Battle of Mutina 43 BC - Rise of Caesar Augustus (Part 2)

 

It’s April 14th, 43BC.

 Marc Antony had just defeated the Consul Pansa at the battle of Forum Gallorum, having forced his army to withdraw inside their fortified camp.

 His victorious but exhausted legionaries were marching westward towards their fortifications around Mutina while singing euphorically hymns of triumph.

 They were completely oblivious to the fact that the day was yet to be decided.

 While the battle of Forum Gallorum was being waged, Pansa was wise enough to send messages to his colleague Hirtius, informing him of the unexpected battle and urgently asking him for support.

 When Hirtius, who was encamped at a distance of only sixty stades from the battlefield (around 11km), received the message, he hurried with 20 cohorts of veterans including the legion that had deserted Mark Antony only a few weeks prior, while Octavian was left behind to hold the camp with a single legion.

 The fresh veteran troops moved swiftly along the Via Aemilia and essentially bumped into the disorderly and loose troops of Marc Antony.

 The view of the perfectly ordered and complete senatorial legions of veterans must have been quite disheartening to the spent Antonians who managed to get themselves in line under compulsion just in time to face the incoming onslaught… Antony’s legionaries fought bravely giving everything they had left, but their efforts were in vain. After many deeds of valour and heroic exertions, the wearied soldiers were overcome by the fresh army opposing them.

 A seemingly victorious day turned into a tragedy for the unfortunate Antonian veterans who were overwhelmed, suffering catastrophic losses in the process. Most of them were slain, and the remnants of the army were scattered into the marshes and the surrounding woods.

 What was left of them was saved due to the onset of darkness and the heroic efforts of Marc Antony’s cavalry which collected them through the entire night.

 Some were told to hold the horses’ tails and run along with them, others were put on horseback while the cavalrymen dismounted to make space for the stranded survivors.

 Hirtius decided to call off the chase, being apprehensive of the marshy ground and the lack of visibility during the night.

 By the end of the battle, the marshes were filled with arms, corpses, wounded, and dying men. It was a dreadful scene.

 According to one of Cicero’s so-called Philippics, Hirtius did not lose a single man in this engagement, but that’s probably a rhetorical exaggeration, while Antony’s losses were disastrous, with the greater part of his men slain. Hirtius was able to capture 60 standards and the eagles of two legions.

 Under the cover of darkness, the vestiges of Antony’s army were able to retreat all the way back into their fortifications around Mutina.

 The victory at Forum Gallorum was greeted with enthusiasm by the Senate. Antony’s sympathizers were forced into hiding, while Cicero exulted in the victory and proposed 40 days of public thanksgiving, praising the fallen legionaries and the two Consuls, Hirtius and Pansa.

 At the same time, he was carefully trying to minimize the contribution of the Young Caesar.

 Despite that, two days after the battle at Forum Gallorum, Octavian was hailed as

 Imperator by his soldiers.

 The young Caesar was becoming a force to be reckoned with.

 The next day, Mark Antony had to re-evaluate his strategic approach if he was to survive. He was a veteran of Caesar’s Gallic wars and perfectly aware of the force-multiplying properties of circumvallation.

 The severity of the previous day’s disaster meant that he was to avoid a general engagement at all costs, even in the case of an attack, and he would instead resort to simply harass the enemy with his swift cavalry until the besieged Decimus Brutus, who was already in an extremely precarious situation due to lack of provisions, would hopefully surrender.

 Hirtius and Octavian would have obviously been aware of this and decided to push on a fight immediately, while Antony’s forces were demoralized and at a disadvantage.

 On 21 April 43BC, Hirtius and Octavian launched their attack.

 Initially, they tried to lure Antony into an open battle, but the cunning Caesarian general was undeterred and remained firmly lodged within his fortifications.

 The two commanders’ manoeuvred with their troops toward the other side of Mutina near a place where the fortifications were weaker due to the topographic nature of the location.

 All the while they were followed and harassed by Antony’s strong cavalry arm.

 Antonian hopes of actually avoiding a general engagement with the senatorial legions were trashed, when Hirtius send his own cavalry to counter their counterpart, rendering the rest of his army able to move freely wherever he chose.

 Consequently, Hirtius and Octavian formed a huge attack column of legionaries attempting to force their way through the weak point of Antony’s circumvallation.

 Antony countered this move by amassing two of his Caesarean veteran legions in a desperate attempt to keep his already stretched siege lines from breaking.

 What followed was a horrific, sluggish fest of pointless massacre.

 With zero space for fancy manoeuvring, the veterans on both sides were locked in brutal, murderous, frontal combat.

 Former brothers in arms, who have fought side by side in countless battles against foreign enemies, were now killing each other for a vague cause on Roman soil.

 And just like previous engagements between veteran legionaries, the body count must have been horrible.

 The battered Antonian legionaries began to struggle, especially due to the slow trickling of reinforcements from around the fortifications that had to cover long distances and were not sufficiently prepared for Octavian and Hirtius’ all-out assault.

 Hirtius, who was fighting in the frontline together with his soldiers was able to push back Antony’s troops and break directly into Antony’s camp.

 He personally led his legion and forced his way directly for Mark Antony’s tent.

 Around the same time, the besieged Decimus Brutus organized a sortie and attacked Antony’s camp

 with some of his cohorts.

 The situation was dire for the Antonians.

 However, the veterans of the V legion were able to halt Hirtius’ advance after a vicious melee in front of their commanders’ tent.

 In the thick of the fighting, consul Hirtius was mortally wounded.

 With their commander dead, Hirtius’ hard-pressed legionaries began to buckle under the pressure of the Antonian counterattack.

 At this critical point of the battle, Octavian, who was not far behind, intervened, risking life and limb to avoid defeat.

 According to some ancient sources, Caesar’s young heir fought heroically to recover Hirtius’ body.

 Reportedly, when the eagle-bearer of one of his legions war seriously wounded, Octavian shouldered the eagle and carried it for some time.

 Eventually, Octavian was able to retrieve the Consul’s body but was unable to capture Antonys’ tent.

 Octavian’s remaining troops were ultimately forced to retreat from the camp by Antony’s personal intervention.

 The melee outside the Tents was the high tide of the senatorial offensive.

 Octavian was soon forced to abandon any further efforts in achieving a breakthrough, leaving behind thousands of dead and wounded.

 The battle of Mutina was over.

 Even though the battle’s outcome was indecisive, at Rome the exultation was unlaced!

 Antonius and his followers were declared public enemies. Cicero praised the victorious legionaries to heaven, and a thanksgiving of fifty days was decreed.

 The senates’ reaction was unprecedented, especially since this was a war between fellow citizens and not foreign enemies.

 The distastefulness must have been obvious to many Romans who were traumatized by the continuous civil strife.

 Meanwhile, the public enemy was retreating to the west. Taking advantage of his superior cavalry force, Mark Antony’s army was able to move faster than his senatorial adversaries.

 His plan was to combine his battered legions with one of his colleagues, Ventidius Bassus, who had already raised three legions of veterans in his native Picenum, and was marching northwards.

 D.Brutus urged Octavian to march across the Apennines, to cut off Ventidius and prevent him from joining forces with Antony. But, unexpectedly the young adventurer changed tactics and refused to collaborate with one of Caesar’s murderers.

 Subsequently, on May 3rd Ventidius was able to slip through and merge his three veteran legions with Mark Antony’s remaining troops.

 Decimus Brutus had lost precious time. Instead of immediately chasing Antony, he wasted two days marching towards Bononia only to learn that his college Pansa had died of his wounds.

 This was a very unfortunate turn of events for the Senatorial cause.

 Hirtius and Pansa could have taken advantage of Antony’s defeat, curb Caesar’s heir and reach some kind of settlement with the Caesarians.

 With both of them gone, the young Octavian, who had already been proven an unpredictable ally, was thrust at the forefront of high politics.

 Octavians refusal to collaborate any further with the Optimates was soon justified.

 For he received news from Rome that he was to be discarded as he had now served his purpose in defeating Antony.

 In the victory honours

 declared by Cicero’s senate, Octavian was only granted an ovation, while Decimus Brutus a triumph and all the legions of the dead consuls.

 Cicero’s tactics though have backfired badly.

 The soldiers refused to tolerate such a slight upon their patron.

 The Caesarian legionaries pledged their loyalty to Octavian, a course that was eventually followed by most of Pansas’ recruits, leaving Decimus Brutus with a handful of green legions with which he began chasing the retreating Antony who already had a two days head start.

 All the while, Mark Antony was marching along the narrow Ligurian road between the sea and the mountains.

 His objective was to induce the allegiance of the vacillating Aemilius Lepidus and Lucius Plancus, both Caesarian generals who were already stationed in Gaul and had under their command many legions of veterans.

 Eventually, Mark Antony was able to enter Gallia Narbonensis unperturbed, with Brutus failing to achieve his main objective of obstructing his passage.

 Lepidus, who had previously been in close communication with Cicero, soon confronted Antony.

 The two armies lay against each other, while a small river ran between the camps. The Caesarian veterans who were comrades in arms for almost a decade made the decision for the generals and embraced Antony introducing him into the camp.

 Lepidus consented…

 It was in essence a peaceful coup.

 Antony and Lepidus now had to reckon with Plancus. The former Caesarian general was all the while dragging his feet, trying to delay taking sides as much as possible.

 He had stationed his army near Cularo and there waited for the arrival of D.Brutus who eventually reached him towards the end of June. Their combined forces amounted to 14legions, but only four were veterans the rest being raw recruits.

 Plancus must have known the unreliability of recruits because a lull followed. Mark Antony was biding his time, waiting patiently for fear and coercion to dissolve the forces of his increasingly isolated and wavering adversaries.

 Back at Bononia, the young Octavian was becoming warry of Cicero’s machinations.

 By now he was perfectly aware that as soon as Antony was out of the way, he was to be discarded.

 In an unexpected and bold move given his precarious situation, Octavian dispatched a strange embassy of some four hundred centurions and soldiers,

 bearing specific demands the foremost being the consulate for the young adventurer.

 The Senate refused.

 As these events were transpiring in Italy, back at the Antonian camp the stalemate with Plancus was broken by the intervention of a third party.

 Asinius Pollio, governor of Hispania Ulterior and a personal friend of Mark Antony marched with two legions and reconciled Plancus and Mark Antony.

 The unfortunate Brutus who was now betrayed by his troops fled northwards hoping to make his way to Macedonia where there were other generals loyal to the Senate.

 He was ultimately captured and killed by a Gallic chieftain loyal to Antony.

 While the Caesarian faction was being revived in the west, in Italy, Caesar’s heir was preparing to turn his arms against his former associates.

 When the Senate refused to make Octavian consul, one of his centurions ominously warned by tapping the hilt of his gladius. “If you do not make him Consul, then this will”.

 In early August 43 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus prepared to march on Rome for the second time in 10

 months…