Ravenna, a Study

by Edward Hutton

Hilderic, who had succeeded Thrasamund on the Vandal throne in Africa, had put Amalafrida, the queen dowager, the sister of Theodoric, to death. In June 531, he was deposed. Now Hilderic favoured the Catholics, was the ally of the empire, and was descended on his mother's side from the great Theodosius. Justinian determined to avenge him, and in avenging him to reconquer Africa for the empire. The hour had struck as I say, and the man had appeared with the hour. That man was the great soldier Belisarius, the instrument of Justinian in all his heroic design.

Belisarius was entirely successful in his African campaign. On 15th September 533, he entered Carthage, and "was received by the majority of the citizens who spoke the Latin tongue and professed the Catholic Faith with unconcealed rejoicing." And as it happened he entered Carthage only to hear of Hilderic's murder. Before the end of the year the reconquest was complete. Africa was once more and in reality a province of the empire, and offered an excellent base of operations for the conquest of Italy, now to be undertaken.

In the summer of 535, eighteen months later, Justinian began the great war against the Goths, the opportunity for which was offered him by the murder of Amalasuntha, and the result of which was to be the re-establishment of the empire in Italy. Rightly understood the true service of Theodoric—and it was a real and a precious service—was that the thirty years of settled government and peace which he had given Italy had prepared the way for the reconquest.

That reconquest occupied five years. It was begun with an attack upon Sicily and proceeded northward by way of Naples and Rome to Ravenna, with the fall of which it was achieved. From a purely strategical point of view Belisarius was wrong to attack Sicily first and to carry the campaign from south to north; he should have attacked Ravenna first, and from the sea, and thus possessed himself of the key of Italy, and this especially as his base was Constantinople. But politically he was absolutely right. Sicily was almost empty of Gothic troops and the provincials were eagerly Catholic and only too willing to make a real part of the Roman empire. Thus the campaign opened with surrender after surrender, was indeed almost a procession; only Palermo offered resistance, and this because it was held by a garrison of Goths; but before the end of 535 the whole island was once more subject to the empire.

Early in 536 a rebellion in Africa, which proved to be little more than a mutiny in Carthage, took Belisarius away; but he was back in Sicily before the end of the spring, and in the early summer was marching through southern Italy almost unresisted, welcomed everywhere with joy and thanksgiving till he came to the fortress of Naples, which was held by a Gothic garrison. Here the people wished to welcome him and surrender the city, but were prevented by the garrison, which, however, was soon cleverly outwitted and taken prisoner, and by the end of November all southern Italy was in Belisarius' hands.

The fall of Naples brought Theodahad to the ground. The Goths deposed him and raised upon their shields Vitiges the soldier. As for Theodahad he was overtaken on the road to Ravenna, whither he was flying, and his throat was cut as he lay on the pavement of the way, "as a priest cuts the throat of his victim."

If Theodahad was a villain as well as a fool, perhaps Vitiges was only the latter. At any rate, he is generally considered to have acted with criminal folly, when, as the first act of his reign, he abandoned Rome and fell back upon Ravenna, determined to make his great defence in northern Italy. But I think, if we consider the position more closely, we shall see that Vitiges was not such a fool as he looks. He had seen the two great fortresses of Palermo and Naples fall, and mainly for the same reason, the fact that the whole of their populations except the Gothic garrisons were eagerly on the side of the enemy. The situation of Rome, its great size, made it difficult to defend except with a very great army, and this would become a hundred times more difficult, if not impossible, if the population were to side with the attack. Yet not only was that already certain, but the sympathies of the citizens there might be expected to be even more passionately Roman than others had been elsewhere; for Rome was the capital of Catholicism, the throne of the Church, the seat of Peter. The Goth had to face the fact that, while he was perhaps hardly holding his own in Rome, Belisarius might stealthily pass on to overthrow the Gothic citadel at Ravenna. He had to ask himself whether he could expect to defend both Rome and Ravenna, for if Ravenna were to fall the whole kingdom was lost, since now, not less but rather more than before, Ravenna was the key to Italy.

There is this also; Justinian had in the summer of 535 despatched two armies from Constantinople. One of these was that which Belisarius had disembarked in Sicily, and which till now had been so uniformly and so easily victorious. The other under Mundus had entered Dalmatia which it had completely wrested from the Goths by the middle of 536. It is probable that Vitiges expected to be attacked in the rear and from the north by this victorious army. If that should fall upon Ravenna while the Gothic strength was engaged in the defence of Rome, what would be the fate of that principal city, and with that lost, what would become of him in the Catholic capital?

Of course Vitiges ought to have met the imperial army in the field and given battle. That was the true solution. But no Gothic army ever dared to face Belisarius in the open, for though the Goths enormously outnumbered his small force of some 8000 men, they feared him as the possessor of a superior arm in the Hippotoxotai, mounted troops armed with the bow, and above all they feared his genius.

But Vitiges was no fool; his cause was hopeless from the first. He abandoned Rome and fell back upon Ravenna, because that was the best thing to be done in the circumstances in which he found himself. Among these must be reckoned the newness of his authority and the necessity of consolidating it by a marriage with a princess of the blood of Theodoric. As it happened, this retreat enabled him to prolong a war that at first looked like coming to an end in a few months for four more years.