Introduction The Byzantine reconquest of Italy from the Goths was accomplished by a protracted war of twenty years. War in Italy between the Lombards and the empire continued, intermittently, for more than 200 years, the entire period of Lombard sovereignty. Except for the conquest by Narses (at right) in 552, all of the contestants for supremacy in Italy fielded inadequate resources for a quick conquest. The resulting protracted war resulted in the destruction of Roman infrastructure, monuments, people, and culture, which impoverished Italy and left it susceptible to outside control. The protracted resistance of the Eastern Roman Empire to the Lombards prevented their unification of the peninsula and left it politically and militarily weak. Theodoric, ruler of a united Gothic Kingdom in Italy "dominated the peoples of the West in a loose confederation which included the Burgundians, Visigoths, and, to the north, the Alemanni and the Franks." [1] Peppin III easily defeated the Lombard king Aistulf in 754. [2] The net effect of the Imperial reconquest of Italy was to weaken it as a power base and leave it susceptible to invasion. Justinian's Invasion Justinian launched his reconquest of Italy after the murder of Amalasuntha, daughter of Theodoric, the Ostrogothic ruler of Italy recognized by the eastern Roman Empire. [3] His excuse was to avenge her death. The real motive may have been the hope for a quick and easy victory like Belisarius' just completed conquest of the Vandals in Africa. [4] The offer of her successor, uncle, and murderer, Theodatus to sell Italy to the emperor, [5] and his indecision and unwarlike character contributed to this hope. The easy conquest of Sicily in 535, [6] Theodatus' reluctance to fight, and the disorganized state of the Goths probably led the Imperial forces to expect a victory in Italy as easy as their recent victory in Africa. However, Naples refused to open its gates to Belisarius' army and the Goths replaced Theodatus with a more aggressive king, Vittigis. Imperial reconquest of Italy would not be cheap or quick. Gaining access to Naples via a broken aqueduct, Belisarius' troops took the city by storm and looted and pillaged it. Moving on to Rome in December of 536, which Vittigis had abandoned in favor of Ravenna, "keeping the most of the senators with him as hostages." [7] Belisarius prepared the city for a siege. He sent many of the non-combatant citizens to Sicily, Naples, and Southern Italy to reduce the requirement for supplies during a siege. [8] Many senatorial families immigrated to Constantinople. This was the start of the elimination of the Roman aristocracy and depopulation of Rome. "Vittigis, upon hearing from the natives who came from Rome that the army which Belisarius had was very small, began to repent of his withdrawal." [9] Belisarius' weakness doomed Rome to a destructive siege. Vittigis Responds One of the more promising actions of Vittigis' assault on the fortifications of Rome on the 18th day of the siege was the attack on Hadrian's tomb. The defenders broke up the marble statues and threw the pieces down upon the Goths. [10] This, and subsequent sieges of Rome, was destructive, in detail, of its legacy from antiquity. Though possessing a much smaller army, Belisarius' superior generalship, his use of horse archers, called Huns by Procopius [11] and the fortifications of the city enabled him to keep a much larger Gothic army at bay. "Now Vittigis, in his anger and perplexity, first sent some of his bodyguards to Ravenna with orders to kill all the Roman senators whom he had taken there at the beginning of this war." [12] More of the Roman aristocracy has been eliminated! This siege of Rome lasted for more than a year. The Franks Invade Both the Goths and Justinian [13] bribed the Franks to remain neutral. Justinian gave them a tribute of gold. To end ongoing hostilities between the Goths and Franks, Vittigis ceded to them territories in the south of France and northwest Italy. [14] The Franks took both bribes, disregarded their agreements, invaded the North of Italy and crossed the Po, 100,000 strong under Theudibert and defeated both the Goths and Romans. [15] The Franks were forced to leave Italy by famine. [16] If a foreign army was dying of famine, the situation must have been worse for the unarmed indigent population. Belisarius used a truce to improve his position in Italy. Vittigis retreated to Ravenna and Belisarius slowly reconquered Italy. In 540 Belisarius accepted the scepter of Italy from the Goths as a condition of their surrender. After packing Vittigis off to Constantinople to become a Roman aristocrat. Belisarius was recalled to the east to fight the Persians. War Again Imperial mismanagement and corruption [17] led to the resurgence of the Goths under Totila. Desertions from the Imperial army and freed slaves bolstered Totila's army. In the period between 542 and 550, Totila conquered all of the Italian Peninsula, except for a few coastal enclaves. Belisarius was sent back to Italy in 544, but with only about 4,000 men, an inadequate force to accomplish anything. In 547 A.D. Totila took Rome from the Imperial general Bessas after an extended siege. To augment his forces, Totila enlisted the slaves of the Italians in his army [18] with a promise of freedom and the possession of the farms of their former masters. [19] Those Romans who did not die of starvation or disease during the siege were exiled. At the end of this siege of Rome, "Among the common people, however, it so fell out that only five hundred men had been left throughout the whole city, and these with difficulty found refuge in the sanctuaries. For all the rest of the population were gone, some having departed to other lands and some having been carried off by the famine." [20] When Milan fell to the Goths, "the city they razed to the ground, killing all the males of every age to the number of not less than three hundred thousand and reducing the women to slavery and then presenting them to the Burgundians." [21] The protracted struggle between Belisarius and Totila, neither of whom had adequate forces to decisively defeat the other resulted in extensive devastation, famine and depopulation of the Italian peninsula. Warfare prevented cultivation of the fields which resulted in famine among the population. "Among the Roman farmers in Picenum not less than fifty thousand persons perished by famine, and a great many more north of the Ionian Gulf." [22] "Some too, overcome by hunger, fed upon their comrades." [23] Belisarius Recalled, Narses Takes Command Belisarius was recalled to Byzantium in 548. [24] At this time "the Franks assumed control of the largest part of Venetia with no right at all, the Romans, for their part, being unable to ward them off any longer, and the Goths being unable to carry on the war against the two peoples." [25] In 552 A.D. Narses was sent to Italy with an Imperial army adequate for the task. In that year he destroyed both Totila and his successor Teias. [26]This gave the imperial forces control of Italy south of the Po River. In 554 Narses destroyed a Franco-Aleman army at the battle of Casilium. In 561 he occupied northern Italy for the Empire. Narses used a contingent of Lombard warriors in his reconquest of Italy, however they were so unmanageable that he sent them out of Italy at the first opportunity. [27] In 568 A.D. they returned, with friends. At this time, "Town and civilian life was in serious decline, agricultural activity had been disrupted and trade badly reduced; plague, piracy and highway robbery were rife." [28] Alboin, ruler of the Lombards had converted from Catholicism to Arianism about 565 A.D. to gain the support of the Arian Goths in northern Italy. [29] The Lombards overran the Po plain in 568-9 with little opposition. [30] Alboin was murdered in 572, his successor; Cleph was murdered in 574. [31] Lombards in Disarray For the ten years between 574 and 584 there was no Lombard king. The Lombard territory was divided into thirty-five duchies. This division of power enabled the Emperor Tiberius II, in 579, to bribe some of the Lombard Dukes to fight against the others. [32] "The Lombard confederation included a large number of different ethnic groups -Saxons, Gepids, Bulgars, Sarmatians, Sueves, Thuringians, Pannonan Romans." [33] Perhaps this explains the lack of cohesiveness of the Lombard polity. The Lombard duchies of Spoleto and Benevento south of Rome remained autonomous of the Lombard King. [34] The weakness of the Lombard kingdom left it open to invasion from its neighbors, the Franks in 590 [35] and an Avar incursion in 610-611. [36] The Emperor Constans II brought an army to Italy in 663. After failing to capture the Duchy of Benevento, he visited Rome, removed all of the bronze remaining in the city, and looted the churches. [37] The Imperial reconquest of Italy was protracted because of the weakness of the forces employed. The devastation of the countryside and many of the towns by warfare, famine, and pestilence during this protracted contest left Italy very poor. The destruction of the Roman aristocracy, monuments, agriculture, and population during the Imperial reconquest of Italy dealt the old Roman culture a blow from which it could not recover. The weakness of both the Lombard invaders and the Byzantine defenders resulted in more than 200 years of warfare in the peninsula, further exhausting its' resources. There is no archaeological evidence of renewed building until the 8th century. [38] The net result of Justinian's reconquest of the west was the destruction of the old Roman culture in Italy and the reduction of the material resources of Italy so that the peninsula could not support an army adequate to resist outside invasion, first of the Franks, later of the Avars, Saracens, Normans and so on. Footnotes [1] Patrick J. Geary, Before France and Germany, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 73. [2] Neil Christie, The Lombards, The Peoples of Europe, Gen. ed. James Campbell and Barry Cunliffe, (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998), 105. [3] Jordanes, History of the Goths, trans. Charles Christopher Mierow, Robert Bretano, ed., The Early Middle Ages, vol. IV of Sources in Western Civilization, ed. Herbert H. Rowen, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1964), 51. [4] Procopius, HISTORY OF THE WARS BOOKS III & IV, trans. H.B. Dewing, Loeb Classical Library, (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, U.K.: Harvard University Press, 1993), [5] Ibid., BOOK V, 53. [6] Ibid., 47. [7] Procopius, Book V., 117. [8] Ibid., 239. [9] Ibid., 163. [10] Procopius, Book V., 73. [11] Ibid., 253. [12] Ibid., 247. [13] Ibid., 45. [14] Ibid., 141. [15] Ibid., Book VI, 85. [16] Ibid., 89-93. [17] Ibid., Book VII., 223. [18] Ibid., 285. [19] Ibid., 351. [20] Ibid., 329. [21] Ibid., Book VI.,55. [22] Ibid., 41. [23] Ibid., 43. [24] Ibid., Book VII., 415. [25] Ibid., 439. [26] Chris Wickham, Early Medieval Italy, (Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981), 26. [27] Procopius, Book VIII, 389. [28] Neil Christie, The Lombards, 69. [29] Early Medieval Italy, 30. [30] Ibid. [31] Ibid., 30-31. [32] Ibid., 31. [33] Ibid., 32. [34] Ibid., 33. [35] Neil Christie, The Lombards, 87. [36] Ibid., 93. [37] Ibid., 96. [38] Neil Christie, The Lombards, 69. 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