Well might Belisarius desire the cavalry of John, useless in Rimini, for the direct road to that city was still in the hands of the enemy. But when John got his orders he refused to obey them and Ildiger and Martin returned without him. What excuse is possible for this refusal of obedience on the part of a subordinate which might well have imperilled the whole campaign? This only: that he had orders from one superior even to Belisarius. It is probable that John in Rimini and Ancona was aware that he might expect reinforcement from Constantinople and that Belisarius knew nothing of them. These reinforcements arrived under Narses, the great and famous chamberlain of Justinian, not long after Rimini had begun to suffer the memorable siege that followed the departure of Ildiger and Martin, and Ancona had only just been saved. The presence of Narses in Italy changed the whole aspect of the campaign, and whatever motives Justinian may have had for sending him thither, the effect of his landing at Ancona with great reinforcements can have had only a good effect upon the war.
[Illustration: Sketch Map CITIES UNDERLINED WERE IN IMPERIAL HANDS]
Belisarius had now secured himself to this extent that Todi and Chiusi were in his hands, and he hastened to meet Narses at Fermo forty miles south of Ancona. There a council of war was held in which Belisarius maintained his plan, namely, that Rimini should be abandoned because Osimo, very strongly held over Ancona, was in the hands of the Goths. Narses, on the contrary, looked only to the spiritual side of war. He maintained that if a city once recovered for the empire was abandoned the moral result would be disastrous. At any cost he was for the relief of Rimini. Somewhat reluctantly, realising the danger, Belisarius consented to try. A screen of a thousand men was placed before Osimo, an army was embarked for Rimini and another was sent out by the coast road, while Belisarius himself and Narses with a column of cavalry set out from Fermo westward, crossed the Apennines above Spoleto, struck into the Flaminian Way, recrossed the Apennines by the Furlo, and had come within a day's journey of Rimini when they came upon a party of Goths, who fled and gave the alarm to Vitiges. But before the Goth could decide what to do, Ildiger was upon him from the sea, Martin was upon him with a great army from the south, and Belisarius and Narses came down from the mountains in time to rejoice at the delivery of the city.
That deliverance but disclosed the two parties that divided the imperial army. When John refused obedience to Belisarius we may be sure he was not acting wholly without encouragement, and this at once became obvious after the deliverance of Rimini which Belisarius had carried out but which had been conceived by Narses. It will be remembered that Milan was by the act of Belisarius in the hands of the Romans; it was, however, now besieged even as Rimini had been by a very redoubtable Gothic leader, Uraius. Orvieto and Osimo also were still in barbarian hands. Belisarius now proposed to employ the army in the relief of the one and the capture of the others. Narses, on the other hand, proposed to take his part of the army and with it to reoccupy the province of Aemilia between the Apennines and the Po. These rivalries and differences were to cost the life of a great city, Milan. For since Narses would not consent to the plan of Belisarius, only what seemed most urgent was done; Orvieto was taken, Urbino too, and the energy of the imperial army and its purpose, also, was expended upon many unimportant things, an attempt upon Cesena, the reduction of Imola, which involved a hopeless dispersal of forces upon no great end. Belisarius, warned of the danger, ordered John to the relief of Milan; again that creature of Narses refused. And down came Milan before Uraius the Goth, who fell upon the helpless citizens and massacred three hundred thousand of them, being all the men of the city; and the women he gave as payment to his Burgundian ally; and of Milan he left not one stone upon another. But when Justinian read the despatch of Belisarius, he recalled Narses, for if the fall of Rimini would have injured so sorely the imperial cause, what of the fall of Milan, the massacre of its inhabitants, the utter destruction of the city? So great was its effect that we read even Justinian thought of treating with the Goths; for he was haunted by the weakness of his Persian frontier, and he had soon to look to the western Alps.
Not so Belisarius. He went on his way and first he reduced two fortresses that had long threatened him, Osimo and Fiesole, and then and at long last he began the great advance upon Ravenna.
In this he was attempting with a small and weary force what had never before been accomplished. Theodoric, it is true, had entered Ravenna as a conqueror, but only by stratagem and deceptive promises after a siege of three years. Belisarius, none knew it better than he, had neither the time nor the forces that were at the disposal of the great Gothic king. He must act quickly if at all, and nowhere and on no occasion does this great and resourceful man appear to better advantage than in his achievement at Ravenna, which should have been the last military action of the reconquest.
Procopius, who was perhaps an eye-witness of the whole business of the siege and certainly entered Ravenna in triumph with Belisarius, tells us that, after the fall of Osimo, Belisarius made haste to Ravenna with his whole army. He sent one of his generals, Magnus, before him with a sufficient force, to march along the Po and to prevent provisions being taken into the impregnable city from the Aemilian Way; while another general, Vitalius, he called out of Dalmatia with his forces to hold the northern bank of the river. When this was done a most extraordinary accident occurred which it seems impossible to explain. "An accident then befell," says Procopius, "which clearly shows that Fortuna determines even yet every struggle. For the Goths had brought down the Po many barges from Liguria[1] laden with corn, bound for Ravenna; but the water suddenly grew so low in the river that they could not row on; and the Romans coming upon them took them and all their lading. Soon after the river had again its wonted stream and was navigable as before. This scarcity of water had never till then occurred so far as we could hear."
[Footnote 1: Cf. Cassiodorus, Variae, II. 20, where we read of
Theodoric in a time of scarcity supplying Liguria with food from
Ravenna. "Let any provision ships which may be now lying at Ravenna be
ordered round to Liguna, which in ordinary times supplies the needs of
Ravenna herself.">[
Owing to this accident and the closeness of the investment the Goths began to be short of provisions, for they could import nothing from the sea, since the Romans were masters there. In their need, however, the King of the Franks, knowing how things were, sent ambassadors to Vitiges in Ravenna, and so did Belisarius. The Franks offered to lead an army of five hundred thousand men over the Alps and to bury the Romans in utter ruin if the Goths would consent to share Italy with them. But the Goths feared the Franks, and the ambassadors of Belisarius were able to persuade them to reject their offers. From this time forward negotiations went on without ceasing between Belisarius and the Goths, for the one was short of time, the other of food. Nevertheless, the Romans did not relax their investment of the city in any way. Indeed, Belisarius chose this moment for his shrewdest and cruellest blow. "For hearing how there was much corn in the public magazines of Ravenna, he won a citizen with money to set them afire; which loss, some say, happened by Matasuntha's advice, the wife of Vitiges. It was so suddenly done that some thought it was by lightning, as others by design, and Vitiges and the Goths, taking it in either kind, fell into more irresolution, mistrusting one another, and thinking that God himself made war against them."
At this misfortune Uraius, the destroyer of Milan, proposed to attempt to relieve Ravenna, but Belisarius easily outwitted him and his intervention came to nothing.