Belisarius knew Sisifried as a bold, loyal, resourceful soldier, and the messenger also as a very trusty man, so he could not but believe the news. The first question he asked, with a sort of gasp, was: ‘And my wife, the Lady Antonina?’
The messenger answered: ‘I do not know. Sisifried’s words were: “I alone am left of Isaac’s men.”’
At this Belisarius swayed upon his feet. Tears burst from his eyes, and for a while he stood speechless. He crossed himself, muttering a broken prayer. But in a little while he regained control of his feelings: perhaps he recalled how Geilimer, the Vandal King, had lost a battle by untimely grief for a dear one. It was now three o’clock, and Bessas had not made the expected sortie, though aware of the burning of the tower and the destruction of the boom. Must he engage the whole Gothic Army by himself? That would be foolhardy to the point of madness. Nevertheless, he would have done so, in the hope of aid from Bessas as soon as the galleys drew near to the city; but that, with the Port taken, he was cut off from the sea – for Ostian was also held by the enemy, and defeat now would be disaster. His only hope lay in immediate return and the recapture of the Port. He ordered the helms of his galleys to be turned hard about, and, taking the infantry aboard, recalled his cavalry by trumpet-blast and hurried downstream. Perhaps it was still not too late to wrest the fortress from the enemy and avenge his dead.
When we at the Port saw his boats returning we were filled with amazement, but not so great an amazement as he himself felt on observing our sentries still at the gates of the fortress. Then relief and disgust struggled for mastery in his mind – relief that the report was an error, disgust at having, from foolish credulity, abandoned an attempt so well begun. He said bitterly: ‘This is the day of St Nicholas, when children find sweetmeats hidden in their shoes, and when old soldiers turn simpletons.’
That night his malarial fever came back upon him. The restless and unhappy condition of his mind aggravated the attack; he grew very sick indeed, and was soon raving in delirium. He kept calling for my mistress, not recognizing her at his bedside. Her heart was pierced when in the wanderings of his mind he relived the anguish that he had suffered in the belief that she was killed. ‘What remains for me now?’ he continually cried. ‘Antonina is dead.’
At the height of his fever, we who attended him were obliged to call the assistance of eight of his strongest guardsmen to restrain him from doing some wild deed. Now he imagined that he was fighting the Goths outside the walls of Rome, and now that it was the Persians at Daras. Once he uttered his war-cry in a terrible voice and caught two men in his arms, nearly crushing them to death; but suddenly fell gasping.
CHAPTER 22
RECALL AND FORGIVENESS
BELISARIUS was confined to his chamber for ten days. On the eleventh day King Teudel took Rome, being admitted one night with all his army by four treacherous Isaurian soldiers at the Asinarian Gate. Bessas had not constantly changed the duty roster for his guards, as Belisarius had done, or changed the locks on the gates; thus the soldiers had been able to agree with Teudel for an exact hour some days in advance. The cause of their treachery was a grievance against the captain of their company for holding back part of their corn ration in order to sell it to patricians.
King Teudel’s Goths immediately set about plundering the great houses of the patricians, allowing Bessas and his garrison to escape without hindrance. Teudel contented himself with what he found in the Pincian Palace – Bessas’s evilly won store, which had the appearance of a royal treasury or the hoard of a successful admiral of pirates. In all Rome, a city that had recently housed half a million souls, the Goths found no more than 500 commoners and 400 persons of patrician blood – nearly all women and children, these, since most of the patricians themselves had escaped with the garrison. Teudel began pulling down the fortifications; and swore that, for its ungrateful hostility to the benignant Gothic rule of Theoderich and his descendants, the city had earned no better fate than to be burned down and reduced to the level of a sheep-walk.
Belisarius learned of this threat and wrote to him from the Port of Rome: ‘King Teudel, if you do as you have threatened with Rome, the birthplace of Empire, will your name not stink in the nostrils of posterity? Be sure that it will be told and written of you: “What fifty generations of Romans toiled to build, bringing together the noblest materials and the finest architects and craftsmen procurable in the entire world, a German princeling, insulting the great dead, burned down one day as an act of spite, and at a time when it stood empty because of plague and famine.”’
Teudel reflected, and refrained. Belisarius had been right in supposing that, with a Gothic King, the hypothetical verdict of posterity would weigh more than his own natural inclinations or the most practical advice of his wisest counsellors. Nevertheless, Teudel dismantled three miles of the fortifications, and removed all the gates, making an open city of it. Then, leaving strong forces behind him in the neighbourhood to pin down our forces at the Port of Rome, he set out against Bloody John, who was now at Taranto.
Bloody John did not dare to face Teudel, and so retreated hurriedly to Otranto; by which action Southern Italy, that had seemed securely his, was handed back to its Gothic rulers. Teudel, considering that the capture of Otranto was a matter of little importance, so long as Bloody John could be immobilized there, decided to march up the Adriatic coast to Ravenna, the inhabitants of which were clearly disaffected to the Imperial cause and likely to open the gates to him. With Ravenna in his hands he would be the undoubted master of Italy.
King Teudel had already begun his march up the coast when he was recalled by news which filled him with astonishment and indignation. Belisarius, true to his reputation for attempting the seemingly impossible, was once more holding Rome and ready to dispute its possession against all the Goths in Italy!
‘But how,’ you may well ask, ‘could even Belisarius dare with his miserably inadequate forces to hold an open city against an army which could now muster 80,000 men?’
Belisarius’s own answer to this question would have been: ‘We must dare to make amends for our former failures.’
As soon as he was sufficiently well to sit his horse, Belisarius had reconnoitred the city with a thousand horsemen, riding out by night from the Port. He had found it wholly deserted (for the first time in its history, I suppose) and even encountered a small pack of wolves roaming in the Field of Mars – which the soldiers refrained from shooting. These wolves were regarded as a good omen, because they were animals once held sacred by the ancient Romans, Romulus the founder of Rome having been suckled by a she-wolf. Belisarius made a careful tour of the walls and finally pronounced: ‘All is well, friends.’
They thought that his wits were still deranged by the fever, but he explained: ‘King Teudel, being a barbarian, has scamped his task of destruction, as I expected. He has been content merely to dislodge the upper courses of stone from the rampart and push the rubble forward into the fosse. Working with vigour, we can repair the damage in a short time.’
The Gothic retaining army, informed that Belisarius was returning to the Port from his reconnaissance, ambushed him at four several points. In each case he divided his forces into three parts: one half-squadron held its ground while the other two pressed forward on either flank and enveloped the enemy, distressing them with arrows until they abandoned their position. On this homeward ride Belisarius killed or captured more than the number of his own forces, losing some thirty men, because the Gothic squadrons consisted of lancers only and were given no opportunity to come to close quarters, but overwhelmed by arrows. Though numbering fully 15,000, this Gothic army did not again venture from its camp; and Belisarius, leaving only 500 men to guard the Port, could throw all his forces into Rome. He had with him his own 4,000 Thracians, diminished by 300, and 2,000 of Bessas’s men who had fled to him when Rome was taken, and 500 regular troops, former deserters to Teudel at Spoleto, who had been persuaded to return to their allegiance. There were also a
few hundred sturdy labourers gathered from the villages in the neighbourhood, mostly refugees from the city, who gladly offered to work for him if they were paid with corn and meat and a little wine.
Count Belisarius entered Rome on the Feast of the Three Kings; King Teudel did not return until the first day of February (of this new year of our Lord 547). In those twenty-five days a miracle had been accomplished. The whole fosse had been cleared of earth and rubble and planted with pointed stakes cut from the rafters of ruined houses; and the dressed stones of the rampart had been collected and laid back in place, though without mortar. The walls presented a bold face again to the enemy, and only fell short by a few feet, in the rebuilt places, of their original height. Only there were no gates, and for lack of skilled smiths and carpenters none could be improvised in that short time. Belisarius was therefore obliged to resort to the tactics of the ancient Spartans: he closed the gateways with human gates, which were his best spearmen drawn up in phalanx. We had all worked in the eight-hour shifts: soldiers, domestics, civilians, including women and children – not one of us was allowed to avoid the corvée. I, a pampered eunuch, broke my well-trimmed nails on the rough stones and wearied my plump shoulders carrying baskets of earth. Belisarius was everywhere at once, like lightning in a storm.
I had been sent by Belisarius to the municipal lime kilns on the first days to see whether any lime was available for making mortar, so that at least the angles of the walls might be strengthened; but I found only a few bags. Nailed to the wall in the President’s office was a parchment document which, since it was no longer valid, I took down and kept as a memento of the siege. I copy it out here as a curiosity. It was the President’s official appointment by Theoderich some years previously.
King Theoderich to the Distinguished Faustulus, President of the Lime Kilns, greeting!
It is a glorious labour indeed to serve the City of Rome! Who can doubt that lime, which is snow-white in hue and imponderable as an African sponge, is of mighty service in the construction of the most magnificent edifices? In proportion as it is itself debilitated and broken down by the fierce breath of fire, so does it lend force to massive masonry. It is a dissolvable stone, a petrifying downiness, a sandy pebble which (O wonder) burns the best when abundantly watered, without which stones do not stay nor grains of gravel commodiously cohere.
Therefore we set you, our industrious lord Faustulus, over the burning of lime and its decent distribution; that there may be plenty of this substance available both for public and private works, and that thereby people may be persuaded and encouraged confidently to build and rebuild our beloved City. Perform this well, and you shall be promoted to yet more honourable offices!
When I first read these elegant words I did not know whether to laugh or weep, they seemed so incongruous to the present desolation of the city and the barbarous Camp Latin of the soldiers who now formed its principal population. A philosophical train of thought was started in my mind, about the essentially evil nature of war, however just the cause; which I instantly smothered as monkish Christian and no more congruous to the situation than the document itself. But enough of this.
When King Teudel came within sight of the city he made an immediate attack upon us from the north-east, sending his men in mass against the Nomentan, Tiburtine, and Praenestine Gates. I think that he expected the rebuilt walls to fall at the mere noise of his war-horns, as the walls of Jericho are said to have fallen to the war-horns of Jewish Joshua. I witnessed the cavalry-charge at the Tiburtine Gate, where I was once more at the same task that had me occupied ten years previously – serving a catapult with bolts while my mistress laid the sights. There were 10,000 Gothic lancers drawn up just out of range, and squadron by squadron they charged in column with levelled lances at the bridge that guarded the gate. It was like pouring wine into a bottle with an obstruction in the neck.
Few indeed of the Goths reached the gate, over a mound of dead and dying, to spit themselves there upon the spears of the phalanx as an Indian bear upon the quills of a porcupine. Their fearful losses were due not merely to our heavy and accurate fire from the walls, with bows, catapults, scorpions, wild asses, but to the iron caltrops which guarded the approach – a device never before used against the Goths. I have remarked that the necessary artisans for the making of new city gates were not available; but the farrier-sergeants of the army had been working night and day, employing all skilled and half-skilled men in the manufacture of these iron caltrops. A caltrop consists of four stout spikes, each a foot in length, fitted to an iron ball at such an angle that all their points are equidistant from one another. Thus, however thrown upon the ground, the caltrop always rests upon a firm triangle of spikes, with one spike sticking threateningly upward. Some call it the ‘Devil’s tripod’. The caltrop was the family badge of Belisarius, and was embroidered in gold by my mistress’s women upon the white Household standard. The motto read: ‘Quocunque jeceris, stabit’ – ‘wheresoever you cast it, it will find its feet’. Cavalry cannot pass a position heavily strewn with caltrops unless they first dismount and carry them away one by one; otherwise the horses catch their feet in the spikes and stumble and fall impaled.
Five squadrons in succession charged this fearful barrier. The mound of dead rose higher and higher until every upward spike had spitted a man or a horse. Thus – as the rhetoricians would put it – the bridge became passable at last by reason of its very impassability. There was heavy fighting at the gate, the Gothic infantry being now engaged, and from the flanking-towers stones, boiling water, and beams came showering down upon them. Our spearmen, Isaurians, fought in relays; but since there were only fifty men in each team and the Goths came pressing forward in their hundreds and hundreds, they grew very weary. It was only my mistress’s heartening presence and her promise of great rewards to every man who survived the day that kept them at their post. By midday our catapults had exhausted their supply of bolts and the wild-asses had kicked themselves to pieces. I seized a bow and found that I had not altogether forgotten my former archery practice, though my arms were feeble.
There was no pause for dinner, but we snatched mouthfuls of bread and cheese as we fought, and slaves carried around pitchers of sour wine. In the afternoon it rained heavily, the rain turned to sleet, and our bow-strings became useless. Even soldiers who usually took an honest pleasure in fighting began groaning and cursing in their distress. But the Goths suffered more than we. The approach to the gate became very slippery; our spearmen, to whom my mistress gave rough cloths to tie about their feet, had a great advantage over the enemy, who staggered and slid here and there on their wet leather soles.
The battle ended at nightfall, the Goths being held at every gate. They retired for the night, and we sent out the labourers in gangs with torches to recover bolts and arrows, for which we paid them by the bundle of fifty; while we ourselves cleared the bridges, freeing the bloody caltrops of their dead and taking plunder of golden torques and rings and shirts of mail.
King Teudel attacked again shortly after dawn, and again there was the same dreadful drama of slaughter, and again every bridge was held. I killed a Goth with my second arrow, striking him in the face at short range. They withdrew at noon, pursued by two squadrons of Household cuirassiers from the Praenestine Gate; but rallied a mile away. Our whole cavalry was sent out to support these squadrons. In the battle which followed, bow and arrow once more prevailed over the lance. During these two days 15,000 Goths had been killed and many more carried away seriously wounded. Twenty thousand dead horses also strewed the battlefield. Our total losses were 450,200 of whom were killed in the cavalry engagements.
A few days later the Goths returned to attack for the third time, but with such evident reluctance that Belisarius – who knew better than any general who ever lived, I suppose, exactly when to turn from the defensive to the offensive – went out himself against them with all the cavalry. They say that from a quarter of a mile’s distance, with his strongest bow, Belisarius
aimed at the Gothic standard-bearer riding ahead of the line. There was a following wind, or the shot would have been impossible: the arrow, falling from a great height, struck the standard-bearer in the groin, and pinned him to the saddle, so that the horse, pricked by the arrow, reared up and threw him. Others, jealous perhaps of Belisarius’s feats, claim that the arrow was not fired by Belisarius, but by Sisifried, the guardsman who had survived Isaac’s defeat; but if so, Sisifried did something extraordinary and far beyond his usual powers. The more natural account is that the arrow was Belisarius’s, though perhaps Sisifried also aimed one at the standard-bearer.
King Teudel’s standard tumbled to the ground; which was the worst of omens. At once our leading squadron charged to seize it, shooting from the saddle as they went, and there was bitter fighting for its possession. Two Gothic lancers were tugging at one end and two Household cuirassiers at the other. A Gothic officer hacked the staff through with a blow of his sword, and our men had to be content with the butt. This same officer chopped off the left forearm of the standard-bearer, because around the wrist was buckled a golden bracelet set with rubies and emeralds which he wished to deny to us. Then the Goths retreated, and in the pursuit lost 3,000 men more. When Belisarius returned that night he had horses to mount the remainder of his Thracians, and every man of them could at last be dressed in a mail shirt. He had lost nine men only.
Teudel broke the siege on the next day, and retired to Tivoli, first destroying all the bridges over the Tiber, upstream from Rome, with the single exception of the Mulvian, which Belisarius had already seized. Teudel was forced to bear the angry reproaches of his surviving noblemen that he had been hoodwinked by Belisarius’s letter into sparing Rome from complete destruction. If he had kept to his original threat and levelled the whole city to a sheep-walk, they said, the war would not have taken this evil turn for the Goths. But when he came to Tivoli, he asked them: ‘And suppose all Tivoli had been levelled with the ground? Come now, my lords, the fault at Rome – if fault it was – lies with you; for I entrusted each of you with the pulling down of a part of the Roman ramparts, but you were lazy and left too much standing. Fortunately, you have done the same thing here: so that the credit of quickly rebuilding the walls of Tivoli will be yours, as well as the fault at Rome. To work, to work, and let posterity praise you!’