Shining a Light on History's Forgotten People: Justinian the Great, Byzantine Emperor 527-5655

The belief that the Roman Empire died with the demise of Romulus Augustulus and the fall of Rome to Odoacer in 476 is a myth too often propagated and dangerous in its assumption that this year is the beginning of a sort of Dark Age for Europe, an era where no great men emerged, and no great deeds were done. Rome did indeed fall, and the decline of the Western Empire was long and terminal, with disputes over succession, the growing emboldening of frontier tribes who now made up a sizable portion of the Roman Army, and monetary issues combining to rot the core of the central power.  But Pax Romana did not fall, nor did the Eastern Roman Empire, with the continuity of Roman ideals, laws, customs (albeit with a rather Greco element to them), and most importantly, military prowess still controlled from the New Rome at Constantinople in modern day Turkey. This empire was to continue, in shape or form, until the fall of the great city to the Turks in 1453, and it saw few greater Emperors than Justinian I, who reigned when strength was needed most, immediately after the fall of Rome.

Justinian I

When Justinian came to power the extent of the Empire’s lands was the Mediterranean coastland from Greece right the way around to Libya, with vast swathes of Anatolia and the region around the Black Sea as well as mainland Greece, leading to Bulgaria. The rest of Rome’s possessions had been divided among various barbarian tribes, with Spain falling to the Vandals and the Visigoths, Italy succumbing to the Ostrogoths and the Lombards and the Adriatic Coast being divided between different ethnic groupings. Indeed, even in Constantinople, political intrigue was rendering the Eastern Empire, which would come to be known as the Byzantium Empire, weak and ineffective, certainly in regards to its responsibility to the territorial integrity of the Latin lands. Born not of aristocratic blood, Justinian had to make up for his lack of political and familial connections by being hard working and surrounding himself with brilliant men and women. One of his greatest triumphs just before becoming Emperor was choosing a worthy match in his wife Theodora, who would provide him with excellent counsel for a large part of his reign.

He came to power in 527 having being both Consul and Commander of the Eastern Armies and he needed both political and military skills to hold his Empire together and reunite both parts of the former Roman lands. His first military actions saw him send his army east to secure an ‘Eternal Peace’ with the Persian Sassanid Empire, leaving his army free to focus on the Mediterranean. In 533-534 his forces reconquered large parts of North Africa, defeating the Vandal King and taking land as far away as Gibraltar. The following years his fleet retook Sicily and landed in Naples and Rome, hoping to crush the Gothic Kingdom, which was in the middle of a dynastic struggle. By 540 Rome and Ravenna had been taken and the Gothic King was in chains in Constantinople. All of this was made possible by a number of factors, including weaknesses in the Barbarian kingdoms, and the professionalism and organisational capabilities which was inherent in Roman legions, even those of the Eastern variety. But above all Justinian had an ace in the pack, his star General, Belisarius, was the key to the retaking of the Empire. His name was famous, a moral boost to the legions and a blow to their enemies, he was even spoken of as the equal of Julies Caesar himself, and Justinian found himself both reliant on, thankful for and jealous of the warrior. Belisarius was even offered the crown of the Western Empire by the King of the Goths at Ravenna and turned it down out of personal loyalty to Justinian and the Empire.  Taking Italy proved much easier than keeping it and Justinian spent much of the rest of his reign consolidating his Western lands and pushing his Eastern frontier.

Justinian's Empire

Justinian’s major reform was in the legal realm with the reform of the old Roman law codes and the introduction of a body of legislation which became known as the Code of Justinian which is the basis for much of European law today, as it is in Russia. Theodora’s influence is all over these pieces of legislation with a number of progressive tracts on the rights of women, widows, and prostitutes. Justinian was a strong supporter of Orthodoxy in the Church and in the Empire and he attempted to unite various Christian and non-Christian groups under the Imperial umbrella, as well as trying to keep Imperial religious practices in keeping with the Pope’s instructions.

Justinian also deserves recognition for the scale and beauty of some of the buildings commissioned and built during his reign, including the splendid Hagia Sophia. There was a church building spree under Justinian and some of the finest buildings in the world at the time were constructed giving Constantinople the look of the real centre of Imperial power in the Western world. He also built fortifications along the Eastern borders of the Empire in order to strengthen the defence of the empire, and this is telling in the sense that it shows where he thought the real threat to Imperial power lay.

Justinian is a forgotten man both in Western European history, but also in Eastern European history. He was probably one of the most successful of all Roman Emperors, deserving of his place with Augustus and Constantine, yet because he never ruled from Rome he is brushed under the carpet. The fact that this civilisation, this European Empire, survived and, at times, thrived, after the ‘fall of Rome’ is too often airbrushed put of the passage of European and with it the legacy left to us by great men like Justinian.  

Shining a Light on History’s Forgotten People: 2. Hannibal of Carthage

Hannibal's Army in Battle

Born around 248 BC to Hamil Barca (whose family, incidentally give their name to the modern city of Barcelona), Hannibal would go on to distinguish himself as one of the greatest military commanders to ever walk the European battlefields, becoming the scourge of the Roman Republic and, briefly, champion of those Rome sought to subjugate.

Carthage, a large and commercially powerful Republic, with Phoenician origins, had its capital city in modern day Tunisia and lands that stretched from Spain, all along the coast of North Africa almost to modern day Benghazi in Libya and included the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. Constantly engaged with the emerging and overtly militaristic Roman Republic, Carthage, primarily a sea-faring and trade based Republic with less interest in military conquest, found itself, after fighting the Three Sicilian Wars and, between 264 and 241 the First Punic War, very much the dominated state. The latter war was a direct conflict between the two Republics over control of the Mediterranean and was a resounding victory for the Romans, destroying the seemingly more powerful Carthaginian fleet with innovative technology and superior infantry numbers. In the aftermath of the victory, Rome seized both Sardinia and Corsica and levied a huge war indemnity on the North Africans. It was into this that Hannibal was born, into the Barcid family, a warrior family based in Spain and committed to expanding Carthage’s Hispanic possessions.

He grew up a soldier in his father’s army, indoctrinated into hating Rome and pledging his life to their downfall, while all the while learning his trade, steeling his nerves for the battles to come. Following his Father’s death and his brother-in-laws assassination, Hannibal became the Strategus of Iberia, giving him a vast amount of power over the silver mines of the region, thus increasing his ability to keep a well-equipped personal standing army, a scenario which was view suspiciously in Carthage. With two years of expansionist warfare, including defying previous treaties by the retaking of lands held by Rome, he had made quite a name for himself and his fame in Carthage was only matched by his notoriety in Rome. Although the Senate in Carthage didn’t agree with his unilateral expansionist policy, they were powerless to stop him, especially as he was so popular and the Romans so hated. In 218BC Hannibal started his journey into Southern Gaul. His army number around 40,000 soldiers, 12,000 on horseback and around 37 war elephants, unseen before by the Gaulic tribes he came across, some of whom joined him, others chose to fight him and were easily defeated. The passage from Gaul through to modern day Italy along the coast was heavily defended both on land and by sea so Hannibal chose to march his army into Italy through a route the Romans had never thought possible with such a large force. Hannibal’s march through the Alps is probably his most well-known feat so I wish here to concentrate on what he did upon arrival in Northern Italy, in particular three battles against Roman forces.

His first encounter in the field was at the Battle of Trebia against the consuls Publius Cornelius Scipio, whose son was to become Scipio Africanus, and Tiberius Sempronius Longus. Reinforced by a Gallic uprising against Roman rule, Hannibal’s army outflanked the Romans and, with their backs to the river and fleeing, affected a massacre upon their numbers. Historian Sir Walter Raleigh blames the Roman loss on the incompetence of Tiberius Longus claiming that he “made no discovery of the place upon which he fought, whereby he was grossly overreached, and ensnared, by the ambush which Hannibal had laid for him”. The public reaction in Rome was understandably one of shock and fear; they had been beaten on land by a coalition of two of their old enemies; Celts and Carthaginians. With winter coming on and his position in Northern Italy secure, Hannibal settled until spring, whereupon he would once again terrorize the Romans.

Early 1917, two new Roman consuls, Cnaeus Servilius and Gaius Flaminius, were dispatched to block the Eastern and Western routes of Hannibals expected march on Rome, the Romans again presumptuous that he wouldn’t march through the central route at eh mouth of the Arno, a marchland of bog and flooded plain, which of course he did march through, losing an eye to conjunctivitis in the process. Although he lost many men on the march, and all his elephants, he had emerged round the other side of Flaminius’ line and proceeded to harass him into giving battle, a battle which the Roman was reluctant to join. He cut off his retreat passage to Rome, burned villages loyal to him, and, after executing the first recorded turning maneuver in military history, lured him into giving chase past the shore of Lake Trasimenus. The ambush that followed killed Flaminus and a huge portion of his men, drowned or otherwise dispatched, as Hannibal was now free to advance on Rome.

The arrival of Fabius Maximus saw the period of shadowing Hannibal’s army with smaller forces, harassing him and moving away, letting him devastate the countryside, aware that he had no siege engines to attack Rome. In Spring 216 Hannibal captured the supply depot at Cannae, positioning his army between it and Rome, cutting off one of the city’s major supply routes. In response, the Romans, now under consuls Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus raised an army considered massive for the time, said to be between 80,000 and 100,000 men. The battlefield chosen at Cannae was a clearing in a wooded area, giving advantage to a smaller force. Hannibal spread his line thin and long, with his famed Numidian cavalry on the right. The cavalry proceeded to smash through the Roman flanks as they lead the body of the army in a massive envelopment maneuver, surrounding the Romans so as to leave the bulk of their forces stuck in to centre of the mass, unable to have any effect on the battle. The Carthaginian army then proceeded to massacre the Romans from the outside in, killing or capturing around 70,000 men, including many senators and men of import. Cannae has been called the greatest military defeat in Roman history and led to a massive overhaul of the Roman mindset.

Unfortunately what seemed to be Hannibal’s crowning glory was not capitalized on. The Senate back in Carthage refused to send reinforcements and, after twelve more years of devastating the Italian countryside with a diminishing army and trying to find Roman armies to fight, Hannibal fled Italy for Carthage. The Romans had taken the lessons of their defeats to heart and, when they launch the Second Punic War against Carthage in 203BC they were again a far superior fighting force, with Scipio Africanus defeating Hannibal at the battle of Zama, ending the war in favour of the Romans.

Hannibal left a legacy not only to the people of Carthage but, perhaps more importantly from our point of view, to the Romans. Men like Julius Caesar would have studied Hannibals tactics and used the treachery of the Gauls as a pretext for spreading Roman rule into modern day France and beyond, altering the make-up of European civilization. To most modern Military historians he was a general matched only by Alexander the Great.

Shining a Light on History’s Forgotten People: 1. Thomas Clarke

Tom Clarke

Ask anyone who the only US citizen to sign the Irish of Proclamation of Independence was, ask anyone who the head of the IRB was at the time of the rising, ask anyone who was the man most responsible for bringing Padraig Pearse to the fore, for uniting the Irish Volunteers and James Connolly’s Citizens Army in the run up to that faithful week in Easter 1916 and most Irish people, indeed most ‘Republicans’ will simply shrug. The answer to all the above questions is of course Tom Clarke, the first signatory of the aforementioned Proclamation, the glue that held the Rising together and a man whose hand and influence are found in the actions of his successor as IRB head during the Irish War of Independence, Michael Collins. How then has history forgotten this man, especially when you consider how much we speak of the actions of Pearse, Connolly, and Collins, and the impact they had on their own era and ours? 

Born in 1857 on the Isle of Wight to a Protestant father and a Catholic mother, the young Tom spent his formative years in South Africa where his father was stationed as a soldier in the British Army, and in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, an area rife with seditious activity and still stained by the memory of the famine well into Toms childhood. The area was also a centre of activity for the IRB, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an oath bound society of nationalists dedicated to the creation of an independent Irish Republic. The IRB’s counterpart in the USA was the Fenian Brotherhood and both organisations became known as the Fenians, especially after the failed rising of 1867.  Clarke became an IRB man after meeting the IRB’s national organiser, John Daly, whose niece he would later marry, and found himself involved in several skirmishes with the local constabulary, eventually fleeing for his life in 1880 to America. It was in the States, and under the tutelage of senior Fenians, that Tom reached the next stage of his commitment to Irish Independence as he was involved in the planning, and, eventually, attempted execution of a bombing campaign in mainland Britain. The operation was a sham from the start with informers privy to every step Clarke was took and he was arrested and, under the pseudonym Henry Wilson, sentenced to penal servitude for life in 1883.

It was from this experience of being caught on active service, betrayed if you will, and the following 15 and a half years of physical and mental torture that the new Tom Clarke arises, broken as a man perhaps but full of the vigour of revolution, aware of the terrible consequences of failure and still prepared to sacrifice his personal liberty for the better of the country. Released in 1898 as an amnesty to mark the centenary of the United Irish rebellion, he moved to America with his new bride Kathleen and set up home in Brooklyn, New York. The penal regime that Clarke survived is documented in his book “Glimpses of an Irish Felons Prison Life”, and some truly barbaric practices like complete silence for the duration of your sentence and an hourly wakeup call during the night must surely have damaged him psychologically. He claimed that “Had anyone told me before those prison doors closed upon me that it was possible for any human being to endure what the Irish prisoners have endured in Chatham Prison, and come out of it alive and sane, I would not have believed him” (Pg. 2).

In 1907 he returned to Dublin and set up a tobacconist shop on Amiens Street, under the close eye of the crown authorities. He had reached legendary status in Republican circles after his survival of the torments of prison, and he was quickly reintroduced to the activities of the IRB, in particular two of its up and coming stars, Bulmer Hobson and Sean MacDermott. Eager to keep a low profile, aware of the reach of the British into every aspect of Irish nationalism he moved behind the scenes to acquaint himself with everybody who could be useful to him, cultivating people and encouraging activism. When the Irish Volunteers came into being in 1913, Clarke was already seen as the leading ‘behind the scenes’ nationalist in the city, yet he stayed away from the Volunteers publically, seeking instead to influence their prominent members, with Pearse becoming an IRB man the same year. Hobson and MacDermott became members of the new organisation and no doubt kept Clarke informed of events and pushed the agenda of the IRB as frequently as possible. As the elder statesman in the organisation, and with his record of previous nationalist activities, Clarke was the last realistic link with the old Fenian movement for a lot of the younger men who had been fed stories of the bravery of ’67 and the need for a new generation of martyrs, and Clarke undoubtedly played on that, especially in his encouraging Pearse to give the graveside oration at the funeral of the Fenian O’Donovan Rossa, an event seen as the coming of age of the generation of ’16. Around this time Clarke was also in contact with James Connolly and his socialist Citizens Army, ensuring him that the Ireland his IRB wanted was both nationalist and socialist, for the people and by the people, encouraging him to support any action taken to rid the country of the landlord class, the British Government.

When it came to nuts and bolts organisation of 1916, most, if not all of the major planning must have been done by the IRB leadership, including Tom Clarke and McDermott, and Clarke was the first signatory of the Proclamation, a fact apparently insisted upon by the other signatories. It is in this action we have the link between The Fenians, the Volunteers, and with the involvement of the IRB, the IRA of the war of Independence. The IRB is the common theme through all of this and Clarke was at the heart of it, pulling strings, pushing agendas, organising behind the scenes, letting people like Pearse be the national face of the movement, letting Pearse declare himself President.

Let us not, however, forget that Clarke, and his ilk, were prepared to use terror tactics to make the British give in to their demands and all of their actions must be seen in the historical context in which they happened. These were no angels, merely men of action who are sometimes necessary for the liberation of a country. Clarke’s second in command in the IRB was Sean McDermott whose aide-de-camp in the GPO was Michael Collins who went on to become head of the organisation after the failure of the Rising, directly taking Clarkes agenda into the fight for independence. Clarke is forgotten because he made himself so invisible; his greatest trick was convincing the Volunteers that it was all their idea, convincing Pearse that he was indeed the President of the new Republic. Clarke insisted that the Volunteers fight until the last man in the GPO, in this he was finally ignored, weeping openly as Pearse surrendered. He was executed, at age 59, along with MacDermott, in Kilmainham Jail following the surrender, this time viewed as too big a fish to put in prison.

His legacy is one of a commitment to physical force Republicanism and if people like MacDermott and Pearse are well regarded as patriots from this period of Irish history then Clarke deserves further study.

22/2/11