Narses was satisfied that his position was a strong one. Numerically, his army was far superior to Totila’s, and the ground was in his favour. The only potential weak spot was a narrow, steep-sided valley to the left of the Roman line, which the enemy would probably try to penetrate in order to turn Narses’ flank. It must be securely blocked, and held — at all costs.
It was. The battle opened with a fierce assault by Gothic cavalry on the Romans guarding the ravine in an attempt to dislodge them. But the steep and broken nature of the terrain (unfavourable to horsemen) made it relatively easy for the defenders to beat off such attacks, which continued throughout the morning.
The sun, glimpsed at rare intervals through a screen of low clouds and drizzling rain, had passed its zenith when a huge force of mounted warriors, the main part of Totila’s host, advanced to the middle of the plain, leaving behind, near the Goths’ encampment, a much smaller infantry contingent. A lone rider, magnificent in gilded armour, now cantered out before the Gothic host, and proceeded to put on a dazzling display of horsemanship, making his mount circle and caracole while tossing up and catching his javelin, then throwing it from side to side. The long golden locks escaping from beneath the rider’s Spangenhelm, together with the splendour of his armour, identified him as none other than Totila.
A pall of dust on the horizon heralding the approach of the Gothic reinforcements, Totila rejoined his army to wild applause.
‘What now, Sir?’ one of the staff officers grouped around Narses enquired of the general.
‘Thank God they used cavalry to try to clear the gully,’ remarked Narses in heartfelt tones. ‘If they’d sent in infantry, we might not still be standing here. That leaves Totila with only one throw of the dice, poor devil. He’ll be forced to use the same tactics he employed successfully at Faventia.’
‘A cavalry charge?’
‘Exactly. Only this time, it won’t work. At Faventia, he took the Romans in the rear and by surprise. This time, we’re ready for him. Best we advance the archers now, I think. Tell the bucinatores to give the signal, would you?’
As the trumpets boomed out, the archers moved forward ahead of the divisions on each flank, ready to provide enfilading fire.
The Gothic cavalry, now augmented by the reinforcements, began to move forward, gradually accelerating from a trot to a canter, finally to a full gallop. Down swept a forest of lances as the huge mass of horsemen thundered up the low incline bounding the limit of the plain, towards the Roman centre. Nothing, it appeared, could stop the centre from being swept away like chaff before the wind. Then an extraordinary thing happened. At the last moment, the seemingly irresistible Gothic charge stalled, the van milling about in confusion, confronted by a rock-steady frieze of spear-points presented by the Lombards, Heruls, and Gepids. The endless hours of training in repelling cavalry, which Narses had insisted on, now paid off handsomely. Faced with the terrifying sight of charging horsemen, a foot-soldier’s insinct is to drop his spear and flee. But if he can learn to hold his nerve and, in concert with his fellows, stand his ground, he will find that horses (endowed with a far greater sense of self-preservation than men) will not press home a charge against sharp blades, no matter how much their riders urge them on. And so it proved.
Suddenly, the sky darkened as the archers on the flanks let fly. A storm of arrows drilled into the bucking, rearing horsemen, causing carnage on a massive scale and increasing the confusion. Volley after volley took their bloody toll, until it became more than flesh and blood could stand. The Gothic cavalry broke and fled — ploughing through their own infantry in their haste to escape those deadly shafts. Now the Romans, mounting their temporarily abandoned steeds, galloped in pursuit, scything down the fleeing Goths in their thousands. .
Busta Gallorum proved a great and conclusive Roman victory, especially when the corpse of Totila — conspicuous in its gilded armour — was found among the dead; ‘The Tomb of the Gauls’ had become ‘The Tomb of the Goths’. The power of the Goths was broken, permanently. Though Teia (immediately chosen as the new king) and a few Gothic leaders continued to hold out for a little longer, they were eliminated one by one, the final battle of the war being fought at Mons Lactarius in October of the same year as Busta Gallorum. Thereafter, all that remained to be done was a little mopping-up. With all its leaders and most of its fighting men killed, the nation of the Ostrogoths had ceased forever to exist.
The ending of the Gothic War meant that a major part of Justinian’s Grand Plan had been accomplished. With Africa, Italy and southern Spain (seized from the divided Visigoths in the year of Busta Gallorum in a lightning campaign waged by Liberius* — an enterprising Roman general of eighty-five) now reintegrated into the Imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire had regained more or less the same dimensions it possessed at the time of Julius Caesar, prior to his expedition against Gaul.
But the knowledge brought little satisfaction to Justinian, to whom the ‘triumph’ was as dust and ashes in the mouth. Narses’ reports were starkly honest. Alongside total victory in Italy must be weighed the cost: destruction of the country’s infrastructure and economy along with countless towns and villages; displacement of people on a massive scale; huge casualty figures for both soldiers and civilians; venerable institutions like the Senate swept away (taken hostage, most senators had died in acts of retribution in the final bitter stages of the war); and, by no means least, the annihilation of a worthy enemy who might have played a valued part in the building of a new nation. Even if, by some miracle, the recovery of the West had been achieved with little bloodshed, any joy it might have afforded would have eluded the now aged emperor. For without Theodora to share it with, life had lost all savour.
The Roman Empire at the death of Justinian, AD 565
But life, nevertheless, had to go on. There was still an Empire to run (one vastly bigger than when he had first assumed the purple), still the thorny issue of religious unity to be resolved, and in Italy — apart from the immense and daunting task of reconstruction — slaves to be returned to their masters and coloni to be evicted from the estates they had commandeered from landowners. With iron in his soul, ‘the Sleepless One’ proceeded to immerse himself in the thousand tasks involved in the administration of his realm, in an attempt to fill the emptiness of his existence.
* Or nephew, according to Gibbon.
* Sofia.
** The remains of these impressive works can still be seen. Their deterrent effect is questionable — as Germanus discovered to his cost.
* In April 552.
* Rimini and Perugia.
** i.e facing Totila; it would of course be to the Romans’ left. (See Plan.)
* See my Attila.
* The same Liberius who, nearly sixty years earlier, had masterminded the division of land in Italy between the Romans and Theoderic’s Ostrogoths — an immensely challenging and delicate task.
TWENTY-NINE