The West was in an even worse condition. Without Belisarius, the Byzantine reconquest had collapsed with frightening speed. Ironically enough, Justinian had only himself to blame for most of it. Scared by the power of a general who had never wavered in his loyalty, he had decided that no one officer would wield supreme command and split the leadership of the Italian campaign between no fewer than five of them. This foolish decision divided the diminished Byzantine resources among squabbling, incompetent generals who almost immediately fell to arguing instead of completing the conquest.
Imperial weakness could hardly have come at a worse time. The Goths at last had found a worthy king in the brilliant Totila, and he was determined to save his kingdom from the desperate situation his predecessor had left it in. Easily outmaneuvering the unwieldy Byzantines, Totila surged through Italy, promising deliverance from the heavy imperial tax collectors and an end to the unceasing war. Belisarius had been welcomed into Rome as a liberator, but now it was the Goths who would set the Romans free.
Within a year, Totila had undone most of Belisarius’s work, and the hapless Byzantine generals wrote to Justinian, informing him that they were no longer capable of defending Italy. The reconquest, which had taken so much effort, seemed to be on the brink of slipping away, and the realization stung Justinian into action. Overriding the protests of his wife, he called once again for Belisarius.
The general had hardly deserved his disgrace, but with Theodora at his side, Justinian could never quite bring himself to trust his old friend, and the general was sent to Italy with only four thousand men. When he arrived, Belisarius found that the situation was virtually hopeless. His soldiers were deeply disillusioned, his commanders were uninspired, and the population was sympathetic to Totila and openly hostile to the Byzantines. Opening an offensive against the Goths was out of the question; it would be a miracle to hold those cities left in imperial control.
Somehow Belisarius managed to hold on to the center of Italy, but every day seemed to bring fresh disasters. Barbarian attacks on the frontiers grew more insistent, and the troops who didn’t drift off to protect their homes seemed more eager to defect to Totila than to fight him. They hadn’t seen regular pay since the onset of the plague, and the Gothic conquest had begun to seem inevitable. Hemorrhaging men and worried that he would soon be unable to protect Rome, Belisarius wryly wrote to the emperor, informing him of the deplorable situation and begging him to send more troops: “The soldiers already stationed … are discontented, fearful, and dismayed; at the sound of an enemy they dismiss their horses, and cast their arms on the ground…. If the war could be won by the presence of Belisarius alone, your preparations are perfect…. But if you desire to conquer, you must do something more than this.”* Belisarius’s refreshingly candid letter went on to say that he could rescue the situation only if his old veterans were sent to him.
From the start, the request seemed doomed. The messenger charged with delivering it decided to enjoy his time in the capital instead of going directly to the palace. Only after he had courted a woman and gotten married did he seek an audience with the emperor and fulfill his mission. The second obstacle was more formidable. Theodora had no intention of allowing Belisarius and his veterans to be reunited, and there was simply no money to equip new troops. A few reinforcements were scraped up and sent, but as always it was too little and too late.
Without real aid from Constantinople, Belisarius couldn’t hope to raise enough men to defeat the Goths, and the war settled into a depressing stalemate. Rome seesawed back and forth between each army and was left a shattered ruin, desolate and nearly deserted.† By 548, Belisarius was desperate enough to send his wife, Antonina, to Constantinople to beg for aid. The plague had run its course and things seemed to be generally improving elsewhere for the empire, so the general hoped that now money and men could be found to turn the tide against the Goths. There was also a good reason to hope that his wife would prove a more able ambassador than the last man he had sent. A close friend of Theodora, she would be able to bypass whatever red tape was thrown in her way and quickly receive a direct audience with the empress. Antonina arrived in the city eager to see her friend, but she found instead everything draped black in mourning and Justinian overwhelmed with grief. Theodora was dead.
She had been a bulwark in those desperate early days of the Nika riots, but as the de facto leader of the empire, she had been disastrous. Convinced that Belisarius was as politically minded as she herself was, she had poisoned the mind of her husband against the one man who could have accomplished his dreams of reconquest. Even worse, while Justinian lay dying, she had made it her personal mission to restore Monophysitism throughout the empire, revitalizing the heresy just as the entire controversy was on the brink of disappearing.* This single act would do more damage than any barbarian army could have, badly weakening the loyalty of most of Syria and Egypt. A century later, when a new and hostile enemy arrived, they would be greeted as liberators against the religious oppression of Constantinople, and much of the East would be wrenched from the Roman orbit forever.
Devastated by his loss, Justinian recalled Belisarius in 549 and greeted him like a brother. Throwing his arms around the tired man who had been so faithful through the years, Justinian installed the general in a sumptuous palace and even erected a bronze statue in his honor. Belisarius was uncomfortable with such praise and soon faded quietly into the background, but there were few people in the empire who deserved fame more. Without him, Justinian’s vast re-conquests would have been unthinkable, and the smaller, reduced state wouldn’t have had the resources to withstand the coming turbulent centuries.
As Belisarius watched from the shadows of Constantinople, Totila besieged Rome, and its unpaid, demoralized garrison, tired of the taste of horse meat, threw open the gates after a brief show of resistance. With the fall of the ancient capital—the fourth time it had changed hands since the war began—Justinian was finally convinced that Italy could only be won by entrusting undivided command to a single general. Calling the elderly eunuch Narses to him, he outfitted a massive army and entrusted it to the courtier.
Already in his seventies, Narses was an odd choice as supreme commander, especially since his only military experiences had been butchering a few thousand unarmed citizens during the Nika riots and causing Belisarius to lose Milan twelve years before. But Narses was a shrewd diplomat who had spent a lifetime gliding among the turbulent waters of the imperial court, and there were few men in the empire who were better connected. As far as the emperor was concerned, age wasn’t a concern. He was nearly seventy himself, and if age hadn’t diminished his own energy, he didn’t see why it should affect his new general.
Narses was equipped with all the supplies that had been denied to his predecessor to claim the victory that should have belonged to Belisarius. Sailing with nearly ten times the number of men granted to the great general, Narses brought with him all the money owed to the long-suffering Byzantine garrisons. When he arrived in Italy, scattering largesse, men flocked to his banner, swelling his ranks.
Just as the last transport ship left the imperial harbor, two ambassadors entered Constantinople bringing an intriguing message to the emperor. They were from Visigothic Spain and brought news of spreading chaos and a Roman revolt against the barbarian king. Under the command of a brilliant leader named Athanagild, the rebels had taken Córdoba and were now asking for imperial help to take Seville.