Soldier of Rome- Reign of the Tyrants

by James Mace

  Centurion Spurinna recalled the mayor telling him that the only reason they sided with the Othonians was because their hated rivals in Cremona had aligned themselves with Vitellius. The scorpion crew that badly injured the enemy torchbearer knew the truth about what happened to their precious theater, though not a word about it was ever spoken.

  “Ride at once to Verona and find General Gallus,” a very tired Centurion Spurinna ordered one of his horsemen. “Inform him we’ve defeated the Vitellians and they’ve withdrawn to Cremona. Take the southern road towards Brixellum to make certain you avoid any enemy patrols.”

  As soon as the messenger departed, Spurinna set about overseeing the numerous tasks still before him. Arguably more relieved than his soldiers, victory still came at a high cost. Their losses may have been far less than what they inflicted, yet there were many dead to burn and wounded to take care of. And with their rapid withdrawal, the Vitellians had abandoned all of their dead, as well as a substantial number of their injured. At least fifteen hundred enemy soldiers were now their prisoners, and almost half of these were wounded.

  As he walked over to where a century of praetorians were disarming and segregating enemy wounded from their uninjured companions, Spurinna’s face broke into an expression that could only be described as relief at the sight of a familiar face. “Glad to see you still among the living, sir,” he said, as he approached Master Centurion Aetius.

  The primus pilus had taken a sword thrust beneath the arm. Though he was in great pain, the bleeding had been bright red and a slow flow, rather than the gushing dark crimson of an arterial rupture. His armor lay in a pile nearby, and a medic was tying a bandage with some crushed herbs to the wound.

  “And you, Centurion Spurinna,” Aetius replied. “It would seem you have won the battle, and I shall be sitting out the rest of this war.”

  “Let us hope for the sake of Rome, as well as our soldiers, that it does not last long. Romans battling Romans is a hateful thing.”

  “A sacrilege the gods will likely punish all of us for,” the master centurion conjectured. He gave a tired smile and shook his head at the absurdity of their situation. “To think, you were once one of my cohort commanders, and now I am your prisoner.”

  “A strange turn of events, sir,” Spurinna concurred. “As the senior Vitellian officer present, give me your solemn oath that you will not attempt to escape or coerce disruptions from your soldiers and you can stay in the mayor’s palace as my guest.”

  “Well, of course, I will give you my word,” the master centurion replied. “I know you may think of us as oath-breakers since we are now enemies, but remember, we cannot have broken oaths that were never sworn.”

  That statement summarized the nature of the war between Vitellius and Otho. The Rhine army refused to swear its allegiance to anyone prior to Vitellius being presented to them. It was, in their eyes, justification for not being labeled as traitors and oath-breakers.

  Chapter XXXVI: Ambush at Ad Castores

  Brixellum, Northern Italia

  4 April 69 A.D.

  ***

  Since his arrival in Brixellum, the reports Emperor Otho received seemed to cover the entire spectrum from catastrophic to absolute triumph. That Caecina’s division managed to cross over the Alpes in the middle of winter, arriving long before the Othonians could converge their forces, was nothing short of disastrous. And with Caecina now holding Cremona, it was assumed that Valens’ much larger army could not be far behind.

  Still, not all the news was bad. Both the emperor and his generals were elated to learn about Caecina’s terrible defeat at Placentia. Suetonius Paulinus figured his casualties must have been substantial. Otherwise, he would have attempted to press the issue with the remainder of the Othonian legions.

  “And we just received this report from General Gallus,” Paulinus said, during Otho’s council of war. “The entire Thirteenth Legion has arrived at Verona with a detachment of two thousand soldiers from Fourteenth Gemina Martia Victrix. The remainder of their forces, along with Seventh Gemina, should arrive from the Balkans within the next month.”

  “I had hoped to avoid open war,” Otho grumbled, seeming to ignore the report. “And now we have reports of the Vitellian army terrorizing people in the Alpine provinces, as well as Gaul. Vitellius is a gluttonous sluggard, surely he does not have the stomach or strategic savvy for an all-out war!”

  “Gluttons and sluggards do not start wars, sire,” Paulinus conjectured. “Vitellius is controlled by his generals, Caecina and Valens most likely, as we now know they are the ones commanding their divisions. And given my experiences with both men, I would say that it is they, and not Vitellius, who is leading this insurrection. Even if Vitellius wanted to stand down and avoid civil war, I don’t think he is in any position to do so.”

  “What vexes me more so,” Otho continued, “is they have not only disregarded all political decorum but have changed the rules of warfare itself. No Roman army ever campaigns during the winter, least of all in the regions of the Alpes! For Caecina to have sprung up in northern Italia, seemingly out of nowhere, he must have left Germania in mid-January.”

  “The winter was unusually mild,” Paulinus observed. “And I regret the gods did not grant our enemies a more arduous passage. Few of the passes were snowed in at all, nothing like Julius Caesar had to struggle through over a century ago.”

  “There is another issue I must address with both of you,” the emperor said, to Paulinus and Celsus. “I would discuss this with Gallus as well, except he is still in Verona. You know I trust both of you completely, and I know your loyalty is above reproach.”

  “Of course, Caesar,” Celsus emphasized.

  “The problem is the soldiers in the ranks disagree,” Otho continued. “Rather emphatically, many of them. If it were just one or two troublemakers, I would have them flogged or strangled depending on the severity of their insolence. However, it is not just a small number, but most of the army. No one doubts that the three generals I selected to command my divisions are among the best in the empire. What they do not trust is that you will remain loyal to me. They fear some of you may be holding back and not attacking the Vitellians hard enough.”

  “Deplorable, ill-disciplined bastards,” Paulinus snarled.

  “That may be,” the emperor replied. “But we need every last one of those bastards, if we are to defeat Vitellius. And they need commanders who are not only competent but who can inspire them. You heard about Martius Macer’s raid across the Padus?”

  “He crossed with two thousand gladiators and caught a few auxiliaries with their cocks hanging out,” Celsus replied.

  “And promptly withdrew,” Otho added. “And with the Balkan reinforcements that have arrived, Gallus is holding most of the army in place at Bedriacum.”

  “As he should,” Paulinus spoke up. “It’s a strong, defensible position with plenty of access to fresh water and forage. Thirteenth Legion is also the only one which has arrived in force, with just the advance cohorts of the Fourteenth. What do the men expect? That we would take our scattered forces and simply fling ourselves at the Vitellians?”

  “In a matter of speaking,” Otho said. “I am not doubting the tactical decisions, such as Macer’s to withdraw. He was badly outnumbered with no reinforcements available. I’ll also not question Gallus’ strategic thinking, as Bedriacum is the ideal rally point for our currently scattered legions. However, there is much grumbling from the ranks that my generals are somehow taking it easy on the Vitellians. That is why my brother, Titianus, and Licinius Proculus will assume overall command. In the meantime, you will consolidate the forces we have and deal with any threats that may arise.”

  General Paulinus was livid when he and Celsus left the emperor’s tent. It was well after dark, and a lone servant with a torch guided them back to their respective quarters.

  “It’s not as if we don’t have enough shit to deal with, without the emperor becoming a pawn to the grumblings of pea
sant soldiers,” he muttered. “At least the Fourteenth is en route with the Balkan legions.”

  “Ah, yes, the Gemina Martia Victrix,” Celsus noted. He was far calmer, though frustrated by the situation. It showed in the tension in his voice. “They were with you in Britannia, weren’t they?”

  “They were the core of my fighting force when we defeated that filthy bitch, Boudicca,” Paulinus said. “I had the entire Fourteenth, along with several cohorts from Twentieth Valeria Victrix...a shame those lads will now most likely side with our enemies. We were outnumbered at least ten-to-one. If not for their splendid discipline and extreme courage, I’d be a disemboweled corpse and Britannia would have been lost.”

  “It’s only been eight years since your triumph over the Iceni,” Celsus observed. “I suspect most of the rankers in the Fourteenth still remember you.”

  “At least they know me,” Paulinus reckoned. “They did not ask questions when I ordered them to withdraw from Londinium, as hateful of a decision as that was. This lot here would have thrown me in chains for cowardice, attacked Boudicca in the open, and been completely thrashed, leaving ten thousand Roman corpses on the field instead of the four hundred that I lost. So, yes, it will be good to have the Fourteenth with us. Four of their cohorts should arrive soon with the entire Thirteenth. The advance guard of legionary cavalry arrived just yesterday. Their commanding legate, Vedius Aquila, told me the rest are about a month’s march behind with the Eleventh Claudia and the newly-raised Seventh Gemina.”

  “We are slowly evening the odds,” Celsus noted. “With such a force, I don’t think even Titianus and Licinius could fuck things up.”

  With the imminent arrival of Valens’ division, and despite their disastrous failure at Placentia, General Caecina was spurred to action once more. Centurion Liberius’ cavalry had performed splendidly as a reconnaissance force, giving the Vitellian general detailed amounts of intelligence. He now knew the Othonians were converging on Bedriacum, approximately twenty miles from his own position at Cremona.

  “Bedriacum is now the enemy’s rallying point,” he told his assembled legates and senior officers, while pointing to a large map. “They are coming up piecemeal and currently have no more than twenty thousand men assembled.”

  “More will be coming,” the legate of the Twenty-First said. “A shame we don’t have Valens’ division here. We’d sweep those bastards from the field in an hour!”

  The other officers mumbled words of concurrence.

  Caecina grimaced at the remark. The last thing he wished was for his rival general to rush in, with his massive force of nearly forty thousand men, and claim all the glory. He could not resist the opportunity to take a swipe at his former friend. “Valens knew when he was supposed to rendezvous with us. He may have had the longer journey, but he did not have to go over the treacherous northern Alpes. Whether his delay is due to enemy action or by deliberate design, we alone are left with the task of dealing with the Othonians, before they can mass their armies against us.”

  That he would hint at Valens deliberately stalling his advance was absurd, especially when there had been no communications at all between the two Vitellian divisions since mid-January. It was also in very poor taste to publicly speak ill of his peer in front of subordinates, though by this point Caecina cared little about decorum. He did, however, have to accept the reality of the strategic situation, especially after the losses he’d suffered at Placentia. As many as a thousand of his soldiers were dead. Almost three times as many were either wounded or prisoners of the enemy. And with the chief tribune for First Germanica left with the Rhine garrison and the master centurion missing, the legion was essentially leaderless. One of the staff tribunes now coordinated the legion, though Caecina was considering detaching Master Centurion Bulla from Fourth Macedonia to aid them.

  Legio XXI was in far better shape with its command staff intact. Still, their overall losses had been just as severe as First Germanica. Legio IV had acted as their reserve at Placentia and was, therefore, mostly undamaged. Caecina found himself in a quandary. He wanted to dispose of the enemy army before they could bring up their reinforcements from the Balkans. And yet, the harsh reality was, his depleted legions and auxilia regiments simply did not have the numbers to engage Otho in open battle. He relayed this blunt assessment to his commanders.

  “That does not mean we will sit on our asses and wait,” he asserted. “I intend to draw them out, using a tactic similar to one the divine Romulus himself once employed. The Via Postumia runs along a boggy plain full of drainage and irrigation ditches. There is a waypoint called Ad Castores. It is also the site of an altar to Castor and Pollux. The ground is very broken there, and the road lined with groves of trees.”

  “The perfect spot for an ambush,” an auxilia commander declared.

  “Precisely,” the commanding general said. “We will bloody Otho’s forces, and then destroy them utterly, once we are finally reinforced by Valens.”

  It was a significant lowering of his expectations, but still, Caecina knew that in order to salvage his honor, he needed a victory of sorts against the Othonians. He had failed to take Placentia, and so would have to settle for an ambush and minor battering of their foe.

  Three hundred and fifty miles to the east, a large column of Othonian loyalists was hurrying its way across Pannonia towards northeastern Italia. Marching in the lead were the six cohorts from the venerable Legio XIV, Gemina Martia Victrix. They were led by the chief tribune, as their legate had gone ahead with the advance guard. At the rear marched Legio XI, Claudia Pia Fidelis, a seasoned force with a rich history dating back to the time of Julius Caesar.

  Perhaps most famous of their veterans from ages passed were the legendary centurions, Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo, who Caesar singled out for their extreme bravery in his commentaries on the Conquest of Gaul. Numerous cohorts of auxilia infantry and archers were dispersed throughout the column.

  In the center of the formation was Marcus Antonius Primus’ own Legio VII, Gemina. Though the term Gemina, which literally meant ‘twin’, was often given to legions that were merged with other units. It was also frequently used to name a legion in honor of Rome’s twin founders, Romulus and Remus. Such was the case with the Seventh, for though they had done nothing as of yet to warrant such a moniker, it was used semi-officially to distinguish it from another legion with the same number, Legio VII, Claudia. Their shields were painted a pale red with blue circle around the center boss. And in honor of their naming, a yellow silhouette of a she-wolf was painted along the top center.

  Their shields were about the only thing that was uniform within the legion. Having been raised at a word from Galba, their leadership had spent the last seven months trying to find sufficient armor and weapons for its recruits. The centurions and other volunteers from various legions had brought their own arms and equipment, though Galba had made little provision for equipping the men in the ranks. With the civil war now halting shipments of armor from the various smiths and armories around the empire, the new legionaries had been forced to make due with whatever could be scrounged. Only a third wore the standard lorica segmentata plate armor, and most of the rest were in much older hamata chain mail. The only reason his soldiers had any sort of armor at all was because of General Primus’ strong rapport with Vespasian.

  “Your men are no doubt anxious to prove themselves,” Legate Priscus of Eleventh Claudia said to Primus. “A pity they will have to prove their mettle against fellow Romans.”

  The legates rode at the head of the long column with Master Centurion Vitruvius leading the Seventh Legion. And though no stipulations had been made regarding seniority, Antonius Primus had assumed overall command through the sheer force of his personality.

  “They may not have the history of the Eleventh,” Primus conceded. “But neither did the Eleventh when they marched into Gaul with Caesar.”

  “Point taken,” Priscus replied. “Still, it was good of Vespasian to send you what he
could, even if most of your men look like artifacts from the republic.”

  “Vespasian sent what he could, which is far more than I can say for either Galba or Otho. I am willing to somewhat forgive our current emperor, though. After all, no sooner does he become Caesar, he has half the empire trying to rip the throne out from under him. I only wish he had sent for us sooner.”

  “Agreed,” the other legate nodded. “Hard to believe that Caecina crossed over the Alpes in the middle of winter. Had Otho sent us to Verona, or even Patavium, we could have given Vitellius a nasty surprise in the spring rather than him giving one to us.”

  “Can’t be helped now.” Primus shrugged almost nonchalantly. “And don’t take my legion’s lack of combat experience to mean they aren’t properly trained. I would pit my centurions against any of yours, and they have drilled my legionaries extensively over the past seven months.”

  “I must admit, I placed my legion behind yours for fear your lads might be out of shape and need a little prodding,” Priscus remarked. “I would hate for it to take us until fall to reach Italia. I’m happy to see, though their armament is a jumbled mess from ages passed, they are fit enough to do a full day’s marching without too much grousing.”

  “Raw physical conditioning takes far less time than learning the technical intricacies of legionary warfare,” Primus observed. “I can only hope my men are proficient and ready when we face the Vitellian legions. Mars be thanked, they are very eager and fit enough.”

  There was a sense of urgency throughout the entire column, especially after receiving word of Caecina’s invasion of northern Italia. Primus reckoned it would be another two weeks before his army could rally with Otho at Bedriacum. He could only hope that whatever forces the emperor did have were enough to keep the Vitellians at bay until he arrived.