If what he commanded was less than perfect, Vitalian knew how to inspire even the rabble, this evidenced when all were called before the oration platform, in front of which he had lined up his formidable-looking foederati, to be told that soon they would march on the capital and give the emperor a choice of two outcomes: either he would have to reverse his position on Chalcedon or face being deposed and thrown to the mob in the Hippodrome. The cheer this received was loud enough to chase every bird in the region away from nest and perch.
It was instructive to observe the reality of a military organisation as opposed to that of which Flavius had so copiously read. In recounting the nature of successful campaigns, historians, even when they were in personal command, never referred to the toil visited upon the common soldier. They wrote of manoeuvres and battles as if those involved were mere fodder to their ambition, nothing more than an asset to be employed.
Camp life at the level at which he was living was very different and he had to suppose that once they moved the obvious lack of overall cohesion in the host must get worse. Flavius saw the sense of Vitalian sticking to the Roman model of organisation, which had the advantage of simplicity for a range of recruits who would struggle to adopt the way the empire was now restructuring its army; his father, given the number of men he led, had stuck to the description ‘cohort’ and the title ‘centurion’ when it had long gone out of use in the main imperial forces.
He was also acutely aware of the change in Ohannes in the coming days; for a man who claimed he had been short on obedience himself and who had been reluctant to take promotion, he came down hard on any of his contubernium who showed any inclination to question his orders. He wanted the barracks clean and the men who served under him that too.
‘Don’t go getting used to this, which is comfort,’ he growled. ‘It will be tents once we are on the march and nowhere to shit either. We cook our own grub and keep ourselves up to the mark, for I have no craving to feel the centurion’s rod if any of you lot are slack.’
And that eventually came to pass, as it had to, for endless time was not a luxury Vitalian could afford. There had already been desertions, either through a loss of desire to continue or a hatred of discipline and the punishment that went with it. So finally they marched, and if those at the head, the mostly German and Gautoi foederati, both mounted and on foot, looked impressive, what came in their wake did not. The better centuries marched in reasonable order but, still armed with that which they had brought from their farms, the rustica looked and were a motley horde.
Worse was their inability to carry out swiftly and effectively the very necessary tasks that must be performed when setting up a temporary camp after the first day. Tents had to be erected and in regular lines all centred round the general’s headquarters. Each century had to dig a latrine fit to serve the eighty men in the unit, and that was often a cause of dispute, as was whose turn had come to fetch the food as well as who should gather the wood to cook it.
When it came to guard duty ? which, outside those before his own quarters Vitalian quite wisely left to those bodies of men he thought he could trust, while sparing and favouring his barbarian foederati ? Flavius and his ilk found themselves lumbered with more of that than was strictly their due. But there were other evenings when the duty fell elsewhere, allowing a small amount of freedom to do other things: look for friends in other units, find the leather workers and see to repairs of footwear or scrounge for extra food.
For Flavius, given they were now marching down the main imperial highway, the Via Gemina, and they always camped somewhere within walking distance of some reasonable-sized habitat, a town or a large village, it gave him a chance to go and ask his most pressing question. In Debellum they had camped around a proper citadel, it being a city, and so he took to wandering the streets and that was when the name of F. Petrus Sabbatius registered.
It only raised his hopes for no more than a few seconds; the man who answered in the affirmative, if he did not know what the imperial envoys were about, did know that when the city was told of Vitalian’s rebellion they headed south, not north. They were on their way back to Constantinople and it was a glum Flavius who returned to the camp that night, to toss and turn, seeking to decide what to do.
‘Continue as we have,’ was what he said to Ohannes in the morning, as they bathed in the lake that abutted the city. ‘What choice do I have?’
Progress, which was laid down at five leagues a day, proved near to impossible and the mustered force lost much potency through the inability of many of the peasant levies to keep up the pace. As a positive, the further south they went, they were greeted as they passed through any town by crowds wishing to bless their cause, although the gifts of food and wine did nothing to speed progress; the combined factor of both often had them trying to make camp after sunset instead of the full light of day.
‘Seen it all before, Flavius,’ Ohannes would say, when some act of insubordination or stupidity was obvious enough to be observed. ‘Including being showered with flowers and kisses. Same lot will hurl curses and stones at you if you have to fall back.’
It amused Flavius, the way the old man now addressed him: he seemed to have taken to his rank and was more than happy to no longer address his young friend as a superior being. Not that he was hard on the lad, able to take the joke with which Flavius responded, that if Ohannes laid on with too much chastisement, then he would decamp to join the foederati cavalry.
Long days melded into a week and if there were losses in numbers due to illness or desertion, what was left was growing leaner and better as good habits took over from petty confrontations. Those chosen to lead the mass of rustica were asserting their authority and the men they were in charge of were wise enough to see where their own interests lay, for if they behaved they were fed. Added to that, there were priests along to encourage them and to press them to recall their purpose.
For a youngster who had read avidly about marching armies and bloody battles what he was engaged in was a cause of ceaseless fascination. If he could see the faults in Vitalian’s hastily gathered host he could also begin to work out the remedies, not least that this army would have been much improved by a longer period of training and by actively divesting itself of some in the ranks, perhaps even reforming into the more modern formations of arithmos and numeri. Easy to say, hard to do and dismissed out of hand by Ohannes, who thought that handling soldiers in units of eight was hard enough; to expand it into the up-to-date and three-to-four-hundred-strong numeri would result in havoc.
Added to that, just holding such a body together was far from straightforward and only possible because most of the harvest was in. The general only had such numbers until the spring, when the need to undertake planting would take most of his volunteers away, added to which there were those who would just break down from the sheer toil of being in any army.
While Ohannes was full of beans at the outset, Flavius became increasingly aware, even if the old man tried to hide it, of the toll endless days of marching was taking on him. Ohannes had done his twenty-five years already, bore battle scars and carried the recurring aches to go with his long service. The fact had been obvious long before they had joined Vitalian, but now the pain Ohannes was feeling began to manifest itself in an irascible and sometimes downright offensive manner, which did nothing to endear him to those he led, not a true soldier amongst them.