Jack Ludlow: Triumph

‘Find the fool that kept them closed against us,’ Flavius ordered.

‘And hang him, General?’

‘No. But a severe flogging and the stocks will do him no harm. It will alert the other gate wardens to have a care.’

With the Milvian Bridge lost, albeit Flavius had never really expected to hold it, Witigis could now proceed to invest as much of the city as he could with the forces he had and his plan was not hard to discern. He began to construct fortified camps opposite six of the eastern gates, from the Porta Flaminia to the Porta Praenestine. A seventh was built to the west on the Plains of Nero to mask the Porta Cornelia, which meant that Witigis could deploy against the only other exterior crossing of the Tiber, hard by the massive Tomb of Hadrian.

The fourteen aqueducts feeding the city were broken, which had been anticipated, it being a standard ploy, though Flavius made sure that they were well blocked on the city side to avoid any repeat of Naples. The Goths then began the construction of siege towers, the mining of the walls to weaken them, as well as sorties to dam the moat with earthen crossings so that such engines could be got closer to the walls.

Aware now of precisely what he faced, Flavius assigned the threatened gates to his most senior subordinates, Constantinus and Bessas, taking command of the two most vulnerable personally. He ordered that a second stone wall be built within the Porta Flaminia to provide double security and placed in various locations upon the parapet catapults as well as piles of stones, some to be fired by the ballistae, the larger rocks to be dropped on ascending crowns.

One difficulty was the provision of bread; the water from the aqueducts had been used to drive the mills that ground the corn, which had been stockpiled and was plentiful. With those now cut a solution needed to be found so that the city could bake bread and would not starve. It being February the Tiber was flowing fast, fed by the melting snows of the glacial Apennines, so Solomon had boats placed in the river that would drive the mills on the fast current and when the Goths tried to break this with huge floating logs a chain across the Tiber was used to protect them.

Two weeks passed before any real threat seemed imminent, time in which the Goth leader sought to open talks with Flavius, offering him the chance to withdraw unmolested, these being quickly rebuffed. Even as these overtures were being made, work on both the camps and the siege equipment continued, indicating that there had been no expectation that the offer would be accepted.

Witigis prepared to launch his attack on the seventeenth day since that furious encounter at the Milvian Bridge. The grey dawn revealed the Goth forces drawn up before the two gates to the east of the Flaminia, of which Flavius had taken personal command, the Pinciana and the Salaria, these presenting ground suitable for the advance of the Goth assault engines, towers and rams.

Flavius Belisarius had in his hand his own bow, giving orders that no one was to fire a single projectile before him. Out on the flat and fertile fields the Goth horns blew and, pulled by huge teams of oxen and surrounded by dense bodies of men, the siege towers and battering rams began their slow crawl towards the walls. On the parapet the only sound was that of men praying for salvation should they fall.

The very sound of the Goth advance, made up of numerous features, was designed to unnerve the defenders: cracking whips to drive on the lowing oxen, blowing horns splitting the chill morning air while spears and swords were used to batter hard leather shields. The grinding of rough wooden wheels over hard ground was accompanied by the cacophonous yelling of the assaulting warriors, this while those they faced stood in total silence.

Every eye was on the man in command, standing like a statue, his gaze steady and his bow strung with an arrow but not yet raised to fire. If there were those who would see this pose as artificial, as one that implied death held no terrors, they would be wrong. This was what Flavius Belisarius had trained for since he was a boy, under the tutelage of his own father, Decimus, and those the centurion had put in to teach him the art of war.

He had rewarded his sire by being the best of his age, faster on his feet, quicker of eye with a sword, able to outcast his fellows with his spear and superbly adept with the weapon he now held, the kind of bow he had helped to design, given the Hun pattern that had dominated the battlefield for decades did not suit his heavy cavalry.

As to losing his own life, Flavius had long given no consideration to the possibility. Having witnessed his father and three older brothers die through treachery he had felt since that day his own existence had no other value than the service he could provide to the empire of which Decimus Belisarius had been so proud.

In part, too, and so deeply buried as to be far from openly acknowledged, was shame that he had survived. Should he too not have expired alongside them in a fight that perfidy had made death the only possible outcome? He had, as a youngster, taken as his hero the stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius, who held that no man was master of his own destiny and to pretend otherwise was folly. If it had been hard to hold to the tenets of that philosophical soldier as witness to the massacre of his family, he was still imbued with it as a core belief.

He could sense the men he led becoming anxious; surely he was allowing the enemy too much licence in their approach, permitting them to get so close to the walls that the faces of the enemy, or what could be seen under their helmets, was in plain view. There was a collective sigh as his bow was slowly raised to be drawn, and if the chosen target was a mystery it did not remain so for long following the release.

There were warriors atop the nearest siege tower, not many to avoid overburdening the oxen, but enough to present a mark. The first arrow was still in the air as Flavius slotted home a second from his quiver and he was reaching for a third when the man at whom he had originally aimed took the bolt in the neck, two more of his compatriots following before they even guessed they were under attack. Then came the order to fire and suddenly the air was full of flying death as the body of defending archers sent off their first salvo.

That it fell on the enemy soldiers was to be expected; the vehemence of Flavius Belisarius was not. He ordered that they should concentrate on the oxen pulling the battering rams and the siege towers, for to kill them was to render such engines of war useless; there was no human agency able to replace the pulling power of these beasts.

There was as yet little counter fire to worry about, archery not being as predominant in the Gothic force, a point Flavius had noted in that first encounter. Added to that they would be required to fire on a high arc, which obliged them to stop and aim, thus rendering each bowman an easy, static target. The towers and rams slowed as the bleating oxen were first weakened then began to expire, those dying dragging down their fellow beasts, this before they got close enough to present a danger to the curtain wall or the towers that abutted the gates.

Flavius was no longer present to observe; he had chosen these gates to personally defend because if the flat ground used by the citizens of Rome for growing food favoured the Goth engines of war, it also, once they became stuck, allowed him a chance to sally forth and counter-attack. Solomon had been left on the parapet to provide the signal Flavius wanted, one that told him the Goth assault had faltered and was in confusion.

With Photius once more at his side, he ordered the gate before him opened so he and the cavalry he led could debouch onto the open ground, where they gathered into a formidable formation that made standing against them hazardous, especially for men fighting on foot. Witigis had not brought forward his horsemen, which left the field free to his opponent and Flavius took full advantage, rampaging forward to drive back an assault that was already lacking in momentum, the Goths falling back behind those now static siege engines.