Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  The Emperor must remain in Milan because Milan was the only city in the region with walls sufficient to delay Alaric at all; and the presence of the Emperor would insure that Alaric would come to Milan and not take some unpredictable tangent. The orders of Stilicho, which were now the orders of Sarus, were to hold Milan to the last man. It was essential to delay Alaric and his Goths as long as possible; and to hold them, by involving them in a siege, to one location.

  Meanwhile, Stilicho rode along the frontiers to find an army he could employ. He is reported to have traveled with such speed that it is likely an error has crept into the accounts of the thing; but he did not travel in panic.

  He was unsparing of himself in the travel, but he did not strip a single garrison that was immediately required. He crossed the Alps in winter. He was along the Rhine for its entire length. He checked and rechecked garrisons and led attacks hundreds of miles beyond that river. He pierced to the heart of every gathering storm and turbulence, hanged leaders, and cowed men. He himself took part in three separate battles in a single week. He crushed all festering centers of opposition; several times taking levies of new troops as tribute from the routed peoples.

  He shifted troops from the areas where the immediate threat was diminished and reinforced other sectors that were more critical. He attacked with savagery and a cruelty that was unusual to him, for he had no time to lose.

  He stood and surveyed the frontiers; and they were, for the moment, at peace. In many places it was a bloody, mangled, resentful peace, but it would suffice till he could return. And the bulk of the Imperial troops he left on the frontier.

  But he did peel off an army of sorts, any excess of troops he could manage, and started them off towards Italy under competent leadership and destined for selected rendezvous points. Though personally moving with all possible speed, he did not do any thing too fast; and did not, in any case, have to backtrack to attend to any thing he had neglected.

  Living like a saddle bum and having no care at all for himself, Stilicho now rode three thousand miles in sixty days, changing horse more than one hundred times. He held night-long conferences with his subordinate commanders, after riding all day. Most of the time he rode alone, often forgetting to carry even primary arms.

  Stilicho made one more deep excursion beyond the frontier and returned from it with a special detachment, small in numbers but in many respects equal to an army. This was the special group of Huns who traveled with Uldin. These were devoted fighters, and their leader, Uldin, a friend and former student of Stilicho, was another firepot of the sort of Sarus.

  Having stabilized the frontiers for a certain time and in a certain manner, Stilicho turned and rode for Italy; gathering up the divisions of the moving army as he went, coming to the relief of the Emperor in Milan.

  And it seemed that the timing of Stilicho was perfect; that Milan, inspired by the intrepid Sarus as captain of the defenses, would be able to withstand siege until help should arrive, and that the ambushing Alaric should himself be ambushed. The Goths, for all their sophistication in warfare, were never able to avoid the wide secondary encirclement, when the Romans had the men and the means to make it work. The Romans seemed to have both now, though barely; having bled both the shaking frontiers and the interior Empire for them. And Stilicho had correctly calculated the term of the affair to the exact day.

  But the siege of Milan was raised three days early; three days before the Goths could have broken down the town with the engines they were constructing; three days before the forces of Stilicho would arrive. The siege was raised when only the most advanced skirmishers of the Empire troops had begun to make contact with the Gothic forces of Alaric.

  Every man of Stilicho had serious failings, and the Master General used what he had. Had they been without failings, they would have been other Stilichos. Sarus may have been the only man in the Empire who could have inspired Milan to such a stand by his anger and will alone. But Sarus was not a great general, and he was no planner at all. His system of intelligence was most rudimentary, and he had no understanding at all of the Court that obtained in Milan. He had eyes for only one thing—the defenses of the town—when he should have had eyes for everything.

  The Emperor Honorius had scutted out of the city like a scared rabbit, accompanied by no more than a hundred courtier guards; and he left the defender of the city, Sarus, in ignorance of his escape. The Roman deception left the Goth in the dark. He was absolutely uncomprehending of the reason for it when Alaric and his forces wheeled off and left the environs of Milan with precipitous speed. His first thought was that the army of Stilicho had arrived in full power; but he could catch no sight of it, and he could not conceive of Alaric leaving a field of action without a fight.

  Moreover, it did not appear to Sarus that the Goths were fleeing from the arriving frontier armies, for the sounds of a flight have their own tone; these were the sounds of a pursuit. And the angle of movement was wrong for it to be a retreat: the Goths were going due south, and the border legions would arrive more from the west—through Gaul, around the southern end of the Alps, and to Milan from Turin.

  Sarus posted the city forces and then rode out following the Goths fearlessly to the south with quite a small force. He did not pursue; he followed in bafflement, with not one-twentieth of their numbers. He had ridden out for several hours before his scouts informed him that the frightened Emperor was out in advance, and that it was he whom Alaric pursued.

  Alaric did not want the city of Milan. He wanted the person of the Emperor to use for a basis of negotiations.

  The way went to Ticinus (which is Pavia); then turned west and a little south to Hasta (which is Asti). The Emperor Honorius slept that night in the little walled town of Asti, and Alaric gnashed his teeth outside because he had not been able to take him during the day.

  Whatever else history forgets to recount of the young Emperor Honorius, who would always be a boy in mind, let it not forget to tell this: he was a horseman. Whenever it mentions of his courtier guards that they would not stand and fight, let it also mention that they could ride. The Court of Arcadius, though very unwarlike, had always been hunt-crazy; wolf, fox, boar, and deer hunts were their main occupation. On their light swift horses they were excellent, and they rode like steeplechasers. They escaped Alaric that day as a fox escapes, with a great rush of speed when it was believed that they had been ridden to the ground, and with a sudden veer to the side through thickets and brakes.

  Milan had stood siege for a month and would have stood at least three days longer, according to the calculations of Stilicho. Asti would not be able to stand for two days. Alaric would shake the Emperor out of that town like shaking a raccoon out of a tree. But already time was running out for Alaric and for everyone; he now had not even two days to give to it. Outriders of the Empire cavalry were sighted early in the second day of the siege of Asti, and the infantry would be no more than a day behind.

  Alaric forgot the small walled town for the moment and prepared for the coming attack. In the meanwhile Sarus was called off and sent back to secure Milan, by advance order of Stilicho. There was the pretext that Sarus, being the brother-in-law of Alaric, might not be trusted to oppose him to the ultimate; but actually the apprehension of Stilicho was quite in the opposite direction.

  Though the two brothers-in-law were never personal enemies, yet on finding themselves on the opposite sides of an affair they would have fought to the death. Stilicho did not desire the death of either of them, nor the destruction of any of the forces involved. He had a need for all in his later plans.

  Sarus had asked for the command of the oncoming cavalry, and it was refused him. There was a moment when it seemed that Sarus would affect not to comprehend the orders that Stilicho had sent in advance, and would take command of that cavalry as the one who best knew how to use it; and Stilicho himself had not yet arrived. But Sarus obeyed, in spite of his itch for combat. He always obeyed Stilicho, or anyone speaking with the voice of
the Empire. Sarus rode back to Milan. And Saul of the Alani captained the cavalry—to his death.

  The orders of Stilicho to Saul were to seek for a device to force the surrender of Alaric's contingent with the least possible fighting. Only if no such device could be found should an all-out assault be ordered; and that only after the infantry was in sight. Alaric had been delayed so long that his hopes of taking the Emperor had failed. He would have to face the forces of Stilicho without any such royal hostage to hold as a club.

  On coming onto the scene, Saul believed that he had discovered such a device to force the sudden surrender of the Goths, and he proceeded with it without waiting for the arrival of the infantry. He resolved to surround the Goths as he saw them, assembled in robes in great numbers for the Easter Mass, and apparently believing that the Romans would also respect the Peace of God on that day.

  Much has been made of the perfidy of the Empire forces attacking the Gothic encampment on Easter Day (April 6, 402) when the Goths were celebrating the Easter Mass in grand and pious assembly. This seemed especially reprehensible in view of the fact that Stilicho had placed Saul, a pagan general, in command of the attack.

  But Saul was one man in whom no perfidy at all could be found. He was a small man physically (he had been called the gad-fly), but he was the commander of auxiliary troops that were incendiary in spirit. He had been a general under Theodosius; even under Valens. Though himself a pagan, he had been the pivot in the turning of the troops from Arbogast to Stilicho and Theodosius at the battle of the River Frigidus. He was a close friend of Alaric, of Stilicho, of Sarus. Nobody who knew him in life has ever spoken or written a disparaging word about him. Now he believed he saw a device to compel the bloodless surrender of a force in revolt against the Empire.

  As for the trick itself, it proved to be a two-way business; and it was the ruse of Alaric that won out. The Goths had not left their camp as unguarded as it appeared, nor was their attention so wholly taken up by the celebration of the Easter Mass as they wished observers to believe.

  It was also a thing that had never happened before, that all of them—Arian, Catholic, and pagan—should assemble at one Mass, and in the mode of extreme piety. The Arians and the Catholics, in spite of their very similar rites, always held their Masses separately. Probably any force but the pagan Alani of Saul would have suspected such perfect amity among Christians.

  Saul surrounded them with his horsemen, the huge assembly packed closely together at worship, and called on them to surrender in the name of the Empire. But the Goths threw off their Easter robes, showing themselves fully armed, and immediately swung into disciplined squares. It was their casque helmets on which they had knelt, and they erupted like a wave under the rearing Alani horses. The Goths themselves had the advantage of the surprise. At close quarters they worked great slaughter on the Alani riders and their back-rearing horses, transfixing them with pikes and chopping them down with sword and axe.

  Saul tried to reform his forces and maintain the encirclement, but he could not. In the old cavalry term, he had overridden himself. He had begun his charge too soon and from too great a distance, believing that speed was essential for the surprise and that the Goths were unarmed. He miscalculated and arrived winded in horse and men. The Gothic footmen stood like one great bull, and tossed the on-coming horsemen on their horns. They broke the attacking cavalry with the stubbornness of their resistance; and then swept them clear with their own horsemen coming up capably from the neighborhood of Alba, where they had been hidden waiting in a woods.

  The Alani, probably the noisiest horsemen ever assembled, had been effective against more barbaric foes. But they had been compelled to carry out their first charge in silence, for the surprise of it; and thereafter their intimidating tactics availed nothing. The Goths were unafraid of shouting and noise and incendiary tactics, figurative or real. The flaming arrow, a favorite of the Alani, is no more to be feared than any other arrow; and a screaming foe is sometimes less frightening than a silent one. The Alani horses of Saul were shattered, and the fiery little general ended his long soldier's life in the action.

  By their sudden and complete victory over the advance cavalry, the Goths had put the Empire forces of Stilicho at a great disadvantage. Stilicho, himself coming to the attack an hour after the defeat of his advance infantry, was also forced to override or overmarch himself—and to bring his troops wearied and staggered onto the field of battle. There was an intangible here, and Stilicho had to join battle before the feeling of the Gothic victory had solidified. The impression of a victory is sometimes as important as the victory itself. That impression had to be challenged before the troops of Stilicho—most of them German and many of them Gothic German—should entertain the idea of swinging to the victorious German Alaric.

  It is impossible to say who won the victory on the field that day. It went into the Roman annals as a Roman victory, and an ovation was later proclaimed for it by the Roman Senate. But ovations were often proclaimed for doubtful actions; and a triumph—a greater thing than an ovation—was declared for even a minor victory.

  The troops opposed evenly and without breaking till nightfall. Then they withdrew a little from both sides. The two forces were still intact and unbroken, and about evenly blooded. However, there is a feeling, from the extreme modesty of the Roman claims at that time and later, that the Goths had somewhat the better of the day's fighting. And the Gothic hopes for the next day were certainly higher than the Roman.

  Stilicho, as he had done several times before, lost a day-long battle—or at least had no better than a doubtful draw; but, as always, he won the battle during the night. The alarmed Goths realized, sometime in the night, that Stilicho had stolen a great advantage over them, and in a way that struck them deep.

  Alaric, at Milan and at Asti, had gone after the person of the Emperor, to use him for a point of negotiation. Stilicho now took royal hostages for the same purpose. By his intelligence set-up, even in the midst of Alaric's Goths, Stilicho knew where was the Waibergroub, the party of Gothic women. He knew how they were guarded, and how the guard might be subverted.

  Stilicho, sometime between midnight and morning and before the Gothic leaders realized it, took about one hundred Gothic women, the wives of the notables, the nobility, and the elders of the Goths. Among these was Stairnon, the wife of Alaric.

  What should the Goths do? The old Romans would have advanced resolutely to the attack, and have worried little about the execution of their wives while the weal of the Republic was the question. But the Goths were people; and the old Romans, perhaps, were not. The people of councils held many councils over this, and the decision of most of them was that they must treat with the Romans and agree to withdraw. Alaric, at first, opposed this decision out of stubbornness or out of Gothic national feeling; and his opposition worried the Gothic national leaders for a reason that seemed in contradiction to their program.

  But if Alaric should pursue the assault, either through unbending spirit or through strong Gothic feeling, then he might lose Stairnon to the Roman vengeance; and it was through Stairnon that Alaric was bound to the Gothic nation. She was the one hold that the Gothic elders had over Alaric, the one thing that kept him Gothic. Alaric would burn up with fury after Stairnon was killed, but when the fury was gone something must take its place. The Gothic elders knew too many Empire Goths of the sort of Sarus who put the Empire before their own people. Without Stairnon, Alaric might become like that. He would attack Stilicho furiously for the moment; but he would later need something to become the object of his life. The elders wanted Stairnon alive to maintain their hold over Alaric; they knew that the seeds of Empire were very strong in him.

  At least three times in the following week Alaric started, or intimated that he would start, hostile moves against the forces of Stilicho. Each time he was dissuaded by the council of the Goths. They were very vulnerable in their wives. They could not, like the old Romans, put their country ahead of their wives
and families; to the Goths, their wives and families were their country.

  It was the belief of the Gothic councils that they should pay the ransom demanded by Stilicho: their leaving Italy and giving pledges that they would settle once more in Illyricum and Epirus and that they would maintain the Empire there. They would leave Italy, by the agreement of Stilicho; and after a term of weeks their wives would be given back to them again.

  They could always break their pledges, and return to Italy another year, the Gothic elders reasoned. But should they lose the conjugal influence of Stairnon over Alaric and he teeter towards the Empire, they might never have a leader able to mount the final assault on Rome.

  It is not known where all the wives were sent, but Stairnon was held longer than most of them, for nearly a year. She was sent to Rome and kept in Stilicho's own house. There she lived with Serena, the friendly and admirable wife of Stilicho. But also with Galla Placidia, Stilicho's young ward, the sister of the two young Emperors.

  This was one of those minor circumstances that might have been of great moment, had it fallen out a little differently. For it appeared that Stairnon came to the side of the Roman party, as Stilicho had intended. The friendship and influence of Serena was very great on Stairnon; and Stairnon left bemused some months later, believing herself of the Roman arrangement, and seeming to realize that all the Gothic turmoil had been nothing but childishness. Stairnon was completely captivated by the goodness and reason of Serena, as were many. Stilicho, a man of excellent judgment, had always said that he had the finest wife in the Empire. From him this was a statement of fact and not of affection.

  But the transformation was flawed, though this was not realized till years later. In the household of Stilicho, Stairnon had also lived with the young Galla Placidia, and between them there was total opposition. The young girl, for Placidia was then about nine years old, would taunt Stairnon to fury. There was an implacable enmity between them, and the fate of the world would hinge on it.