‘I know you too well,’ Procopius whispered as they left the senate chamber. ‘You never repose much faith even in our own infantry, never mind these Romans.’
Procopius spoke nothing but the unvarnished truth; if Flavius Belisarius had won many battles there had also been losses, and on those occasions it had been the flight of the infantry in the face of attacking cavalry that had brought on defeat.
He was not alone in suffering from this, it was the bane of every one of his contemporaries, both those who served the empire and its enemies. The army of the day had moved on from the brute foot soldier tactics of the legions. Now the effective arm was cavalry, infantry being raised to provide numbers only when some danger threatened.
This left whoever led them – even if he was inclined, and many were not – short of time to train them to do more than move forward and back as a body, the latter harder than the former, the greater requirement being that they hold their ground when attacked. In addition, they were rarely gifted with the kind of leadership that would meld them into a homogeneous body willing to engage in collective and mutually beneficial action.
Only when he had been given both time and space, as on the way to North Africa, had Flavius been able to pick and instruct their competent officers, while dismissing the inept, for they alone could inspire them to show courage. Lacking proper leadership and perceiving doom about to descend upon their ranks they broke and ran, only to pay the price of their panic as those same horsemen, whom they could not outrun, cut them down.
Flavius waited till he was well away from any risk of being overheard before he felt free to respond. ‘Never fear, Procopius, I will take good care to place them where they can do the least harm.’
Which he did, deploying them between the Porta Pancratia and the western walls, packed into a constrained section with the Tiber bridges at the back and stout masonry to their front, where they would remain until the main battle to the north-east of the city had produced a victory.
Yet Witigis had one of his camps on that flank, which needed to be dealt with, so he instructed Valentinus, now in command in that sector, to march out to confront the Goth forces on the Plains of Nero, his task to prevent them from being free to cross the Milvian Bridge, the sole route by which they could reinforce Witigis and participate in the main effort.
‘But you are to avoid battle. I will give you the Moorish cavalry to add to your own troops but you are to hold the Goths. Do not engage them closely unless orders come from me to do so and keep a firm grip on the Roman levies.’
The temptation to add ‘If possible do not use them at all’ had to be resisted lest it get back to the ears of those who had forced his hand; it was a message to impart in private.
Valentinus was not good at hiding his disappointment – he was being asked to act passively, not a command to be welcomed, so Flavius sought to assuage his pride. ‘It takes an exceptional general to avoid battle while still holding ground, which is why it falls to you.’
If that was fabrication it sufficed, having been stated before his peers, to satisfy that subordinate. This allowed Flavius to outline the rest of his thoughts, how they would deploy as well as his stated aim to make this a cavalry fight, given the number of horses taken from the Goths meant he could now mount a very high proportion of his army.
‘Will the Goths not seek to fight us close to the walls?’ asked Bessas.
‘I believe we have nothing to fear until we are fully deployed.’
To which Constantinus added, ‘Witigis will want this coming contest as much as we do.’
The Isaurians comprised the one major component not mounted; they had come to serve on foot and they would do so now as a body. Yet in terms of battle they were an unknown quantity, having arrived in Sicily as reinforcements. Since landing in Italy they had been given little deployment in the open, though they had the success of that raid through the Naples aqueduct as a laurel.
In the need to move north at speed, followed by the requirement to defend the walls of Rome, Flavius had been afforded no time to act on what he suspected to be their deficiencies. A good number of the men who led them were not of the stamp any general would have chosen, being too careful of their own comfort rather than that of their men.
Added to that they resented any reference to their lack of personal respect, Flavius having been at pains to point out, when he had the time, that men fought not for some great cause but for the fellow next to them and the faith they reposed in the man who was their leader.
His solution was, in part, to replicate the action taken at Naples; he flattered the senior Isaurian officers in whom he had little faith by giving them the higher status of cavalry and attaching them to the mounted foederati. They were replaced with two long-serving members of his own bodyguard, Principius and Tarmutus, the latter the brother of Ennes who had led the Isaurians into the Neapolitan aqueduct.
They would deploy in front of the moat; there the foot soldiers would be close to the city and, if they were broken, would not have far to run to get to a position of safety, while the moat would break the charge of any pursuing cavalry. Neither of the men he appointed questioned the need for such a precaution. If the day favoured Flavius it would be achieved by cavalry, the Isaurians then following up to occupy and pillage the Goth camps.
Yet they had another role and a vital one. Flavius was not the kind of general to assume victory would follow automatically from whichever action he initiated. If suffering previous defeats had been hard, they provided a valuable lesson: with two armies on the field, and on this occasion he would be outnumbered, a steady body of infantry was required to act as a backstop behind which his mounted forces, if thrown into retreat, could re-form.
The supposition that Witigis would do nothing to impede the movement of his enemies proved correct. He knew from numerous spies what was coming and made no attempt to close with the walls and prevent their exit. Quite the reverse: the Goths lined up before their own camps, further off than anticipated and silent as, with horns blaring and much shouting, their enemies formed up in three detachments of cavalry, each several thousand strong, before moving to within range of where their archery would be effective.
Opposite them in the front centre, the Goths had placed their best protected and heavily armoured infantry, providing security for their less numerous archers deployed to the rear, while Goth cavalry formed the two wings. The difference in reaction to the opening salvoes, compared to previous engagements, was telling; the Goths in the centre suffered less than they had previously by the clever use of their shields. Yet still there were casualties, only this time there was no breaking of their forward line. If a man fell, that merely closed up and the remainder held their ground.
Slowly but inexorably the distance between the two armies shortened as the Byzantines crept forward and with frustration being added to the mix – such a stoic resistance was infuriating – the cavalry began to attack the enemy line, the bucellarii, included, given they were running short on arrows. Great loss was inflicted with spears, but they too were diminished and that caused the gap to narrow sufficiently to allow close combat, Flavius’s men on horseback against Goths on foot in the centre, cavalry fighting cavalry on the wings.
Witigis had wisely held his centrally placed archers in reserve. But now with their enemies fighting right on their front line and, elevated by being mounted, they presented prime targets, more so the horses than the armoured riders, for without his mount a cavalryman was of little use.
Those who suffered from such tactics and ended up dismounted did not stay to fight on foot; with an abundance of horses held before the moat they streamed back to the city to secure a remount, unwittingly creating an opportunity for their enemies. Such conduct depleted the numbers attacking at a time when there was very little for the Goths to fear from archery and that was the point at which Witigis seized his opportunity.