Two years after, Alaric, constantly provoked to vengeance by the
perfidies of the Romans, presented himself again before the Capitol,
and besieged Rome very closely. The siege was long, but very few
circumstances relating to it have been preserved. On the 24th of
August, the Gothic prince entered the city, of which some traitors
had opened the gates to him during the night. Rome was sacked by the
furious soldiery; its wealth, its valuable furniture, its public
edifices, its temples, its private houses, became the prey of the
flames. The blood of the citizens inundated the streets and public
places; the women were dishonoured, and then immolated upon the bodies
of their slaughtered husbands and fathers; children were destroyed upon
the bosoms of their mothers. Heaven seemed to arm itself in concert
with the Goths to punish Rome: lightning reduced to dust what the
flames had spared.
The Goths, however, respected the churches; these holy places were
an inviolable asylum for all who sought refuge in them. An officer
having entered a house which served as a depôt for the church of St.
Peter, and finding nobody in it but a woman advanced in age, asked her
if she had any gold or silver. “I have a great deal,” she replied;
“I will place it before your eyes.” At the same time, she displayed
a great number of precious vases. “They belong to St. Peter,” said
she; “carry away, if you dare, these sacred riches; I cannot prevent
you. I abandon them to you; but you must render an account of them
to him who is the master of them.” The barbarian did not dare to lay
an impious hand upon this deposit, and sent to ask the king’s orders
relative to them. Alaric commanded all the vases to be taken to the
basilica of the church of St. Peter; and that that woman, with all the
Christians who would join her, should be conducted thither likewise.
It was a spectacle as surprising as it was magnificent, to see a long
train of soldiers, who, holding in one hand their naked swords, and
supporting with the other the precious vases they bore on their heads,
marched with a respectful countenance, and as if in triumph, amidst the
greatest riot and disorder.
The Christian women signalized their courage in a most striking manner
on this melancholy day. A widow, respectable from her age and birth,
and who had lived in retirement with an only daughter, whom she brought
up in a life of piety, was assailed by a troop of soldiers, who, in a
threatening manner, demanded her gold. “I have given it to the poor,”
replied she. The angry barbarians rewarded her answer with blows.
Insensible to pain, she only implored them not to separate her from her
companion, whose beauty she feared might expose her to insults more
cruel than death itself. Her appeal was so touching, that the Gothic
soldiers conducted them both safely to the basilica of St. Paul.
A young officer, struck with the beauty of a Roman lady, after having
made every effort in vain to induce her to comply with his wishes, drew
his sword, and pretending that he would cut off her head, inflicted a
slight wound, in the hope that she would be overcome by the fear of
death; but this noble woman, so far from being terrified at the sight
of her own blood, presenting her neck to her enemy, exclaimed,--“Strike
again, and strike better!” The sword fell from the hand of the
barbarian; he conducted his captive to the church of St. Peter, and
commanded the guards to give her up to nobody but her husband. Thus
Rome, 1,163 years after its foundation, lost in a single day that
splendour which had dazzled the world. It was not, however, destroyed,
and was soon repeopled again; but from that period of humiliation, this
queen of cities and of the world became the sport and the prey of the
barbarians who sacked it in turn.
After the taking of Naples in 538, Belisarius shut himself up in Rome,
and prepared to sustain a siege, if Vitiges would undertake to attack
him. The new monarch, at the head of a hundred and fifty thousand men,
marched towards the capital of Italy, asking of every one he fell in
with on his route, whether Belisarius were still in Rome. “Prince,
be satisfied on that point,” replied a priest; “the only part of the
military art Belisarius is ignorant of, is flight.” This general had
constructed a fort upon a bridge, at a mile from Rome, and had provided
it with a sufficient garrison; but these base cowards, seized with fear
at the approach of the Goths, took to flight, and dispersed themselves
over the Campania. The next day, at dawn, Vitiges crossed the bridge
with a great part of his army. As he advanced, he met Belisarius, who,
at the head of a thousand horse, had come to reconnoitre; his surprise
was excessive at seeing the enemy; but without being daunted by their
numbers, he halted, and received them at the head of his little troop.
Here the valour and exploits of Belisarius approach the marvellous:
in the hottest of the _mêlée_, the brave leader of the Romans was
recognised by some deserters, who cried out from several quarters at
once: “At the bay horse, comrades!--aim at the bay horse!” Assailed on
all sides, he became a mark for every arrow. Inflamed with a generous
courage, he drove off some, overthrew others, and cut down all that
impeded his passage. The Romans, seeing the danger of their general,
flew to his aid, surrounded him, warded off every blow directed against
him, and made him a rampart of their bucklers and their bodies. The
terrified Goths turned bridle, and were pursued to their camp; the
rest of the army, however, stopped the career of the conquerors, and
forced them to fly in their turn to a neighbouring height, where they
rallied. The combat was then renewed; and the Romans, too inferior in
numbers, would scarcely have effected a retreat, but for the heroic
valour of an officer named Valentinus. This new Cocles alone withstood
the Gothic cavalry, and gave time to his comrades to regain the city;
but the inhabitants shut the gates against them. In vain Belisarius
shouted his name, and pressed to be admitted; the inhabitants were
persuaded that he had perished in the fight, and could not otherwise
recognise his countenance, from the blood and dust which disfigured
it; they therefore paid no regard to his orders. In this extremity,
Belisarius re-animated his little band, and turned with fury upon the
enemy, who were close at his heels. The Goths, imagining that he was at
the head of fresh troops from the city, stopped their pursuit, turned
their horses’ heads, and regained their camp. Belisarius re-entered
the city in triumph, where he was received with transports of the most
lively joy. Rome believed itself from that time safe from all reverses,
beneath the ægis of this intrepid general. In this combat the Goths
lost the _élite_ of their cavalry.
On the eighteenth day of the siege, at sunrise, the Goths, led on
by Vitiges, marched towards the gate Salaria. At the sight of their
machines, Belisarius broke into a loud laugh, whilst the inhabitants
were frozen with fear. The Goths had reached the bank of the ditch,
when the Roman general, seizing a bow, took aim at a Gothic commander
covered with a cuirass, and pierced him quite through the neck. This
act was highly applauded by his troops, whose triumph was doubled by
a second aim as fortunate as the first. Belisarius then commanded
his soldiers to make a general discharge at the oxen which drew the
machines. In an instant they were covered and transpierced with an iron
shower. The astonished and discomfited Goths were forced to terminate
their attack.
Although the attempts of Vitiges seemed generally to fail, he was on
the point of taking Rome, to the north of the mole or tomb of Adrian,
since called the castle of St. Angelo. It was necessary for the Goths
to possess themselves of this place, to cross the Tiber. In spite of
the arrows of the Romans, they had applied their ladders and begun
to ascend, when the defenders of the mole bethought themselves of
breaking off the numerous marble statues with which this monument was
ornamented, and rolled the fragments upon the heads of the besiegers,
who, beaten from their ladders by these enormous masses, were
constrained to abandon their enterprise.
The next day, Belisarius dismissed all useless mouths from the city;
he enrolled a great number of artisans; he changed the locks and bolts
of the city gates twice a month; and caused instruments to be played
upon the walls during the night. A Goth, remarkable for his height
and famous for his exploits, covered with his cuirass, and with his
helmet on his head, advanced from the ranks opposite the gate Salaria,
and setting his back against a tree, kept up a continuous discharge
of arrows at the battlements. An immense javelin, launched from a
ballist, pierced him through cuirass, body and all, and penetrating
half its length into the tree, nailed this redoubtable warrior to it.
Although we are arrived at a well-authenticated period of history,
we must confess the following account trenches upon the marvellous:
but, as we know truth is sometimes more wonderful than fiction, we do
not hesitate to repeat it. A Massagete horseman named Chorsamantes,
one of Belisarius’s guards, accompanied by a few Romans, was pursuing
a body of sixty horse on the plains of Nero. His companions having
turned rein, in order not to approach too near to the enemy’s camp,
he continued the pursuit alone. The Goths, seeing him thus deserted,
turned round upon him: he killed the boldest of them, charged the
others, and put them to flight. Chorsamantes pursued them to their
intrenchments, and, more fortunate than prudent, he regained Rome in
safety, and was received with loud acclamations. Some time after,
having been wounded in a rencontre, he swore to avenge himself, and
kept his word. He went out alone, and made his way to the camp of the
Goths. They took him for a deserter; but when they saw him shooting
at them, twenty horsemen came out for the purpose of cutting him in
pieces. He at first met them with the greatest audacity, and even
checked them; but soon, environed on all parts, furious at the aspect
of peril, and always the more redoubtable from the numbers of his
enemies, he fell, covered with wounds, upon a heap of men and horses he
had slain.
In a severe combat which was afterwards fought, the Goths were repulsed
with loss. Rutilus, a Roman officer, pierced by a dart, which was
half-buried in his head, as if insensible to the pain, continued the
pursuit of the enemy. He died the moment the dart was extracted.
Another officer, named Azzes, returned from a charge with an arrow
sticking close to his right eye. A skilful leech, named Theoclistes,
cured him. Tragàn, the commander of a body of troops, whilst
endeavouring to break through a battalion of Goths, received an arrow
in his eye; the wood broke off at the moment of striking, and fell, but
the steel, being quite buried, remained in the wound, without giving
Tragàn much pain. Five days afterwards, the steel began to reappear,
pierced through the cicatrice, and fell out apparently of itself.
Tarmut, a barbarian captain, an ally of the Romans, being left almost
alone on the field of battle, was assailed by a crowd of enemies;
but, armed with two javelins, he laid at his feet all who ventured
to approach him. At length, covered with wounds, he was near sinking
from weakness, when he saw his brother Ennes, chief of the Isaurians,
approach with a troop of horse, and throw himself between him and
his assailants. Reanimated by this unhoped-for succour, he recovered
sufficient strength to gain the city, still armed with his two
javelins. He only survived this astonishing effort of courage two days.
Such were the principal exploits during the siege of Rome by Vitiges,
who was obliged to raise it, after a year and nine days of useless
attempts. Sixty-nine battles were fought, all very bloody, and almost
all to the advantage of the Romans: they cost the king of the Goths
more than the half of his numerous army. Belisarius had but a small
force; Rome might have been taken easily: it had yielded to much weaker
armies, but Belisarius was in Rome, and that great general, fertile in
resources, was alone worth whole legions.