The Conquest Of Italy


Odovacar invades Dalmatia--Conducts a successful campaign against the

Rugians--Theodoric accepts from Zeno the commission to overthrow

Odovacar--He invades Italy, overthrowing the Gepidse, who attempt to bar

his passage--Battles of the Isonzo and Verona--Odovacar takes refuge in

Ravenna--The treachery of Tufa--Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, comes

to Italy to oppose Theodoric, while Alaric II, king of the Visigoths,

comes as his ally--The battle of the Adda, and further defeat of

Odovacar--Surrender of Ravenna--Assassination of Odovacar.





The friendly relations between Odovacar and the Eastern Emperor which

had been established by the embassy last described were gradually

altered into estrangement. In the year 480, Nepos, the dethroned Emperor

of Rome, was stabbed by two treacherous courtiers in his palace near

Salona. Odovacar led an army into Dalmatia, and avenged the murder, but

also apparently annexed the province of Dalmatia to his dominion, thus

coming into nearer neighbourhood with Constantinople (487-488) This may

have been one cause of alienation, but a more powerful one was the

negotiation which was commenced in the year 484 between Odovacar and

Illus, the last of the many insurgent generals who disturbed the reign

of Zeno. At first Odovacar held himself aloof from the proposed

confederacy, but afterwards (486) he was disposed, or Zeno believed that

he was disposed, to accept the alliance of the insurgent general. In

order to find him sufficient occupation nearer home, the Emperor fanned

into a flame the smouldering embers of discord between Odovacar and

Feletheus, king of the Rugians, the most powerful ruler of those

Danubian lands from which the Italian king himself had migrated into

Italy. The Rugian war was short, and Odovacar's success was decisive. In

487 he vanquished the Rugian army and carried Feletheus and his wife

prisoners to Ravenna. In 488 an attempt to raise again the standard of

the Rugian monarchy, which was made by Frederic, the son of Feletheus,

was crushed, and Frederic, an exile and a fugitive, betook himself to

the camp of Theodoric, who was then dwelling at Novae(Sistova?), on the

Danube.



When the attempt to weaken Odovacar by means of his fellow-barbarians in

Rugiland failed, Zeno feigned outward acquiescence, offering

congratulations on the victory and receiving presents out of the Rugian

spoils, but in his heart he felt that there must now be war to the death

between him and this too powerful ruler of Italy. The news came to him

at a time when Theodoric was in one of his most turbulent and

destructive moods, when he had penetrated within fourteen miles of

Constantinople and had fired the towns and villages of Thrace, perhaps

even within sight of the capital. It was a natural thought and not

altogether an unstatesmanlike expedient to play off one disturber of his

peace against the other, to commission Theodoric to dethrone the

tyrant Odovacar, and thus at least earn repose for the provincials of

Thrace, perhaps secure an ally at Ravenna. Theodoric, we may be sure,

with those instincts of civilisation and love for the Empire which had

been in his heart from boyhood, though often repressed and disobeyed,

needed little exhortation to an enterprise which he may himself have

suggested to the Emperor.



Thus then it came to pass that a formal interview was arranged between

Emperor and King (perhaps at Constantinople, though it seems doubtful

whether Theodoric could have safely trusted himself within its walls),

and at this interview the terms of the joint enterprise were arranged,

an enterprise to which Theodoric was to contribute all the effective

strength and Zeno the glamour of Imperial legitimacy.



When the high contracting parties met, Theodoric lamented the hapless

condition of Italy and Rome: Italy once subject to the predecessors of

Zeno; Rome, once the mistress of the world, now harassed and distressed

by the usurped authority of a king of Rugians and Turcilingians. If the

Emperor would send Theodoric thither with his people, he would be at

once relieved from the heavy charges of their stipendia which he was

now bound to furnish, while Theodoric would hold the land as of the free

gift of the Emperor, and would reign there as king, only till Zeno

himself should arrive to claim the supremacy[51].





In the autumn of the year 488, Theodoric with all his host set forth

from Sistova on the Danube on his march to Italy. His road was the same

taken by Alaric and by most of the barbarian invaders; along the Danube

as far as Belgrade, then between the rivers Drave and Save or along the

banks of one of them till he reached the Julian Alps (not far from the

modern city of Laibach), then down upon Aquileia and the Venetian plain.

As in the Macedonian campaign, so now, he was accompanied by all the

members of his nation, old men and children, mothers and maidens, and

doubtless by a long train of waggons. We have no accurate information

whatever as to the number of his army, but various indications, both in

earlier and later history, seem to justify us in assuming that the

soldiers must have numbered fully 40,000; and if this was the case, the

whole nation cannot have been less than 200,000. The difficulty of

finding food for so great a multitude in the often desolated plains of

Pannonia and Noricum must have been enormous, and was no doubt the

reason of the slowness of Theodoric's progress. Very probably he divided

his army into several portions, moving on parallel lines; foragers would

scour the country far and wide, stores of provisions would be

accumulated in the great Gothic waggons, which would be laboriously

driven over the rough mountain passes. Then all the divisions of the

army which had scattered in search of food would have to concentrate

again when they came into the neighbourhood of an enemy, whether

Odovacar or one of the barbarian kings who sought to bar their progress.

All these operations consumed much time, and hence it was that though

the Goths started on their pilgrimage in 488 (probably in the autumn of

that year) they did not descend into the plains of Italy even at its

extreme north-eastern corner, till July, 489.



There was one fact which probably facilitated the progress of Theodoric,

and prevented his expedition with such a multitude from being condemned

as absolute foolhardiness. His road lay, for the most part, through

regions with which he was already well acquainted, through a land which

might almost be called his native land, and both the resources and the

difficulties of which were well known to him. The first considerable

city that he came to, Singidunum (the modern Belgrade), was the scene of

his own first boyish battle. The Gepidae, who were his chief antagonists

on the road, had swarmed over into that very province of Pannonia where

his father's palace once stood; and though they showed themselves

bitter foes, they were doubtless surrounded by foes of their own who

would be friends to the Ostrogoths. Probably, too, Frederic, the Rugian

refugee, brought with him many followers who knew the road and could

count on the assistance of some barbarian allies, eager to overturn the

throne of Odovacar. Thus it will be seen that though the perils of the

Ostrogothic march were tremendous, the danger which in those mapless

days was so often fatal to an invading army--ignorance of the

country--was not among them.



We are vaguely told of countless battles fought by the Ostrogoths with

Sclavonic and other tribes that lay across their line of march, but the

only battle of which we have any details (and those only such as we can

extract from the cloudy rhetoric of a popular preacher[52]) is one which

was fought with the Gepidse, soon after the Goths had emerged from the

territory of the friendly Empire, near the great mere or river which

went by the name of Hiulca Palus, in what is now the crown-land of

Sclavonia. When the great and over-wearied multitude approached the

outskirts of the Gepid territory, their leader sent an embassy to

Traustila, king of the Gepidae, entreating that his host might have an

unmolested passage, and offering to pay for the provisions which they

would require. To this embassy Traustila returned a harsh and insulting

answer: He would yield no passage through his dominions to the

Ostrogoths; if they would go by that road they must first fight with

the unconquered Gepidae Traustila then took up a strong position near

the Hiulca Palus, whose broad waters, girdled by fen and treacherous

morass, made the onward march of the invaders a task of almost desperate

danger. But the Ostrogoths could not now retreat; famine and pestilence

lay behind them on their road; they must go forward, and with a

reluctant heart Theodoric gave the signal for the battle.



It seemed at first as if that battle would be lost, and as if the name

and fame of the Ostrogothic people would be swallowed up in the morasses

of the reedy Hiulca. Already the van of the army, floundering in the

soft mud, and with only their wicker shields to oppose to the deadly

shower of the Gepid arrows, were like to fall back in confusion. Then

Theodoric, having called for a cup of wine, and drunk to the fortunes of

his people, in a few spirited words called to his soldiers to follow his

standard--the standard of a king who would carve out the way to victory.

Perchance he may have discerned some part of the plain where the road

went over solid ground, and if that were beset by foes, at any rate the

Gepid was less terrible than the morass. So it was that he charged

triumphantly through the hostile ranks, and, being followed by his eager

warriors, achieved a signal victory. The Gepidae were soon wandering over

the plain, a broken and dispirited force. Multitudes of them were slain

before the descent of night saved the remaining fugitives, and so large

a number of the Gepid store-waggons fell into the hands of the

Ostrogoths that throughout the host one voice of rejoicing arose that

Traustila had been willing to fight. So had a little Gothic blood bought

food more than they could ever have afforded money to purchase.



Thus, through foes and famine, hardships of the winter and hardships of

the summer, the nation-army held on its way, and at length (as has been

already said) in the month of August (489) the last of the waggons

descended from the highlands, which are an outpost of the Julian Alps,

and the Ostrogoths were encamped on the plains of Italy. Odovacar, who

apparently had allowed them to accomplish the passage of the Alps

unmolested, stood ready to meet them on the banks of the Isonzo, the

river which flows near the ruins of the great city of Aquileia. He had a

large army, the kernel of which would doubtless be those mercenaries who

had raised him on the shield thirteen years before, and among whom he

had divided one-third part of the soil of Italy. But many other

barbarians had flocked to his standard, so that he had, as it were, a

little court of kings, chieftains serving under him as supreme leader.

He himself, however, was now in the fifty-sixth year of his age, and his

genius for war, if he ever had any, seems to have failed him. He fought

(as far as we can discern his conduct from the fragmentary notices of

the annalists and panegyrists) with a sort of sullen savageness, like a

wild beast at bay, but without skill either of strategy or tactics. The

invaders, encumbered with the waggons and the non-combatants, had

greatly the disadvantage of position. Odovacar's camp had been long

prepared, was carefully fortified, and protected by the deep and rapid

Isonzo. But Theodoric's soldiers succeeded in crossing the river,

stormed the camp, defended as it was by a strong earthen rampart, and

sent its defenders flying in wild rout over the plains of Venetia.

Odovacar fell back on the line of the Adige, and the beautiful

north-eastern corner of Italy, the region which includes among its

cities Udine, Venice, Vicenza, Padua, now accepted without dispute the

rule of Theodoric, and perhaps welcomed him as a deliverer from the

stern sway of Odovacar.[53] From this time forward it is allowable to

conjecture that the most pressing of Theodoric's anxieties, that which

arose from the difficulty of feeding and housing the women and children

of his people, if not wholly removed was greatly lightened. Odovacar

took up a strong position near Verona, separated from that city by the

river Adige. Theodoric, though not well provided with warlike

appliances,[54] rightly judged that it was of supreme importance to his

cause to follow up with rapidity the blow struck on the banks of the

Isonzo, and accordingly, towards the end of September, he, with his

army, stood before the fossatum or entrenched camp at Verona. In order

to force his soldiers to fight bravely, Odovacar had, in defiance of the

ordinary rules of war, placed his camp where retreat was almost

hopelessly barred by the swift stream of the Adige, and he addressed his

army with stout words full of simulated confidence in victory. On the

morning of the 30th of September, when the two armies were about to join

in what must evidently be a most bloody encounter, the mother and sister

of Theodoric, Erelieva and Amalfrida, sought his presence and asked him

with some anxiety what were the chances of the battle. With words,

reminding us of the Homeric saying that the best omen is to fight

bravely for one's country, Theodoric reassured their doubting hearts.

On that day, he told his mother, it was for him to show that she had

given birth to a hero on the day when the Ostrogoths did battle with the

Huns. Dressed in his most splendid robes, those robes which their hands

had adorned with bright embroidery, he would be conspicuous both to

friend and foe, and would give a noble spoil to his conqueror if any man

could succeed in slaying him. With these words he leapt on his horse,

rushed to the van, cheered on his wavering troops, and began a series of

charges, which at length, but not till thousands of his own men as well

as of the enemy were slain, carried the fossatum of Odovacar.





The battle once gained, of course the dispositions which Odovacar had

made to ensure the resistance of his soldiers, necessitated their ruin,

and the swirling waters of the Adige probably destroyed as many as the

Ostrogothic sword. Odovacar himself, again a fugitive, sped across the

plain south-eastward to Ravenna, compelled like so many Roman Emperors

before him to shelter himself from the invader behind its untraversable

network of rivers and canals. It would seem from the scanty notices

which remain to us that in this battle of Verona, the bloodiest and

most hardly fought of all the battles of the war, the original army of

foederati, the men who had crowned Odovacar king, and divided the third

part of Italy between them, was, if not annihilated, utterly broken and

dispirited, and Theodoric, who now marched westward with his people, and

was welcomed with blessing and acclamations by the Bishop and citizens

of Milan, received also the transferred allegiance of the larger part of

the army of his rival.



It seemed as if a campaign of a few weeks had secured the conquest of

Italy, but the war was in fact prolonged for three years and a half from

this time by domestic treachery, foreign invasion, and the almost

absolute impregnability of Ravenna.



I. At the head of the soldiers of Odovacar who had apparently with

enthusiasm accepted the leadership of his younger and more brilliant

rival, was a certain Tufa, Master of the Soldiery among the foederati

Either he had extraordinary powers of deception, or Theodoric, short of

generals, accepted his professions of loyalty with most unwise facility;

for so it was that the Ostrogothic king entrusted to Tufa's generalship

the army which assuredly he ought to have led himself to the siege of

Ravenna. When Tufa arrived at Faventia, about eighteen miles from

Ravenna, his old master came forth to meet him; the instinct of loyalty

to Odovacar revived (if indeed he had not all along been playing a part

in his alleged desertion), and Tufa carried over, apparently, the larger

part of the army under his command to the service of Theodoric's rival.

Worst of all, he surrendered to his late master the chief members of

his staff the so-called comites (henchmen) of Theodoric some of whom

had probably helped him in his early adventure against Singidunum, and

had shared his hardships in many a weary march through Thrace and

Macedonia. These men were all basely murdered by Odovacar, a deed which

Theodoric inwardly determined should never be forgiven (492).



Such an event as the defection of Tufa, carrying with him a considerable

portion of his troops, was a great blow to the Ostrogothic cause. Some

time later another and similar event took place. Frederic the Rugian,

whose father had been dethroned, and who had been himself driven into

exile by the armies of Odovacar, for some unexplained and most

mysterious reason, quitted the service of Theodoric and entered that of

his own deadliest enemy. The sympathy of scoundrels seems to have drawn

him into a special intimacy with Tufa, with whom he probably wandered up

and down through Lombardy (as we now call it) and Venetia, robbing and

slaying in the name of Odovacar, but not caring to share his hardships

in blockaded and famine-stricken Ravenna. Fortunately, the Nemesis which

so often waits on the friendship of bad men was not wanting in this

case. The two traitors quarrelled about the division of the spoil and a

battle took place between them, in the valley of the Adige above Verona,

in which Tufa was slain. Frederic, with his Rugian countrymen, occupied

the strong city of Ticinum (Pavia), where they spent two dreadful

years, Their minds, says an eye-witness,[55] in after-time the Bishop

of that city, were full of cruel energy which prompted them to daily

crimes. In truth, they thought that each day was wasted which they had

not made memorable by some sort of outrage. In 494, with the general

pacification of Italy, they disappear from view: and we may conjecture,

though we are not told, that Pavia was taken, and that Frederic received

his deserts at the hands of Theodoric.



II. In the year 490 Gundobad, king of the Burgundians, crossed the Alps

and descended into Italy to mingle in the fray as an antagonist of

Theodoric. In the same year, probably at the same time, Alaric II., king

of the Visigoths, entered Italy as his ally. A great battle was fought

on the river Adda, ten miles east of Milan, in which Odovacar, who had

emerged from the shelter of Ravenna, was again completely defeated. He

fled once more to Ravenna, which he never again quitted.



While these operations were proceeding, Theodoric's own family and the

non-combatants of the Ostrogothic nation were in safe shelter, though in

somewhat narrow quarters, in the strong city of Pavia, whose Bishop,

Epiphanius, was the greatest saint of his age, and one for whom

Theodoric felt an especial veneration. No doubt they must have left that

city before the evil-minded Rugians entered it (492), but we hear

nothing of the circumstances of their flight or removal.



As for the Burgundian king, he does not seem to have been guided by any

high considerations of policy in his invasion of Italy, and having been

induced to conclude a treaty with Theodoric, he returned to his own

royal city of Lyons with goodly spoil and a long train of hapless

captives torn from the fields of Liguria.



III. These disturbing elements being cleared away, we may now turn our

attention to the true key of the position and the central event of the

war, the siege of Odovacar in Ravenna. After Tufa's second change of

sides, and during the Burgundian invasion of Italy, there was no

possibility of keeping up an Ostrogothic blockade of the city of the

marshes. Odovacar emerged thence, won back the lower valley of the Po,

and marching on Milan, inflicted heavy punishment on the city, for the

welcome given to Theodoric. In the battle of the Adda, 11 August, 490,

however, as has been already mentioned, he sustained a severe defeat, in

which he lost one of his most faithful friends and ablest counsellors, a

Roman noble named Pierius. After his flight to Ravenna, which

immediately followed the battle of the Adda, there seems to have been a

general movement throughout Italy, headed by the Catholic clergy, for

the purpose of throwing off his yoke, and if we do not misread the

obscure language of the Panegyrist, this movement was accompanied by a

wide-spread popular conspiracy, somewhat like the Sicilian Vespers of a

later day, to which the foederati, the still surviving adherents of

Odovacar, scattered over their various domains in Italy, appear to have

fallen victims.



Only two cities, Caesena and Rimini, beside Ravenna, now remained to

Odovacar, and for the next two years and a half (from the autumn of 490

to the spring of 493) Ravenna was straitly besieged. Corn rose to a

terrible famine price (seventy-two shillings a peck), and before the

end of the siege the inhabitants had to feed on the hides of animals,

and all sorts of foul and fearful aliments, and many of them perished of

hunger. A sortie made in 491 by a number of barbarian recruits whom

Odovacar had by some means attracted to his standard, was repelled after

a desperate encounter. During all this time Theodoric, from his

entrenched camp in the great pine-wood of Ravenna, was watching

jealously to see that no provisions entered the city by land, and in

492, after taking Rimini, he brought a fleet of swift vessels thence to

a harbour about six miles from Ravenna, and thus completed its

investment by sea.



In the beginning of 493 the misery of the besieged city became

unendurable, and Odovacar, with infinite reluctance, began to negotiate

for its surrender. His son Thelane was handed over as a hostage for his

fidelity, and the parleying between the two rival chiefs began on the

25th of February. On the following day Theodoric and his Ostrogoths

entered Classis, the great naval emporium, about three miles from the

city; and on the 27th, by the mediation of the Bishop, peace was

formally concluded between the warring kings.



The peace, the surrender of the city, the acceptance of the rule of the

new King from the East, were apparently placed under the especial

guardianship of the Church. The most blessed man, the Archbishop John,

says a later ecclesiastical historian,[56] opened the gates of the

city, 5 March, 493, which Odovacar had closed, and went forth with

crosses and thuribles and the Holy Gospels, seeking peace. While the

priests and the rest of the clergy round him intoned the psalms, he,

falling prostrate on the ground, obtained that which he desired. He

welcomed the new King coming from the East, and peace was granted unto

him, including not only the citizens of Ravenna, but all the other

Romans[57], for whom the blessed John made entreaty.



The chief clause of the treaty was that which assured Odovacar not only

life but absolute equality of power with his conqueror. The fact that

Theodoric should have, even in appearance, consented to an arrangement

so precarious and unstable, is the strongest testimony to the

impregnability of Ravenna, which after three years' strict blockade,

could still be won only by so mighty a concession. But of course there

was not, there could not be, any real peace on such terms between the

two queen-bees in that swarming hive of barbarians. Theodoric received

information--so we are told--that his rival was laying snares for his

life, and being determined to anticipate the blow, invited Odovacar to a

banquet at the Palace of the Laurel-grove, on the south-east of the

city (15th March, 493). When Odovacar arrived, two suppliants knelt

before him and clasped his hands while offering a feigned petition. Some

soldiers who had been stationed in two side alcoves stepped forth from

the ambush to slay him, but at the last moment their hearts failed them,

and they could not strike. If the deed was to be done, Theodoric must

himself be the executioner or the assassin. He raised his sword to

strike. Where is God? cried the defenceless but unterrified victim.

Thus didst thou to my friends, answered Theodoric, reminding him of

the treacherous murder of the henchmen. Then with a tremendous stroke

of his broadsword he clove his rival from the shoulder to the loin. The

barbarian frenzy, which the Scandinavian minstrels call the fury of the

Berserk, was in his heart, and with a savage laugh at his own too

impetuous blow, he shouted as the corpse fell to the ground: I think

the weakling had never a bone in his body.



The body of Odovacar was laid in a stone coffin, and buried near the

synagogue of the Jews. His brother was mortally wounded while attempting

to escape through the palace-garden. His wife died of hunger in her

prison. His son, sent for safe-keeping to the king of the Visigoths in

Gaul, afterwards escaped to Italy and was put to death by the orders of

Theodoric. Thus perished the whole short-lived dynasty of the captain of

the foederati.



In his long struggle for the possession of Italy, Theodoric had shown

himself patient in adversity, moderate in prosperity, brave,

resourceful, and enduring. But the memory of all these noble deeds is

dimmed by the crime which ended the tragedy, a crime by the commission

of which Theodoric sank below the level of the ordinary morality of the

barbarian, breaking his plighted word, and sinning against the faith of

hospitality.



More

;