Siege of Rome

by David Pilling

  We were soon to enjoy a surfeit of blood. In February another detachment of cavalry was sent out, this time commanded by Constantine – the grateful officer Procopius and I had rescued from the stake at Membresa – with some of Bessas’ troops in support.

  Constantine’s orders were to enter Tuscany and take the towns of Spoleto and Perugia. Again, the Italian citizens surrendered both places readily enough, and hailed us as friends rather than conquerors.

  Perugia was some fifty miles north of Rome, and directly on the Gothic line of march from Ravenna. Constantine was over-confident, and neglected to post scouts while he secured the town and chose men to leave behind as a garrison.

  A spearman patrolling the northern wall was the first to see them. “Horsemen to the north!” I heard him shout, his voice tinged with panic.

  I ran up the steps onto the walkway, followed by my men, and leaned over the wall to look north, where the sentry pointed his spear.

  There was a considerable haze of dust approaching from that direction, steadily growing larger as it rolled across the network of fields and woods outside the town, silhouetted against a backdrop of dreaming hills.

  The dust cleared a little, and I made out a troop of horsemen, eighty or so, riding in skirmish formation.

  “Nothing to worry about,” I muttered, willing it to be true, “probably a scouting party, miles ahead of Vitiges’ main army.”

  “You are wrong, sir,” said one of my men – the Heruli are a miserable lot, and insolent with it – “look there. More riders.”

  I could have cursed him, but he was right. My eighty horse-archers swiftly became a hundred, and then two hundred, and behind them sixty or so heavy cavalry, in scale mail and helmets with streaming horse-tail plumes, carrying large round shields and spathas as well as their long spears. This was surely no band of scouts, but part of the Gothic vanguard. The rest of their massive host could not be far behind.

  We might have stayed behind the walls of Perugia and left the Goths to ride around uselessly outside, for they had no infantry or siege equipment.

  “Vitiges will not waste time laying siege to Perugia,” I said confidently, “he will bypass us and march on to Rome.”

  Constantine, however, was not one for skulking behind walls. Trumpets sounded through the streets, summoning us to arms. Forcing down my excitement, I led my men to the stables where we had left our horses. We mounted and rode back to the northern gates.

  Our commander was already drawing up his men on the fields outside. He was an excitable figure, splendid as any Roman general in his polished armour, riding up and down in front of our line and howling at our men to get into position.

  We numbered almost three hundred riders, a few more than the Goths, and like them a mixture of horse-archers and mailed lancers. I led my men to join the rest of Bessas’ soldiers on the left wing, a hundred or so Huns and Heruls.

  Our little army was drawn up in three divisions. I glanced north, and my mouth dried up as I observed the Goths forming up for battle. Their own lancers were in the centre, with horse-archers spread out wide to right and left. A few of the braver souls rode forward to taunt us, shaking their spears and yelling insults.

  “Soldiers of Rome!” Constantine shouted, his face scarlet with the effort of shouting, “fear not these barbarians! Put your faith in God, cast your javelins at them, bring them down with your lances, and you shall have victory!”

  I had heard Belisarius make similar speeches on the eve of battle, and it was obvious that Constantine was consciously aping the general, even down to his splendid armour and style of oratory. Now he wanted to take his hero-worship and mimicry a step further, and win a great victory on the battlefield.

  To speak plain, Constantine had chosen to endanger his men simply to gratify his ego. He drew his sword with a flourish and shouted the order to attack.

  His tactics were unsubtle: straight at the Goths, hit them between the eyes – between the legs, as Bessas later described it with one of his feral grins – and scatter them to the four winds.

  Our left wing surged forward, with me and my ten Heruls in the front rank on the extreme left. To my right, our Hunnish lancers whooped and shrieked like the savages they were, urging their heavy horses into a gallop. Constantine galloped ahead of them, bent low over his beast’s neck.

  We spread out as we charged, to match the loose formation of the Gothic horse-archers. Half their number had peeled away to avoid contact and shoot into our flanks, while the rest spurred forward to engage us head-on.

  The most difficult skill a horse-soldier can learn is the art of shooting a bow from the saddle while controlling the horse with his knees. I had spent hundreds of hours in the camp of the Heruli trying to master it, with limited success.

  This was real combat, not a drill-yard, so instead I plucked one of the two light javelins hanging from my saddle and drew it to my shoulder, aiming at the contorted face of the Goth streaking towards me.

  He had put aside his bow and drawn a thin, curved sword. I let fly with my javelin. He wrenched his pony aside in time to avoid it, and the missile plunged harmlessly to his left. I had time to draw Caledfwlch before we closed, and then it was blade to blade as both sides surged together.

  All was chaos and noise and terror, horses shrieking, men shouting, steel clashing. I parried the Goth’s wild lunge, stabbed at his face, missed, punched him with the grip of Caledfwlch, yelled in pain as I bruised my knuckles on his bony jaw. It was enough to unseat him, and he fell away, vanishing among the conflicting waves of riders.

  A red-bearded face flashed before me. I drove the point of my sword at it and felt my wrist shudder with the impact. Blood spattered up my arm. I felt a surge of exultation – got one! – and looked around for my men. They were close behind me, spearing Goths with controlled fury and lethal efficiency.

  “On them!” I shouted, though they hardly needed telling, “cut them to pieces!”

  The rest of the fight is a blur. I killed another Goth, I think, and suffered a minor wound on the shoulder, but events are often compressed in my memory. Now it seems to me that only seconds passed before the Goths broke and fled. Constantine’s headlong charge had taken them by surprise, and our lancers were more numerous and superior to theirs.

  My men were eager to pursue the beaten enemy, but I held them back, not wishing to lose them among that great mass of men and horses retreating towards the hills. Constantine also kept a tight rein on his troops. His trumpeters sounded the recall, summoning back those of our men who hared after the Goths, while his silver-armoured figure rode back and forth, triumphant, over-excited, the light of victory shining in his eyes.

  He spotted me, biting back curses as one of my soldiers wrapped a bandage round the cut on my shoulder, and galloped over.

  “Coel!” he shouted, holding aloft his bloody sword, “my friend and saviour, it is good to see you! What a fight, eh? Look at them run! Have you taken a nick, then?”

  “It is nothing,” I said with forced modesty, and truly it was not, a shallow gash from a Gothic spear, but I have never been very good at enduring pain.

  He glanced at it with fleeting concern, and then his mind flitted back to higher matters. “Look at that!” he exclaimed, indicating the battlefield, “how many Goths did we kill, do you think? A hundred, at least!

  I did a quick head-count. Certainly there were more Goths stretched out on the field than Romans, but unlike them we could ill-afford the casualties. I was tempted to say so, but it seemed a shame to spoil Constantine’s little victory.

  My fears that the Gothic war-band we had driven off was merely part of Vitiges’ advance guard proved groundless. The King of the Goths was still at Ravenna, but news of the defeat outside Perugua seems to have spurred him into action.

  He divided his enormous host, sending part of it into Dalmatia. In an attempt to distract the Goths, Justinian had ordered the remains of Mundus’s troops in Illyria to cross the border and do as much damage as
they could before withdrawing again.

  Vitiges then led the rest of his army, which still numbered some one hundred and fifty thousand men, south towards Rome. Belisarius hurriedly recalled Bessas and Constantine, instructing them to leave small garrisons in the towns we had captured.

  Bessas, who unwisely despised the Goths and rated them poor soldiers, was slow in retreating, and almost caught by the vanguard of the Gothic host. He managed to extricate himself, not without heavy loss, and led the survivors of his command in an undignified scramble back to Rome.

  I was ordered to accompany the main part of Constantine’s force back to the city. The Goths pressed hard on our heels as we rode at a hard gallop along the Via Flaminia, the ancient road leading to the Flaminian Gate. Constantine called a halt when we reached the Milvian Bridge, two miles north of Rome.

  This great stone causeway over the Tiber had been the scene of an epic battle between the Emperor Constantine and his rival Maxentius, some two hundred years previously. Constantine won, and went on to move the capital of the empire from Rome to a decrepit fishing port on the Bosphorus, which he modestly named after himself.

  The bridge was the main route to Rome, and the Goths would have to cross it. Knowing this, Belisarius built an enormous wooden tower on the southern side of the river, six levels high and with fighting platforms for archers to rain missiles down on anyone advancing over the bridge. The tower commanded the passage over the river, and was manned with a strong garrison of Isaurians.

  Constantine hailed the soldiers in the tower as we rested our horses on the northern side before crossing.

  “There is a fine difference between an orderly withdrawal and headlong flight,” he said, “I don’t want the barbarians to think we are running away.”

  Running away was precisely what we were doing, but again I didn’t want to shatter his delusions.

  I shaded my eyes to look north. As expected, I glimpsed a great storm of dust rolling across the plains, and felt the earth tremble slightly underfoot, like a distant earthquake.

  “They are coming,” one of my soldiers said bleakly.

  I swallowed. They were coming. A hundred and fifty thousand Goths, hot for revenge against the pathetic handful of Romans that had dared to invade their land.

  The siege of Rome had begun.

  14.

  The Goths came on fast, ignoring our garrisons at Narni and Spoleto and Perugua. Vitiges was not to be distracted from the main prize, and all of the obstacles Belisarius had strewn in his path failed to impede his advance for a second. All, save the tower guarding the Milvian Bridge.

  Our soldiers, including myself, crowded the walls beside the Flaminian Gate to watch the innumerable squadrons of the Gothic vanguard march into view.

  Like locusts, Procopius had described the Gothic host, and it seemed an apt description. A horrified silence fell over our men as the enemy spread across the land north of the bridge.

  One hundred and fifty thousand men. It sounds meaningless, a mere statistic, until you see them in the flesh. It was as though Hell had vomited up its legions of the damned, rank after rank, squadron after squadron of barbarians.

  I still call them barbarians, an arrogant conceit I picked up from the Romans, but they were no undisciplined horde of savages. They had learned the art of war from Rome, and deployed with a smooth, calm efficiency that would have brought a happy tear to the eye of Agricola or Scipio Africanus.

  “Vitiges is in no hurry,” remarked Procopius, who stood to my left, “he likes to sup his vengeance cold, this one. Pity. I had hoped he would charge at Rome like a bull, and dash his brains out against our defences.”

  “We are dead men,” a soldier muttered to my right, “how can we resist such a multitude? Belisarius has brought us to our deaths.”

  “Stop whimpering,” I said angrily, “the Goths have not won a single victory against us. Every time we fight them, they surrender or run away screaming, like frightened children.”

  He smiled bitterly. “I would think twice before facing a hundred and fifty thousand children, sir.”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand, or half a million, it makes no odds,” I said dismissively, “they cannot cross the bridge. Let them sit on the northern banks of the Tiber and shout insults at us. They will soon grow hoarse with shouting, and turn for home.”

  Brave words, uttered with conviction, but it was all an act. I knew the Goths were not children, and that the tower over the Milvian Bridge could not hold them forever, but I was trying to play the role of an officer and raise morale. Judging from the cynical expressions of the soldiers who heard me, I had overplayed it.

  Belisarius intended the tower to delay the Gothic advance, obliging them to waste valuable time building boats or marching around to find some other bridge. Such an enormous host could only be kept in the field with difficulty, and would eventually start to break up. Once that happened, Belisarius could ride out and destroy the scattered Gothic armies in turn.

  Such was my understanding of his strategy. The morning after our return to Rome, he led out a thousand of his men to camp on the shores of the Tiber and observe the movements of the enemy. He took Bessas with him, which meant my little command was part of the expedition.

  Had I know what would follow, I might have feigned illness or injury, anything to keep me safe inside the walls of Rome.

  It was a sharp morning in the dying days of winter, cold and with a smattering of frost on the ground, but with the scent of spring and renewal in the air. Some of the pessimism among our men had died away, for the Goths had not moved overnight, and the dark mass of their army was still encamped beyond the northern side of the bridge.

  Belisarius wore his golden armour, as though on parade, and rode his famous white-faced bay. I remember being cheered by the sight of him riding at the head of the column, our peerless general, with the purple and gold imperial standard fluttering above his head.

  We spread out in a double line and approached the bridge at an easy canter. The Goths had no catapults or ballistae set up on the northern side of the bridge, and we were well out of bow-shot. I imagined Belisarius standing on the southern banks of the Tiber and thumbing his nose at the enemy, and smiled.

  Half a mile from the bridge, our trumpeters sounded the halt. We reined in with practiced discipline, and Belisarius trotted forward a few steps, leaning forward in the saddle to study the tower.

  Suddenly he wheeled his bay in a circle and galloped back to our line. “Back!” I heard him shout, his voice hoarse and urgent, “back to the city, at once!”

  More trumpets sounded, not ours, but from the north. Hundreds of Gothic cavalry were pouring over the bridge. For a terrible moment I thought the tower had been abandoned, but then I saw helmets gleaming on the upper levels. I waited, expecting our Isaurians to unleash a deadly hail of arrows.

  Nothing happened. Even as our trumpets squealed the retreat, and I barked at my men to turn about, the full horror of the situation dashed over me like freezing water.

  The men in the tower were Goths. Somehow they had seized it during the night, slaughtering or driving away the garrison. That was impossible. Our sentries on the Flaminian Gate kept a constant vigil on the tower. If the Goths had attempted an assault, the Isaurians would have sounded the alarm. Belisarius kept a strong body of Hunnish lancers on permanent alert, ready to ride out and aid the garrison.

  The Goths moved fast, determined to catch Belisarius in the open before he reached the safety of the city. We fled back across the plain with the taste of fear in our mouths. I lashed my horse’s flanks with my spurs until the poor animal bled, growling at her to find an extra burst of speed.

  Belisarius reached the Flaminian Gate and shouted at the soldiers on the ramparts to admit us. They hesitated.

  “What ails you?” he screamed, snatching off his helmet, “why do you delay? See, it is me, your general! Open the gates!”

  They refused to obey. Terrified by the sudden onset of the Goths, th
e men on the rampart abandoned all notions of duty and courage, and thought only of their own safety.

  Belisarius cursed and railed at them, threatening all kinds of dire punishments, to no avail. They vanished, and we were left stranded outside the city with thousands of baying Goths closing in behind us.

  A lesser man might have lost his head completely. Belisarius wheeled around, his face ashen, and addressed his officers.

  “You, sirs! Why are you standing there like a pack of lost sheep? Bessas, your cohort will form the left flank. Constantine, the right. I will lead my guards in the centre. Move!”

  He was going to attack. It seemed insane, but what else could we do, save wait to be slaughtered?

  I barely had time to think. Bessas roared us into line, forming up in a single column on the left, while Belisarius arranged his guards. My horse neighed and tossed her head, and I soothed her with a trembling hand, gulping and breathing fast as I observed the approach of the Goths.

  Some two to three thousand had crossed by now, and were thundering towards us in a wild, all-out charge. Their red and black banners streamed in the wind, while the sound of their deep-throated war-yells rolled like thunder across the plain.

  To oppose that rapidly advancing horror was to embrace death. Another few seconds, and I might have shied away, my courage stretched and snapped beyond endurance, but the sound of the trumpets called me to my duty.

  “Charge, charge, charge!” howled Bessas, kicking his own bay into life. His cohort surged after him, straight at the solid wall of iron and horseflesh flowing towards us.

  Then I heard it, another cry leaping from thousands of Gothic throats and rippling around the field like a forest fire:

  That is Belisarius! Kill the bay! Kill the bay!

  Our general’s fame had worked against him. His golden armour and white-faced bay were famous across the known world, and he made no attempt to hide himself, galloping at the head of his guards, his lance aimed at the heart of the Gothic line.