Triumph

CHAPTER FOUR

Cumae was the only other fortified city south of Rome but the news of what had happened to their southern neighbour ensured that Flavius Belisarius and his army were welcomed with open arms, the small Goth garrison having fled well before their arrival. Flying columns were sent east to secure the cities in the provinces of Apulia, especially the ports on the Adriatic coast, thus shortening communications with both the Army of Illyria and Justinian.

Meeting no resistance the invaders soon had the whole of Southern Italy under their control, though the need to hold such a vast tract of territory and the towns therein seriously diminished the forces set to continue their march. News from the north seemed to confirm that success had brought serious repercussions: the Goth nobles had met and deposed Theodahad for his failure to act against Belisarius, then elected a new leader called Witigis. Theodahad fled to Ravenna where an envoy sent to bring him back avoided any complications by lopping off his head.

Flavius had to surmise he faced a new and more active opponent, now, he was informed, marching on Rome to reinforce possession of the old imperial capital. Yet Witigis was not free to do as he wished; he had to contend with the same difficulties faced by his now dead predecessor. On his northern borders he had the powerful Franks of Southern Gaul, allied to Justinian and in receipt of imperial gold.

Clovis, the Frankish king, was pressing a claim on what Goth possessions remained within what he saw as their territory, while there was still a strong Roman army on the border with Illyricum; if Witigis denuded the north of men, then that made it vulnerable to either one of those threats.

In response, this new Goth ruler decided to leave Rome with a strong garrison and keep his army in the field as he tried to negotiate to improve his position, first by nullifying the Frankish threat. Basing himself at Ravenna he could react to all three possible pressures as they developed, but he could not account for the perfidy of the citizens of the old imperial capital, who sent an embassy under a divine called Fidelis to the man that posed, as far as they were concerned, the most pressing threat.

‘Witigis left behind a garrison of four thousand men.’

Flavius merely nodded; if this envoy from Rome was telling him the truth the number quoted was insufficient to hold Italy’s largest city. Fidelis followed with the name of the man who led them, Leuderis, unknown as a fighting quality, with nothing to suggest a reputation that would compensate for his lack of numbers.

‘And what of your hostages?’

Fidelis had come as an envoy from Pope Silverius, who held great sway in the city and probably reasoned that, despite the various ongoing ecclesiastical disputes he had with Constantinople, he had less to fear from those who shared a basic religious belief than from the Arianism of the Goths.

His envoy was not one to squirm, being too much the smooth bureaucrat, even if the question was one that should make him uncomfortable. Witigis had taken several leading citizens and senators with him when he departed for Rome to ensure that the citizens remained loyal. There was little doubt as to what would be their fate if Rome opened its gates, which was the offer now being made.

‘We must hope for the intercession of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Goths are barbarians but it is to be hoped that exposure to our ways have tempered their savagery.’

Flavius wanted to reply that the man was wishing for the moon; diplomacy forbade that he say anything but he could not help but reflect on what had happened at Naples and see it in a very positive light, in sharp contrast to the way it had been perceived by him at the time. Never entirely comfortable with the notion of sacking a city Flavius had to admit that what was set in motion at Naples had paid dividends since. Cumae had surrendered to avoid the same fate and now Rome was acting likewise, albeit this Fidelis was wrapping it in righteous embellishment.

‘No citizen of Rome, from the pontifex maximus to the lowliest street sweeper, could be happy under barbarian rule. How many years have we and indeed all of Italy not hankered after a reunion with our brethren in Constantinople?’

‘The Goths have treated you better than others. The mere presence of Pope Silverius in the city, as well as your full churches, testifies to that.’

‘What does that count against freedom?’ came the suave response.

‘Who knows you are here, Fidelis?’

‘Only His Holiness and a very few of his closest advisors.’

‘Leuderis?’

‘Steps have been taken to keep him in ignorance.’

Which sealed the man’s fate; just as in Naples, Rome could not be held without the active support of the citizens. Indeed, with its extended walls and eighteen gates even he, with a host over twice the size, would find it a weighty task. As it was, Leuderis made no attempt to hold: the garrison headed north by the Porta Flaminia as Flavius led his men in to the city through the Asinarian Gate. Their commander elected not to go with them; no doubt fearing the wrath of Witigis he handed himself over to Flavius who sent him, as well as the keys to the city, back to Justinian.

Witigis would have no choice but to seek to evict his enemies, so preparations were made for his inevitable assault, the first being the digging of a moat from the Tiber adjacent to the Porta Flaminia all the way round the eastern walls to where the river, flowing south, abutted the southern edge of the fortifications. Gold taken from Naples was used to persuade an initially unwilling crowd of Romans to undertake the task. Repairs were also carried out to the long-neglected walls, while he built and garrisoned a substantial fort on the south side of the Milvian Bridge, which would, he hoped, impede an easy passage to his enemies.

In order to delay the Goth progress, strong bodies of troops under Constantinus and another general called Bessas were despatched to take possession of Tuscany as well as the main towns on the Via Flaminia and points north. This gave Flavius control of the main approaches over the Apennines, while he remained in Rome and, with the aid of Solomon, began to stockpile the quantity of supplies needed to sustain a siege, a task carried out in the face of the pessimism of the citizens, who were certain that the city could not be held against a determined attacker, an opinion based on previous and bloody experience.

The information that trickled in as this work was carried out consisted of the good and the bad; Witigis had surrendered his possessions in Gaul to the Franks and if they had agreed to stand aside from his fight with Constantinople, at least their leader Clovis had declined to provide direct military aid. Yet, with forces released from that frontier, Witigis could now send an army into Illyricum. That initial incursion had met with defeat but relief was at best temporary.

If Clovis had decided to stay neutral, the northern frontier was now open to another tribe of hardy mountain warriors, the Suevics, eager for plunder and willing to act alongside the Goths and no attempt being made by the Franks to impede them. With those as reinforcements, the Goths outnumbered the Illyrian army, forcing them to fall back on and become besieged in the port city of Salona, which left Witigis free to march on Rome.

The plan Flavius first formulated had always anticipated such an advance. His taking of strongholds on the route to Rome was an attempt to bleed the approaching army by forcing them into a series of costly assaults on the towns through which they must pass. Yet with Rome as the key he had as much of a dilemma as his opponent, given he too was constrained in numbers, obliging him to call back to the city most of his troops and leaving behind only token garrisons.

‘Witigis has not taken the bait, General.’

Flavius nodded; even if he knew well that no military aim ever survived contact with an enemy he was frustrated. The Goth leader had no interest in occupying the towns his forces held, however tentatively, on the road to Rome. Bessas, the man who had come to tell him of this, also brought the less than welcome information on the size of what he faced, which substantially outnumbered his own army.

‘Still not enough to close off the city,’ conjectured Constantinus.

‘How far ahead of them were you, Bessas?’ Flavius demanded.

That brought a flush to the cheeks of this inferior commander; both Constantinus and Bessas had been ordered back to Rome but the latter had taken too long to obey. Caught by the swiftly moving Goths he had been forced to retreat on Narnia where the fighting men supposed to be within the walls of Rome were now trapped. Bessas had been obliged to ride hard to bring warning of these developments.

‘Their forward elements are moving at speed in the hope of gaining surprise.’

‘Then we must make sure they do not achieve that. Let us go out and meet them.’

It did not need to be stated where such a flying column might appear. The approach to Rome from the north, given the course of the River Tiber, forced any attacker to head for the Milvian Bridge, which gave an investing force access to the greatest extent of the city walls to the east, over which were cultivated and easily traversed fields. On the western flank, dotted with villages, too much of that was protected by the river itself, leaving only a short section of wall open to assault and one that was, because it was so constrained, relatively easy to defend.

‘Who should we send?’ asked Constantinus.

Flavius was quick in response. ‘I will go myself.’

‘Magister!’ was the anxious response of Procopius.

The secretary got a smile for his obvious apprehension; he was never keen that the man who employed him should expose himself to danger, which he was convinced would have a disastrous effect on the morale of the army should he fall. Seen as a lucky general and a wily one, there was to the mind of Procopius no one to replace him. Added to that was a personal and strong attachment that transcended mere loyalty.

‘I must seek to see our enemies for myself, Procopius, or how will I know how to beat them?’

‘By allowing others to tell you.’

‘No. I need to look this Witigis in the eye, or if not him, the kind of men he commands.’

Not even a general with a superbly well-trained body of personal troops could depart immediately, so it was well into the day when Flavius, Photius at his side, exited the Porta Flaminia and headed towards the Milvian Bridge. This was the site of the battle in which Constantine, the founder of the city to which he gave his name, as well as the ruler who had brought Christianity to the empire, had triumphed. He had defeated his brother-in-law Maxentius to take control of the Roman Empire when it was at its height, to become one body under one emperor.

That was what Flavius had been tasked to recreate, to join under Justinian the two fractured parts of that ancient domain into one whole. If he felt, as a successor to mighty Constantine, the weight of such history, he was also happy to be out of Rome at the head of a thousand-strong body of cavalry. It was not often gifted to a commanding general to be able to act so, his responsibilities as well as the concerns of others placing a bar on such freedoms.

Sure he had moved with commendable speed it came as a shock to find himself facing the vanguard of his enemies and on the Roman side of the bridge, even more so to find many of those from the garrison of the fort he had erected to prevent this had abandoned their post and were now fleeing towards him, quick to tell him that a body of his German mercenaries had defected to the Goths.

The rest of the fort garrison felt they lacked the numbers to fight off the enemy and if that spinelessness was a cause of fury there was no time to indulge it. Nor was there time to make any tactical dispositions with his own men, given the enemy were making ready to attack. The horns were blown and the call to battle immediately initiated, with Flavius to the fore, a thundering cavalry advance met by a like response, so that both forces clashed into each other, and becoming mingled, were immediately engaged in a mass of individual combats.

It had been a long time since Flavius had been able to test his fighting skills in real action, though he had exercised often with his men to keep them sharp. That he needed such abilities now and at their peak soon became obvious. He had been identified, probably he surmised later by those German defectors, and was thus rendered the prime target.

The Goths’ leaders were straining to close with him, well aware that the death of the enemy general was usually the prelude to total victory, and that might include the city itself. Such a manoeuvre was not lost on the men Flavius had personally trained and within a blink he and Photius were surrounded by his bodyguards, who ensured that none of the enemy got close.

In concentrating on him the Goths had lost sight of their main aim, which was, if they could not annihilate them, to drive the Byzantine cavalry back towards the city and hold the Milvian Bridge for their main force. Indeed it was they who lost the initiative and began to fail in both cohesion and forward movement.

The men in command, so busy seeking to kill Flavius and dying in the attempt, left the remainder lacking in leadership and that proved crucial as they broke and streamed back towards the bridge, clattering across the arched stonework with their enemies on their tail.

If success seemed assured, further surprise awaited Flavius on the northern side, proof of how he had underestimated the speed with which Witigis would close in on Rome. On the hills to the north stood lines of infantry drawn up for battle. This was the main Gothic army and with them Witigis had cavalry reinforcements too numerous to contest with.

Once they emerged to mix with their recently defeated comrades there was no option for Flavius but to effect a swift retreat. Given the numbers he faced and the distance he would need to cover for safety, on horses close to being blown by their exertions, he ordered his men to occupy a nearby hill and form up in defence.

These men were Belisarius’s own bucellarii and if no longer trained personally by their general they formed the very body of troops he had first raised when his mentor, the late Emperor Justin, was still alive. As well as swords and spears they carried bows and arrows and these now came into play, Flavius directing salvo after salvo against the advancing Goths, breaking each attempted attack in turn until their enemies, in receipt of unsustainable losses, broke off the engagement.

With horses no longer winded, Flavius could lead his men back towards Rome, though he chose a different route by which to seek to enter the city, aware that if the enemy had been blooded, it was not beaten and they were bound to follow in pursuit. This would have presented no danger at all if the man in command of the Porta Salaria, two entrances east of the Flaminia, had not refused to open the gates.

‘Belisarius is dead,’ came the call from the battlements.

That got the furious and shouted rejoinder from Photius. ‘Fool of a Roman, you are addressing Flavius Belisarius.’

‘The Byzantine general, never! I know you for a barbarian and I will not be a fool for your trickery.’

‘Your head will adorn your gate if you do not open up.’

The head disappeared, leaving Flavius no one with whom to argue. On leaving the city he and his men had been trailed by the curious on foot and in dog carts, nothing to remark upon as it was a commonplace. Such creatures would have seen the opening of the fighting, perhaps even the concerted attempts by the Goths to isolate him, and had, once they hot-footed it back to the city, no doubt chastened by the sight of real fighting as against the romance, spread the rumour he had been killed.

If that was bad, it was worse given the Goth pursuit was now too close to ignore. Flavius was trapped with his back to the walls of Rome and left with no room to contemplate making for another more easterly gate. To accept battle is one thing; to be forced to fight is never comfortable and Flavius verbally had to remind his men of what they now faced, either victory or certain death.

With just enough time to prepare he led them forward, this time in a disciplined line, each rider knee to knee with his nearest compatriots, which would on contact present to the enemy an impenetrable wall of spears. Nor did he order a gallop; the pace was a steady if fast canter, which suited the heavy horses his men rode for they would, having discharged a hail of arrows, then hit the enemy with their weight as well as the spear points of those who rode them.

The Goths would never have faced the like; few warriors in these times had, for cavalry once released were usually lost to whoever commanded them. Not the bucellarii; this kind of fight was that for which they had been created, the type of warfare for which they practised and now, instead of being to the fore, Flavius, as well as his unit commanders, had fallen back to become part of that continuous line.

The Goths tried to meet them as a body but could not, doing so in a disordered and dog-legged fashion after the assault of archery, which saw their front horsemen die in droves. Within no time at all the rest broke off the contest and retired from the field. Flavius had no intention of pursuing them so he called for the horns to be blown and in an equally disciplined way his men swung their mounts and headed back to the Porta Salaria. As they approached, the gates swung open to allow them entry.

‘Find the fool that kept them closed against us,’ Flavius ordered.

‘And hang him, General?’

‘No. But a severe flogging and the stocks will do him no harm. It will alert the other gate wardens to have a care.’

With the Milvian Bridge lost, albeit Flavius had never really expected to hold it, Witigis could now proceed to invest as much of the city as he could with the forces he had and his plan was not hard to discern. He began to construct fortified camps opposite six of the eastern gates, from the Porta Flaminia to the Porta Praenestine. A seventh was built to the west on the Plains of Nero to mask the Porta Cornelia, which meant that Witigis could deploy against the only other exterior crossing of the Tiber, hard by the massive Tomb of Hadrian.

The fourteen aqueducts feeding the city were broken, which had been anticipated, it being a standard ploy, though Flavius made sure that they were well blocked on the city side to avoid any repeat of Naples. The Goths then began the construction of siege towers, the mining of the walls to weaken them, as well as sorties to dam the moat with earthen crossings so that such engines could be got closer to the walls.

Aware now of precisely what he faced, Flavius assigned the threatened gates to his most senior subordinates, Constantinus and Bessas, taking command of the two most vulnerable personally. He ordered that a second stone wall be built within the Porta Flaminia to provide double security and placed in various locations upon the parapet catapults as well as piles of stones, some to be fired by the ballistae, the larger rocks to be dropped on ascending crowns.

One difficulty was the provision of bread; the water from the aqueducts had been used to drive the mills that ground the corn, which had been stockpiled and was plentiful. With those now cut a solution needed to be found so that the city could bake bread and would not starve. It being February the Tiber was flowing fast, fed by the melting snows of the glacial Apennines, so Solomon had boats placed in the river that would drive the mills on the fast current and when the Goths tried to break this with huge floating logs a chain across the Tiber was used to protect them.

Two weeks passed before any real threat seemed imminent, time in which the Goth leader sought to open talks with Flavius, offering him the chance to withdraw unmolested, these being quickly rebuffed. Even as these overtures were being made, work on both the camps and the siege equipment continued, indicating that there had been no expectation that the offer would be accepted.

Witigis prepared to launch his attack on the seventeenth day since that furious encounter at the Milvian Bridge. The grey dawn revealed the Goth forces drawn up before the two gates to the east of the Flaminia, of which Flavius had taken personal command, the Pinciana and the Salaria, these presenting ground suitable for the advance of the Goth assault engines, towers and rams.

Flavius Belisarius had in his hand his own bow, giving orders that no one was to fire a single projectile before him. Out on the flat and fertile fields the Goth horns blew and, pulled by huge teams of oxen and surrounded by dense bodies of men, the siege towers and battering rams began their slow crawl towards the walls. On the parapet the only sound was that of men praying for salvation should they fall.