A Struggle For Rome Volume Iii Part 16

Yet for weeks and months Cethegus's stern resolution sustained the despairing defenders against their will.

At last the fall of the city, not by force, but by starvation, was expected daily.

At this juncture an unexpected event occurred, which revived the hopes of the besieged, and put the genius and good fortune of the young King to a hard proof: for there once more appeared upon the scene of battle--Belisarius!

CHAPTER VII.

When news arrived in the golden palace of the Caesars at Byzantium of the lost battles on the Padus and at Mucella; of the renewed siege of Rome, and the loss of Neapolis and almost all Italy, the Emperor Justinian, who had already imagined the West again united to the East, was awakened from his dream of triumph in a terrible manner.

It was now easy for the friends of Belisarius to prove that the recall of that hero had been the origin of all these disasters.

It was clear that as long as Belisarius had been in Italy victory had followed victory; and no sooner had he turned his back, than misfortunes crowded one upon the other.

The Byzantine generals in Italy openly acknowledged that they could not replace Belisarius.

"I am not able," wrote Demetrius from Ravenna, "to meet Totila in the open field. Scarcely am I able to defend this fortress in the marshes. Neapolis has fallen. Rome may surrender any day. Send us again the lion-hearted man, whom, in our vanity, we dreamed we could replace--the conqueror of the Vandals and the Goths."

And Belisarius, although he had sworn never again to serve the ungrateful Emperor, forgot all his wrongs as soon as Justinian smiled upon him. And when, after the fall of Neapolis, he actually embraced him and called him "his faithful sword"--in truth, the Emperor had never believed in the general's rebellion, but was envious of his sovereign position--Belisarius could no longer be restrained by Antonina and Procopius. As, however, the Emperor feared the expense of a second enterprise in Italy (besides that of the Persian wars, which Na.r.s.es conducted successfully but expensively in Asia), avarice and ambition produced a struggle within him, which would, perhaps, have lasted longer than the resistance of Rome and Ravenna, had not Prince Germa.n.u.s and Belisarius proposed an expedient. The n.o.ble Prince was impelled by the wish to revisit Ravenna and the tomb of Mataswintha, and to revenge her memory on the rude barbarians, for Cethegus had declared that the cause of the tragic end of this incomparable woman was that her mind had been disordered in consequence of her forced marriage with Witichis.

Belisarius, on his side, could not endure that all his fame should be imperilled by Totila's success. "For," asked his enemies at court, "could he really have conquered a people who, within the year, had again almost made themselves masters of Italy?"

He had given his word to annihilate the Goths, and he would keep it.

So, influenced by these motives, Germa.n.u.s and Belisarius proposed to conquer Italy for the Emperor at their own expense. The Prince offered his whole fortune for the equipment of a fleet; Belisarius all his lately reinforced body-guard and lance-bearers.

"That is a proposition after Justinian's own heart!" cried Procopius, when informed of it by Belisarius. "Not a solidus out of his own pocket! And perhaps the laurels of fame and a province for this world, and the wholesale destruction of heretics to rejoice Heaven and Theodora! You may be sure that he will accept, and give you his fatherly benediction into the bargain. But nothing else. You, Belisarius, I know, can be as little kept back as Balan, your piebald, when he hears the call of the trumpet; but I will not see your lamentable fall."

"Fall? Wherefore, Raven of Misfortune?"

"This time you have both Goths and Italians against you. And you could not conquer the first when Italy was _for_ you."

But Belisarius only reproached him with cowardice, and presently went to sea with Germa.n.u.s.

The Emperor, in fact, gave them nothing but his blessings and the great toe of the holy Mazaspes.

The Byzantines in Italy breathed again when they heard that an imperial fleet had anch.o.r.ed off Salona, in Dalmatia, and that the army had landed.

Even Cethegus, to whom the news was brought by spies, exclaimed with a sigh:

"Better Belisarius in Rome than Totila!"

And the King of the Goths was filled with anxiety. He determined first of all to discover the strength of the Byzantine army, in order to decide upon what course he would take. Perhaps it would be necessary to raise the siege of Rome, and advance to attack the army of relief.

Belisarius sailed from Salona to Pola, where he mustered his s.h.i.+ps and men. While there, two men came to him, who announced themselves to be Herulian mercenaries, therefore Goths, but speaking Latin well. They said that they had been sent by Bonus, one of the commanders of Spoletium.

They had succeeded in pa.s.sing the Gothic lines, and they pressed the commander-in-chief to come to the relief of that place. They begged for exact particulars as to the strength of his army and the number of his s.h.i.+ps, in order to be able to revive the sinking courage of the besieged by trustworthy reports.

"Well, my friends," said Belisarius, "you must perforce embellish your report; for the truth is, that the Emperor has left me entirely to my own resources."

All the day long he showed these messengers his army and fleet.

The night following the messengers had disappeared.

They were Thoris.m.u.th and Aligern, who had been sent by King Totila, and now furnished him with the much-desired particulars.

So, from the very beginning, fate was against Belisarius, and the whole course of this campaign was unworthy of the fame of that great general.

It is true that he succeeded in running into the harbour of Ravenna, and providing that city with provisions.

But, the very day that he arrived. Prince Germa.n.u.s was attacked by a fatal malady while visiting the tomb of Mataswintha.

She had been buried in the vault of the palace, near the graves of her brother and the young King Athalaric.

Germa.n.u.s died, and, according to his last wish, was buried beside the woman he had loved so truly.

In a little niche in the same vault there reposed a heart which had ever beat warmly for Queen "Beautiful-hair."

Aspa, the Numidian slave, would not outlive her beloved mistress.

"In my home," she had said, "the virgins of the G.o.ddess of the Sun often voluntarily leap into the flames which receive the G.o.dhead.

Aspa's G.o.ddess, the lovely, bright, and kind, has left her. Aspa will not live forlorn in the cold and darkness. She will follow her Sun."

She had heaped up flowers in the death-chamber of her mistress--heaped them still higher than on the day when she had prepared the same small room for a bridal chamber--and had kindled unknown combustibles and African resin, the stupefying odours of which drove away all the other slaves. But Aspa had spent the night in the room.

The next morning Syphax, attracted by the well-known but dangerous odour, which reminded him of his country's sacrificial customs, went softly into the room, which was as silent as the grave. At Mataswintha's feet, her head buried in flowers, he had found his Antelope--dead.

"She died," he told Cethegus, "for love of her mistress. And now I have none left on earth but you."

After the burial of Germa.n.u.s, Belisarius left Ravenna with the whole fleet.

But his very next undertaking, an attempt to surprise Pisaurum, was repulsed with great loss.

And King Totila, now acquainted with the small number of Belisarius's troops, had sent skirmishers, under the command of Wisand, supported by a few s.h.i.+ps of war, to take Firmum, which was situated on the same coast, almost under the generals very eyes.

The Byzantines, Herodian and Bonus, surrendered Spoletium to Earl Grippa, after the lapse of thirty days, during which they had hoped for reinforcements from Belisarius in vain.

In a.s.sisium the commander of the garrison was a man of the name of Sisifrid, a Goth who had deserted in the days of the fall of Witichis.

This man well knew what was in store for him, should he fall into Hildebrand's hands, who besieged the fort in person. Hatred of such treason had enticed the old man from the siege of Ravenna to complete this task of retribution.

The Goth obstinately defended the town, but when, during a sally, the axe of the old master-at-arms sent him to the other world, the citizens obliged the Thracian garrison to yield. Many aristocratic Italians, members of the old Catacomb conspiracy, three hundred Illyrian hors.e.m.e.n, and some chosen body-guards of Belisarius, were taken prisoners.

Immediately afterwards, Placentia, the last town in the aemilia which was held by a Saracen garrison for the Emperor, was forced to capitulate to Earl Markja, who commanded the small army of investment.

In Bruttia, the fortress of Ruscia, the most important harbour for Thurii, surrendered to the bold Aligern.