As the emperor’s advisers, aware of the debacle in 468 (see above, p. 636), warned him, an expedition to Vandal Africa was a risky enterprise but in the event their fears proved unjustified. Justinian’s general Belisarius landed in the bay of Tunis with 10,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. A revolt had been provoked beforehand in Sardinia that diverted many of the Vandal troops there. As a result the Vandals’ control of Africa collapsed after two battles and all traces of their presence soon disappeared, another indication of how shallow were the roots of their occupation. (It is assumed that the defeated Vandals were gradually absorbed into their conquerors’ armies.) The Vandal king, Gelimer, was taken back to Constantinople where he was paraded in a triumph reminiscent of those of republican Rome. The local population rejoiced at their liberation but now found themselves, somewhat incongruously, under a Greek-speaking administration. Heavy taxation and the raids of nomadic tribes hindered the return of the province’s natural prosperity, which does not seem to have been assured until the seventh century. Eastern control survived until the Arab conquest of north Africa in the late seventh century.
In 535 Justinian, buoyed up by his success in Africa, attempted an invasion of Italy. His motives, the elimination of Arianism and the restoration of the western empire, remained the same, but everything was different in Italy. The country was difficult to fight in, the Ostrogoths were resilient, while the local population was ambivalent about being rescued by Greek-speaking easterners. Furthermore the invading force, once again under Belisarius, was only half the size of that sent to Africa. In all the war was to drag on for almost twenty years. Belisarius found himself besieged in Rome (the cutting of the aqueducts by the Goths finally closed the city’s great baths) and was only relieved when a second force, still only 5,000-strong, managed to reach the Ostrogoth capital, Ravenna. Complex negotiations eventually resulted in the surrender of the city in 540 but no permanent settlement was made and the Ostrogoths still retained the cities of northern Italy. War soon broke out again just at a time when Justinian faced pressures on his own eastern borders from the Persians. Victory for the east came only in 554, but soon afterwards northern Italy was invaded by the Lombards, who drove out the eastern armies and established their own kingdom in the Po valley, which was to last until 774 (and which still sends echoes to northern separatists today). The empire retained control only of Rome, Ravenna, a fragile corridor between them, and a scatter of cities and fortresses. The historian Procopius (see below) details the widespread starvation of the local population that accompanied the wars. Justinian’s attempt to revive a western empire had done much to destroy the very society he had been determined to preserve and, apart from an intervention in a Visigothic civil war in Spain, his overseas adventures were over.
World History
