CHAPTER XV.
The day after the arrival of this news, so fateful for the Goths, KingWitichis abandoned the siege of Rome and led his thoroughlydisheartened troops out of the four remaining camps.
The siege had lasted a whole year and nine days. All courage andstrength, exertion and sacrifice, had been unavailing.
Silently the Goths marched past the proud walls, against which theirpower and good-fortune had been wrecked. Silently they suffered thetaunting words cast at them from the battlements by Romans andByzantines.
They were too much absorbed by their grief and rage to feel hurt bysuch mockery. But when the horsemen of Belisarius, issuing from thePincian Gate, would have pursued them, they were fiercely repulsed, forEarl Teja led the Gothic rearguard.
So the Gothic army, avoiding the strongholds occupied by theenemy--Narnia, Spoletium and Perusia--marched with expedition from Romethrough Picenum to Ravenna, where they arrived in time to crush thedangerous symptoms of rebellion among the population, some of whom,upon hearing of the misfortunes of the barbarians, had already enteredinto secret negotiations with Johannes.
As the Goths approached the latter withdrew into the fortress ofAriminum, his last important conquest.
In Ancona lay Konon, the navarchus of Belisarius, with the Thracianspearmen and many ships of war.
The King, however, had not taken to Ravenna the whole of the army whichhad besieged Rome, but had, during the march, left several regiments togarrison the fortresses which he passed.
One thousand men he had left under Gibimer in Clusium; another thousandin Urbs Vetus, under Albila; five hundred men in Tudertum underWulfgis; in Auximum four thousand men under Earl Wisand, the bravebandalarius; in Urbinum two thousand under Morra; and in Caesena andMonsferetrus five hundred.
He sent Hildebrand to Verona, Totila to Tarvisium, and Teja to Ticinum,for the north-eastern part of the peninsula was also endangered byByzantine troops, coming from Istria.
In acting thus he had been also influenced by other reasons. He wishedfirst of all to check Belisarius on his march to Ravenna. Secondly, hewas afraid, in case of a siege, that if all his troops were with him,they would speedily be exposed to the evils of starvation, and, lastly,he wished to attack the besiegers in their rear from various sides.
His plan was to occupy his stronghold of Ravenna, limiting himself todefensive proceedings until the foreign troops which he expected,Longobardians and Franks, should place him in a position to take theopen field.
But his hope of checking Belisarius on his way to Ravenna wasdisappointed, for the Byzantine contented himself with investing allthe Gothic fortresses with a portion of his army, marching on with themain army to the capital city and last important refuge of the Goths.
"If I have mortally wounded the heart," he said, "the clenched fistswill open of themselves."
And so, very soon, the tents of the Byzantines were seen stretching ina wide semicircle round the royal residence of Theodoric, from theharbour-town of Classis to the canals and branches of the Padus, which,particularly to the west, formed a natural line of defence.
The old aristocratic city had indeed, even at that time, lost much ofthe glory in which it had rejoiced for nearly two centuries as theresidence of the Roman emperors; and the last rays which the splendidreign of Theodoric had shed over it, were extinguished since thebreaking out of the war.
But even thus, what a different impression must the stillthickly-populated city--similar to the present Venice--have made atthat period, in comparison with its aspect at present; when theinterior of the city, with its silent streets, its deserted squares andits lonely basilicas, appears to the beholder no less melancholy thanthe plain outside the walls, where the desolate and marshy levels ofthe Padus stretch far away, until they are lost in the mud of thereceding sea.
Where once the harbour-town of Classis was filled with active life onland and sea; where the proud triremes of the royal fleet of Ravennarocked on the blue waters, now lie swampy meadows, in whose tall reedsand grass the wild buffalo feeds; the streets foul with stagnant water;the harbour choked with sand; the once joyous population vanished; onlyone gigantic tower of the time of the Goths still stands near the soleremaining Basilica, of Saint Apollonaris in _Classe fuori_, which,commenced by Witichis and completed by Justinian, now rises sadly outof the marshy plain, far from any human abode.
In the time of which our story speaks the strong fortress wasconsidered impregnable, and for that reason the emperors, when theirpower began to decay, had chosen it for their residence.
The south-eastern side was at that time protected by the sea, whichrolled its waves to the very foot of the walls, and on the other threesides nature and art had spun a labyrinthine network of canals,ditches, and swamps, begotten by the many-armed Padus, among which allbesiegers were hopelessly entangled.
And the walls! Even yet their mighty ruins fill the traveller withamazement. Their colossal width, and less their height than the numberof strong round towers, which even now (1863) rise above thebattlements, defied, before the invention of gunpowder, every means ofattack.
It was only by starving the city that, after a resistance of nearlyfour years, the great Theodoric won this, Odoacer's last place ofrefuge.
In vain had Belisarius attempted to take the city by storm, as soon ashe had reached the walls.
His attack was bravely repulsed, and he was obliged to content himselfwith closely investing the fortress, in order by cutting off allsupplies, as had formerly been done by Theodoric, to force that city tocapitulate.
But Witichis was able to look upon this proceeding with composure, for,with the prudence which was peculiar to him, he had, before marching toRome, heaped up provisions of all kinds, principally corn, inextraordinary quantities. He had stored them in granaries built of woodand erected within the walls of the immense marble Circus ofTheodosius. These extensive wooden edifices, situated exactly oppositeto the palace and the Basilica of Saint Apollonaris, were the pride,joy, and comfort of the King.
It had been impossible to convey much of the provisions to the armybefore Rome, and with reasonable economy these magazines would withoutdoubt suffice for the wants of the population and the no longerformidable army for another two or three months.
By that time the Goths expected the arrival of an allied army, inconsequence of the newly-opened negotiations with the Franks. On itsarrival the siege would necessarily be raised.
But Belisarius and Cethegus knew or guessed this as well as Witichis,and they indefatigably sought on all sides for some means of hasteningthe fall of the city.
The Prefect, of course, tried to make use of his secret relations withthe Queen for the furtherance of this end. But, on the one hand,communication with Mataswintha had become very difficult, for the Gothscarefully guarded all the entrances to the city; and, on the otherhand, Mataswintha herself seemed greatly changed, and no longer soready and willing as before to allow herself to be used as a tool.
She had expected the speedy destruction or humiliation of the King. Thelong delay wearied her, and, at the same time, the immense suffering ofher people had begun to shake her resolution. Lastly, the sad change inthe manner of the usually strong and healthy King, the resigned butprofound grief which he evidently felt, touched her heart.
Although she accused him, with all the injustice of pain and the bitterpride of insulted love, of having rejected her heart and yet forced herto give him her hand; although she believed that she hated him with allthe passion of her nature, and did indeed in some sort hate him, yetthis hatred was only love reversed.
And now, when she saw him humbled by the terrible misfortunes of theGothic army and the failure of all his plans--to which failure she hadso greatly contributed by her own treason--so humbled, that his mindhad begun to be affected by sickly melancholy, and he tormented himselfwith reproaches; the sight powerfully affected her impulsive nature,strangely compounded as it was of the contradictory elements oftendernes
s and harshness.
In the first moment of angry grief, she would have seen his blood flowwith delight. But to see him slowly devoured by self-reproach andgnawing pain that she could not endure.
This softer feeling on her part had, besides, been greatly broughtabout by her having noticed, since their arrival in Ravenna, a changein the King's behaviour towards herself.
She thought that she observed in him traces of remorse for having soforcibly encroached upon her life, and she involuntarily softened herharsh and blunt manner to him during their rare interviews, whichalways took place in the presence of witnesses.
Witichis considered the change as a sign that a step had been takentowards reconciliation, and silently acknowledged and rewarded it, onhis part, by a more friendly manner.
All this was sufficient to induce Mataswintha, with her emotionalnature, to repulse the overtures of the Prefect, even when theysometimes reached her by means of the clever Moor.
Now the Prefect had already learned from Syphax during the march toRavenna, that which was known later by other means, namely, that theGoths expected assistance from the Franks.
He had therefore forthwith renewed his old and intimate relationswith the aristocrats and great men who ruled in the name of themock Kings of the Merovingians in the courts of Mettis (Metz),Aurelianum (Orleans) and Suessianum (Soissons), in order to induce theFranks--whose perfidy, even then become a proverb, gave good hope thathis efforts would be successful--to renounce the Gothic alliance.
And when the affair had been properly introduced by these friends, hehimself wrote to King Theudebald, who held his court in Mettis,impressively warning him of the risk he would run if he supported sucha ruined cause as that of the Goths had undeniably become since theirill-success in the siege of Rome.
This letter had been accompanied by rich gifts to his old friend, theMajor Domus of the weak-minded King, and the Prefect impatientlywaited, day by day, for the reply; the more impatiently because thealtered demeanour of Mataswintha had cut off all the hopes he hadentertained of effecting a more speedy conquest of the Goths.
The answer came--at the same time with an imperial letter fromByzantium--on a day which was equally pregnant with the fate of theheroes both in and out of Ravenna.