Ravenna, a Study Part 7

What he hoped to gain by his retreat was, however, not merely the security of the north. He hoped also to lure Belisarius thither after him where, in a country less wholly Latin and imperialist, he would have a better chance of annihilating him by mere numbers once and for all. To this supreme hope and expectation of the Goth's, the refortification of Rome by Belisarius finally put an end. It was a countermove worthy of such a master and entirely in keeping with the Roman tradition.

At first it must have appeared to Vitiges that the course he had expected Belisarius to pursue was actually being followed; for presently the imperialists began to move up the Flaminian Way. But it was soon evident that this was no advance in force, but rather a part of the fortification of the City. All the places occupied were fortresses and all were with one exception upon the Via Flaminia which they commanded. The first of these strong places was Narni, which held the great bridge over the Nera at the southern exit of the pa.s.ses between the valley of Spoleto and the lower Tiber valley, where the two roads over the mountains, one by Todi, the other by Spoleto, met.

The second place occupied was Spoleto at the head, and the third was Perugia at the foot, of the great valley of Spoleto, from which the Via Flaminia rose to cross the central Apennines. The three places were occupied without much trouble, and it was thus attempted to make the great road from the north impa.s.sable.

If Vitiges, as I believe, thought the imperialists would immediately follow him northward he was no more deceived than the Romans themselves. They had surrendered the City to Belisarius to save it from attack and the last thing they desired was to suffer a siege. A feeling of resentment, the old jealousy of Constantinople, seems to have appeared, and in this Vitiges thought he saw his opportunity.

With 150,000 men, according to Procopius, he issued from Ravenna and marched upon Rome, avoiding apparently the three forts held by the imperialists, for he came, again according to Procopius, through Sabine territory and therefore his advance was upon the eastern bank of the Tiber. However that may be, he got without being attacked as far as the bridge over the Anio on the Via Salaria, or as the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber where the Via Ca.s.sia and the Via Flaminia meet to enter the City.[1] This bridge, whichever it was, Belisarius had determined to hold, but without his knowledge it was deserted. The Goths were crossing unopposed when the general himself appeared with 1000 horse. A tremendous fight followed in which, such was his rage and astonishment, Belisarius bore himself rather like a brave soldier than a wise general. Unhurt in spite of the _melee_ he fell back either upon the Porta Salaria[2] or upon the Porta Flaminia (del Popolo), which he found closed against him, for the City believed him dead. Almost in despair he rallied his men and made a desperate charge, which, such was the number of the Goths in the road and the confusion of their advance, was successful. The barbarians fled and Belisarius and his gallant troopers entered the City at nightfall.

[Footnote 1: Procopius tells us both that Vitiges advanced through the Sabine country and that he crossed the Tiber--an impossible thing.

Gibbon and Hodgkin refuse the former, Gregorovius the latter statement. I agree with Gregorovius, for Procopius confuses the Tiber and Anio elsewhere, notably iii. 10.]

[Footnote 2: Possibly the Porta Pinciana.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch Map of VITIGES, MARCH]

All through that night the walls of Rome were aflame with watchfires and disastrous tidings, happily false; and when the dawn rose out of the Campagna, Rome was still inviolate.

Thus began the first siege of Rome in the early days of March 537. It lasted for three hundred and seventy-four days and ended in the sullen retreat of the barbarians to save Ravenna, which as Vitiges had at first foreseen would happen was threatened with attack. But as so often in later times, those three hundred and seventy-four days had dealt incomparably more hardly with the besiegers than with the besieged. The Campagna had done its work, and it has been calculated that of the 150,000 men that are said to have marched with Vitiges to attack the city, not more than 10,000 returned to Ravenna.

Meanwhile during the great siege Belisarius, by means of his subordinate general, John, had carried on a campaign in Picenum and had been able to send a.s.sistance to the people of Milan, eagerly Roman as they were.

In Picenum, John had perhaps rashly pushed forward from Ancona to Rimini; which he held precariously and to the danger of Ancona. The first act of Belisarius after the raising of the siege of the City was to despatch troops post haste to Rimini. He sent Ildiger and Martin with a thousand horse to fight their way if necessary to Rimini to withdraw John and his two thousand horse. He purposed to hold Rimini only with the tips of his fingers, for his determination was to secure all he held before he entered upon a final and a real advance northward.

The position of Belisarius seemed more insecure than in fact it was.

If we consider the great artery of his advance northward, the Via Flaminia, we shall find that he held everything to the east of the road between Rome and Ancona save one fortress, Osimo above Ancona, which was held by four thousand of the enemy. But all was or seemed to be insecure because he held nothing to the west of the great road save Perugia: Orvieto, Todi, Chiusi, Urbino were all in Gothic hands, while the Furlo Pa.s.s over the Apennines was also held by the enemy.

Well might Belisarius desire the cavalry of John, useless in Rimini, for the direct road to that city was still in the hands of the enemy.

But when John got his orders he refused to obey them and Ildiger and Martin returned without him. What excuse is possible for this refusal of obedience on the part of a subordinate which might well have imperilled the whole campaign? This only: that he had orders from one superior even to Belisarius. It is probable that John in Rimini and Ancona was aware that he might expect reinforcement from Constantinople and that Belisarius knew nothing of them. These reinforcements arrived under Na.r.s.es, the great and famous chamberlain of Justinian, not long after Rimini had begun to suffer the memorable siege that followed the departure of Ildiger and Martin, and Ancona had only just been saved. The presence of Na.r.s.es in Italy changed the whole aspect of the campaign, and whatever motives Justinian may have had for sending him thither, the effect of his landing at Ancona with great reinforcements can have had only a good effect upon the war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch Map CITIES UNDERLINED WERE IN IMPERIAL HANDS]

Belisarius had now secured himself to this extent that Todi and Chiusi were in his hands, and he hastened to meet Na.r.s.es at Fermo forty miles south of Ancona. There a council of war was held in which Belisarius maintained his plan, namely, that Rimini should be abandoned because Osimo, very strongly held over Ancona, was in the hands of the Goths.

Na.r.s.es, on the contrary, looked only to the spiritual side of war. He maintained that if a city once recovered for the empire was abandoned the moral result would be disastrous. At any cost he was for the relief of Rimini. Somewhat reluctantly, realising the danger, Belisarius consented to try. A screen of a thousand men was placed before Osimo, an army was embarked for Rimini and another was sent out by the coast road, while Belisarius himself and Na.r.s.es with a column of cavalry set out from Fermo westward, crossed the Apennines above Spoleto, struck into the Flaminian Way, recrossed the Apennines by the Furlo, and had come within a day's journey of Rimini when they came upon a party of Goths, who fled and gave the alarm to Vitiges. But before the Goth could decide what to do, Ildiger was upon him from the sea, Martin was upon him with a great army from the south, and Belisarius and Na.r.s.es came down from the mountains in time to rejoice at the delivery of the city.

That deliverance but disclosed the two parties that divided the imperial army. When John refused obedience to Belisarius we may be sure he was not acting wholly without encouragement, and this at once became obvious after the deliverance of Rimini which Belisarius had carried out but which had been conceived by Na.r.s.es. It will be remembered that Milan was by the act of Belisarius in the hands of the Romans; it was, however, now besieged even as Rimini had been by a very redoubtable Gothic leader, Uraius. Orvieto and Osimo also were still in barbarian hands. Belisarius now proposed to employ the army in the relief of the one and the capture of the others. Na.r.s.es, on the other hand, proposed to take his part of the army and with it to reoccupy the province of Aemilia between the Apennines and the Po.

These rivalries and differences were to cost the life of a great city, Milan. For since Na.r.s.es would not consent to the plan of Belisarius, only what seemed most urgent was done; Orvieto was taken, Urbino too, and the energy of the imperial army and its purpose, also, was expended upon many unimportant things, an attempt upon Cesena, the reduction of Imola, which involved a hopeless dispersal of forces upon no great end. Belisarius, warned of the danger, ordered John to the relief of Milan; again that creature of Na.r.s.es refused. And down came Milan before Uraius the Goth, who fell upon the helpless citizens and ma.s.sacred three hundred thousand of them, being all the men of the city; and the women he gave as payment to his Burgundian ally; and of Milan he left not one stone upon another. But when Justinian read the despatch of Belisarius, he recalled Na.r.s.es, for if the fall of Rimini would have injured so sorely the imperial cause, what of the fall of Milan, the ma.s.sacre of its inhabitants, the utter destruction of the city? So great was its effect that we read even Justinian thought of treating with the Goths; for he was haunted by the weakness of his Persian frontier, and he had soon to look to the western Alps.

Not so Belisarius. He went on his way and first he reduced two fortresses that had long threatened him, Osimo and Fiesole, and then and at long last he began the great advance upon Ravenna.

In this he was attempting with a small and weary force what had never before been accomplished. Theodoric, it is true, had entered Ravenna as a conqueror, but only by stratagem and deceptive promises after a siege of three years. Belisarius, none knew it better than he, had neither the time nor the forces that were at the disposal of the great Gothic king. He must act quickly if at all, and nowhere and on no occasion does this great and resourceful man appear to better advantage than in his achievement at Ravenna, which should have been the last military action of the reconquest.

Procopius, who was perhaps an eye-witness of the whole business of the siege and certainly entered Ravenna in triumph with Belisarius, tells us that, after the fall of Osimo, Belisarius made haste to Ravenna with his whole army. He sent one of his generals, Magnus, before him with a sufficient force, to march along the Po and to prevent provisions being taken into the impregnable city from the Aemilian Way; while another general, Vitalius, he called out of Dalmatia with his forces to hold the northern bank of the river. When this was done a most extraordinary accident occurred which it seems impossible to explain. "An accident then befell," says Procopius, "which clearly shows that Fortuna determines even yet every struggle. For the Goths had brought down the Po many barges from Liguria[1] laden with corn, bound for Ravenna; but the water suddenly grew so low in the river that they could not row on; and the Romans coming upon them took them and all their lading. Soon after the river had again its wonted stream and was navigable as before. This scarcity of water had never till then occurred so far as we could hear."

[Footnote 1: Cf. Ca.s.siodorus, _Variae_, II. 20, where we read of Theodoric in a time of scarcity supplying Liguria with food from Ravenna. "Let any provision s.h.i.+ps which may be now lying at Ravenna be ordered round to Liguna, which in ordinary times supplies the needs of Ravenna herself."]

Owing to this accident and the closeness of the investment the Goths began to be short of provisions, for they could import nothing from the sea, since the Romans were masters there. In their need, however, the King of the Franks, knowing how things were, sent amba.s.sadors to Vitiges in Ravenna, and so did Belisarius. The Franks offered to lead an army of five hundred thousand men over the Alps and to bury the Romans in utter ruin if the Goths would consent to share Italy with them. But the Goths feared the Franks, and the amba.s.sadors of Belisarius were able to persuade them to reject their offers. From this time forward negotiations went on without ceasing between Belisarius and the Goths, for the one was short of time, the other of food. Nevertheless, the Romans did not relax their investment of the city in any way. Indeed, Belisarius chose this moment for his shrewdest and cruellest blow. "For hearing how there was much corn in the public magazines of Ravenna, he won a citizen with money to set them afire; which loss, some say, happened by Matasuntha's advice, the wife of Vitiges. It was so suddenly done that some thought it was by lightning, as others by design, and Vitiges and the Goths, taking it in either kind, fell into more irresolution, mistrusting one another, and thinking that G.o.d himself made war against them."

At this misfortune Uraius, the destroyer of Milan, proposed to attempt to relieve Ravenna, but Belisarius easily outwitted him and his intervention came to nothing.

Nevertheless time, so scarce with the Romans, was running short.

Justinian was impatient to have done with the Italian war, for the general situation was extremely grave; upon the Danube an invasion of Slavs was gathering; in Asia, Persia threatened the empire. It is not altogether surprising then that Justinian now made an attempt to come to terms with Vitiges behind the back of Belisarius. He sent two amba.s.sadors to offer peace upon the following really amazing terms, namely, that the Goths were to have half the royal treasure and the dominion of the country beyond the Po, that is to say, to the north of the Po; the other half of the revenues and the rest of Italy with Sicily were to be the emperor's. The amba.s.sadors showed their instructions to Belisarius, who had them conducted into Ravenna, where Vitiges and the Goths gladly consented to make peace and to accept these conditions. But both sides had reckoned without Belisarius, who doubtless saw that such a peace could not endure and that all his labour, if such terms were to be made, had gone for nothing. Nothing would satisfy his ideas of security save the absolute defeat of the Goths with its natural sequel, the bringing of Vitiges to Constantinople as a prisoner. He, therefore, refused to sign the treaty, leaving it to be established by the amba.s.sadors alone. But when the Goths saw this they thought that the Romans cozened them, and refused to conclude anything without the signature and oath of Belisarius.

That Belisarius was right we cannot doubt; but his action naturally laid him open to be accused of a design, against the emperor's intentions, to prolong the war for his own glory. Nor were certain of his generals slow to make such an accusation. When he heard of it, he (who had suffered more than enough from the disloyalty of subordinates) called them all together, and in the presence of the amba.s.sadors confessed that Fortune was the great decider of war, and that a good opportunity for peace should ever be seized. Then he bade them speak their minds in the present case. They declared then, one and all, that it were best to follow the instructions of the emperor.

When Belisarius heard them speak thus he was glad and bade them put their opinions in writing, that neither he nor they might afterwards deny their confession that they were not able to subdue the enemy by war.

But Belisarius was sure of his ground. The Goths pressed by famine could hold out no longer, and weary of Vitiges, who had given them no success, yet afraid of yielding to the emperor lest he should remove them out of Italy to Constantinople and thereabout, they resolved, of all things, to declare Belisarius emperor in the West. Secretly they sent to entreat him to accept the empire, professing to be most willing to obey him. Such an astonis.h.i.+ng proposal must have filled Belisarius with delight. He, indeed, had no intention of receiving from such hands a gift so fantastic, for he hated the name of usurper; but he saw at once how this proposal might help his ends. He immediately called his generals and the amba.s.sadors together and asked them if they did not think it a matter of importance to make all the Goths and Vitiges the emperor's captives, to capture their wealth, and to recover all Italy to the Romans. They answered it would be an extreme high fortune and bade him effect it if he could. Then Belisarius sent to the Goths and bade them perform what they had offered. And they, for the famine was too hard to bear, agreed and sent amba.s.sadors to take the oath of the great Roman for their indemnity and that he would be King of Italy, and when they had it, to return into Ravenna with the Roman army. Now as to their indemnity Belisarius bound himself, but touching the kingdom he said he would swear it to Vitiges himself and the Gothic commanders. And the amba.s.sadors, not thinking he would forego the kingdom, but that he desired it above all things, prayed him forthwith to march into Ravenna. And he himself with his army and the Gothic amba.s.sadors entered Ravenna; and he commanded also s.h.i.+ps to be laden with corn and to come into Cla.s.sis.

"When I saw," says Procopius, whose account of the siege and fall of Ravenna I have followed so far, "when I saw the entrance of their army into Ravenna, I considered how actions are not concluded by valour, mult.i.tudes, or human virtue, but by some Divinity that steers the acts and judgements of men. The Goths had much the advantage in numbers and power, and since they came to Ravenna no defeat there had overthrown them, yet they became prisoners and thought it no shame to be slaves to fewer in number. The women (who had heard from their husbands that the enemy were tall and gallant men and not to be numbered) looked with contempt upon the Roman soldiers when they saw them in the city, and spat in the faces of their husbands, reviling them with cowardice, pointing at their conquerors."

Thus Ravenna, the impregnable city, was taken by stratagem and willingly; never again to pa.s.s out of Roman hands till Aistulf the Lombard in 752 seized it for a few years and thus caused Pepin to cross the Alps to vindicate the Roman name.

The first Gothic war, against Vitiges, (536-540) had thus for its crown and end, the capture of Ravenna; the second, against Totila (541-553), proceeded from Ravenna for the reconquest, yet once again, of Italy.

In 540, after Ravenna had been occupied, Belisarius recalled, and Vitiges taken as a captive to Constantinople, the Romans held all Italy except the city of Pavia. In 544, when Belisarius returned, they held only Ravenna, Rome, Spoleto, and a few other strongholds such as Perugia and Piacenza. Nor was this all. In this second war all Italy was laid waste and ruined, Rome was twice besieged and occupied by the Goths, and in 546, when Totila had done with her, during a s.p.a.ce of forty days the City remained utterly desolate, without a single inhabitant. How had such a miserable and unexpected catastrophe befallen the Catholic cause?

In the first place it must be admitted that the capture of Ravenna by stratagem was not the final catastrophe it appeared for the Goths. It is true that that triumph seemed to give, and indeed did give, all Italy into the hands of the Romans, but that gift was never secured.

Belisarius, partly from necessity, partly on account of the suspicious jealousy of the emperor, was withdrawn from Italy too soon. He was victorious, but he was not given time to secure his victories. The extraordinary incompetence and rivalries of the committee of generals which succeeded him let the opportunity for securing and establis.h.i.+ng an enduring peace slip through its fingers; the inevitable reaction that followed the departure of Belisarius was not met at all, the whole situation that then developed was misunderstood, with the result that the Goths were soon able to find a leader, perhaps the most formidable, and certainly the most destructive, that they had ever produced.

The cause of the imperial incompetence and failure would appear to have been financial. The empire had been perhaps always, certainly for two hundred years, bankrupt. Its administration and above all its defence were beyond its means. The Gothic war had been a tremendous strain upon the imperial finances already incredibly involved in the defence of the East. It was necessary to find in Italy the money for that war and for the future defence of that country; but Italy had been ruined by the Gothic war and above all things needed capital and a period of reproductive repose. These Justinian was unable to give her. His necessities forced him to cover the peninsula with tax gatherers, to bleed an already ruined country of the little that remained to her. If the result was a reaction, in the north actively Gothic, in the centre and south certainly indifferent to the imperial cause, we cannot wonder at it. The spiritual situation and the economic or material would not chime. The result was the appalling confusion we know as the second Gothic war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Colour Plate S. VITALE: THE GALLERY]

I say it was a confusion. No clear issue seems to present itself from beginning to end; the old democratic cause, the Catholicism of the people rising in rage and fury against the Arianism of the courts, burnt low for a moment, and was indeed in part extinguished by the appalling misery of the material situation of Italy. Upon this materialism, the material benefits that Theodoric had undoubtedly conferred upon the Italian people, Totila, that formidable chieftain who now came to the front as the Gothic leader, based his appeal and his hope of victory. "Surely," he says to the Roman senate, "you must remember sometimes in these evil days the benefits which you received not so very long ago at the hands of Theodoric and Amalasuntha." And again: "What harm did the Goths ever do you? And tell me then what good you received from Justinian the emperor?... Has he not compelled you to give an account of every _solidus_ which you received from the public funds even under the Gothic kings? All hara.s.sed and impoverished as you are by the war, has he not compelled you to pay to the Greeks the full taxes which could be levied in a time of profoundest peace?" Totila based his appeal upon the material well-being of the people. It was a formidable appeal; it nearly succeeded. That it did not succeed, though it had so much in its favour, is the best testimony we could have to the real nature of the war, which was not a struggle between two races or even primarily, at any rate, between barbarism and civilisation, but something greater and more fundamental, a fight to the death between two religions Arianism and Catholicism, upon the result of which the whole future of Europe depended.

The confusion of the second Gothic war, in which the future of the world and the major interests of man were in jeopardy, may be divided into three parts. The first of these is that in which the whole administration precariously established by Belisarius fell to pieces before the earthquake that was Totila, who, never systematically met and opposed, by the year 544 held all Italy with the exception, as I have said, of Ravenna, Rome, Spoleto, Perugia, Piacenza, and a few other strongholds. The second is that in which Belisarius again appears, and from the citadel of Ravenna, without ceasing or rest, but without much success, opposes him everywhere. In this period Rome was occupied and reoccupied no less than four times, and, as I have said, in 546 was left utterly desolate. Nevertheless, when for the second time Belisarius was recalled, in 548, he left things much as he had found them. He had at least--and with what scarcity of men and money we may see in his letters to the emperor--opposed and perhaps stemmed the overwhelming Gothic advance. At his departure the imperialists held Ravenna, Rome (but after the sack of 546), Rimini, Spoleto, Ancona, and Perugia. But before he arrived in Constantinople, Perugia had fallen; in the same year, 549, a mutiny in Rome gave the City to the Goths and Rimini was betrayed. In the year 551, the year of Na.r.s.es' appointment as general-in-chief in Italy and the opening of the third period, only Ravenna and Ancona, with Hydruntum (Otranto) and Crotona in southern Italy, remained to the empire.

In that year, 551, however, everywhere the Gothic cause began to fail.

In a sea-fight off Sinigaglia the imperial forces disposed of the Gothic sea power and relieved Ancona, which was in grave danger. About the same time Sicily was delivered from the Gothic yoke, and in the spring of 552 Crotona was relieved. Meanwhile, in Illyric.u.m, Na.r.s.es gathered his army, in which Ardoin, King of the Lombards, rode at the head of two thousand of his people, and prepared for the great march into Italy.

He came through Venetia round the head of the Adriatic, close to the sea (for a formidable Frankish host held the great roads), crossing with what anxiety we may guess, the mouths of the Piave, the Brenta, the Adige, and the Po by means of his s.h.i.+ps, and having thus turned the flank of the Frankish armies he triumphantly marched into Ravenna.

There he remained for nine days, as it were another Caesar about to cross the Rubicon.

While he waited in Ravenna an insulting challenge reached him from the barbarian Usdrilas who held Rimini. "After your boasted preparations, which have kept all Italy in a ferment, and after striking terror into our hearts by knitting your brows and looking more awful than mortal men, you have crept into Ravenna and are skulking there afraid of the very name of the Goths. Come out with all that mongrel host of barbarians to whom you want to deliver Italy and let us behold you, for the eyes of the Goths hunger for the sight of you."[1] And Na.r.s.es laughed at the insolence of the barbarian, and presently he set forward with the army he had made, upon the great road through Cla.s.sis for Rimini, till he came to the bridge over the Marecchia, there which Augustus had built and which was held by the enemy. There in the fight which followed--little more than a skirmish--the barbarian Usdrilas came by his end, and Na.r.s.es ignoring Rimini marched on, his great object before him, Totila and his army, which he meant, before all things else, to seek out and to destroy. So he went down the Flaminian Way to Fano and there presently left it for a by-way upon the left, rejoining the great highway some miles beyond the fortress of Petra Pertusa, which he disregarded as he had done that of Rimini. He marched on till he came to the very crest of the Apennines, over which he pa.s.sed and camped upon the west under the great heights, at a place then called Ad Ensem and to-day Scheggia.

[Footnote 1: Hodgkin's free translation of Procopius, _op. cit_. iv.

28.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch Map Na.r.s.eS' MARCH FROM RAVENNA _To Meet_ TOTILA]

Meanwhile Totila had come to meet him from Rome, and had managed to reach Tadinum, the modern Gualdo Tadino, when he found Na.r.s.es, unexpectedly, for he must have thought the way over the mountains securely barred by the fortress of Petra Pertusa, upon the great road before him.

Na.r.s.es sent an emba.s.sy to Totila to offer, "not peace, but pardon;"

this the barbarian refused. Asked when he would fight Totila answered, "In eight days from this day." But Na.r.s.es, knowing what manner of man his enemy was, made all ready for the morrow, and at once occupied the great hill upon his left which overlooked both camps. In this he was right, for no sooner had he seized this advantage than Totila attempted to do the same, but without any success.

Then on the morrow Totila, having meanwhile been reinforced with two thousand men, rode forth before the two armies and "exhibited in a narrow s.p.a.ce the strength and agility of a warrior. His armour was enchased with gold; his purple banner floated with the wind; he cast his lance into the air; caught himself backwards; recovered his seat and managed a fiery steed in all the paces and evolutions of the equestrian school."[1] No doubt Na.r.s.es the eunuch smiled. The barbarians were all the same, and they remain unaltered. Totila's theatrical antics are but the prototype to those amazing cavalry charges, excellently stage-managed, that may be seen almost any autumn during the German manoeuvres, a new Totila at their head.

[Footnote 1: Gibbon's free translation of Procopius, iv. 31.]