Count Belisarius

CHAPTER 11

IN most histories that are published nowadays, one battle reads very much like any other. It will be a test of my historical skill henceforth if I can tell you enough about those battles fought by Belisarius to indicate their difference in character one from another, without wearying you with too much heroic military detail: as a host may give a guest famous old wines to taste without attempting to induce intoxication in him. I must show, for example, that the Battle of the Tenth Milestone differed from the two Persian battles of Daras and the Euphrates Bank in its extreme disorderliness and geographical complexity.

Shortly after landing at Capoudia on the day of St John the Baptist, which is also Midsummer Day, after this three months' voyage, we were greeted by an excellent omen: in digging camp-entrenchments for the night some soldiers unexpectedly released an abundant spring of fresh water. By canalizing this into troughs we were able to water all the horses without the trouble of disembarking water-casks. Belisarius sent a troop of his Household Regiment ahead to Sullecthum, the nearest town. They reached a ravine near the gates at dusk and hid there all night. At early dawn a long train of vegetable-carts and farmers on horses came along the road from the interior; for it was a market-day at Sullecthum. In twos and threes our cuirassiers quietly joined this stream of traffic and occupied the town, which was un-walled, without meeting any opposition. When the townspeople, Roman Africans, awoke, they were instructed to rejoice, because Belisarius was coming to free them from their Vandal oppressors. The priest and mayor and other notables announced themselves as indeed very willing to surrender the keys of the town and put post-horses and other conveniences at our disposal. On the next day we were billeted in Sullecthum, which consists of square white-washed stone houses with flat roofs, each in its well-kept garden; and since Belisarius had impressed on the troops the importance of behaving in a friendly and honest way to the natives — by flogging some men who stoic fruit from an orchard — we were treated with extreme hospitality.

A royal courier of the Vandals was detained, and Belisarius, who always gave his enemies the chance to submit before attacking them, sent him to Carthage with a message to the Vandal magistrates there. He assured them that he had not come to make war upon them, but only to dethrone the usurper Geilimer and restore their rightful king, Hilderich; and he called on their assistance in Justinian's name. The sending of this letter may be regarded as an imprudent step, and in contradiction of his avowed intention to take the city by surprise: because the courier, if he rode fast, would arrive six days ahead of us and give the alarm. But Belisarius's moral scruples about fighting unnecessary battles were not easily smothered. Besides, such an open announcement of his intentions suggested that he had brought extremely strong forces with him to carry them into practice, and the Vandals might well be frightened into compliance.

King Geilimer, however, was not at Carthage, but at Bulla with most of his fighting men, some days' journey away inland. His brother Ammatas, to whom the courier delivered the message, immediately forwarded it to him. The post-system in the Vandal kingdom being very well organized, Geilimer was able to reply on the following day. His message was that Hilderich was to be put to death at once, and that Ammatas was to prepare to hold the road by which we were approaching, at the tenth milestone from Carthage, where there is a narrow defile between hills. Ammatas's forces must be in position by the third day of July. He would himself hurry up with cavalry reinforcements and take us in the rear on that day, unless the situation had meanwhile altered. Of this exchange of letters Belisarius knew nothing as yet.

We continued our march by way of Leptiminus and the great comport of Hadrumetum, covering twelve miles a day. Meanwhile we were well supplied with fruit and fresh bread by the country people, who greeted us with the utmost enthusiasm, poor souls. Every night we entrenched. To build the necessary stockade, each soldier carried a long, pointed stake, which was planted in the rampart. The fleet kept pace with us on our right, and the wind remained favourable. Armenian John, with 300 of the Household Regiment, formed the vanguard, and the Massagetic Huns protected our left flank. Belisarius commanded the rearguard. At last we reached the neck of the promontory and must part company with the fleet; but our regret was soothed by the beauty of the place that we came upon at this point, the Paradise of Grasse. This is a royal palace which Geiserich built and surrounded with a noble park. There are great groves of trees here, of every variety suitable to the climate, and fish-pools and fountains and lawns and shady walls and arbours and beds of flowers; and an immense orchard consisting of trees arranged in quincunx, that is, in groups of five, each quincunx consisting of trees of five different varieties. The African climate is hotter than ours, so that at midsummer there was ripe fruit, which we had not expected to find until early August — second-figs and peaches and grapes and the like. The troops camped under these trees and were permitted to cat what they could, but not to carry any fruit away. We all gorged ourselves on bullaces and damsons and figs and mulberries, yet when we marched on again the trees still seemed as heavily laden as ever.

This was the day on which we heard of the execution of Hilderich, and on which King Geilimer's scouts first made contact with our rearguard. But Belisarius continued forward without lagging or hurrying. By the sixth day, the fourth day of July, we had crossed the peninsula and, skirting the Lake of Tunis, drawn near to the Tenth Milestone. Here there was a small village and a posting-station; we halted five miles away from it. Belisarius chose a defensible site for the usual fortified camp, where we dug ourselves to safety as usual, each man fixing his stake in the stockade.

Meanwhile the Vandal forces were closing in on us. Ammatas led out the garrison from Carthage; Geilimer's nephew, the son of Zazo, advanced against our flank; and Geilimer himself threatened our rear. Now, the Vandals, like the Goths, were fine horsemen and clever with lance and broadsword, but only their infantry carried bows. They had no recent experience of horse-archers like ours, for their only enemies in this country, the wild Moorish horsemen of the desert, used javelins. This was greatly to our advantage. As for their fighting qualities: these fair-skinned, fair-haired Northerners had now, by the third generation, become acclimatized to Africa. They had intermarried with the natives, changed their diet and yielded to the African sun (which makes for ill-temper rather than endurance) — and to such luxuries as silk clothes, frequent bathing, spiced foods, orchestral music, and massage instead of exercise. This enervating life had brought out strongly a trait common to all Germanic tribes, namely an insecure hold on the emotions. However, their fighting forces had increased in numbers since Geiserich's time from 50,000 to 80,000, apart from their numerous Moorish allies.

Armenian John with the vanguard pushed on ahead, and on the third day of July, about midday, turning a corner in the road close to the Tenth Milestone, he came upon a force of 100 well-mounted Vandal horsemen halted negligently outside the posting-station. John's men, who were riding in column, could not deploy, because of the narrowness of the defile through which the road passed at this point. There was no opportunity for using their bows, so they immediately charged with the lance, just as they were. The Vandals formed up hurriedly and stood their ground. In the ensuing skirmish twelve of our men went down; but then Armenian John pulled a weighted throwing-dart from his shield and with it struck their leader, a handsome youth in gilded armour, full in the forehead at short range. He toppled from his horse, dead, and the Vandals then broke away, with cries of dismay, pursued by our men. More Vandals, leisurely trotting up the road in troops of twenty or thirty, became involved in the rout; and as a snowball rolled down a lull picks up new snow and grows to monstrous proportions, so with the Vandals in flight. With lance and throwing-dart and arrow the cuirassiers pursued, killing methodically, not allowing the enemy the opportunity to reform, driving them headlong out of the defile.

It was possible to deploy in the plain beyond, and the slaughter was even greater there. Armenian John pushed the Vandals back to the very walls of Carthage, and by a view of the corpses dotted here and there over the plain in those ten miles one could liave imagined that an army of 20,000 men, not a mere half-squadron, had been at work.

Meanwhile King Geilimer's forces and those of his nephew converged on the Tenth Milestone. In a plain which had once been a salt marsh the nephew had the ill-luck to come suddenly upon the Massagetic Huns. He outnumbered them by 3,000 to 600, but the outlandish look of these hollow-eyed, long-haired fellows (who lived, remember, a year's journey away from Carthage and had never before been seen on African soil) scared the superstitious Vandals, and the unexpected, stinging showers of arrows were terrible. They fled unanimously without coming to blows at all, and were massacred almost to a man. As for Geilimer, he was unaware of his nephew's fate and had lost touch with Belisarius's rearguard, because of the hilly nature of the ground. Belisarius knew by now that Armenian John had cleared the defile of the enemy; but had received no further reports from him, and feared that he might have been ambushed and stand in need of assistance. Leaving the infantry behind in the stockade, he ordered the Herulians under his blood-brother Pharas, and a squadron of Thracian Goths, to gallop ahead and investigate; he followed at a more leisurely pace with the main body of cavalry.

King Geilimer was close to the Tenth Milestone now, with 30,000 cavalry. At the stockade my mistress had taken command and organized the defence in a very capable way; for she had studied these matters with Belisarius, and her courage and humorous manner of address inspired great confidence in all. However, her military capacities were not put to any severe test: Geilimer passed by our stockade without seeing it, for a hill lay between. He missed Belisarius too, who was advancing by a different road.

When Pharas and the Thracian Goths reached the posting-house where the skirmish had taken place, they found the people there in a state of the greatest excitement; because the dead Vandal in the gilded armour was none other than Ammatas himself, Geilimer's brother.

Pharas and his Herulians pushed on in search of Armenian John. Hardly had they gone when a cloud of dust was seen to the southward, and a look-out signalled enormous forces of Vandal cavalry — King Geilimer's men. The Thracian Goths immediately rushed to seize the hill commanding the entrance to the defile, but the Vandals soon thrust them off it by sheer weight of numbers, and they retreated at a gallop on the main body. Thus King Geilimer, with an army five times the size of ours, was left in possession of the highly defensible defile. Armenian John and Pharas were on one side, and Belisarius on the other, our fleet was far away — the battle was as good as lost to us.

Now, in Constantinople there is a square called 'The Square of Brotherly Love' with a fine group of statuary in it, on a tall pedestal, commemorating the fraternal devotion of the sons of the Emperor Constantine — who subsequently destroyed one another without mercy. And among the Greeks and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean lands true fraternal devotion, because of the laws of inheritance, is so rare that its genuine occurrence, even in less exalted persons than young men born in the purple, would indeed be worthy of sculptural commemoration. Why, the oldest poem in the Greek language, the Works and Days of Hesiod, grew out of an instance of fraternal squabbling. But with the Germanic tribes brotherly devotion is the rule rather than a rarity, and the luxurious life that they lived in Africa had by no means weakened this trait in the Vandals. When, therefore, King Geilimer readied the posting-house by the Milestone in the middle of the afternoon, and the news was broken to him that his brother Ammatas had been killed, this was a terrible thing for him. He gave himself up to barbarian grief and was incapable of taking stock of the tactical position: he could think only in terms of sepulchres and funeral elegies.

Belisarius had rallied the Thiacian-Gothic fugitives and pressed on with them to the Milestone, where the Vandal forces were now crowded together in complete disorder. The cavalry had descended from the commanding hill in order to observe what was happening, and remained to join in the general lamentations over Ammatas's death. Geilimer, who now heard also of the defeat and death of his nephew at the hands of the Massagetic Huns, was blubbering disconsolately, and no military thought or action could be expected of him.

Belisarius, surprised but gratified by what he saw, at once divided his squadrons into two compact masses and sent them up the hills on either side of the defile; and, when they were in position, signalled a simultaneous attack on the mass below and between. Volleys of arrows lent sting to that impetuous charge, the slope of the hill lent it irresistible momentum. Hundreds of the enemy went down at the first onset. Then our squadrons disengaged and, after withdrawing a little way up the slope and letting loose another volley of arrows, charged once more. They repeated this manoeuvre again and again. Within half an hour all the surviving Vandals but two or three squadrons, who were cut off in the defile, were away in full flight towards the salt-marsh, where a great number of them were headed off and killed by the Massagetic Huns. As for Armenian John in the plain outside Carthage, his men had become so scattered from plundering the dead that he could not easily rally them, Pharas's arrival did not help matters, for there was loot for his Meridians too, and it was some time before the combined force of 700 returned to Belisarius's assistance, arriving just before the close and completing the victory with a charge up the defile.

It was a battle of which Belisarius said: 'I am grateful but ashamed: as a hard-pressed chess-player might be when a temperamental opponent has thrown away the game by sacrificing his best pieces. Perhaps, after all, I should have taken the Admiral's advice, and made straight for Carthage by sea; for the Milestone defile was an impassable barrier, had it been resolutely held.'

On the following morning my mistress came up with the infantry' and we all went forward together to Carthage. We arrived late in the afternoon, and found the gates thrown open to us. But Belisarius forbade any of us to enter the city, not so much because he feared a possible ambush as because he could not trust the troops to refrain from plundering. Carthage was a 'Roman city redeemed, not a Vandal city captured, and must be offered no violence. The jubilant citizens had lighted candles and lamps in almost every window, so that the city was illuminated as if for a festival; and very beautiful it looked from where we were, being built on gradually rising ground. Excited citizens came running out to visit our camp, with wreaths and presents for the soldiers. What a pity, they cried, that we were not allowed to participate in such marvellous scenes of unrestrained jubilation. All the vile Vandals who had not been able to escape had sought sanctuary in the churches; and there were tremendous processions in the streets, led by the bishops, of singing and cheering Orthodox Christians!

That evening the fleet arrived, for the wind had turned just as they were rounding Cape Bon; and anchored in the Lake of Tunis — all but a small division of warships that went off on an unauthorized expedition to the outer port of Carthage, the crews plundering the warehouses. When Belisarius knew that the fleet had arrived he said: 'Yet if, risking unfavourable winds and a sea-battle, I had taken the Admiral's advice, I sec now that I should have chosen wrong. For a sea-attack upon Carthage would have been madness. The defences of the harbour could not have been pierced, the sea-walls being lofty and well-manned. And if it had not been for the panic raised by the news of King Geilimer's defeat, which caused the Vandal garrison to remove the huge booms from the entrances to the Lake of Tunis and the outer harbour, so as to escape themselves in all the available ships, our fleet would not have been able to enter. It was a problem that had no solution. We should never have attempted the expedition with such small forces. Yet with greater forces would we have been so successful?"

The next morning, when it was fully day, he disembarked the marines. After giving strict orders as to the importance of keeping on good terms with the natives, he marched the whole army into Carthage. Then, billeting arrangements having been made on the previous night, each detachment moved off to the street assigned to it in as orderly a manner as if this had been Adrianople or Antioch or

Constantinople itself. My mistress Antonina went with Belisarius to the Royal Palace, which they made their home; we all sat down in the banquet hall at dinner-time to eat the very banquet that Ammatas had ordered for King Geilimer, the royal servants waiting upon us. Afterwards Belisarius sat on Geilimer's throne and dispensed justice in the name of the Emperor. The occupation of the city had been so quietly undertaken that business was not in the least disturbed. Apart from the matter of the warehouse robberies, into which he made a stern inquiry, there was no crime that called for punishment and very few complaints.

This day was celebrated the feast of St Cyprian, the patron of Carthage, though it wanted two months of the correct date; because St Cyprian's storm, a violent north-cast wind which is expected in mid-September, had also anticipated its date and blown the fleet safely into harbour. The Cathedral of St Cyprian, which had been seized as an Arian place of worship some years before, was in the hands of the Orthodox again, so that the feast was celebrated with ecclesiastical triumph and hosannas.

The city is a grand one, full of shops and statues, and colonnades of the local yellow marble, and baths and street-markets and a huge Hippodrome on a hill — of everything in fact that a city should be, though the squares are not so large as those of Constantinople and the streets much narrower. A radiance of liberty continued to shine for weeks in the faces of the inhabitants, and every day seemed a festival. The extraordinary case with which the Vandals had been defeated was almost the only topic of conversation, and, to account for it, everyone began recalling his or her prophetic dreams or domestic omens.

A prophetic quality was even found in a schoolchildren's rhyme, long current in the streets:

Gamma shall chase Beta out;

Again, contrariwise,

Beta shall Gamma put to rout

And sling out both his eyes.

This rhyme was based on a horn-book used in the local monastic schools for the learning of the Greek alphabet: the first letter 'alpha' was to be memorized as being the initial letter of anthos, a flower; and 'beta' as standing for 'Balcaricos', a Balearic slinger; and 'gamma' for 'Callos', a Gallic spearman. These figures were drawn by the monks in the horn-book to fix the letters in the minds of the children. But the children had a notion that the Balearic and the Gaul, on opposite pages of the parchment pamphlet, were enemies. So, in their game of ‘Gaul and Balearic', one child was the Gaul and pursued another, the Balearic, with a stick; but as soon as he caught him the Gaul ran away again, and the Balearic, in pursuit, attacked him with pebbles. The rhyme referred to this game. Hut the popular interpretation of it as a prophecy was that King Geiserich had chased out Count Boniface, the Roman General who had invited him there from Andalusia, and now Belisarius had put King Geilimer to rout and killed his brother and nephew. For the initial letters corresponded exactly.

Belisarius himself had no time to spend on self-congratulation or the analysis of prophecies. He at once set to work a number of Vandal prisoners, and all the available masons and unskilled labourers of the city, and a great number of sailors, and whatever infantry he could spare from garrison-duty, at repairing the city-walls to landward which had fallen into a ruinous condition, and at digging a deep, stockaded trench about them. This was a great undertaking. Though the city on its swelling promontory is protected by water on three sides, its fortifications are of enormous extent: a triple line seven miles long, across the neck of the promontory, of walls forty feet high with strong towers at intervals; and a fifteen-mile inner wall, also very strong, where the land begins to rise; and coastal defences. There are two fortified harbours — the outer for merchant vessels, and the inner for warships, of which more than two hundred can be accommodated at a time. The inner harbour was empty when we arrived, the greater part of the Vandal Navy being away with Zazo at Sardinia, and other ships having been sent to Tripoli, and the garrison having escaped in the remainder.

A day or two later a Vandal warship was signalled and allowed to enter the harbour unmolested, because it was clear that the crew had no notion that their city was in our hands. The captain was arrested as soon as he disembarked, and was thunderstruck at the sudden change of sovereignty. He bore a letter for King Geilimer from his brother Zazo announcing a complete victory in Sardinia, and trusting that the Imperial fleet that had been reported on its way to-Carthage had met with deserved destruction. King Geilimer was now reorganizing his forces at Bulla — an inland town four days' march away to the cast-ward, and the ancient capital of the Numidian kings. He had already sent a letter to Zazo, by one of his galleys stationed farther down the coast, imploring him to return.

A fortnight later Zazo was back in Africa with his entire force — Sardinia lies only 100 miles to the northward — and was embracing his brother Geilimer on the plain at Bulla. As they stood there, weeping silently together, locked in each other's arms, they formed a statue of brotherly love that would have made the fortune of any sculptor who could have reproduced it. And wordlessly, following the royal example, each one of Zazo's men singled out a man of Geilimer's for a similar embrace, and then all began weeping and wringing their hands. A most fantastic sight it must have been!

Then the combined Vandal armies moved against Carthage. Geilimer was astonished to find the outer defences protected by a newly dug, stockaded trench, and most of the weak places in the outermost of the three walls repaired. They did not dare to attack the wall, which was held by sharp-shooting infantry, and contented themselves with making a breach in the fifty-mile long aqueduct which supplies the city with water. But Belisarius had already taken the precaution of temporarily diverting the water from the baths and ornamental pools into the deep, underground, drinking-water reservoirs. The Vandals also cut off the supply of fruit and vegetables from the interior; but this made no impression on the city, which could supply itself from the sea and from its own gardens. To be a Vandal in Africa had meant to live tax-free and enjoy feudal privileges, so that the Vandal suburb of Carthage, to the right of the old city as one sails in from the sea, was composed of magnificent residences, each standing in a park with extensive orchards and kitchen-gardens. These estates Belisarius appropriated for the billeting of the troops; and as it was the fruitful autumn season we were all extremely well off for supplies. The city granaries were well stocked, too.

Then King Geilimer tried secretly to persuade some of our troops to mutiny: the Thracian Goths, who were their Arian co-religionists, and the Massagetic Huns, who had a grievance — when peace had been signed with Persia they had not been sent home to their native steppes at the other side of the Persian Empire, as had been promised, but shipped to Africa. The Goths merely laughed at the disloyal suggestion and reported it at once; but it was some time before Belisarius, by treating the Huns with particular honour and inviting them to a number of banquets, won their full confidence and made them confess that they had seriously considered the Vandal proposal — as he already knew from his lieutenant Aigan. They explained that they did not wish to be detained in Africa as garrison troops, to live and the so far from their homes. Such attractions as silk garments, and crystal drinking-vessels for their kavasse, and full bellies, and plump, loving women, could not outweigh their homesickness for the wide, windswept steppe and the wagons of their own folk. Then Belisarius swore an oath, by his own honour, that they would be allowed to go home as soon as the Vandals were conclusively defeated; and in return they swore renewed loyalty to him.

When, in early December, the wall was repaired and once more defensible throughout its seven-mile length even without the trench, Belisarius decided to lead his army out against the Vandals. If he were defeated now, he at least had a secure place for retreat. He commanded the infantry, which formed the main body, in person. The advance guard, consisting of all his cavalry except for 500 of his Household cuirassiers, whom he had kept behind with him, found the enemy at Tricamaron, twenty miles away, and attacked at once, as they had been ordered to do. The character of this battle was unusual. The Vandals, although again enormously superior in numbers, stood dully on the defensive, as if they were a poor sort of infantry recruits. Armenian John, at the head of the remaining 1,000 Household cuirassiers, tried to tempt them out against him by skirmishing attacks. At last, finding them immovable and realizing that they had lost all courage, he charged in earnest, unfurling the Imperial standard. Geilimer had, for some superstitious reason, ordered his men to discard lance and spear and fight only with their swords: which put them at a great disadvantage.

Soon Uliaris had the good fortune to kill Zazo with a lance-thrust; when his death was known the Vandal centre broke and (led back to their camp. The wings followed, as soon as the attack became general, without striking a blow. For a battle that was to settle the fate of a huge kingdom it was remarkably bloodless and one-sided, and lasted scarcely a full hour from start to finish. We lost fifty men, and they 800. Our infantry had again not come into action at all, for they were half a day's march behind. They arrived late that afternoon and prepared to attack the Vandal camp, which was a vast ring of covered country-wagons protected by a flimsy palisade.

When King Geilimer saw our main body approaching, he caught up his favourite little nephew, Ammatas's six-year-old son, set him on the crupper of his saddle, told him to hold tight, and galloped away with him, followed by a retinue of brothers-in-law and cousins and such-like; without so much as a word of explanation or apology to his generals. Being given so commanding an example of cowardice by their sovereign, these generals did not think to organize the defence of the camp. Squadron by squadron, the army scattered in all directions: a shameful prelude to a shameful scene.

Without a blow we captured the camp and everything that it contained; the men broke ranks and the game of grab-all began at once. Never was such plunder offered to a deserving soldiery. Not only was there plunder of gold and jewels, both ecclesiastical and personal, and carved ivories and silks from chests on the wagons, but also human plunder — the Vandal women and children, whom their menfolk had basely left to their fate. Now, Belisarius had made it clear enough that, although old military custom gave the victors of a battle a right to despoil the enemy's camp, he would hang or impale any man found guilty of rape, which was an offence against the laws of God. Belisarius, as you know, was in the habit of enforcing orders of this sort, and needed only to make a law once — unlike Justinian, his master, who often issued the same edict again and again, because, lacking the resolution to enforce it, he could thus at least keep the penalties fresh in the memory of his subjects.

So no rape took place, in the sense of women being forced against their will. But there was a great deal of earnest love-making on the part of the women themselves, many of whom were extremely good-looking and nearly all delicately nurtured. For they had no reason to remain faithful to husbands who deserted them in this cowardly fashion. Moreover, they took the practical view that, faced with slavery, they had no chance now of ever resuming their comfortable life at Carthage, which had been interrupted by this disagreeable campaign, except as the wives of our men — the better men. Many of them had their children to consider, too. They assumed, as most of our men did themselves, that when the fighting was done the army of invasion would become the military aristocracy of Africa, dispossessing the Vandals, man for man, of all their personal properties. Our men had been encouraged in this view by a sermon preached at the Cathedral by the Bishop of Carthage, on the text from the Evangelist Luke: 'When a strong man, armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are at peace. But when a stronger shall come upon him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted and divideth his spoils.' This prospect of becoming noblemen in so prosperous and pleasant a land delighted them all, except only the Massagetes.

But it was hard for me to decide whether it was a comic or a tragic sight to sec these women hurriedly selecting suitable husbands and offering themselves to them with promises of land and cattle and fine furnished houses in Carthage as dowries. The men, except the Thracian Goths, did not understand a word of the Vandal language. Unless a woman was particularly attractive or offered herself to a man with a store of jewels and gold in the bosom of her robe he shook her off and went in search of better bargains. In point of numbers, there was at least one Vandal woman for every man of our army. Several of the more modest women crowded around me because I was a eunuch, hoping by marriage with me to preserve their chastity as well as their freedom. My mistress, too, had innumerable offers of ladies' maids. She had been among the first to enter the camp; and it was a fine haul of treasure that she made from the wagons, with the help of her domestics.

What with plundering, and the gross enjoyment of sexual pleasure freely offered, the army became utterly disorganized. If a single troop of Vandals had attempted to recapture that camp two hours later they would have won an easy triumph. Our soldiers had been filling their helmets from the barrels of sweet wine on the wagons, and now wandered about, quarrelling, plundering, singing discordantly; selling one another unwieldy or unwanted objects for small quantities of ready cash; accepting the caresses of the women; and finally roaming outside the camp in search of more plunder that had perhaps been concealed by fugitives in neighbouring caves or under stones. This wild sort of business continued all night. Belisarius went about from one point to another with six faithful men and put down violence, wherever he came across it, with a heavy hand. The troops were so drenched by their sudden good fortune, having become quite rich men, most of them, at a single stroke, that they were all convinced that they could now retire on their earnings without any further military obligation. When early dawn came, Belisarius climbed up on a mound in the centre of the camp, with my mistress at his side, appealing loudly for discipline, and enlarging on the dangers of a counter-attack. At first he received no answer at all. Then with his own lips he blew 'Assemble the Whites!' on a trumpet, and his Household cuirassiers gradually remembered that the penalty for absence off parade was a severe flogging. So one by one they unwillingly came together, lugging their plunder along with the help of their newly acquired families. At my mistress's suggestion Belisarius sent a convoy of plunder back to Carthage, the goods tied in bundles and piled in the captured wagons: a wagon for each half-section, and the captives of that half-section walking beside it, with a responsible senior soldier in charge.

Then he sent Armenian John with 200 men in pursuit of King Geilimer, with orders to bring him back, alive or dead, wherever he might be; and Uliaris, who was justly proud of his success in killing Zazo, volunteered to go too. Belisarius now ordered a general parade and threatened to charge the drunken mob of soldiers with the lance unless they returned to duty; which they soon did. He sent the cavalry to scour the neighbouring country for Vandals; of whom thousands were found to have taken sanctuary in village churches. Their lives were spared, and they were marched back, disarmed, under infantry guard to Carthage.

Armenian John and Uliaris pursued Geilimer for five days and nights towards Hippo Regius, a prosperous port about 200 miles to the west of Carthage, and would have overtaken him on the next day but for a most unhappy accident. At dawn Uliaris, feeling cold, drank a great deal of wine to warm himself. His stomach being empty, he became intoxicated and began to talk and joke in a foolish, genial manner. An old sergeant reproved him and said: 'If your master Belisarius were to sec you now, Noble Uliaris, you would be in danger of impalement.'

'Pish!' replied Uliaris. 'No man is drunk who can shoot straight.' So saying, he took aim at the first target that presented itself — a, hoopoe bird, with speckled plumage and yellow crest, sitting in a thorn-tree on a mound near by. Off whizzed the arrow, and Uliaris cried out: 'Is this the shooting of a drunken man? As I told our master myself, at Abydos, no drunken man should ever handle a weapon.'

All laughed, for he shot very wide. But their laughter was soon cut short, for a cry went up from the other side of the mound that a man was wounded. It proved to be Armenian John himself, and the arrow had sunk in at his neck, beyond the barbs.

Thus the pursuit of King Geilimer ended for a while. Armenian John died a few minutes later in Uliaris's arms, and Uliaris, overcome with shame and horror, fled for sanctuary to a village shrine close by; so that the soldiers were left leaderless. John's death was the first great grief that Belisarius experienced, but he bore it without any loud outcry in the Vandal style. When the soldiers reported Uliaris's remorse and Armenian John's dying words — 'By your love for me, dearest master, I implore you not to take vengeance on our old comrade' — he forgave Uliaris. Armenian John was buried in that place, and Belisarius endowed the tomb with a perpetual income. Uliaris never again touched wine for the rest of his life, except at the Eucharist ceremony. Years later, when his campaigning days were over, he became a monk, and served God in the monastery of St Bartimaeus at Blachernae by the Golden Morn.

Belisarius himself resumed the pursuit of King Geilimer, who had almost escaped from Africa in a boat filled with treasure. He was trying to sail to his ally, the King of the Visigoths, in Spain. But a contrary wind blew him back to Hippo Regius, and he took refuge with a tribe of friendly Moors on a precipitous mountain named Pappua, not far from Hippo and overlooking the sea. The treasure ship fell into the hands of Belisarius, who could not, however, afford to wait in the neighbourhood until the spoils were completed with the crown and person of Geilimer. He was needed elsewhere. So, after receiving the submission of the local authorities at Hippo, he cast about for a responsible soldier to undertake the siege of Pappua; and hit upon his blood-brother Pharas, who undertook the charge. While Pharas and his Herulians camped at the foot of the mountain and prevented Geilimer from escaping, Belisarius continued his task of capturing and disarming fugitive Vandals throughout the Diocese. He assembled his prisoners at Carthage and used them as labourers on the fortifications.

He also sent out expeditions to the various detached parts of the Vandal Empire, to win these back to their former allegiance, increasing his army by levies of Roman Africans. He sent one expedition to Corsica and Sardinia, armed with the head of Zazo as a proof that he was not lying when he claimed to have conquered Carthage; and another to Morocco with the head of Ammatas, who had formerly governed that country; and another to Tripoli; and still another to the fertile Balearic Islands, rich in olive-oil and almonds and figs. All these islands or regions submitted at once to his authority.

The only failure that he experienced was in Sicily, where, in Justinian's name, he claimed the promontory of Lilybaeum as part of the Vandal Empire: on the ground that it had passed to the Gothic Crown in the dowry that King Theoderich gave King Hilderich with his sister. The Goths of Sicily refused to surrender this place, though it was rocky and desolate enough, and assisted the small Vandal garrison there to drive Belisarius's men away. Then Belisarius wrote a stern letter to the Governor of Sicily, reasserting Justinian's inalienable claim to the place, and threatening war if they refused; for he was aware that a foothold in Sicily would be a security against a possible Gothic invasion of Africa. I mention this matter of Lilybacum because it later assumed great political importance.

Now let me close this chapter with the conclusion of the story of King Geilimer. There he was with his nephews and cousins and brothers-in-law on Mount Pappua, living with the wild Moorish tribesmen, in despair of rescue — what more miserable man in all Africa? For if the Vandals could have been described as the most luxurious nation in the world, their neighbours the Moors were among the most poverty-stricken, living all the year round in underground huts which were stifling or dank according to the season. They slept on the floor, each with only a single sheepskin under him, and wore the same rough shirt and hooded burnous, winter and summer; and had no armour worth the name and few possessions. Bread, wine and oil were absent from their diet, which consisted of water and herbs and unleavened barley-cake made not of milled flour but of grams bruised in a rough mortar and baked in the embers.

The sufferings of Geilimer and his family cannot easily be understated. They were forced to be grateful to their Moorish friends for the miserable hospitality which these offered; and since Pharas was keeping strict guard, no fresh supplies could enter. Soon the barley began to give out. They had no amusements, no baths, no horses, no charming women, no music; and far in the distance below them they could sec the white walls and towers of Hippo Regius, and the oval of the Hippodrome, and vessels sailing in and out of the harbour; and among the dark masses of green, which were orchards, shone little silver patches, which were cool fish-pools.

Pharas, growing weary of the siege, attempted an assault on the mountain cliff; but his Herulians were repulsed with heavy loss by the Moorish garrison, who toppled boulders down upon them. He decided to starve Geilimer out. One day he wrote him a letter which ran as follows:

Dear Sir and King, I greet you.

I am a mere barbarian and totally uneducated. But I am speaking this to a scribe who will record what I have to tell you faithfully, I trust, (if not, I will whip him well.) What in the world, my dear Geilimer, has come upon you that you and your kinsmen stay perched up on that desolate crag with a pack of naked, verminous Moors? Is it perhaps that you wish to avoid becoming a slave? What is slavery? A foolish word. What living man is not a slave? None. My men are slaves to me in all but name; and I to my anda, Belisarius; and he to the Emperor Justinian; and Justinian, they say, to his wife, the beautiful Theodora; and she to someone else, I know not whom, but perhaps it is her God or sonic bishop or other. Come down, monarch of Mount Pappua, and become a fellow-slave with the great Belisarius, my master and anda, to the Emperor Justinian, the slave of a slave. Belisarius is willing, I know, to spare your life and send you to Kesarorda [Constantinople] where you shall be made a patrician and given rich estates and pass the rest of your life in every comfort, among horses and fruit-trees and full-bosomed women with charmingly small noses. He will pledge you his word, I am confident, and once you have that assurance, you have everything.

Signed: x the mark of Pharas, the Herulian your well-wisher.

Geilimer sobbed when he had read this letter. Using the ink and parchment which Pharas had thoughtfully sent with his messenger, he answered briefly that honour forbade him to yield; for the war was an unjust one. He prayed that God would punish Belisarius one day for the misery that he had inflicted on the innocent Vandals. He ended: 'As for me, I cannot write more; for misfortune has robbed me of my wits. Farewell, then, good-hearted Pharas, and of your charity send me a harp and a sponge, and a single loaf of white bread.'

Pharas read the last sentence over and over, but could make no sense of it. The messenger then interpreted it: Geilimer wished to experience again the smell and taste of good bread, which he had not eaten for so long a time; and the sponge was to treat an inflamed eyefor the Moors suffer from ophthalmia, which is infectious; and the harp was to provide musical accompaniment to an elegy that he had composed upon his misfortunes. Then Pharas, being a man of generous feelings, sent the gifts, but did not relax his watch.

One day, when the siege had lasted three months, King Geilimer was sitting in a hut watching a Moorish woman, his hostess, making a very small barley-cake. When she had pounded the barley and made a paste of it with water and kneaded it a little, she put it to bake in the embers of her thorn fire. Two children, his little nephew and the son of his hostess, were crouched beside the hearth, both very hungry. They waited impatiently for the cake to be baked. The young Vandal was suffering severely from intestinal worms, caught from the Moorish children, which rob the stomach of its sustenance and so increase the natural appetite. The cake was only half-baked, but he could wait no longer, and snatched it from the ashes and, without dusting it or waiting for it to cool, thrust it into his mouth and began eating it. The young Moor seized him by the hair of his head, struck him on the temple with his fist, and thumped him between the shoulders, so that the cake flew out of his mouth; and then ate it himself.

This was too much for the sensitive soul of Geilimer. He immediately took a pointed stick and a torn piece of sheepskin, and ink of powdered charcoal and goat's milk, and wrote to Pharas again. He said that he surrendered on the terms that had been proposed; but he must first be given Belisarius's pledge in writing.

Thus the siege ended, for Belisarius gave the pledge required and sent an escort to bring Geilimer to him. Geilimer descended from the mountain with all his family; and a few days later, at Carthage, he met Belisarius for the first time, who came to greet him in the suburbs.

I was present at that meeting, in attendance on my mistress, and I was a witness of King Geilimer's pitiful and strange behaviour. For, as he came towards Belisarius, he smiled, and the smile changed to hysterical laughter, and the laughter to weeping. There were tears in Belisarius's eyes, too, as he took the former monarch by the hand and led him into a neighbouring house for a drink of water. He laid him down on a bed and comforted him as a woman comforts a sick child.