nothing.’

Four times the Goth leader repeated his mistake, seeking to take the initiative away from the Byzantines and those he led paid the price. Finally he formulated a reaction that did not cost lives, no longer sending forward bodies to be slaughtered but merely to tempt and retire in good order. When Flavius sought to reprise his own previous tactics, the Goths employed a controlled charge by bodies of cavalry waiting for his men to emerge from one of the gates, the aim to drive them back, though never getting close enough to the catapults to be in danger.

Flavius had not deliberately favoured either his own comitatus or the newly arrived foederati but they had been the soldiers most engaged, such men being simply the best troops available for the hit-and-retire tactics he was employing. Yet it was now obvious that such methods had run their course; Witigis would no longer take the bait and the siege once more descended into stalemate.

Meetings of his senior subordinates were a daily occurrence and usually they passed off with little in the way of disagreement; these experienced commanders, now including many who had acted independently prior to serving with Flavius, tended to bow to his reputation and agree to whatever course he suggested. That, as the weeks went by with nothing to show, began to fracture and a resentment not previously noticed began to surface; those he had not used in his expeditions felt left out.

Watching others enjoy the fruits of the Belisarius tactics might have been cheering initially but within the bulk of the army there emerged a degree of grumbling. If it was based on envy it was also underpinned by a confidence that came from the results being achieved by the few. Surely if small bodies of troops could inflict such damage on their enemies the whole army could beat the Goths in proper battle.

‘It is as well to recall,’ Flavius insisted, when this was raised, ‘that even with their losses they still outnumber us by a factor of three to one.’

It was Constantinus who responded. ‘It’s not just our own men complaining, Flavius Belisarius, we have the citizens of the city clamouring to be part of the fight and they number enough to redress the balance.’

‘Quality?’ Flavius asked, thick black eyebrows rising.

‘Do they have to do any more than stand their ground?’

‘I have often seen infantry fail in that regard, Constantinus.’

‘With respect, what we face are not open landscapes and highly mobile enemies. We are constrained by walls and rivers, but so are our opponents. I know you as a general who likes to pick your field of battle. Here, outside Rome, you have that choice.’

The response was a murmur of assent from all of those gathered, each one in command of a substantial body of the troops that made up the army. Flavius had always been careful when outlining his plans to make them sound like suggestions rather than orders, for, as a commanding general it was necessary to carry such stalwarts with you and diplomacy was as important.

Up till now that had held but Flavius had ever been aware that, though he was discreet in his feelings, Constantinus chafed at his lack of independence, which he had hitherto enjoyed before joining in the Italian campaign. The relationship between a commander and his immediate inferior can often be a fraught one; should Flavius fall Constantinus would assume command.

They were very different men from vastly dissimilar backgrounds. Flavius with his black hair and beard, naturally dark-skinned, that made more so by exposure to the elements, looked like what he was, the son of a one-time common soldier who had died with the rank of centurion. Decimus Belisarius had been tasked to hold the Danube border with fewer than a hundred men, and if his son had risen swiftly to command armies of many thousands it had been with the aide of Justinian, and that had to be the cause of disquiet in the breast of certain people.

His second in command seemed to have a golden quality to his countenance, with a handsome face topped by blond curled hair going suitably grey. Constantinus was a patrician to his toes and he looked it. Not for him the battered armour of the men he served with; with his slim figure and effortless grace he dressed as what he was. He had been bred to command armies, and if not that, to occupy some important office of state – it went with his bloodline.

Up till now there had been few disagreements. The campaign and subsequent sieges, both those pressed and this one endured, had dictated the way matters worked out, but that murmur was telling; such a reaction from such a body would not have been advanced had there been no need for discussion. That was proved when Valentinus took up the argument. He, like Constantinus, had to be afforded attention; he too was a general in his own right who had once commanded an army in Illyricum.

‘We have not lost a fight against the Goths since they came to the walls and the supply situation is far from perfect. A swift end would be suitable.’

‘Do not doubt that I wish for such an outcome, Valentinus.’

‘Then how can it be achieved if it is not attempted?’

The smile that came with the response took any implied criticism out of the words and soon these men were joined by Bessas, long in the service of Flavius, as well as Martinus and Valerian, newly arrived with their foederati. It was in no way a revolt but a discussion among men whose views were always welcome, albeit one pressed home with more than a normal emphasis until Flavius summed up with the aim of giving himself time to think.

‘As of this moment I cannot say yes and I will not say no.’

Standing, he indicated that today’s conference was over and most present filed out of the chamber, only Bessas staying behind at the silent request of his general.

‘How much of this comes from the soldiers?’ Flavius asked, aware that if they were unhappy none had imparted that to him.

‘I have never known fighting men not grumble.’

‘Me neither, but there are grouses that can turn into mutiny.’

‘You have no fear of that, Magister, but I would say an army that merely sits behind walls, as does the mass of the men you lead, will not stay content. What Constantinus said about the Roman citizens is true as well. If they do not see our men winning these skirmishes with ease they hear of it and talk, then wonder why the city is still under siege.’

‘There’s barely a trained man amongst them.’

‘There’s no shortage of a thirst for a fight from what I can hear.’ Bessas suddenly looked sly. ‘You’re not telling me you have not considered this as a course to adopt?’

‘I have, obviously. We cannot beat Witigis by sitting on our arses and you know as well as I that holding Rome is only part of a campaign that must end in Ravenna. We are here to inflict a full defeat on the Goths and that cannot become even possible unless they lose outside Rome. But the timing, Bessas?’

‘Thank the Lord it is not for me to decide.’