Eagles in the Dust

by Adrian Coombs-Hoar

  Valens meanwhile finally left Antioch and made for Constantinople, where within a few days of his arrival a riot broke out. The cause of this appears to have been the population of that city’s exasperation with what they perceived as Valens’ laxity in dealing with the Goths, some of whom were at that very time plundering the outlying suburbs of the city.13 Valens had to act and act fast; he removed Trajanus as commander of the infantry and replaced him with Sebastianus, a much more able and vigorous man who had recently left Gratian’s command at his own request to join Valens’ army.14 Once this had been completed, Valens travelled to the imperial villa at Melanthias, some fifteen miles from Constantinople, with the aim of rallying the troops stationed there and using them in his campaign against the Goths. Having achieved that aim he marched with those troops west along the Constantinople to Adrianople road to a military station called Nike. On arrival at Nike Valens received a report from his scouts that the Goths who were still camped near to Adrianople were on the move. The Goths, on hearing Valens was marching towards them with a field army, were now preparing to leave as fast as they could with all their plunder, with the intention of making their way to their ‘permanent garrison near Beroea and Nicopolis’.15 Sebastinanus, recognizing that this was a golden opportunity to catch the fleeing Goths at a severe disadvantage, asked for, and was granted, permission to take 300 men from each legion, and with this force he attempted to catch the Goths unawares.16 Sebastianus made a rapid march to Adrianople, where initially the inhabitants of that city barred the gates and refused him entry, fearing he had sided with the Goths and was coming not as a protector but as an enemy. After much persuasion he was allowed to enter with his troops where they were given food and allowed to rest for the night. The following day Sebastianus and his men left the city ‘in secret haste’ and by that evening they were approaching the River Hebrus (now the modern Tonzos in Turkey) where they chanced upon the Goths who just a few days before had fled from the vicinity of Adrianople and who were flying towards their base in Beroea. Sebastianus took advantage of the terrain to remain hidden until nightfall when he led his men stealthily to where the Goths were sleeping by the river. The Goths, totally unaware that they had been pursued from Adrianople, had not set up any pickets and were utterly surprised by Sebastianus’ attack. The assault was both unexpected and brutal, only a handful of Goths escaped the carnage to flee to safety across the river. In one fell stroke Sebastianus and his men had not only annihilated a much superior force, but they recaptured ‘countless booty, which was too great to be contained in the city (Adrianople) and the broad plain about it’.17

  Fritigern, who was still camped not far from Adrianople, received news of this disaster from survivors of the attack. He realized that unless he could gather up all the Gothic bands that were out pillaging into a single force, there was a risk each band could be similarly attacked and be picked off one by one by Sebastianus’ army. He therefore sent out orders for all the Goths to gather near to the town of Kabyle. Once the Goths had gathered as a group at that location they were led out by Fritigern to ‘the open plains’, a plan which he hoped would prevent any further surprise attacks upon the Gothic horde.18

  Gratian meanwhile, having dealt with the Alamanni, now turned his attention to the situation facing Valens in the East. He sent his baggage train on ahead by land whilst he himself sailed down the Danube with a picked force and he entered Sirmium where he rested for four days. He then travelled down the Danube to the Camp of Mars in Moesia where a bout of fever and an attack by a group of Alans delayed his progress.19

  The events of the coming few days would prove to be crucial not only for Valens and the Goths, but also for the Empire as a whole.

  Chapter Ten

  The Calm Before the Storm

  The Last Fateful Days Before the Battle of Adrianople, the Decisions Made and Why

  The situation between the Goths and Valens had reached its most critical point, and the decisions made now would have far reaching consequences for all those involved.

  There appears to be some confusion within the text of the usually reliable history of Ammianus at this point. In the previous chapter I discussed how Valens had replaced Trajanus with the more able Sebastinanus and had marched from Melanthias to the ‘station of Nice’ (Nike). However, Ammianus, when describing the events after Sebastinanus’ successful attack on the Goths near Adrianople, had Valens marching once again from Melanthias with ‘… a force made up of varying elements, but one neither contemptible, nor unwarlike; for he had joined with them also a large number of veterans, among whom were other officers of high rank and Trajanus, shortly before a commander-in-chief, whom he had recalled to active service’.1 Either Ammianus was confusing earlier events or the implication here was that once Valens had despatched Sebastianus and his 2,000 men to deal with the Goths fleeing from the vicinity of Adrianople, he returned back to Melanthias to gather reinforcements or replacements for the troops under Sebastianus’ command. He also recalled Trajanus from retirement, reappointed that former general as Magister of the Army and then marched once more back along the Constantinople to Adrianople road towards Adrianople itself. This appears the most logical reading of the text at this point and seems perfectly reasonable under the circumstances previously described in Chapter Nine.

  Valens may have been motivated to gather further troops and then march against the Goths for more personal reasons. He was made aware, from regular reports from messengers, of the victories of Gratian and Sebastinanus, both of whom had inflicted crushing defeats upon their respective foes. Valens may have been envious of those two able men’s exploits and quite possibly wanted to emulate their exploits, or he had been persuaded by flatterers at the Court that he should ignore advice to return to Constantinople, where he would remain safe, and go and deal with Fritigern and the Goths in person.2 Either way Valens was now on the move.

  Valens received reports from his scouts that the Goths were preparing to block the roads the Roman supply train would need to travel on and to this end in order to frustrate the Gothic plan he sent some infantry archers along with a ‘turma’ of cavalry to block the passes the Goths would need to travel through. The same scouts also reported that the main Gothic band, now led by Fritigern, numbered only some ten thousand men in total, was only some fifteen miles from Adrianople and was heading for Nike. Valens, swayed by this report, became determined to march as quickly as possible to Adrianople where he would join Sebastinanus and his men and wait for the arrival of Gratian, where with their combined armies they would be able deal a devastating blow to Fritigern and his horde.3

  It’s worth examining the journey Valens made from Melanthias. The distance from Melanthias to Adrianople was approximately 130 miles. Using Vegetius’ rate of march of twenty miles in five summer hours, this should have taken Valens’ army just less than a week to march to Adrianople at this speed. As it was likely Valens would have force marched on at least part of the route, as he was in some haste, this may then have increased the distance he had travelled. It would further explain the passage in Ammianus where he makes specific mention of Valens being three days into the march from Melanthias when he received the reports from his scouts that the Goths were now moving past Adrianople on their way to Nike.4 When Valens received this report he ordered the army to form the ‘square formation’, a defensive one used when marching through hostile territory, and he hastened with his troops to Adrianople itself. If Valens and his army force-marched part of the way then the journey may have taken only four days in total from Melanthias to Adrianople in this case. On arrival at that city Valens had his men make an encampment of a ‘rampart of stakes, surrounded by a moat’ and he waited there somewhat impatiently for the arrival of Gratian and the Gallic army.5 Whilst he was waiting, Richomeres arrived with some troops. He had been despatched by Gratian not only with an advance party but also Richomeres bore a personal letter for Valens. The letter informed Valens that Gratian was on the march again and would be a
t Adrianople soon. The letter that Richomeres bore from Gratian also asked Valens to wait patiently for his arrival and ‘to not rashly expose himself alone to serious perils’.6 How far away Gratian was by this time is not known but he must have been less than a week’s march away from Adrianople. The basis of my stating this is that Gratian was marching as quickly as possible and we last heard of him was when he was in Moesia at the Camp of Mars, some 370 miles from Adrianople, and that was at least a week before Richomeres arrived with his letter.7 After reading the letter, Valens called a council of all his high ranking officers to discuss what course of action to take. Ammianus stated that Sebastinanus urged Valens to offer battle against the Goths as soon as possible, whilst Victor, now Magister Equitum (Commander of the Cavalry), despite being a Sarmatian by birth and naturally inclined to rashness, with the support of Richomeres and others, counselled waiting instead for Gratian and the Gallic army, so that the combined strength of both armies would overwhelm Fritigern and his Goths.8

  Unfortunately Sebastinanus, aided by the Court flatterers, won the day, using the argument that he, Sebastianus, had already shown how the Goths could be defeated, and anyway, Valens’ army already outnumbered that of Fritigern’s by a wide margin, if the reports of the scouts putting Fritigern’s band at only 10,000 strong were accurate and true.9 The Roman confidence in their ability to defeat the Goths is telling. The size of Valens’ army is unknown; no existing history gives even a vague figure. However, my own calculation would set it at between 30,000–40,000 strong. We know that Sebastianus took 300 men from each legion when Valens first left Melanthias, and if Zosimus was correct in stating that this force totalled 2,000 men, then there were at least 7 legions in Valens’ army at that stage (300 x 7 = 2,100, just a tad more than Zosimus’ figure). When Valens returned to Melanthias it’s highly likely that he would have gathered more men, and his army may well have contained not only the original seven legions but several more. To this we must add troops that were already in Adrianople plus those that arrived with Richomeres. As many as ten legions could have been present when Valens arrived at Adrianople, with probably the same number of Auxiliary units. This total would put the number of infantry at approximately 30,000 strong, let alone the cavalry of all types that would have been present, which may well have pushed the total size of the army to nearer 40,000 strong. It’s no wonder that Valens was confident of victory (see Chapter Fifteen for my discussion on the Late Roman field army sizes).

  Whilst the preparations for the coming battle were being made, an envoy sent by Fritigern, consisting of a Christian ‘presbyter’ (Elder/Priest), accompanied by ‘some humble folk’ arrived at the Roman camp. The envoy presented Valens with a letter from Fritigern which asked Valens to abide with the Goths’ original request when they first arrived on the banks of the Danube some two years ago, i.e. the Goths being allowed to settle in Thrace, and if this was granted, peace would return between the Goths and Romans. The same envoy, a ‘confidant and trusted friend of Fritigern’, produced another, ‘private’ letter from Fritigern which stated that in order for Fritigern to ‘tame the savagery of his people’, and persuade them to agree to peace terms, Valens would need to ‘from time to time show them near at hand his army ready for battle’. This show of force from the Romans would then be enough to keep the Goths in check and make sure they stuck to their end of the agreement.10

  This envoy and the letters he bore are very intriguing and worth examining in some detail. As was discussed in Chapter Five, Fritigern had converted to Christianity as a result of the aid Valens had provided to Fritigern during the civil war between him and Athanaricus. He probably believed that sending a Christian envoy bearing letters, including a personal one would be taken as a sign of his sincerity. And there is evidence to suggest that the contents of both of the letters were in fact not deceptive as Ammianus would have us believe. I believe that they were in fact a sign that Fritigern was making a genuine attempt at ending the conflict with the Romans in a manner that would prove both beneficial and face saving to both sides. Fritigern would have been fully aware that Gratian and the Gallic army were dangerously near. When he arrived the combined armies would have outnumbered his own force by a substantial amount and there would be a very real risk that the Goths would not only face defeat at the hands of the combined army but also risked being enslaved should they be defeated. Fritigern had absolutely nothing to gain by prolonging the conflict, he had no idea that he would be able to defeat a Roman field army; no Gothic horde had faced one so far. He needed the Romans to agree to his terms in order for his people to survive. The part of the private letter that most historians appear to have overlooked that to me shows Fritigern did not want to be attacked and was genuine is where he asked Valens to ‘from time to time’ make a show of force near to where the Goths planned to settle in Thrace. He did not to require Valens to immediately set off for the Gothic encampment in full battle array. This instead implies that Fritigern was more than happy for Gratian to arrive and then Fritigern could point out to his people that this much more dangerous combined army should be taken note of and an agreement entered into and abided by or face the consequences. Once the Goths had entered into a peace treaty all the Romans needed to do would be to station units at the cities of Adrianople and Marcianople, and every so often send them out on manoeuvres near to the Gothic settlement in Thrace to ensure the peace was maintained. Valens himself also had much to gain if peace terms were agreed even at this late stage. The Goths would no longer be ravaging Thrace, they would not continue to threaten the trade route to Constantinople, and more importantly Valens could send his eastern units back to their stations and then he could set about recruiting from the Goths again for his postponed invasion of Sassanid Persia. The fact that Fritigern had not left the area around Adrianople, and had been in Thrace during the two years since the Goths first crossed the Danube, was also telling. He had not allowed the Goths under his command to move closer to Constantinople or out of Thrace into the surrounding provinces. In fact from all the evidence we have from the surviving histories the vast majority of the Goths were in fact within Thrace between AD 376 and 378, very few ventured outside of that province. It was almost as if they were still complying with the original agreement between themselves and Valens, despite the treatment they had received at the hands of the Romans.

  Whatever the intention of Fritigern, Valens sent the envoy back to the Gothic encampment without any agreement being given. The final roll of the dice had been thrown; the events of the following day would forever change Roman history.

  Chapter Eleven

  9 August AD 378

  ‘The Day the Eagles Fell’

  There have been a number of examinations of the Battle of Adrianople, and they all vary in both the quality of their treatment of the battle but also in their interpretation of what actually happened on the battlefield.1 Apart from Donnelly (2013), there has been little breakdown and analysis of the battle in detail. I have chosen to follow Donnelly’s example in this chapter, and I have broken down the battle into distinct parts, using Ammianus as the main source, only using information from the other sources where I feel they add anything relevant or different. This will I believe demonstrate exactly what happened on that day, and why. I will examine the sources for clues as to which direction the Roman army was marching when they left Adrianople, where the army deployed, and where Valens’ position on the battlefield was etc. so as to give an indication of the direction the Gothic Cavalry attack came from. Diagram 1 shows the location of Adrianople, now modern Edirne in Turkey with distances marked to the possible sites of the battlefield as noted below. Diagrams 2–5 show how the Gothic wagon laager could have been set up, whilst Diagram 6 shows how I believe the Roman army was formed up, and the direction of the initial Gothic cavalry attack.

  And so, on to the fateful day of 9 August AD 378. As we saw in the previous chapter, on 8 August 378 Valens had held a council of war. The outcome of which was that Valens h
ad been persuaded to march out against the Goths the following day. Valens was swayed by the reports from the scouts who had reported that the Goths only numbered 10,000 just a few days beforehand. Most commentators on the battle dispute that, believing that the scouts had underestimated the size of the Gothic horde, because they fail to believe that a ‘barbarian’ army, possibly a quarter of the size of the Roman army, could possibly defeat the much larger Roman one. But ancient accounts are full of smaller armies defeating ones that substantially outnumbered them, especially if something unexpected happened during the battle.2 The traditional way of counting how many troops an enemy had was by the scouts undertaking several things. The standards of the enemy army could be counted as they marched by, if you knew how many men were in a unit then the total number of standards that were counted would give you a rough idea of the number of men in the army. Camp fires could also be counted and a rough estimate of the number of men sat around them could be worked out. But in the case of Fritigern’s Goths the matter was confused by the Goths moving along not in units but travelling in a wagon train. Yes, you could count the number of wagons and estimate that for every wagon you see there could be probably four people attached to it, and of these four possibly only two may be warriors. So if there were at least 5,000 wagons travelling down from Kabyle that may well have indicated to the Roman scouts that there were only 10,000 Gothic warriors present. However, we know that Fritigern had called for all the Gothic bands in the region to join him, and many of them came without wagons because they had to camp outside of the wagon laager. So, it was entirely possible that instead of 10,000 warriors present there may have been double or more, even perhaps as many as 40,000 warriors, and that included the Gothic cavalry, who were now ominously absent.