The Roman army were encamped on an open plain severely lacking in the kind of features required for a defensive battle. There were few hills and no river on which they could secure one flank. Added to that they were facing the rising sun, which meant any attack at dawn would come with the sun at the Sassanid rear and be blinding to the Romans. If Flavius chafed at having no part in the higher decision-making, he was at least sure the cavalry he commanded would behave well for he had trained them rigorously.
As a military force, mounted soldiers had several inherent problems as well as certain advantages. In the latter case they could move from one point in a battle to another quickly, and if so desired visibly, thus disrupting enemy plans. In addition they could be sent in as shock troops to break up an attack. The problem lay in the truth that once released into the fight they became impossible to control and were usually lost as a continuing fighting force, so a wise general husbanded his horsemen until he knew they could be effective.
There was a certain stateliness to the way the Sassanid army deployed; it was done without haste, a great cloud of dust, as if they were rehearsing to fight rather than preparing to engage in one, this based on the certain knowledge that the Romans would not advance into their territory, for if they had determined to do so it would have happened already. As usual messages were exchanged, the Sassanids inviting their foes to quit the field and admit the battle lost before it had even begun, and in addition demanding promises that Constantinople pay high sums for their folly.
Lacauris might hold the office of magister militum but it had long been a tradition in imperial armies to split the command between two generals on what was seen as the sound reason of nullifying the kind of risk that had been inherent when emperors personally led their forces. One strong-headed leader could lose more than a battle, he could risk the empire, but in addition to that there was the knowledge that a too successful fighting man could become a threat.
The history of Rome was replete, from the days of Julius Caesar onwards, of men who had finished a successful campaign only to turn on those on whose behalf they had been fighting in a bid for personal power. To protect against both, control was split, which meant that any tactics employed had to be agreed upon as a wise course of action.
Thus Lacauris had to consult with his co-commander, Restines, as to how to draw up his forces and that took time. Eventually the army deployed with the mass of infantry in the centre, the archers behind them and the cavalry, Flavius included, holding the right wing. The left was allotted to the forces once led by Vitalian and at the front of that body stood the Gautoi foederati. If they had arrived in Mesopotamia and relished the winter they were less comfortable now in late spring rapidly turning to hot summer, and Vigilius, who commanded them, had arranged for great urns of water to be added to their baggage train so they could use it to cool themselves as well as quench what seemed a permanent thirst.
Perozes, the Sassanid general, had greater numbers but not in such strength as to easily overwhelm the Roman position, so he sent forward his centre to engage and fix the Roman infantry. If the battlefield was devoid of hills it was not without rising ground and Flavius was sat on a mound that had a view of the way matters were developing. It was his impression that the enemy were not pressing evenly along their whole front; the greater pressure seemed to be on the point at which the infantry adjoined the foederati.
It was testament to the ability of Vigilius that he sensed this and began to reinforce his own right until obviously commanded to cease the manoeuvre and return to his original formation, at which point Perozes released the weapon most feared by the Romans, his horse archers. These men, Armenian mercenaries, rode short and agile ponies and operated as a fast-moving mobile force.
They were no more disciplined than any other mounted troops but they did not have to be: their task was to so harass enemy formations by stinging attacks with flights of arrows that they began to lose their cohesion. That was what began to happen to the foederati, who were assailed not just from their front but on their flank, which left any man holding a protective shield in doubt as to from where the threat was coming.
Now the pressure on the right of centre began to tell for the Sassanids as some of their spearmen began to break into a gap that had appeared on the left of the Roman infantry, which led to an order that half the cavalry should move across the rear of the army to shore up that flank and if possible drive into the enemy infantry and break up their assault. Flavius being part of that deployment felt the surge that comes to any young man at the prospect of actual battle.
The problem was the movement was visible to the enemy and Perozes moved his own cavalry to mitigate the threat. By the time Flavius and his compatriots were able to deploy they found themselves facing their own kind, and to drive into the flank of the enemy infantry would expose their own left to a counter-assault, while to merely charge might drive back the enemy but it would deprive the Romans of one of their major assets.
That was when the Armenian horse archers reappeared, their quivers replenished and their ponies still eager to run. Facing them were the drawn-up and static Roman cavalry, which presented a wonderful target to disrupt, especially since many of their arrows wounded unbarded horses, not men who had shields and mail armour. Those struck naturally became hard to control, some bending to their knees while others reared up and began to run amok, with their riders more intent on maintaining their seat than their fighting positions.
‘We should charge them,’ Flavius said.
This was addressed to no one in particular, for he could sense that to stand and just receive this assault was the worst of two evils and if it continued the Roman cavalry would lose all cohesion and be rendered ineffective. Lacauris and Restines must have realised the same and they moved their archers to back up the foederati who, furious at being so stung, were ordered to advance at an angle which would press in on the flank of the enemy infantry, the very tactic that Vigilius had been forced to abandon.
Suddenly the horse archers, quivers empty again, were gone and with much shouting and the occasional slaughter of a screeching horse the Roman cavalry got into some form of fighting order again, just in time to advance and block the mounted Sassanids who had begun to advance on the foederati flank.
Diomedes, the man in command of this portion of the mounted Roman forces, made no attempt to impose order and it was with some difficulty that Flavius avoided his own three-hundred-strong command from joining in the melee of a general charge. This was what he had trained for and his aim was simple: to keep his men in some kind of order so that when they made contact with the enemy they did so as a body and with maximum impact.
In this objective he was only partially successful but at least he fared better than his fellow tribunes, many of whom seemed to behave as though the wild yells they were uttering as they urged their men on would be enough to destroy their opponents. It was as well the Sassanid cavalry commander had as little control as the Romans, the result being that when the forces met it was usually one on one. Only the group led by Flavius had any great impact and he knew it to be marginal for they were far from the formation he had sought to create.
What he did have was a core of his troopers who had fully imbibed his ideas and they formed a phalanx of cavalry that drove into the enemy with great effect, each man able to protect at least one of his fellows and, should the lead horseman be held up — it was not always their commander — to drive forward and break the logjam. In the end it was too effective as Flavius found he had led his core right through the enemy, which left them in danger of being isolated.