June 14th, 1150
North of Adrianopolis, Thrace
Morning
Pillars of smoke stretched from horizon to horizon, rising straight for miles in the still summer air. The Croatian invaders had not been gentle; nor could they have been, even had their commanders desired it. A feudal levy did not have, could not have, the discipline of regular
tagmata troops. Thomas smiled grimly. It was all set out in the books. "Above all, therefore, in warring against them one must avoid engaging in pitched battles, especially in the early stages. Instead, make use of well-planned ambushes, sneak attacks, and stratagems." Maurice had not mentioned the cost of such strategy; behind Thomas and his army were thousands of peasants, men owed protection by the Basileus Romaion, who had fled before the invaders and whose houses now lay in ashes. But it had worked well enough. The Croats were by all reports hungry and tired, frustrated with three months of trying to come to grips with the Roman cavalry. Their councils leaked like a sieve; a dozen separate deserters had told Thomas that their commanders intended to march on Constantinople and relieve the siege, or else force the Romans to give battle to prevent them from doing so. And now, at last, Thomas was willing; for he had maps of the terrain, as the Croatians did not, and his army was rested and well fed, and reinforced by thousands of local militia. And Maurice had also said, "if a favourable opportunity for a battle occurs, line up the army as set forth in the book on formations."
Maurice had written in an earlier age, when the task of Roman armies was to prevent the barbarians from reaching the rich agricultural provinces; and so Thomas had not taken his advice fully. He had chosen a position athwart the road to Constantinople, where the Croatians would have to climb a gentle rise to get to his troops; but he had not set strong blocks of regular infantry in the centre, with their flanks protected by cataphracts. That was, indeed, the plan urged by his advisors; and Thomas had no doubt that by doing so he could have stopped the Croatian army, turned them back from their advance to the Hellespont, perhaps have harried them to the border. But Thomas did not want to
stop the Croats, did not want merely to halt their advance. He wanted to
crush them, to destroy their army as a fighting unit for months and years to come, to shred it to pieces and lay a trail of blood and intestines all along the road to the border. His purpose was not to protect the siege of Constantinople, but to break the heart of the Croatian army and make them run; he wanted to make an entire generation of fighting men shiver in fear at the thought of again confronting Roman troops.
And so he had not chosen a position along any of the many steep ridges the road crossed, where his army could have easily thrown back any assault; instead he had fixed on this spot, where only a gentle slope would protect his line. For although the low hill was not conventionally defensible, it had another feature to recommend it: Arcing out from the road, it turned to run parallel to the road on the Roman right flank, and a small wood grew on it; a wood which hid troops lying in wait behind the ridge, concealed from soldiers marching up the road. Concealed, at least, from soldiers with the notoriously poor scouting of the Croats.
That was where Thomas had sent his best troops; and so his line was held by militia and new-recruited peasants, men sent fleeing ahead of the army that had burned their homes. He had given them each a spear, and told them where to stand, and stiffened them with such regular infantry as he had; but he did not believe they would stand, if the Croat army pressed its attack. It was a risk, but all warfare was risk. At the back of his head he could see Arkadios, his eyes blazing with the will to combat even as he lay dying; and knew that he was in the right. If he lost, today - if his ambush was discovered and attacked separately, or if it failed to break the Croat attack - then his dynasty might be lost with it; but nonetheless he was right to run such a risk.
He broke off his thoughts to look again at the army coming down the road. They marched in no sort of order, clumps and mobs of household troops, a village levy here, a noble's household there; but they made an imposing sight nonetheless. It was one thing to hear reports of so-and-so many thousand men, and move counters on a map; but it was another again to actually
see twenty thousand angry strangers holding edged metal and coming to kill you. Nor could he take comfort in the fine order of his outnumbered troops; the militia had no better order than the Croats, and fewer banners and less armour to make a brave show. Only the five hundred men of the
oikeioi surrounding him, his own personal guards, were armed and armoured to match the oncoming enemy.
The Croats were forming a line of battle, perhaps half a mile from where Thomas stood; mounted men were coalescing on their right flank where the ground was flatter, while their infantry formed a growing clot across the road, clumping and throwing out shoots in all directions as those who wanted to demonstrate their bravery jostled for position in the front ranks. Thomas nodded to himself; they would be another half an hour getting into order. He turned to the men behind him, officers gathered to hear final orders and an encouraging speech; the men expected a few words from the commander before battle. He couldn't address the whole army and make them hear, but the officers would carry his words to their units.
"Soldiers! We have seen, this year, what sort of barbarians we deal with; we have seen them burn Roman fields and turn Roman citizens out of their homes. Today, by God's grace, we will put an end to their infamy. There are foreign boots tramping the streets of Constantinople; there are houses burned and olive groves laid in ashes all up and down Thrace. That changes today.
"Some of you were with me five years ago, when we broke these same Croats on the field before Belgrade; then they got their friends, the infidels and the heretics, to help them, and we had to give them a gentle peace. Now they've broken that peace; but even the infidels have had enough of them, and won't come to their aid.
"It's just us and them, this time, and we know who is the better fighter of Roman and Slav. Just hold your ground and listen for orders. And when they break, as they will break, kill without mercy. Croatia has invaded Roman territory; Croatia has broken solemn treaties; Croatia holds the walls of Constantinople, the second Rome, against the anointed of the Senate and the People.
Death to Croatia.
"No quarter."
He returned to waiting as the officers dispersed to take the speech back to their men; there was sporadic cheering up and down the line as this unit, then that one, heard it, but in the main his men waited silently, as he did. At last the Croatian host began to move, slowly, in dribs and drabs at first as the bravest or least patient felt it was time to get things started, but then in a mass as shouts of command went up. For a barbarian levy, it wasn't a bad show; at least their men would all be coming into action at once, not in several waves; and the cavalry was staying together with the infantry, not charging off to glory.
At five hundred paces the first missiles arced out from the Roman lines, scorpions and ballistae; not enough to do any real damage, not even enough to cause much disorder in the Croatian ranks - twenty thousand men made a
big host - but it would cheer the men and make them feel they had got in the first blows. And, more to the point, the arcing smoke of the single catapult throwing a barrel of flaming pitch was the signal for the cataphracts to mount; it would take them some time to get to the top of the ridge, and the timing was critical. To avoid misunderstandings Thomas dispatched two couriers as well, but he didn't think them necessary; the
Megas Domestikos would be watching for the signal himself, lying concealed in the woods, and he was not a man given to sleeping on battlefields.
Unless he is treacherous, a voice whispered at the back of Thomas's head. A man who had command of the regular regiments in the moment of a disaster could achieve much; it had happened to Roman armies before. He thrust the thought aside. He had given his trust, and it was now too late to revoke it even had he wanted to. The dice clattered on the table, and God would protect him or not, just the same as for any soldier, in either army.
The first arrows arced out at a hundred and fifty paces, extreme range for peasant bows but men who hunted rabbits for the pot could hardly miss a target like the enormous Croatian host. The enemy responded by picking up the pace, but only slightly; there were not many bowmen among the militia, and they did not fire in volleys. There were no army-killing flights of arrows that darkened the sun; only a few men struck, here and there, and dying in agony before the battle proper had started, significant to nobody but themselves. Thomas looked impatiently at the ridge; his line wouldn't hold long, he could already feel the shiver in it as the shouting Croats came closer. Where were the cataphracts?
There. Glints of metal coming out of the woods; a long line of spear points, banners, and helmets. Thomas grinned savagely; it was going to work. "Look there!" he shouted, pointing, and his men took it up. "Look behind you, you idiots!" Then the whole army was shouting it, and the Croats slowed down, almost visibly wondering what craziness these Romans were up to now. But a few did glance over their shoulders, to where the cavalry
tagmata were forming up with solemn, hieratic slowness; and now their advance slowed in earnest.
Distantly, he could hear the words of command, and the cataphracts unlimbered their bows. A line of mounted archers all along the ridge - five thousand men - an image to strike fear in the heart of any European who remembered the Huns, the Scythians, or the Magyars - all of whom had at one time or another marched through Croatia. The arrows flew, once, twice, again; and now the Sun was indeed darkened.
Now the shiver of panic ran along the Croatian ranks; but as the cataphracts got out their lances and prepared to charge, some genius among the enemy infantry shouted, "Forward! We're dead if we stay here! Charge!" and others took it up. Their only way out was forward; and having it set out quickly in those decisive terms, before panic could take proper hold among them, they might yet be saved. They came forward again, not slowing down or limiting themselves to a walking pace this time, but rushing the Roman lines as fast as their legs could carry them, and shouting their throats hoarse.
Answering shouts met them; and Thomas drew his sword. "Advance!" he ordered, and kicked his horse into motion; the
oikeioi followed. There was no time to work up into a trot; they entered the Croat host at a walk. Thomas struck at bobbing faces that thrust spears at him, felt the sword bite, raised it again dripping with blood and other matter. He rapidly lost all feeling for how the battle was going; there was only the next Croatian. His horse went down, a spear in its withers; he found another running riderless through the melee, its eyes rolling wildly. The roar of human voices all around deadened all thought; it was impossible to make out battle cries or words, there was only the terrible gale-force noise of thousands of men fighting and dying.
Abruptly, or so it seemed, the noise slackened. For a moment the fighters on both sides looked around, trying to see what had happened; then a shout of triumph rose on the Roman side. The cataphracts had struck, and where they had entered the Croat lines there was no longer an army; just a vast mob of fleeing men, throwing aside their weapons and being hunted down and speared by the lancers. The rear ranks of the Croat army had contained those least eager to fight, the men content to let others have the glory of crossing swords with the Romans; they would have contributed to victory nonetheless, by pressing in and keeping up the push on the Roman line, and maintaining the feeling in the front rank of having friends at their back. Now that was gone, and it was the Romans who could push forwards, cheering. The disparity in weight of metal and training ceased to matter when one side knew itself victorious; the rawest militia recruit would stand, and advance, when he saw his enemy's reinforcements crumbling.
It lacked only one thing to make it a perfect victory, a crushing triumph to frighten Croat children for a generation to come, and Thomas quickly supplied it. Rising in his stirrups, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Death to Croatia!" His guards took it up, and then it became a rhythmic chant, shouted in unison by thousands of exultant bass voices;
Death to Croatia! Death to Croatia!
The killing did not end until sunset.
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Some screenies, starting with the initial invasion:
Successive stages of the battle. Note how Thomas, in spite of being outnumbered, completely destroys Croatian morale:
A much later stage of the war. No quarter!