I found an interesting artible on Carolingian warfare:
Development on Carolingian and Saxon Warfare
The period from the battle of Poitiers in 732 A.D. to the battle of Lechfeld in 955 A.D. witnessed important changes in how Western European leaders organized, moved and engaged their military forces. The focus of this development was on the Frankish Merovingian and Carolingian states and Saxon led Germany that became the Holy Roman Empire. Accordingly this paper will have to omit events in Britain and Italy.
With reference to the Western Way of War thesis, proposed by Victor Davis Hanson and Geoffrey Parker, this period is of great interest because of the many non-Western enemies both the Franks and the Saxons encountered and battled. Particularly interesting in this regard was the fact that the Saxons for the first half of this period were “non-Western” adversaries of the Franks. The Saxons were able to quickly assimilate Western culture and became a bulwark against attack by non-Western forces. The Saxon experience demonstrated the political development from tribal allegiances to loyalties based on larger communities of either a religious nature (Christendom) or to a regional king (Holy Roman Emperor). This was a factor in allowing Western leaders to marshal larger forces that culminated with the multi-national and multi-ethnic army sent to Palestine during the Crusades. At issue is the nature of continuity in warfare from the classical to the early modern period. Hanson maintains that such continuity exists within a changing Western cultural context. Hanson’s describes Charles Martel’s Franks at the battle of Poitiers as a shield “wall” strongly reminiscent of Greek hoplites (Hanson, pp. 163; 139).
The two-hundred year period under discussion was instrumental in laying the foundations of Western military power throughout the rest of the Middle Ages; this military power rested upon the use of combined arms of whose composition and deployment on the battlefield was the result of both experience and careful planning. The many different types of enemy forces these early Western leaders had to deal with demonstrated the necessity of flexibility. These enemies included sea faring Vikings, Magyar horse archers and Saracen cavalry backed by a wealthy empire. The central location of both the Frankish and Saxon/German realms meant that both had to deal with enemies and invaders from all points of the compass. Western leaders had to adapt various military and political expedients in order to not just survive but thrive during this violent era.
Military leaders of this period were also well versed in siege craft. It can be shown that as early as the 8th Century Western armies were much more than simply armed mobs. The siege craft and sophisticated logistics used by Charlemagne illustrated this fact. While much has been made of the “knight in shining armor” in later medieval warfare and culture, during much the period under discussion infantry forces were an important factor on the battlefield. The most contentious issue in military history during this period is the use and relative importance of cavalry. The development of heavy cavalry was certainly begun during the latter phase of the period. However, the scanty source material indicates that heavy cavalry was not the decisive arm until employed as such by Henry I and Otto I in the first half of the tenth century. The use and importance of missile weapons is an open question for which the sources are of little help. In order to examine both the development of Western warfare during this period and its relationship to the Hanson thesis, this paper will focus on the Frank’s and Ottonian’s conflicts with non-Western forces.
As noted above, the Franks had numerous non-Western enemies and forces to contend with on their various marches. This is not to imply that they didn’t have other enemies, most notably the Lombards in northern Italy. The Carolingian leaders also campaigned extensively in Aquitaine in order to secure their authority in that vital province. However, by far the most historically famous enemy of the Franks was the Saracens who had conquered Spain in the early 8th century. Although, whether this popular focus on the Frankish wars against the Moslems is justified is a debatable point. For the long-term development of France and Germany the conquest of the Saxons and the eventually taming and assimilation of the Vikings were perhaps more important.
The battle of Poitiers (732/3) was one of the most famous battles to occur during the early Middle Ages. Even today, Gibbon’s rumination that Charles Martel saved Western Christendom from Moslem domination has currency. What Poitiers demonstrated was that the Franks would be the bulwark against Moslem incursions in the Latin West just as Byzantium served the same function in the Greek East. With his victory at Poitiers Charles Martel was able to solidify Merovingian dominance of the territory that would become known as France. Poitiers was a critical turning point in the creation of the Carolingian Empire:
The ensuing battle of Poitiers of October(?) 732 or 733, in which the Arabs were defeated and forced to retreat to Spain, may not have saved Christendom from imminent Islamic conquest, as is sometimes asserted, but it certainly left Aquitaine open to the re-imposition of political control from the north. When Duke Eudo died in 735 Charles returned to Aquitaine, occupied Bordeaux and imposed his own garrisons on the principal fortresses and towns of the duchy. As in the duchies to the east of the Rhine, a formerly more closely integrated component of the Merovingian kingdom had been restored, albeit temporarily, to Frankish control (Collins, p. 269).
The important question with regard to the campaigns of Charles Martel, and the later Carolingians, was their development and use of heavy cavalry. This question is not just relevant to the development of Western European warfare but also on the process by which feudalism came to be dominant in politics, economics and military organization.
Based on previous work by Heinrich Brunner, Lynn White, Jr. published his thesis on Carolingian cavalry development in Medieval Technology and Social Change in 1962. White maintained that the introduction of the stirrup directly led to the Western knight:
The Man on Horseback, as we have known him during the past millennium, was made possible by the stirrup, which joined man and steed into a fighting organism. Antiquity imagined the Centaur; the early Middle Ages made him the master of Europe (Quoted from Bachrach, (1993) “Armies and Politics,” p. 50).
There are problems with the above. For example, Alexander did more than imagine heavy cavalry; his Companion Cavalry was his main shock force. Operating in column the Companion Cavalry was able to break through the holes created by the phalangites and provide the knock-out blow to Phillip’s and Alexander’s enemies. The Companion’s illustrate that the stirrup was not required for effective heavy cavalry (Hanson, p. 66-68; Sidebottom, p. 89-90).
The main problem with White’s sweeping stirrup thesis is that it is based on a paucity of source material. Philippe Contamine, building on the work of Bernard Bachrach, agrees that White’s thesis is not tenable being based on the limited source material. According to Contamine the foundation of White’s thesis rests upon only three primary documents. The first document states that in 758 Pepin the Short, Charles Martel’s son, changed the annual Saxon tribute from 500 cows to 300 horses. The second document, the Annales Petaviani written in 755, states that the annual concentration of Frankish warriors, the “marchfield,” was changed from March to May. White argued that the purpose of this change was to insure the availability of fodder for the host’s horses. Contamine, however, notes that it was never a hard and fast rule that the annual meeting of warriors took place in March. The beginning of the annual campaign seems to have been decided on the basis of contemporary circumstances. The third document, the Annales Fuldenses, briefly describes the battle of the Dyle in 891 that was a rare victory against the Vikings. The debate surrounding this document involves the proper interpretation of the Latin word pedetemptim. Even if White’s interpretation of this document is correct, basing such an important argument on a single passage of such a late date is problematical (Contamine, pp. 182-3).
The other contentious aspect of White’s thesis regards the claim that the origins of feudalism occurred during the rule of Charles Martel. According to White immediately after the battle of Poitiers there occurred a military revolution in the Carolingian realm that was engineered by Charles Martel. There were two reasons for this revolution during the early medieval period, the introduction of the stirrup and the seizure of Church land by Martel. The issue of the alleged importance of the stirrup in the development of heavy cavalry has already been dealt with; there is scant evidence to justify such a sweeping claim. The fact that Martel gave benefices of Church lands to his followers is claimed by White to be the beginning of feudalism.
“Feudalism” is a notoriously slippery term. To characterize the period prior to ~900 A.D. as “feudal” has problems due to the fact that the earlier Carolingians maintained a relatively tight control over their territories and their various men-at-arms. It is certain that Martel bestowed Church land upon his loyal retainers; however this was nothing new as this practice had existed throughout the Merovingian period (Bachrach (1974) pp. 3-4). Although, it isn’t clear if the Merovingians seized Church land, they did use benefices to create or keep the loyalty of the magnates:
Anyone who desired to rule effectively over a large area as either a king or a duke found it necessary to purchase the loyalty of these magnates and their armed retainers with valuable “gifts” and even with landed estates (Bachrach (1974) p. 4).
More is required than the age old practice of a king or emperor bribing local rulers to accurately characterize the early Carolingian realm as “feudal.” The rise of a genuinely decentralized feudal France would be the result of both the barbarian incursions of the later 9th and 10th centuries and the break up of the Carolingian dynasty into warring factions (Hollister, pp. 120-1). In sum the leading scholars of the early medieval period have discounted Lynn White’s thesis. The evidence supports the view that even during this early developmental period the armies of Christendom were made up of men recruited by several different means and representing different social groups. These warriors then fought using combined arms and had the flexibility to fight many different enemies on their home ground.
After the battle of Poitiers both Charles Martel and his son Pepin the Short conducted a series of campaigns in southern France that resulted in the Moslems being driven back south of the Pyrenees. Pepin the Short was an extremely successful warrior and ruler. He was crowned king of the Franks in 751 and this date marked the official end of the Merovingian dynasty and the beginning of the Carolingian dynasty. Pepin’s son Charlemagne (Charles the Great) continued his father’s defensive policy on the Spanish March. One exception to this strategy was Charlemagne’s raid into Moslem Spain in 778 that he personally led. This raid was a failure in both the small amount of booty seized and that the Frankish rear guard under Roland being wiped out by Basque light cavalry at Roncesvalles. Despite this defeat Charlemagne continued to devote his main military efforts against the Lombards and the Saxons. As a result of Moslem raids on Frankish territory in 792-3, Charlemagne changed his largely defensive policy on the Spanish March to one of conquest in 797 (Bachrach (1983) p.182).
Charlemagne designated his son Louis the Pious to lead the campaign of 802 against Moslem Spain. This campaign would culminate in the taking of Barcelona after a siege of approximately eights months. Of great interest regarding this campaign was Charlemagne’s capitulatory that demonstrates the great care taken with logistics and siegecraft. Charlemagne clearly anticipated a long siege for this campaign and was not deterred by this fact. The army was instructed on the composition of its baggage train that included extra food, fodder, siege engines and ammunition. Charlemagne tasked the various counts to protect and maintain the line of communications by guarding bridges and waterways. Charlemagne also explicitly ordered that the levies of the civitates be armed with bows and arrows; it is unlikely that these missile forces fought on horseback (Bachrach (1974) p. 28).
It is also clear from Charlemagne’s capitulatory that Carolingian siege-craft was far more sophisticated than is usually credited and indicates continuity from the Roman period, as do earlier Byzantine campaigns in Italy:
Knowledge of how siege was conducted in antiquity was applied, with slight modification, to early medieval siegecraft... The walls [of Barcelona] were weakened by mining and bombardment from stone-throwing siege engines such as petraries and mangonels which used torsion to provide power to launch their projectiles. It also appears that the gates were attacked with battering rams. The final assault was led by men approaching the walls under cover, the testudo … and the walls were scaled by means of siege towers and ladders (Keen, p. 167-8)
Charlemagne’s campaign against the Avars in present day Hungary and Bohemia also demonstrates the care he took in planning his military operations. The Avars were a horse people who had been displaced by the Turks from their original homeland around the Caspian Sea. After settling in central Europe the Avars began attacking and raiding the tribes east of the Rhine living under Frankish protection (Wallace-Hadrill, p. 83).
Charlemagne’s plan for destroying Avar power was a carefully coordinated campaign based on converging columns. In both of his campaigns against the Avars in 791 and 796 Charlemagne used three columns that moved down the Danube valley (Halsall, p. 147). The reason for this strategy was mainly logistical. Contamine estimates that once these columns were united they probably amounted to no more than 20,000 warriors, a number that was only a fraction of the total available manpower of Charlemagne’s realm (Contamine, p. 25). However, this was a very large force for the period which would quickly “eat out” any region it was moving through. Charlemagne supplied his army via the river and moved two wings of it down either bank. According to the sources little Avar resistance was met during the expedition of 791. One possible reason for the abandonment of their fortifications by the Avars was the knowledge that Charlemagne possessed a formidable siege train. Even with the death due to disease of thousands of Frankish horses the decisive element in the campaign’s outcome was Charlemagne’s reputation for siege craft (Bachrach (1983) p. 182). Charlemagne may also have benefited from a civil war occurring within the Avar realm (Collins, p. 287).
Charlemagne’s most extensive campaigning was directed against the Lombards and Saxons. The Lombards were, by this time, a Western, urban people and therefore a discussion on these campaigns is beyond the scope of this paper. The Saxons, on the other hand, while familiar with Western civilization and Christianity were still considered a barbaric people who refused to acknowledge Frankish overlordship. The Saxons would prove to be the most difficult of Charlemagne’s many enemies to pacify. For example, there was the botched campaign of 782. It should be noted at this juncture that Frankish armies campaigned yearly. Years in which there was no military campaign were rare enough to deserve mention in the Annals, the Annales regui Francorum (Contamine, p. 23). It was usually decided who the host would attack at the spring Marchfield. In 782 a campaign against the Avars was “forsaken” in order to deal with the troublesome Saxons. There is a passage in the Revised Royal Annals that describes the defeat of the Franks at the hands of the Saxons. Apparently, during this period the Saxons still fought on foot. The Frankish force seems to be of both infantry and cavalry. The two Frankish lords commanding the cavalry force foolishly decided to attack the Saxons who where occupying strong defensives positions on a mountain top. The uncoordinated cavalry attack upon the Saxons was as successful as the Saracen attack upon Frankish infantry at Poitiers. The two Frankish lords, Adalgis and Gailo, paid for their precipitous action with their lives. The writer of the chronicle clearly understood that the Frankish defeat was the result of bad tactics and the absence of combined arms (Bowlus, p. 122).
As with Roncesvalles, the Frankish defeat in the Suntel Mountains gave Charlemagne another opportunity to demonstrate his tenacity. Until the defeat in 782 Charlemagne was content to have underlings conduct the campaigns against the Saxons while he focused on dealing with the Lombards. After the battle of the Suntel Mountains, in which Charlemagne himself lost many friends and comrades, the king took a more personal interest in the campaign. Charlemagne was also in “deadly earnest” about converting the Saxons to Christianity once and for all (Wallace-Hadrill, p. 102-3). In Charlemagne’s campaign of 782 he was able to yet again subdue most of the Saxon leaders and had them assembled with their men. The motives of Charlemagne’s next action are not known. Therefore, either out of revenge or a desire to terrorize the Saxons into submission Charlemagne had approximately 4500 Saxon leaders and warriors put to death on the spot (Halsall, p. 142).
Despite his ruthlessness, Charlemagne considered himself a civilizing influence whose primary purpose was converting the barbarian Saxons. In order to perform this task, Charlemagne established churches and monasteries in Saxon territory. In order to protect the eastern frontier of the Carolingian realm Charlemagne also established fortifications as he had in Aquitaine:
By 778, Einhard tells us, perhaps with some exaggeration born of hindsight, that Charlemagne had placed garrisons in strategic position the entire length of the Saxon frontier. During the campaign of 779, Charlemagne captured the Saxon fortifications at Bochold, and in the campaign of 785 his forces which operated during the winter captured many Saxon castro and destroyed many of their other fortifications…In 806, Charlemagne’s son, Charles, was sent against the Sorbs. After skirmishing with the enemy and driving them off, he built two castella…In 808, Charlemagne’s forces built two more castella on the Elbe, which like other Carolingian fortifications were provided with garrisons to defend them (Bachrach (1983) p. 183).
In his subjugation of the Saxons Charlemagne’s strategy was very similar to that used by the Carolingians elsewhere. In both Aquitaine and Lombardy Charlemagne and his father Pepin the Short used the same method of fortifications. First, they would reduce and take the walled cities and forts of their enemies. Then the Carolingians established their own strong points at strategic locations and provided these fortifications with garrisons. Each Carolingian fortification was expected to control the surrounding territory with the compliance of the local lords. The weakness in this strategy was the frequency with which local lords rebelled. Generally, the rebel lord would feel that the absence of the king left an opportunity for success. This was one reason why the Carolingians would have to campaign annually; generally someone on the Empire’s periphery would be plotting or committing rebellion.
Charlemagne also had a long-term strategy for the pacification of the Saxons. This strategy was based on cultural assimilation. While it is doubtful that Charlemagne thought of his efforts in these terms, his strategy was hugely successful. By 804-6 Charlemagne had Saxony pacified. For the next hundred years the culture of Western Christendom would work its way into the Saxon psyche. It is a testament to the power of cultural ideas that within a hundred years of being “civilized” and converted, the Saxon king Otto I would inherit both Charlemagne’s crown as “Holy Roman Emperor” and status as the main bulwark of the West against Eastern barbarians.
One of the major weaknesses of the Carolingian kingdom and empire was the issue of succession. From the period of Charles Martel to Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious the Carolingians were fortunate in not having a contested succession to the throne. The run of good luck dramatically changed with the death of Louis the Pious in 840. Louis’ three living sons, Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald were all able and ambitious. These three Carolingian princes had begun fighting over their inheritance even before their father’s death. In 840, the eldest son Lothar claimed the entire empire as his by right. He was engaged by his two brothers and forced to concede to their claims in the Treaty of Verdun (843) that divided the empire into three, roughly equal sections. The Treaty did not end the fighting between the brothers and their descendants. In fact, the fratricidal warfare between the various Carolingian heirs became the main focus of politics for the next fifty years as Charlemagne’s progeny fought over the corpse of his creation. It should be noted that the absence of primogeniture also indicates that it is inaccurate to characterize the Carolingian period as feudal.
The break up of the Carolingian empire was central to the development of feudalism. Of equal and interrelated importance, the demise of central authority also encouraged foreign invaders to contest their share of the spoils with Charlemagne’s heirs. The most famous of these pagan invaders were the Vikings. The Vikings also had the great advantage of sea power over their victims since the various Germanic kingdoms that replaced the Roman Empire could not finance a professional army much less a navy to defend Northern Europe’s long coast and rivers:
The Scandinavians could not be so summarily dispatched [as the Magyars], for their assaults were launched by a means to which none of the west European kingdoms had an antidote, the sea-going warship…The Vikings – so called from the Norse Viking, piracy – were among the hardiest and most warlike people ever to assault civilisation, their terrifying readiness to close to hand-to-hand combat heightened in a century of land quarrels that preceded their era of voyaging…Military means alone could not have sufficed to contain the devastations wrought by the various raiders of the ninth and tenth centuries (Keegan, p. 287-8).
The Viking attacks accelerated the political fragmentation of Western Europe. As John Keegan notes, it was the royal decree (Capitulation) of 877 by Charles the Bald, grandson of Charlemagne, which codified the feudal system and can be used as the beginning date of the feudal era. Charles the Bald ordered that all fiefs (previously benefices) would be hereditary. Charles also ordered that all men-at-arms or freeman were to have a lord, “When every man had to have a lord, when every holder of a benefice had to serve as a mounted soldier, and when offices, benefices and military obligations became hereditary, feudalism was complete at least in practice” (Beeler, p. 17). Be that as it may, one should still be very careful with generalizations in defining this period. Regional particularism would remain strong and for example, statements regarding northern France may not be true for the southern part of the country.
With the Carolingians occupied by internal warfare, the Vikings found the Frankish realm to be a rich area of booty. Locally raised Frankish militia proved so inept at driving off the invaders that the Vikings took to establishing base camps in both coastal and inland areas (Beeler, p. 19). The Vikings also helped to accelerate the demise of the Carolingian dynasty. The Vikings grew so bold that in 886 they laid siege (unsuccessfully) to Paris. The defense of the city was led by an energetic lord of the Robertinian dynasty. This rare success against the Vikings is usually credited with the origins of the Capetian dynasty’s ascent to the throne of France (Wallace-Hadrill, p. 137 and Collins, p. 375).
A rare Frank field victory over the Vikings in 891 has already been mentioned above. There is still a debate over whether the Franks fought on foot or mounted in the battle that took place on the Dyle River. The Vikings were fierce warriors and renowned sailors; however they were also culturally backwards compared to those they attacked in Western Europe. In 911 the Frankish king Charles the Simple made the Viking warlord Rolf a vassal by giving him a section of Northern France as a fief, which became Normandy. As with the Saxons, or for that matter the Franks themselves, the Vikings assimilated into Western Civilization:
Over the next century and a half the Normans became, as one historian put it, ‘more French than the French.’ They adopted French culture and the French language, built castles and founded monasteries, yet retained much of their former adventurousness and wanderlust. In the eleventh century Normandy was producing some of Europe’s best warriors, crusaders, administrators, and monks Hollister, p. 111).
An interesting point was that the Saxons, Vikings and later the Magyars were able to be assimilated into Western culture. Indeed these recent additions quickly became pillars of the societies they had once attacked with such ferocity and had so recently joined. There was however, one group of non-Western invaders who could not be assimilated: the Moslems. The Moslem themselves conquered in the name of a universal religion and possessed an advanced culture (Archer, p. 135). The converse was also true in Spain. The Christian inhabitants of Spain never assimilated into the Moslem/Arab culture that had conquered them; nor were they encouraged to do so by their Moslem rulers. This example provides a lesson of history that should not be ignored today.
The Magyars were the last of the steppe “horse people” to descend into Europe, although the Mongols threatened to attack in the thirteenth century they never proceeded as far west as the Magyars. The Magyars established themselves on the Hungarian plain which became their base for attacks upon the kingdoms to the west. The Magyars profited by the political and military disintegration of Western Europe. They would plan their campaigns based on intelligence acquired by mounted reconnaissance. These campaigns would then be directed at the most opportune target (Contamine, p. 34).
The Magyars fought as light cavalry using the bow. They did not possess the ability to besiege fortifications and would shun pitched battle if it was not to their advantage. The Magyar campaign of 899, an attack on Lombardy, provides an excellent study on Magyar tactics. History is fortunate that this campaign was well documented by Luitprand of Cremona. In 898 the Magyars launched a reconnaissance in force into northern Italy. The information gathered during this mounted raid was used to plan a full scale attack for the following year. According to Luitprand this raid progressed as far as Pavia. Berenger I, king of the Lombards, assembled his host in order to drive off the invader. Luitprand interpreted the campaign that followed in a generous manner for his king, however it is clear that the Lombards fell for the classic ruses of light cavalry.
The Magyars retreated about thirty miles east of Pavia, and then offered to come to terms with the Lombards. They offered the return of all booty for a safe conduct out of Lombardy. Berenger thought he had the Magyars cornered so he rejected this offer. Luitprand reports of a battle fought about sixty miles from Pavia in which the Magyars got the worst of it, but the kings forces were also worn down. The climatic battle of the campaign was fought on 24 of September which began with a well timed attack by the Magyars while the Lombards were at lunch. The Lombards were utterly routed:
Actually, through Luitprand’s turgid rhetoric there can be detected a strategy that was typical of the Magyars and the other nomadic peoples who invaded Europe and the Near East during the Middle Ages. To lure an enemy far from his base by a retreat, to wear him out in the process, to gain time for rest by fruitless negotiations, to lure the foe into a false sense of confidence, and then to attack at a time and place of their own choosing—these were the stratagems which led to the defeat of Berenger on the Brenta and which European commanders would not learn to counter effectively for another half century (Beeler, p. 203-5).
That it was the Saxon kings Henry I and Otto I who would provide the Magyars with their Waterloo at Riade (933) and Lechfeld (955) seemed unlikely at the end of the ninth century. The Saxons had submitted to Frankish overlordship by the first decade of the ninth century.
As was expected of other subordinate peoples the Saxons had to provide warriors for the Frankish host when called upon by the emperor. It is clear from the records that exists that Saxon warriors were not very well thought of during the ninth century and were used as auxiliaries and skirmishers. On at least two occasions the Saxons joined the Frankish host of Charles the Bald for campaigning against the Bretons. The Bretons fought as light cavalry using hit-and-run tactics and it was very difficult for the heavier and less mobile Franks to bring them to decisive battle. According to Regino of Prum at both battles the Saxons were deployed forward of the main Frankish line. There is reason to belief that in their encounters with the Bretons the Saxons fought dismounted (Leyser, pp. 17-8).
The Saxons also fought their own enemies during the ninth century. To the north, the Saxons had to deal with the Danes, while in the south they fought Slavs, Bavarians and other Germans. In 880 the Saxons suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Danes that cost them two bishops, twelve counts and eighteen royal vassals. In later years the Saxons did better, but with Frisian and Frankish help. Generally, however, the Saxons seemed to have been held in low regard by their Frankish overlords and were sometimes used as military labor. One major shortcoming of Saxon warriors during the ninth century was that they were lightly equipped “Hauberked, well-armed and well-mounted warriors were usually scarce and it was useful to make up the numbers of a host with something less excellent and effective” (Leyser, p. 21). The “something less excellent and effective” during this period was the Saxons. The Carolingian dynasty came to a formal end in Germany in 911. This opening allowed the energetic Henry I to establish his dominance with breathtaking speed.
Prior to Henry’s I truce with the Magyars in 923/4 he was making changes in his military establishment not only to enable it to deal with the Magyars but also those who contested Henry’s claim as king. Henry organized his forces into roughly two parts, the agraii milites and the miles armatus. Particularly in the frontier regions, the agraii milites were used to provide defense of fortifications. For every group of nine men, eight tilled the fields while one remained within the walls, and presumably trained with arms, in order to provide for local defense (Beeler, p. 217-8). There is still an ongoing debate on who these men were and what their legal status was. For the purpose of this paper the answer to these questions are not important. What was important was that Henry I had found a reasonably effective method of defending his realm’s frontier. Henry I also gave convicted criminals the choice of either hanging or going to the most dangerous and exposed march at Merseburg as colonists to both farm and fight off local invaders.
The miles armatus were Henry’s field forces. Henry’s goal was to field a large force of armored and trained warriors who could fight on horseback in order to catch, cut-off, and defeat the Magyars. During the Magyar invasion of 923/4, there were not enough of these warriors with sufficient skill to defeat or drive off the Magyars. Instead, Henry made a nine year truce with them; a truce that included yearly tribute to be paid by Henry to the Magyars. Henry tested his newly created army in the intervening years of the truce against the Slavs. He was able to win a series of victories that gave him and his nobles’ confidence enough to allow the truce to expire in 933. Henry scored a notable victory against the Magyars at Riade in 933 (Contamine pp. 34-5). According to Luitprand both forces fought on horseback at Riade:
Just before the battle at Riade is due to begin, he [Luitprand] has Henry I address his men to give them a piece of advice. On approaching the Hungarians nobody, however fast his horse might be, was to outride his fellows. They should help to cover one another with their shields, receive the first volley of the Magyars’ much-feared arrows and then ride fast to close with their enemy so that he should not have a chance of shooting a second time. The Saxons, then, in Liudprand’s story, formed their acies and did as they had been told so that everything happened according to plan. The Hungarians lost their nerve and fled before they could fire a second arrow
(Leyser, p. 23).
Riade was not a decisive victory because the heavier Saxon horse could not catch up with the faster moving Magyars. Henry I had made a conscious decision to base his field force on heavy cavalry. He must have reasoned that the traditional Saxon reliance of infantry was ineffective against both the Magyars and Slavs. This change in tactics and strategy also required a change in weaponry. From approximately 900 the Saxons adopted a sword designed for both cutting and thrusting as a replacement for the heavier Carolingian model (Leyser, p. 25). Henry’s son Otto I carried on his father’s innovations and decisively defeated the Magyars at Lechfeld.
In 955 Otto had just put down a rebellion in Lotharingia. This was the moment when the Magyars decided to strike again. Their intelligence was good in that Otto was not able to muster many Saxons for the campaign. The Magyars made the mistake of besieging Augsburg which was held by the competent Bishop Udalrich. According to Beeler we are fortunate that the battle on the Lech River outside of Augsburg was well documented. Despite the rebellion, Otto was able to muster 8,000 men for the relief of Augsburg. This force was organized into eight “divisions” of roughly one thousand men each. It is noteworthy that Otto’s entire force traveled and fought on horseback. In order to cut-off the Magyars’ line of retreat Otto approached from the east instead of the north.
After a day of fasting, on 10 August 955 Otto lined up seven of his division to give battle. The Magyars broke off the siege and launched a diversionary attack upon Otto’s force. However, the Magyars sent their main body around the German flank to attack the eighth division made up of Bohemians who were guarding the camp and baggage. The Bohemians broke and fled. This allowed the Magyars to attack Otto’s left flank, held by Swabians, from the rear. In this situation, the leadership of Otto and the training and discipline of his army were illustrated. Although Otto didn’t have any reserves, he was able to quickly redeploy his forces on the right and counterattack. This attack was successful and without an avenue of retreat the Magyars were mercilessly ridden down by Otto’s heavy cavalry (Beeler, pp. 228-231).
As mentioned above the battle of Lechfeld was well documented by the standards of the early Middle Ages. As noted by Victor Davis Hanson, the term “Dark Ages” originally referred to the lack of written records during the period up to the battle of Lechfeld (Hanson, p. 151). This fact represents the greatest frustration in studying the development of Western warfare during the two hundred year span from the battle of Poitiers to the battle of Lechfeld. While it is certain that the Franks under Charles Martel fought dismounted and the Germans under Otto fought as heavy cavalry, drawing broad conclusions based on a handful of records of battlefield tactics is problematical:
Of all the problems facing the student of early medieval warfare, the most intractable is that of finding out what actually happened on the battlefield; here our perennial problem of inadequacy of the sources becomes particularly acute…The sources’ accounts are usually stereotypical; descriptions of battles were very often the occasion for archaic language, literary borrowings and other devices designed to show off the writer’s skill (Halsall, p. 177).
The above explanation is why one should be very careful in drawing generalizations about this period, particularly regarding the issue of the transformation to heavy cavalry. Apparently, as mention above, Lynn White based his thesis on the introduction of the stirrup as of central importance to the development of heavy cavalry and feudalism during the time of Charles Martel on just three primary documents. However, it seems fairly clear that feudalism reached its fruition as a result of Europe’s political fragmentation and after the decline of the Carolingian Empire and Viking invasions.
Technology does not explain why cavalry came to dominate the battlefield from the period of Otto I to the Hundred Years War. Stephan Morillo has provided a compelling argument that Middle Ages were not so much an era of great cavalry as one of bad infantry. As Morillo pointed out in his essay “The ‘Age of Cavalry’ revisited” the Swiss Pike Companies of the early modern period were able to stand up to and defeat heavy cavalry using a weapon that had been available since antiquity. However, to be effective pike armed infantry required great discipline:
The general absence of recognizable pike tactics in early medieval wars was surely not the result of the absence of pikes, for spear carriers made up the quantitative majority of most medieval armies; the absence reflects instead the difficulty of recruiting and training those who were to fight with such simple weapons. Pikeman had to be prepared to sacrifice parts of their formation in order to maintain the integrity of the whole, and any failure on their part usually resulted in the breaking up of the entire force…The most basic purpose of heavily armed and armored cavalry was to break the formations of the enemy’s troops in order to reduce them to a chaotic state (Hall, p. 32, 12).
The training and unit cohesion required for an infantry force to withstand a charge of heavy cavalry were beyond the means of any Western European lord until the fifteenth century. Only a small number of landed elite had the luxury to be able to train full time without the worry of earning their daily bread. The knight devoted his training to mastery of his personal weapons from either horseback or on foot (Showalter, p. 408). The smallholder or peasant could not hope to stand up to such a formidable figure and by the High Middle Ages war had became a vocation by a self conscious elite. The result was the well known orders of medieval society divided into those who pray, those who fight and those who toil.
Much has been made of Charles Martel’s confiscation of church land in order to provide benefices for his loyal retainers. Lynn White based his thesis on this and the introduction of the stirrup into Western Europe to date the beginnings of feudalism and the armored knight from the time of Martel. It is more accurate to state that Martel’s actions were part of the perennial state/church power struggle. Due to the lack of educated subjects the Ottonian rulers turned to the Church to provide for their administrative needs. This conflating of Church and state would lead to the investiture crisis of the eleventh century.
An example of this conflation of Church and state in the tenth century was the figure of Gero. Gero was a warden of the East Saxon March and the founder of the monastic center at Gernrode (Collins, p. 413). As a margrave Gero was expected to provide his milites for local defense and the royal host when called upon (Leyser, p. 29). It was not thought unusual that Gero, a man of God, would also lead men in battle. Gero must have been a trusted member of Otto’s entourage as he also served as archbishop of Cologne from 969 to 976. What is interesting about Gero was that he was also a man of great cultural significance. While archbishop he had a cross carved for the cathedral. This cross is important as an early, if not the first, example of German Expressionism:
There is no precedent for the stark and anything but idealized figure in the Cologne Cathedral, a Christ exhausted by physical pain and torment, chest strained to the limits of endurance, stomach bulging, head slumped forward with eyes closed and mouth very slightly open. It was carved for Gero…and is the earliest known instance of that preoccupation with Christ’s agony which originated in northern Europe and was to become a distinguishing feature of Western Catholic, as opposed to Eastern Orthodox, Christianity (Honour, p. 364).
The Church was an integral part of the military and political organization of the Saxon Empire, not to mention the Ottonian Renaissance. The Ottonians would continue to govern by use of the Church. This state control over the Church would delay the introduction of feudalism into Germany for over a century (Hollister, p. 125).
This essay should demonstrate the dangers of confusing military affairs of the early Middle Ages with the later period beginning with the demise of the Carolingian dynasty, the rise of Saxon power, and the end of foreign attacks. John Lynn makes this mistake by stating “The first style, the feudal army, can be dated roughly from the late eight through the twelfth century” (Lynn, p. 515). Actually, it was the later part of this period that witnessed a decline in “civic militarism” as warfare became the prerogative of the landed elite.
The concepts of both “landed infantry” and “civic militarism” are important aspects of Victor Davis Hanson’s Western Way of War thesis. The transition from an infantry force made up of rustic farmers and small-holders into the highly skilled mounted elite of the High Middle Ages was the result of military, political and economic realities. This view is contrary to that of Lynn White whose thesis maintained that the introduction of new technology was what created the conditions for feudalism. However, the decision by Henry I to create a shock force of heavy cavalry was based upon an evaluation of the type of force required to defeat his enemies. As the battles of Riade and Lechfeld indicate, the Western desire to fight decisive battles was still strong during this period. Henry I judged that only heavy cavalry could provide the decisive victory against the Magyars that he sought. As indicated by Stephan Morillo, the creation of a disciplined and cohesive body of heavy infantry was beyond the economic and organizational capabilities of the kings and lords of this period.
In order to demonstrate the continuity of his thesis Hanson still needs to provide more work on how it applies to the Middle Ages. The obvious objection to his thesis is the replacement of pagan religions with that of Christianity during the later Roman Empire and the conversion to Christianity of peoples who had never been part of the Roman Empire that occurred throughout the medieval period. The creation of chivalry and the “Truce of God” not to mention the Crusades and Charlemagne’s forced conversions demonstrate the deep Christian influence on Western warfare during the Middle Ages.
In his introduction to Carnage and Culture Hanson states that Western military dominance “is ultimately explained by a long-standing Western cultural stance toward rationalism, free inquiry, and the dissemination of knowledge that has its roots in classical antiquity….” However Hanson then continues, “The fall of Rome in some sense meant the spread of the West much farther to the north as Germanic tribes became settled, Christianized, and more Western than ever before” (Hanson, pp. 19, 21. Emphasis added). In order to prove his contention that there is continuity of Western cultural values, and therefore Western warfare, for 2500 years Hanson must demonstrate that Gero was the descendant, at least to some degree, of Greek and Roman thinkers. Answering the question “what has Jerusalem to do with Athens” is obviously a huge undertaking. Hanson, or those who accept his thesis, must make an attempt to demonstrate that Charlemagne and Otto I were the rightful heirs of Alexander and Caesar. Otherwise, Hanson’s thesis falls upon the sword of cultural discontinuity.
References
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Bachrach, Bernard S. “Military Organization in Aquitaine Under the Early Carolingians”
Speculum Vol. 49, No. 1 (Jan, 1974) pp. 1-33
Bachrach, Bernard S. “Charlemagne’s Cavalry: Myth and Reality” Military Affairs
Vol. 47, No. 4 (Dec, 1983) pp. 181-187
Bachrach, Bernard S. (1993) Armies and Politics in the Early Medieval West. Variorum
(Photocopy of essay “Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and
Feudalism” provided by Prof. Michael Bitter, University of Hawaii-Hilo)
Beeler, John. (1971) Warfare in Feudal Europe: 730-1200. Ithaca: Cornell University
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Hanson, Victor Davis. (2002) Carnage and Culture. New York: Anchor Books.
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The Dark Ages are very interesting to me.
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