It was at his back that the real damage was being inflicted; John Vitalianus, known to be one of the most enterprising officers in the imperial army, at the head of two thousand cavalry, had been sent to ravage in Witigis’s very backyard, close to his capital of Ravenna. The old Roman province of Picenum was ripe for such a tactic, given it had a higher proportion of Goths within its borders than the rest of Italy.
With the main body of fighting men outside Rome, that left the aged, the infirm, the women and children and these John was busy enslaving, while at the same time sticking closely to the Belisarian creed in the way he cosseted the Italians to win them over to his cause. Naturally that had to be countered and Witigis was being forced to deplete his forces to deal with the threat, a fact reported to him by Procopius.
Flavius never asked him where he got the information he imparted, with such confidence, about what was happening in the Goth encampments. Nor did he question it, his secretary being only too adept at the game of planting or bribing informants.
‘Numbers?’
‘Three thousand cavalry under a leader called Ulitheus, uncle to Witigis, which shows how seriously he takes the matter. He has staked the family prestige on stopping Vitalianus.’
‘John will have to deal with it himself, which I trust him to do, as I cannot reinforce him but so far I cannot fault him.’
The man referred to, part of the most recent batch of reinforcements, had avoided any search for personal glory, a perennial risk with independent commands. He had stuck rigidly to the goal of strategically unnerving the enemy, declining to attack such Goth-garrisoned cities as Auximus and Urbinus, concentrating instead on their anxieties for what they considered their heartlands.
Flavius hoped he had found one senior officer he might be able to trust to be both obedient as well as enterprising for what was now going to be a more mobile and flexible form of warfare where he could not always be present to ensure that which was required in pursuit of the main object was executed as planned.
It seemed so when news came of the defeat of Ulitheus, indeed his own death at the hand of John Vitalianus, as well as the utter destruction of the forces he had led. With that came an even more encouraging outcome: the Italian citizens of Ariminum, a mere twelve leagues south of Ravenna, had invited the victor to enter and he had obliged, well aware that the occupation of a city so close to the Goth capital must bring on a serious response.
Witigis must have received the bad news at the same time as Flavius got the good. The Byzantine pickets set to watch the Goth camps were able to report that the enemy army was now making serious preparations to depart from a siege in which they had no hope of now succeeding, the aim to move due east to counter Vitalianus.
‘Do we let them go?’ asked Photius.
‘One more blow,’ was the response.
Flavius waited with increasing impatience for his enemies to begin to decamp, given he had no intention of facing their main force in a major battle and risking a reverse. He desired to restore the faith of his infantry in their own capability, so his action was planned to inflict maximum damage on a retreating enemy with as little risk as possible to his own men.
In any movement of a host the main cavalry arm took the lead and with the forces who had spent over a year on the Plains of Nero this was the case. Flavius waited until the horsemen were across the Milvian Bridge and on their way to rejoin Witigis, then led his own infantry in a sudden and swift attack on the remainder, to face an outnumbered foot-bound rearguard.
Initially they put up a stiff resistance before being forced to break and run. That sent the rear sections of the retiring main body into a panic, which affected those ahead of them and they began to rush for the bridge. Being a narrow causeway it became a bottleneck for a mass of men either in dread or merely desiring to get swiftly clear of an unwinnable fight. That soon turned to mayhem as terror spread to the entire Goth contingent, who in their sheer volume crowded the western approach, which prevented cavalry reinforcements from the east bank coming to their aid.
A massacre ensued: those that did not fall to the sword and spear either died in the crush on the bridge or drowned as they tried desperately to save their lives by jumping into the fast-flowing Tiber. When the action was over Flavius stood amongst a heap of corpses in total control of anything that might follow. He held the Milvian Bridge in force and even if Witigis had been eager to reverse matters the cost in blood, already great, was too much to risk, given his other concerns.
The siege of Rome was over and the battle for Italy could now resume.
Meeting the wishes of the Milanese delegation, a large force was sent by sea to land at Genoa, before proceeding to Ticinum. The Goth garrison there exited the city to fight them and were soundly defeated. Naturally Witigis, retiring towards Ravenna, was obliged to react by detaching a large body to march on Milan in an attempt to get there before the troops sent by Flavius, a hope in which he failed, meaning his men were committed to another siege and, given the stout walls and full storerooms, one as difficult as Rome.
Not that everything favoured Byzantium: if Flavius had more troops now there were never enough. In order to hold Liguria and the route to the coast fewer than four hundred men were left to enter Milan. They had been obliged to garrison an endless number of towns and cities in order to secure them should the forces of Witigis seek to sever the line of communication. To protect Milan itself, the citizens would need to aid the Byzantines in manning the walls.
Flavius was sure they would do so as long as matters progressed well in other places, most notably Ariminum. This was a stronghold Witigis dare not leave in Byzantine-cum-Roman hands, not that he could do so with all his forces. He too was obliged to denude his army of effectives; unoccupied towns on the road from Rome to Ravenna needed garrisons to stop them defecting to Belisarius, and they had to be of sufficient numbers to drive off any attack that came from the enemy forces that might be following in his wake.
Fortunately for Flavius, with small Byzantine forces still holding strategic places on the direct route to Ravenna, Witigis had been obliged to march his main force by a more circuitous route to avoid them and the check they could place on his progress. This allowed him to reinforce Ariminum with a strong body of Isaurian infantry under Ildiger, prior to the arrival of the main Goth host.
His orders to both the commanders were specific: infantry were secure and effective behind walls, therefore Ildiger should take over the task of holding the city while John and his cavalry operated outside as a mobile force, able to snap at the Goths and disrupt their efforts to sustain the siege of Ariminum. The news that came from there told of dissension, not agreement.
‘John Vitalianus refuses to leave the city as ordered. He sends me to say that he has captured it and he will hold it for the empire.’
‘Not for his own personal glory?’ Flavius replied in a mordant tone.
There was no point in responding to say that this was in direct contradiction of a simple command and one Flavius had taken care should be given by Ildiger in writing, something that had become increasingly necessary. The senior officers who had arrived with his reinforcements were men of high rank and higher ambition who needed to be constrained by unequivocal instructions.
Flavius now had to conclude that the faith he had placed in John was proving to be misplaced and as he looked around at a now more crowded assembly he had to wonder who else would be as likely to act on their own initiative, which brought on a problem he had not yet encountered. Prior to his North African campaign, Flavius had persuaded Justinian to break with tradition and give him sole command of the forces he led and this had carried on once he crossed to Sicily and eventually to the Italian mainland.