Attila the Hun (4 page)

The real cancer in this vast body was the emerging problem of division. When Constantine founded his ‘New Rome’ in 330, it was to have been the heart of his new religion, Christianity, and the symbol of a new unity. In fact, from then on the Latin-speaking western empire began to part company with its Greek-speaking (though frequently bilingual) eastern wing.
Rome’s decline was mirrored by Constantinople’s rise.

Constantine chose well when he decided to develop a small, ancient town on a rocky peninsula in the Black Sea into his new version of Rome. It was said, of course, that God had guided him, though it didn’t take omniscience to see that the peninsula was a much better base than Rome from which to secure the empire’s shaky eastern frontier. The little town of old Byzantium had occupied the tip of this rocky nose. Constantine enclosed five times that area behind a wall 2 kilometres long, and built into his new capital a triumphal arch, the first great Christian church and a marble-paved forum, its 30-metre porphyry column from Egypt topped by an Apollo with the head of Constantine himself. A hippodrome for processions and races was connected via a spiral staircase to the reception halls, offices, living areas, baths and barracks of the imperial palace. Within a century there would be a school, a circus, 2 theatres, 8 public and 153 private baths, 52 porticoes, 5 granaries, 8 aqueducts and reservoirs, 4 senatorial and judicial meeting halls, 14 churches, 14 palaces and 4,388 houses in addition to those of the common people. By then there were walls almost all around it, seaward as well, except along the Golden Horn river, which was protected by an immense chain (it was broken only once, in 1203, by soldiers of the Fourth Crusade, who loaded a ship with stones, fixed a huge pair of shears on the prow, drove at the chain and snipped it).

The beauty of the city and the speed of its construction made Constantine’s capital a glory. But
within a generation it had achieved the opposite of what its founder intended: not unity but division, confirmed by the emperor Valentinian. He was an impressive character – champion wrestler, great soldier, energetic, conscientious in defence of the realm; and he decided the interests of the empire would be best served by the creation of two sub-empires, each of which could look to its own defence. In 364 he made his brother Valens the first eastern emperor, while he, Valentinian, kept control of the West. It might have worked, had the threats to unity been containable. They were not. The empire, though still nominally united by history and family, had begun to split: two capitals, two worlds, two languages and two creeds (each fighting its own sub-creeds of paganism and heresy).

This was no firm foundation for confronting enemies within and without. To the east lay the great imperial rival, Persia; in Africa, Moorish rebels; and right across northern Europe and the frontiers of Inner Asia the
barbaricum
, inhabited by those who spoke neither Greek nor Latin. With continual barbarian incursions across the Rhine and Danube, Rome – the term sometimes included Constantinople and sometimes didn’t, depending on the context – tried to defend itself with a range of strategies from outright force to negotiation, bribery, intermarriage, trade and, finally, controlled immigration. This last was in the end the only possible way to stave off assault, and yet it also led inexorably to further decay. Barbarians were good fighters; it made sense to employ them, with confusing consequences for
both sides. Enemies became allies, who often ended up fighting their own kin. Peace came always at the price of continued collapse: the army was strengthened by an influx of barbarians, but taxes rose to pay for them; faith in government declined, and corruption spread. By the late fourth century the empire’s borders resembled a weakening immune system, through which barbarians crept, in direct assault or temporary partnership, while the army – the ultimate arbiter of political authority and the guardian of the frontiers – were like the blood platelets of this ageing body, always rushing to clot some new wound, and never in sufficient numbers.

Not all the empire’s enemies were on or beyond its borders. Since Constantine’s decision to adopt Christianity earlier in the century, his new capital had been the heart of division over and above the usual political squabbles about succession. Christians naturally fought against paganism, which proved remarkably resilient. In addition, Christians squabbled with each other, for these were the early days of church doctrine, with rivals arguing fiercely over the nature of a god who was somehow three-in-one, and somehow both human and divine. No-one could understand these mysteries, but that didn’t stop rival believers stating firm opinions, fighting for some new orthodoxy, and branding their opponents unorthodox and heretical.

The most challenging heresy was named after the Alexandrian priest Arius, who claimed that Jesus was wholly human – God’s adopted son, as it were – and thus by implication not divine, and therefore inferior to
his father. This idea appealed to eastern emperors, notably Valens, perhaps because it did not appeal to the western ones. It was in this form that Christianity first reached the Goths, whose converts became stubbornly Arian.

This, then, was the glorious, vast and diseased structure that Valens was once again preparing to defend as he marched north from Constantinople in the early summer of 378, planning to join up with his co-emperor and rival, his ambitious nephew Gratian.

N
ow Valens’ battered ego took the reins. He, who had demanded Gratian’s help, had become jealous of his nephew’s success, and eager for a victory of his own. Marching north to Adrianople in July, he was told by his scouts that a Goth army was approaching, but that it consisted of only 10,000 men, a force rather less than his own of some 15,000. Outside Adrianople, he made his base near the junction of the Maritsa and Tundzha rivers, around which over the next few days arose a palisade and a ditch. Just then an officer arrived from somewhere up the Danube with a letter from Gratian urging his uncle not to do anything hasty until the reinforcements arrived. Valens called a war council. Some agreed with Gratian, while others whispered that Gratian just wanted to share in a triumph that should belong to Valens alone. That suited Valens. Preparations continued.

Fritigern, laagered in his wagons some 13 kilometres away up the Tundzha, was himself wary of giving battle. Around him were not just his warriors, but their
entire households as well: perhaps 30,000 people, with an unwieldy corps of wagons, all arranged in family circles, impossible to re-form in less than a day. To fight effectively – away from the encumbering wagons – he would need help; and so he had sent for the heavily armoured Ostrogothic cavalry. Meanwhile he played for time, sending out scouts to set fire to the sun-scorched wheat fields between his encampment and the Romans’ – and a messenger, who arrived in the imperial camp with a letter: yes, ‘barbarian’ leaders were quite capable of using secretaries fluent in Latin to communicate with the Roman world. This missive was carried by a Christian priest, who would probably have become an aide to the Visigoth in the hope of converting him. The letter was an official plea to revert to the status quo: peace, in return for land and protection from the whirlwind approaching from the east.

Valens would have none of it. He wanted the fruits of victory: Fritigern captured or dead, the Goths cowed. He refused to reply, sending the priest away on the insulting grounds that he was not important enough to be taken seriously.

Next morning, 9 August, the Romans were ready. All non-essential gear – spare tents, treasure chests, imperial robes – was sent back into Adrianople for safety, and the horsemen and infantry set off to cover the 13 kilometres to the Visigothic laagers. It was a short march, but a gruelling one, over burned fields, under a scorching sun, with no streams in sight to refresh the heavily armoured troops.

After a couple of hours the Roman horsemen and
infantry approached the Visigothic camp and its huddles of wagons, from which rose wild war cries and chants in praise of Gothic ancestors. The sweaty approach had caused the Romans to straggle, with one wing of the cavalry out in front and infantry behind blocking the way of the second. Slowly they pulled themselves into line, clattering their weapons and beating their shields to drown out the barbarians’ clamour.

To Fritigern, still awaiting help, these were unnerving sights and sounds. Again, he played for time, sending a request for peace; again, Valens sent the envoys away as of too low a rank. Still no sign of the Ostrogothic cavalry. Time for another message from Fritigern, another peace proposal, raising the stakes, suggesting that if Valens would supply someone of high status he would himself come to negotiate. This time Valens agreed, and a suitable volunteer was on his way when a band of Roman outriders, hungry for glory, perhaps, made a quick lunge at the Visigothic flank. The volunteer diplomat beat a hasty retreat – just in time, for at that moment the Ostrogothic cavalry came galloping in along the valley. The Roman cavalry moved forward to confront this new menace.

That was what Fritigern had been waiting for. His infantry burst from the wagons, firing arrows, throwing spears, until the two lines clashed and locked in a heaving scrum of shields, broken spears and swords, so tightly packed that soldiers could hardly lift their arms to strike – or, having done so, lower them again. Dust rose, covering the battle-ground in a choking, blinding fog. Outside the mêlée, there was no need for the
Visigothic archers and spearmen to aim: any missile thrown or fired at random dropped through the dust unseen, and had to find a mark.

Then came the heavy cavalry, with no opposing Roman cavalry to stop them, trampling the dying, their battleaxes splitting the helmets and breastplates of infantrymen weakened by heat, weighed down with armour and slipping on the blood-soaked ground. Within the hour, the living began to stumble away from the Roman lines over the corpses of the slain. ‘Some fell without knowing who struck them,’ writes Ammianus. ‘Some were crushed by sheer weight of numbers, some were killed by their own comrades.’

As the sun set, the noise of battle died away into the silent, moonless night. Two-thirds of the Romans – perhaps 10,000 men – lay dead, jumbled with corpses of horses. Now the dark fields filled with other sounds, as the cries, sobs and groans of the wounded followed the survivors across the burnt-out crops and along the road back to Adrianople.

No-one knows what happened to Valens. At some time during the battle he had been lost or abandoned by his bodyguard and found his way to the army’s most disciplined and experienced legions, holding out in a last stand. A general rode off to call in some reserves, only to find they had fled. After that, nothing. Some said the emperor died when struck by an arrow soon after night fell. Or perhaps he found refuge in a sturdy farmhouse nearby, which was surrounded and burned to the ground, along with all those inside – except one man who escaped from a window to tell what had
happened. Thus the story came to Ammianus. There was no way of proving it, for the emperor’s body was never found.

The violence continued, and the empire had no answer to it. The Visigoths knew from deserters and prisoners what was hidden in Adrianople. At dawn they advanced beyond the battlefield, hot on the heels of the survivors seeking refuge. But there was no safety to be had; for the defenders, scrabbling to prepare for a siege they never expected, fearful of weakening their defences, refused to open the gates to their fleeing fellows. By midday the Visigoths had encircled the walls, trapping the terrified survivors against them. In desperation, some 300 surrendered, only to be slaughtered on the spot.

Luckily for the city, a thunderstorm washed out the assault, forcing the Visigoths back to their wagons and allowing the defenders to shore up the gates with rocks and make ready their trebuchets and siege bows. When the Visigoths attacked the next day, they lost hundreds crushed by rocks, impaled by arrows the size of spears and buried under stones tipped from above.

Giving up the assault, they turned to easier targets in the countryside, looting their way across 200 kilo-metres to the very gates of Constantinople. There the rampage died, killed by the sight of the vast walls, and then by a horrifying incident. As the city mounted its defence, a Saracen contingent suddenly erupted from the gates. One of these fearsome warriors, carrying a sword and wearing nothing but a loincloth, hurled himself into the fray, sliced open a Gothic soldier’s throat,
seized the corpse and sucked the streaming blood. It was enough to drain what remained of the Goths’ courage and force a retreat northwards.

The war dragged on for four more years, ending in a treaty that gave the Goths almost exactly what had been agreed in the first place: land just south of the Danube and semi-independence, with their soldiers fighting for Rome under their own leaders. It would not last, for the Goths were a nation on the move, the greatest of the many barbarian migrations that would undermine the empire. A Visigoth who fought at Adrianople could have lived through another revolt, a slow advance deeper into the empire, the brief seizure of Rome itself in 410, a march over the Pyrenees and a final return over the same mountains to find peace at last in south-west France.

A
nd all this chaos – the refugee crisis, the rebellion, the disaster of Adrianople, the attack on Constantinople, the impossible peace, the slow erosion by barbarians – had been unleashed by the ‘unknown race’ to the east. Still no-one in the empire or even the nearer reaches of the
barbaricum
knew anything of them.

Perhaps they should have done. For, as Ammianus mentions in passing, among the cavalry that had come to Fritigern’s rescue was a contingent of these lightly armed horse-archers, no more than a few hundred, probably operating as outriders for the main Goth force. It was their arrival the previous year that had forced the Romans to withdraw, allowing the Goths to break through into Thrace. No doubt they
had been doing very nicely as freebooters and spies, harassing enemy flanks. If they had been in the battle outside Adrianople, no-one would have taken much notice of these few coarse creatures with their minimal armour; but they were seen afterwards, during the looting. Then they vanished, for few cities had fallen and the pickings would have been meagre. They left, however, with another sort of treasure: information. They had seen what the West had to offer. They had witnessed Rome’s worst day since the defeat by Hannibal at Cannae 600 years before. They might even have guessed that Rome would in future rely more on heavy cavalry, which, as they knew, was no match for their own type of warfare. They had seen Rome’s wider problems: the difficulty of securing a leaky frontier, the impossibility of gathering and moving large armies to fight fast-moving guerrillas, the arrogance of the ‘civilized’ when confronting the ‘barbarian’. While the whole Balkan sector of the empire collapsed into rioting, these swift mounted archers galloped back northwards and eastwards with their few stolen items, and their vital intelligence:
the empire was rich
,
and the empire was vulnerable
.