Honour

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Romans having no idea of the whereabouts of their enemies or their mode of fighting, Flavius split the army into separate detachments prior to the march to Styllectus, their first destination. Three hundred bucellarii were placed under an experienced commander, John the Armenian. They were sent ahead of the main body at a distance of one league, that to be maintained.

Balas and his Huns were allotted the inland flank defence, there being no need for that on the shoreside of the advance; that was guarded by the fleet which would accompany the army and match its pace as long as they hugged the coast. Flavius brought up the rear with the remainder of the bucellarii as well as his own comitatus, these being his best troops. Gelimer had last been placed south of their landing place; being behind his main force their commander was well placed not only to protect them but to launch an immediate attack should the need arise.

They arrived at Syllectus to be greeted by a wary populace, but that caution evaporated in the face of the way the Romans behaved. Soon a delegation of the leading citizens were happy to inform Flavius that he had their full support and the first task he had for them was that these worthies should give him some indication of the methods of fighting he was likely to face.

Being non-military it could only be partial but that proved edifying. The first point established that the Vandals did not train as an army, each fighter was expected to work on his own skills but never in large bodies, more in small local detachments, and that boded well. Better still was their opinion regarding the Moors, the local rivals of the Vandals, nomads occupying the lands to the west all the way to the Pillars of Hercules and beyond, into which these northern barbarians were inclined to encroach.

The two protagonists had fought a battle not long past in which the Moors had triumphed by placing a screen of camels ahead of their army, which threw the mounted attack into disarray, the stink of camels being one equines cannot abide. They had then, from behind that screen, assailed their enemies with archery and volleys of stones fired from small ballistae, throwing the entire Vandal assault into turmoil and eventually obliging them to retire. The first lesson to be drawn from this was obvious: the Vandals would struggle against any force that could disrupt their structure, for it appeared they lacked the ability to make swift tactical changes.

With the population of Syllectus on his side these elders were happy to send out riders to gather intelligence from the cities that lay in the Roman army’s path. The reports that came back indicated that another brother of Gelimer, Ammatus, was in the capital with some five thousand effectives while the unconfirmed news was that Gelimer was hurrying north to join up with him, traversing the road between the capital and Hermione. His numbers were greater but that was yet to be established, so in essence it was a race to Carthage.

That allowed Flavius to alter his dispositions; the cavalry were to go ahead of the infantry, which he would command, keeping with him his mounted comitatus as a shock and protective force bringing up the rear until notice came that Gelimer may have reached his columns. There was no hiding the fact that this was a strategy that carried risks. The Vandals had morphed in North Africa from travelling in carts and fighting on foot into a mounted power and that was the kind of opposition the Roman infantry ever struggled to contain.

Like the Vandal messengers he would base his advance on the roads. The difficulty was that moving at the pace of a foot soldier imposed some restrictions: first there was the speed of penetration; Gelimer would not forever be in ignorance of the whereabouts of those he must fight and destroy. There would be scouts out soon if not already, so Flavius wanted any information he received to put the Roman army well ahead of where it was in total, which would form the basis of his contrary tactics.

Strung out along a highway made the infantry vulnerable but with a strong cavalry screen and the fact that he had spent so much time in training them to manoeuvre, their commander was sure by the time any enemy came upon them they would be formed up and ready to defend themselves, very likely on favourable ground chosen by their general. At that point he would send out skirmishers and archers to disrupt the Vandal preparations in order to delay any attack.

The cavalry, operating in strong flying columns, would have standing orders to retire on the position Flavius took up, which might completely surprise the enemy in the first instance. But more importantly it would unite the two arms into a formidable whole in a spot where the Romans should enjoy the advantage. To any observation on the dangers Flavius Belisarius had his response ready: war was ever carried out in a fog of uncertainty and that applied to Gelimer just as much as it applied to him.

Never one to underestimate his opponent, he knew that his enemy would be seeking to surprise him, and putting the sandal on the other foot he sought to outguess him. There was one obvious point on the old Roman maps which told Flavius danger would very likely threaten, the narrow pass at Ad Decimum, some three leagues from Carthage, a place where, if his information was accurate, success depended more on how troops were deployed than the mere numerical supremacy he was sure he enjoyed.

Could Gelimer leave his capital city undefended? To ask Ammatus to come towards him was to bring that to pass, which meant wherever battle was joined the Vandal leader must win for any other outcome would leave his capital at the mercy of the invader. But the Romans were between the two Vandal forces and Flavius could not see how they could combine without him being aware of their dispositions.

Truly war was carried out in a fog; for all his intelligence and the aid of the locals no one told the Romans that there was another road to the south by which Gelimer could join forces with his brother, other than the direct route from Hermione. That road met the main route from the coast and Leptis Magna, south of the very pass where danger threatened.

It had been the intention to draw the enemy towards him, and as was his way, fight a battle on his chosen ground. If his insistence on what amounted to a defensive tactic met with disapproval from his more fiery inferiors, that he was willing to suffer, so, on the fourth day, having found a suitable site for an encampment, on ground he knew he could defend, Flavius ordered it made secure before sending Solomon and a force of mounted foederati riding off to reconnoitre for the enemy as well as join up with John the Armenian.

Unbeknown to the man in command, battle was already being joined. Balas and his Huns were still to the west of the main force to guard its flank, albeit they had increased the distance somewhat, which brought them to the main road from Hermione to Carthage and there they encountered a force of Vandals outnumbering their six hundred by some three or four times. Sense indicated an immediate withdrawal but one of Balas’s men rode right on to top a slight mound and gazed down upon the enemy, defying them to attack.

This piece of bravado caused the Vandals to stop, either because they feared a trap or they were merely nonplussed by such behaviour and it was at that point Balas saw an opportunity. Famously fierce and sometimes uncontrollable he attacked an enemy now static, which was a bad situation for cavalry under any circumstances and deadly when they lacked the discipline to properly react.

Before the Vandals could get into any sort of defensive formation, the fast-riding Huns were peppering them with arrows just before, swords out, they got amongst them, throwing the Vandals into utter confusion. To say they acted like headless chickens was only to anticipate the fate of many who ended up as headless humans, many more being skewered or dragged from their horses by whips in the hands of riders of great skill.

The enemy were routed, many of them killed, including their leader who, it transpired, was the nephew of Gelimer. The Huns also established that, two thousand strong, they had been on their way to defend Carthage, which was a solid indication that Ammatus had left the city to join his elder brother.

The next phase of the battle was as much a mystery to Flavius Belisarius as the first; at almost the same moment at Balas was routing his enemies, John the Armenian had encountered a force of Vandals scouting forward, one clearly a high-ranking leader with a small escort of no more than thirty men, and that led to an immediate engagement. John suffered casualties, for the Vandals fought bravely and well, but for his dozen dead John could account in profit of the bodies of every man he had faced.

Sensing the road to Carthage might be open, John ordered his men to follow and sped along it, encountering on his way the army of Ammatus strung out in small groups along the roadway, these either fleeing or, if they stood to fight, dying. John kept going until he sighted the walls of Carthage itself where, knowing he was isolated, he turned to retrace his steps, the men he led looting his dead and dying victims en route.

Solomon, coming upon the site of John’s recent victory, discovered one of the dead to be none other than Ammatus himself, but with no sight of John he was at a loss what to do. Reconnoitring to the west he and his men ascended a decent-sized hill and from there spotted a cloud of dust on the horizon; it had to be Gelimer and the main Vandal force, so word was sent back to Flavius Belisarius that an opportunity arose to smite the enemy, to catch them strung out on the march, as long as the main army moved swiftly.

If they had sighted Gelimer, his scouts had seen Solomon. Between the two forces stood a high hill that dominated the surrounding country. Possession of that would give a huge advantage to whoever held it and a race resulted to get control. The Vandals got there first and despite Solomon’s best efforts he was up against too many to prevail and was obliged to retreat, not without a hot and threatening pursuit.

Halfway back to the camp he came across a force of eight hundred bucellarii, all from the Belisarius comitatus, dismounted and holding a strong position. They, on hearing of Solomon’s reverse — it was not more than that — instead of standing where they were to provide aid, immediately fled. It was as well they encountered their general, himself out seeking news of his enemies and, though he would scarce admit it, getting himself away from the bickering of Antonina and Procopius.

Rallying them by sheer force of personality he was able to steady his troops and get them ready to fight, while the pursuit, seeing the formation of that stand, saw it as prudent to withdraw. Now Belisarius knew the whereabouts of his enemy and he also knew of the existence of the second road leading to the pass at Ad Decimum, which had him send a fast rider to order an immediate advance to secure a position that would cut Gelimer off from Carthage or, if the Vandal usurper got there first, force him to do battle before he could retire towards the safety of the city walls.

Luck, that indefinable quality, came to the aid of Flavius once more, for Gelimer delayed in his decision-making. He neither force-marched north nor seemed to be prepared for battle when the forces Belisarius led fell upon him. It was clear by the Vandal dispositions that Gelimer thought he had been beaten to the pass so that the arrival of the Romans at his rear threw his forces into complete confusion, a situation the better general was able to exploit.

There was resistance but it was fragmented and easily broken, which had the Vandals breaking off the battle and fleeing, not towards Carthage, but north-west towards the wide fertile Plains of Boulla, perhaps fearing that with the bodies of their comrades littering the road the route to the capital was already barred by substantial numbers of their enemies: they could never have guessed that the force of John the Armenian numbered a mere three hundred men.

The flat and grassy and fertile plain facilitated, for mounted men, a swift retreat and left the way open for Flavius to advance, but he halted, eager to gather in his disparate cavalry. John returned laden with Vandal booty, likewise Balas, and with the night drawing in sentinels were posted and the army settled down for a night in which the general who had won a victory sought to find out how he had achieved it, that after he had sent back to the infantry to join him at Ad Decimum, bringing with them his wife.

In assessing what he had been told Flavius knew just how fortunate he had been, not least in encountering that fleeing bucellarii and rallying them, for if the pursuit had made it through to the main encampment the whole army might have panicked. He had no illusions about such a scenario; the mood of his troops could swing from confidence to despair in the blink of an eye. It was not just true of his host, it was true of any and he understood why.

A fighting soldier could only see so much and for him, and often for the men that led them, what was happening over the extent of a whole field of battle was a mystery. In essence they were confined to the periphery of a very limited vision, thus they depended to a great extent on the mood of their comrades, which was why the wildfire sense of panic could so readily spread. One man fearing death can scare a thousand.

But Gelimer had played a good hand badly too, seeking to join his forces away from Carthage and splitting them even more than when they were already divided. Having got first to the pass at Ad Decimum he should have carried on and not allowed himself to be attacked, all of these matters discussed with Procopius so that he could write up an account which would be sent to Justinian, who would have no fingernails left with the amount of worry he must be suffering.

That also afflicted Flavius when news was passed to him that his ships, now out of sight of an army too far inland, had disobeyed his orders to match his pace and proceeded to round Cap Bon, nearly to reach the point at which lay the Vandal fleet. They might have been brought to battle and if defeated where that would have left him? As it was, nothing untoward had occurred so, reunited with Antonina, he could retire to his bed and celebrate the victory in connubial bliss.

The horns blew on a bright dawn and, with Antonina at his side, Flavius Belisarius led his army on the short march to Carthage, passing the locations of his predecessors who had fought there and humbled Hannibal and the rival Carthaginian Empire to make Rome the supreme ruler of the Mediterranean. There was an attempt at humility but it was hard; how could he not feel proud? How could he not recall his father Decimus, so much the Roman, at a time like this?

He came upon a city without a garrison to defend it and with walls in poor repair; migratory barbarians were not adept at building or maintaining fortifications, while inside the walls lived a population eager in the main to embrace them. Yet there was no rush to enter; the streets of the city were narrow, the Vandals if defeated, not destroyed. Despite the direction in which they fled how many might there be within the city waiting to ambush his men? Another day would make no difference.

Word had reached Calonymus of the victory so they were heading for the port, a move Flavius blocked; they were to stay away until he had secured the Vandal capital and all was safe. The sailors satisfied themselves by plundering every merchant ship they could find and many a shore warehouse too, in the ports close to the capital.

On the sixth day the citizens of Carthage awoke to find the Roman army drawing up in battle formation. If they were fearful they did not hear the conquering general admonish his troops to show the citizens respect, as well as their property. On demand the gates were opened and Flavius Belisarius entered the city, making for the palace of Gelimer to take up residence, eating the meal that had been prepared for the owner’s return.

Two things frustrated him: Hilderic and his supporters had been murdered by Ammatus on the news of the Roman landing; also the treasury was empty and that was a great disappointment for it was legendary in its value. It was reputed to contain the proceeds of the Vandal rampage across Gaul and Aquitaine, during two centuries in which they had despoiled palaces, churches and the villas of the rich citizenry, stripping the county of every gold solidus they could find, many of them worked into fabulous decorative ornaments. Hispania had suffered the same depredations, a land that had within it the spoils of Carthage, Rome and the Celtic tribes who had inhabited the land prior to any imperial subjection.

It had been removed, no doubt on the orders of Gelimer, to where no one knew, but what it meant was that the man who had occupied the city previously had the means, in both manpower and money, to keep the war going. Flavius made plain, through the leading citizens of the city whom he called to consult with him, that his policy towards the Vandals who remained with Carthage was one of peace and harmony, the same as he was extending to the old Roman stock.

Most had fled to their churches and monasteries for sanctuary from the expected wrath of their enemies; he had to convince them that they had nothing to fear. Then he turned to other pressing matters. Defending the place!

‘The walls can wait, surely, Husband,’ Antonina protested, when he said his next task was to inspect them. It was unfortunate that it was Procopius who chose to respond, saying the same as would his employer but beating him to it.

‘Gelimer is not yet beaten.’

‘Then wave your stylus at him, Procopius. I am sure he will flee then.’

The reply was icy and delivered with a thin and waspish smile. ‘Perhaps, Lady Antonina, he will encounter your good self and surrender to be spared from your tongue.’

‘Procopius, enough,’ Flavius barked. ‘Both of you are commenting on matters outside your responsibilities.’

‘As if I had been granted any,’ pouted his wife.

‘You have them now. I am the imperial representative here and you’re my consort, which will mean many tasks devolving upon you to ensure that what we have gained stays in our possession.’

‘And what will they be?’

‘Ask Theodora,’ Procopius suggested. ‘I’m sure she will be able to advise you of your duties.’

‘Just as long as you never seek to.’

‘I am off to inspect the walls,’ Flavius growled. ‘They at least will not dispute with me.’