THE VANDALIC WAR
[523-533 A.D.]
When Justinian ascended the throne, about fifty years after the fall of the Western Empire, the kingdoms of the Goths and Vandals had obtained a solid, and, as it might seem, a legal establishment, both in Europe and Africa. The titles which Roman victories had inscribed were erased with equal justice by the sword of the barbarians; and their successful rapine derived a more venerable sanction from time, from treaties, and from the oaths of fidelity, already repeated by a second or third generation of obedient subjects.
After Rome herself had been stripped of the imperial purple, the princes of Constantinople assumed the sole and sacred sceptre of the monarchy; demanded, as their rightful inheritance, the provinces which had been subdued by the consuls or possessed by the Cæsars; and feebly aspired to deliver their faithful subjects of the West from the usurpation of heretics and barbarians. The execution of this splendid design was in some degree reserved for Justinian. During the first five years of his reign, he reluctantly waged a costly and unprofitable war against Persia; till his pride submitted to his ambition, and he purchased, at the price of £440,000 [$2,200,000], the benefit of a precarious truce which, in the language of both nations, was dignified with the appellation of “the endless peace.” The safety of the East enabled the emperor to employ his forces against the Vandals; and the internal state of Africa afforded an honourable motive and promised a powerful support to the Roman arms.
According to the testament of the founder, the African kingdom had lineally descended to Hilderic, the eldest of the Vandal princes. A mild disposition inclined the son of a tyrant, the grandson of a conqueror, to prefer the counsels of clemency and peace; and his accession was marked by the salutary edict which restored two hundred bishops to their churches, and allowed the free profession of the Athanasian Creed. But the Catholics accepted, with cold and transient gratitude, a favour so inadequate to their pretensions, and the virtues of Hilderic offended the prejudices of his countrymen. The Arian clergy presumed to insinuate that he had renounced the faith, and the soldiers more loudly complained that he had degenerated from the courage of his ancestors. His ambassadors were suspected of a secret and disgraceful negotiation in the Byzantine court; and his general, the Achilles, as he was named, of the Vandals, lost a battle against the naked and disorderly Moors.
The public discontent was exasperated by Gelimer, whose age, descent, and military fame gave him an apparent title to the succession. He assumed, with the consent of the nation, the reins of government; and his unfortunate sovereign sank without a struggle from the throne to a dungeon, where he was strictly guarded, with a faithful counsellor and his unpopular nephew, the Achilles of the Vandals. But the indulgence which Hilderic had shown to his Catholic subjects had powerfully recommended him to the favour of Justinian, who, for the benefit of his own sect, could acknowledge the use and justice of religious toleration; their alliance, while the nephew of Justin remained in a private station, was cemented by the mutual exchange of gifts and letters, and the emperor Justinian asserted the cause of royalty and friendship.
In two successive embassies, he admonished the usurper to repent of his treason, or to abstain at least from any further violence, which might provoke the displeasure of God and of the Romans; to reverence the laws of kindred and succession, and to suffer an infirm old man peaceably to end his days, either on the throne of Carthage or in the palace of Constantinople. The passions or even the prudence of Gelimer compelled him to reject these requests, which were urged in the haughty tone of menace and command; and he justified his ambition in a language rarely spoken in the Byzantine court, by alleging the right of a free people to remove or punish their chief magistrate, who had failed in execution of the kingly office. After this fruitless expostulation, the captive monarch was more rigorously treated, his nephew was deprived of his eyes, and the cruel Vandal, confident in his strength and distance, derided the vain threats and slow preparations of the emperor of the East. Justinian resolved to deliver or revenge his friend, Gelimer to maintain his usurpation; and the war was preceded, according to the practice of civilised nations, by the most solemn protestations that each party was sincerely desirous of peace.
The report of an African war was grateful only to the vain and idle populace of Constantinople, whose poverty exempted them from tribute and whose cowardice was seldom exposed to military service. But the wiser citizens, who judged of the future by the past, revolved in their memory the immense loss, both of men and money, which the empire had sustained in the expedition of Basiliscus. The troops, which after five laborious campaigns had been recalled from the Persian frontier, dreaded the sea, the climate, and the arms, of an unknown enemy.
The forces of the Vandals were diminished by discord and suspicion; the Roman armies were animated by the spirit of Belisarius, one of those heroic names which are familiar to every age and to every nation.