however energetic, to attempt the reconqucst of Italy. My answer is: he would need 30,000 men, and at least 20,000 of these should be cavalry, well mounted, and should include the flower of the Roman army — the scattered squadrons of my Houschold Regiment which I have trained and tested against the Goths. Also, he would need abundance of money, not only to pay his army well but to win back the allegiance of the soldiers in Italy who for want of money have deserted to the Goths.'
Narses was a shrewd judge of men. He recognized Belisarius as a man incapable of guile and of perfect devotion to the Emperor. He paused awhile and then said: 'I thank you, Belisarius, not merely for your advice but for sparing to remind me of my obstinacy. If it had not been for that, Milan need never have been destroyed.'
Belisarius replied: 'Narses, I honour you for your generosity, and my prayers will go with you.'
Narses accepted the commission from Justinian, but insisted on the terms — not mentioning that Belisarius had framed them. The men and money were found immediately. Narses came again to Belisarius, and with decent humility begged him, in the name of their new friendship, for advice as to the best military means of defeating the Goths.
Belisarius said: 'Offer King Teudel a pitched battle as soon as you have landed, before he has time to collect his troops from the fortresses; no Gothic King can resist a pitched battle, even when his forces are greatly inferior in numbers to the enemy. Stand on the defensive as we did at Daras, posting your foot-archers well forward on either flank, facing inwards. Bait the trap with mail-clad spearmen: King Teudel has had reason to despise the Imperial infantry, who seldom face a cavalry charge'
Narses objected: 'But if I do as you advise, will not King Teudel, swallowing the bait, carry the trap away with him?'
Belisarius replied: 'There is that danger, and I was therefore about to suggest that your spearmen should be dismounted cavalry, whose courage would be of a higher order.'
'Good. And I must place my light cavalry forward on the flanks, I suppose?'
'Yes. Keep them thrust well out, not near enough to invite attack, but near enough to act as a menace. Hold my Household Regiment, with your other heavy cavalry, in reserve'
Narses asked: 'But if Teudel attacks the foot-archers first?'
'It would be against the Gothic code of kingly honour to do so. Mailed horseman disdains to attack leather- coated archer.'
Thus the famous Battle of Taginae was won already at the Brazen House at Constantinople, and by Belisarius, though Narses never acknowledged his indebtedness to him, nor did Belisarius ever seek to diminish from Narses' glory by recalling it. The battle, which King Teudel eagerly accepted, began with his lancers charging into the re-entrant that Narses offered them and being raked with distant flanking fire from 8,000 long bows. The confusion caused by the uncontrollable kicking and plunging of a huge number of wounded horses and by the death or unhorsing of most of the chieftains, conspicuous by their armour and trappings, slackened the charge from a gallop to a trot, from a trot to a walk. When momentum is lost, charging cavalry are no match for courageous mail- clad spearmen, and their horses offer a most vulnerable target. Teudel's leading squadron could not break the line of spears; the squadrons behind could do nothing to assist them, and lost heavily from continuous arrow-fire. At last Teudel himself was wounded. The Goths wavered. The Roman spearmen then opened their ranks and the Household Regiment swept through the gap; and it was to the war-cry 'Belisarius' that the Gothic lancers were thrown back upon their own infantry, who became involved in the rout and scattered in all directions.
King Teudel was overtaken and killed a few miles from the battlefield. His blood-stained garments and his jewelled hat were dispatched as trophies of victory to the Emperor at Constantinople.
The dismantling of the fortifications of so many cities by the Goths proved their undoing: there was nothing to oppose Narses' progress. Rome was captured at the first assault by one of his generals. Then the Gothic fleet came over to him. Within two months, after a last engagement on the banks of the Sarno, in the neighbourhood of Mount Vesuvius, the war was won. The surviving Goths were broken in spirit; they agreed cither to quit Italy or to submit to Justinian.
Shortly before this agreement was made a venerable institution came to a sudden end. For of the Roman Senators and their families, 300 persons whom Teudel had kept as hostages beyond the Po were butchered in revenge for his death; and the rest, hurrying from Sicily to Rome on news of its capture, were intercepted by the Goths near Vesuvius and likewise destroyed without mercy. The Order had not been revived, and never, I think, will be. Its only excuse for continuance during the last few hundred years had been its riches and its ancient traditions of culture. Justinian inherited the riches; the traditions could not be cither recovered or established afresh. So much then for the Senatorial Order of the West, and for King Teudel, and for the Goths — whose name is now extinct in Italy, though there are still Visigothic Kings ruling in Spain.
The end of Bessas: he redeemed his loss of Rome by his success in Colchis, where he recaptured Petra, the capital, from the Persians; and died in honour at Constantinople, not long afterwards. But Petra was once more taken by the Persians. Then a strange coincidence — Dagistheus, the Roman commander at Petra, redeemed his loss of that city by his success in Italy; for it was he who recaptured Rome, lost by Bessas, for Narses.
Narses, who remained in Italy as Governor, won a second great battle on his own account, so that this time the credit goes to his own studies of the art of war. A huge army of Franks had marched down into Southern Italy. Narses surprised their main body at Casilinum in Campania when (as before in Belisarius's time) they had lost half their numbers from dysentery. The Frankish army consisted wholly of infantry armed with sword, spear, and throwing-axe. Narses offered to oppose them with his own infantry; but, as the Franks charged in column, he enveloped their flanks with his squadrons and shot them to pieces at a hundred paces' distance, which was out of the range of their axes. The Franks dared not move forward for fear of being charged on either flank, nor did they dare to break column and attack the cavalry- their art of war demands that they keep close order on all occasions. They died together in a heap, and only five men of 30,000 succeeded in escaping. Narses, perhaps to avoid Justinian's jealousy, ascribed the credit for this victory entirely to the miraculous image of the Virgin that he carried with him, who warned him of all important events.
When Justinian heard of Taginae and Casilinum he praised God and was exceedingly happy. 'Ah,' he is reported to have Said, 'why did we not think to send our valiant Narses to Italy long ago? Why did we recall him from the previous campaign, upon a jealous complaint of Count Belisarius? Many lives would have been saved and much treasure spared if we had only trusted to our Narses. We blame ourselves for displaying too great consideration for the feelings of Belisarius, a cowardly and stupid officer; but perhaps such excess of generosity is pardonable in a sovereign.'
Then he returned to his theological studies and, convinced that Italy was safe, that King Khosrou meditated no further mischief on the Eastern frontier, and that the barbarians to the North could be bribed or tricked into fighting one another, he neglected his armies and fortifications more than ever before.
Belisarius, as Commander of the Armies in the East and of the Imperial Guards, three times approached him, begging him to consider the danger to the Empire. After the third attempt an Imperial order came: 'His Serenity forbids this subject to be raised again. God will defend His people who trust in Him, with a strong right hand.'
One day, in the autumn of the year of our Lord 558 — which was the year of Bloody John's death, in a hunting accident, after having obediently served with Narses in his Italian campaign, and the tenth year of our renewed residence in Constantinople — Belisarius was handed a message by the master of a Black Sea trading vessel. It was written in the shaking hand of an old man, on a dirty strip of parchment.
'Most Illustrious Belisarius, who rescued my life from Cappadocian John fifty years and more ago, in an inn near Adrianople in Thrace, when you were only a little lad: the time has come to show that Simeon the burgess does not forget this debt of gratitude. The Bulgarian Huns carried mc off as a slave long ago in a raid upon Thrace, but have treated me with indulgence because of my skill as a saddler. I have learned their barbarous language and am admitted to their councils, and I confess that I am now better situated in many ways than when I was the slave of rapacious tax-collectors. Only, I miss the good wine of Thrace and the warmth of my well-built house. Know, then, that this winter, if the Danube freezes again, as the weather prophets foretell, a Bulgarian horde will overrun Thrace. They boast that they will attack Constantinople itself and take such plunder as was never taken before since the world began. Zabergan leads them, a capable Cham. Twenty thousand men ride with him. Warn the Emperor. Farewell.'
Belisarius brought the letter to the Emperor's attention. Justinian asked: 'Why this torn strip of parchment, reeking of the docks? Is this a proper document to show an Emperor?'
