ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK V
.
CHAPTER XV
THE ELEVATION OF TOTILA.
No stronger proof of the superiority of Belisarius, both as a general
and a ruler, could be afforded than the disasters which befell the Imperial
cause in Italy after his departure. There can be little doubt that Justinian's
chief reason for recalling him was the fear that he might listen to some such
proposition as that made to him by the Goths during the siege of Ravenna and
might claim independent sovereignty. The fact that he was not sent against
Chosroes till the spring of 541 proves that jealousy was Justinian's main
motive, and heavily was he punished for that jealousy by the subsequent course
of the war. Italy appeared to be recovered for the Empire when Belisarius
entered Ravenna in triumph. Six months more of the great General's presence in
the peninsula would probably have turned that appearance into a reality. But as
it was, the stone of Sisyphus had only just touched the topmost angle of the
cliffs. When Belisarius went, it thundered down again into the plains. The
struggle had all to be fought over again, and twelve years of war, generally
disastrous to the Imperial arms, had to be encountered before Italy was really
united to the Roman Commonwealth.
The officers who accompanied Belisarius on his return to Constantinople
were Ildiger his son-in-law, Valerian, Martin, and
Herodian. All of these generals except Herodian, who was speedily sent back to
Italy, distinguished themselves in the Persian war.
The chiefs of the army who were left in Italy were John the nephew of
Vitalian, John ‘the Glutton’, Bessas the Goth, Vitalius,
and Constantian ‘the Count of the Imperial Stables'.
The last two had commanded in Dalmatia, till the cessation of the Gothic
resistance in that quarter allowed them to be transferred to Italy.
Among all these generals there was none placed in supreme command. Constantian as commandant of Ravenna, and Bessas, either at
this time or soon after governor of Rome, were placed in two of the most
prominent positions in the country. John's military record was the most
brilliant, and probably with all his faults he would, if appointed
General-in-chief, have soon brought the war to a successful termination. But
no—the studious Emperor was not going to encounter again the same agony of
jealous apprehension which had caused each successive bulletin from Belisarius
to be like a stab in his heart. Forgetful therefore of the fine old Homeric
maxim,
“Ill
is the rule of the many: let one alone be the ruler”
he
left the generals with an equality of authority to hold and govern Italy each
according to his own ideas. Naturally, these ideas were in each case to plunder
as much and to fight as little as possible. The bonds of discipline were soon
utterly relaxed, and the rapacious, demoralized army of the Emperor became
formidable to the peaceful provincials, but to no one else.
Now too the power of that terrible engine of oppression, the Byzantine
taxing-system, began to make itself felt in Italy. Justinian's first care with
all his conquests was to make them pay. With an extravagant wife, a pompous and
costly court, with that rage for building which seems to be engendered by the
very air of Constantinople, with multitudes of hostile tribes hovering round
his frontiers who required constant bribes to prevent them from exposing the
showy weakness of his Empire, with all these many calls upon him Justinian was
perpetually in need of money; and the scourge, the rack, the squalid dungeon,
as we have seen in the last chapter, were freely used in order to obtain it.
That odious analogy to a great Roman household which had now thoroughly
established itself in the once free commonwealth of Rome, and which made the
Emperor a master and his subjects slaves, seemed to justify any excess of
rapine. If we could scrutinize the heart of the Dardanian peasant's son who sat
on the throne of the Caesars, we should probably find that his secret thought
was something like this : “It is the business of my generals to conquer for me
new provinces. The inhabitants of those provinces become my slaves, and must
pay whatever I command them. It is my privilege to spend the money which I
condescend to receive from them exactly for such purposes as I choose”
With these high notions of prerogative in his mind, Justinian became one
of the most ruinous governors to his Empire that the world has ever seen. The
reader need not be reminded of the dreary story of fiscal oppression which in
Constantinople, in Africa, in Lydia, has already met his view. The eighteen new
taxes with fearful and unheard-of names, the stringently-exercised rights of pre-emption,
the cruel angaria which, like the French corvees, consumed the strength of the
peasant in unremunerated labour, all these made the yoke of the Emperor
terrible to his subjects. And yet, as was before pointed out, notwithstanding
this extreme rigor in collecting the taxes, the reproductive expenditure of the
Empire was not attended to : the aqueducts were not kept up, the cursus publicus or public post, the best legacy received from
the flourishing days of the Empire, was suffered to fell into irretrievable
ruin. Everywhere the splendour of the reign of Justinian— and there was splendour
and an appearance of prosperity about it—was obtained by living upon the
capital of the country. Everywhere, by his fiscal oppression as well as by his
persecuting attempts to produce religious conformity, he was preparing the
provinces of the East, pale, emaciated, and miserable, for the advent of the
Moslem conquerors, who, within a century of his death, were to win the fairest
of them, and were to hold them even to our own day.
In order to deal with the fiscal questions arising in the
newly-recovered provinces, Justinian appears to have created a special class of
officers, who bore the name of Logothetes, and whose functions correspond to
those which with us are exercised by an auditor or comptroller. Doubtless some
such machinery was necessary to enable the Emperor to take up the financial
administration of two great countries, somewhat entangled by the supremacy of
Vandal and Ostrogothic kings (however true it might be that the subordinate
officers in the revenue department had remained Roman), and also to appraise at
their just value, often to reduce, the large claims which the soldiers by whom
the conquest had been wrought would make against the Imperial treasury. Some
such machinery was necessary, but it should have been worked with a due regard
to the eternal principles of justice and to the special and temporary
expediency of winning the affections of a people who for two generations had
not seen the face of an Imperial tax-gatherer.
Both justice and expediency, however, were disregarded by the freshly
appointed Logothetes, and especially by the chief of the new department. This
man, Alexander by name, received the surname ‘the Scissors', from a bitter joke
which was current about him among the oppressed provincials, who declared that
he could clip the gold coins that came into his hands without injuring their
roundness, and reissue them without risk of detection. He, like all the other
Logothetes, was paid by the results of his work, receiving one-twelfth of all
that by his various devices he recovered for the Imperial Treasury. From a very
humble station in life he soon rose to great power and accumulated enormous
wealth, which he displayed with vulgar ostentation before the various classes
of men whom his exactions were grinding into the dust.
The first of these classes were the soldiers, for the Logothete was the
natural enemy of the soldier, and Justinian deemed himself now secure enough in
his hold on Italy to kick down the ladder by which he had risen. Every offence
against the public peace—and the wild swarms of Huns, Isaurians, Heruli, whom
Belisarius had brought into Italy, when his strong hand was removed, no doubt
committed many such offences—had to be atoned for by a heavy fine to the
Imperial treasury, one-twelfth of which went into the coffers of Alexander the
Logothete. The endeavour to punish was praiseworthy, but it would have been
wise to employ some sharp military punishment in cases of signal offence, and
above all, to make the generals feel that they were responsible for the good
conduct of their men, rather than to create the general feeling that while the
Logothete was rolling in wealth the soldiers whose stout hearts had reconquered
Italy were shrinking into a poor, despised, and beggared remnant, and would
undertake no more daring deeds for the Emperor who had requited them with such
ingratitude.
Not in Italy only, but throughout the Empire, another form of
embezzlement practiced by the Logothetes told terribly upon the efficiency of
the army. The system of payment of the soldiers at this time was one of advance
according to length of service. The young soldier received little, perhaps
nothing besides his arms and his rations. The man who had seen some years'
service and who was half way up on the rolls of the legion was more liberally
dealt with. The veteran who would shortly leave the ranks received a very
handsome salary, out of which he was expected to provide for his superannuation
fund and to leave something to his family. Of course, promotion to these more favored positions depended on the retirement or death of
those who occupied them. But the Logothetes, intent on curtailing the soldier's
allowances for the Emperor's profit and their own, hit upon the expedient of
keeping the highly paid places full of phantom warriors. A veteran might have
died a natural death, retired from the service, or fallen in battle, but still
his name was borne on the rolls of his legion; and thus an excuse was afforded
for keeping the middle-aged and elderly combatant still upon the lowest scale
of pay. Procopius hints that Justinian himself connived at a system so grossly
unfair to the soldiers and so absurdly deceptive as to the real strength of the
army.
Among the various frivolous pretences for abridging the soldier's pay or
cancelling his right to promotion we hear with surprise that one was derived
from their Greek nationality. “They were called Greeks, as if it was quite out
of the question for one of that nation to show anything like high courage”.
This passage shows us, what we might have expected, that these exactions were
tried more frequently on the docile native soldier than on the fiery and easily
unsettled barbarian auxiliary. It also brings before us the officials of the
great monarchy by the Bosporus, men who were themselves Greek in their names,
their language, and their ideas, still acting the part of pure-blooded Roman
governors, and affecting to speak of the men who were in fact their countrymen
with the old Roman disdain, the disdain which was not altogether unreasonable
in the conquerors of Pydna and Cynoscephalae.
Having filled the soldiery with a burning sense of wrong, Alexander
proceeded to alienate thoroughly as possible the Roman inhabitants of Italy,
whose good-will had so greatly aided the progress of Belisarius. All Italians
who had had any pecuniary transactions with the Gothic kings, or had held
office under them, were called upon to produce a strict account of all moneys
had and received, even though such moneys had passed through their hands forty
years ago in the early days of Theodoric. Very possibly the easy-tempered King
and his Gothic nobles had not been served with absolute fidelity by the sharp
Italian officials. “But what concern is that of yours?” they naturally
enquired. “It is not the Emperor who suffered : nay, rather, we might have
thought that we were serving the Emperor by every aureus that we withheld from
the most powerful of his foes”. But now was again exemplified the elasticity
which marked all the reasonings of the Imperial cabinet on the subject of the
Gothic domination in Italy. When that domination appeared to be hopelessly
overthrown, Byzantium reverted to the theory which it had so often played with,
that Theodoric and his successors had been the lawful governors of Italy under
Anastasius, Justin, and Justinian, that they had been by no means usurpers, but
regular vicegerents, and therefore that an action for embezzlement would lie in
the Emperor's name against all officials of the Ostrogothic Kings who had not
faithfully discharged their trust. But this theory was not popular in Italy;
and enforced as it was by grasping Logothetes, regardless of all principles of
justice as to the kind of evidence which they required for transactions long
past and forgotten, it swelled the chorus of discontent which was arising in
all parts of the peninsula against the tyrant who had been hailed as a
deliverer.
By all these causes the smouldering embers of the Gothic resistance were
soon fanned into a flame. When Belisarius left Italy, Ildibad held only one
city, Pavia, and had but one thousand soldiers. Before the year was ended, all
Liguria and Venetia, that is all Italy north of the Po, recognised his sway,
and an army of considerable size (largely composed of deserters from the
Imperial standard) was under his orders. All the generals but one watched this
sudden development of the Gothic power with apathy. Vitalius alone, who was lately commanding in Dalmatia and now in Venetia, moved with his
hordes of Herulian auxiliaries against Ildibad. A
great battle followed near Treviso—not many miles from the little trembling
colony of saltmanufacturers at Venice—and this
battle was disastrous for the Imperialists. Vitalius himself with difficulty escaped. Theudimund son of
Maurice and grandson of Mundus the Gepid, a young lad who thus represented
three generations of Imperial defeat, was in imminent peril of his life, but
just succeeded in escaping, along with Vitalius. Visandus, King of the Heruli, lay dead upon the field.
The tidings of this victory, which were soon carried to Constantinople,
made the name of Ildibad of great account in the mouths of all men. Domestic
dissensions, however, soon cut short a career which promised to be of great
brilliance. Uraias the nephew of Witigis could forget, his wife could not, that
the Gothic crown had been offered to him and that Ildibad reigned by virtue of
his refusal. This lady, who was conspicuous among all her countrywomen for
beauty and for the wealth which she lavishly displayed, was one day proceeding
to the baths with much barbaric pomp of raiment and retinue. At the same moment
the wife of Ildibad happened to pass, in mean attire and with scant attendance;
for Ildibad had lost his possessions as well as his children by the fall of
Ravenna, and there had been no time as yet to form another royal hoard. The
wife of the chief who would not reign offered no obeisance to the wife of the
actual King, and even allowed it to be seen that she was jeering with her
attendants at that honourable poverty. The insult, and the burning tears with
which his wife told the tale, maddened the heart of Ildibad. He began to
traduce his benefactor, accusing him of disloyalty to the national cause, and
before long caused him to be assassinated.
From that day Ildibad's hold on the hearts of his countrymen was gone,
and he also soon fell a victim to the hand of the assassin. One of his guards,
named Wilas, a Gepid by birth, was betrothed to a young maiden whom he loved
with passionate ardour. During his absence on some military duty, the King,
either from forgetfulness or caprice, conferred the hand of the damsel on
another of his followers. From the moment that he heard the tidings, Wilas,
maddened with the wrong, vowed his master's death; and he found many willing
accomplices, for the blood of Uraias cried for vengeance. There came a day when
Ildibad was feasting right royally in his palace, with all his guards in bright
armour standing round him. The King stretched forth his hand to grasp some
delicate morsel; but, overcome apparently by the wine that he had drunk, fell
forward on the couch. Wilas saw his opportunity, stepped forward, drew his
sword, and severed his master's neck at one blow. With amazement and horror the
bystanders saw the head of Ildibad roll upon the festive board, even while his
fingers yet clutched the morsel that was never to be eaten. Nothing is said as
to any punishment of the murderer.
The death of Ildibad occurred about May, 541, a year after the departure
of Belisarius and six years from the commencement of the war. He was succeeded
by Eraric the Rugian, whose precarious royalty was, however, never fully
acknowledged by the remnant of the Gothic nation. It will be remembered that a
part of the Rugian people had followed the standards of Theodoric into Italy
and had shared his victories and his revenge over their deadly enemy Odovacar.
Notwithstanding the subsequent treachery of Frederic their King, the bulk of
the little nation remained faithful subjects of the Ostrogothic royalty, but
though they loyally did his bidding in battle they remained a separate
nationality, marrying only the women of their own tribe, and probably having
justice administered by their own chiefs. This fragment of a nation, in the
distress and discouragement of their Gothic friends, aspired to give a king to
the whole confederacy: a pretension almost as audacious as if in the party
disputes at the close of the reign of Queen Anne the Huguenot refugees had
signified their willingness to place one of their number on the throne of Great
Britain.
Eraric reigned only five months, during which time he performed not a
single noteworthy action against the enemy, but devoted his chief energies to
those illusory negotiations with Constantinople which were the natural resource
of a barbarian king doubtful of the loyalty of his subjects. He called together
a general assembly of the Goths, and proposed to them to send ambassadors to
Justinian, offering peace upon the same terms which had been suggested to
Witigis: all Italy south of the Po to be the Emperor's, the rest to belong to
the Goths. The assembly approved, and the ambassadors set forth on their
journey; but it is scarcely necessary to state that they bore also a secret
commission by virtue of which Eraric offered to sell his people and the whole
of Italy to Justinian upon the usual terms, the Patriciate, a large sum of
money, and a splendid establishment at Constantinople. But in the mean time the
hearts of all the Gothic people, sore for the loss of Ildibad, from whose
mighty arm they had expected deliverance, and impatient at the feeble gropings after a policy of this Rugian kinglet whom
accident had set over them, were turning with more and more of hope and loyalty
to one still remaining scion of the house of Ildibad. This was his nephew Baduila, a man still young for command, but one whose
courage and capacity had already much talked of at the council-table and the
banquet. At the moment of his uncle's murder he was in command of the garrison
at Treviso: and when he heard the tidings of that lamentable event, thinking
that it was all over with Gothic freedom, he sent, messengers to Ravenna
offering to surrender his stronghold on receiving pledges from Constantian for the safety of himself and his soldiers. The
offer was gladly accepted, the day for the surrender fixed, the Roman generals
looked upon Treviso as already theirs, when the whole aspect of the case was
changed by a deputation from the discontented Goths offering the crown to Baduila. The young chief told them with perfect openness
all that had passed between him and Constantian, but
agreed, if the Rugian adventurer were removed before the day fixed for his
capitulation, to cancel his agreement with Ravenna and to accept the dangerous honour
of the kingship. The negotiations of Eraric with the Emperor, both those which
were avowed and those which were only suspected, no doubt hardened the hearts
of the Gothic patriots against him and quickened their zeal: and thus it came
to pass that in the autumn of 541, long before the messengers had returned from
Constantinople, Eraric had been slain by the conspirators and the young Baduila had been raised on the shield as King.
The unanimous testimony of the coins of the new King proves that Baduila was that form of his name by which he himself chose
to be known. From some cause, however, which has not been explained, he was
also known even to the Goths as Totila, and this name is the only one which
seems to have reached the ears of the Greek historians. It is useless now to
attempt to appeal from their decision, and the name Totila is that by which he
will be mentioned henceforward in this history.
The new King wielded the Ostrogothic sceptre for eleven years, a longer
period than any of hi predecessors since the great Theodoric. Coming to the
help of his countrymen when their cause seemed sunk below hope, he succeeded in
raising it to a height of glory such as even under Theodoric himself it had
scarcely surpassed. Though almost the last, he was quite the noblest flower
that bloomed upon the Ostrogothic stem, gentle, just, and generous, as well as
a valiant soldier and an able statesman. Though he first appears before us,
engaged in somewhat doubtful transactions, breaking his agreement with Constantian and counseling the
death of Eraric, he is upon the whole one of the best types of the still future
age of chivalry that the Downfall of the Empire can exhibit: and in fact we may
truthfully say of him in the words of Chaucer—
“He was a very perfect gentle knight”.
The tidings of the ill-success of the Imperial arms and of the death of
Eraric were conveyed to Justinian, who sent a severe reprimand to the generals
for their supineness and misgovernment. Stung by this rebuke, having assembled
a council of war at Ravenna, at which all the chief generals were present as
well as Alexander the Logothete, they resolved to besiege Verona, the key to Totila's Venetian province, and as soon as that city was
taken to press on to Pavia and extinguish the Gothic monarchy in its last
asylum. The plan was strategically sound, and its failure was only due to the
really ludicrous rapacity of the generals. An army of 12,000 men, under the
command of eleven generals, advanced into the wide and fertile plains south of
Verona, where their cavalry could operate with great advantages against the
enemy. Moreover, a nobleman of the province of Venetia named Marcian, who dwelt
near to Verona and favoured the Imperial cause, sent word to the generals that
he had bribed one of the sentinels to open a gate of that city to the Imperial
forces. The generals, not feeling absolutely sure that this offer was made in
good faith, invited volunteers for the dangerous task of commanding a small
picked force, which should advance in front of the army and be admitted under
cover of night within the walls of Verona. No one was willing to undertake the
duty but Artabazes, a Persian, who in the Eastern
campaign of 541 had attached himself to the fortunes of Belisarius and had been
sent by him to serve in the Italian war. Having selected one hundred and twenty
of the bravest men in the army he advanced at dead of night to the walls, and
was admitted inside the gate by the sentinel, faithful in his treachery: his
followers then slew the surrounding guards and mounted to the battlements. The
Goths, finding out what had happened, threw up the game, retired through the
northern gate to one of the hills overlooking the town, and there passed the
night.
With the smallest fraction of military capacity the important city of
Verona would now have been recovered for the Emperor. But the eleven generals,
having started with the bulk of the army at the appointed time, began, when
they were still five miles distant, to dispute as to the division of the spoil.
The quarrel was at length adjusted, but meantime the sun had risen, and there
was broad daylight over the old amphitheatre, over the swirling Adige, over the
streets and market-places of Verona. The Goths from their hill-side took in the
whole position of affairs, and saw by what an insignificant band they had been
ousted from the city. Bushing in again by the northern gate, of which they had
not given up possession, they drove Artabazes and his
band to take refuge behind the battlements of the southern portion of the wall.
At this moment the Roman army and the eleven generals arrived under the walls
and found all the gates barred, and all the circuit of the city, except one
small part, occupied by their foes. Vainly did Artabazes and his friends shout to them for help. They withdrew with all speed, and the
little band whom they thus left to their fate had no resource but to leap
headlong from the battlements. The greater number were killed by the fall. A
few who had the good-fortune to alight on smooth soft ground escaped. Among
these latter was Artabazes, who, when he reached the
camp, inveighed bitterly against the cowardice and incapacity of the generals,
which had brought so promising an enterprise to disaster.
Recognizing the failure of their design to reconquer Venetia, the whole
army crossed the Po and mustered again near Faventia,
a town on the Emilian Way, about twenty miles southwest of Ravenna. This place
still survives in the modem Faenza, a bright little city of the plain, nestling
under the shadow of the Apennines. Its early advances in the ceramic art have
made the name of faience familiar to all French dealers in earthenware.
When Totila learned what had passed at Verona he set forth with his
whole army in pursuit of the Roman generals. So dwindled, however, was the
Gothic force, that those words ‘the whole army' still described a force of only
five thousand men. While he was still on the northern bank of the Po, Artabazes, who had not ridden in vain beside Belisarius to
battle, and who is the only soldier whose deeds shed a brief lustre across this
part of the annals of the Imperial army, implored his brother generals to
attack the barbarians in the act of crossing, so that they might have only one
part of the Gothic force to deal with at once. He truly said that they need not
trouble their minds about the alleged in-gloriousness of such a victory. In war
success was everything, and if they defeated the foe, men would not narrowly
scrutinize the means by which they had overcome. But the generals, having each
his own scheme for conducting the campaign, could accept no common plan of
action, not even the obvious one suggested by Artabazes,
but remained inactive in the plain of Faenza, for which course they had, it
must be admitted, one excuse, in that they thereby barred the Emilian Way
against the southward progress of the invader.
Here then Totila, having crossed the Po without opposition, met the
many-generalled forces of the enemy. In a most
spirit-stirring speech he called upon his soldiers for one supreme effort of valour.
He did not dissemble the difficulties of their situation. The Romans if
defeated could take shelter in their fortresses, or could await reinforcements
from Byzantium; but they had no such hope. Defeat for them meant ruin, the
utter ruin of the Gothic cause in Italy. But, on the other hand, victory earned
that day would bring with her every promise for the days to come. Blundering
and defeat had reduced the army of the Goths from two hundred thousand men to
one thousand, and their kingdom from the fair land of Italy to the single city
of Ticinum. But then, one victory gained by the
gallant Ildibad had multiplied their numbers fivefold, and had given them for
one city all the lands north of the great river. Another victory now, with the
blessing of God on their endeavours, with the favour and sympathy of all the
Italians wearied out by the exactions of the Byzantine tax-gatherers, might
restore to them all that they had lost. And such a victory they might surely
win against the recent dastards of Verona.
After this harangue Totila selected three hundred men, who were to cross
the river at a point two miles and a-half distant and fall upon the rear of the
enemy when the battle was joined. Then the two armies set themselves in battle
array; but before the fight began, one of those single combats in which the
barbarians in both armies delighted, and which seem more congenial to the
instincts of mediaeval chivalry than to the scientific discipline of the old
Imperial legion, occupied the attention of both armies. A Goth, mighty in
stature and terrible in aspect, Wiliaris by name,
completely armed, with helmet and coat of mail, rode forth into the space
between the two armies, and, Goliath-like, challenged the Romans to an
encounter. All shrank from accepting the challenge except the gallant Persian, Artabazes. Couching their spears at one another the two
champions spurred their horses to a gallop. The Persian's spear penetrated the
right lung of the Goth. Instant death followed, but the spear in the dead man's
hand, having become jammed against a piece of rock below him, prevented him
from falling and gave him still the erect attitude of life. Artabazes pressed on to complete his victory, and drew his sword to smite his enemy
through his coat of mail, but in doing so, by some sudden swerve of his horse,
his own neck was grazed by the upright spear of the dead Wiliaris.
It seemed a mere scratch at first, and he rode back in triumph to his comrades
: but an artery had been pierced, the blood would not be stanched, and in three
days the gallant Artabazes was numbered with the
dead. Thus did a dead man slay the living.
While Artabazes, out of the reach of bow-shot,
was vainly endeavouring to stanch his wound, the battle was going ill with the
Romans. Totila’s three hundred men appearing in the
rear were taken for the vanguard of another army, and completed the incipient
panic. The generals fled headlong from the field, one to take refuge in one
city, another in another. Multitudes of the soldiers were slain, multitudes
taken prisoners and sent to a place of safety; and all the standards fell into
the hands of the enemy, a disgrace which, Procopius assures us, had never
before befallen a Roman army.
Totila now found himself strong enough to strike boldly across the
Apennines, probably taking, not the Flaminian but the Cassian Way, and so try
to gain a footing in Tuscany. With this view he sent a detachment of soldiers
to besiege Florence. Fiesole, on its inaccessible height, he probably deemed
too difficult for his little army. Justin, who had distinguished himself in
these regions three years before, was now commandant of the Imperial garrison
of Florence; but, fearing that he was too weak in men and provisions to hold
out long, he sent messengers by night to Ravenna to ask for relief. A force,
probably a strong force, was sent to his aid under the command of his old
friend and colleague Cyprian, together with John and Bessas. At the approach of
this large body of troops the Goths raised the siege of Florence and retreated
northwards up the valley of the Sieve, which still bears in popular usage the
name by which Procopius calls it, the valley of Mugello. It was thought
unadvisable by the Imperial generals to risk an engagement with their whole
force in the gorges of the mountains, and it was decided that one of their
number, with a picked body of troops, should seek out and engage the Goths,
while the rest of the army followed at their leisure. The lot fell on John the
venturesome and precipitate, who, nothing loth, pushed on up the rocky valley.
The Goths had stationed themselves on a hill, from which they rushed down with
loud shouts upon the foe. There was a little wavering in the Roman ranks. John,
with loud shouts and eager gestures, encouraged his men, but one of his
guardsmen, a prominent figure in the ranks, was slain; and in the confused
noise of the battle it was rumoured that John himself had fallen. Then came
wild panic : the Roman troops swept down the valley, and when they met the
solid squadrons of their fellow-soldiers, and told them the terrible tidings of
the death of the bravest of the generals, they too caught the infection of fear
and fled in disgraceful and disorderly flight. Many were slain by the pursuing
Goths. Some having been taken prisoners, were treated with the utmost kindness
by the politic Totila, and even induced in large numbers to take service under
his standard. But others went galloping on for days through Italy, pursued by
no man, but bearing everywhere the same demoralizing tidings of rout and ruin,
and rested not till they found themselves behind the walls of some distant
fortress, where they might at least for a time breathe in safety from the fear
of Totila.
Such, according to Procopius, was the battle, or rather the headlong
rout, of Mugello. He was not an eye-witness of the scene, and one is inclined
to conjecture that he has overrated the element of mere panic and underrated
the strategic skill of the Goths, who had apparently posted themselves on some
coign of vantage among the hills from which they could inflict deadly injury on
the foe, themselves almost unharmed. But, whatever were the details of the
fight, it seems to have opened the whole of Central and Southern Italy to
Totila. Cesena, Urbino, Montefeltro, Petra Pertusa,
all those Umbrian fortresses which it had cost Belisarius two years of hard
fighting to win, were now lost to Justinian. Totila pressed on into Etruria.
There no great fortress seems to have surrendered to him, and he would not
repeat the error of Witigis by dashing his head against the stone walls of
Rome. He therefore crossed the Tiber, marched southwards through Campania and
Samnium, easily took Beneventum, and razed its walls, that no Byzantine host
might shelter there in time to come. The stronghold of Cumae with a large store
of treasure fell into his hands. In the same place was a little colony of
aristocratic refugees, the wives and daughters of the Senators. Totila treated
them with every mark of courtesy, and dismissed them unhurt to their husbands
and fathers, an act of chivalry which made a deep impression on the minds of
the Romans. All the southern provinces of Italy, Apulia, Calabria, Bruttii, and Lucania, were overrun by his troops. Not all
the fortresses in these parts were yet his, but he collected securely and at
his ease both the rent of the landowner and the revenue of the Emperor.
The oppressions of the Logothetes had revealed to all men that one great
motive for the Imperial reconquest of Italy was revenue; and Totila, by
anticipating the visit of the tax gatherer, stabbed Justinian's administration
in a vital part. The barbarian auxiliaries could not be paid: desertions from
the Imperial standard became more and more frequent; all the prizes of valor were seen to glitter in the hand of the young Gothic
hero, who, encouraged by his marvellous success, determined to wrest from the
Emperor the first fruits of Belisarius's campaigns in Italy. He sat down before
the walls of Naples, which was held by a garrison of a thousand men, chiefly
Isaurians, under the command of Conon.
This sudden transformation of the political scene took place in the
summer of 542. And what meanwhile were the Imperial generals doing? Without
unity of action or the semblance of concerted plan they were each cowering over
the treasure which they had succeeded in accumulating, and which was stored in
the several fortresses under their command. Thus Constantian had shut himself up in Ravenna; John, not slain but a fugitive from Mugello, in
Rome; Bessas at Spoleto; Justin at Florence (which had not, after all, fallen
into the hands of the Goths); and his friend Cyprian at Perugia. Like islands
these high fortresses occupied by the Imperial soldiers stand out above the
wide-spreading sea of Gothic reconquest. Even the victorious Totila will not be
safe till he has reduced them also to submission.
The terrible news of the re-establishment of the Gothic kingdom in Italy
filled Justinian with sorrow at the thought of all his wasted men and treasure.
Not yet, however, was he brought to the point of entrusting the sole command to
Belisarius: that remedy still seemed to him worse than the disease. He would
end, however, the anarchy of the generals by appointing one man as Praetorian
Prefect of Italy, who should have supreme power over all the armies of the
Empire within the peninsula. This was a wise measure in itself, but the holder
of the office was badly chosen. Maximin, the new Prefect , was quite
inexperienced in war, of a sluggish and cowardly temper; and though the
generals under him, Herodian the commander of the Thracians and Phazas nephew of Peranius, who
came from the gorges of the Caucasus and commanded a brave band of Armenian
mountaineers, knew somewhat more about the business of war, their martial
energy was deadened by the feebleness of their chief.
This new appointment was made apparently in the autumn of 542. The timid
Maximin, afraid to face the unquiet Adriatic in November, lingered, upon one
pretence or another, on the coast of Epirus. All the time the distress of Conon
and the beleaguered garrison of Naples was growing more severe. Demetrius,
another officer of the old army of Belisarius, who had been dispatched from
Constantinople after Maximin, perhaps to quicken his movements, sailed to
Sicily and there collected a large fleet of merchantmen, which he filled with
provisions, hoping by the mere size of his armament to overawe the Goths and
succeed in revictualling Naples. Had he sailed thither at once his bold
calculation would probably have been verified : but unfortunately he wasted
time in a fruitless journey to Rome, where he hoped to enlist volunteers for
the relief of the besieged city. The discontented and demoralized soldiers
refused to follow his standard, and after all he appeared in the Bay of Naples
with only his provision ships and the troops which he himself had brought from
Constantinople.
When the fleet of Demetrius was approaching the bay a little boat
appeared, in which sat his namesake, another Demetrius, a Cephalonian seaman whose nautical skill had been of the highest service to Belisarius in
his Italian and African voyages. This man was now Financial Administrator of
the city of Naples for the Emperor. He had good reason to wish for the success
of his namesake the general, since when Totila first summoned the citizens to
surrender he had assailed the stately and silent barbarian with such a torrent
of voluble abuse as only a foul-mouthed Greek could utter. He had now come, at
great hazard of his life, to inform the general of the distress of the
beleaguered city and to quicken his zeal for its relief.
But, during the ill-advised journey to Rome, Totila also had obtained
information of the movements and character of the relieving squadron. He had
prepared a fleet of cutters, lightly loaded and easily handled, and with these
he dashed into the fleet of heavy merchantmen as soon as they had rounded the
promontory of Misenum and entered the Bay of Naples.
The unwieldy and feebly-armed vessels were at once steered for flight. All of
the ships, all of their cargoes, most of the men on board, were taken. Some of
the soldiers were slain; a few who were on board the hindermost vessels of the
fleet were able to escape in boats. Among these fugitives was Demetrius the
general. His namesake, the unhappy sailor-orator, fell into the hands of
Totila, who ordered his abusive tongue and the hands that had been probably too
greedy of gold to be cut off, and then suffered the miserable man to go whither
he would. A cruel and unkingly deed, not worthy of
the gallant Totila.
Meanwhile the Prefect Maximin arrived with all his armament in the harbour
of Syracuse. Having reached the friendly shore he would not again leave it,
though all the generals sent messages urging him to go to the assistance of
Conon. But, at length, fear of the Emperor's wrath so far overcame his other
fears that he sent his whole armament to Naples under the command of Herodian,
Demetrius, and Phazas, tarrying himself quietly at
Syracuse. By this time the winter was far advanced and sailing was indeed
dangerous. A tremendous storm sprang up just as the fleet entered the Bay of Naples, Phazas the Armenian seems to have at once abandoned
all hope, and fled before the storm. The rowers could not draw their oars out
of the water, the deafening roar of the wind and waves drowned the word of
command if any officer had presence of mind enough to utter it, and, in short,
all the ships but a very few were dashed on shore by the fury of the gale. Of
course in these circumstances their crews fell a helpless prey to the Goths who
lined the coast.
Herodian and Phazas with a very few others
escaped. Demetrius, this time, fell into the hands of the enemy. With a halter
round his neck he was led in front of the walls of the city, and was then
compelled—but a man who called himself the countryman of Regulus should not have
yielded to such compulsion—to harangue the citizens in such words as Totila
dictated. The speech was all upon the necessity of surrender, the impossibility
of resisting the Goths, the powerlessness of the Emperor, whose great armament had
jus been shattered before their eyes, to prepare another for their deliverance.
Cries and lamentations filled all the city when the inhabitants, after their
long sufferings bravely borne, heard such counsels of despair coming from the
lips of a Roman general standing in such humiliating guise before them. Totila,
who knew what their frame of mind must be, invited them to the battlements and
there held parley. He told them that he had no grudge in his heart against the
citizens of Naples, but, on the contrary, would ever remember their fidelity to
the Gothic crown and the stout defence which they had made against Belisarius
seven years before, when every other city in Italy was rushing into rebellion.
Neither ought they on their part to bear any grudge against him for the
hardships which the siege had caused them, and which were all part of the
kindly violence by which he would force them back into the path of happiness
which they had quitted. He then offered his terms: leave to Conon and his
soldiers to depart whithersoever they would, taking all their possessions with
them, and a solemn oath for the safety of every Neapolitan citizen.
The terms were generous, and both citizens and soldiers, pressed by
hunger and pestilence, were eager to accept them. Loyalty to the Emperor,
however, made them still consent to the surrender only in the event of no help
reaching them within thirty days. Totila, with that instinct of repartee which
shone forth in him, and which was more like a Greek than a Goth, replied, “Take
three months if you will. I am certain that no succours in that time will
arrive from Byzantium”. And with that he promised to abstain for ninety days
from all attacks upon their fortifications, but did not repeat the blunder of
Witigis, in allowing the process of revictualling to go forward during the
truce. Disheartened and worn out with famine, the citizens surrendered the
place long before the appointed day, and Naples (May, 543) again became subject
to Gothic rule.
On becoming master of the city, Totila showed a thoughtful kindness
towards the inhabitants, such as, in the emphatic words of Procopius, could
have been expected neither from an enemy nor a barbarian. To obviate the evil
consequences of overfeeding after their long abstinence, he posted soldiers in
the gates and at the harbour with orders to let none of the inhabitants leave
the city. Each house was then supplied with rations of food on a very moderate
scale, and the portion given was daily and insensibly increased till the people
were again on full diet.
Conon and his soldiers were provided with ships, which were ordered to
take them to any port that they might name. Fearing to be taunted with their
surrender if they went to Constantinople, they elected to be taken to Rome. The
wind, however, proved so contrary that they were obliged to return on shore.
They feared that the Gothic King might regard himself as now absolved from his
promises and might treat them as foes. Far from it: he summoned them to his
presence, renewed his promises of protection, and bade them mingle freely with
his soldiers and buy in his camp whatever they had need of. As the wind still
continued contrary, he provided them with horses and beasts of burden, gave
them provisions for the way, and started them on their road for Rome, assigning
to them some Gothic warriors of reputation by way of escort. And this, though
his own heart was set on taking Rome and he knew that these men were going to
swell the ranks of her defenders.
In conformity with his uniform policy (borrowed perhaps from the
traditions of Gaiseric), he then dismantled the walls of Naples, or at least a
sufficient portion of them to make the city, as he believed, untenable by a
Roman army. For he preferred ever to fight on the open plain, rather than to be
entangled in the artifices and mechanical contrivances which belong to the
attack and defence of besieged cities.
About this time an event happened which showed in a striking light the
policy of Totila towards the Italians. A countryman of Calabria appeared in the
royal tent, demanding justice upon one of the Gothic King's body-guard who had
violated his daughter. The offence was admitted, and the offender was put in
ward till Totila, should decide upon his punishment. As it was generally
believed that this punishment would be death, some of the men of highest rank
in the army came to implore the King not to sacrifice for such a fault the life
of a brave and capable soldier. With gentle firmness Totila refused their
request. He pointed out that it is easy to earn a character for good-nature by
letting offenders go unpunished, but that this cheap kindness is the ruin of
good government in the state, and of discipline in the army. He enlarged on his
favourite theme, that all the vast advantages with which the Goths commenced
the war had been neutralized by the vices of Theodahad; and on the other hand,
that, by the Divine favor and for the punishment of
the rapine and extortion of their foes, the Gothic banner had in a marvellous
way been raised again from the dust in which it had lain drooping. Now, then,
let the chiefs choose which they would have, the safety of the whole Gothic
state or the preservation of the life of this criminal. Both they could not
have, for victory would be theirs only so long as their cause was good. The
nobles were convinced by his words, and no murmurs were heard when, a few days
after, the ravisher was put to death and his goods bestowed on the maiden whom
he had wronged.
Such was the just rule of the barbarian King. Meanwhile the so-called
Roman officers, shut up in their several fortresses, seemed intent only on
plundering the country which they could not defend. The generals feasted
themselves at gorgeous banquets, where their paramours, decked with the spoils
of Italy, flaunted their mercenary beauty. The soldiers, dead to all sense of
discipline, and despising the orders of such chiefs, wandered through the
country districts, wherever the Goths were not, pillaging both villa and praedium, and making themselves far more terrible to the
rural inhabitants than the Goths from whom they professed to defend them. Thus
was the provincial, especially he who had been a rich provincial, of Italy in
evil case. Totila had appropriated his lands and was receiving the revenues
which they furnished, and all his moveable property was stolen from him by the
soldiers of John or Bessas.
The state of the country became at length so intolerable that Constantian, the commandant of Ravenna wrote to the Emperor
that it was no longer possible to defend his cause in Italy; and all the other
officers set their hands to this statement. Of this state of discouragement
among his enemies Totila endeavoured to avail himself by a letter which he
addressed at this time to the Roman Senate. “Surely”, he said, “you must in
these evil days sometimes remember the benefits which you received, not so very
long ago, at the hands of Theodoric and Amalasuntha. Dear Romans, compare the
memory of those rulers with what you now know of the kindness of the Greeks
towards their subjects. You received these men with open arms, and how have
they repaid you? With the griping exactions of Alexander the Logothete, with
the insolent oppressions of the petty military tyrants who swagger in your
streets. Do not think that as a young man I speak presumptuously, or that as a
barbarian king I speak boastfully when I say that we are about to change all
this and to rescue Italy from her tyrants. I make this assertion, not trusting
to our own valor alone, but believing that we are the
ministers of Divine justice against these oppressors, and I implore you not to
side against your champions and with your foes, but by such a conspicuous service
as the surrender of Rome into our hands to wipe out the remembrance of your
past ingratitude”
This letter was entrusted to some of the captive Romans, with orders to
convey it to the Senate. John forbade those who read the letter to return any
answer. Thereupon the Gothic King caused several copies of the letter to be
made, appended to them his emphatic assurances, sealed by solemn oaths, that he
would respect the lives and property of such Romans as should surrender, and
sent the letters at night by trusty messengers into the City. When day dawned
the Forum and all the chief streets of Rome were found to be placarded with Totila’s proclamation. The doers of the deed could not be discovered, but John,
suspecting the Arian priests of complicity in the affair, expelled them from
the City.
Finding that this was the only answer to his Rome and appeal, Totila
resolved to undertake in regular form the siege of Rome. He was at the same
time occupied in besieging Otranto, which he was anxious to take, as it was the
point at which Byzantine reinforcements might be expected to land, in order to
raise the standard of the Empire in Calabria. He considered, however, that he
had soldiers enough for both enterprises, and, leaving a small detachment to
prosecute the siege of Otranto, he marched with the bulk of his army to Rome.
Now at length did Justinian, with grief and sighing, come to the
conclusion that only one man could cope with this terrible young Gothic
champion, and that, even though the Persians were pressing him hard in the
East, Belisarius must return to Italy.
But, before we begin to watch the strange duel between the veteran
Byzantine General and the young Gothic King, before we turn the pages which
record another and yet another siege of Rome, we must devote a little time to
the contemplation of the figure of one who, more powerfully than either
Belisarius or Totila, moulded the destinies of Italy and Western Europe. The
great Law-giver of European monasticism died just at this time. Let us leave
for a space the marches and counter-marches of Roman and Barbarian, and stand
in spirit with the weeping monks of Monte Cassino by the death-bed of Benedict
of Nursia.