Totila
Totila (b. ?-d.July 1, 552) was the penultimate King of the Ostrogoths, reigning from 541 to 552 AD. A skilled military and political leader, Totila reversed the tide of Gothic War, recovering by 543 almost all the territories in Italy that the Eastern Roman Empire had captured from his Kingdom in 540.
Early life
"Totila" was the nom de guerre of a man whose real name was Baduila, as can be seen from the coinage he issued. "Totila" is how he was referred to by the historian Procopius. According to Henry Bradley, `Totila' and `Baduila' are diminutives of `Totabadws'.[1] Born in Treviso, Totila was a relative of Theudis, king of the Visigoths. Elected king of the Ostrogoths in 541 after the death of his uncle Ildibad, having engineered the assassination of Ildibad's short-lived successor, his cousin Eraric in 541. The official Byzantine position, adopted by Procopius and even by the Romanized Goth Jordanes, writing just before the conclusion of the Gothic Wars, was that Totila was a usurper: Jordanes' Getica (551) overlooks the recent successes of Totila.[2]
History
A relative of Theudis, sword-bearer of Theodoric the Great and king of the Visigoths, Totila was elected king by Ostrogothic nobles in the autumn of 541 after King Witigis had been carried off prisoner to Constantinople. Totila proved himself both as a military and political leader, winning the support of the lower classes by liberating slaves and distributing land to the peasants. After a successful defence at Verona, Totila pursued and defeated a numerically superior army at the Battle of Faventia in 542 AD. Building on his victories, Totila followed these victories by defeating the Romans outside Florence and capturing Naples.
By 543, fighting on land and sea, he had reconqured the bulk of the lost territory. Rome held out, and Totila appealed unsuccessfully to the Senate in a letter reminding them of the loyalty of the Romans to his predecessor Theodoric the Great.
In the spring of 544 the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I sent his general Belisarius to Italy to counterattack, but Totila, captured Rome in 546 from Belisarius and depopulated the city after a yearlong siege. When Totila left to fight the Byzantines in Lucania, south of Naples, Belisarius retook Rome and rebuilt its fortifications.
After Belisarius retreated to Constantinople in 549, Totila recaptured Rome, going on to complete the reconquest of Italy and Sicily.
By the end of 550, Totila had recaptured all but Ravenna and four coastal towns. The following year Justinian sent his general Narses with a force of 35,000 Lombards, Gepids and Heruli to Italy in a march around the Adriatic to approach Ravenna from the north. In the Battle of Taginae, a decisive engagement during the summer of 552, in the Apennines near present-day Fabriano, the Gothic army was defeated, and Totila was mortally wounded.
Totila was succeeded by his relative, Teia, who later died at the Battle of Mons Lactarius. Pockets of resistance, reinforced by Franks and Alemanni who had invaded Italy in 553, continued until 562, when the Byzantines were in control of the whole of the country. The country was so ravaged by war that any return to normal life proved impossible, and only three years after his death most of the country was conquered by Alboin of the Lombards, who absorbed the remaining Ostrogothic population.
Most of the historical evidence for Totila consists of chronicles by the Byzantine historian Procopius, who accompanied the Byzantine General Belisarius during the Gothic War.
Jat History
Ram Sarup Joon[3] writes that .... In 500 BC, Jats took part in the civil war in Italy. When the hunters invaded Italy, the Jats defeated them on the battlefield of Nester. As a reward the ruler of Italy permitted them to occupy the Danube basin called Balkans now. After four years, differences arose between the Jats and king Theodius of Italy,
History of the Jats, End of Page-41
who attacked the Jats. The Jats were victorious and occupied Asia Minor. Then they attacked Rome and after defeating the famous military commander Allers, occupied the south Eastern portion of Italy. Theodius gave his daughter in marriage to the Jat leader. The Jats vacated Italy, advanced into and settled in Spain and Portugal.
In 490 BC, there was another battle after which Jats occupied the whole of Italy and ruled there for 65 years upto 425 BC. During this period Italy made a great measure of progress.
After the death of the great Jat leader Totila, the Jat power declined and they were driven out of Italy. Soon after, the Arabs drove the Jats out of Spain and Portugal. Consequently Jats were so weakened and scattered that they ceased to exist as a recognised group in this area.
Death
After the conquest and plunder of Sicily, he subdued Corsica and Sardinia and sent a Gothic fleet against the coasts of Greece. By this time the emperor Justinian I was taking energetic measures to check the Goths. The conduct of a new campaign was entrusted to the eunuch Narses; Totila marched against him and was defeated and killed at the Battle of Taginae (also known as the Battle of Busta Gallorum) in July 552, which brought an end to the long struggle between Byzantium and the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy, and left the Eastern Emperor for the time being in control of Italy.
External links
References
- ↑ Henry Bradley, The story of the Goths: from the earliest times to the end of the Gothic dominion in Spain, p. 280 (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1903).
- ↑ Croke, Brian (April 1987). "Cassiodorus and the Getica of Jordanes". Classical Philology (82.2): 117–134.
- ↑ Ram Sarup Joon: History of the Jats/Chapter III, p.41