Count Belisarius (31 page)

This day was celebrated the feast of St Cyprian, the patron of Carthage, though it wanted two months of the correct date; because St Cyprian's storm, a violent north-east wind which is expected in mid-September, had also anticipated its date and blown the fleet safely into harbour. The Cathedral of St Cyprian, which had been seized as an Arian place of worship some years before, was in the hands of the Orthodox again, so that the feast was celebrated with ecclesiastical triumph and hosannas.

The city is a grand one, full of shops and statues, and colonnades of the local yellow marble, and baths and street-markets and a huge Hippodrome on a hill — of everything in fact that a city should be, though the squares are not so large as those of Constantinople and the streets much narrower. A radiance of liberty continued to shine for weeks in the faces of the inhabitants, and every day seemed a festival. The extraordinary ease with which the Vandals had been defeated was almost the only topic of conversation, and, to account for it, everyone began recalling his or her prophetic dreams or domestic omens.

A prophetic quality was even found in a schoolchildren's rhyme, long current in the streets:

Gamma shall chase Beta out;
    Again, contrariwise,
Beta shall Gamma put to rout
    And sling out both his eyes.

This rhyme was based on a horn-book used in the local monastic schools for the learning of the Greek alphabet: the first letter ‘
alpha
' was to be memorized as being the initial letter of ‘
anthos
', a flower; and ‘
beta
' as standing for ‘
Balearicos
', a Balearic slinger; and ‘
gamma
' for ‘
Gallos
', a Gallic spearman. These figures were drawn by the
monks in the horn-book to fix the letters in the minds of the children. But the children had a notion that the Balearic and the Gaul, on opposite pages of the parchment pamphlet, were enemies. So, in their game of ‘Gaul and Balearic', one child was the Gaul and pursued another, the Balearic, with a stick; but as soon as he caught him the Gaul ran away again, and the Balearic, in pursuit, attacked him with pebbles. The rhyme referred to this game. But the popular interpretation of it as a prophecy was that King Geiserich had chased out Count Boniface, the Roman General who had invited him there from Andalusia, and now Belisarius had put King Geilimer to rout and killed his brother and nephew. For the initial letters corresponded exactly.

Belisarius himself had no time to spend on self-congratulation or the analysis of prophecies. He at once set to work a number of Vandal prisoners, and all the available masons and unskilled labourers of the city, and a great number of sailors, and whatever infantry he could spare from garrison-duty, at repairing the city-walls to landward which had fallen into a ruinous condition, and at digging a deep, stockaded trench about them. This was a great undertaking. Though the city on its swelling promontory is protected by water on three sides, its fortifications are of enormous extent: a triple line seven miles long, across the neck of the promontory, of walls forty feet high with strong towers at intervals; and a fifteen-mile inner wall, also very strong, where the land begins to rise; and coastal defences. There are two fortified harbours – the outer for merchant vessels, and the inner for warships, of which more than two hundred can be accommodated at a time. The inner harbour was empty when we arrived, the greater part of the Vandal Navy being away with Zazo at Sardinia, and other ships having been sent to Tripoli, and the garrison having escaped in the remainder.

A day or two later a Vandal warship was signalled and allowed to enter the harbour unmolested, because it was clear that the crew had no notion that their city was in our hands. The captain was arrested as soon as he disembarked, and was thunderstruck at the sudden change of sovereignty. He bore a letter for King Geilimer from his brother Zazo announcing a complete victory in Sardinia, and trusting that the Imperial fleet that had been reported on its way to Carthage had met with deserved destruction. King Geilimer was now reorganizing his forces at Bulla – an inland town four days' march away to the eastward, and the ancient capital of the Numidian kings. He had already
sent a letter to Zazo, by one of his galleys stationed farther down the coast, imploring him to return.

A fortnight later Zazo was back in Africa with his entire force – Sardinia lies only 150 miles to the northward – and was embracing his brother Geilimer on the plain at Bulla. As they stood there, weeping silently together, locked in each other's arms, they formed a statue of brotherly love that would have made the fortune of any sculptor who could have reproduced it. And wordlessly, following the royal example, each one of Zazo's men singled out a man of Geilimer's for a similar embrace, and then all began weeping and wringing their hands. A most fantastic sight it must have been!

Then the combined Vandal armies moved against Carthage. Geilimer was astonished to find the outer defences protected by a newly dug, stockaded trench, and most of the weak places in the outermost of the three walls repaired. They did not dare to attack the wall, which was held by sharp-shooting infantry, and contented themselves with making a breach in the fifty-mile long aqueduct which supplies the city with water. But Belisarius had already taken the precaution of temporarily diverting the water from the baths and ornamental pools into the deep, underground, drinking-water reservoirs. The Vandals also cut off the supply of fruit and vegetables from the interior; but this made no impression on the city, which could supply itself from the sea and from its own gardens. To be a Vandal in Africa had meant to live tax-free and enjoy feudal privileges, so that the Vandal suburb of Carthage, to the right of the old city as one sails in from the sea, was composed of magnificent residences, each standing in a park with extensive orchards and kitchen-gardens. These estates Belisarius appropriated for the billeting of the troops; and as it was the fruitful autumn season we were all extremely well off for supplies. The city granaries were well stocked, too.

Then King Geilimer tried secretly to persuade some of our troops to mutiny: the Thracian Goths, who were their Arian co-religionists, and the Massagetic Huns, who had a grievance – when peace had been signed with Persia they had not been sent home to their native steppes at the other side of the Persian Empire, as had been promised, but shipped to Africa. The Goths merely laughed at the disloyal suggestion and reported it at once; but it was some time before Belisarius, by treating the Huns with particular honour and inviting them to a number of banquets, won their full confidence and made them confess that
they had seriously considered the Vandal proposal – as he already knew from his lieutenant Aigan. They explained that they did not wish to be detained in Africa as garrison troops, to live and die so far from their homes. Such attractions as silk garments, and crystal drinking-vessels for their
kavasse
, and full bellies, and plump, loving women, could not outweigh their homesickness for the wide, windswept steppe and the wagons of their own folk. Then Belisarius swore an oath, by his own honour, that they would be allowed to go home as soon as the Vandals were conclusively defeated; and in return they swore renewed loyalty to him.

When, in early December, the wall was repaired and once more defensible throughout its seven-mile length even without the trench, Belisarius decided to lead his army out against the Vandals. If he were defeated now, he at least had a secure place for retreat. He commanded the infantry, which formed the main body, in person. The advance guard, consisting of all his cavalry except for 500 of his Household cuirassiers, whom he had kept behind with him, found the enemy at Tricamaron, twenty miles away, and attacked at once, as they had been ordered to do. The character of this battle was unusual. The Vandals, although again enormously superior in numbers, stood dully on the defensive, as if they were a poor sort of infantry recruits. Armenian John, at the head of the remaining 1,000 Household cuirassiers, tried to tempt them out against him by skirmishing attacks. At last, finding them immovable and realizing that they had lost all courage, he charged in earnest, unfurling the Imperial standard. Geilimer had, for some superstitious reason, ordered his men to discard lance and spear and fight only with their swords: which put them at a great disadvantage.

Soon Uliaris had the good fortune to kill Zazo with a lance-thrust; when his death was known the Vandal centre broke and fled back to their camp. The wings followed, as soon as the attack became general, without striking a blow. For a battle that was to settle the fate of a huge kingdom it was remarkably bloodless and one-sided, and lasted scarcely a full hour from start to finish. We lost fifty men, and they 800. Our infantry had again not come into action at all, for they were half a day's march behind. They arrived late that afternoon and prepared to attack the Vandal camp, which was a vast ring of covered country-wagons protected by a flimsy palisade.

When King Geilimer saw our main body approaching, he caught
up his favourite little nephew, Ammatas's six-year-old son, set him on the crupper of his saddle, told him to hold tight, and galloped away with him, followed by a retinue of brothers-in-law and cousins and such-like; without so much as a word of explanation or apology to his generals. Being given so commanding an example of cowardice by their sovereign, these generals did not think to organize the defence of the camp. Squadron by squadron, the army scattered in all directions: a shameful prelude to a shameful scene.

Without a blow we captured the camp and everything that it contained; the men broke ranks and the game of grab-all began at once. Never was such plunder offered to a deserving soldiery. Not only was there plunder of gold and jewels, both ecclesiastical and personal, and carved ivories and silks from chests on the wagons, but also human plunder – the Vandal women and children, whom their menfolk had basely left to their fate. Now, Belisarius had made it clear enough that, although old military custom gave the victors of a battle a right to despoil the enemy's camp, he would hang or impale any man found guilty of rape, which was an offence against the laws of God. Belisarius, as you know, was in the habit of enforcing orders of this sort, and needed only to make a law once – unlike Justinian, his master, who often issued the same edict again and again, because, lacking the resolution to enforce it, he could thus at least keep the penalties fresh in the memory of his subjects.

So no rape took place, in the sense of women being forced against their will. But there was a great deal of earnest love-making on the part of the women themselves, many of whom were extremely good-looking and nearly all delicately nurtured. For they had no reason to remain faithful to husbands who deserted them in this cowardly fashion. Moreover, they took the practical view that, faced with slavery, they had no chance now of ever resuming their comfortable life at Carthage, which had been interrupted by this disagreeable campaign, except as the wives of our men – the better men. Many of them had their children to consider, too. They assumed, as most of our men did themselves, that when the fighting was done the army of invasion would become the military aristocracy of Africa, dispossessing the Vandals, man for man, of all their personal properties. Our men had been encouraged in this view by a sermon preached at the Cathedral by the Bishop of Carthage, on the text from the Evangelist Luke: ‘When a strong man, armed, keepeth his palace, his goods are at
peace. But when a stronger shall come upon him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted and divideth his spoils.' This prospect of becoming noblemen in so prosperous and pleasant a land delighted them all, except only the Massagetes.

But it was hard for me to decide whether it was a comic or a tragic sight to see these women hurriedly selecting suitable husbands and offering themselves to them with promises of land and cattle and fine furnished houses in Carthage as dowries. The men, except the Thracian Goths, did not understand a word of the Vandal language. Unless a woman was particularly attractive or offered herself to a man with a store of jewels and gold in the bosom of her robe he shook her off and went in search of better bargains. In point of numbers, there was at least one Vandal woman for every man of our army. Several of the more modest women crowded around me because I was a eunuch, hoping by marriage with me to preserve their chastity as well as their freedom. My mistress, too, had innumerable offers of ladies' maids. She had been among the first to enter the camp; and it was a fine haul of treasure that she made from the wagons, with the help of her domestics.

What with plundering, and the gross enjoyment of sexual pleasure freely offered, the army became utterly disorganized. If a single troop of Vandals had attempted to recapture that camp two hours later they would have won an easy triumph. Our soldiers had been filling their helmets from the barrels of sweet wine on the wagons, and now wandered about, quarrelling, plundering, singing discordantly; selling one another unwieldy or unwanted objects for small quantities of ready cash; accepting the caresses of the women; and finally roaming outside the camp in search of more plunder that had perhaps been concealed by fugitives in neighbouring caves or under stones. This wild sort of business continued all night. Belisarius went about from one point to another with six faithful men and put down violence, wherever he came across it, with a heavy hand. The troops were so drenched by their sudden good fortune, having become quite rich men, most of them, at a single stroke, that they were all convinced that they could now retire on their earnings without any further military obligation. When early dawn came, Belisarius climbed up on a mound in the centre of the camp, with my mistress at his side, appealing loudly for discipline, and enlarging on the dangers of a counter-attack. At first he received no answer at all. Then with his own lips he blew ‘Assemble
the Whites! ‘on a trumpet, and his Household cuirassiers gradually remembered that the penalty for absence off parade was a severe flogging. So one by one they unwillingly came together, lugging their plunder along with the help of their newly acquired families. At my mistress's suggestion Belisarius sent a convoy of plunder back to Carthage, the goods tied in bundles and piled in the captured wagons: a wagon for each half-section, and the captives of that half-section walking beside it, with a responsible senior soldier in charge.