Justinian

FIFTEEN

With the heat of the fierce African sun tempered by a cool sea breeze blowing from the Mare Internum* to its right, the army marched north along a stretch of glorious sandy beaches. Inland, these were fringed by waving clumps of esparto grass topped by graceful feathered seed heads, beyond which olive groves and fields of wheat rolled to the horizon. High overhead, the first migrating birds of early autumn — storks, geese, finches and many other species — speckled the bright blue sky, bound from Europe for the lands beyond the Great Sand Sea.

Walking their horses to the top of a rise, Belisarius and his second-in-command, Dorotheus, a fellow Thracian, looked down on the long cavalry column winding its way below them: horse-archers and lance-armed foederati,** mailed cataphractarii, the general’s personal corps of retainers or bucellarii, Hun mercenaries — stocky, skin-clad men with yellowish complexions and flat Oriental faces, mounted on huge ill-conformed brutes, and armed with deadly recurved bows. Miles to the rear, appearing as a multitude of crawling dots, came the infantry.

A rapidly approaching cloud of dust to the fore announced the imminent arrival of a scout. Minutes later, the man drew rein before the two officers. ‘Vandals!’ the man panted. ‘Vanguard’s only two miles off.’

‘But those Hun outriders told us the enemy was at least a day’s march distant!’ exclaimed Dorotheus to his superior. ‘Strung out like this, our army’s at a massive disadvantage. Best we fall back and join the infantry; I’ll order the trumpeters to sound “Retreat”, shall I?’

‘Certainly not,’ declared Belisarius. Though projecting an air of breezy confidence, the news had in fact caused him to be deeply worried. Thanks to that faulty information from the Huns, the Romans, at this particular juncture, were in a poor position to take on the Vandals. Before they could be fully deployed in line of battle, and lacking infantry support, the enemy would most likely be upon them. But the alternative — getting the column to turn around then march back several miles, in a manoeuvre that would be time-consuming, inevitably chaotic, and bad for morale — was even less attractive.

Belisarius was also uncomfortably aware of the fact that the coming encounter would be the first real test of his ability as a commander. Hitherto, his experience of soldiering had been confined to service on the Persian front. Here, he had earned a reputation for energy and dash, but any action had amounted to little more than skirmishing against a civilized enemy who understood the rules of warfare, including knowing when discretion was the better part of valour. The Vandals — Germans with a name for aggressiveness, ferocity, and disregard for personal safety — could prove to be a very different matter. It was to be hoped that a century of life as conquerors in a fat land with a hot climate, had softened them somewhat, but it would be foolish to count on it.

‘Get the bucinatores to sound the “Halt”,’ he told Dorotheus. ‘I’ll take the centre with the heavy cavalry, you dispose the archers and light horse on the wings.’ And the two galloped off to start the process of readying the troops for battle.

Watching the Vandal advance from a high dune out on the seaward flank of the Roman line, Procopius cursed beneath his breath. The fools were coming on in three divisions — all widely separated, thus unable to reinforce each other. He could see that the foremost was commanded by Ammatas — conspicuous, even at a distance, by his tawny mane. That was counter to the plan. The agreed strategy was that Ammatas, commanding the first two sections as a single unit, would, when joined by the Huns, have sufficient weight of numbers to deliver a destabilizing blow to the Roman line; Gelimer, bringing up the rear with the main force, would do the rest. The Roman invasion, like all its predecessors, would be brought to nothing before it had properly begun. Now, thanks to Ammatas’ folly, the whole scheme was in jeopardy. What was the man thinking of? fumed Procopius. Probably thought he could defeat the Romans single-handed, so to speak, and thus not have to share the glory with the other Vandal leaders. Typical German.

The scene below Procopius unfolded with a kind of dreadful inevitability. The Huns, too cunning to risk throwing away their lives on what they could see was probably now a doomed attempt, held back. From the Roman front, still milling about in semi-confusion as units scrambled to find their place, scattered groups of cataphracts began to emerge; then, swiftly coalescing in a single mass, like drops of oil in the bottom of a skillet, they formed up and thundered down upon Ammatas’ force. The mailed horsemen, each armed with a heavy kontos — the deadly, twelve-foot lance that could skewer a man like a rabbit on a spit — crashed into the mob of charging warriors, most of whom lacked body-armour. Beneath the shattering impact of the heavy Roman horse, the German formation first shredded at the fringes, then broke up. Once infiltrated by enemy cavalry, infantry is finished; so it proved with Ammatas’ Vandals, who were slaughtered to a man, including Ammatas himself.

Now came the turn of the Huns. Anxious to identify with what now looked to be the winning side, they galloped forward and, forming a moving ring around the second Vandal force, proceeded to discharge volley upon volley of arrows into it. Only a few survived that lethal sleet, the Huns only withdrawing when the main Vandal force under King Gelimer arrived upon the scene.

With the advent of the monarch, the scales suddenly began to tilt in the Vandals’ favour. Advancing in six enormous cunei — close-packed attack columns — the Vandal host, with enormous impetus drove into the still-forming Roman line, causing it to buckle and fall back. Desperately, Belisarius tried to steady his troops, galloping to and fro, exhorting the men in a frantic effort to make them hold their ground. If only, he thought, they could have had just a few more minutes to get into formation. .

Then, as if the gods (in the heart of most Thracians, Christ had not yet quite supplanted the old Olympian pantheon) had heard his anguished plea and decided to intervene, the Vandal advance inexplicably began to falter; then it stopped. (As Belisarius was to find out later, Gelimer — coming upon the corpse of his brother Ammatas, had been plunged into inconsolable grief, becoming so distracted as temporarily to lose his grip on the demands of leadership.)

It was enough for Belisarius to regain the initiative. Granted those precious extra minutes, he was able to complete the deployment of the Roman line. Immediately thereafter, Roman discipline, combined with superior organization and equipment, began to tell against the Vandals who, in the course of the past century, had had to contend with no more formidable foes than tribal bands of Moors and Berbers. Raw German courage now proved no match against the armoured Roman force, which began to roll forward inexorably, like an unstoppable machine.

With their king no longer directing them, doubt and confusion spread rapidly among the Vandals. Losing heart, they broke, and were suddenly in headlong flight west towards Numidia, bypassing Carthage.

Drenched with sweat — as much from relief as from the exertions of command — Belisarius summoned the expedition historian. He pointed to a milestone beside the Roman road running through the battlefield, which bore the inscription, IMP. CAES. FLAV. VAL. CONSTANTINO: PIO NOB. CAES: A CARTHAGO M. P. X.

‘Something for your Chronicle, Procopius. Ready?’ The lawyer nodded. Taking out his waxed writing tablets, he scratched with his stylus to the other’s dictation, ‘Know that on this Ides of September in the year the two hundred and fourth from the Founding of New Rome,* at the tenth milestone south from Carthage, the Romans gained a great victory over the Vandals, ending their one hundred and four years’ usurpation of the Diocese of Africa.’

It wasn’t quite the end. Although the Romans occupied Carthage and at once set about dismantling the machinery of Vandal administration, Gelimer and the remnants of his army managed to hold out till mid-December, when (Belisarius’ Hun contingent deciding to ignore the Vandal monarch’s bribes and again stay loyal to the Romans) they were finally routed at Tricamarum, west of Carthage. Africa (now including, besides the mainland diocese, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearics) became a praetorian prefecture divided into seven provinces, upon which immediately descended a swarm of officials — and tax-collectors. As for the civilian Vandal population, it was absorbed or killed by the surrounding Romans and Berbers. As a nation the Vandals had been wiped from the slate of history, leaving not a trace of their existence behind, save a memory of cruelty and destruction.

Entering the city through the Golden Gate in the mighty Theodosian Walls, the great procession, flanked by cheering crowds, made its way along the Mese. At the front, heading his soldiers, marched Belisarius — granted a Roman triumph, the first for centuries; then came Gelimer in chains, but clad, ironically, in royal purple, followed by the tallest and handsomest of the Vandal prisoners, then wagon after wagon loaded with the spoils of victory, among which was the Menorah: the seven-branched gold candlestick which, close on five centuries before, Titus had taken to Rome whence Gaiseric had removed it to Carthage.

The column proceeded through the fora of Arcadius, the Ox, Amastrianum, Theodosius, and Constantine, with all around new buildings rising to replace those destroyed in the riots of two and a half years before. The parade finally halting in the Hippodrome, Belisarius knelt in obeisance before the kathisma wherein were seated, surrounded by the great officers of state, Justinian and Theodora.

‘“Well done, thou good and faithful servant,”’ the emperor quoted from St Mathew’s Gospel, his voice warm with emotion, ‘- conqueror of Africa, and our consul for next year.’*

Next, Gelimer was brought before the imperial pair. Instead of the defiantly scowling savage that he had half-expected, Justinian beheld a gentle-faced man who carried himself with quiet dignity. The thought — ‘Thus might Christ have appeared before Pilate,’ flitted through his mind.

‘Eat the dust, Vandal dog,’ growled the officer on escort duty, ripping the purple robe from Gelimer’s shoulders, and giving his back a brutal shove. Abasing himself at the foot of the royal box, the last king of the Vandals murmured, in the words of the son of David, ‘Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’

Justinian felt a surge of compassion. There was something touching, almost noble, about a man who, finally surrendering to the Romans after weeks of a wretched existence as a hunted fugitive, had asked for three things: a lyre to accompany himself singing the sad story of his misfortunes, a sponge to wipe away his tears, and a loaf of bread to stay the pangs of hunger.

‘Rise, friend,’ Justinian commanded softly. ‘Your fetters will be removed, your freedom restored, and a fitting residence found for you to pass your days in peace.’**

A sense of triumphant gladness welled up in the emperor’s breast. The horror and humiliation of the Nika episode could now finally be put behind him. By his great victory over the Vandals, God had indeed confirmed that Justinian was His Appointed. But Africa was only the beginning. As Resti-tutor Orbis Romani — Restorer of the Roman World — he must now embark on the next stage of the Great Plan: the conquest of Italy.

* The Mediterranean.

** Foreign troops serving under their own leaders.

* 13 September 533.

* Belisarius’ consulship, inaugurated on 1 January 535, was one of the very last; ‘. . the succession of consuls finally ceased in the thirteenth year of Justinian [i.e. in 539].’ (Gibbon)

** Justinian was as good as his word. Displaying a magnanimity not exactly typical of Roman emperors, he settled the Vandal monarch on a rich estate in Galatia, where he was permitted to practise his Arian faith. In addition, he enrolled surviving able-bodied Vandal males into five regiments of Vandali Justiniani.