A Struggle For Rome Volume Iii Part 48

Hildebrand interposed.

"The King has fallen. The Goths cannot--even to die--fight without a King. Athalaric, Witichis, Totila--_one_ only can be the fourth; only one is worthy to succeed these three; thou, Teja, our last, our greatest hero!"

"Yes," said Teja; "I will be your King. Under me you shall not live joyfully; you shall only die greatly. Be still! No cry of joy, no clang of arms must greet me. Whoever will have me for his King, let him do as I do."

And he broke a small branch from the tree under which he stood, and twisted it round his helmet. All silently followed his example.

Adalgoth, who stood next him, whispered:

"O King Teja! it is a cypress bough! Thus is crowned a victim doomed to sacrifice!"

"Yes, my Adalgoth, thou speakest prophecy;" and Teja swung his sword in a circle round his head. "Doomed to death!"

BOOK VI.

TEJA

"I have now to describe a most remarkable battle, and the high heroism of the man who was inferior to none of the heroes--of Teja."--_Procopius: Gothic War_, iv. 35.

CHAPTER I.

The destiny of the Goths was soon to be fulfilled. The rolling stone approached the abyss.

When Na.r.s.es came to his senses and learned what had taken place, he gave orders at once to arrest Liberius and send him to Byzantium to answer for his conduct.

"I will not say," he said to his confidant, Basiliskos, "that he has come to a false decision. I myself could not have done otherwise. But I should have done it for different reasons. _His_ only wish was to save his friend and the ten thousand prisoners. That was wrong. Situated as he was, he ought to have sacrificed them, for he could not overlook the actual condition of the war. He did not know, as I know, that after this battle the Gothic kingdom is lost--whether it be completely destroyed at Rome or Neapolis is indifferent--and that alone would have been, and is, the reason for which the ten thousand should be saved."

"At Neapolis? But why not at Rome? Do you not remember the formidable fortifications of the Prefect? Why should not the Goths throw themselves into Rome and resist for months?"

"Why? Because things are very different with regard to Rome. But the Goths know this as little as Liberius. And Cethegus--above all--must know nothing of it yet; therefore be silent. Where is the Prefect of Rome?"

"He has hastened forward, in order to be the first to conduct the pursuit as soon as the time of truce has expired."

"Surely you have taken care----"

"Do not doubt it! He would have marched with his Isaurians alone, but I--that is, Liberius at my order--gave him Alboin and the Longobardians as companions, and you know----"

"Yes," said Na.r.s.es, with a smile, "my wolves will not lose sight of him."

"But how long shall he----"

"As long as he is necessary to me; not an hour longer. So the young and royal wonder-worker lies upon his shield! Now may Justinian rightly call himself 'Gothicus,' and again sleep peacefully. But truly--he will never more sleep peacefully--that disappointed widower----"

So the two generals, Na.r.s.es and Teja, were of one opinion with regard to the Gothic kingdom. It was lost. The flower of the Goths had fallen at Caprae and Taginae. Totila had placed there five-and-twenty thousand men; not even a thousand had escaped. The two wings of the army had also suffered great loss; and so King Teja commenced his retreat to the south with scarcely twenty thousand men.

He was urged to the greatest speed by the calls for help sent by the little army under Duke Guntharis and Earl Grippa, who were hard pressed by the greater force of the Byzantines under the command of Armatus and Dorotheos, who had landed between Rome and Neapolis.

And besides this, Teja's retreat was also precipitated because of the terrible manner in which, when the truce was ended, he was pursued by Na.r.s.es.

While the Longobardians and Cethegus pursued the fugitives without pause, Na.r.s.es slowly followed with the main army, spreading to the right and left his two formidable wings, which extended in the south-west far beyond the Sub-urbicarian Tuscany to the Tyrrhenian sea, and in the north-east through Picenum to the Ionian Gulf, extinguishing as they pa.s.sed from north to south and from west to east, every trace of the Goths behind them.

This proceeding was considerably facilitated by the now general desertion of the Gothic cause on the part of the Italians. The benevolent King, who had once won their sympathies, had been succeeded by a gloomy hero of terrible reputation. And all who hesitated were speedily drawn over to the other side, not by inclination to the rule of Byzantium, but from fear of Na.r.s.es and of the Emperor's severity, who threatened all who took the part of the barbarians with death.

The Italians who still served in Teja's army now deserted and hastened to Na.r.s.es. It also happened much more frequently than before the battle of Taginae, that Gothic settlers were betrayed to the Romani by their Italian neighbours, generally by the _hospes_, who had been obliged to relinquish a third of his property to the Goths; or, where the Italians were in the majority, the Goths were either killed, or taken prisoners and delivered up to the two Byzantine fleets, the "Tyrrhenian" and the "Ionian," which, sailing along the coasts of those seas, accompanied the march of the land forces and received all the captured Goths on board--men, women, and children.

The forts and towns, weakly garrisoned--for Teja had been obliged to strengthen his small army by lessening their numbers--generally fell by means of the Italian population, who now overpowered the Gothic garrison, as, after Totila's election, they had done the imperial. Thus fell, during the progress of the war, Namia, Spoletium and Perusia; the few towns which resisted were invested.

So Na.r.s.es resembled a strong man who walks with outstretched arms through a narrow pa.s.sage, pursuing all who try to hide themselves before him. Or a fisher, who wades up a stream with a sack-net; behind him all is empty. The few Goths who could yet save themselves fled before the "iron roller" to the army of the King, which soon consisted of a greater number of the defenceless than of warriors.

The Visigoths were again engaged in migration, just as they had been a hundred years before, but this time the iron net of Na.r.s.es was behind them; and before them, as they advanced farther and farther into the constantly narrowing peninsula, the sea. And not a ship did they possess in which to fly.

CHAPTER II.

Added to this, an inevitable necessity reduced the number of Goths in the King's army capable of bearing arms in the most frightful manner.

From the very commencement of the pursuit, Cethegus, with his mercenaries, and Alboin with his Longobardians, had stuck to the heels of the fugitives, and consequently, if the retreat of the Gothic army--already delayed by the number of women, children, and aged people who had joined it--was not to be brought to a complete standstill, it was necessary to sacrifice each night a small number of heroes, who halted at some spot suitable for their design, and held the pursuers at bay by an obstinate, fearless, and hopeless resistance, until the main army had again gained a considerable advance.

This cruel, but only possible expedient, always entailed the loss of at least fifty men, and often, where the place to be defended had a wider front, a much greater number.

Before King Teja marched from Spes Bonorum, he had explained this plan to the a.s.sembled army; his faithful troops silently a.s.sented to it. And every morning the "death-doomed" volunteered so eagerly to join this forlorn hope, that King Teja--with humid eyes--made them draw lots, not wishing to offend any one by the preference of others. For the Goths, who saw nothing before them but the certain destruction of the nation, and many of whom knew that their wives and children had fallen into the enemy's hands, vied with each other in seeking death.

So their retreat became a triumphal procession of Gothic heroes, and every halting-place a monument of courageous self-sacrifice. Thus, among the leaders of the "doomed rear-guard," old Haduswinth fell near Nuceria Camellaria; the young and skilful archer, Gunthamund, at Ad Fontes; and the swift rider, Gudila, at Ad Martis. But these sacrifices, and the King's generalship, were not without influence on the fate of the nation.

Near Fossatum, between Tudera and Narnia, a night attack took place between the rear-guard under Earl Markja, and the hors.e.m.e.n of Cethegus, which lasted from afternoon till sunrise.

When at last the returning light illumined the hastily-constructed earthworks thrown up by the Goths, they were as still and silent as the grave.

The pursuers advanced with the utmost caution. At last Cethegus sprang from his horse and on to the parapet of the earthworks, followed by Syphax.

Cethegus turned and signed to his men: "Follow me; there is no danger!

You have only to step over the bodies of our enemies, for here they all lie--a full thousand. Yonder is Earl Markja; I know him."

But when the earthworks were demolished, and Cethegus and his hors.e.m.e.n continued their pursuit of the main army--which had gained a great advance they soon learned from the peasants of the neighbourhood that the Gothic army had not pa.s.sed on the Flaminian Way at all.

By the n.o.ble sacrifice of this night, King Teja had been enabled to conceal the further direction of his retreat, and the pursuers had lost the scent.

Cethegus advised Johannes and Alboin, the one to send a portion of his men to the south-east, the other to the left on the Flaminian Way, to try to find the lost track. He himself longed to get to Rome. He wished to reach that city before Na.r.s.es. Once there, he hoped to be able to checkmate him, as he had done Belisarius, from the Capitol.