Belisarius accepted the terms — for he disdained to bargain. Presently he sailed for Italy with my mistress Antonina, whom I accompanied, and his 400 Thracians. His new title gave my mistress much amusement. She would say such things as this: 'My poor husband, you are created Count of the Augean Stables, but forbidden to cleanse them!' (The hero Hercules was commanded, as his fifth Labour, to cleanse the stables of Augeas in one day; accomplishing this by leading the Rivers Alpheus and Peneus through them.)
It was about this time that Solomon was killed in Africa, in battle with a raiding army of Moors. He had been a most capable Governor, though greatly hampered by an insufficiency of troops. The Roman Africans had long regretted those happy days of Vandal rule when the Moors were restrained in their hill-fortresses and the tax- gatherers from Constantinople had not yet begun to eat up the land. After Solomon's death the Moors massacred, burned, and destroyed without pity or fear of reprisal. The poorer the Diocese grew, the more heavily did the taxes fall on what wealth survived; for the assessment made in the year of Belisarius's Consulsliip had never been modified. Then came the plague. In those years of general disaster five millions of the population perished; then, so many fields being left untilled and un-watered, the desert broke in upon them. I think this fertile land will never recover from its misfortunes — or at least not so long as it remains within the Empire.
CHAPTER 21
What now follows is an account of five years of the most thankless campaigning, surely, that any general of repute ever undertook. Disappointment wearies, not only in the experience but in the telling of it. I shall therefore be brief and write down only enough of this, Belisarius's last campaign in the West, to prove that his courage and resource and vigour remained unaffected by thirty years of almost continuous campaigning, and that he did all that could possibly have been expected of him, and more.
It will be remembered that the Gothic crown had passed to a young prince named Teudel who could command at first no more than a thousand lances and had only one fortified city of any strength in his possession — Pavia. But he was the first capable sovereign to rule over the Goths since the death of Theoderich. By the quarrelsomeness and inactivity of the eleven Imperial generals that opposed him, he was able to increase his forces to 5,000 men and organize them into a well-equipped army. In the same year that Belisarius quarrelled with my mistress at Daras, Bloody John, Bessas, and the rest had received instructions from Justinian to 'crush the last remnants of the Goths'; but he was unwilling to entrust the supreme command to any one of them. They took the field with 12,000 men, including the garrison of Sisauranum that Bclisarius had captured and that had just arrived from the East. Chiefly because of their disagreement as to the equitable distribution of the booty that they expected to take, they were ingloriously defeated by Teudel, at Faenza: many thousands of their men were killed or captured and — unique disgrace — every single regimental standard was abandoned, though every single general escaped. Only the Persian squadron fought with courage, and for this reason lost more heavily than any other. Then each of the eleven generals led what remained of his own command into the shelter of a different fortress, so that the whole of Italy now lay open to Teudel's army.
Bloody John took the field again with reinforcements from Ravenna. Though still outnumbered, Teudel scattered Bloody John's army at a battle near Florence, and not only caused him heavy losses in killed and wounded but persuaded a great many of his men to desert to the Gothic army. Alexander ('The Scissors') had reduced the armies in Italy to a most despondent condition by stealing their pay and rations. No soldiers will fight for long without pay or proper food, except in the defence of their own homes and under a courageous leader. Besides, if there is discord among the officers, as here, the ranks soon come to know of it, and confidence is destroyed. Those who deserted to Teudel were putting themselves under the protection of a king who was a man of his word — a bold, active, generous leader who did not share his command with rivals.
In the next spring, the same spring in which Belisarius was sent against King Khosrou in Syria, Teudel, leaving the Imperial generals to skulk in their fortresses of the North-East of Italy, marched down to the almost unprotected South. He overran it with case, capturing the fortresses of Benevento, where he destroyed the fortifications, and Cumae, where he found great quantities of treasure, and soon he was besieging Naples.
From Ravenna Bloody John, in the name of all the generals, wrote to Justinian for reinforcements. With unexpected promptness, Justinian sent a senator, Maximums, with a huge fleet and all the troops that could be gathered together from the training depots and garrison towns of the East. Maximums was given authority as Commander of the Armies in Italy. He was a coward, and totally without experience of war. A great deal of his time was spent in prayer and fasting. Justinian hated to entrust large armies to experienced generals, lest they should prove rebellious. He seemed to be under the impression that victories are won on one's knees, not in the saddle.
The expedition ended disastrously, as might have been expected. First, Maxiininus delayed for months in Greece, sending one of his generals ahead with a number of supply ships but inadequate forces to the relief of Naples. Teudel's cavalry surprised this small fleet as the crews disembarked carelessly at Salerno, to take in water and stretch their legs, and captured nearly the whole of it. Then Maximums himself sailed to Syracuse in Sicily, from where he now sent the rest of his army in the rest of his ships, to the further relief of Naples. This was already November, too late in the year for safe voyages. A violent north-westerly wind overtook the expedition when close to Naples, driving the ships ashore — and where else but on the very beach where King Teudel was encamped with his Goths? Of the soldiers who managed to escape from the fury of the waves many hundreds were hurled back into the sea by the pitiless Goths, who did not wish to be encumbered with prisoners. The Roman general in command of the expedition was, however, spared. They made him go with a halter around his neck to advise the Neapolitans to capitulate, since they could expect no succour now and were hard-pressed by famine. Teudel undertook to spare their lives.
Thereupon Naples surrendered. When Teudel saw how utterly emaciated the citizens were, he acted with a humanity and understanding remarkable in a barbarian. He made it his care that they should not fill their empty bellies suddenly and so destroy themselves — building up their strength with a gradual increase of rations. He took no vengeance on them, cither, even allowing the garrison to march out with the honours of war and providing them with pack animals to take them to Rome. Moreover, as an example to his own men and an encouragement to the native population, he executed a Gothic soldier for the rape of an Italian girl and awarded her as a dowry all the soldier's possessions. But he razed the fortifications of Naples to the ground so that, though recaptured, the city could never again be used against the Goths as a base of operations.
King Teudel would have next marched on to the capture of Rome, where Bloody John was commanding the garrison; for the citizens were well-disposed to the Gothic cause and prepared to welcome him. But the plague had now readied Italy, and the streets of Rome were full of unburicd corpses. Teudel hurried away from the infection. Part of his army he sent to besiege Otranto, wliilc with the remainder he besieged Osimo and Tivoli. Tivoli fell to him by an act of treachery; and the communications between Rome and Tuscany, on which the citizens of Rome relied for provisions, were thereby cut. The Imperial Forces degenerated more and more as Teudel's force improved. Their pay, which depended on the Italian revenues, could no longer be found, because the Goths now held nearly the whole of the countryside; and their fighting capabities depended largely on their pay.
Such was the state of affairs in Italy when Belisarius brought us there from Constantinople. He had first made a recruiting march through Thrace with his 400 cuirassiers. This was the first time for a great many years that he had visited Tchermen, his birthplace, or Adrianople, where he had begun his military career. He received a great welcome from his fellow-countrymen. At every town to which he came a civic reception was waiting for him: the march became almost a royal progress. The 400 men, all Thracians and heroes of the Gothic, Vandal, and Persian campaigns, were so fine and martial-looking in their mail-shirts and white-plumed helmets, sat their chestnut horses so well, and spoke with such admiration and love of Belisarius that no less than 4,000 recruits cndisted under his standard — of whom 1,500 were from Adrianople alone. They called him 'Lucky Belisarius' in Thrace, because not only had he himself never been wounded, but of his Household Regiment that had fought in so many glorious battles very few men had fallen — at least while serving under his direct command — and very many had made their fortunes. He had hoped to procure arms and armour here for his recruits, there being a supply of such things at the Imperial arms factory at Adrianople; but they were refused him, even for ready gold. The Bulgarian
