Theodoric (2 page)

AD
468, when this story begins, was a critical year for the Western half of the Roman Empire; nothing less than its survival or extinction hung in the balance. How had this ‘moment of truth' come about?

The beginning of the fifth century had witnessed successive waves of barbarians – Visigoths, Vandals, Suevi et al. – break through the West's frontiers and rampage through Gaul and Spain, with Britain being abandoned in the chaos. But cometh the hour, cometh the man. Just when it seemed that nothing could halt the West's slide towards disintegration, a remarkable Roman general, Constantius, took on the German invaders and forced them to settle peacefully on Roman soil as federate ‘guests'. After his premature death, Constantius' work was continued and consolidated by an even greater Roman commander, Flavius Aetius. For thirty years, Aetius was able, most of the time, with the help of his allies the Huns, to maintain stability and some form of imperial control. Ironically, it was the Huns, a formidable horde of nomadic horse-archers from Central Asia who, by pressing the German tribes from the rear, had set off a chain reaction of migration resulting in the barbarian invasions. These were largely confined to the West, whose long Rhine–Danube frontier was especially vulnerable to attack by the confederations of German tribes beyond the northern banks. In contrast, the Eastern Empire – wealthy, stable, the home of ancient civilizations – had only the Lower Danube frontier to defend; also it became adept at passing on barbarian invaders, such as Alaric's Visigoths, to the West. (Persia, to the east, potentially a far greater threat than any barbarian confederation, was a civilized power which on the whole kept its peace treaties with Rome.)

The great exception to Aetius' entente with the German invaders was Gaiseric, king of the Vandals. As ambitious as he was cunning and cruel, in 429 Gaiseric had transported his tribe from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar, wrested North Africa – the West's richest and most
productive diocese – from Roman control, and set up an independent Vandal kingdom in its place. Unlike other German immigrant leaders, Gaiseric never showed the least desire for an accommodation with Rome, towards whom he maintained a stance of unvarying hostility.

In 451, Aetius' policy of forging bonds with the federates was triumphantly vindicated. In that year, his old friend Attila, king of the Huns, abandoned a long-running campaign against the Eastern Empire to launch a full-scale attack on the West. Heading a coalition of Roman troops and German confederates, Aetius defeated Attila and his Huns in an epic battle on the Catalaunian Plains – the West's greatest, though final, victory. Yet from this high point things began to go rapidly downhill for the West. Two years later Attila died, then in the following year, 454, Aetius was murdered by his jealous emperor, Valentinian III, himself assassinated in 455 by loyal followers of Aetius, thus ending the long Theodosian dynasty. (Whatever its faults, the House of Theodosius had provided a valuable measure of stability.) With the threat of Attila gone, and no general of the stature of Aetius to keep them in line, the federates took advantage of the constitutional vacuum resulting from the murder of Valentinian, and began to flex their muscles with a view to expanding their territories.

There followed in rapid succession four further reigns, the emperors virtual appointees of the new Master of Soldiers, Ricimer, the first German to fill the post for half a century. Meanwhile, the Western Empire, weakened by protracted haemorrhaging of taxes, troops and territory, was beginning to unravel, the federates held in check from an all-out land-grab only by wariness concerning possible countermeasures by the powerful Eastern Empire acting in concert with the Western government. Then, in 467, the storm-clouds gathering over the West suddenly rolled back, as circumstances combined to promise a real hope for recovery. A charismatic new emperor, the fifth since Valentinian, ascended the throne of the West, in parallel with the devising of a Grand Plan for finally driving the Vandals from Africa. (More than one abortive attempt had already been made.)

This emperor, Anthemius, seemed an ideal choice to head a Western recovery. Polished and affable, approved by Ricimer and having the full backing of his promoter, the Eastern emperor, Leo, Anthemius came with impeccable credentials. These were: successful campaigning as an Eastern
general; a distinguished family background; named consul for 455 and Patrician; marriage to the daughter of the late Eastern emperor Marcian; and near elevation to the Eastern purple on Marcian's death. If anyone could restore stability to the West, that man, it seemed, was Anthemius.

He made an auspicious start. His arrival in Gaul at the head of a considerable force drawn from the Roman field army of Illyricum, cowed the federates there – Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths – into, if not quite submission, at least acquiescence. (In set-piece battles, as the barbarians knew to their cost, properly led Roman troops would always beat them. Only overwhelming numbers had enabled them to establish themselves on Roman soil. Now, the prospect of East Roman reinforcements descending on them if they stepped out of line encouraged them to adopt a posture of appeasement.) Almost to a man, the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, whose loyalty to the centre had become eroded by the necessity of making terms with the dangerously volatile settlers in their midst, flocked to declare allegiance to their new head of state. (The
cursus publicus
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we know was still functioning.)

But, as everyone knew, the main plank of any scheme to revive the fortunes of the West consisted not in tweaking the balance of power in Gaul, but in reconquering North Africa. The potential benefits were enormous. The immediate effect would be a massive injection of revenue into the cash-strapped Treasury in Ravenna. With fresh blood pumping through its fiscal arteries, the West could replenish its shrunken, decimated field armies, and begin the process of re-establishing imperial authority. Peter Heather, in his brilliantly perceptive
The Fall of the Roman Empire
, says it all: ‘The knock-on effect of a decisive victory over Geiseric . . . would have been far-reaching. With Italy and North Africa united, Spain could have been added to the new western power-base . . . Then, once Hispanic revenues had begun to flow in again, . . . Visigoths and Burgundians could have been reduced to much smaller enclaves of influence [in Gaul] . . . The Roman centre would have become once again . . . dominant . . .' In addition, Britain (which had never been officially written off, and where Saxon settlement had only just begun) might have been scheduled for re-occupation.

Like the thinking behind the Spanish Armada, the strategy of the invasion was to disembark a huge sea-borne army on the coast of Africa, bring Gaiseric to battle, then smash him. Before enlarging on this plan, it should perhaps be asked: why was the East willing to commit its resources on a massive scale to rescue its beleaguered partner? First, Gaiseric was a thorn in the flesh of both Empires; as the only barbarian leader with a fleet (of Roman-built vessels) he had become a serious nuisance to the East, disrupting sea-borne trade by raids and piracy. Second, the Eastern emperor, Leo, mindful that Anthemius had come within a whisker of being elevated to the purple, was only too willing to have a potential rival removed as far away as possible – and kept there. (There is no evidence that Anthemius had accepted being passed over with anything other than good grace; but in the unforgiving world of Roman power politics it was best to take no chances.) Third, although East and West had in many ways drifted apart during the seventy-three years since their formal separation, there still existed an emotional attachment to the concept of ‘the One and Indivisible Empire' – rather like the ties binding the British Commonwealth, and before that ‘the Empire upon which the Sun Never Sets'. (The late great Peter Ustinov had a delicious story about when, arriving at his first school, he was confronted in the hall by a large painting. It depicted a Boy Scout gazing at a map of the world, beside which stood Jesus Christ pointing to the red patchwork of the British Empire!)

To finance the expedition the treasuries of both East and West were emptied, yielding one hundred and thirty thousand pounds' weight (fifty-eight tons!) of gold. Thus was raised a vast combined operation: a fleet of eleven hundred ships transporting a force, according to Gibbon's estimate (and his figures are usually reliable), upward of a hundred thousand strong. In June 468, the great armada set sail from the Bosphorus, carrying with it not only one of the largest armies the world had ever seen, but the hopes of salvation for the Western Empire.

 

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The efficient state post used relays of horses operating from postal stations 8–10 miles apart. Subject to official permit, it could be used by civilian VIPs.

Like an endless row of needles, the mast-tips of the approaching fleet rose above the horizon, followed by the white flecks of sails then dark hulls – hundreds upon hundreds of them. The Vandal scout, watching from the northern tip of Mercurii Promontorium,
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the monstrous headland pointing like an accusing finger from the African coast towards Sicilia, tried for a time to estimate the number of ships, then abandoned the attempt. As well essay to count the pebbles on a beach. Scrambling into the saddle of his waiting mount, he spurred off to bring the news to his master, Gaiseric, king of the Vandals.

The swirling crowds that filled the streets and squares of Carthage – from the forum crowning Byrsa Hill, to the quays beside the great twin harbours (naval and trading) and the sprawling suburbs of Megara to the west – seethed with aggressive excitement. Almost all the faces were of Romans, Moors and native Berbers. Those Vandals rash enough to venture out of doors had encountered a barrage of jeers, insults, rotten fruit, and even stones. For at last the Romans had arrived, to drive out the swaggering yellow-haired tyrants, with their harsh German voices and ugly sun-reddened skins, who for nearly two generations had bullied and oppressed the citizens of Roman Africa. Like wildfire, the news had spread that the Roman fleet – of over a thousand sail, some claimed – was even now riding at anchor less than forty miles to the north. The hour of deliverance had surely come.

Seated before his council within the great basilica of Carthage, where the baying of the mobs sounded only as a distant murmur, Gaiseric, though he gave no outward sign, was worried, deeply worried. Since seizing Roman Africa forty years before, he had maintained his grip on the territory by a mixture of luck and cunning, fomenting dissension between his enemies to play them off against one another, then striking when, divided, they were at their weakest. But now, it seemed, luck, fate (the ‘weird' of his ancestors in their cold northern forests), call it what you will, had finally deserted him. For let the army of the Romans, currently aboard their fleet at anchor off the western shore of Mercurii Promontorium, once disembark, and he was finished. He was certainly outnumbered, probably vastly so, and, while his Vandal warriors would fight with ferocious courage, they were no match for the armoured Romans with their iron discipline. Nor could he rely on the support of his native auxiliaries; anticipating a Vandal defeat, they would undoubtedly desert to the Romans.

The only counter left him in the game was to play for time. If only the Roman commander (one Basiliscus, so his spies in Constantinople had informed him) could be prevented from landing his army, until . . . Until the wind reversed direction, pinning the Romans against the western shore of the great promontory? Lead might float. At this time of year the prevailing south-easterly, famed for its constancy from time immemorial, could be expected to blow for weeks yet. With the wind in their favour, the Romans could sail at any time they chose, to establish a beachhead westward of their present position.

Gaiseric rose, to address his assembled war-leaders and advisers. Though stooped with age, and lame from an early riding accident, the Vandal monarch, white mane falling to his shoulders, was still an impressive figure, an aura of ruthless will and power seeming to emanate from him.

‘Who can tell me of this Basiliscus?' the king demanded, in his deep, guttural voice.

‘Sire, he is the son-in-law of Leo, the Greek who sits on the throne of Constantinople,' offered a battle-scarred veteran. Like many present, he had adopted the burnous of the local Berbers, a hooded cloak of light material affording some protection from the fierce sub-tropical sun, to which the Vandals' fair skins were especially vulnerable. ‘An able general, it would seem. They say he drove the last of Attila's sons from Dacia and Macedonia when they tried to find sanctuary within the Eastern Empire.'

‘Does he love gold?'

‘What Roman does not, Sire?' answered a grey-haired councillor. ‘But if you mean can he be bribed? Unlikely, I would say. The man is hardly poor, so why risk his reputation?'