Count Belisarius

From Ravenna Bloody John, in the name of all the generals, wrote to Justinian for reinforcements. With unexpected promptness, Justinian sent a senator, Maximums, with a huge fleet and all the troops that could be gathered together from the training depots and garrison towns of the East. Maximums was given authority as Commander of the Armies in Italy. He was a coward, and totally without experience of war. A great deal of his time was spent in prayer and fasting. Justinian hated to entrust large armies to experienced generals, lest they should prove rebellious. He seemed to be under the impression that victories are won on one's knees, not in the saddle.

The expedition ended disastrously, as might have been expected. First, Maxiininus delayed for months in Greece, sending one of his generals ahead with a number of supply ships but inadequate forces to the relief of Naples. Teudel's cavalry surprised this small fleet as the crews disembarked carelessly at Salerno, to take in water and stretch their legs, and captured nearly the whole of it. Then Maximums himself sailed to Syracuse in Sicily, from where he now sent the rest of his army in the rest of his ships, to the further relief of Naples. This was already November, too late in the year for safe voyages. A violent north-westerly wind overtook the expedition when close to Naples, driving the ships ashore – and where else but on the very beach where King Teudel was encamped with his Goths? Of the soldiers who managed to escape from the fury of the waves many hundreds were hurled back into the sea by the pitiless Goths, who did not wish to be encumbered with prisoners. The Roman general in command of the expedition was, however, spared. They made him go with a halter around his neck to advise the Neapolitans to capitulate, since they could expect no succour now and were hard-pressed by famine. Teudel undertook to spare their lives.

Thereupon Naples surrendered. When Teudel saw how utterly emaciated the citizens were, he acted with a humanity and understanding remarkable in a barbarian. He made it his care that they should not fill their empty bellies suddenly and so destroy themselves – building up their strength with a gradual increase of rations. He took no vengeance on them, cither, even allowing the garrison to march out with the honours of war and providing them with pack animals to take them to Rome. Moreover, as an example to his own men and an encouragement to the native population, he executed a Gothic soldier for the rape of an Italian girl and awarded her as a dowry all the soldier's possessions. But he razed the fortifications of Naples to the ground so that, though recaptured, the city could never again be used against the Goths as a base of operations.

King Teudel would have next marched on to the capture of Rome, where Bloody John was commanding the garrison; for the citizens were well-disposed to the Gothic cause and prepared to welcome him. But the plague had now readied Italy, and the streets of Rome were full of unburicd corpses. Teudel hurried away from the infection. Part of his army he sent to besiege Otranto, wliilc with the remainder he besieged Osimo and Tivoli. Tivoli fell to him by an act of treachery; and the communications between Rome and Tuscany, on which the citizens of Rome relied for provisions, were thereby cut. The Imperial Forces degenerated more and more as Teudel's force improved. Their pay, which depended on the Italian revenues, could no longer be found, because the Goths now held nearly the whole of the countryside; and their fighting capabities depended largely on their pay.