Vandalic War (533-534): Belisarius Reconquers North Africa

The Vandalic War was the campaign of 533–534 in which the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I destroyed the Vandal kingdom of North Africa. Led by the general Belisarius, a relatively small expeditionary force defeated King Gelimer at Ad Decimum and Tricamarum, took Carthage and returned the former province to Roman rule after almost a century. Its speed encouraged Justinian to attempt the much harder reconquest of Italy.

Background: the Vandal kingdom

The Vandals, a Germanic people, crossed from Spain into Africa in 429 under their king Gaiseric and captured Carthage in 439 (see Vandal conquest of North Africa). Their kingdom, covering much of modern Tunisia and coastal Algeria and Libya, was rich in grain and olive oil, and its fleet dominated the western Mediterranean. In 455 they sacked Rome itself (see Vandal sack of Rome).

Earlier Roman efforts to destroy the kingdom had failed. In 468 a huge eastern and western armada under Basiliscus was wrecked by Vandal fireships near Cape Bon, a costly disaster still remembered in Constantinople in Justinian’s time.

The Vandals were Arian Christians, rejecting the Nicene Creed, and their kings at times persecuted the Catholic majority. Under King Hilderic, who came to power in 523, relations with Constantinople improved: he was a grandson of the emperor Valentinian III through his mother, tolerated Catholics and was on friendly terms with Justinian.

Causes of the war

On 15 June 530 Hilderic was overthrown by his cousin Gelimer, a great-grandson of Gaiseric, who had support among Vandal nobles angered by defeats against Moorish tribes and by Hilderic’s pro-Roman policy. Justinian protested and demanded Hilderic’s release. Gelimer refused, replying that kings should mind their own affairs.

Justinian’s advisers were wary. According to Procopius, the praetorian prefect John the Cappadocian warned of the cost and the risk of another 468. But in 532 the Eternal Peace with Persia freed troops and money, and the crushing of the Nika riots had left Justinian secure at home (see Nika riots). Revolts against Gelimer in Sardinia, led by the governor Godas, and in Tripolitania offered further openings.

The expedition sails

The fleet left Constantinople around midsummer 533. According to Procopius, who sailed with it as Belisarius’s secretary, it carried 10,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry, plus Belisarius’s personal guard and allied Hun and Herul horsemen. Some 500 transports manned by about 30,000 sailors were escorted by 92 warships. Belisarius’s wife Antonina also accompanied him.

The voyage was slow and difficult. Procopius records that bread supplied under John the Cappadocian had been baked too little to save fuel, and that about 500 soldiers died after eating it. In Sicily, then part of the Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy, the regent Amalasuntha allowed the Romans to buy supplies and horses, a decision with consequences for the later Gothic War.

Gelimer, meanwhile, had sent his brother Tzazon with 5,000 men and 120 ships to retake Sardinia. When Belisarius landed unopposed at Caput Vada (Ras Kaboudia, in modern Tunisia) in early September 533, the Vandal king was caught unprepared. He ordered the imprisoned Hilderic to be killed.

Ad Decimum and the fall of Carthage

Belisarius marched north along the coast towards Carthage, his fleet keeping pace offshore. Gelimer planned to trap him at Ad Decimum, the tenth milestone south of the city, with three forces converging: his brother Ammatas from Carthage, his nephew Gibamund on the flank, and Gelimer himself from the rear.

The battle on 13 September 533 went wrong for the Vandals because of poor timing. Ammatas arrived early and was killed in a clash with the Roman vanguard. Gibamund’s force was routed by the Huns. Gelimer’s main army then drove back part of Belisarius’s cavalry, but when he found his brother’s body he stopped to mourn and bury him. Belisarius rallied his troops and scattered the Vandals.

On 15 September Belisarius entered Carthage without resistance. Procopius says he and his officers ate the dinner that had been prepared in the palace for Gelimer. Belisarius kept strict discipline, and the city was not plundered.

Tricamarum and Gelimer’s surrender

Gelimer regrouped west of Carthage and recalled Tzazon from Sardinia, which he had retaken. In mid-December 533 the two armies met at Tricamarum, about 30 kilometres west of the city. Belisarius’s cavalry under John the Armenian charged the Vandal centre three times; Tzazon was killed and the Vandal army broke. Gelimer fled, and Belisarius took the Vandal camp and its treasure.

Gelimer took refuge on Mount Papua, a mountain in Numidia held by Moorish allies, where the Herul commander Pharas blockaded him through the winter. Procopius tells that, near starvation, he asked Pharas for a lyre, a sponge and a loaf of bread: the bread to taste again, the sponge to bathe his eyes and the lyre to sing a lament he had composed. In March 534 he surrendered on promise of good treatment.

Aftermath

Belisarius returned to Constantinople in 534 and was granted a triumph, the first for a general who was not an emperor in centuries. Procopius says Gelimer, led in the procession before Justinian, repeated the words of Ecclesiastes, “vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. The spoils included treasures that the Vandals had taken from Rome in 455. Gelimer was given estates in Galatia, in central Anatolia, and lived there with his family.

In April 534 Justinian created a praetorian prefecture of Africa and restored Catholic churches. Holding the province proved harder than conquering it. Moorish tribes rebelled, and in 536 Roman troops mutinied under Stotzas. Peace was not secured until the campaigns of John Troglita in 546–548. Africa nevertheless remained Byzantine for more than a century and a half, until the Arab capture of Carthage in 698.

The easy victory led Justinian to attack the Ostrogoths in Italy in 535, beginning a war that would last nearly twenty years (see Gothic War).

Key people

• Belisarius (c. 500–565): Justinian’s leading general, not yet 35 at the time. His caution, discipline and use of mounted archers were central to the victory, and the campaign made his reputation.
• Gelimer (r. 530–534): the last Vandal king. Procopius portrays him as capable but undone by grief and indecision at Ad Decimum.
• Ammatas and Tzazon: Gelimer’s brothers, killed at Ad Decimum and Tricamarum respectively.
• Hilderic (r. 523–530): the deposed pro-Roman king whose overthrow gave Justinian his pretext; he was killed on Gelimer’s orders in 533.
• John the Armenian: Belisarius’s trusted officer, who led the vanguard at Ad Decimum and the decisive charges at Tricamarum.
• Procopius of Caesarea: Belisarius’s secretary and the war’s eyewitness historian, whose Vandalic War (Books 3–4 of his Wars) is the main source.
• Solomon: Belisarius’s successor in Africa, who faced the Moorish wars and the army mutiny that followed the conquest.

Timeline

• 15 June 530: Gelimer overthrows King Hilderic.
• June 533: Byzantine fleet sails from Constantinople under Belisarius.
• Early September 533: Landing at Caput Vada.
• 13 September 533: Battle of Ad Decimum; Ammatas killed.
• 15 September 533: Belisarius enters Carthage.
• Mid-December 533: Battle of Tricamarum; Tzazon killed, Gelimer flees.
• March 534: Gelimer surrenders on Mount Papua.
• 534: Belisarius’s triumph in Constantinople.

Why it matters

The Vandalic War ended the Germanic kingdom that had been carved out of Roman Africa and restored a wealthy province to the empire. Its stunning success shaped Justinian’s ambitions in the West and made Belisarius the most famous general of his age.