ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK V
.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE THIRD SIEGE OF ROME.
Belisarius left the Imperial cause in Italy capture of in a miserable
condition. The garrison of Perugia, who for three years and more,
notwithstanding the murder of the gallant Cyprian had resisted the arms and the
solicitations of Totila, were now overmastered, and before Belisarius reached
Constantinople that high Etrurian fortress, taken by
storm, not yielding to a surrender, had passed into the power of the Goths.
At Rome, the soldiers who had been placed in charge of the recovered
City, with long arrears of pay due to them from the treasury, could endure no
longer the spectacle of Isaurian Conon, their commandant, renewing as they
believed the greedy game of the corn-traffic by which he and Bessas had
enriched themselves during the second siege, and thus thriving upon their
misery. Having risen in mutiny and slain their general they sent some of the
Roman clergy as their ambassadors to Constantinople, claiming a full amnesty
for their crime and discharge of the arrears of pay due to them from the State.
Should these demands not be complied with, they declared that they would at
once surrender the City to the Goths. Of course the Emperor had no choice but
to comply, and to promise to pay from his exhausted treasury the money kept
back by fraud and reclaimed by massacre.
This mutiny occurred several months before the recall of Belisarius.
Now, after that event, Totila began to press the garrison of Rome more
vigorously than he had done for the past two years. The cause which suddenly
endowed the ancient capital of the world with so great importance in his eyes
was a singular one, namely, his suit for the hand of a Frankish princess. Ever
since the death of Clovis, and pre-eminently since the break of the Gothic war,
the Frankish Kings had been advancing steadily towards a position of greater
legitimacy than any of the other barbarian royalties; and this pretension of
theirs had been upon the whole acquiesced in by the Eastern Emperor, anxious
above all things to prevent the weight of the Frankish battle-axe from being
thrown into the scale of his enemies. Thus Justinian had formally sanctioned
the cession made by the Ostrogoths of the south-east corner of Gaul to the
Franks, and in doing so must inevitably have waived any shadow of claim which
the Empire might still have been supposed to possess to the remaining
nine-tenths of Gaul, the territory wrested from Syagrius,
Alaric, and Godomar. Secure in this Imperial
recognition of their rights and in the loyal support which, as professors of
the Athanasian form of Christianity, they received from the Catholic clergy,
the Frankish partnership of kings clothed the substance of their power with
more of the form of independent sovereignty than any of the Teutonic
conquerors, whether at Toulouse or at Ravenna, had yet cared, or dared, to
assume. Sitting in the Emperor's seat in the lordly amphitheatre of Arles, the
long-haired Merwing watched the chariot-race and
received the loyal acclamations of the people. Now too the sons of Clovis began
to coin golden money bearing their own image and superscription, whereas
hitherto all the barbarian monarchs (including, says Procopius, even the King
of Persia himself) had been content to see their effigy on coins of silver,
while upon the solidi of the nobler metal appeared the rude resemblance of the
Caesar of Byzantium. It is singular to find already working in the middle of
the sixth century a thought as to the superior legitimacy of Frankish conquest,
which was not to bear fruit in visible deeds till two hundred and fifty years
later, when Frankish Charles was hailed by the people of Rome as Imperator and
Augustus.
While these ideas of a right, in some way differing from the mere right
of conquest, were working in the minds of the bishops and counsellors of the
Frankish Courts, came Totila’s messengers to one of
the kings of the Franks, probably Theudebert of Metz,
asking on behalf of their master for his daughter's hand in marriage. The
Frankish King refused the request, saying that that man neither was nor would
ever be King of Italy who, having once been in possession of Rome, could not
hold it, but destroyed a part of the city and abandoned the rest to his
enemies. What became of Totila’s matrimonial suit in
after days we know not: but at any rate the taunt stung him to the quick, and
he determined that the world should recognize him as master not only of Italy,
but of Rome.
The garrison of Rome now consisted of three thousand picked soldiers
commanded by Diogenes, one of the military household of Belisarius, who had
distinguished himself in sallies and on the battlements during the first siege
of Borne. Under his able generalship the utmost force
of the garrison was put forth to repel the foe. Assault after assault was
repulsed, and the baffled Totila was obliged to convert the siege into a
blockade. Having taken Porto, he was able to make this blockade more rigorous
than any which had preceded it. On the other hand, in the very depth of her
recent fall, the Eternal City found a new source of safety. Diogenes had sown
great breadths of land within the walls with corn. The great City, once
brimming over with human life and filled in Horace's days with the babble of
all human tongues, was now a little, well-ordered, and prosperous farm. In the
summer of 549, when Totila stood before her walls, the golden ears were waving
to the wind on the heights of the lordly Palatine and along the by-ways of the
crowded Suburra.
Notwithstanding this advantage, however, the desperate bankruptcy of
Justinian's government played the game of Totila. Either the arrears stipulated
for by the murderers of Conon had not been sent, or they had not been fairly
divided among the soldiers. The little band of Isaurians who kept guard at the
Porta San Paolo (the archway which spans the road to Ostia) deeply resented the
withholding of their pay, which, as they declared, was now several years in
arrears. Deeply too had sunk into their hearts the story of the splendid
rewards given by Totila to those of their countrymen who three years before had
betrayed the City to the Goths. Even now from the walls they could see these
men arrayed in splendid armour riding side by side with the Gothic captains.
Accordingly they opened secret negotiations with the besiegers, and promised on
a certain night to open the Gate of St. Paul. Totila, who knew that he could
reckon on no such sleepy supineness among the besieged as had enabled him to
effect his previous entry, resorted to a stratagem. When the fated night came,
he put a party of trumpeters on board two little boats, and ordered them,
before the first watch was over, to creep up the river and blow a loud blast from
their trumpets as near as possible to the centre of the City. They did so. The
Romans, not doubting that an attack was being made by the way of the river
(perhaps just below the northern end of the Aventine Mount), left their various
posts and all hurried to the threatened quarter. Meanwhile the Isaurian
deserters opened the Pauline opened to Gate, and the Gothic host, without
trouble or loss of life, found themselves once more inside the City.
Of the garrison, many were slain by the Gothic soldiers in the streets,
some fled northwards and eastwards, and succeeded in escaping from the sword of
the barbarians; some, probably the most warlike of the host, headed by the
brave Diogenes, rushed forth by the Porta San Pancrazio and along the Aurelian
Way, hoping to reinforce the garrison which at Centumcellae (Civita Vecchia) was defending the last stronghold now left to the Empire in
Central Italy. Totila, who anticipated this movement, had stationed a party of
his best warriors in ambush on this road. The fugitives rushed headlong into
the snare, and a fearful slaughter of them followed, from which only a very few
escaped to Civita Vecchia. Among the few, however, was he whom Totila most
desired to capture, their valiant leader Diogenes.
One of the bravest soldiers, first of Belisarius and then of Diogenes, a
cavalry officer named Paul (who like his great namesake was a native of the
province of Cilicia), collected a band of four hundred horsemen, and with them
occupied the Tomb of Hadrian and the bridge of St. Peter which was commanded by
it. Statueless, battered by the storm of war, and
bereft of nearly all its Imperial adornment, but still
‘A tower of strength
That stood four-square to every wind that blew'
rose
the mighty Mausoleum. As soon as day dawned, the Goths advanced to the attack
of the fortress, but owing to the peculiar character of the ground, could
effect nothing, and perished by handfuls in the narrow approaches, where their
crowded masses were exposed without cover to the shower of the Roman missiles.
Seeing this, Totila at once called off his men, forbade all direct assault upon
the Tomb, and gave orders to wait the surer work of hunger. Through the rest of
that day and the following night the gallant followers of Paul remained without
food. The next day they determined to kill some of the horses and feed upon
their flesh; but repugnance to the strange banquet kept them till twilight
still unfed. Then they said one to another, “Were it not better to die
gloriously than to linger on here in misery, and surrender after all?” They
resolved accordingly to burst forth suddenly upon the besiegers, to slay as
many of them as possible, and die, if they must die, in the thick of the
battle. These strong men then, with sudden emotion, twined their arms around
one another, and kissed one another's faces with the death-kiss, as knowing
that they must all straightway perish. Totila, seeing these gestures from afar
and reading their import, sent to offer honorable terms of surrender. Either the garrison might depart unharmed to
Constantinople, leaving their horses and arms behind them, and having taken an
oath never again to serve against the Goths; or, if they preferred to keep
their military possessions, and would enter his service, they should be treated
in all things as the equals of their conquerors and new comrades. The
despairing soldiers heard this message with delight. At first they were all for
returning to Constantinople: then when they bethought them of the shame and the
danger of returning unarmed and on foot over all the wide lands that intervened
between them and the Emperor, and remembered how that Emperor had broken his
share of the compact by leaving their pay so long in arrear, they changed their
minds and elected to serve under the standards of the gallant Totila. Only two
men remained faithful to the Emperor, Paul himself, and Mindes the Isaurian. They sought the King's presence and said, “We have wives and
children in our native land, and without them it is not possible for us to
live. Send us therefore to Byzantium”. Totila knew them for true men, and
giving them an escort and necessaries for the journey, started them on their
road. There were still three hundred Roman soldiers, refugees at the various
altars in the City. To them also Totila offered the same terms, and all
accepted service under him.
There was no talk now of destroying, but only of keeping and
embellishing Rome. Totila caused abundance of provisions to be brought into the
City. The scattered remnants of the Senatorial families were brought back from
their Campanian exile and bidden to inhabit their old homes without fear. As
many as possible of the buildings which he himself had hewn down and burned
with fire were raised up again. And when the Gothic King sat in the podium of
the Circus Maximus, dressed in his royal robes, and gave the signal for the
charioteers to start from the twelve ostia, he doubtless remembered the taunt
of the Frankish King, and felt with pardonable triumph that he was now at least
undoubted King of Italy.
Totila then sent a Roman citizen named Stephen to Constantinople to
propose terms of peace and alliance between the two nations, which had now been
for near fifteen years engaged in deadly struggle: but the Emperor, immersed in
theology and still unwilling to own himself defeated, did not even admit the
ambassador to an interview. On hearing of this rebuff Totila marched first to Centumcellae and summoned it to surrender, offering the
garrison the same terms which had been granted to the defenders of Hadrian's
Tomb. Diogenes replied that it was not consistent with his honour to surrender
the stronghold entrusted to him, for so little cause shown, but that if by a
given day he had received no succours from his master, Centumcellae should be evacuated. Thirty hostages were given on each side for the fulfilment
of this compact, the Goths being bound not to attack during the stipulated
interval, and the Romans not to defend beyond it; and then the Gothic army,
accompanied by the Gothic fleet, consisting of four hundred cutters and many
larger vessels captured from the Imperialists, moved off to the south.
Vengeance upon ungrateful Sicily was the great desire of Totila's heart, as it had been three years before when he
forbade the Roman deacon Pelagius even to name her pardon. Some work, however,
had yet to be done on the mainland. Reggio, which was under the command of
Thorimuth, one of the former defenders of Osimo, was assaulted, but so bravely
defended that the siege had to be turned into a blockade. Tarentum was easily
taken. In the north, Rimini, once so stubbornly defended by John, was now
betrayed into the hands of the Goths. From Ravenna, Verus the Herulian, whose drunken hardihood had once moved the mirth
of Totila, made another of his wild sorties, in which he fell with many of his
followers.
Just at the end of 549, or the beginning of 550, Reggio fell, the
garrison being compelled by famine to surrender. Even before this town, nearly
the last stronghold left to the Empire in Southern Italy, had been won, Totila
had crossed the Straits of Messina into Sicily. His campaign here was one of
plunder rather than conquest. All the chief cities of the island, Messina,
Syracuse, Palermo, seem to have resisted his arms; and only four fortresses,
the names of which are not given, submitted to him. But far and wide through
the island the villas of the Roman nobles bore witness to the invader's
presence. The whole of the year 550 and (apparently) part of 551 were occupied
by these devastations. At the end of that interval the King, collecting all his
booty, large troops of horses and herds of cattle, stores of grain, fruit, and
every other kind of produce of which he had despoiled the Sicilians, loaded his
ships with the plunder and returned to Italy. It was said that he had been
partly persuaded to to abandon Sicily by his own
Quaestor, a citizen of Spoleto named Spinus, who had the misfortune to be taken
prisoner at Catana. This man, of Roman, not Gothic kin, persuaded his captors
to consent to his being exchanged for a noble Roman lady who had fallen into Totila's hands. They at first scouted the idea of so
unequal a bargain, but consented upon his promising to do his best to induce
Totila to depart from the island. On being liberated he painted to his master
in lively colours the danger that the Imperial armament then assembling on the
other side of the Adriatic might make a sudden swoop upon the coast in the neighbourhood
of Genoa and carry off the Gothic women and children tranquilly abiding in
those northern regions and supposed to be out of the reach of war. Totila
listened to the advice, which was probably sound enough, with whatever motive
given, and desisting from his work of plunder, returned to his true base of
operations in Italy, leaving garrisons in his four Sicilian fortresses.
Meantime the appointed day for the surrender Diogenes of Centumcellae had come and gone. Diogenes hearing, as
everyone else in Italy had heard, rumours of the great army collected in
Dalmatia under the Emperor's nephew Germanus, considered himself absolved from
his promise, and refused to surrender the Mediterranean fortress. The thirty
hostages who had been mutually given and received, returned in safety to their
friends. Of the further fortunes of the valiant governor we have no
information. Centumcellae was certainly surrendered
to the Goths, probably not later than the spring of 551: but Procopius has
omitted to tell us the story of its final surrender and to inform us—what we
would gladly have known—whether Diogenes experienced the generosity or the hot
wrath of Totila.
All these expectations, however, of help from Byzantium were for the
present disappointed. Belisarius was recalled, as we have seen, early in 549.
During all the rest of that year and the next, and until the middle of 551,
nothing effectual was done for the relief of the Italians, who were still loyal
to the Empire. Strange weakness and vacillation marked the counsels of the
Emperor. The elderly Patrician Liberius, formerly ambassador from Theodahad to
Justinian, a man of pure and upright character but quite unversed in war, was
appointed to the command of the relieving army. Then his appointment was
cancelled. Some months afterwards he was again appointed, and actually set sail
for Syracuse, where he succeeded in effecting some temporary relief for the city,
straitly besieged by the Goths. He had accomplished this work, and had sailed
away to Palermo, before he learned that the wavering Emperor had again revoked
his commission and entrusted the command of the Sicilian army to Artabanes the
Armenian prince, though, as we shall shortly see, he had little reason for
trusting his loyalty. The ships of Artabanes were dispersed by a fierce storm
while they were rounding the promontories of Calabria, but the General himself
with one ship succeeded in making his way through the tumultuous seas to the
island of Malta .
Then for a time all other names were merged in the renown of Germanus,
the nephew of Justinian, who collected a great army at Sardica,
and from whom all men either hoped or feared a triumphant ending to the Italian
war. How these expectations were disappointed, and what were some of the causes
of the strange but not inexplicable vacillation of Justinian during these years
of Totila’s victorious progress, must be told in the
next chapter.
