Count Belisarius

CHAPTER 7

Imust at this point give a short account of events in Persia since Belisarius had been appointed to the command of the troops at Daras. The impregnable city of Nisibis, fifteen miles to the eastward, had once been the principal Roman frontier station. It had successfully withstood three long sieges against Sapor, the eleventh Sassanid, when it was peacefully handed over to him by the disgraceful treaty which the Emperor Jovian signed, yielding to Persia five frontier districts. To supply the place of Nisibis, Anastasius had fortified Daras, which remained in Roman territory; but an outpost was needed to secure it against a surprise attack. Justinian therefore permitted Belisarius, at his own request, to build a castle at Mygdon, which was three miles away and only a few hundred yards from the frontier.

Belisarius had made a study of the art of fortification. He sited the castle in a strong position, and began building at a great pace, intending to make it ready for occupation by a garrison before the Persians could interrupt the work. The masons, who were very numerous, built hurriedly, sword at thigh, just as the Jews under Nehemiah are said to have rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem under the jealous eyes of their Samaritan neighbours. Before he began the work Belisarius had gathered together at Daras a great quantity of timber and dressed stones and lime; and the castle walls, which enclosed two acres of land, were soon two men high and rapidly rising higher.

The Persian commander at Nisibis handed an immediate protest to Belisarius, a copy of which he also sent to the Commander of the Roman Armies in the East, with a covering letter to the effect that the Persians took a serious view of this further breach of the treaty clauses relating to frontier fortifications. If building operations did not cease forthwith he would be obliged to resort to compulsion.

This protest was referred at once to Justinian, who replied that it was to be disregarded, and that Belisarius must be reinforced at once. The reinforcements sent were a mixed division of cavalry and infantry under two young Thracian noblemen, brothers, named Coutzes and Boutzes, who jointly commanded the troops stationed in the Lebanon.

By the greatest ill-luck the clash with the Persians in front of Mygdon Castle took place on a day when Belisarius was lying sick, in the worst stage of malarial fever, and fit for nothing. Not more than 8,000 troops were engaged on either side in this battle; in the course of which Boutzes, with half the cavalry, allowed himself to be drawn away in pursuit of a small body of the enemy, and left exposed the flank of the main body, which was composed of infantry. The Persians made a concentrated attack on Coutzes's cavalry on the other flank and routed it, capturing a number of prisoners, including Coutzes himself. The infantry, protected in their flight by Belisarius's Household cavalry under the command of Armenian John, streamed back to the castle. At nightfall Boutzes, returning with his forces intact and proudly exhibiting his plunder, learned of the fate of his brother and grew very angry. He ordered the castle to be evacuated, as a place of evil omen; and the whole Roman force, infantry and cavalry, retired on Daras, carrying the sick Belisarius with them on a litter. Two days later Belisarius, recovered from the delirium of fever, but still so weak that he could hardly sit his horse, made a counterattack on the Persians, who had occupied the castle and were already dismantling it. At the head of his Household Cavalry, who numbered a thousand men, he drove them from the walls; but Boutzes, who should then have led the infantry back again with supplies for a siege, could not persuade them to follow him; so Mygdon Castle was abandoned once more for lack of a garrison. The Persians razed it to the ground and retired victoriously to Nisibis.

Justinian, on reading the reports that came to him, decided that the Commander of the Armies in the East had made an error of judgement in sending Belisarius inadequate and ill-led forces, and that Belisarius was the only soldier who had not tarnished his reputation. He therefore dismissed this Commander of the Armies and appointed in his place Belisarius, whose age at that time was only twenty-eight. Justinian also sent out to the frontier the Master of the Offices, one of his chief ministers, whose duties included the supervision of posts, communications, and arsenals throughout the Eastern Empire, and foreign embassies abroad. This Master of Offices was charged with resuming peace-negotiations with the Persians but protracting them as long as possible, thus giving Belisarius time to put Daras and the frontier generally into a posture of defence. Belisarius took advantage of this truce to make a tour of inspection of the frontier, strengthening fortifications, raising and drilling troops, collecting military stores. It was hoped that a renewal of hostilities might be avoided, because Kobad at the age of seventy-five seemed likely to prefer a tranquil old age to the anxieties of a major war. But this was not to be.

Belisarius, who had succeeded in getting together an army of 25,000 men (of whom, however, he could not count on more than 3,000 to show hardihood, cither in attack or defence) soon heard that a well-trained army of 40,000 men under the command of the Persian generalissimo Firouz was marching against him. Then came a Persian messenger with an arrogant message for Belisarius: 'Firouz of the Golden Fillet spends tomorrow night in the City of Daras. Let a bath be prepared for him.'

To which Belisarius replied with the amiable wit which became his handsome person: ' Belisarius of the Steel Casque assures the Persian Generalissimo that the sweating chamber and the cold douche will both be ready for him.'

The person who felt most insulted by Firouz's message, strangely enough, was not Belisarius but a bath-attendant. He was that same Andreas who had been Belisarius's satchel-slave. Andreas had been given his freedom sonic years before at Constantinople, and had been employed as instructor at a wrestling-school near the University until he came East to rejoin Belisarius at Daras.

Belisarius's tactical problem now was the familiar table-problem of the poor country inn-keeper who is forced to provide a banquet at short notice for a number of hungry guests: namely, how to make a little go a long way. Like the inn-keeper, he knew that his little was of inferior quality, and like the inn-keeper, too, he solved his problem by a carefully laid table and a brave smile and by putting the best food and wine foremost, keeping the coarser food and the worse wine in reserve. The coarser food and the worse wine were his infantry, half of whom were recent recruits. He had decided, because of the short time at his disposal, not to attempt to train these recruits in more than one art: he therefore chose to make archers of them. He provided them with long, stiff bows and regulated their pay according to their gradually increasing skill with these weapons; but it was only what he called 'random shooting'. He demanded no more than that each man should be able to send his whole quiverful of forty arrows a distance of at least a hundred yards, keeping them within an angle of not more than ten degrees. Against a massed enemy this would be sufficient aim. He had already manufactured an enormous quantity of arrows, and continued to keep his artificers busy at forging more arrow-heads and trimming and feathering more shafts. The trained infantry he also perfected in a single art, namely the defence of a narrow bridge against cavalry or infantry charges; he found them all chain-armour and spears of varying lengths, drilling them in the phalanx-formation used by Alexander, the front of which bristled with spears like an Indian porcupine. The half-trained infantry he practised in javelin-throwing.

The better food and wine, in this metaphor of the poor inn-keepir, were his cavalry. He had temporarily broken up his Household cuirassiers into six parties, which he sent as model troops to the six regular squadrons of heavy cavalry, to set them a standard of training for emulation: he did not represent them as instructors, only as challengers in the arts of shooting and tilting and rapid manoeuvre — but instructors they became. He also had with him two light-cavalry squadrons, of Massagetic Huns from beyond Bokhara and Samarkand, old enemies of Persia. And half a squadron of Herulian Huns whose summer quarters were in the Crimea; they were archers, with a quick rate of fire, and for fighting at close quarters they carried lances and Broadswords. They wore buff-coats, with light metal plates sewn on them, but no other body armour. (Light cavalry is essential for outpost work on the frontier, Belisarius held, but must be supported by a strong striking force of heavy cavalry garrisoned not far away. The Empire was poor in light cavalry; as might be deduced from the fact that both the Herulian and Massagetic Huns live many hundreds of miles from the Roman border.)

Belisarius went out in front of Daras, just beyond the parade-ground which borders the fosse. He staked out a crooked system of trenches to be dug, six feet deep and twelve feet wide, with a narrow bridge at every hundred paces. The system, viewed from the battlements of the fortress, was like a drawing of a square-crowned, wide-brimmed hat, with the top of the crown resting on the farther edge of the parade-ground. Since this was to be a battle of the Persians' own choosing, and since their object was the capture and dismantling of Daras, Belisarius could afford to remain on the defensive; and indeed to have taken the offensive with troops like his would have been most unwise.

Around the three sides of the open central square, or re-entrant, of the trench-system, Belisarius stationed his infantry, with phalanxes of spearmen guarding the bridges, supported by the javelin men, and with the archers lining the length of trench between. The trench was set with pointed stakes along its whole extent and was too broad to be leaped by cavalry. Forward on the wings, behind the advanced trenches (the brim of the hat), he stationed heavy cavalry. The bridges across the trenches were somewhat wider here, to allow for more rapid movement. As a connecting link between centre and wings, 600 Massagetic Huns were stationed inside each comer of the re-entrant, ready to bring a cross-fire of arrows against the enemy should they advance against the infantry, or to go to the help of cither cavalry wing that might be involved in difficulties. In reserve he kept his own Household Cavalry, now reunited, and the Herulian Huns.

These were his dispositions. Everyone approved them at the council of war at which they were explained. The men were in excellent In-all in spite of the very hot July weather: the expected outbreak of dysentery and other hot-weather sicknesses, almost inevitable at Daras at this time of year, had not taken place. The fact was that Belisarius had issued most strict regulations about the mixing of all drinking-water with sour wine to purify it; and about the cleanliness of latrines and field kitchens; and especially about allowing no harbourage for flies- for he said that Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, was the chief devil of destruction and that where there were flies, there was sickness. Moreover, all military exercises had been carried out in the early mornings before the sun was strong; after which the men slept until noon. In the evenings he had sent them out on night-marches to keep them in good physical condition, or employed them in digging. Beli-sarius never allowed his men to stand idle. They were now in proper fighting spirit, and had the greatest confidence in their young commander.

At sunrise on the day after Firouz's messenger had come, the lookout on the battlements reported clouds of dust rising along the road from Harmodius, a village near Mygdon in the direction of Nisibis. Soon the Persian columns came in sight, forming up in close order out of range of the Roman bows; with infantry, concealed behind enormous oval shields, in the centre, and cavalry on either flank. It was estimated that their army numbered 40,000 men. But Belisarius's comment was: 'There are few generals capable of controlling forty thousand men in battle. Firouz no doubt would feel easier in mind if the armies were more equal in numbers.'

The Persians tried to provoke the Romans to attack by challenging and derisive shouts, but they held their ground and kept silence; and for a long time nothing happened. The Romans did not even retire for their midday meal as their custom was, but cold food — salt pork and wheatcn cakes and wine — was distributed to them at their stations. Firouz had been convinced that the sight of his enormous forces would frighten our men out of their wits, and that the luncheon-hour would be a good enough excuse for the more cowardly commanders to withdraw their forces. He still anticipated no serious fighting. ' Wait,' he said. 'They are only Romans. Soon they will think better of it.' But nothing happened.

Late in the afternoon the household troops of a Persian named Pituazcs, who commanded on their right flank, came riding out against Boutzces's Thracian cavalry, who were opposite him. Boutzes had sworn to Belisarius to fight that day in loyal co-operation with the rest of the forces, and be drawn into no private adventures. As had been agreed, therefore, he withdrew slightly from the trench as soon as Pituazcs's men, all mounted on greys, came at liim. His object was to decoy the Persians across and then to turn and charge them while they were still bunched at the bridges, not yet properly deployed. The Persians, however, did not venture to cross the trench after all, so Boutzes and his men returned to their station, shooting from the saddle as they went. The Persians retired. These Persian horsemen have highly ornamented weapons and shields and especially beautiful quivers, and wear gloves (for which our men ridicule them) but no helmets. They also carry riding-whips; for whips our men have no use in battle.

Seven Persians fell in this skirmish, and Boutzes sent a party out beyond the trench, who brought the bodies back. Then the two armies stood watching each other for a few minutes more in silence. Firouz is said to have remarked to his staff that the Romans kept remarkably good order, but that he would send for the garrison of Nisibis, 10,000 more men, and doubtless their arrival on the following day would have the effect of breaking the enemy's obstinate mood. Then a young Persian, whose name I do not know, an aristocrat by his dress and weapons, galloped out on a beautiful chestnut hone, towards the Roman centre. He knew some words of Greek and, as he reined in suddenly, he uttered a loud challenge to single combat, undertaking to cut into small pieces any Roman knight who dared oppose him.

Nobody accepted the challenge, because there was a general order that ranks should not be broken on any pretext whatsoever. The young man continued shouting and brandishing his spear and laughing contemptuously. Suddenly there was a murmur from the side-trench on the Roman left. A horseman, bending low over his horse's neck, came dashing over a bridge, past the Massagetic Huns in the angle, and went straight for the Persian. The Persian saw the charge too late. He tried to avoid it by suddenly whipping his horse forward, but the lance struck him full on the right breast and toppled him over. He lay stunned. The Roman, lustily dismounting, cut his throat — as if he had been a sacrificial animal. A mighty shout went up from the Roman army, and from the walls of Daras, which were crowded with townspeople. At first it was thought that the hero was Boutzes, avenging the capture of his brother Coutzes. But when the victor rode back at leisure across the trench, leading off the Persian's horse, with the dead Persian thrown over the saddle, it was seen who he was — bold Andreas the bath-attendant!

For Andreas, whose duties were light and whose character was energetic, had for some rime, unknown to Belisarius, been taking part in the early morning cavalry exercises under Boutzes, who was now Belisarius's Master of Horse; and his training as a wrestler had made him a formidable fighter. Belisarius sent a staff officer to him, congratulating liim, with a present of a white-tufted steel cap and a white-pennoned lance and a gold neck-chain as a sign that he wished to give him sergeant's rank in his Household cuirassiers. But the Master of Offices, who was acting as marshal to Belisarius, deplored the breach of discipline — though delighted with Andreas's success. He sent a message to all commanders of squadrons that nobody else must answer another challenge to single combat, under penalty of a severe whipping. Belisarius took the Master of Offices to task over this, because it was a threat that could not be carried out. A man who rode out to accept a challenge would cither be victorious, in which case there would be a popular outcry against his punishment; or else defeated, in which case the Persian would carry off his dead body out of range of Roman whips.

A second challenge soon came. It was from another Persian, who had been vexed that the first challenger had ridden out against the rules of courtesy. For there is a strict punctilio in these matters in the Persian army: the challenger must always be of the noblest family represented in the battle. The second such challenger therefore came riding out rather to reassert his family's pride than because he was thirsting for combat. He was no youth, but a man in the prime of life; he managed his horse and weapons with an air of experienced decision. Nor did he shout excitedly like the youth whom Andreas had killed, but only cracked his whip with a stem 'ho! Ho!' at intervals in his slow ride down the Roman lines. At one point he reined in and called out something in Persian which was thought to be an invitation to Belisarius himself to come out against him. But when this was reported to Belisarius by some of his staff, who urged him to accept the challenge for the heartening effect dm victory would have upon the army, he replied with contempt: 'If he wishes for death, why does he not put his head in a halter, privately, instead of trying to implicate me as an accessory?'

So for a long time nobody went out against the second challenger. He was returning to the Persian lines, perhaps relieved at having performed an honourable obligation to his family without serious consequences to himself, when, as before, a sudden murmur rose: again a horseman, this time wearing a white-tufted cap and carrying a white-pennoned lance, came charging across the bridge. The Persian turned, grasped his lance, spurred Ills horse, and met the challenger in full career. Each lance glanced off the polished corselet against which it was driven; but somehow the horses, instead of passing each other, as usually happens in such a tilting match, crashed together head on with a clang of frontlet and poitrail and were thrown back on their haunches. The riders were projected forward and collided in mid-air, falling to the ground in a tumble together. This was the moment when every spectator held his breath. The Roman made the quicker recovery. As the Persian rose to his knee he struck him in the face with his fist, then seized his foot and threw him head over heels, in the well-known wrestling-school style; and dispatched him with a single blow of his dagger. Then a roar went up from the Romans behind the trenches and on the walls, even louder than before, and it was seen that it was again Andreas, in a sergeant's uniform of Belisarius's Household, who had taken it upon himself to maintain the honour of Rome. The Persians withdrew to their camp, judging the day ill-omened; and the Romans raised the victory song and marched back behind the walls of Daras.

But Andreas resigned his sergeant's rank in the Household Regiment.

He had done a great feat that day in sight of 70,000 men, and had then proved that it had been due to skill, not chance, by repeating it: however long he lived he would never surpass these twin glories, which would always be remembered by the camp-fires and in the wine-shops and in the written histories of war. He therefore returned to his towels and sponges and furnaces, a simple bath-attendant once more, and was never seen in armour again — except on a single, most urgent occasion, to which I shall refer in due course.

Early on the next morning the garrison of Nisibis arrived, increasing the strength of the Persians to 50,000 men of all arms, which was twice the strength of Belisarius's forces. He commented, when he heard the news: 'Few as are the generals capable of controlling in battle an army of forty thousand men, there are still fewer who can control fifty thousand.' His conjecture that Firouz was somewhat embarrassed by the unwieldy size of his forces appeared to be justified. For they were now reorganized into two equal lines of battle, one supporting the other. Belisarius commented: 'A drill-sergeant's solution. He could have used the front formations to mask Daras, and with the remainder struck at my communications!' Meanwhile he and the Master of Offices sent a joint letter to Firouz, suggesting that he withdraw the Persian army to Nisibis instead of forcing a desperate and unnecessary battle. The wording of this letter was for the most part Belisarius's, and one characteristic sentence has been recorded: 'Nobody with the smallest claim to common sense enjoys fighting, even when fighting is necessary; and the general who begins hostilities has a grave responsibility not only to the men under his command but to his whole nation for the distresses and horrors that are inseparable from war.' The Master of Offices contributed a passage to the effect that negotiations for peace were about to be resumed by Justinian, whose ambassador was now on the way from Antioch, but that a clash at Daras would put an immediate end to all hopes of a peaceful settlement.

Firouz replied that Persia had been so often deceived by the peaceful protests of Roman ambassadors that her patience was exhausted: war was now the only remedy for wrongs. No peace treaty could any longer be taken seriously, especially if concluded by Roman oaths.

Belisarius and the Master of Offices replied that they had said as much as could honourably be said, and that the present correspondence would be fixed upon the Imperial standard next day — true copies of their own letters and the Persian reply — as a witness to the God of the Christians that the Romans had made every effort to avoid a needless battle.

Firouz replied: 'The Persians have a God too, more ancient than yours, and more powerful, and he will bring us safely into Daras tomorrow.'

Belisarius now addressed his forces, which were drawn up in mass behind the trench in the centre. He pitched his voice high and spoke slowly and enunciated clearly, so that every man heard as plainly as if it had been a conversation in a private room; and he spoke familiarly, first in Camp Latin and then in Greek, so that all might understand. He explained that the reason why Roman armies had not in the past invariably beaten the Persians, who were inferior to them alike in courage, arms and physique, was merely that their discipline had been faulty; and this was an easily remedied matter. If every man obeyed his officers, during both advance and retirement, defeat would be impossible. A battle should be fought by the common soldier as if it were a drill; and in drill it was surely easier to obey than to break ranks or act on a private impulse? The tactical control of the battle must remain in the responsible hand of the commanding general, namely himself, and he had given clear alternative instructions to Ids subordinate officers as to how to behave in this possible development of the battle and that. The common soldier should be so occupied with his own weapons, and with keeping formation, as to have no time to speculate irrelevantly on the general progress of the fighting. Full reliance must be placed on the tried intelligence and loyalty of the officers. He also made a laughing reference to the enemy infantry, only half of which consisted of trained soldiers. 'You Roman recruits have in a short time learned to do one thing well, which is to shoot strong and straight; their recruits have also learned a single military art, and that is to protect themselves behind those enormous shields of theirs. They are merely crowds of rustics brought up for effect, like stage armies, and will prove a great embarrassment to their generalissimo before the day is over. They have spears in their hands, it is true, but this no more makes spearmen of them than if one were to arm them with flutes and call them snake-charmers!'

The warning was then given from the look-out tower that the Persians were beginning to marshal their forces; so, with loud cheers for Belisarius, the parade moved off. The heavy cavalry rode to their stations on the flanks, the light cavalry posted themselves in the two angles of the re-entrant, the archers once more lined the nearer trenches, the phalanxes of spearmen posted themselves at the bridges with the javelin men behind and beside them. Then Pharas, the little bow-legged leader of the Herulian Huns, trotted up to Belisarius and said to him in the almost unintelligible trade-Greek that these Crimean savages use: 'I not harm the Persians, not much, here under tall walls: send I behind that hill on the left, away. I hide behind that hill- When Persians come, I hurry to their behind; I charge, shoot, shoot.'

Belisarius eyed Pharas steadily, who dropped his gaze. Pharas evidently doubted the issue of the day and wished to be in a neutral position; his final charge would be against whichever side seemed to be winning the battle. Belisarius noticed that Pharas's finger was bleeding from a slight scratch: he therefore quickly seized it, for they were knee to knee, and thrusting it into his mouth sucked it. Then he said: 'I have eaten your blood, Pharas: you shall be my anda, my blood-brother. Go now, dear Pharas, my anda, and do as you say. Hide behind that hill and charge the Persians neither too soon nor too late.' Pharas complained whimpering: 'You eat my blood, now give me yours, anda!' For by this one-sided action he had come (according to Hunnish superstition) under Belisarius's magical power. But Belisarius replied: 'After the charge has been made you may cat your fill. I have no blood to spare now, anda.' Thus Pharas was securely bound to loyalty.

The Persians held their positions all the morning, until they heard the bugles blowing from the fortifications as a signal for the ration men to fetch the midday meal up to the trenches. As soon as Firouz calculated that the distribution of food was about to start, he launched the attack. Persian soldiers are accustomed to cat in the late afternoon, and consequently do not feel hungry until the sun is low in the sky, whereas the call of the Roman appetite comes when the bugle sounds at midday. However, Belisarius had anticipated a midday attack, and advised the troops to fill their bellies well at breakfast; so they fought none the worse. The Persian cavalry advanced to within bowshot of the Roman cavalry on the wings and began to shoot; and a mass of foot-archers also pressed forward into the re-entrant and began firing clouds of arrows at the Roman infantry and at the light cavalry in the trench-angles. These foot-archers moved forward in parallel single files, with a single pace's interval between files. As soon as the man at the head of each file had fired one arrow he retired to the rear and then gradually came again to the head of the file; and by this means a steady stream of arrows was maintained. They greatly outnumbered our own archers, but they suffered from three great disadvantages. First, the stiff bows that Belisarius's recruits were using had a greater range than their own lighter ones; next, the wind was blowing from the west, so that their arrows lost speed and fell short; lastly, they were being fired at from the front and both flanks and were tightly enough packed to make the most random Roman shooting effective. The pressure of fresh troops from behind urged them farther forward than they wished, and though this brought them into closer range, they lost the more heavily. A half-hearted attempt on the part of their spearmen to capture two of the bridges simultaneously failed; the javelin men drove them off. Hut, an hour or two later, both sides having exhausted their missile weapons, there were desperate battles at the bridges all along the line with lance and spear, and attempts to cross the trenches with planks. Belisarius broke one dangerous thrust with dismounted cavalry — the right-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, now recalled this side of the trench.

At last the attackers gained a slight advantage against Boutzes's Thracians on the left. They forced one of the bridges and managed to deploy on the other side. The enemy troops engaged were Saracen auxiliaries, well mounted and savage. Boutzes fought vigorously, but the issue was in doubt until the left-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, who, like the right-hand squadron, had now been recalled across the trench, galloped to their aid. They had just been provided with a supply of Persian arrows that a crowd of boys from the town had been hurriedly collecting from all sides and tying up in bundles of forty. The Saracens were driven back across the trench with great slaughter, and had no time to reform before Pharas and his half-squadron of Herulians unexpectedly charged them in the rear from the hill. It is said that Pharas's men did more damage, proportionately to their numbers, than any other force on the field that day. They were using their broadswords now, and between them and Boutzes's Thracians and the Massagetic Huns, the Persian cavalry of that wing lost 3,000 men. The survivors broke back to the main body; but Boutzes had no instructions as to pursuit and returned dutifully to his trench.

Belisarius immediately recalled the Massagetic Huns and Pharas's men. He embraced Pharas and completed the blood-brotherhood ceremony by allowing Pharas to suck an arrow-graze on the back of his hand. These fine fighters were now urgently needed on the other flank, where Firouz had just sent 'The Immortals' — the Royal Heavy-cavalry Corps, 10,000 strong — to break the defences at all costs. The Immortals succeeded in forcing two bridges. Our cavalry there, Armenians for the most part, then retreated slowly, but, according to instructions, diagonally away to the right. This left a clear field for a strong Roman counter-charge from the centre. The right-hand squadron of Massagetic Huns, now remounted and joined by their compatriots fresh from their victory on the left wing, and by Pharas's Herulians, and by Belisarius's own incomparable Household Regiment, broke into a canter, and then into a gallop. Such was the weight of this charge, which caught the Persians in the flank, that it drove right through the column, breaking it into two unequal halves.

The Persian General commanding on this wing was one-eyed Baresmanas, a cousin of King Kobad's. He was riding comfortably along with his staff in the rear of what he thought was a victorious pursuit of the crumpled Roman right; when suddenly, from his blind side, he heard wild shouts and cries, and the Massagetic Huns were upon him with their short, tough lances and whirling broadswords. These Huns had good reason to hate Baresmanas, for he was the general who had dispossessed them of their grazing lands in the far east. In revenge they had made a journey of many hundreds of miles and taken service in the Roman army. Their leader Sunicas drove with his lance at the Grand Standard-bearer, who was some strides ahead of Baresmanas, and caught him under the spole of his raised arm, so that the crimson standard embroidered with the Lion and Sun dipped suddenly and fell. A yell of rage and alarm from the rear halted the leading Immortals when they saw that their Grand Standard was down; they rushed back to the rescue. But it was too late. Sunicas, drunk with glory, had sought out Baresmanas himself and killed him with a lance-thrust in the side, and at that sight the Persians in his rear turned to flight. The main body of Immortals was now surrounded, for the Armenians had recovered and were fighting fiercely again; and 5,000 of these noble Persians fell before the day was ended.

Soon the unprotected Persian centre broke and streamed back towards Nisibis; and the Persian infantry recruits confirmed Belisarius's poor opinion of them by throwing away their great shields and their spears as the Roman main body rushed after them. The Roman recruits, though only trained in random archery, picked up the fallen spears and played at being spearmen; the Persian ranks were in such disorder that even this awkward spear-pushing turned their retreat into a rout.

But Belisarius did not allow the pursuit to be pressed beyond a mile or so, because it was always a principle with him not to pursue a beaten enemy to the point of despair; which had been a maxim also of Julius Caesar's. He thus preserved the victory unmarred. It was the first time for more than a hundred years that the Romans had decisively defeated a Persian army; and he had fought with a great numerical disadvantage. The Great Standard of Baresmanas, spotted with blood, was picked up from the battlefield, and Belisarius sent it to Justinian together with his laurelled dispatches announcing the victory.

The Persian Army did not recover from its surprise and shame for a long time. Only skirmishes took place for the rest of the year on this part of the frontier, since Belisarius could not risk an attack on Nisibis or even another attempt to rebuild Mygdon castle. As for Firouz, Kobad accused him of cowardice and deprived him of the golden fillet that he wore in his hair as a sign of exalted rank.

To tell more particularly of the Huns. There are many nations of them, and they occupy all the wild land to the northward of the Roman and Persian Empires from the Carpathian mountains as far as China. There are White Huns and Massagetic Huns and Herulian Huns and Bulgarian Huns and Tartars and many more. All have the same general customs, except that the Herulians have lately professed Christianity. Huns are wheat-coloured, with crooked, sunken eyes (always red with wind and dust), insignificant noses, fat checks, lank black hair which they wear shorn in front, plaited at the ears, and hanging long behind, shrunken calves, powerful arms, small feet turned inwards. They navigate the desert, like sailors the sea, in long caravans of black-hooded wagons. Their horses can gallop twenty miles without a halt, and cover 100 miles in a single day. Upon some wagons they tic great wicker-baskets covered with black felt, in which they store the whole of their household treasure; and upon others they tic bell-shaped tents of the same construction, which are their only homes. They drive from pasture to pasture as the seasons change; going in a year, it may be, a distance equivalent to that from Constantinople to Babylon and back. Each tribe and every clan of each tribe has its own hereditary pastures. Most of their wan are due to disputes about grazing rights. In the summer they set their faces to the North, following the snow-bird; in the winter they return to the South. They do not till the ground, but obtain corn cither as barter or as tribute from their settled neighbours. Their chief refreshment is mares' milk, which they call kosmos and drink cither fresh, or as buttermilk, or as whey, or as the intoxicating kavasse. Plain water they abhor. They cat all meats, but only game and horse-flesh is of their own supplying, for swine or oxen would the in the cruel winds of the steppes where they travel. They cure meat by drying it in the sun and wind, without salt. That they cat horse-flesh makes them detestable to civilized people.

The Huns wear fox-skin caps and for warmth in winter two long fur coats, the one with the hair turned outwards, the other with the hair turned inwards. A man's rank is shown by the sort of fur that he wears: the common person wears dog's or wolf's skin, but the nobleman sable. Their breeches are of goatskin. They carry gerfalcons on their fists for hawking, by which means they obtain a great quantity of wild geese and other game. Their other chief sport is wrestling from horse-back. They are very quarrelsome; yet, when two men fight, no third man dares intervene to part them, not even a brother or father of either man. Murder is punished by death (unless the murderer was intoxicated at the time), and so are fornication, and adultery, and theft, and the making of water upon a camp-fire, and even lesser offences, unless these are committed outside the clan or tribe or confederation of tribes, in which case all is permissible. Their personal habits are most filthy, and they do not wash, but smear their faces with horse-tallow. They worship the blue sky and employ magicians and, for fear of evil spirits, no sick man of them may be visited by any but his servants. They are terrified of thunder and lightning, and hide in their tents during storms. Marriage with them is by capture or pretence of capture, and a son inherits and marries all his father's wives except his own mother. Their weapons, as I have told, are light bows and arrows, and tough lances and curved broadswords. In battle the nobler men wear leather coats armoured in front with overlapping plates; but not behind, because they consider this cowardly. They talk an almost unintelligible language, piping like birds. For the most part they live in disharmony, tribe with tribe and clan with clan, but occasionally a single nobleman rises to be a prince having many clans subservient to him, and is called a Cham. It is when a Cham arises that the two Empires must beware of raids over the frontier. So much for the Huns.