The Horse Changer (26 page)

We used those on horseback to guard our rear. The rest advanced in tight formation down Antony’s road. The redoubts were built to protect the camp from external attack. With an enemy at their backs, the defenders of the redoubts simply fled into the marsh. Two miles on, we found the broken palisade where Antony had crossed that morning; after that we were safe.

I rode forward with a handful of my officers, calling out the day’s password to one of the sentries. This let us enter the fortified area, where we discovered two legions belonging to Cassius now defending our camp’s southern perimeter. They were of course twelve hours late for the party, but no matter. At least we were ready to turn back a second attack.

Once I knew our army still possessed the camp, I sent for my men and asked the prefect of the Night Watch to take me to Cassius.

‘Cassius is dead. He killed himself an hour ago,’ came the answer.

‘Killed himself? I don’t understand.’

‘Nobody does. They’re saying he thought we lost the battle.’

I looked at the smouldering ruins that had been our camp. ‘Didn’t we?’

‘While we were getting battered about, Brutus’s legions broke through Caesar’s line. They destroyed the better portion of four of his legions. After that they looted Caesar’s camp, including his payroll.’

‘How bad was it for Cassius’s legions?’

‘The camp is completely destroyed, and Antony made off with our payroll. As for the legions, we took heavy casualties across the line, but we can still turn out nine legions tomorrow morning – assuming Brutus is willing to pay us.’

Food for our evening meal came from the hardtack tied to every man’s belt, the food of last resort. After that we went looking for the ruins of our tents, but with no landmarks to guide us and the roadways blocked by rubbish, we were as disoriented as the rest of the army. Finally, Scaeva put our men to work clearing an area. We were all barefoot and suffering with bruised and cut feet; I don’t think a single man had made it through the marsh with his sandals still on his feet, but no matter. We were alive.

By midnight we collapsed close to one another around small campfires. There were no bathhouses remaining and in the chilly night no one cared to bathe in the river; so we slept as we were, covered in blood and mud; the worst of it was that we stayed in our armour. We feared the enemy might attempt to take our palisade under the cover of another moonless night. Some of the men wrapped themselves in half-burned blankets. I recall I slept covered by a charred leather tarp.

At dawn, neither army bothered to turn out for battle formations. Instead, following a breakfast of hardtack, the legionaries set to work clearing the camp of debris in earnest. The auxiliaries retrieved the dead from the battlefield. From these, my men and I found footwear.

Brutus’s camp had survived without any damage, and although my men had pierced the membrane of Antony’s camp and burned perhaps a hundred tents, that damage was more symbolic than actual. Antony still possessed his payroll, plus the one he took from Cassius. Brutus owned his own great fortune and Caesar’s too. The critical issue on both sides of the battlefield was money. Antony, once he learned Caesar still lived, offered to pay Caesar’s legions from his own purse.

Bankrupt though he was, Caesar would not allow it. Instead, he borrowed money from Antony, and you can be sure Antony arranged the interest rates to his advantage. Not coin exactly but power, which amounts to the same thing in the end. They did not make a formal arrangement – not without Lepidus, who was in Rome – but the agreement was settled nonetheless. Antony would take possession of upper Gaul, Greece, Macedonia, Asia and the biggest prize, Cleopatra’s Egypt. Lepidus would have western Africa, Spain and Sicily, as before. That left Caesar with Narbonne, the southernmost province of Gaul – asliver of the empire, in other words. As before, the spoils of Italy still belonged to all three men. Their bargain left Antony preeminent, assuming they were victorious, but Caesar had no choice. Without a payroll for his men he knew they would abandon him and join Antony.

Brutus, having no partner remaining, was the real winner of the first battle at Philippi, and though he talked about restoring the Republic, even an idealist knows when he suddenly owns the world, which would be the case if he defeated Antony and Caesar. All Brutus had to do was embrace the legions and auxiliaries that had formerly pledged themselves to Cassius. No one competed with him for the command of these forces because no one but Brutus had the money at hand to pay them. To seal his new contract with the legions of Cassius, Brutus issued a thousand denarii bonus to every fighting man in our camp, regardless of his rank or nationality. That his own forces might not grow discontented, Brutus awarded the same bonus to them. We received our bonuses promptly next day, but of course the men who had formerly been under the command of Cassius could not help but think that they had lost everything when their tents were looted and burned, while the men who served Brutus still possessed the money they had already earned. In fact, the legionaries and auxiliaries in Brutus’s camp suddenly had more money than most of them had seen in their entire lives.

By such small matters are armies ruined. For his part Brutus proved incapable of understanding the problem. To his mind he had been even-handed in his generosity. His army had seized a fortune, and he paid out a bonus to everyone; Cassius had lost his camp, and Brutus would assume responsibility for feeding and paying these men going forward. What more could anyone expect of him? It was not his fault we had lost our money.

Had Brutus been less even-handed about the distribution of money, had he given his officers something like half-a-year’s salary for a bonus and provided less to the legionaries and less still to the auxiliaries, his officers would certainly have quelled the mutinous rumblings. As it was, resentment came chiefly from the officers, who complained about the foreign auxiliaries getting the same bonus they received. As with all armies the attitudes of the officers soon trickled down through the ranks. Before any of us saw his next payday, every man in the legions Cassius had once commanded cursed the name of Junius Brutus. More to the point, they did it openly and without fear of disciplinary action.

Cassius’s legions lost ten thousand men. Caesar lost almost twice that number, fully a third of his army. Antony and Brutus, in contrast, kept their legions intact, counting fewer than a thousand dead on either side. A week after the battle, we learned that on the same day we had fought at Philippi, Caesar lost an armada of transport ships in a storm off the Peloponnese. Two legions, bound for the Hellespont, gone. Had they succeeded they would have cut off our supply lines and left us poorly placed. As it was, Brutus now possessed every advantage.

With news of the disaster, Brutus took heart and spoke to his officers of our coming victory over the tyrants. ‘Even the gods hate tyranny!’ he told us. A confirmed atheist, I could name a great many tyrants whom the gods permitted to thrive, but I was happy nonetheless. I thought Brutus would take courage from the news and press forward. But no, he refused to change from his defensive strategy. In fact, he now insisted his legions stay behind the camp palisade. ‘No need to risk another battle,’ he said. ‘We will wait for Antony and Caesar to make a second attack on our camp, and when they fail to breach our defences, we will turn our cavalry loose on their retreat!’

Brave words and fine policy – if only the enemy had behaved as halfwits. Instead, Antony had his men construct a siege camp between our southern camp’s palisade and his own fortifications. He set it close to the marsh for defensive purposes and then arranged for a low wall to connect the new camp to his old one. By this means, he meant to keep his advance position well stocked with artillery. This new wall included several redoubts. These were all bristling with artillery, though the effort was wasted. Brutus made no attempt to stop the construction of Antony’s new camp or the wall connecting it to the old camp. Once it was established, Antony’s artillery began sending stones into our southern camp. Brutus’s answer was to order us to move our bedrolls back half-a-furlong; in that way the stones landed harmlessly on vacant ground.

Our real worry was the road Antony and Cassius had built through the marsh, for it connected us with Antony’s camp and could not be easily destroyed. Even after it had become impassable for cavalry because the hard-packed mud washed away in the rain, it still functioned for infantry. The only answer was to build a palisade along the southern perimeter of our camp.

Antony’s and Caesar’s camps did indeed turn into mud pits, and supplies grew progressively more difficult for them to acquire. None of this mattered. With Brutus cowering behind his camp palisade, our men were the ones who lost heart. The desertions began with our sentries fleeing to Antony’s new camp. When Antony happily received these men, entire cohorts of auxiliaries began going over. Then even the legions lost courage. With reviving fortunes, Caesar came from his sickbed and began to appear each morning on the battlefield. And still Brutus preferred to keep his army behind the camp palisades. As for himself, he rarely left his commander’s tent except to attend his staff meetings.

Within a fortnight Brutus had lost five thousand men to desertions, though no one would admit such a number. Some of these men rode as a complete cohort into Antony’s camp with their officers in the lead. They took whatever grain and supplies they could carry as a bribe. Others, like the Thracians I commanded, slipped away into the east, going back home with their thousand denarii bonuses wrapped in their packs and whatever goods they could steal. A patrol might be sent out and never come back. Sentry posts were routinely abandoned overnight. Those officers foolish enough to make a search for deserters would often lose the search party as well. The stones Antony sent into our camp now carried notes promising amnesty to every deserting officer and money paid to him at once if he brought his men along. Those who refused such generosity were told not to hope for mercy later. And of course every day it rained. Without a tent, and no one in the southern camp had one, high ground is only slightly better than low. I can still recall shivering in the dark as I listened to rocks falling out of the sky, each with a promise of amnesty or death.