Count Belisarius

King Wittich had sent 25,000 men to increase the garrison of Osimo, and this army barred the way to Rimini An immediate council of war was held, at which Belisarius invited the general officers present to give their views in rising order of seniority. Valerian and Hil-digcr spoke first, expressing that, since Bloody John had twice disobeyed orders, first in advancing beyond Osimo without reducing it and then in not withdrawing from Rimini when desired to do so, he should be left to extricate himself from the difficulty as best he could. To march to his relief, skirting Osimo, was to endanger the whole army for the sake of 2,000 men. Between the Goths at Osimo and Wittich's field army encamped outside Rimini we would be caught as between hammer and anvil. Bessas agreed and added piously that Bloody John's avariciousness deserved whatever punishment God might think fit to impose. But Narses intervened; he pointed out, as though Belisarius had already agreed to follow their advice, that Bloody John's disobedience of orders was no reason for sentencing the brave soldiers under his command to massacre or slavery. 'To do so, indeed, is to injure your own cause, and that of the Emperor. You may laugh at me as a mere theorist of warfare, but I shall not consent to any plan of action that sacrifices Rimini to private revenge.'

Belisarius raised his brows at this outburst. He replied: 'Distinguished Chamberlain, is it not more charitable to withold condemnation of an offence until that offence is committed?' He was about to give his own opinion on the proper course to pursue, when the meeting was interrupted by a message from Bloody John, smuggled through the Gothic lines by a daring Isaurian soldier. The message was that Rimini could not hold out more than seven days longer at most, after which it would surrender from starvation.

Belisarius then delivered his opinion: which was that Osimo must be masked by a small force – no more than a thousand men could be spared – encamped twenty miles away; the remainder of the army must hurry forward to the relief of Bloody John and his men. The only hope of forcing Wittich to abandon the siege was to deceive him as to our numbers, and for this reason we must divide into three armies and converge on Rimini with all speed. One army must march up the coast under Martin, a recently arrived general, and the fleet under Hildiger must keep pace with it. Narses and himself, with the best of the cavalry, must take the Apenninc ridge-track, far inland. To this plan everyone agreed; and the start was made that very morning. My mistress went with Belisarius and Narses, and I with her, riding on a mule behind her palfrey. And a rough ride it was indeed, and an extremely hot one – for this was July, with not a breath of wind stirring among the rocks and pines. The mountain villages through which we passed were inhabited by miserable half-starved savages, who not only were not Christians but had never been converted to a belief in the Olympian Gods and still worshipped obscure aboriginal deities. But there was plenty of game in the valleys, and our scouts had fine sport. One of them even shot a bear, an animal which we had thought was extinct in Italy since the time of the Emperor Augustus. On the fifth day, after travelling some 200 miles and on a diet mainly of army biscuit and salt pork, we reached Sarsina, which is only one day's journey inland from Osimo. There our scouts came suddenly on a Gothic foraging party and drove them off with loss. Belisarius, in the vanguard, could easily have captured them all, but preferred to let them escape and spread the alarming news of our approach.

King Wittich, to whom the fugitives had given a very exaggerated account of our strength, expected us to march down the valley of the Rubicon and attack him from the north-west. But on the following evening he saw the distant glare of our camp-fires to the westward, and very numerous these were: every soldier had been instructed to light one and keep it heaped with fuel all night. To the southeastward he saw the camp-fires of what seemed to be another huge army, which was Martin's brigade. And when day broke the sea was covered with ships, and armed galleys came steering menacingly towards the harbour. The Gothic army abandoned its camp in a panic. Nobody obeyed orders or had any thought at all but to be the first man off up the Aemilian Way and into Ravenna. If Bloody John had been able to make a sortie at that moment the result might well have been decisive; but his men were so weak from starvation that they could hardly mount their horses, which themselves were mere bags of bones, since there was practically no grazing in Rimini.