Ravenna, A Study by Edward Hutton
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Edward Hutton >> Ravenna, A Study
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[Footnote 1: My theory of the strategy of Vitiges and of his purpose
is perhaps unorthodox; the orthodox theory being that he was a fool
and the abandonment of Rome a mere blunder. But my theory would seem
to be accurate enough, for Vitiges's first act from Ravenna was to
despatch an army into Dalmatia.]
In leaving a garrison within the City of some four thousand men--say
half as many as the whole imperialist army--he at least hoped to delay
the enemy till he had secured himself in the north and to waste him. I
do not think he expected to hold the city for any length of time, for
the whole country was spiritually with the enemy.
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 passes
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 impassable.
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 Cassia 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.]
[Illustration: 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 assistance 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 Pass 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 Narses, 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 Narses 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.
[Illustration: 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 Narses 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.
Narses, 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 Narses 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 Narses 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 Narses. 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. Narses, 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 Narses 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 Narses refused. And down came
Milan before Uraius the Goth, who fell upon the helpless citizens and
massacred 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 Narses, for if the fall of Rimini
would have injured so sorely the imperial cause, what of the fall of
Milan, the massacre 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. Cassiodorus, _Variae_, II. 20, where we read of
Theodoric in a time of scarcity supplying Liguria with food from
Ravenna. "Let any provision ships 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 ambassadors 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 ambassadors 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 God 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
ambassadors 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 ambassadors 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 ambassadors 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
ambassadors 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 astonishing 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 ambassadors 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 ambassadors 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
ambassadors, 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 ambassadors
entered Ravenna; and he commanded also ships to be laden with corn and
to come into Classis.
"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,
multitudes, 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 pass 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 space 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 establishing
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.
[Illustration: 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 harassed 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
Narses' 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.
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