The Scarlet Banner
Page 31
CHAPTER VI
PROCOPIUS TO CETHEGUS:
We are actually still alive, and we are spending the night in Decimum,but we have had a narrow escape from passing it with the sharks at thebottom of the sea; never before, Belisarius says, was annihilation sonear him. This mysterious King brought us into the greatest peril byhis admirable plan of attack. And when it had already succeeded, healone, the King himself, cast away his own victory, and saved us fromcertain destruction. I will tell you briefly the course of recentevents, partly from our own experiences, partly from what we havelearned through the citizens of Decimum and the Vandal prisoners.
The King, undiscovered by us, had accompanied our march from the timeof our landing. The place where he suddenly attacked us had been wiselychosen long before. Belisarius says that not even his great rival,Narses, could have made a better plan of battle. As soon as we left ourlast camp outside of Decimum, we lost, as I wrote in my former letter,the protection of our fleet. If a superior force assailed us herefrom the west, it would hurl us, not--as along the whole previousmarch--upon our sheltering galleys, but directly into the sea from theroad running along the steep hills close to the coast. Just beforeDecimum this road narrows greatly; for lofty mountains tower at thesouthwest along the narrow highway. Over the loose sand, heaped on themountains by the desert winds, neither man nor horse can pass withoutsinking a foot deep. Here, attacked from all three sides at the samemoment, we were to be driven eastward into the sea at our right.
A brother of the King, Gibamund, was to rush with two thousand men fromthe west upon our left flank; a Vandal noble with a still strongerforce was to attack us from Decimum in the front; the King, with themain body, was to fall upon us in the rear from the South.
Belisarius had carefully planned the order of our march through thisdangerous portion of the way. He sent Fara with his brave Herulians andthree hundred picked men of the bodyguard two and a half Roman miles inadvance. They were to pass through the Narrow Way first alone, andinstantly report any danger back to the main body led by Belisarius. Onour left flank the Hun horsemen and five thousand of the excellentThracian infantry under Althias were thrown out to guard us from anyperil threatening in that quarter and report it to Belisarius, toprevent a surprise of the main body during the march.
Then, to our great good fortune, it happened that the attack from thenorth, from Decimum, came far too early. Prisoners say that a youngerbrother of the King, scarcely beyond boyhood, taking part in thebattle against Gelimer's orders, dashed out of Decimum with a fewhorsemen upon our ranks as soon as he saw us. The noble wished to savehim at any cost, so he also attacked with the small force at hisdisposal,--four hours too soon,--only sending messengers back toCarthage to hasten the march of his main body. The youth and the noblemade the most desperate resistance to the superior force. Twelve ofBelisarius's bravest bodyguard, battle-tried men of former wars,were slain. At last both fell, and now, deprived of their leader,the Vandals turned their horses, and, in a mad flight, ran downand overthrew those who were advancing from Carthage to theirsupport,--true, in little bands of thirty and forty men. Fara with hisswift Herulians dashed after them in savage pursuit to the very gatesof Carthage, cutting down all whom he overtook. The Vandals, who hadfought bravely so long as they saw the Asdings and the nobles in theirvan, now threw down their weapons and allowed themselves to beslaughtered. We found many thousand dead bodies on the road and in thefields to the left.
After this first onset of the Vandals had resulted in defeat, Gibamund,knowing nothing of it, attacked with his troops the greatly superiorforce of the Huns and Thracians. This happened at the Salt Field,--atreeless, shrubless waste on the edge of the desert five thousand paceswest of Decimum. With no aid from Carthage and Decimum, he wascompletely routed; nearly all his men were slain; their leader was seento fall, whether dead or living, no one knows.
Meanwhile, entirely ignorant of what had happened, we were marchingwith the main body along the road to Decimum. As Belisarius found anexcellent camping-ground about four thousand paces from this place, hehalted. That the enemy must be in the neighborhood he suspected; thedisappearance of the two Huns during the night had perplexed him. Heestablished a well-fortified camp, and said to the troops, "The enemymust be close at hand. If he attacks us here, where we lack the supportof the fleet, our escape will lie solely in victory. Should we bedefeated, there is no stronghold, no fortified city, to receive us; thesea, roaring below, will swallow us. The intrenched camp is our onlyprotection, the camp and the long-tested swords in our hands. Fightbravely! Life, as well as fame, is at stake."
He now ordered the infantry to remain in camp with the luggage as thelast reserve, and led the whole force of cavalry out toward Decimum. Hewould not risk everything at once, but intended first to discover thestrength and plans of the Barbarians by skirmishing. Sending theauxiliary cavalry in the van, he followed with the other squadrons andhis mounted bodyguard. When the advance body reached Decimum, it foundthe Byzantines and Vandals who had fallen there. A few of the citizenswho had hidden in the houses told our troops what had happened; most ofthem had fled to Carthage on learning that their village had beenchosen for the battleground.
A wonderfully beautiful woman,--she looks like the Sphinx atMemphis,--the owner of the largest villa in Decimum, voluntarilyreceived our men. It was she who told us of the noble's death. He fellbefore her eyes, just in front of her house.
The leaders now consulted, undecided whether to advance, halt, orreturn to Belisarius. At last the whole body of cavalry rode about twothousand paces west of Decimum, where they could obtain from the highsand-hills a wider view in every direction. There they saw rising inthe south-southwest--that is, in the rear and on the left flank ofBelisarius--a huge cloud of dust, from which sometimes flashed the armsand banners of an immense body of horsemen. They instantly sent amessage to Belisarius that he must hasten; the enemy was at hand.
Meanwhile the Barbarians, led by Gelimer, approached. They weremarching along a road between Belisarius's main body in the east andthe Huns and Thracians, our left wing, who had defeated Gibamund andpursued him far to the west. But the high hills along the roadobstructed Gelimer's view, so that he could not see Gibamund'sbattlefield. Byzantines and Vandals, as soon as they saw each other,struggled to be first to reach and occupy the summit of the highesthill in the chain which dominated the whole region. The Barbariansgained the top, and from it King Gelimer rushed down with such powerupon our men, the auxiliary cavalry, that they were seized with panic,and fled in wild confusion eastward, toward Decimum.
About nine hundred paces west of the village the fugitives met theirstrong support, a body of eight hundred mounted shield-bearers, led byVelox, Belisarius's bodyguard. The General and all of us who hadtremblingly witnessed the flight of the cavalry consoled ourselves withthe hope that Velox would check their flight and march back with themto the enemy. But--oh, shame and horror--the weight of the Vandalonslaught was so tremendous that the fugitives and the shield-bearersdid not even wait for it; the whole body, mingled together, swept backin disorder to Belisarius.
The General said that at this moment he gave us all up for lost:"Gelimer," he said at the banquet that night, "had the victory in hishands. Why he voluntarily let it escape is incomprehensible. Had hefollowed the fugitives, he would have pursued me and my whole army intothe sea, so great was the alarm of our troops and so tremendous theforce of the Vandal assault. Then the camp and the infantry would bothhave been destroyed. Or if he had even gone from Decimum back toCarthage, he could have destroyed without resistance Fara and his men,for expecting no attack from the rear, they were scattered singly or incouples along the streets and in the fields, pillaging the slain. Andonce in possession of Carthage he could easily have taken our ships,anchored near the city,--without crews,--and thus cut off from us everyhope of victory or retreat."
But King Gelimer did neither. A sudden paralysis attacked the powerwhich had just overthrown everyth
ing in its way.
Prisoners told us that, as he dashed down the hillside, spurring hiscream-colored charger far in advance of all his men, he saw in thenarrow pass at the southern entrance of Decimum the corpse of his youngbrother lying first of all the bodies in the road. With a loud cry ofanguish, he sprung from his horse, threw himself upon the lifeless boy,and thus checked the advance of his troops. Their foremost horses, heldback with difficulty by the riders that they might not trample on theKing and the lad, reared, plunged, and kicked, throwing those behindinto confusion, and stopped the whole chase. The King raised in hisarms the mangled and bloody body (for our horsemen had dashed over it);then breaking again into cries of agony, he placed it on his chargerand ordered it to be buried by the roadside with royal honors. Thewhole did not probably occupy fifteen minutes, but that quarter of anhour wrested from the Barbarians the victory they had already won.
Meanwhile Belisarius rushed to meet our fugitives, thundered at them inhis resonant leonine voice his omnipotent "Halt," showed them, liftinghis helmet, his face flaming with a wrath which his warriors dreadedmore than the spears of all the Barbarians, brought the deeply shamedmen to a stand, arranged them, amid terrible reproaches, in the bestorder possible in the haste, and, after learning all he couldconcerning the position and strength of the Vandals, led them to theattack upon Gelimer and his army.
The Vandals did not withstand it. The sudden, mysterious check of theiradvance had bewildered, perplexed, discouraged them; besides, theirbest strength had been exhausted in the furious ride. The sun ofAfrica, burning fiercely down, had wearied us also, but at the firstonset we broke through their ranks. They turned and fled. The King, whotried to check them, was swept away by the rush, not to Carthage, noteven southwest to Byzacena, whence they had come, but towards thenorthwest along the road leading to Numidia, to the plain of Bulla.
Whether they took that course by the King's command or without it andagainst it, we do not yet know.
We wrought great slaughter among the fugitives; the chase did not enduntil nightfall. When, as the darkness closed in, the torches andwatchfires were lighted, Fara and the Herulians came from the north,Althias with the Huns and Thracians from the west, and we all spent thenight in Decimum celebrating three victories in a single day: over thenobleman, over Prince Gibamund, and over the King.