by Ross Laidlaw
‘Well done, my heroes!’ shouted the aged Theoderic, his long white locks streaming behind him as he rode along the ranks to encourage his men. ‘Only hold fast, then they can never break us.’ But his courage in exposing himself proved fatal. Arcing through the air, a heavy Ostrogoth angon struck him in the chest and, mortally wounded, he fell from his horse.
Instead of discouraging the Visigoths, however, his death had the opposite effect. Burning for vengeance, they surged forward, no longer a defensive shield-wall, but a charging mass fronted by a bristling hedge of blades. So ferocious and determined was their attack that the Ostrogoths were forced to give ground, retreating stubbornly pace by pace, fighting all the way. Both sides, being Germans, mostly scorned the use of armour or lacked the wealth to own it, which resulted in frightful wounds and a high casualty rate. A spear-thrust in the torso was almost sure to pierce a vital organ, while a blow from a sword could inflict spectacular damage. Pattern-welded, edged with razor-sharp steel, these fearsome weapons – almost exclusively the preserve of nobles – could slice off heads and limbs with ease, and in the right hands cleave a man from skull to crotch.
On the left flank, the Romans waited, silent, motionless: cavalry, consisting of light scouting squadrons, heavier Stablesian vexillationes, and one or two formidably armoured units like the ‘Equites Cataphractarii Ambianenses’; infantry, comprising a few of the old legions still proudly bearing their eagles, now outnumbered by the newer units with their dragon standards – the Celtae et Petulantes, Cornuti et Brachiati, and many others, the red crests of their helmets a vivid contrast to the sombre grey of their mail. Beyond the Romans, the remainder of the German allies stood in loose formation, mainly unarmoured infantry with spears and shields. Their chiefs were mostly mounted, many wearing Spangenhelms and body armour, and armed with swords.
A message-carrier came posting up to Aetius, who was seated on his horse a little way in front of his troops, flanked by his two chief generals, Aegidius and Majorian.
‘Sir, it’s the Alans!’ gasped the messenger. ‘They’re falling back – Attila’s got them on the run!’
‘Splendid,’ said Aetius, smiling enigmatically.
‘They’re falling back, sir.’
‘Thank you, Tribune,’ replied Aetius crisply, ‘I heard you the first time. Off you go now and find out what’s happening on the right wing. Dismissed.’
‘Well, gentlemen, Attila’s taken the bait it would seem,’ Aetius remarked with satisfaction to his two generals. ‘Now to see how well young Torismund can play his part.’
Some time later the galloper returned with news of heavy fighting on the right: the Visigoths were apparently beginning to gain the upper hand.
‘Tell the trumpeters to sound the advance,’ Aetius ordered him. Then, turning to his generals, ‘To your posts, gentlemen.’ He shook each by the hand, then added quietly, ‘May God be with us. Jupiter or Christ? Perhaps it does not matter what we call Him, for surely He has heard our prayers and will grant us victory this day.’
As the last deep notes of the bucinae died away, the whole left wing began to move – infantry in the centre, cavalry on the flanks. Both Roman and German foot advanced in attack formations, cunei, which, despite the name, consisted of broad-fronted columns rather than triangular wedges. Carapaced in armour, legs swinging as one at the regulation marching pace, the Roman columns resembled monstrous metal centipedes. The enemy – Attila’s German subjects other than the Ostrogoths – surged forward to meet the Roman-led wing, chanting their war-cry and banging spear-butts on shields. As the gap between the two forces narrowed, the Roman campidoctores began to call out their ritual training admonitions: ‘Silentium; mandata captate; non vos turbatis; ordinem servate – Silence; obey orders; don’t worry; keep your positions.’
On the command ‘Jacite’, a storm of javelins and lead-weighted darts arced up from the Roman ranks, who then immediately locked shields fore and above, in the ancient but tried and tested testudo formation, to form an impenetrable ‘tortoise-shell’ against which the enemy missiles thudded harmlessly – in contrast to the Roman volley, which took a heavy toll. Then the two sides slammed together with an earth-shaking crash. For a while, the battle swung to and fro, with neither side gaining the advantage. Then slowly, inexorably, the allied forces, stiffened by the steady and disciplined Roman contingents, began to push Ardaric and his Gepids back.
From Torismund’s hill, Titus was able to observe the progress of the battle from the start. In the centre, under relentless pressure from the Huns, he saw Sangiban’s front begin to waver and buckle, and a great concave salient form in the Alan line as Attila’s onslaught started to take effect.
The Ostrogoths were now in action against the Visigoths, while to his right the two wings of the opposing armies were as yet unengaged. Gripped by a dreadful fascination, Titus watched as the battle slowly began to evolve its own patterns and rhythms. In the centre, the Hun advance pressed relentlessly forward, while to the left, after some ferocious fighting, the Ostrogoths were beginning to fall back. Now, on Titus’ right, the Romans and their allies were moving, meeting head-on Attila’s subject Germans under Ardaric. For a time, the outcome of the battle swayed in the balance. Then the two wings of Attila’s force, its weakest sections, began to crumble. With shocking suddenness, they broke, first the left wing then the right, and streamed back in headlong flight, looking like a scatter of moving dots, pursued by the dark clumps of their victorious foes. Around Titus on the hill, the Visigoths formed up at Torismund’s command, and charged downhill to attack Attila’s retreating forces from the rear.
With his wings disintegrating, Attila’s centre – now isolated by its forward momentum against the retreating Alans – was dangerously exposed on both flanks. Suddenly, Titus saw the genius of Aetius’ plan: calculating on the Alans’ expendability, he had ensured that the Huns’ initial success became their downfall. Leaving Torismund and his men to deal with Attila’s broken wings, the other Visigoths and the Romans, together with the other federates, abandoned the pursuit to smash into the Hun centre from either side. So mighty was the impact that Titus could hear, faint with distance, the clash of shields meeting and the ring of steel on steel. Then, guiltily aware that he had allowed events to overtake him, he began to scramble down the slope to where he had left his horse tethered.
Badly mauled, the Huns managed to make it back to their entrenchments where, from behind the wagon-wall, their archery kept their foes at bay, until the coming of darkness caused the allies to withdraw.
Although far from destroyed as a fighting force, Attila’s army had sustained enormous losses, and he knew that he had been soundly beaten – his first defeat. Curiously, the thought did not trouble him – the reverse, in fact. He realized, with a stab of wry astonishment, that his chief feeling was one of relief. No more struggle, no more never-ending demands on his ability as a leader to conquer more and yet more lands, and reward his people with a constant bounty of pastures, gold, and plunder. Life as King of the Huns had become a burden he was ready to lay down. Tomorrow the Romans and their German allies would close in for the kill, like hunters with a bayed lion. But he would cheat them of their greatest prize, himself. For Attila, there would be no captive chains, no exposure to jeering mobs as he was dragged behind a Roman chariot to face a shameful death. No; he would die magnificently, and in a manner befitting a king, so that generations down the ages would recount with awe and admiration how Attila had perished.
He gave orders for a great funeral pyre, consisting of the saddles of his cavalry and his own finest trophies, to be erected within the wagon-walls, and issued instructions to his most trusted captains to set fire to it when the final assault came – as it surely must on the morrow. Then, seated atop the monstrous pyramid, he prepared to wait out the night, his last on earth.
The moon rose, illuminating a stark and dreadful scene. Between the two fields of myriad flickering lights that marked the rival camps, and extendin
g on either hand for as far as he could see, the dead lay strewn in heaps and windrows where they had fallen, for the fighting had ended too late for burial to be possible. Attila cast his mind back over his long and eventful life. He would not dwell with regret on his unfulfilled ambitions for his people; the time for that was past. Instead, he would savour those defining moments when the blood ran high and keen, with the senses at their sharpest – when he faced the challenges that marked great turning-points in his life.
He recalled how, as a boy of ten, he had fought a lynx which had attacked the flock he had been guarding. Braving the great cat’s snarling spitting rush, riding the pain as its claws raked his arms and chest, until he managed to draw his knife and plunge it into the creature’s neck. Then his first raid: riding as a youth at his father’s side against a Sarmatian war-band, his thrilled surprise at seeing warriors fall to the arrows he shot in quick succession from the powerful recurved bow of laminated wood and sinew that was his father’s gift. He remembered Margus, where he had stamped his authority on the Huns, and forced the Romans to a shameful treaty. Incidents in his long friendship with Aetius (now, such were the strange workings of fate, his deadly foe) paraded in his memory – the great hunt where Carpilio, the Roman’s son, had faced the bear; the shooting of the rapids of the Iron Gate . . .
Attila jerked awake, chilled and stiff. The moon had set. The shimmering greyness of the false dawn came and went, leaving the night blacker than before. Then a rosy flush appeared in the east and a tide of light spilt over the horizon, gradually suffusing the wide expanse of the Catalaunian Plains. The time had come, Attila told himself with a kind of defiant exultation. He would embrace death joyfully, with no regrets.
An hour passed.
When the camp beneath him was fully astir, and the full light of Midsummer’s Day exposed a silent battlefield, empty save for corpses, Attila knew that the Romans would not come. He was being allowed to escape. A wave of weary disillusionment engulfed the tired old warrior. The struggle would resume, and once more he must take up the burden of leading his people, a burden grown so heavy as to be well-nigh unendurable.
As Attila began his retreat towards the Rhenus, he heard again the final words of Wu Tze’s prophecy: ‘The eagle is joined by the boar, and together they put the ass to flight.’ The eagle was Rome; the boar was the favourite emblem of German warriors; the wild ass of the plains represented the Huns. The meaning was clear: Rome and Germany would join together to defeat the Huns. All along, the seer’s prediction had proved correct, Attila reflected, with gloomy wonder. In the end, it seemed, no man was master of his fate.
Titus exclaimed in disbelief, ‘You let him go, sir! Why?’
Aetius looked up from scanning a tally. All over the battlefield moved little knots of men, burial parties, and assessors compiling lists of the fallen. They were all Romans, the Visigoths and other allies having left the Catalaunian Plains for their homelands. In the case of Torismund, elected king on the battlefield after his father’s death, he had taken Aetius’ advice to return without delay to Tolosa, to prevent his brothers challenging his succession.
‘It was the wisest course,’ said Aetius. He gestured at the buzzards wheeling overhead. ‘Would you wish their feast prolonged? This has been Rome’s bloodiest victory. Another day’s fighting would have all but wiped out the remaining legions, cohorts, and auxilia1 of my army. Attila is a wounded tiger – best let him escape, to lick those wounds. He may still be dangerous, but he can never again be the menace he was before. Besides, we need him.’ He smiled at his courier enigmatically.
‘Need him?’
‘Indeed. Without the fear of Attila to make the federates stay friends with Rome for their own safety, they’d start carving out more territory for themselves. Unless I get fresh Roman troops, which there isn’t the money to raise, I’d never be able to stop them. Which is why I persuaded Torismund to head for home as soon as possible – just in case he was tempted to start getting above himself.’
‘A shabby way to treat our staunchest ally,’ said Titus, unable to conceal his disgust at the general’s cynicism. ‘Without the Visigoths we’d probably have lost.’
‘Not “probably” but certainly,’ conceded Aetius. ‘To spare my Roman troops who, being virtually irreplaceable, are too valuable to be squandered, I had to ensure that the Visigoths bore the brunt of the toughest fighting. Pitting barbarians against barbarians – that’s been a policy of all our generals regarding federate troops, in order to cut down on Roman casualties. I salute the Visigoths; they performed magnificently.’
‘But might that not have dangerous repercussions? They’re bound to feel exploited.’
‘Which is why I want them as far away as possible,’ observed Aetius, like a lecturer expounding an elementary point of logic. ‘At this moment, despite their losses, they’re elated by victory. Resentment will come later – against myself, against Rome. But that’s a price I’m prepared to pay for victory against Attila.’
‘I see,’ said Titus, both impressed and shocked by this revelation of the general’s calculating craftiness. He paused, then added gently, ‘But there was another reason, apart from keeping the federates on side, why you spared Attila, wasn’t there?’
Aetius shrugged, then gave a wistful smile. ‘True,’ he admitted; ‘the most important reason. He was my friend.’
1 ‘Cohort’ was a sub-division of the old legion. ‘Auxilium’ (a ‘regiment’) was the name for one of the new formations replacing the legion.
PART IV
ROME
AD 451–5
FIFTY
And God breathed life into the dead and lifeless hand and she stretched out to take the tome
Theophylact, Chronicles, seventh century
‘Chalcedon!’ screamed Valentinian, leaning forward in his throne to point an accusing sceptre at the sturdy old man in pontiff’s robes who stood before him. ‘A boatload of bishops to the Bosporus! Did you hear that, Heraclius?’ The emperor turned to the plump eunuch, his chief adviser, standing beside the throne. ‘He means to ruin us.’ To the pope he continued, ‘Do you have the least idea how much this expedition will cost in fares, in board and lodging, in expenses? And for what? A vast quantity of hot air expended in theological hair-splitting.’
Pope Leo controlled his temper. ‘With respect, Your Serenity, to determine the true nature of Christ can hardly be dismissed as hair-splitting,’ he countered, with some difficulty keeping his tone reasonable. Had he been dealing with Valentinian’s predecessors, Honorius, the Emperor’s pious and gentle uncle, or his grandfather, the great Theodosius, who had knelt in humble supplication before Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, this conversation would have been very different. With disapproval, Leo noted the colossal statues of pagan gods and emperors that lined the walls of the great audience chamber of Domitian’s palace in Rome – which city the Emperor increasingly favoured for his residence over Ravenna. It was said that Valentinian was a Christian in name only, that in secret he practised the black arts of sorcery and divination. But of course it was wise to keep knowledge of such rumours to oneself.
‘The matter is closed,’ snapped Valentinian. ‘The state cannot afford it. Tell him, Heraclius.’
‘I think, Your Serenity, the Treasury might just be able to find the funds,’ said the eunuch smoothly. ‘The defeat of Attila last month liberated monies which otherwise would have been earmarked for the war. Besides, the state’s contribution to the expenses of the trip need not be very great. The Church’s income from legacies and donations is considerable, and would help substantially to cover costs. And it would enhance your imperial prestige, Serenity, if for once Rome could be seen to be dictating terms to Constantinople.’
‘It would hardly be dictating,’ Leo protested; then he rumbled into silence as Heraclius shot him a warning glance. A tough and experienced negotiator, Leo knew enough about the ways of the world to understand the game Heraclius was playing. Vain, profligate and vicious, head
ing a corrupt and inefficient government, Valentinian was widely unpopular. To block a key papal delegation would cause enormous offence, not only to the bishops but to their flocks throughout the Western Empire. It would be disastrous for the Emperor’s already tarnished image. Bishops were powerful men, with strong influence on public opinion and increasingly involved in civic administration, as the decurions, overburdened by responsibilities, sought escape by flight, or by enrolling in the army or the civil administration. Heraclius was astute enough, Leo realized, to know that any crisis affecting Valentinian might affect his own position, possibly resulting in his being made a scapegoat.
‘I would of course be at pains, Your Serenity, to ensure my delegates made clear to the assembled Council that they came only with your consent,’ Leo said tactfully. ‘And with your blessing too, I trust.’
‘Oh very well then, go – go!’ cried the Emperor peevishly. ‘Empty our coffers, impoverish your sees – what do these things matter so long as Christ is served?’ He waved his sceptre dramatically in a gesture of dismissal, covering his eyes with his other hand. ‘See to the arrangements, Heraclius, and speed them on their way.’
‘What’s happening to the Roman world, old friend?’ Marcian asked Aspar, as the old Emperor and his Master of Soldiers strolled in the gardens of Constantinople’s main imperial palace. ‘People seem more concerned over what constitutes the exact Divinity of Christ than over repelling Huns or Germans. When I was a child, the first Theodosius was on the throne and the empire was still one. Theodosius may have been obsessed with enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, but his priority was always the security of the state. He died leaving the frontiers intact and strongly defended. God, how things have changed!’ He stared moodily downhill at the old Wall of Septimius Severus, which here formed part of the sea defences. ‘The West crumbling, the East preoccupied with theological minutiae – the legacy of Greek philosophy, I suppose. The people pay more heed to Daniel on his pillar than they do to any edict of mine. Meanwhile, the empire continues to drift apart, like a cracked ice-floe. To help stop the rot, I suppose I had to convene this wretched Council, but believe me it went against the grain. There are weightier matters claiming my attention – rebuilding the country after Attila’s ravages, for a start.’