THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 123

The Fall of Valens at Hadrianople

8-8. The Fall of Valens at Hadrianople

In face of this immense and sobering responsibility, which should have summoned forth all the energy and loyalty of which men were capable, the ministers of Valens did nothing — they left to chance alone the feeding of a multitude which none could number. It is not in their everyday peculations, nor in their habitual violence and oppression of the provincials, that the degradation of the bureaucracy of the Empire is seen in its most hideous form: the weightiest count in the indictment is that when met by an extraordinary crisis which imperilled the existence of the Empire itself, the agents of the State, with the danger in concrete form before their very eyes, failed to check their lust or bridle their avarice.

Maximinus and Lupicinus kept the Goths upon the banks of the Danube in order to wring from them all they had to give — except their arms. Provisions failed utterly: for the body of a dog a man would be bartered into slavery. As for the Goths who remained north of the river, Athanarich, remembering that he had declined to meet Valens on Roman soil, thought it idle to pray for admission within the Empire and retired, it would seem, into the highlands of Transylvania; now however that the imperial garrisons had been withdrawn to watch the passage of the followers of Fritigern, the Greutungi under Alatheus and Saphrax crossed the Danube unmolested, although leave to cross the frontier had previously been refused them. Meanwhile Fritigern slowly advanced on Marcianople, ready if need be to join his compatriots who were now encamped on the south was serving in the Roman army that Gratian had been summoned to the East. Collecting allies from the neighbouring clans, they burst across the border some 40,000 strong.

Gratian was forced to recall the troops who had already marched into Pannonia, and in command of these as well as of his Gallic legionaries he placed Nannienus and the Frankish king Mallobaudes. At the battle of Argentaria, near Colmar in Alsace, Priarius the barbarian king was slain and with him, it is said, more than 30,000 of the enemy. According to the Roman estimate only some 5000 escaped through the dense forests into the shelter of the hills. Gratian in person then crossed the Rhine and after laborious operations among the mountains starved the fugitives into surrender; by the terms of peace they were bound to furnish recruits for the Roman army. The result of the campaign was a very real triumph for the youthful Emperor of the West.

Meanwhile Sebastian, appointed in the East to succeed Trajan in the command of the infantry, was raising and training a small force of picked men with which to begin operations in the spring. In April 378 Valens left Antioch for the capital at the head of reinforcements drawn from Asia: he arrived on 30 May. The Goths now held the Schipka Pass and were stationed both north and south of the Balkans at Nicopolis and Beroea. Sebastian had successfully freed the country round Hadrianople from plundering bands, and Fritigern concentrating the Gothic forces had withdrawn north to Cabyle. At the end of June Valens advanced with his army from Melanthias, which lay some 15 miles west of Constantinople. Against the advice of Sebastian, the Emperor determined upon an immediate march in order to effect a junction with the forces of his nephew, who was now advancing by Lauriacum and Sirmium. The eastern army entered the Maritza Pass, but at the same time Fritigern would seem to have despatched some Goths southwards.

These were sighted by the Roman scouts, and in fear that the passes should be blocked behind him and his supplies cut off, the Emperor retreated towards Hadrianople. Fritigern himself meanwhile marched south over the pass of Bujuk-Derbent in the direction of Nike, as though he would intercept communication between Valens and his capital.

Two alternative courses were now open to the Emperor: he might take up a strong position at Hadrianople and await the army of the West (this was Gratian’s counsel brought by Richomer who reached the camp on 7 August), or he might at once engage the enemy. Valens adopted the latter alternative; it would seem that he underestimated the number of the Goths, and it is possible that he desired to shew that he too could win victories in his own strength as well as the western Emperor; Sebastian, who had at his own request left the service of Gratian for that of Valens, may have sought to rob his former master of any further laurels. At dawn on the following morning, 9 August, the advance began; when about midday the armies came in sight of each other near the modern Demeranlija, Fritigern, in order to gain time, entered into negotiations, but on the arrival of his cavalry he felt sure of victory and struck the first blow.

We cannot reconstruct the battle: Valens, Trajan, and Sebastian all fell, and with them, two-thirds of the Roman army. In the open country no resistance could be offered to the victorious barbarians, but they were beaten back from the walls of Hadrianople, and a troop of Saracen horsemen repelled them from the capital. Victor bore the news of the appalling catastrophe to Gratian.

In the face of hostile criticism Valentinian had chosen Valens as his co-Augustus, intending that he should carry out in the East the same policy which he himself had planned for the West. His judgment was not at fault, for in the sphere of religion alone did the two Emperors pursue different ends. Like an orderly, with unfailing loyalty Valens obeyed his brother's instructions. He too strengthened the frontier with fortresses and lightened the burden of taxation, while under his care magnificent public buildings rose throughout the eastern provinces.

But Valentinian's masterful decision of character was alien to Valens: his was a weaker nature which under adversity easily yielded to despair. Severity, anxiously assumed, tended towards ferocity, and a consciousness of insecurity rendered him tyrannical when his life or throne was threatened. His subjects could neither forget nor forgive the horrible excesses which marked the suppression of the rebellion of Procopius or of the conspiracy of Theodorus. He was hated by the orthodox as an Arian heretic and by the Pagans as a Christian zealot, while it was upon the Emperor that men laid the responsibility for the overwhelming disaster of Hadrianople. Thus there were few to judge him with impartial justice, and it is probable that even later historians have been unduly influenced by the invectives of his enemies. His imperious brother had made of an excellent civil servant an Emperor who was no match for the crisis which he was fated to meet.

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