The day after the arrival of this news, so fateful for the Goths, King
Witichis abandoned the siege of Rome and led his thoroughly
disheartened troops out of the four remaining camps.
The siege had lasted a whole year and nine days. All courage and
strength, exertion and sacrifice, had been unavailing.
Silently the Goths marched past the proud walls, against which their
power and good-fortune had been wrecked. Silently they suffered the
taunting words cast at them from the battlements by Romans and
Byzantines.
They were too much absorbed by their grief and rage to feel hurt by
such mockery. But when the horsemen of Belisarius, issuing from the
Pincian Gate, would have pursued them, they were fiercely repulsed, for
Earl Teja led the Gothic rearguard.
So the Gothic army, avoiding the strongholds occupied by the
enemy--Narnia, Spoletium and Perusia--marched with expedition from Rome
through Picenum to Ravenna, where they arrived in time to crush the
dangerous symptoms of rebellion among the population, some of whom,
upon hearing of the misfortunes of the barbarians, had already entered
into secret negotiations with Johannes.
As the Goths approached the latter withdrew into the fortress of
Ariminum, his last important conquest.
In Ancona lay Konon, the navarchus of Belisarius, with the Thracian
spearmen and many ships of war.
The King, however, had not taken to Ravenna the whole of the army which
had besieged Rome, but had, during the march, left several regiments to
garrison the fortresses which he passed.
One thousand men he had left under Gibimer in Clusium; another thousand
in Urbs Vetus, under Albila; five hundred men in Tudertum under
Wulfgis; in Auximum four thousand men under Earl Wisand, the brave
bandalarius; in Urbinum two thousand under Morra; and in Caesena and
Monsferetrus five hundred.
He sent Hildebrand to Verona, Totila to Tarvisium, and Teja to Ticinum,
for the north-eastern part of the peninsula was also endangered by
Byzantine troops, coming from Istria.
In acting thus he had been also influenced by other reasons. He wished
first of all to check Belisarius on his march to Ravenna. Secondly, he
was afraid, in case of a siege, that if all his troops were with him,
they would speedily be exposed to the evils of starvation, and, lastly,
he wished to attack the besiegers in their rear from various sides.
His plan was to occupy his stronghold of Ravenna, limiting himself to
defensive proceedings until the foreign troops which he expected,
Longobardians and Franks, should place him in a position to take the
open field.
But his hope of checking Belisarius on his way to Ravenna was
disappointed, for the Byzantine contented himself with investing all
the Gothic fortresses with a portion of his army, marching on with the
main army to the capital city and last important refuge of the Goths.
"If I have mortally wounded the heart," he said, "the clenched fists
will open of themselves."
And so, very soon, the tents of the Byzantines were seen stretching in
a wide semicircle round the royal residence of Theodoric, from the
harbour-town of Classis to the canals and branches of the Padus, which,
particularly to the west, formed a natural line of defence.
The old aristocratic city had indeed, even at that time, lost much of
the glory in which it had rejoiced for nearly two centuries as the
residence of the Roman emperors; and the last rays which the splendid
reign of Theodoric had shed over it, were extinguished since the
breaking out of the war.
But even thus, what a different impression must the still
thickly-populated city--similar to the present Venice--have made at
that period, in comparison with its aspect at present; when the
interior of the city, with its silent streets, its deserted squares and
its lonely basilicas, appears to the beholder no less melancholy than
the plain outside the walls, where the desolate and marshy levels of
the Padus stretch far away, until they are lost in the mud of the
receding sea.
Where once the harbour-town of Classis was filled with active life on
land and sea; where the proud triremes of the royal fleet of Ravenna
rocked on the blue waters, now lie swampy meadows, in whose tall reeds
and grass the wild buffalo feeds; the streets foul with stagnant water;
the harbour choked with sand; the once joyous population vanished; only
one gigantic tower of the time of the Goths still stands near the sole
remaining Basilica, of Saint Apollonaris in _Classe fuori_, which,
commenced by Witichis and completed by Justinian, now rises sadly out
of the marshy plain, far from any human abode.
In the time of which our story speaks the strong fortress was
considered impregnable, and for that reason the emperors, when their
power began to decay, had chosen it for their residence.
The south-eastern side was at that time protected by the sea, which
rolled its waves to the very foot of the walls, and on the other three
sides nature and art had spun a labyrinthine network of canals,
ditches, and swamps, begotten by the many-armed Padus, among which all
besiegers were hopelessly entangled.
And the walls! Even yet their mighty ruins fill the traveller with
amazement. Their colossal width, and less their height than the number
of strong round towers, which even now (1863) rise above the
battlements, defied, before the invention of gunpowder, every means of
attack.
It was only by starving the city that, after a resistance of nearly
four years, the great Theodoric won this, Odoacer's last place of
refuge.
In vain had Belisarius attempted to take the city by storm, as soon as
he had reached the walls.
His attack was bravely repulsed, and he was obliged to content himself
with closely investing the fortress, in order by cutting off all
supplies, as had formerly been done by Theodoric, to force that city to
capitulate.
But Witichis was able to look upon this proceeding with composure, for,
with the prudence which was peculiar to him, he had, before marching to
Rome, heaped up provisions of all kinds, principally corn, in
extraordinary quantities. He had stored them in granaries built of wood
and erected within the walls of the immense marble Circus of
Theodosius. These extensive wooden edifices, situated exactly opposite
to the palace and the Basilica of Saint Apollonaris, were the pride,
joy, and comfort of the King.
It had been impossible to convey much of the provisions to the army
before Rome, and with reasonable economy these magazines would without
doubt suffice for the wants of the population and the no longer
formidable army for another two or three months.
By that time the Goths expected the arrival of an allied army, in
consequence of the newly-opened negotiations with the Franks. On its
arrival the siege would necessarily be raised.
But Belisarius and Cethegus knew or guessed this as well as Witichis,
and they indefatigably sought on all sides for some means of hastening
the fall of the city.
The Prefect, of course, tried to make use of his secret relations with
the Queen for the furtherance of this end. But, on the one hand,
communication with Mataswintha had become very difficult, for the Goths
carefully guarded all the entrances to the city; and, on the other
hand, Mataswintha herself seemed greatly changed, and no longer so
ready and willing as before to allow herself to be used as a tool.
She had expected the speedy destruction or humiliation of the King. The
long delay wearied her, and, at the same time, the immense suffering of
her people had begun to shake her resolution. Lastly, the sad change in
the manner of the usually strong and healthy King, the resigned but
profound grief which he evidently felt, touched her heart.
Although she accused him, with all the injustice of pain and the bitter
pride of insulted love, of having rejected her heart and yet forced her
to give him her hand; although she believed that she hated him with all
the passion of her nature, and did indeed in some sort hate him, yet
this hatred was only love reversed.
And now, when she saw him humbled by the terrible misfortunes of the
Gothic army and the failure of all his plans--to which failure she had
so greatly contributed by her own treason--so humbled, that his mind
had begun to be affected by sickly melancholy, and he tormented himself
with reproaches; the sight powerfully affected her impulsive nature,
strangely compounded as it was of the contradictory elements of
tenderness and harshness.
In the first moment of angry grief, she would have seen his blood flow
with delight. But to see him slowly devoured by self-reproach and
gnawing pain that she could not endure.
This softer feeling on her part had, besides, been greatly brought
about by her having noticed, since their arrival in Ravenna, a change
in the King's behaviour towards herself.
She thought that she observed in him traces of remorse for having so
forcibly encroached upon her life, and she involuntarily softened her
harsh and blunt manner to him during their rare interviews, which
always took place in the presence of witnesses.
Witichis considered the change as a sign that a step had been taken
towards reconciliation, and silently acknowledged and rewarded it, on
his part, by a more friendly manner.
All this was sufficient to induce Mataswintha, with her emotional
nature, to repulse the overtures of the Prefect, even when they
sometimes reached her by means of the clever Moor.
Now the Prefect had already learned from Syphax during the march to
Ravenna, that which was known later by other means, namely, that the
Goths expected assistance from the Franks.
He had therefore forthwith renewed his old and intimate relations
with the aristocrats and great men who ruled in the name of the
mock Kings of the Merovingians in the courts of Mettis (Metz),
Aurelianum (Orleans) and Suessianum (Soissons), in order to induce the
Franks--whose perfidy, even then become a proverb, gave good hope that
his efforts would be successful--to renounce the Gothic alliance.
And when the affair had been properly introduced by these friends, he
himself wrote to King Theudebald, who held his court in Mettis,
impressively warning him of the risk he would run if he supported such
a ruined cause as that of the Goths had undeniably become since their
ill-success in the siege of Rome.
This letter had been accompanied by rich gifts to his old friend, the
Major Domus of the weak-minded King, and the Prefect impatiently
waited, day by day, for the reply; the more impatiently because the
altered demeanour of Mataswintha had cut off all the hopes he had
entertained of effecting a more speedy conquest of the Goths.
The answer came--at the same time with an imperial letter from
Byzantium--on a day which was equally pregnant with the fate of the
heroes both in and out of Ravenna.