JUSTINIAN—(_continued_)
540-565 A.D.
Justinian as builder—His ruinous financial policy—His second Persian
war—Chosroes takes Antioch, 540—Campaigns of Belisarius and
Chosroes—The Great Plague of 542—Peace with Persia—Baduila restores
the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy—His campaign against Belisarius—Two
sieges of Rome—Success and greatness of Baduila—Narses invades
Italy—Baduila slain at Taginae, 552—End of the Ostrogothic
kingdom—Narses defeats the Franks—Justinian attacks Southern
Spain—Third Persian War, 549-55—Justinian as Theologian—Belisarius
defeats the Huns—Later years of Justinian—His legal reforms.
The year 540 was the last of Justinian’s years of unbroken good fortune.
For the rest of his long life he was to experience many vicissitudes,
and see some of his dearest schemes frustrated, though, on the whole,
the dogged perseverance which was his most notable characteristic
brought him safely through to the end.
The first difficulty which was destined to trouble him, in the latter
half of his reign, was a financial one. He had now come to the end of
the hoarded wealth of Anastasius; the military budget of his increased
empire required more money, for Africa and Italy did not pay their way,
and now a new Persian war was upon his hands. [Sidenote: Justinian as
builder.] In addition, his magnificent court and his insatiable thirst
for building called for huge sums year after year. It is impossible to
exaggerate Justinian’s expenditure on bricks and mortar: not only did he
rebuild in his capital, on a more magnificent scale, all the public
edifices that had been burnt in the ‘Nika’ riot, but he filled every
corner of his empire, from newly-conquered Ravenna to the Armenian
frontier, with splendid forts, churches, monasteries, hospitals, and
aqueducts. Whenever a Byzantine ruin is found in the wilds of Syria or
Asia Minor it turns out, in one case out of every two, to be of
Justinian’s date. In the Balkan peninsula alone we learn to our surprise
that he erected more than 300 forts and castles to defend the line of
the Danube and the Haemus, the side of the empire which had been found
most open to attacks of the barbarian during the last century. The
building of his enormous cathedral of St. Sophia alone cost several
millions, an expenditure whose magnificent result quite justifies
itself, but one which must have seemed heartrending to the financiers
who had to find the money at a moment when the emperor was involved in
two desperate wars.
Justinian poured forth his treasures with unstinting hand in the arts
both of war and of peace. But to replenish his treasury—that jar of the
Danaides—he had to impose a crushing taxation on the empire. His finance
minister, John of Cappadocia, was the most unscrupulous of men, one who
never shrank from plying extortion of every kind upon the wretched
tax-payers: as long as he kept the exchequer full Justinian winked at
his iniquitous and often illegal proceedings. It was only when he
chanced to quarrel with the empress Theodora that John was finally
disgraced. [Sidenote: Ruinous finance of Justinian.] His successors were
less capable, but no less extortionate: ere ten years had passed the
Africans and Italians, groaning under the yoke of the Greek
_Logothetes_, were cursing their stars that ever they had aided
Belisarius to drive out the Arian Goth and Vandal. As Justinian’s reign
went on the state of matters grew worse and worse; for a crushing
taxation tends to drain the resources of the land, and at last renders
it unable to bear even a burden that would have once been light.
Historians recapitulate twenty new taxes that Justinian laid upon the
empire, yet at the end of his reign they were bringing in far less than
the old and simpler imposts of Anastasius and Justin had produced.
This ruinous draining of the vital power of the empire only began to be
seriously felt after 540, when, for the first time, Justinian was
compelled to wage war at once in East and West, and yet refused to
slacken from his building. The Gothic war—contrary to all probability
and expectation—was still destined to run on for thirteen years more;
the Persian lasted for sixteen, and, when they were over, the emperor
and the empire alike were but the shadow of their former selves: they
were unconquered, but drained of all their strength and marrow.
[Illustration:
THE PERSO-ROMAN FRONTIER UNDER JUSTINIAN.
]
We have already mentioned that the young king Chosroes of Persia,
stirred up by the embassy of Witiges, and dreading lest the power which
had subdued Carthage and Rome should ere long stretch out its hand to
Ctesiphon, had found a _casus belli_, and crossed the Mesopotamian
frontier. Some blood-feuds between Arab hordes respectively subject to
Persia and Constantinople, and a dispute about the suzerainty of some
tribes in the Armenian highlands formed a good enough excuse for
renewing the war at a moment when Justinian’s best general and 50,000 of
the flower of his troops were absent in Italy and Africa.
[Sidenote: Second Persian war, 540-545.] In the spring of 540, at the
very moment when Belisarius was reducing Ravenna, Chosroes marched up
the Euphrates, leaving the frontier fortresses of Daras and Edessa on
his flank, and launched a sudden attack on north Syria. He had been
expected not there but in Mesopotamia, and all preparations for defence
were out of gear. Before any resistance was organised Chosroes had
crossed the Euphrates, sacked Beroea, and ransomed Hierapolis for 2000.
lbs. of gold. But it was at Antioch, the third city of the Roman Empire,
and the seat of the Praetorian Prefect of the East that the Persian
monarch was aiming. It was more than two centuries and a half since the
city of the Orontes had seen a foreign foe, and its walls were old and
dilapidated. A garrison of 6000 men was thrown in, and the Blues and
Greens of the city armed themselves to guard the ramparts. [Sidenote:
Sack of Antioch, 540.] But there was no Roman army in the field to
protect the city from the approach of the Persian: Buzes, the general of
the East, refused to risk his small army in a general engagement, and
had retired no one knew whither. The siege of Antioch was short, for the
defence was ill-managed: the garrison cut its way out when the walls
were forced, but the town, with all its wealth, and a great number of
its inhabitants who had not found time to fly, became the prize of
Chosroes. The Persian plundered the churches, burnt the private houses,
and drove away a herd of captives, whom he took to his home, and
established in a new city near Ctesiphon, which he called
Chosroantiocheia.
The great king then ransomed the neighbouring cities of Chalcis and
Apamea, and recrossed the Euphrates into Mesopotamia. Here, where strong
and well-armed fortresses blocked his way, Chosroes found that he could
effect nothing; after looking at Edessa he found it too strong, and made
his way to Daras. To this town he laid siege, but was beaten off without
much difficulty, and then returned home for the winter (540).
The Persians were never destined to win again such successes as had
fallen to them in this the first year of the war. By the next spring
Justinian had reinforced the eastern frontier with all his disposable
troops, and the mighty Belisarius himself had arrived to take command of
the army of Mesopotamia. But it was not fated that the great king and
the great captain should ever measure themselves against each other.
Hearing that the frontier to the south was now well guarded, the Persian
had resolved to make a dash at a new point of the Roman line of defence.
While expected on the Euphrates he quietly marched north through the
Median and Iberian mountains, crossed many obscure passes, and appeared
on the Black Sea coast by the river Phasis. The Romans here held the
shore by their great castle of Petra, while the Lazi, the tribes of
inland Colchis, were Roman vassals. Chosroes overran the land,
constrained the Lazi to do him homage, and, after a short siege, took
Petra.
Meanwhile Belisarius, on finding the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia
delayed, had crossed the frontier in the far south, beaten a small
Persian force in the field, and ravaged Assyria from end to end, though
he could not take the great fortress of Nisibis. On hearing of this raid
Chosroes returned from Colchis with his main army, whereupon Belisarius
retired behind the ramparts of Daras. The campaign had not been
eventful, but the balance of gain lay on the side of the Persians, whose
frontier now touched the Black Sea.
Nor was the next year (542) destined to see any decisive fighting.
Belisarius had concentrated his army at Europus on the Euphrates and
waited to be attacked, but save one raid no attack came, though Chosroes
had brought the full force of his empire up to Nisibis. The Roman
chronicles ascribe his sluggishness to a fear of the reputation of
Belisarius, but another cause seems to have been more operative. The
great plague of 542 had just broken out in Persia, and its ravages were
probably the real cause of the retreat and disbanding of the army of
Chosroes, much as in 1348 the ‘black death’ caused English and French to
drop for a time their mutual hostilities.
This awful scourge merits a word of notice. It broke out in Egypt early
in the year, and spread like wildfire over Syria, the lands of the
Euphrates valley, and Asia Minor, thence making its way to
Constantinople and the West. It is impossible to make out its exact
nature, but we know that it was accompanied by ulcers, and by a horrible
swelling of the groin. [Sidenote: The Great Plague of 542.] Few whom it
struck down ever recovered, but of these few was Justinian himself, who
rose from his bed when the rumour of his death was already abroad and a
fight for the succession imminent. At Constantinople the plague raged
with such violence that 5000, and even 10,000 persons are said to have
died in a single day. The historian Procopius marvelled at its universal
spread. ‘A man might climb to the top of a hill, and it was there, or
retire to the depths of a cavern, but it was there also. It took no note
of north or south, Greek or Persian, washed or unwashed, winter or
summer: in all alike it was deadly.’ This awful scourge, which is
thought to have carried off a third of the population of the empire, was
not the least of the causes of that general decay which is found in the
later years of Justinian’s reign. It swept away tax-payers, brought
commerce to a standstill, and seems to have left the emperor himself an
old man before his time.
The plague then sufficiently accounts for the stagnation of the war in
542. Perhaps we may also allow something for the personal troubles of
Belisarius, who, in the previous winter, had fallen on evil times. He
had detected his intriguing wife Antonina in unfaithfulness, and, for
throwing her into a dungeon, and kidnapping her paramour, had incurred
the wrath of Theodora, which seriously handicapped him in the rest of
his career, so great was her influence with her imperial spouse. He was
no longer supported from Constantinople as he had once been, and was at
last compelled to disarm Theodora’s displeasure by liberating his wife.
The imperial ill-humour may, perhaps, have stinted his resources during
the summer that followed his domestic misfortune.
In 543, the plague having somewhat abated, Chosroes once more assumed
the offensive, and moved towards Roman Armenia, following the valley of
the upper Euphrates; but a fresh outbreak of pestilence forced him to
turn back, and the Romans were consequently enabled to invade
Persarmenia. Belisarius was not with them, and they suffered a serious
defeat from an inferior force, and returned with discredit to their old
cantonments. The great general had been recalled with ignominy to
Constantinople. Justinian had heard that, when the news of his supposed
death had reached the army of the Euphrates, Belisarius had shown some
signs of arranging for a military _pronunciamento_. He did not make this
his pretext for recall, but dwelt on some unsettled charges of money
lost from the Vandal and Gothic treasures, for which there was some
foundation, for Belisarius, like Marlborough, had an unhappy taste for
hoarding. For some months the general was in disgrace: his body-guard
was dispersed—7000 men was too large a _comitatus_ for even the most
loyal of men—and much of his wealth confiscated, but, on his consenting
to be reconciled to his wife, and to depart for Italy, the empress
Theodora consented to forget her displeasure and allow Justinian to give
Belisarius the charge of a new war (543).
But, before relating the doings of the humbled and heartbroken
Belisarius in the West, we must finish the Persian war. In 544 Chosroes,
freed alike from the plague and from the fear of Belisarius, invaded
Mesopotamia and laid siege to its capital Edessa. After a siege of many
months, in which the gallant garrison beat off every effort both of open
force and of military engineerings,—mounds, mines, rams, and towers
availed nothing against them,—Chosroes withdrew humbled to Nisibis, and
began to negotiate for a truce; it was successfully made on the terms
that the Persians should retain the homage of their conquests in
Colchis, and receive 2000 lbs. of gold on evacuating their other
conquests—which were of small value. On the all-important Mesopotamian
frontier the great fortresses had held good, and there was nothing of
importance for the king to restore. This truce was concluded for five
years, at the end of which the war was renewed (545-550).
Meanwhile all Italy was once more aflame with war. After Ravenna
surrendered, and Witiges was led captive to Byzantium, all the Gothic
fortresses surrendered save two, Verona and Pavia, the only towns of
northern Italy in which the Teutonic element seems to have outnumbered
the Roman. [Sidenote: Hildibad, king of the Goths, 540-41.] The remnant
of the Ostrogoths in Pavia, though they did not number 2000 men, took
the bold step of proclaiming a new king, a warrior named Hildibad, who
was the nephew of Theudis, king of Spain, and who promised his uncle’s
help to his followers. Hildibad’s resistance might have been crushed if
he had been promptly attacked, but the Roman commanders were occupied in
taking over the towns that made no resistance, and in quelling some
disorders among their own men. After Belisarius left, there were five
generals in the peninsula of whom none was trusted with supreme
authority over the rest. Each left to another the task of treading out
the last sparks of Gothic resistance, and gradually Hildibad grew
stronger as the scattered remnants of the army of Witiges made their way
to his camp. When he recovered most of Venetia, the Romans thought him
worthy of notice, but he won a battle near Treviso over the army that
came against him. The Italians were now far from showing the devotion to
the imperial cause that they had once displayed. The Logothetes from
Constantinople were harassing them with new imposts, and most especially
with the preposterous attempt to gather the arrears of taxation for the
years during which the war had raged, a time at which the emperor had,
as a matter of fact, no firm hold on the country.
In 541 Hildibad was murdered by a private enemy ere yet he had succeeded
in freeing all the land north of the Po. But this hero of the darkest
hour, who had saved the Goths from extinction when salvation seemed
impossible, found a still worthier successor. After a few months, during
which a certain Rugian, named Eraric, ruled at Pavia, Hildibad’s nephew,
Baduila, was raised on the shield and saluted as king. Baduila[12] was,
after Theodoric, the greatest of all the Goths of East or West: he
showed a moral elevation, a single-hearted purity of purpose, a
chivalrous courtesy, a justice and piety worthy of the best of the
knights of the Middle Ages. As a warrior his feats were astonishing: he
out-generalled even the great Belisarius himself. The only stain on his
character, during eleven years of rule, are one or two unjustifiable
executions of prisoners of war who had roused his wrath, and caused the
old Gothic fury to blaze forth.
Footnote 12:
This, as his coins show, was his real name, but the Constantinopolitan
historians call him Totila.
From the first moment of his accession Baduila went forth conquering and
to conquer. [Sidenote: Baduila, king of the Goths, 541-53.] The Roman
generals frightened by his first successes were at last induced to
combine: he foiled them at Verona, followed them across the Po, and
inflicted on them at Faenza in Æmilia a decisive defeat in the open
field, though they had 12,000 men to his 5000. Then crossing the
Apennines he won all Tuscany by a second battle on the Mugello near
Florence. By these two victories all Italy north of Rome, save the great
fortresses, fell into his hands: Rome and Ravenna, with Piacenza in the
valley of the Po, and Ancona and Perugia in the centre, were left as
isolated garrisons, rising above the returning tide of Gothic conquest.
All the surviving Goths had rallied under Baduila’s banner, and many of
the imperial mercenaries of Teutonic blood took service with him when
the cities which they garrisoned were subdued. After conquering Tuscany
and Picenum, Baduila left Rome to itself for a space—the memories of its
last siege were too discouraging—and spent the year 542 in overrunning
Campania and Apulia. The Italians kept apathetically quiet, while the
imperial garrisons were few and scattered. In six months south Italy was
once more Gothic up to the gates of Otranto, Reggio, and Naples. The
siege of the last-named town was Baduila’s first exercise in
poliorcetics: the place was very gallantly defended, and only
surrendered when famine had done its work, and after an armament sent
from Constantinople to its relief had been shattered by a storm almost
in sight of the walls, along the rocks of Capri and Sorrento. In spite
of this desperate resistance, it was noted with surprise that Baduila
treated both garrison and people with kindness, sending the one away
unharmed, and preserving the other from plunder. It was at the time of
the fall of Naples that an event occurred which was long remembered as a
token of the justice of Baduila. A Gothic warrior had violated the
daughter of a Calabrian: the king cast the man into bonds and ordered
his death. But many of the Goths besought him not to slay a brave
warrior for such an offence. Baduila heard them out, and replied that
they must choose that day whether they preferred to save one man’s life,
or to save the whole Gothic nation. At the beginning of the war they
would remember how they had great hosts, famous generals, vast treasure,
splendid arms, and all the castles of Italy. But under king Theodahat, a
man who loved gold better than justice, they had so moved God’s anger by
their unrighteous lives that everything had been taken from them. But
the divine grace had given the Goths one more chance of working out
their salvation: God had opened a new account with them, and so must
they do with him, by following justice and righteousness. The ravisher
must die, and as to being a brave warrior, they should remember that the
cruel and unjust were never finally successful in war, for as was a
man’s life, such was his fortune in battle. The officers caught their
sovereign’s meaning and withdrew, and the criminal was duly executed.
In 542, the year of the plague, Justinian had been able to do little for
Italy, but in that which followed, when he heard that Naples had fallen,
he determined to send the newly-pardoned Belisarius back to the scene of
his former glories. Denied the services of his own body-guard the great
general recruited 4000 raw troops in Thrace, and made ready to return.
Baduila meanwhile was besieging Otranto, and clearing Apulia of the
Imperialists.
In the next year the Gothic king and the Roman general came for the
first time into contact; contrary to expectation it was not Belisarius
who had the better of the struggle: broken in spirit, badly served by
his raw recruits, and by the demoralised army of Italy, and unaided by
Justinian, who was straining every nerve to keep up the Persian War, he
accomplished little or nothing. [Sidenote: Campaign of Belisarius and
Baduila.] Based on the impregnable fortress of Ravenna he was able to
seize Pesaro, and to relieve the garrisons of Osimo and of Otranto, but
that was all. Baduila ravaged Italy unmolested, and began to make
preparations for the siege of Rome: if he was to be checked—as
Belisarius wrote to his master—more men and money to pay them were
urgently needed.
Justinian could not, or would not, send either men or money in adequate
quantity, and Baduila was able to invest Rome. Unlike Witiges, he
succeeded in barring all the roads, and in blocking the Tiber by a boom
of spars. Famine was soon within the walls, but the Goths made no
attempt at a storm, leaving hunger to do its work. Bessas, the governor
of Rome, sought for aid from all sides, and corn ships were sent him
from Sicily, but Baduila seized them all as they were tacking up the
Tiber channel. Then Belisarius came round to Portus, at the mouth of the
river, with all the men he could muster, a very few thousands, and
endeavoured to force his way to Rome by breaking Baduila’s boom, and
bringing his lighter war-vessels up the Tiber. He left his wife, his
stores, and his reserves at Portus, sailed up the river, and succeeded,
after a hot engagement, in burning the towers which guarded the boom.
But, in the moment of success, news came to him that the Goths were
attacking Portus in his rear, and that his wife and camp were in danger.
He turned back, found that the fighting at Portus was only an
insignificant skirmish brought on by the rashness of the officer in
command there, and so missed his chance of forcing the boom.
Disappointment, or the malarial fever of the marshy Tiber-mouth, laid
him on a bed of sickness next day, and, before he was recovered, Rome
had fallen. Some of the famished garrison threw open the Asinarian Gate
at midnight, and admitted the Goths, after the siege had lasted thirteen
months (545-546). The blame of the fall of the city rested mainly on the
governor Bessas, who doled out his stores with a sparing hand to
soldiery and people alike, while he was secretly selling the corn at
exorbitant prices to the richer citizens. The troops were starving, yet
vast quantities of provisions were found concealed in the general’s
praetorium.
Baduila gave up the plunder of the city to his long-tried troops, but
sternly prohibited murder, rape, or violence. [Sidenote: Baduila takes
Rome, 546.] By the confession of his enemies themselves only twenty-six
Romans lost their lives, though 20,000 war-worn troops had poured into
the city at midnight, wild for plunder and revenge. The king made the
churches into sanctuaries, and the multitudes that gathered in them
suffered no harm.
Baduila looked upon Rome as the chief lair of his enemies, the home of a
faithless people, and the snare of the Goths. He resolved neither to
make it his capital nor to garrison it, but to make a desert of it. The
people were driven out, the gates burnt, and great breaches were made
all round the walls of Aurelian. Then he harangued his army, bidding
them remember how, in the days of Witiges, 7000 Imperialists had robbed
of power and wealth and liberty 100,000 rich and well-armed Goths. But
now that the Goths were become poor, and few, and war-worn, they had
discomfited more than 20,000 Greeks. The reason was that in the old days
they had angered God by their pride and evil-living; now they were
humbled and chastened in spirit, and therefore they were victorious. For
the future they must remember that if just they would have God with
them; but, if they fell back into their former ways, the hand of Heaven
would work their downfall.
This done, he drew off with his army, leaving Rome desolate, and without
a living soul within its walls. For forty days the imperial city was
given up to the wolf and the owl, but at last Belisarius, who still lay
at Portus with his small army, marched within the walls, hurriedly
barricaded the breaches and the gateless portals, and prepared to hold
Rome for a third siege. The Goths had been too slack in casting down the
walls, and the hasty repairs of Belisarius made the city once more
tenable against any _coup-de-main_. [Sidenote: Belisarius recovers
Rome.] In great disgust Baduila rushed back from Campania, and tried to
force the barricades. After three assaults he recognised that they were
too strong, and retired to central Italy, leaving, however, a strong
corps of observation at Tivoli, to keep Belisarius from issuing out of
the city for further operations.
For two years more Belisarius and Baduila fought up and down the
peninsula, but the Goth kept the superiority; though sometimes foiled,
he had, on the whole, the advantage. Belisarius, like Hannibal during
the later years of his sojourn in Italy, flitted from point to point
with his small army, looking for opportunities to strike a blow, but
seldom finding them. Justinian, though now freed from the Persian War,
sent no adequate supplies or reinforcements, and seemed content that his
general should hold no more than Rome and Ravenna. In 548 Belisarius was
recalled on his own or his wife’s request. He felt that he could do no
more with his inadequate resources, he had outlived the desire of glory,
and his old age was at hand. Justinian received him with kindness, made
him _magister militum_ and chief of the Imperial Guard, and bade him
live in peace in Constantinople.
The sole check on Baduila was now removed, and, in the four years that
followed, the gallant Goth cleared the whole country, save Ravenna, of
the presence of the imperialist soldiery. He retook Rome in 549, and
captured or slew the whole garrison. This time, instead of dismantling
the city, he determined to make it his capital. [Sidenote: Successes of
Baduila.] He reorganised the Senate, bade the palace be repaired, and
celebrated games in the circus as his great predecessor, Theodoric, had
done. It would seem that he now felt himself so strong that he feared no
return of the imperialist armies, and lost his old dread of walled
towns. He sent embassies to Justinian, bidding the emperor recognise
accomplished facts, and return to the old relations that had subsisted
between the Goths and the emperor in the happy days of Anastasius and
Theodoric. But the stern ruler of the East was immovable. He quietly
persisted in the war, and merely began to collect once more an army for
the invasion of Italy. The first expedition he placed under count
Germanus, his own nephew, who was looked upon as the destined heir to
the empire. But a sudden invasion of Macedonia by the Slavs drew aside
Germanus to Thessalonica. He achieved a success over the invaders, but
died soon after, and his army never crossed the Adriatic. Baduila
meanwhile was in full possession of Italy. When he found that the
armament of Germanus had dispersed, he built a fleet, conquered
Sardinia, and then crossed into Sicily, and ravaged that island, against
whose people the Goths bore an especial grudge for their rebellion and
eager reception of Belisarius fifteen years before.
It was not till 552 that Baduila was forced to fight on the defensive
once more, and protect Italy from the last of the armies of Justinian.
[Sidenote: Narses invades Italy, 552.] This time the emperor had chosen
a strange commander-in-chief, the eunuch Narses, his chamberlain, or
_praepositus sacri cubiculi_, who had once before been seen in Italy, in
538, when he had intrigued against Belisarius. Narses was known as
clever, pushing, and persistent, but his choice as a general-in-chief
was one of those strange appointments of Justinian’s which looked like
freaks of folly, but turned out to have been guided by the deepest
knowledge of character. Being better trusted than Belisarius, he was
better equipped for war. Besides a large detachment of the regular
troops of the East, he was allowed to hire no less than 10,000 German
auxiliaries from the Danube—Herules, Lombards, and Gepidae. His whole
force must have been more than 20,000 strong, thrice the size of the
army that had followed Belisarius. Narses had resolved to turn the head
of the Adriatic and advance through Venetia, but, while he was executing
this long march, he sent a fleet to threaten the east coast of Italy.
Off Ancona his armada met and defeated the Gothic ships, which Baduila
had brought round to watch the Adriatic. This engagement seems to have
induced the Goths to expect a Roman landing in Picenum, and only a small
portion of Baduila’s army was sent into Venetia, under count Teia, to
watch the passes of the Carnic Alps. Narses succeeded in eluding this
force by hugging the sea-coast, and using his ships to ferry him over
the Po-mouth. He reached Ravenna without striking a blow, and there was
joined by such Roman troops as were already in Italy.
Then, neglecting all the Gothic fortresses, he marched straight on Rome:
not by the Flaminian Way, the great road between north and south—for
that was held by the Goths—but by following a minor pass up the valley
of the river Sena. He had just crossed the Apennines when Baduila met
him at Taginae, in Umbria, under the very shadow of the mountains. The
Gothic king had called up all his forces from central Italy, and was
joined by Teia and the northern army on the eve of the fight, but he was
still inferior in numbers to the Imperialists. Narses showed himself an
able general. Knowing that the Goths mainly trusted to the wild rush of
their heavy cavalry, he dismounted all his barbarian auxiliaries, and
formed them in a serried mass in his centre; 8000 Roman archers flanked
them, and 1500 chosen Roman cavalry were held in reserve on his left
wing. Baduila bade his men use the lance alone, and himself led the
horsemen of his _comitatus_ in a gallant charge on the enemy’s centre.
[Sidenote: Battle of Taginae.] From noon till dusk the Gothic knights
dashed again and again at the phalanx in the middle of the Roman line:
they could not break it, and meanwhile they were shot down in hundreds
by the archers on the wings. The battle, in fact, was much like the
English fight at Cressy; at both the archery and dismounted horsemen
beat back the unsupported cavalry of the assailant. At last, towards
dusk, the wrecks of the Gothic cavalry reeled back in disorder upon
their infantry, and Narses bade the 1500 cuirassiers of his reserve to
strike at the hostile flank.
All was over with the Goths. Their line broke and fled, their gallant
king was mortally wounded in the pursuit, and darkness alone saved the
army from annihilation. So perished Baduila, last Ostrogothic king of
Italy, and ‘first of the Knights of the Middle Ages,’ as he has been not
inaptly styled. There was still, however, fighting to be done. The
warriors who had escaped from Taginae proclaimed count Teia king, and
though most of the Italian towns accepted the death of Baduila as ending
the war, a few still held out. Rome, manned by an inadequate garrison,
was stormed with ease, and its keys sent, now for the third time, to
Justinian. King Teia, after ranging up and down the land in a vain
attempt to keep up the war, was brought to bay in Campania. His little
army, penned up in the hills above Sorrento, made a sudden dash to catch
the eunuch-general unprepared. [Sidenote: The Goths leave Italy, 553.]
But Narses was ready for them, and on the banks of the Sarno the last of
the Goths were overwhelmed with numbers, and saw their king slain in the
forefront of the battle. Then the poor remnants of the rulers of Italy
sent to offer submission. They would leave the peninsula, with bag and
baggage, wife and child, and betake themselves beyond the Alps, if only
a free passage were granted to them. So, in the autumn of 553, the few
remaining Gothic garrisons laid down their arms, gathered together, and
disappeared over the passes of the Alps into the northern darkness. We
have no tidings of the fate of these last survivors of the great
Ostrogothic race. Whether they became the vassals of the Frank, or
mingled with the Bavarians, or sought their kinsmen, the Visigoths of
Spain, no man can tell.
So perished the Gothic kingdom, which had been erected by the genius of
Theodoric, by the same fate which had smitten the pirate-realm of the
Vandals seventeen years before. Both fell because the ruling race was
too small to hold down the vast territory that it had overrun, unless it
could combine frankly and freely with the conquered Roman population.
[Sidenote: Causes of Gothic disasters.] But the fatal bar of Arianism
lay in each case between masters and servants, and when the orthodox
armies of Constantinople appeared, nothing could restrain the Africans
and Italians from opening their gates to the invader. The Ostrogoths had
been wise and tolerant, the Vandals cruel and persecuting, but the end
was the same in each kingdom. It was only in the measure of the
resistance that the difference between Goth and Vandal appeared. Sunk in
coarse luxury, and enervated by the African sun, the Vandals fell in one
year before a single army. The Ostrogoths, the noblest of the Teutons,
made a splendid fight for seventeen years, beat off the great Belisarius
himself, and only succumbed because the incessant fighting had drained
off the whole manhood of the tribe. If Baduila could have mustered at
Taginae the 100,000 men that Witiges had once led against Rome, he would
never have been beaten. It is one of the saddest scenes in history when
we see the well-ordered realm of Theodoric vanish away, and Italy is
left an unpeopled desert, to be disputed between the savage Lombard, the
faithless Frank, and the exarchs of distant Byzantium.
The conquest of Italy by Narses was destined to have one further episode
ere it was yet complete. When Teia’s fate was known, the ministers of
the young Frankish king Theudebald of Metz launched a great army into
the peninsula, under two Suabian dukes Chlothar and Buccelin. Their
hosts pressed down the peninsula, following the one the western coast,
the other the eastern. But Chlothar’s army was destroyed by famine and
pestilence, and Buccelin’s was annihilated at Casilinum, in Campania, by
Narses. Against the mass of Frankish foot-soldiers, with spear and
battle-axe, Narses employed the same tactics as against the Gothic
horse. A solid centre of dismounted Teutons, Lombards, and Heruli, kept
the Frankish column in check, while wings of Roman archers and
cuirassiers swung round the flanks of the invader, enveloped him, and
destroyed him. Of 40,000 of Buccelin’s men it is said that not a hundred
escaped, so far worse did they fare than the Goths had fared at Taginae
in the previous year. [Sidenote: Desolation in Italy.] The Frankish
ravages put the last finishing touch to the misery of Italy. Alike in
the northern plain, in Picenum and Æmilia, and in the neighbourhood of
Rome, the whole population had disappeared. Justinian and Narses had
restored peace, but it was the best example ever seen of the adage,
_solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant_.
To these same years belongs the story of Justinian’s invasion of
southern Spain, an episode which will be found narrated at full length
in the chapter dealing with the Visigoths.
We must now turn back to Justinian’s fortunes in the East. It will be
remembered that his Second Persian War had been ended by a five years’
truce in 545, after the great plague and gallant defence of Edessa. The
five years of peace that followed were not very notable in the history
of the empire save for one important event. Theodora, the colleague and
other self of Justinian, died of cancer in 548, and with her death much
of her husband’s vigour, if not of his persistence, seems to have
vanished. Deprived of his councillor and helpmate the emperor became
gloomy and morbid. His midnight studies took the direction of theology
alone, and he launched out into a futile ecclesiastical controversy on
‘The Three Chapters.’ This was a wholly unnecessary dispute as to
whether three documents of three patristic writers, Theodore, Ibas, and
Theodoret—all long dead—contained heretical matter or not. But it
succeeded in convulsing the whole Eastern Church, and led Justinian into
a quarrel with the Roman see, which refused to condemn the ‘Three
Chapters.’ He seized Pope Vigilius, and brought him to Constantinople,
to compel him to fall in with his own views. [Sidenote: Justinian and
Pope Vigilius.] After detaining the unfortunate pontiff in the East for
six years, and even dragging him from sanctuary and imprisoning him in
an island, the emperor succeeded in inducing him to declare that
Theodore and the two other theologians had indeed fallen into grievous
heresy (A.D. 553). Justinian was triumphant, but Vigilius found that he
had thereby introduced schism into Italy and Africa, where many bishops
stood by the ‘Three Chapters.’ An African council went so far as to
excommunicate Vigilius, and for a century some of the north Italian
churches were out of communion with the Roman see.
But long ere Vigilius had yielded Justinian was once more at war with
Persia. When the five years’ truce ran out at the end of 549, the
imperial troops advanced to recover the suzerainty of Colchis, the one
point that had been yielded to Chosroes in the treaty of 545. But
strangely enough, while the war was renewed on the Black Sea, it did not
recommence on the Mesopotamian frontier. [Sidenote: Third Persian War,
549-55.] Both parties concurred to renew the truce for everything except
Colchis, and on that limited arena alone the hostilities proceeded. The
struggle recalls, in this curious feature, the way in which the French
and English fought in India in the eighteenth century, while in Europe
they were at peace. The conditions of the war were favourable to
Justinian, whose armies had free access by sea to the Colchian coast,
while the Persians had to reach it by the wild passes over the Armenian
and Iberian mountains. The dreary but very bloody Colchic or Lazic war
went on for six years, draining alike the Persian and the imperial
treasuries; but at last the Romans had the better in the struggle,
secured the homage of the Lazic king, and drove the Persians far back
into the interior (555). Finally, after interminable negotiations
Chosroes made peace, surrendering his claim on Colchis in consideration
of an indemnity of 30,000 solidi (£18,000) per annum.
This was the last of Justinian’s great wars; but the end of his reign
was far from being peaceful or prosperous. It was especially noteworthy
for the repeated inroads of the Huns and Slavs into the Balkan
peninsula. The greatest raid was in 558, when the Cotrigur Huns under
their khan Zabergan eluded the garrisons on the Danube, crossed the
Balkans, and rode at large over the whole of Thrace. [Sidenote:
Belisarius defeats the Huns.] One body of 4000 horse pushed their
incursions up to the very gates of Constantinople, and so alarmed
Justinian that he bade the aged Belisarius to buckle on his arms once
more, and save the capital. The military resources of the empire were so
scattered that Belisarius could only count on 300 of his own veterans,
on the ‘Scholarian Guards’[13] and a levy of half-armed Thracian
rustics. By skilfully posting this small force, and inducing the Huns to
attack his line exactly where it was strongest, he routed the
barbarians, and returned in triumph from this his last campaign.
Footnote 13:
A body of local troops raised in the city, who formed part of the
imperial guard.
After this final feat of the old general it is sad to learn that his
master had not even yet learned to trust him. Four years later there was
a futile conspiracy against Justinian, and Belisarius was accused of
having known of it. He was disgraced, and put under ward for eight
months, before the emperor convinced himself that the charge was false.
Restored at last to favour, he lived two years more in possession of his
riches and honours,[14] and died in March 565. His thankless master
followed him to the grave before the end of the same year. On the 11th
of December 565, Justinian, after living more than seventy years, and
reigning for thirty-eight, descended to the tomb.
Footnote 14:
It is now fully recognised, as Finlay and Bury have proved, that there
is no truth in the legend that Belisarius was blinded, and became a
beggar crying to the people, _Date obolum Belisario_.
We have spoken of Justinian’s wars, of his buildings, of his financial
policy, of his ecclesiastical controversies. But for none of these is he
so well remembered as for his activity in yet another sphere. [Sidenote:
Legal reforms of Justinian.] It is by his great work of codifying the
Roman law, and leaving it in a complete and orderly form as a heritage
to the jurists of the modern world that he earned his greatest title to
immortality. This was an achievement of the first half of his reign,
carried out with the aid of the best lawyers of Constantinople, headed
by Tribonian, the able but greedy quaestor against whom the rioters in
the ‘Nika’ sedition had raged so furiously.
Roman law had hitherto consisted of two elements—the constitutions and
edicts of the emperors, and the decisions of the great lawyers of the
past. Both these elements were somewhat chaotic. Five centuries of
imperial edicts overruled and contradicted each other in the most
hopeless confusion; Pagan and Christian ideas were intermixed in them,
many had gone completely out of date, and new conditions of society had
made others impossible to work. Nor were the _responsa prudentum_ or
decisions of the ancient jurisconsults any less chaotic; in modern
England the difficulties of ‘case made law,’ as it has been happily
called, are perplexing enough to enable us to understand the troubles of
a Constantinopolitan judge, confronted with a dozen precedents of
contradictory import.
Justinian removed all this confusion by producing three great works. His
_Code_ collected the imperial constitutions into a manageable shape,
striking out all the obsolete edicts, and bringing the rest up to the
requirements of a Christian state of the sixth century. His _Digest_ or
_Pandects_ did the same for the decisions of the ancient lawyers, laying
down the balance of authority, and specifying the precedents which were
to be accepted. Lastly, the _Institutes_ gave a general sketch of Roman
law in the form of a commentary on its principles for the use of
students. These volumes were destined to be the foundation of all
systematic jurisprudence in modern Europe; their compilation was the
last, and not the least, of the works of the ancient Roman spirit of law
and order, incarnate in the last great emperor of Roman speech, for none
of Justinian’s successors could say, as could he himself, that Latin was
his native tongue. After-ages remembered him, above all things, as the
compiler of the _Code_, and it was as its framer that he is set by Dante
in one of the starry thrones of the Christian paradise.
In spite of all his great achievements it cannot be disputed that
Justinian left the empire weaker than he found it. Its territorial
expansion in Italy, Africa, and Spain did not compensate for the
exhaustion of the Eastern provinces. By his ruthless taxation Justinian
had drained off their vital energies, and left them poorer and weaker
than they had ever been before. Even his armies felt the reaction; at
the end of his reign we read that they were sinking both in numbers and
efficiency; the new and extended frontiers were more than they could
guard, and the old race of generals who had followed Belisarius was
dead. Justinian himself is said to have neglected their pay and
maintenance, while he set his aged brains to wrestle with the problem of
the ‘Three Chapters’ or the heresy of Aphthartodocetism. Like Louis XIV.
of France, whom he resembles in many other respects, Justinian closed a
reign of unparalleled magnificence as a gloomy pietist, whose despotism
drained and crushed a people who had grown to abhor his very name.
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