Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/246

Rh 234 N A R N A E tions in Italy. Meanwhile his brother Butilin, whose army was also suffering grievously from disease, partly induced by too free indulgence in the grapes of Campania, encamped at Casilinum, the site of modern Capua. Here, after a time, Narses accepted the offered battle. The barbarians, whose army was in the form of a wedge, pierced the Eoman centre. But by a most skilful manoeuvre Narses contrived to draw his lines into a curve, so that his mounted archers on each flank could aim their arrows at the backs of the troops who formed the other side of the Alemannic wedge. They thus fell in whole ranks by the hands of unseen antagonists. Soon the Roman centre, which had been belated in its march, arrived upon the field and completed the work of destruction. Butilin and his whole army were destroyed, though we need not accept the statement of the Greek historian (Agathias, ii. 9) that only five men out of the barbaric host of 30,000 escaped, and only eighty out of the Roman 18,000 perished (554). The only other important military operation of Narses which is recorded and that indistinctly is his defeat of the Herulian king Sindual, who had served under him at Capua, but who subsequently revolted, was defeated, taken captive, and hanged by the eunuch s order (565). In the main the thirteen years after the battle of Capua (554- 567) were years of peace, and during them Narses ruled Italy from Ravenna with the title of prefect. 1 He rebuilt Milan and other cities destroyed in the Gothic war ; and two inscriptions on the Salarian bridge at Rome have pre served to modern times the record of repairs effected by him in the year 564. 2 His administration, however, was not popular. The effect of the imperial organization was to wring the last solidus out of the emaciated and fever-stricken population of Italy, and the belief of his subjects was that no small portion of their contributions remained in the eunuch s private coffers. At the close of 565 Justinian died, and a deputation of Romans waited upon his successor Justin II., representing that they found &quot; the Greeks &quot; harder task masters than the Goths, that Narses the eunuch was determined to reduce them all to slavery, and that unless he were removed they would transfer their allegiance to the barbarians. This deputation led to the recall of Narses, which took place in 567, and was accompanied, according to a somewhat late tradition, by an insulting message from the empress Sophia, who sent him a golden distaff, and bade him, as he was not a man, go and spin wool in the apart ments of the women. &quot;I will spin her such a hank,&quot; Narses is represented as saying, &quot; that she shall not find the end of it in her lifetime&quot;; and forthwith he sent mes sengers to the Lombards in Pannonia, bearing some of the fruits of Italy, and inviting them to enter the land which bore such goodly produce. Hence came the invasion of Alboin (568), which wrested the greater part of Italy from the empire, and changed the destinies of the peninsula. 3 1 Gibbon s statement that Narses was &quot; the first and most powerful of the exarchs of Eavenna&quot; is more correct in substance than in form. The title of exarch does not appear to be given to Narses by any contemporary writer. He is always &quot; Prtcfectus Italics,&quot; &quot; Patricius,&quot; or Dux Italise, &quot; except when he bears the style of his former offices in the imperial household, &quot; Ex-Preepositus [Cubiculi]&quot; or &quot;Chartularius&quot; (compare Rubens, Histories Ravennates, p. 175). 2 See Gruter, p. 161. 3 This celebrated story seems to be unknown to strictly contem porary authors. We find no hint of it in Agathias (who wrote between 566 and 582), Marius (532-596), or Gregory of Tours (540-594). The possibly contemporary Liber Pontificalis and Isidore of Seville (560-636) hint at the invitation to the Lombards. Fredegarius (so- called), who probably wrote in the middle of the 7th century, and Paulus Diaconus, towards the close of the 8th, supply the saga-like details, which become more minute the further the narrators are from the action. On the whole, the transaction, though it is too well vouched for to allow us to dismiss it as entirely fabulous, cannot take its place among the undoubted facts of history. Narses, who had retired to Naples, was persuaded by the pope (John III.) to return to Rome. He died there about 573, and his body, enclosed in a leaden coffin, was carried to Constantinople and buried there. Several years after his death the secret of the hiding-place of his vast stores of wealth is said to have been revealed by an old man to the emperor Tiberius II., for whose charities to the poor and the captives they furnished an opportune supply. Narses was sliort in stature and lean in figure. His freehanded- ness and affability made him very popular with his soldiers. Evagrius tells us that lie was very religious, and paid especial reverence to the Virgin, never engaging in battle till he conceived that she had given him the signal. Our best authorities for his life are his contemporaries Procopius and Agathias. For the period after 555 we have to depend chiefly on fragmentary notices in the authors whose names have been mentioned above. (T. H. ) NARSINHPUR, 4 a district in the chief-commissioner- ship of the Central Provinces, India, lying between 22 45 and 23 15 N. lat. and between 78 38 and 79 38 E. long., bounded on the N. by Bh6pal state and by Sagar, Damoh, and Jabalpur districts, E. by Seoni, S. by Chhind- wAra, and W. by Hoshangabad. It forms a portion of the upper part of the Nerbudda valley. The first of those wide alluvial basins which, alternating with rocky gorges, give so varied a character to the river s course opens out just below the famous marble rocks in Jabalpur, and extends westward for 225 miles, including the whole of Narsinhpur, together with the greater part of Hoshanga bad. The Satpura hills to the south are here a generally regular range, nowhere more than 500 feet above the plain, and running almost parallel to the river, at a distance of 15 or 20 miles. In the intervening valley, the rich level of black wheat land is seldom broken, except by occasional mounds of gravel or nodular limestone, which afford serviceable village sites. Along the foot of the boundary hills the alluvium gives way to belts of red gravelly soil, rice and sugar-cane take the place of wheat, and forest trees that of mango groves. The population in 1880 was 365,173, the Hindus numbering 305,562, and the Mohammedans only 13,425. The most numerous of the aboriginal tribes are the Goncls (46,645). Only two towns contained upwards of 5000 inhabitants Narsinhpur (7816) and Gadarwara (6553). Of the area of 1916 square miles, 974 were under cultivation in 1882. Wheat is the staple crop, occupying 280,898 acres ; other food grains took up 245,797 acres; cotton, 46,204 acres ; and sugar-cane, 2271 acres. Rotation of crops is not practised, but when the soil shows signs of exhaustion gram or some other pulse is substituted for two or three years. Cultivators dare not leave their lands fallow, even for a single year, for the ground would be immediately occupied by rank kdns grass, which no exer tions can eradicate till it has run its course of about ten years. The principal export is cotton. Coal mining is carried on at Moli- pani, Sihora, and Setarewa ; and iron-ore of excellent quality is smelted in large quantities at Tendukhera and elsewhere there being 38 mines in operation in 1882. NARVAEZ, PAMFILO DE (c. 1480-1528), Spanish adventurer, was an hidalgo of Castile, born at Valladolid about 1480. He was one of the subordinates of Velazquez in the reduction of Cuba, and, after having held various posts under his governorship, was put at the head of the force sent to the Aztec coast to compel Cortes to renounce his command ; he was surprised and defeated, however, by his abler and more active compatriot at Cempoalla, and made prisoner with the loss of an eye (1520). After his return to Spain he obtained from Charles V. a grant of Florida as far as the River of Palms; sailing in 1527 with five ships and a force of about 600 men, he landed, probably near Tampa Bay, in April 1528, and, striking inland with son^e 300 of his followers, reached &quot;Apalache&quot; on June 25. The prospects of fabulous wealth which had sustained them in their difficult and perilous journey having proved illusory, a return to the coast was determined, and the Bahia de los Caballos, at or near St Mark s, was 4 Narsinhpur is also the name of a petty native state in Orissa.