by David Blixt
The legions went wild. They had enough awe not to kill the senators outright, but every officer who had changed sides was clapped into irons and locked away. Vitellius' standards were restored, and new commanders were chosen from among the legates loyal to Vitellius.
It was at that moment that three unfortunate galleys put into the nearby port. They had no idea that their commander, Bassus, had switched sides, but it did not matter. Delighted to have someone to vent their fury upon, the Vitellian army slaughtered them to a man. The chaos in the camp went on all night. Matters were not helped by the full eclipse of the moon, taken as a terrible omen for all who saw it. It was decided that they should retreat to familiar ground. They had won the war against Otho at Cremona, and there too were stationed the First Italica and the Twenty-First Rapax, both firmly Vitellian. There they would go and, united, win this war as well.
With their general and ranking officers in chains, they quick marched across the Tartarus and Po rivers, demolishing bridges behind them. At Cremona, they discovered the city was full of rich merchants, as there was a festival honouring Jupiter going on. Amidst the dancing and celebrations, the legions at once began the work of fortifying their defenses. They knew what was coming.
* * *
As is often the case in war, victory at the Second Battle of Cremona was not a matter of who fought better, but of who made fewer mistakes.
Hearing of internal strife in the Vitellian camp, Antonius was elated. But he was caught completely by surprise by their night-time retreat. The moment the report came he gave up fortifications and massed his men to march. At dawn on the Nineteenth of October, Antonius set off on the run with five over-strength legions and a full cavalry. Based at Verona, he was closer to Cremona than the Alaudae, and arrived a full day ahead of them. His plan was to survey the land today, then goad the two legions in Cremona to a battle tomorrow at dawn, before the Alaudae could arrive.
Overconfident, Antonius was utterly unprepared for the two legions in Cremona to sally forth at the first sight of his scouts, ready for a full battle. His armies were still building his camp, miles away. He had only his cavalry with him. Should he retreat? He had survived on boldness thus far. But this was not bold, this was madness.
While Antonius hesitated, his second-in-command, Arrius Varus, led a sudden charge. It started well, but more and more Vitellian horsemen rode up, and the Flavians were forced to extricate themselves and retreat. Many horsemen escaped. Varus did not. While his body rocked in the saddle, his severed head was kicked to and fro by horses' hooves.
Antonius had recovered the instant Varus led his charge, and sent his scouts back to the camp for his army. Then he took a stand upon a wooden bridge with a paltry force of foragers he'd sent into the field, and waited.
The Flavian cavalry retreated a long way up the road, chased by the Vitellians. When they came to the bridge, they saw that Antonius had deployed his few men with a hole in the center for the cavalry to slip through.
But this was a dangerous stratagem, as any gap in a line must be. Yet Antonius, who was a dangerous man in peacetime, proved himself a brave and brilliant leader in war. At one point his standard-bearer turned to run. Antonius himself cut the man down, hefted the standard, and kicked forward. The cavalry was so impressed by this that they instinctively followed, driving the Vitellians back. This heartened Antonius' men, who redoubled their efforts. The pursuers now became the pursued.
The two eager Vitellian legions had not advanced more than four miles from Cremona when they saw their own cavalry retreating full tilt towards them. But the two legions did not open their lines as Antonius had. Nor was there anyone to order them to do so – like their brothers at Hostilia, they had locked up their commanders. So the cavalry was forced to peel off, riding north along the face of their own allies, risking the swords and spears of the Flavians, now covered in blood and looking fierce.
In the chaos of what followed, the Vitellian line broke, pulling back to the safety of Cremona's walls. Had they known, as the cavalry did, that Antonius did not have his army with him, they could have captured the daring general and possibly ended the war. Certainly they would have engineered a striking defeat. Instead it was Antonius who had the laurels of the hour. He had made mistakes, but his foes had made more. He would come back in the morning, refreshed and with a plan for victory.
But the day was not over. Antonius' scouts had reached his camp, and his legion now arrived on the run. Viewing the battleground, they deemed the war already won. If two legions could be broken by a force of cavalry, there was clearly no heart in their enemies. They started marching for Cremona, meaning to storm the city.
At once their officers tried to stop them. But the soldiers knew that when a city surrendered, the wealth went to the officers, whereas if a city was stormed, the plunder went to the rankers. Not being from rich Italia, these legions from Hispania and Syria and Germania and Gaul were eager to make their fortunes.
Antonius rode along the front ranks, cohort by cohort, begging them to show sense and follow orders. It was already late afternoon. A night-time siege would be a nightmare. But now his silver tongue failed him. The men wouldn't listen. It was only the stunning news that the Fifth Alaudae had arrived at Cremona, having marched thirty miles in a single day, that stopped the Flavian legions. What's more, the Twenty-Second Primigenia had also arrived from the south, with detachments from legions in Britannia. The scouts reported that the Vitellian army was preparing to leave Cremona and engage the enemy.
A better plan for the Vitellians would have been to rest, eat, and sleep through the night, leaving Antonius and his legions to sleep in the open air, then attack fresh in the morning. But they had no officers or generals left to advise them of military sense – they were all in chains.
“Very well,” snapped Antonius. “Light the torches. We're about even strength now, so there's nothing for it but meet them head on. Put the Eighth Gemina on the road there, with the Seventh Galbiana on its left and the Seventh Claudia on the left of that, right up against that ditch. Put the Eighth Augusta to the right of that road, and the Third Gallica to their right – they're going to have to fight among the vine trellises. Move!”
They moved, and were barely in place when the Vitellians arrived. With the blaring of bugles on both sides, the two armies engaged just as darkness fell.
Almost at once units became confused. Passwords were useless, with both sides too bewildered to gain the advantage. After an hour the Vitellian artillery arrived, throwing massive ballista stones into the air to rain down on the Flavians. But as luck would have it, the moon was behind the Flavian army, making distances difficult to read. The ballistae fell as much upon the Vitellians as the Flavians.
Around midnight the fighting became heavy around Antonius' own legion. They were fighting the Rapax, who were smarting over their retreat earlier in the day. The veteran German legion inflicted heavy damage on the inexperienced one from Hispania. Many standards were lost, but not the eagle. The Aquilifer died protecting it, passing it to a very junior legionary, young Gaius Mansuetus Junior.
Holding the golden aquila in one hand, Mansuetus stood between two fellow Galbanians, using his wickedly sharp gladius to stab anyone who came near his legion's eagle.
Suddenly a battered old centurion came at him, screaming and fighting like the veteran he was. But the centurion's stab was blocked by the man to Mansuetus' left. With the speed of youth and the desperation of fear, young Mansuetus stabbed at the only unarmoured part he could see, the man's throat. As the blade slid home, the centurion's chin lifted. The moon over young Mansuetius' shoulders showed him a face very like his own, a face much changed over the last ten years, but a face he knew too well. “Father!”
There was a terrible moment of recognition on Mansuetus Senior's face. His mouth opened, but rather than words, blood poured out. Young Mansuetus released his sword and watched his father sink to the earth, the steel still sticking out of his chin.
&nb
sp; The aquila was forgotten as young Mansuetus knelt and gabbled nonsense into his father's dying ears. Pleas of forgiveness ran together with moans and curses. In seconds more, Mansuetus Senior was gone. That was when his son began screaming.
First in a small knot, then in larger and larger groups, the fighting stopped. Men lowered their swords and shields as they heard first the singular screaming of a man gone mad, then the tale of what had happened. It seemed too poetic to be real, yet there was not a man on the field who did not know it to be true.
By mutual consent both sides drew off for water and rest, boxed tightly in their squares lest one of the enemy should try to sneak in and hear their plans. The dead were all piled up to either side of the battle – all save one. When the Rapax came to claim the body of their centurion, young Mansuetus refused to part with him. It was decided that he should be buried where he'd fallen, and men from both the Galbiana and the Rapax removed their breastplates to use them as shovels. Of all who died that night, the only man to receive a burial was Gaius Mansuetus Senior. The chief mourner was his son, also his killer.
During this lull, women from Cremona came out with drinks and refreshments for the Vitellians. They knew what would happen to them should Cremona fall to the Flavians, and they wanted their protectors strong and ready. Yet many of the Vitellians surprised their women by crossing the battle lines and offering drinks to their enemies, who were also their fellow Romans.
Then, after an hour of rest, the trumpets blared and the battle started again.
As the sky grew slightly brighter, the catapults and ballistae became more accurate. Two enterprising soldiers from Antonius' army took up shields from two fallen foes and worked their way back through the enemy lines, then turned their swords upon the artillery. The ballistae stopped, ruined. The brave saboteurs were cut down at once.
The battle dragged on, with more frequent breaks as men collapsed from fatigue. But neither side would fall back, nor could either side gain ground. Two perfectly matched Roman armies fought over that bloody ground without a decision for ten hours, an unheard-of length for a night-time engagement, unique in the annals of warfare.
Then the dawn broke, and something changed. As the first streaks of real sunlight appeared in the East, the men of Antonius' Third Gallica paused in their exhausted fighting to raise their heads. They had lived in Syria for many years and had come to worship the Parthian sun-god of war, Mithras. Seeing him rise now, they called on him to give them strength. “Mithras! Mithras! Mithras!”
Other legions on both sides were confused. What were the men of the Third shouting? Mithras? Or was it Mucianus?
Mucianus! In an instant a wild rumor spread that Mucianus' army had come to reinforce Antonius – quite impossible, as they were still hundreds of miles distant. But the Vitellian forces faltered, turned, and fled back to the city of Cremona and their camp just outside it.
Screaming with inhuman joy, Antonius pressed his men on. After more hard fighting up ladders and over ramparts, the Vitellian camp fell. Escaping within the city, the Vitellians went to the incarcerated Caecina and freed him from bondage, begging him to go to Antonius and offer surrender. Caecina refused. Then the people of Cremona decided matters by throwing signs of surrender from the walls. At once Antonius halted the assault, and the people of Cremona exited the city through one gate, while the soldiers of Vitellius marched out, swords reversed, through another.
When the tally was complete, the Vitellians had lost over thirty thousand men, more than half their force, while Antonius had lost just forty-five hundred. At first the Flavians were scornful, throwing taunts at their defeated foes. But when the Vitellian survivors took the insults stoically, the abuse ended.
Until Caecina came out. Dressed not in his armour, but in his purple-bordered toga and with his consular insignia – for he had replaced Sabinus as consul this terrible year – he marched up to Antonius and offered his congratulations and thanks.
This riled the exhausted soldiers of both sides, for if any man had earned the scorn of the legions, it was Caecina, who seemed to embody everything bad about the Senate of Rome. Moreover, the Flavian forces, already bent on plunder, saw the rich clothes of the festival-goers of Cremona, saw with resentment the women who had brought drinks to the Vitellians but not them, saw their general embrace Caecina and wander off into a nearby villa for a bath and a hot meal.
No one knew who began it. But in the absence of their general, forty thousand Flavian soldiers, slaves, and non-combatants flooded into the city of Cremona bent on pleasure, riches, and destruction.
Mithras, an illegal foreign god, had granted victory to the forces of Vespasian. The blood-lust he engendered did not cool until all of Cremona was sacked, looted, and burned. Burned to ash.
Later, when he heard of the battle, Vespasian refused to give money for the Cremona's reconstruction. To do so would be to claim the dishonour of its ruin. That belonged to Vitellius, for placing his soldiers there, and to Antonius, for not restraining his men.
Or to Mithras, for giving the soldiers an unslakable thirst for blood.
XXIII
ROMA, ITALIA
24 OCTOBER 69 AD
News of Cremona arrived in Rome five days after the battle, on what happened to be Domitian's birthday, which Flavian sympathizers took as an omen.
Having expected a complete victory, Vitellius refused to believe the reports and sent scouts to the north. Rather than kill the scouts, Antonius gave them a tour of his camp and of the battlefield, then sent them back to their master.
Still Vitellius refused to believe. Finally one trusted centurion, Julius Agrestis, stepped forward. “Since you need compelling proof, and I am no more use to you alive or dead, I will force you to believe me.” He left the room and fell upon his own sword. Finally, Vitellius believed.
“But what happened to Valens? Where was he?” For Fabius Valens had gone north at the start of October at the head of a small force to join Caecina. Somewhere along the road he had disappeared.
In fact, Valens had been heading north at a crawl, enjoying the feel of lording it over his fellow Romans. He'd been in no hurry, as only a fool could have lost this war. But when he heard of the defection of Bassus' fleet, he paused. Then came news of the battle of Cremona. With that, Valens was off overland and taking a ship at Pisa with only a few close friends, telling his soldiers he meant to raise an army in Gaul and come back to save them all.
Without either of the men who had won the first war for him, Vitellius himself ventured north with a strong force. But the omens were so dire and the news so bad, the march northward ground to a halt as he turned to the wine flagon, hoping to drink himself insensible. The fleet at Misenum now defected as well, and the southern city of Tarracina was in revolt. Leaving seven of his remaining cohorts to guard the mountain town of Narnia, Vitellius sent his brother Lucius south – if southern Italia was all that remained to them, they could not risk losing it.
That left Vitellius nothing to do but retreat to Rome with a single Praetorian cohort. Wondering if his mother had been right, Vitellius wished he had never lived long enough to be hailed Imperator.
The only good news was that it was now the end of November. With any luck, rain and snow would begin to fall, ending the campaigning season and giving the Princeps a few months to recover and devise a new strategy.
* * *
ASISSIUM, ITALIA
8 DECEMBER 69 AD
“General,” said the senior legate of the Eleventh Claudia, entering the command tent.
Antonius Primus cheerfully set aside the paperwork before him. “Yes?”
“Quintus Petillius Cerialus Caesius Rufus has arrived, and requests an audience.”
“That's quite a mouthful,” laughed Antonius, suddenly less grateful. But he couldn't not see Vespasian's son-in-law. “Show him in.”
This was his first encounter with a close relative of Vespasian, for whom he was nominally waging this war. Expecting a rebuke, even a dem
and to lay down his command, Antonius was surprised to find himself warmly embraced.
“A delight to meet the only daring soldier in Italia,” declared Cerialis brightly. “Cremona was a testament to that old saw, 'Fortuna favours boldness.' ”
Off-balance, Antonius brought up something he had meant to avoid. “What happened to the city was a tragedy.”
“Such things occur,” replied the man who had caused the death of hundreds of soldiers in Britannia.
Thawing, Antonius voiced his anxiousness. “I hope your father-in-law feels the same. The letters I've been getting from Mucianus are very disapproving.”
“Pfah! Mucianus is jealous – no big battle for him. You know what will make Vespasian approve? Victory. Nothing sweetens a temper like being made indisputable imperator, no?”
Delighted, Antonius offered his guest some wine. “So, where have you come from?”
“Rome.”
Antonius goggled. “Rome? Is that where you've been?”
“Since March,” confirmed Cerialis. “I got to Rome just as Otho was marching to defeat.”
“And you were allowed to live free?”
“Oh, I've been watched. We all have, us Flavians. Even my little girl, if you can believe it. But Domitian especially.”
“How did you escape?”
Cerialis managed to look both sly and rueful. Removing his hat, he revealed an entirely bald scalp. “They were looking for a red-headed man.”
