The Scarlet Banner

by Felix Dahn

CHAPTER VI

Procopius to Cethegus:

We are actually still alive, and we are spending the night in Decimum, but we have had a narrow escape from passing it with the sharks at the bottom of the sea; never before, Belisarius says, was annihilation so near him. This mysterious King brought us into the greatest peril by his admirable plan of attack. And when it had already succeeded, he alone, the King himself, cast away his own victory, and saved us from certain destruction. I will tell you briefly the course of recent events, partly from our own experiences, partly from what we have learned through the citizens of Decimum and the Vandal prisoners.

The King, undiscovered by us, had accompanied our march from the time of our landing. The place where he suddenly attacked us had been wisely chosen long before. Belisarius says that not even his great rival, Narses, could have made a better plan of battle. As soon as we left our last camp outside of Decimum, we lost, as I wrote in my former letter, the protection of our fleet. If a superior force assailed us here from the west, it would hurl us, not--as along the whole previous march--upon our sheltering galleys, but directly into the sea from the road running along the steep hills close to the coast. Just before Decimum this road narrows greatly; for lofty mountains tower at the southwest along the narrow highway. Over the loose sand, heaped on the mountains by the desert winds, neither man nor horse can pass without sinking a foot deep. Here, attacked from all three sides at the same moment, we were to be driven eastward into the sea at our right.

A brother of the King, Gibamund, was to rush with two thousand men from the west upon our left flank; a Vandal noble with a still stronger force was to attack us from Decimum in the front; the King, with the main body, was to fall upon us in the rear from the South.

Belisarius had carefully planned the order of our march through this dangerous portion of the way. He sent Fara with his brave Herulians and three hundred picked men of the bodyguard two and a half Roman miles in advance. They were to pass through the Narrow Way first alone, and instantly report any danger back to the main body led by Belisarius. On our left flank the Hun horsemen and five thousand of the excellent Thracian infantry under Althias were thrown out to guard us from any peril threatening in that quarter and report it to Belisarius, to prevent a surprise of the main body during the march.

Then, to our great good fortune, it happened that the attack from the north, from Decimum, came far too early. Prisoners say that a younger brother of the King, scarcely beyond boyhood, taking part in the battle against Gelimer's orders, dashed out of Decimum with a few horsemen upon our ranks as soon as he saw us. The noble wished to save him at any cost, so he also attacked with the small force at his disposal,--four hours too soon,--only sending messengers back to Carthage to hasten the march of his main body. The youth and the noble made the most desperate resistance to the superior force. Twelve of Belisarius's bravest bodyguard, battle-tried men of former wars, were slain. At last both fell, and now, deprived of their leader, the Vandals turned their horses, and, in a mad flight, ran down and overthrew those who were advancing from Carthage to their support,--true, in little bands of thirty and forty men. Fara with his swift Herulians dashed after them in savage pursuit to the very gates of Carthage, cutting down all whom he overtook. The Vandals, who had fought bravely so long as they saw the Asdings and the nobles in their van, now threw down their weapons and allowed themselves to be slaughtered. We found many thousand dead bodies on the road and in the fields to the left.

After this first onset of the Vandals had resulted in defeat, Gibamund, knowing nothing of it, attacked with his troops the greatly superior force of the Huns and Thracians. This happened at the Salt Field,--a treeless, shrubless waste on the edge of the desert five thousand paces west of Decimum. With no aid from Carthage and Decimum, he was completely routed; nearly all his men were slain; their leader was seen to fall, whether dead or living, no one knows.

Meanwhile, entirely ignorant of what had happened, we were marching with the main body along the road to Decimum. As Belisarius found an excellent camping-ground about four thousand paces from this place, he halted. That the enemy must be in the neighborhood he suspected; the disappearance of the two Huns during the night had perplexed him. He established a well-fortified camp, and said to the troops, "The enemy must be close at hand. If he attacks us here, where we lack the support of the fleet, our escape will lie solely in victory. Should we be defeated, there is no stronghold, no fortified city, to receive us; the sea, roaring below, will swallow us. The intrenched camp is our only protection, the camp and the long-tested swords in our hands. Fight bravely! Life, as well as fame, is at stake."

He now ordered the infantry to remain in camp with the luggage as the last reserve, and led the whole force of cavalry out toward Decimum. He would not risk everything at once, but intended first to discover the strength and plans of the Barbarians by skirmishing. Sending the auxiliary cavalry in the van, he followed with the other squadrons and his mounted bodyguard. When the advance body reached Decimum, it found the Byzantines and Vandals who had fallen there. A few of the citizens who had hidden in the houses told our troops what had happened; most of them had fled to Carthage on learning that their village had been chosen for the battleground.

A wonderfully beautiful woman,--she looks like the Sphinx at Memphis,--the owner of the largest villa in Decimum, voluntarily received our men. It was she who told us of the noble's death. He fell before her eyes, just in front of her house.

The leaders now consulted, undecided whether to advance, halt, or return to Belisarius. At last the whole body of cavalry rode about two thousand paces west of Decimum, where they could obtain from the high sand-hills a wider view in every direction. There they saw rising in the south-southwest--that is, in the rear and on the left flank of Belisarius--a huge cloud of dust, from which sometimes flashed the arms and banners of an immense body of horsemen. They instantly sent a message to Belisarius that he must hasten; the enemy was at hand.

Meanwhile the Barbarians, led by Gelimer, approached. They were marching along a road between Belisarius's main body in the east and the Huns and Thracians, our left wing, who had defeated Gibamund and pursued him far to the west. But the high hills along the road obstructed Gelimer's view, so that he could not see Gibamund's battlefield. Byzantines and Vandals, as soon as they saw each other, struggled to be first to reach and occupy the summit of the highest hill in the chain which dominated the whole region. The Barbarians gained the top, and from it King Gelimer rushed down with such power upon our men, the auxiliary cavalry, that they were seized with panic, and fled in wild confusion eastward, toward Decimum.

About nine hundred paces west of the village the fugitives met their strong support, a body of eight hundred mounted shield-bearers, led by Velox, Belisarius's bodyguard. The General and all of us who had tremblingly witnessed the flight of the cavalry consoled ourselves with the hope that Velox would check their flight and march back with them to the enemy. But--oh, shame and horror--the weight of the Vandal onslaught was so tremendous that the fugitives and the shield-bearers did not even wait for it; the whole body, mingled together, swept back in disorder to Belisarius.

The General said that at this moment he gave us all up for lost: "Gelimer," he said at the banquet that night, "had the victory in his hands. Why he voluntarily let it escape is incomprehensible. Had he followed the fugitives, he would have pursued me and my whole army into the sea, so great was the alarm of our troops and so tremendous the force of the Vandal assault. Then the camp and the infantry would both have been destroyed. Or if he had even gone from Decimum back to Carthage, he could have destroyed without resistance Fara and his men, for expecting no attack from the rear, they were scattered singly or in couples along the streets and in the fields, pillaging the slain. And once in possession of Carthage he could easily have taken our ships, anchored near the city,--without crews,--and thus cut off from us every hope of victory or retreat."

But King Gelimer did neither. A sudden paralysis attacked the power which had just overthrown everything in its way.

Prisoners told us that, as he dashed down the hillside, spurring his cream-colored charger far in advance of all his men, he saw in the narrow pass at the southern entrance of Decimum the corpse of his young brother lying first of all the bodies in the road. With a loud cry of anguish, he sprung from his horse, threw himself upon the lifeless boy, and thus checked the advance of his troops. Their foremost horses, held back with difficulty by the riders that they might not trample on the King and the lad, reared, plunged, and kicked, throwing those behind into confusion, and stopped the whole chase. The King raised in his arms the mangled and bloody body (for our horsemen had dashed over it); then breaking again into cries of agony, he placed it on his charger and ordered it to be buried by the roadside with royal honors. The whole did not probably occupy fifteen minutes, but that quarter of an hour wrested from the Barbarians the victory they had already won.

Meanwhile Belisarius rushed to meet our fugitives, thundered at them in his resonant leonine voice his omnipotent "Halt," showed them, lifting his helmet, his face flaming with a wrath which his warriors dreaded more than the spears of all the Barbarians, brought the deeply shamed men to a stand, arranged them, amid terrible reproaches, in the best order possible in the haste, and, after learning all he could concerning the position and strength of the Vandals, led them to the attack upon Gelimer and his army.

The Vandals did not withstand it. The sudden, mysterious check of their advance had bewildered, perplexed, discouraged them; besides, their best strength had been exhausted in the furious ride. The sun of Africa, burning fiercely down, had wearied us also, but at the first onset we broke through their ranks. They turned and fled. The King, who tried to check them, was swept away by the rush, not to Carthage, not even southwest to Byzacena, whence they had come, but towards the northwest along the road leading to Numidia, to the plain of Bulla.

Whether they took that course by the King's command or without it and against it, we do not yet know.

We wrought great slaughter among the fugitives; the chase did not end until nightfall. When, as the darkness closed in, the torches and watchfires were lighted, Fara and the Herulians came from the north, Althias with the Huns and Thracians from the west, and we all spent the night in Decimum celebrating three victories in a single day: over the nobleman, over Prince Gibamund, and over the King.