Justinian

by Ross Laidlaw

  ‘Thank you for coming, General,’ announced Justinian, breaking in on Narses’ thoughts. He seated himself beside the general. Narses was shocked to notice how much the emperor had aged, the once-handsome face now gaunt and lined beneath a thinning fuzz of lint-white hair, the neck all scrawny and wattled like a vulture’s. Although older than the emperor by a good five years, Narses reckoned he himself must look at least a decade younger.

  ‘How would the idea of returning to Italy appeal to you, old friend?’ enquired Justinian. ‘You once served me well in that same theatre.’ He added with a gentle smile, ‘Although I seem to recall, on that occasion yourself and Belisarius had views that, let us say — “diverged”.’

  ‘You could say that, Serenity,’ acknowledged Narses wryly. He shot the other an appraising look. ‘Of course I’m honoured by your suggestion, but, to be frank, I think it’s a bad idea. I suspect I’d get along with Germanus even less well than I did with Belisarius. With Totila’s star in the ascendant, the last thing you need at this stage is a divided command.’

  ‘Germanus is dead,’ declared Justinian sadly. ‘After driving from the Balkans a huge force of Slav invaders, he suddenly fell sick and died at Sardica.* What an emperor he would have made! — as Augustus of the West uniting Goth and Roman, then, upon my death succeeding to the Eastern throne, leaving his son to become the Western emperor.’

  Masking his huge relief that this nonsense of a reconstituted Western Empire-cum-Romano-Gothic entente was now dead in the water, Narses enquired, ‘You wish me then to take over as supreme commander in Italy?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Then I gladly accept, Serenity. ‘However,’ he went on, a note of steel entering his voice, ‘there are conditions.’

  ‘Conditions?’ Justinian’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You forget yourself, I think, General.’

  ‘I’ll be blunt, Serenity. I leave for Italy only when I have sufficiency of troops. And Roman troops at that, drawn from regular units of the field armies. Not a ragbag collection of personal retainers, mercenaries, and barbarian federates, such as Belisarius was fobbed off with. Before you recalled him, that is.’

  ‘My hands were tied!’ protested Justinian. ‘You must see that, Narses. With revolt in Lazica threatening to destabilize the whole eastern frontier, I needed a strong general on the ground to contain a crisis that could escalate.’

  ‘I understood that Belisarius was no further east than Constantinople.’

  ‘Granted he may not physically be in Lazica, but his very presence in the capital has been enough to make the Lazi draw their horns in. As to your military demands — ’ Justinian shook his head and spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘Impossible, I fear. The financial resources of the Empire are severely over-stretched — suppressing insurgency in Africa, countering Totila in Italy, building a chain of forts across the Balkans against Slav invaders,** relocating troops to meet this new threat in the East, the cost of rehabilitation following the plague. . You’ll just have to make do with whatever extra forces can be scraped together, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Then, Serenity, I must decline your offer,’ declared Narses with icy self-restraint. ‘Find some pliant nobody to do your bidding — a yes-man who won’t object to taking up lost causes.’ He rose and bowed. ‘With your permission Serenity, I’ll take my leave.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Narses, do sit down!’ snapped Justinian. ‘I daresay we can come to some arrangement that’ll keep you happy.’

  Sensing victory, the general re-seated himself. ‘My request’s a simple one, Serenity,’ he said with a conciliatory smile. ‘Give me the men; I’ll give you Italy.’

  To meet Narses’ ambitious targets, with chilling efficiency the full might of the Roman tax machine now bore down on all parts of the Empire, including Italy (or at least those parts of it not under Totila’s control) and Africa, now largely pacified by John the Troglite. Men, equipment, ships and money were raised in ever-increasing quantities, creating a force of awesome power such as Rome had seldom mustered. Narses, tirelessly involved on a tour of military establishments based mainly in Thrace and Illyria, at last declared himself satisfied.

  A realist who was also both humane and clear-sighted, the Armenian knew that the surest way of mitigating the cruel consequences of war was to defeat the enemy as swiftly and decisively as possible. Men like Belisarius, Totila and Germanus, the general reflected, obsessed with outmoded ideals of restraint towards an enemy they respected and admired were anachronisms — more suited to the Trojan War than to this modern age of realpolitik. Their peculiar code of honour had allowed the war in Italy to drag on for nearly twenty years, laying waste vast swathes of the peninsula and inflicting untold suffering on the civilian population. What was needed was a speedy victory. And this could only be achieved, Narses told himself, by taking on the Gothic host with a force of such overwhelming power as to utterly annihilate it. That this inevitably meant the wiping out of most male Goths of fighting age was unfortunate. But in the end it was more merciful than waging a campaign of slow attrition, which ultimately must bring about the same result, as well as prolonging the country’s economic misery and incurring the death of many thousands of non-combatants.

  At last, the great expedition fully mobilized, Narses set out northwards from his headquarters at Salonae* and, the fleet keeping level with the army, rounded the head of the Adriatic and descended upon Italy.

  On the last day of June of that same year, Totila, pushing up the Via Flaminia from Rome, halted his army (the bulk of which was cavalry) near the village of Tadinae, midway between Ariminum to the north and Perusia to the south.* Accompanied by his chief general, Teia, he rode out a further mile to survey the terrain on which he would most likely have to fight the Romans — a bleak plain surrounded by the high peaks of the northern Appennines. The place, so Totila’s scouts had informed him, was called Busta Gallorum — ‘The Tomb of the Gauls’ — site of a great Roman victory against that people, fought eight centuries before.

  ‘Good cavalry country, Sire,’ observed Teia, a tough veteran who had vainly tried to halt Narses’ advance, flooding the Padus valley by breaching the dykes of that river and its tributaries — a move that Narses had circumvented by marching his army along the coast, crossing the delta’s mouths by means of pontoon bridges.

  ‘Provided they choose to fight us on the level,’ muttered the young king (he was not yet thirty), noting with dismay the Roman dispositions. Narses had drawn up his army, which far outnumbered the Goths’, on rising ground at the northern end of the plain, which was surrounded by steep and broken slopes, ruling out all but a frontal attack on their position — save at one spot. This was a gully to the right** of the low ridge on which the Romans had encamped, constituting a possible route by which they might be outflanked. Pointing out the feature to Teia, Totila said, ‘Today we rest. Tomorrow, by which time our expected cavalry reinforcements should have joined us, we will try to force the gully and attack the Romans from the rear.’

  Though making himself sound calm and positive, Totila in fact felt close to despair. In the ten years since his great victory at Faventia, he had fought the Romans to a standstill, occupied the greater part of the peninsula, taken Sicily, achieved naval superiority in western waters, won over the Roman people to his side, and come within a hairsbreadth of securing an honourable peace by which Goth and Roman would share the government on equal terms. Yet it had all been for nothing. With the sudden and unexpected death of Germanus, the picture had changed completely. That terrible old man in Constantinople had recovered his resolve and, prompted by Narses, mobilized the full might of the Roman Empire against Totila’s people. Even at the height of his success, Totila had known he could never achieve full victory against the Romans; a compromise settlement was the best that he could hope for. Their Empire was simply too strong, their resources too vast, for him to match. Clearly, between them Justinian and Narses had decided finally to bring matters to a head in an
attempt to finish off the Goths for good. The fate of his nation, Totila told himself, depended on whether he could push through that gully on the morrow.

  The Battle of Tadinae/Busta Gallorum, 1 July(?) AD 552

  The Kalends of July dawned grey and overcast. From his own position on the left wing of the Roman line, Narses surveyed the arrangement of his troops. All were dismounted, the right wing (Romans like his own command) under an experienced general, Valerian; in the centre, Lombard, Herul, and Gepid allies — stout warriors of Germanic stock. Before each wing was ranged a screen of archers — all expert marksmen, armed with powerful recurved bows of laminated wood, horn, and sinew.

  Narses had never shared the prevailing Roman bias which favoured cavalry over infantry, believing that well-trained pedites were (as in Rome’s glory days) superior to equites every time. The Ostrogoths on the other hand, from having in the past been mainly foot-soldiers, had gradually changed to fighting principally on horseback, perhaps in imitation of Belisarius’ tactics, or perhaps reverting to an earlier tradition. Centuries before, migrating from northern Germania to the steppelands of the Euxine littoral, their way of life had changed to that of mounted herdsmen. As such, they had been absorbed into the Empire of the Huns, supplying Attila with formidable cavalry shock troops, which had almost turned the tide in his favour at the great Battle of the Catalaunian Plains.*

  Narses was satisfied that his position was a strong one. Numerically, his army was far superior to Totila’s, and the ground was in his favour. The only potential weak spot was a narrow, steep-sided valley to the left of the Roman line, which the enemy would probably try to penetrate in order to turn Narses’ flank. It must be securely blocked, and held — at all costs.

  It was. The battle opened with a fierce assault by Gothic cavalry on the Romans guarding the ravine in an attempt to dislodge them. But the steep and broken nature of the terrain (unfavourable to horsemen) made it relatively easy for the defenders to beat off such attacks, which continued throughout the morning.

  The sun, glimpsed at rare intervals through a screen of low clouds and drizzling rain, had passed its zenith when a huge force of mounted warriors, the main part of Totila’s host, advanced to the middle of the plain, leaving behind, near the Goths’ encampment, a much smaller infantry contingent. A lone rider, magnificent in gilded armour, now cantered out before the Gothic host, and proceeded to put on a dazzling display of horsemanship, making his mount circle and caracole while tossing up and catching his javelin, then throwing it from side to side. The long golden locks escaping from beneath the rider’s Spangenhelm, together with the splendour of his armour, identified him as none other than Totila.

  A pall of dust on the horizon heralding the approach of the Gothic reinforcements, Totila rejoined his army to wild applause.

  ‘What now, Sir?’ one of the staff officers grouped around Narses enquired of the general.

  ‘Thank God they used cavalry to try to clear the gully,’ remarked Narses in heartfelt tones. ‘If they’d sent in infantry, we might not still be standing here. That leaves Totila with only one throw of the dice, poor devil. He’ll be forced to use the same tactics he employed successfully at Faventia.’

  ‘A cavalry charge?’

  ‘Exactly. Only this time, it won’t work. At Faventia, he took the Romans in the rear and by surprise. This time, we’re ready for him. Best we advance the archers now, I think. Tell the bucinatores to give the signal, would you?’

  As the trumpets boomed out, the archers moved forward ahead of the divisions on each flank, ready to provide enfilading fire.

  The Gothic cavalry, now augmented by the reinforcements, began to move forward, gradually accelerating from a trot to a canter, finally to a full gallop. Down swept a forest of lances as the huge mass of horsemen thundered up the low incline bounding the limit of the plain, towards the Roman centre. Nothing, it appeared, could stop the centre from being swept away like chaff before the wind. Then an extraordinary thing happened. At the last moment, the seemingly irresistible Gothic charge stalled, the van milling about in confusion, confronted by a rock-steady frieze of spear-points presented by the Lombards, Heruls, and Gepids. The endless hours of training in repelling cavalry, which Narses had insisted on, now paid off handsomely. Faced with the terrifying sight of charging horsemen, a foot-soldier’s insinct is to drop his spear and flee. But if he can learn to hold his nerve and, in concert with his fellows, stand his ground, he will find that horses (endowed with a far greater sense of self-preservation than men) will not press home a charge against sharp blades, no matter how much their riders urge them on. And so it proved.

  Suddenly, the sky darkened as the archers on the flanks let fly. A storm of arrows drilled into the bucking, rearing horsemen, causing carnage on a massive scale and increasing the confusion. Volley after volley took their bloody toll, until it became more than flesh and blood could stand. The Gothic cavalry broke and fled — ploughing through their own infantry in their haste to escape those deadly shafts. Now the Romans, mounting their temporarily abandoned steeds, galloped in pursuit, scything down the fleeing Goths in their thousands. .

  Busta Gallorum proved a great and conclusive Roman victory, especially when the corpse of Totila — conspicuous in its gilded armour — was found among the dead; ‘The Tomb of the Gauls’ had become ‘The Tomb of the Goths’. The power of the Goths was broken, permanently. Though Teia (immediately chosen as the new king) and a few Gothic leaders continued to hold out for a little longer, they were eliminated one by one, the final battle of the war being fought at Mons Lactarius in October of the same year as Busta Gallorum. Thereafter, all that remained to be done was a little mopping-up. With all its leaders and most of its fighting men killed, the nation of the Ostrogoths had ceased forever to exist.

  The ending of the Gothic War meant that a major part of Justinian’s Grand Plan had been accomplished. With Africa, Italy and southern Spain (seized from the divided Visigoths in the year of Busta Gallorum in a lightning campaign waged by Liberius* — an enterprising Roman general of eighty-five) now reintegrated into the Imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire had regained more or less the same dimensions it possessed at the time of Julius Caesar, prior to his expedition against Gaul.

  But the knowledge brought little satisfaction to Justinian, to whom the ‘triumph’ was as dust and ashes in the mouth. Narses’ reports were starkly honest. Alongside total victory in Italy must be weighed the cost: destruction of the country’s infrastructure and economy along with countless towns and villages; displacement of people on a massive scale; huge casualty figures for both soldiers and civilians; venerable institutions like the Senate swept away (taken hostage, most senators had died in acts of retribution in the final bitter stages of the war); and, by no means least, the annihilation of a worthy enemy who might have played a valued part in the building of a new nation. Even if, by some miracle, the recovery of the West had been achieved with little bloodshed, any joy it might have afforded would have eluded the now aged emperor. For without Theodora to share it with, life had lost all savour.

  The Roman Empire at the death of Justinian, AD 565

  But life, nevertheless, had to go on. There was still an Empire to run (one vastly bigger than when he had first assumed the purple), still the thorny issue of religious unity to be resolved, and in Italy — apart from the immense and daunting task of reconstruction — slaves to be returned to their masters and coloni to be evicted from the estates they had commandeered from landowners. With iron in his soul, ‘the Sleepless One’ proceeded to immerse himself in the thousand tasks involved in the administration of his realm, in an attempt to fill the emptiness of his existence.

  * Or nephew, according to Gibbon.

  * Sofia.

  ** The remains of these impressive works can still be seen. Their deterrent effect is questionable — as Germanus discovered to his cost.

  * In April 552.

  * Rimini and Perugia.

  ** i.e facing Totil
a; it would of course be to the Romans’ left. (See Plan.)

  * See my Attila.

  * The same Liberius who, nearly sixty years earlier, had masterminded the division of land in Italy between the Romans and Theoderic’s Ostrogoths — an immensely challenging and delicate task.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Now this country of silk lies beyond the remotest of the Indies, and. . is

  called Tzinitza [China]

  Cosmas Indicopleustes,* Christian Topography, c. 540

  In the year that witnessed the destruction of the Ostrogoths at Busta Gallorum and Mons Lactarius, two Nestorian monks from Persia who had sojourned in China sought an audience with Justinian.

  ‘The monks are here, Serenity,’ a silentiarius announced to the emperor, seated as usual at his desk in his triclinium or private study. Here, rather than in rooms of state or the chambers of the Council, the administration of the Empire was increasingly carried out, by the ‘many-eyed’ emperor — ‘the Sleepless One’ himself — working alone at night till dawn.

  ‘Ah, Paul,’ murmured the emperor, looking up with a smile from the codex he was scanning, ‘a little bird tells me you’re composing a poem — a description in hexameters of our Church of the Holy Wisdom.’