regret the absence of their companions; and the Goths, alike destitute of hope and subsistence, clamorously urged their departure before the truce should expire, and the Roman cavalry should again be united. One year and nine days after the commencement of the siege, an army so lately strong and triumphant burnt their tents, and tumultuously repassed the Milvian bridge. They repassed not with impunity; their thronging multitudes, oppressed in a narrow passage, were driven headlong into the Tiber by their own fears and the pursuit of the enemy, and the Roman general, sallying from the Pincian gate, inflicted a severe and disgraceful wound on their retreat. The slow length of a sickly and desponding host was heavily dragged along the Flaminian way, from whence the barbarians were sometimes compelled to deviate, lest they should encounter the hostile garrisons that guarded the high road to Rimini and Ravenna. Yet so powerful was this flying army, that Vitiges spared ten thousand men for the defence of the cities which he was most solicitous to preserve, and detached his nephew Uraias, with an adequate force, for the chastisement of rebellious Milan. At the head of his principal army he besieged Rimini, only thirty-three miles distant from the Gothic capital. A feeble rampart and a shallow ditch were maintained by the skill and valour of John the Sanguinary, who shared the danger and fatigue of the meanest soldier, and emulated, on a theatre less illustrious, the military virtues of his great commander. The towers and battering-engines of the barbarians were Rimird; rendered useless, their attacks were repulsed, and the tedious blockade, which reduced the garrison to the last extremity of hunger, afforded time for the union and march of the Roman forces. A fleet, which had surprised Ancona, sailed along the coast of the Adriatic to the relief of the besieged city. The eunuch Narses landed in Picenum with two thousand Heruli and five thousand of the bravest troops of the East. The rock of the Apennine was forced, ten thousand veterans moved round the foot of the mountains, under the command of Belisarius himself, and a new army, whose encampment blazed with innumerable lights, appeared to advance along the Flaminian way. Overwhelmed with astonishment and despair, the Goths abandoned the siege of Rimini, their tents, their standards, and their leaders; and Vitiges, who gave or followed the Ravenna. example of flight, never halted till he found a shelter within the walls and morasses of Ravenna. Lose retire to To these walls, and to some fortresses destitute of any mutual Jealousy of support, the Gothic monarchy was now reduced. The provinces of Italy had embraced the party of the emperor, and his army, gradually recruited to the number of twenty the Roman generals, A.D. 538. thousand men, must have achieved an easy and rapid conquest if their invincible powers had not been weakened by the discord of the Roman chiefs. Before the end of the siege, an act of blood, ambiguous and indiscreet, sullied the fair fame of Belisarius. Presidius, a loyal Italian, as he fled from Ravenna to Rome, was rudely stopped by Constantine, the military governor of Spoleto, and despoiled, even in a church, of two daggers, richly inlaid with gold and precious stones. As soon as the public danger had subsided, Presidius complained of the loss and injury; his complaint was heard, but the order of restitution was disobeyed by the pride and avarice of the offender. Exasperated by the delay, Presidius boldly arrested the general's horse as he passed through the forum, and, with the spirit of a citizen, demanded the common benefit of the Roman laws. The honour of Belisarius was engaged he summoned a council, claimed the obedience of his subordinate officer, and was provoked, by an insolent reply, to call hastily for the presence of his guards. Constantine, viewing their entrance as the signal of death, drew his sword, and rushed on the general, who nimbly eluded the stroke and was protected by his friends, while the desperate assassin was disarmed, dragged into a neighbouring chamber, and exe- Death of cuted, or rather murdered, by the guards, at the arbitrary command of Belisarius. 95 In this hasty act of violence the guilt of Constantine was no longer remembered; the despair and death of that valiant officer were secretly imputed to the revenge of Antonina ; and each of his colleagues, conscious of the same rapine, was apprehensive of the same fate. The fear of a common enemy suspended the effects of their envy and discontent, but, in the confidence of approaching victory, they instigated a powerful rival to The eunuch oppose the conqueror of Rome and Africa. From the domestic service of the palace and the administration of the private revenue, Narses the eunuch was suddenly exalted to the head of an army, and the spirit of an hero, who afterwards equalled the merit and glory of Belisarius, served only to perplex the operations of the Gothic war. To his prudent counsels the relief of Rimini was ascribed by the leaders of the discontented faction, who exhorted Narses to assume an independent and separate command. The epistle of Justinian had indeed enjoined his obedience to the general, but the dangerous exception, "as far as may be advantageous to the Constantine. Narses. 95 This transaction is related in the public history (Goth. 1. ii. c. 8 [p. 180, ed Bonn] with candour or caution; in the Anecdotes (c. 7 [c. i. p. 16, ed. Boun]) with malevolence or freedom; but Marcellinus, or rather his continuator (in Chron.), casts a shade of premeditated assassination over the death of Constantine. He had performed good service at Rome and Spoleto (Procop. Goth. 1. i. c. 7, 16 [tom. ii, P. 81 ed. Bonn]); but Alemannus confounds him with a Constantianus comes stabuli. Firmness "public service," reserved some freedom of judgment to the discreet favourite, who had so lately departed from the sacred and familiar conversation of his sovereign. In the exercise of this doubtful right the eunuch perpetually dissented from the opinions of Belisarius, and, after yielding with reluctance to the siege of Urbino, he deserted his colleague in the night, and marched away to the conquest of the Emilian province. The fierce and formidable bands of the Heruli were attached to the person of Narses;96 ten thousand Romans and confederates were persuaded to march under his banners; every malecontent embraced the fair opportunity of revenging his private or imaginary wrongs; and the remaining troops of Belisarius were divided and dispersed from the garrisons of Sicily to the shores of the Adriatic. His skill and perseverance overcame every obstacle: Urbino was taken, the sieges of Fæsulæ, Orvieto, and Auximum were undertaken and vigorously prosecuted, and the eunuch Narses was at length recalled to the domestic cares of the palace. All dissensions were healed, and all opposition was subdued, by the temperate authority of the Roman general, to whom his enemies could not refuse their esteem; and Belisarius inculcated the salutary lesson that the forces of the state should compose one body, and be animated by one soul. But in the interval of discord the Goths were permitted to breathe; an important season was lost, Milan was destroyed, and the northern provinces of Italy were afflicted by an inundation of the Franks. and autho rity of Belisarius. Invasion of When Justinian first meditated the conquest of Italy, he sent ambassadors to the kings of the Franks, and adjured them, by the common ties of alliance and religion, to join in the A.D. 538, 539. holy enterprise against the Arians. The Goths, as their wants were more urgent, employed a more effectual mode of persuasion, and vainly strove, by the gift of lands and money, to purchase the friendship, or at least the neutrality, of a light and perfidious nation.97 But the arms of Belisarius and the revolt of the Italians had no sooner shaken the Gothic monarchy, than Theodebert of Austrasia, the most powerful and warlike of the Merovingian kings, was persuaded to succour their distress by an indirect and seasonable aid. Without expecting the consent of their sovereign, ten thousand Burgundians, his recent subjects, descended from the Alps, and 96 They refused to serve after his departure; sold their captives and cattle to the Goths; and swore never to fight against them. Procopius introduces a curious digression on the manners and adventures of this wandering nation, a part of whom finally emigrated to Thule or Scandinavia (Goth. 1. ii. c. 14, 15). This national reproach of perfidy (Procop. Goth. 1. ii. c. 25 [tom. ii. p. 247, ed. Bonn]) offends the ear of La Mothe le Vayer (tom. viii. p. 163-165), who criticises as if he had not read, the Greek historian. of Milan. joined the troops which Vitiges had sent to chastise the revolt of Milan. After an obstinate siege the capital of Liguria was reduced by famine, but no capitulation could be obtained, except for the safe retreat of the Roman garrison. Datius, the orthodox bishop, who nad seduced his countrymen to rebellion 98 and ruin, escaped to the luxury and honours of the Byzantine court;99 but the clergy, perhaps the Arian clergy, were slaughtered at the foot of their own altars by the defenders of the catholic faith. Three hundred thousand males were reported to be slain;100 the female sex and the more precious spoil was resigned to the Burgundians; and the houses, or at least the walls, of Milan were levelled with the Destruction ground. The Goths, in their last moments, were revenged by the destruction of a city second only to Rome in size and opulence, in the splendour of its buildings, or the number of its inhabitants, and Belisarius sympathised alone in the fate of his deserted and devoted friends. Encouraged by this successful inroad, Theodebert himself, in the ensuing spring, invaded the plains of Italy with an army of one hundred thousand barbarians.101 The king and some chosen followers were mounted on horseback and armed with lances; the infantry, without bows or spears, were satisfied with a shield, a sword, and a double-edged battle-axe, which in their hands became a deadly and unerring weapon. Italy trembled at the march of the Franks, and both the Gothic prince and the Roman general, alike ignorant of their designs, solicited with hope and terror the friendship of these dangerous allies. Till he had secured the passage of the Po on the bridge of Pavia, the grandson of Clovis dissembled his intentions, which he at length declared by assaulting, almost at the same instant, the hostile camps of the Romans and Goths. Instead of uniting their arms, they fled with equal precipitation, and the fertile though desolate provinces of Liguria and Æmilia were abandoned to a licentious host of barbarians, whose 98 Baronius applauds his treason, and justifies the catholic bishops-qui ne sub heretico principe degant omnem lapidem movent-an useful caution. The more rational Muratori (Annali d'Italia, tom. v. p. 54) hints at the guilt of perjury, and blames at least the imprudence of Datius. He 99 St. Datius was more successful against devils than against barbarians. travelled with a numerous retinue, and occupied at Corinth a large house (Baronius, A.D. 538, No. 89; A.D. 539, No. 20). 100 Mupiades Tрiánovra (compare Procopius, Goth. 1. ii. c. 7, 21 [tom. ii. p. 234, ed. Bonn]). Yet such population is incredible; and the second or third city of Italy need not repine if we only decimate the numbers of the present text. Both Milan and Genoa revived in less than thirty years (Paul Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. 1. ii. c. 38 [16 or 22?]). 101 Besides Procopius, perhaps too Roman, see the Chronicles of Marius and Marcellinus, Jornandes (in Success. Regn. in Muratori, tom. i. p. 241), and Gregory of Tours (1. iii. c. 32, in tom. ii. of the Historians of France). Gregory supposes a lefeat of Belisarius, who, in Aimoin (de Gestis Franc. 1. ii. c. 23, in tom. iii. p. 59), B slain by the Franks. rage was not mitigated by any thoughts of settlement or conquest. Among the cities which they ruined, Genoa, not yet constructed of marble, is particularly enumerated; and the deaths of thousands, according to the regular practice of war, appear to have excited less horror than some idolatrous sacrifices of women and children which were performed with impunity in the camp of the most Christian king. If it were not a melancholy truth that the first and most cruel sufferings must be the lot of the innocent and helpless, history might exult in the misery of the conquerors, who, in the midst of riches, were left destitute of bread or wine, reduced to drink the waters of the Po, and to feed on the flesh of distempered cattle. The dysentery swept away one-third of their army, and the clamours of his subjects, who were impatient to pass the Alps, disposed Theodebert to listen with respect to the mild exhortations of Belisarius. The memory of this inglorious and destructive warfare was perpetuated on the medals of Gaul, and Justinian, without unsheathing his sword, assumed the title of conqueror of the Franks. The Merovingian prince was offended by the vanity of the emperor; he affected to pity the fallen fortunes of the Goths; and his insidious offer of a fœderal union was fortified by the promise or menace of descending from the Alps at the head of five hundred thousand men. His plans of conquest were boundless, and perhaps chimerical. The king of Austrasia threatened to chastise Justinian, and to march to the gates of Constantinople;102 he was overthrown and slain 103 by a wild bull,104 as he hunted in the Belgic or German forests. As soon as Belisarius was delivered from his foreign and domestic enemies, he seriously applied his forces to the final reduction of Italy. In the siege of Osimo the general was nearly transpierced with an arrow, if the mortal stroke had not been intercepted by one of his guards, who lost in that pious office the use of his hand. The Goths of Osimo," four thousand warriors, with those of Fæsulæ and the Cottian Alps, were among the last who maintained their independence; and their gallant resist Belisarius besieges Ravenna; 102 Agathias, 1. i. [c. 4], p. 14, 15 [ed. Par.; p. 20, 21, ed. Bonn]. Could he have seduced or subdued the Gepida or Lombards of Pannonia, the Greek historian is confident that he must have been destroyed in Thrace. 103 The king pointed his spear-the bull overturned a tree on his head-he expired the same day. Such is the story of Agathias; but the original historians of France (tom. ii. p. 202, 403, 558, 667) impute his death to a fever. 104 Without losing myself in a labyrinth of species and names-the aurochs, urus, bisons, bubalus, bonasus, buffalo, &c. (Buffon, Hist. Nat. tom. xi. and Supplement, tom. iii. vi.), it is certain that in the sixth century a large wild species of horned cattle was hunted in the great forests of the Vosges in Lorraine, and the Ardennes (Greg. Turon. tom. ii. l. x. c. 10, p. 369). Auximum.-M. |