The Journal of Medieval Military History. Volume I [1] 0851159095, 9780851159096

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THE JOURNAL OF

Medieval Military History Volume I

THE JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL MILITARY HISTORY

Founding Editor Bernard S. Bachrach

Associate Editors Clifford J. Rogers Kelly DeVries

ISSN 1477–545X

THE JOURNAL OF

Medieval Military History Edited by BERNARD S. BACHRACH with CLIFFORD J. ROGERS and KELLY DEVRIES

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2002 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2002 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge ISBN 0 85115 909 5

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Contents

Editor’s Introduction Bernard S. Bachrach 1. The Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’ in the Middle Ages Clifford J. Rogers 2. Battle Seeking: The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy Stephen Morillo 3. Italia – Bavaria – Avaria: The Grand Strategy behind Charlemagne’s Renovatio Imperii in the West Charles R. Bowlus 4. The Composition and Raising of the Armies of Charlemagne John France 5. Some Observations on the Role of the Byzantine Navy in the Success of the First Crusade Bernard S. Bachrach 6. Besieging Bedford: Military Logistics in 1224 Emilie Amt

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7. ‘To aid the Custodian and Council’: Edmund of Langley and the Defense of the Realm, June – July 1399 Douglas Biggs

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8. Flemish Urban Militias against the French Cavalry Armies in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries J.F. Verbruggen, translated by Kelly DeVries

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Editor’s Introduction

Consistent with the tastes of the educated reading public throughout the West, students in American colleges and universities for a very long time have filled and, indeed, have overfilled, classes in military history. Courses dealing with war and its multifaceted influence, however, are few and far between in our institutions of higher education because the work of specialists in military history is not highly regarded by many of our colleagues. On the eve of the Second World War, Sir Charles Oman, the doyen of Anglophone military historians, tried to explain this dissonance and argued with especial attention to the Middle Ages: “Both the medieval monastic chroniclers and the modern liberal historiographers had often no closer notion of the meaning of war than that it involves various horrors and is attended by a lamentable loss of life. Both classes strove to disguise their personal ignorance or dislike of military matters by deprecating their importance and significance in history.”1 Educated citizens, apparently as contrasted to the majority of academics, are painfully aware that throughout the history of Western civilization, war, preparation for war, and the aftermath of war have dominated society. As a result, the informed citizenry of the democratic West have concluded that these topics deserve our concentrated attention. In the medieval West, the focus of this journal, the greatest part of surplus human and material resources was utilized for building and maintaining fortifications such as town walls, castles, and lesser strongholds. In addition, during the Middle Ages, the production of arms and armor, the creation of stud farms for breeding “war” horses, and the construction of roads and bridges, as well as the ongoing maintenance of these infrastructural components of the society and economy were voracious consumers of resources. In social perspective, war provided then as it does today a major road to upward mobility for those who were successful and for their families. Politically, of course, war was then and remains the pursuit of diplomacy by other means. Sir Charles Oman’s insights into the regrettable but perhaps understandable behavior of academics, who had been thoroughly traumatized by the great losses suffered in the First World War, ring true. It might be thought, however, that during the past generation even academics in their tenured ivory towers might

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Charles Oman, On the Writing of History (New York, 1939), pp. 159–160.

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have learned that the ostrich approach to military history is productive neither to understanding nor peace. Indeed, they may have been able to grasp, at least in principle, that recognition of the need to study war does not mean that those who pursue such studies are advocates for war. As historical studies have demonstrated and contemporary affairs in the West affirm, the better one is informed regarding military matters the more cautious one is likely to be in advocating that diplomacy be pursued by other means. In any case, many medievalists are now fully aware of the central importance of res militaris in determining the social and political structure of medieval Europe, and appreciate how great an impact they had on the daily lives of men and women of all classes.2 Even in armies raised to fight open battles (the strategic role of which is discussed below in two articles, by Clifford Rogers and Stephen Morillo), there was plenty of room for contributions by the common people – as we can see in the articles by John France, Douglas Biggs, and J.F. Verbruggen alike. The conduct of siege warfare could place an even greater burden on the peasantry and on urban economies, as Emilie Amt’s study of the siege of Bedford clearly illustrates. And it was of course the common people of the countryside who suffered the most in the devastating raids and chevauchées which formed such a large part of medieval campaigning. Indeed, the study of warfare and martial institutions in the Middle Ages has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years. Prestigious university presses, including Oxford, Yale, California, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Pennsylvania, have brought out titles in our field within just the past three years, while Boydell & Brewer has made it one of their principal specialties. De Re Militari, the Society for Medieval Military History, regularly now sponsors five full panels at the annual International Congress of Medieval Studies, and many more papers in the same area are presented each year at Leeds, at the Battle Conferences, and at other gatherings. Although books and conference papers have, thus, found a reasonable sufficiency of outlets, there has not until now been any scholarly journal devoted to publishing articles in this field. Indeed, although general historical journals like the English Historical Review and the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and military history publications like War in History and The Journal of Military History have made some room for pieces dealing with medieval warfare, military topics have been noticeably scarce on the contents pages of some of the medieval journals, particularly Speculum. Considering the amount of high-quality work being done in this area, the need for a venue specifically dedicated to this topic is evident. The Journal of Medieval Military History, while focused on preparation for war, war, and the aftermath of war in medieval Europe, welcomes studies over a 2 This despite the fact that the field of medieval studies as a whole has taken a distinct turn towards favoring the study of the “marginal,” which by implication denigrates the value of research dealing with phenomena which were actually central to medieval societies. See Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies,” The American Historical Review 103 (1998), 677–704.

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very broad chronological and geographical compass. Chronologically, we will publish studies that deal with the later Roman empire, both East and West, where the research demonstrates either a break with the Middle Ages or continuity from the late antique period into medieval Europe. The later terminus of this journal is the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. Here again connection with medieval period is essential in that we will favor studies that deal with the matter of continuity between the early modern era and its medieval past or demonstrate something that is radically new and marks a sharp or revolutionary break with that past. Geographically, we take all of Europe as our focus and encourage studies that deal with areas such as Central Asia or West Asia in so far as these either have had an impact on Europe or provide a basis for comparative study. In regard to the latter, we also encourage straight-forward comparative studies, e.g. a comparison of medieval English and Japanese naval tactics or strategies. From a technical point of view, we aim to publish only studies which reflect high standards of scholarship, primarily pieces of original research. We recognize, however, that many important articles have been published in languages with which most scholars are unacquainted. Therefore, we will regularly publish in English translation such classics, often with commentary and updating of the research. We do not currently plan to include reviews of individual books (for which we refer our readers to the De Re Militari website, at www. deremilitari.org), but we will sometimes publish historiographical survey articles. The style used in The Journal of Medieval Military History is the same as that used by Speculum, the official organ of the Medieval Academy of America, and authors are advised to submit their manuscripts in this format both in hard copy and on disk. It remains for me, as founding editor of The Journal of Medieval Military History, to thank my two associate editors, Professor Clifford J. Rogers of the United States Military Academy at West Point and Professor Kelly DeVries of Loyola College, Baltimore, Md. for the immense amount of work they have done to see to the launching of the Journal. In this same context, Susan Dykstra-Poel, the representative of our publisher Boydell & Brewer, has been of the greatest help and without her this journal would never have seen the light of day. Finally, it is my pleasure to note that De Re Militari, the Society for Medieval Military History, under the leadership of its three-term president Professor Charles Bowlus, has voted to have The Journal of Medieval Military History serve as its official organ. Bernard S. Bachrach Professor and Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America

1 The Vegetian “Science of Warfare” in the Middle Ages* Clifford J. Rogers

The Vegetian “Science of Warfare”

The scholarly study of medieval warfare began almost as a study of medieval battles. Authors like Sir Charles Oman, A.H. Burne, John Beeler, and even Hans Delbrück, writing mainly from the 1890s to the 1960s, considered the evolution of tactics to be the central and most intriguing aspect of the subject, and devoted the bulk of their works to case studies of individual battles and the campaigns which led up to them. These historians, whose ideas about strategy were largely based on the battle-oriented conceptions of post-Napoleonic military theorists and generals, were aware that full-scale battles were relatively rare in the Middle Ages,1 a fact which they sometimes explained in terms of the incompetence of medieval commanders and the indiscipline of medieval troops, and sometimes attributed to the strength of the defensive in siege warfare, which made it easy for reluctant commanders to avoid battle. These historians were also aware that devastation was very common in medieval warfare, but often saw this as evidence of a lack of strategic purpose, a sign that medieval campaigns were mere “purposeless parades,” or viking-like plundering expeditions motivated mainly by the desire for loot. Despite their recognition of the relative rarity of general engagements, however, they implicitly or even

* My thanks are due to Kelly DeVries, who read a draft of this article and made a number of useful suggestions. 1

H. Delbrück, History of the Art of War: Vol. III, The Middle Ages, tr. W.J. Renfrow, Jr. (Lincoln, NE, 1982), p. 327: “This condition, the great dependence of the commander on the mood and the will of his army [due to lack of formal discipline], also no doubt contributed to the fact that battles were so rare in the medieval wars. Wars were almost interminable, and in many years there were no battles . . .”; C. Oman, History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (London, 1924), 2:52: “the ascendancy of the defensive over the offensive in the matter of siegecraft is the main reason for the fact that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries show comparatively few engagements in the open field when compared with other ages. The weaker side was always tempted to take shelter behind its walls rather than to offer battle.” See also J. France, Victory in the East (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 27–30, on the battle-focus of post-Clausewitzian historians.

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explicitly considered campaigns which did not culminate in open battle to be “uninteresting.” 2 Starting as early as the 1950s with the superb contributions of historians like J.F. Verbruggen and R.C. Smail, scholars began to look at medieval warfare from different perspectives. One group, including people like Warren Hollister and H.J. Hewitt, influenced both by the Annales school and later by the “New Military History” movement, downplayed the importance of battle and instead emphasized document-based institutional military history, rightly arguing that subjects like the recruitment, provisioning, equipment and financing of medieval warfare were far more important for understanding the political, social, and economic structures and the cultures of medieval society than were the details of individual fights.3 Another group, following the lead of Smail, revisited the subject of the conduct of medieval warfare and the competence of medieval generals. These historians also downplayed the importance of battle, but for different reasons. They argued that the rarity of battle in the Middle Ages was not the result of the military incompetence of medieval generals. On the contrary, veteran commanders like Henry II of England – who never fought a single general action in his long reign, though he was described by the contemporary poet Jordan Fantosme as the greatest conqueror since Charlemagne – were intelligent war-leaders, who recognized the inherent wisdom of the battle-averse strategy advocated by the fourth-century military writer Vegetius (whose treatise De re militari was one of the most-copied texts of the Middle Ages).4 Vegetius pointed out that battle was an extremely chancy business, and 2

Oman, History, 2:201: “the most surprising feature of the intermittent periods of war which lie between 1369 and 1396 is that no single pitched battle was fought in them . . . no new military discovery was made, save indeed Du Guesclin’s ingenious if somewhat uninteresting proof that a successful war may be waged without accepting battles in the open”; Delbrück, History, p. 328: “In the war between Henry IV and Rudolf, a certain degree of strategic thought is no doubt visible, but since no great decisive action resulted from it, it does not stimulate our full interest.” Note also C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (London, 1898), p. 557: “The other class of war had been waged against irregular enemies such as the Welsh and Irish, who lurked in hills or bogs, generally refused battle, and were only formidable when they were executing a surprise or an ambuscade. Campaigns against them had been numerous, but had affected the English art of war no more than Soudanese or Ashantee expeditions affect the military science of to-day.” [Note: all other citations to Oman are to the 1924 edition.] 3 E.g. see W. Hollister, Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions on the Eve of the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1962); H.J. Hewitt, The Organization of War Under Edward III, 1338–62 (Manchester, 1966); P. Contamine, Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge. Etudes sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494 (Paris, 1972). A related trend was the study of the effects of war and military organization on social history; e.g. see J. Barnie, War in Medieval English Society: Social Values in the Hundred Years War 1337–99 (Ithaca, NY, 1974), or more recently, N. Wright, Knights and Peasants. The Hundred Years War in the Countryside (Woodbridge, 1998). Works like M.H. Keen’s Chivalry (New Haven, 1984) and The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1965), or F.H. Russell’s Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1975), could also be considered part of this development. 4 Its influence was also greatly heightened by the frequency with which Vegetius’ ideas, and even words, were incorporated into other medieval treatises, including several exemplars of the

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that more certain victories could be won by attacking an enemy’s logistics, for “hunger is more terrible than the sword,” and, therefore, “the main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions for yourself and to destroy the enemy by famine.” This school of thought concerning the relative unimportance of battle in medieval strategy was brought to its apogee in a series of brilliant articles by John Gillingham, particularly in his studies “Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages” and “William the Bastard at War.”5 What might therefore be called the “Gillingham paradigm”6 has now, to borrow the words of one of its adherents, Matthew Strickland, from his fine recent book entitled War and Chivalry, become “so commonplace that it may safely be said to have moved from revisionism to orthodoxy.”7 My own views differ somewhat from this “new orthodoxy,”8 but before I get to that subject, let me adumbrate

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“Mirrors of Princes” genre, Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas, Christine di Pisan’s Livre des faits d’armes et de chevalerie, etc. See P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages, tr. M. Jones (Oxford, 1987), pp. 210–11. Both reprinted in Matthew Strickland’s valuable collection, Anglo-Norman Warfare (Woodbridge, 1992). Gillingham writes that “I am doing no more [in “Richard I and the Science of Warfare”] than transferring to a wider stage many of the insights contained in R.C. Smail’s Crusading Warfare” (“Richard I and the Science of War,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 195) and that might suggest that a better name for this school of thought would be the “Smail paradigm.” There are, however, significant difference between Smail’s thought and Gillingham’s. Most significantly for this paper, Gillingham goes substantially further in presenting medieval strategy as generally battle-averse; Smail is more sensitive to the differing perspectives of attacker and defender. Crusading Warfare, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, 1995), p. 138. For other adherents of the Gillingham paradigm, see M. Strickland, War and Chivalry (Cambridge, 1996), p. 43n: “the majority of commanders were anxious to avoid pitched battle whenever possible, due to the enormous strategic, political and physical risks which it entailed”; p. 59: “Most commanders eschewed pitched battle wherever possible, even if they possessed superior numbers. Not only were the military and political consequences of defeat potentially catastrophic, but the difficulties of communications once troops were committed, the imponderables of morale and enemy resistance, the chance death of a leader that might bring disaster, all conspired to make the final outcome uncertain and a matter of divine judgment.”; Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. xx; R. Mortimer, Angevin England, 1154–1258 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 24–5. Similarly, J. Bradbury (“Battles in England and Normandy,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 184) writes: “Wise commanders therefore avoided battle whenever possible. . . . Battle was a last resort, to be avoided unless victory seemed assured.” Contamine, War, p. 219: “Medieval strategy does indeed appear to have been dominated by two general principles: fear of the pitched battle, of the confrontation in open country, and what one could call the ‘siege mentality’, in other words ‘an automatic reaction’ which consisted in replying to an attack by shutting oneself up in the most easily defensible strongholds of the country.” S. Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings (Woodbridge, 1994), p. 2: “Battles in medieval warfare were rare events. Ravaging and plundering the land, building and besieging castles, and indeed actively avoiding battles were the normal, everyday activities of war, activities punctuated only in unusual and almost accidental circumstances by set piece engagements. There were good reasons for the battle-shy nature of medieval war . . . medieval leaders avoided battle . . .” [Emphasis added.] War and Chivalry, p. 43. M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages. The English Experience (New Haven, 1996), p. 11: “the new orthodoxy is that medieval commanders sought to avoid battle wherever

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more fully what the currently prevailing paradigm says about battle and strategy in medieval warfare. Battle, argues Gillingham, was rare because it was risky,9 and because, in an age when the landscape was dominated by a vast number of castles and other minor fortifications, and when the balance between offense and defense in siege warfare was firmly tilted in favor of the latter, the benefits to be gained by a battlefield victory were unusually limited.10 As Stephen Morillo, another adherent to this school of thought, puts it: “The riskiness of battle stood out as perhaps its most prominent characteristic for those who had to engage in combat. . . . It was for this reason, as well as because it furthered the aims of strategy only indirectly, that battle was a last resort.”11 Even if an enemy army was defeated in the field, the survivors could simply retreat into their castles and other fortresses, leaving the victor facing the same Sisyphean task of reducing them one by one which he would have faced had there been no battle. The winner of the engagement could, thus, harvest the fruits of his battlefield victory only slowly and at great expense – and only if he could keep his army together long enough to do so in the face of the almost inevitable financial and logistical difficulties posed by such a course of methodical conquest, despite lacking the large standing forces (or the large regular tax revenues to pay them) which had been available to Roman leaders.12 In the words of the early-fourteenth-century

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possible, seeking instead to wear down their opponents by waging wars of devastation.” There has already been some undermining of this orthodoxy, however. I made the case for Edward III’s strategy as battle-seeking in the 1994 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society; Prestwich himself wisely adds: “Yet the case should not be overstated. . . . There is no doubt that battle was sought on many occasions, and its part in the structure of medieval warfare should not be dismissed, as some recent commentators have tended to do.” John France in his recent textbook makes a similar comment. Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades (Ithaca, 1999), p. 150. “Richard I,” p. 198: “Most campaigns did not end in battle largely because both commanders were reluctant to risk battle.” Ibid., p. 199: “Battle was a desperately chancy business. A few minutes of confusion or panic and the patient work of months or years might be undone. Moreover although comparatively few knights were actually killed in battle, the king or prince who committed his cause to battle was also putting himself in jeopardy since it was always clear that the surest way to win a battle was to kill or capture the opposing commander.” “William the Bastard at War,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 148; p. 149: “the rewards [of battle] might be limited while the risks were always terrible.” “Richard I,” p. 199: “From the attacker’s point of view if the defender’s strongpoints were still able to offer prolonged resistance, allowing the defender time to re-organise and raise fresh troops, then victory in battle would have achieved little. From the defenders’ point of view if he could force the enemy to withdraw without battle then he would have achieved his aim with relatively little risk.” Ibid., pp. 206–7: “victory in battle normally offered rewards sufficient to offset the risks involved only in those societies where the science of fortification was relatively poorly developed. But, as is well known, throughout most of the European Middle Ages this science was a highly developed one. . . . In European medieval history as a whole battles are rare and making war did not normally involve seeking battle.” Warfare, p. 149, and similarly p. 136; but cf. p. 99, which is more nuanced. Hans Delbrück made a clear statement of this idea as early as 1923: because of changes in castlebuilding, “the power of the defense grew vis-à-vis offense. It became easy for a weaker

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writer Pierre Dubois, “A castle can hardly be taken within a year, and even if it does fall, it means more expenses for the king’s purse and for his subjects than the conquest is worth.”13 Reinforcing the trend towards avoidance of battle was the fact that, while victories provided only limited gains, battlefield defeats could be utterly disastrous,14 as they were, for example, for both Harald Hardrada and Harold Godwineson in 1066. Since chance, as Vegetius emphasized, has an extraordinarily great role in the outcome of battle, calamity was a distinct possibility whenever a general took the unwise risk of accepting battle on anything like even terms. As Vegetius said, “Every plan, therefore, is to be considered, every expedient tried and every method employed before matters are brought to this last extremity. Good officers decline general engagements where the danger is common.” And the danger was almost always common, for in open battle “fortune often has a greater share than valor.”15 Furthermore, battle was not only unprofitable and excessively risky, it was also unnecessary.16 A better tool was available for compelling an enemy to do one’s will, namely the chevauchée or “war-ride.”17 As Gillingham explained in yet another important article, “War and Chivalry in the History of William the Marshal,” the basic idea here was, while avoiding battle, to ride into your enemy’s land without warning – or better yet after having deceived him into expecting an attack elsewhere – and lay it waste, burning barns, houses and towns, demolishing mills, staving in wine-casks, and basically stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down, and burning everything that was.18 The strategic use of the chevauchée, which Gillingham described based on the thirteenthcentury example of William the Marshal, had already been thoroughly analyzed by historians of the Hundred Years War, like H.J. Hewitt, Kenneth Fowler, and Christopher Allmand. As they have pointed out, such a devastating mounted

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force to avoid a decisive battle, whereas it was now more difficult for the stronger opponent, even if he won a victory, to benefit from it. For besieging every individual city and castle was hard work, and there were countless numbers of them.” History, p. 324; cf. also p. 326. P. Dubois, Summaria brevis et compendiosa doctrina felicis expedicionis et abreviacionis guerrarum ac litum regni Francorum, ed. Hellmut Kämpf (Leipzig, 1936), p. 3; translation from J.F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages. From the Eighth Century to 1340, tr. S. Willard and R.W. Southern, second English edition (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 306. Note also William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, ed. Edmund King, tr. K.R. Potter (Oxford, 1998), pp. 40–1, and the analysis of Oman, History, 2:20–1, 52–3. “William the Bastard,” p. 148: “Even victory in battle might, in other words, bring only limited rewards, whereas there was always the possibility that defeat might be disastrous.” Flavius Renatus Vegetius, De re militari, in Ammien Marcellin, Jordanès, Végège, Modestus, avec la traduction en français, ed. [C.] Nisard (Paris, 1878), III.9, 26, pp. 698–9, 714; trans. from T.R. Phillips, ed., Roots of Strategy (Harrisburg, 1985), pp. 143, 172. Smail, Crusading Warfare, p. 139: “the rewards of victory could be won by other means which did not involve the penalties of defeat”; Gillingham, “Richard I,” p. 199; “William the Bastard,” pp. 149–51. Gillingham, “Richard I,” pp. 199–201. “War and Chivalry,” pp. 255–6, 258, 260.

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raid could accomplish a great deal “without having recourse to the near-ultimate sanction of a pitched battle”:19 it could undermine the enemy’s political support by underlining his inability to protect his dependents, secure plunder for the benefit of the invader and his soldiers, and most importantly, wreck the enemy’s economic resources, thus hamstringing him – for money, as medieval people well knew, is the sinews of war.20 This last aspect of the chevauchée is best illustrated by a campaign dispatch sent from the Black Prince’s army to the Treasurer of England in 1355: . . . the countryside and towns which have been destroyed in this chevauchée produced more revenue for the King of France in aid of his wars than half his kingdom . . . as I could prove from authentic documents found in various towns in the tax-collectors’ houses. For Carcassonne and Limoux, which is as large as Carcassonne, and two other towns near there, produce for the King of France each year the wages of a thousand men-at-arms and 100,000 old crowns towards the costs of the war. According to the records which we found, the towns around Toulouse, Carcassonne and Narbonne which we destroyed, together with Narbonne itself, produced each year, over and above this, 400,000 old crowns as war subsidies; and the citizens of the larger towns and other inhabitants, who should know about such matters, have told us this.21

Note the writer’s explicit linkage between destruction, tax revenues eliminated, and soldiers’ wages, and note also the clear strategic purpose revealed by the fact that the English raiders took the time to collect tax documents and to have them confirmed by influential citizens. When the enemy could thus be crippled by attacking his economic infrastructure in a way that simultaneously brought rich plunder to army and commander alike, why should a general take the much riskier course of seeking battle, especially considering that, as we have seen, the rewards of a battlefield victory were limited by the superiority of the defensive in the siege warfare of the era? Gillingham’s answer is worth quoting. The typical medieval commander, he

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C.T. Allmand, “The War and the Non-Combatant,” in Kenneth Fowler, ed., The Hundred Years War (London, 1971), p. 166. 20 See the citations in Rogers, “Edward III,” p. 84, particularly C. Allmand, The Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 54–5: “Was an army’s main aim, then, not to draw the enemy to battle? The chevauchée may have been seen as a challenge to an enemy’s pride and ability to defend his territory, but it is doubtful whether the leader of a chevauchée, often at the head of but a few thousand men, and needing to make the expedition profitable through the taking of booty and prisoners, was seeking battle. In fact, the opposite was nearer the case. . . . rather than seek battle, it was better to avoid it. . . .” For an earlier period, see Morillo, Warfare, pp. 98–102 (and note the absence of “provocation to battle” among the reasons he gives for ravaging). Money: M. Prestwich, “War and Finance,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 59; cf. M. Bennett, “Wace and Warfare,” ibid., p. 240; Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, tr. E.A.S. Dawes (London, 1928), p. 42. 21 C.J. Rogers, ed., The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 154–5.

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suggests, if asked under what circumstances one should give battle, would reply “in accord with the advice given in . . . Vegetius . . .:” Don’t. Well, you might occasionally, if you heavily outnumbered your enemy, if their morale was poor, their supplies short, if they were tired and poorly led, then in these circumstances you might, but otherwise, no. Normally battle was the last resort.22

Stephen Morillo makes the same point equally well, in reference to AngloNorman warfare: fighting battles was not a primary goal nor even a frequent necessity. The place of battle as a tool of warfare paralleled the place of warfare as a tool of policy: it was a risky last resort, to be used only when no other tool would serve, or at best a course of action to be forced on an inferior enemy army by surprise.23

This case has been argued so persuasively that historians have generally accepted the conclusion that, to quote Strickland, “the majority of [medieval] commanders were anxious to avoid pitched battle whenever possible.”24 This new orthodoxy, however, is fundamentally flawed. The remainder of this article will highlight the problems with the Gillingham paradigm, and offer a more balanced formulation of the strategic value of battle in medieval warfare. I initially became skeptical of the idea that medieval generals normally avoided battle as I examined a particular set of campaigns – the English expeditions into 22

“Richard I,” p. 198. Actually this overstates the degree of Vegetius’ battle-aversion somewhat. The Roman was aware that “in the decision of a pitched battle consists the fulness of victory,” (III.11) and even his famous dictum that “Good officers never engage in general actions unless induced by opportunity or obliged by necessity” (III.28) implies that in those quite broad circumstances, skilled generals may seek battle. De re militari, pp. 702, 716; translation from Roots of Strategy, pp. 150, 174. Furthermore, Vegetius held that one of the most important determinations a general had to make was whether, in a given situation, “it is better to protract the war or bring it to a rapid conclusion [by battle].” If a general’s troops are well prepared, he should not hesitate to seize a favorable opportunity for open battle. If on weighing the strengths of the two sides “he finds himself superior in many particulars, he should initiate the battle without delay [opportunum sibi ne differat inire conflictum].” De re militari, III.9; pp. 699, 701. Note that it will often, even usually, be the case that the side taking the offensive will be the stronger one, and so the attacker, following Vegetius’ advice, will often be eager for battle. 23 Warfare, p. 110. 24 Strickland, War and Chivalry, p. 43. For a more balanced view, see Verbruggen, Art of Warfare, p. 318, and France, Western Warfare, p. 178. An interesting side-effect of this belief has been the increasing acceptance of the idea that infantry, rather than cavalry, was the most important element of high-medieval armies, since battle (the cavalry’s forté), was less significant than sieges, where the infantry did the work, and to which cavalry made virtually no contribution. This is a misapprehension, however, which fails to give due weight to the role of cavalry in foraging and ravaging operations, which were crucial to medieval strategy both in their own right and also as components of campaigns aimed at battle or siege.

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Scotland and France during the reign of Edward III (1327–1377). Although the great chevauchées of this warrior-king and his famous son the Black Prince have generally been considered by historians as prime examples of the battleavoiding tendencies of medieval commanders – for battles like Crécy and Poitiers, it was argued, came only when poor generalship by the English commanders allowed their armies to be chased down and compelled to fight against their will – my own research convinced me that, on the contrary, Edward and his sons consistently sought out battle with their enemies. For modern historians, this was often obscured by the fact that the English had to maneuver carefully to make sure that they could not be cut off from their bases and starved into submission without battle, which was a major risk since their tactical system demanded a defensive rather than an offensive stance on the battlefield, at least when faced with the much-superior numbers of the French royal army. The maneuvers made by the Plantagenets to ensure that, when the fighting came, they would enjoy the powerful advantage of the tactical defense often seemed to historians to be simple retreats, aimed at avoiding battle rather than seeking favorable conditions under which to fight. When the movements of the armies were more carefully studied, however, it became evident that what Edward III and the Black Prince themselves said in their letters (namely that their strategy in virtually every campaign they fought aimed “to make an end to the war by battle”) was indeed the truth rather than a propagandistic distortion or part of a campaign of deception.25 Having observed that at least some medieval commanders did view battle as one of the main weapons in their strategic arsenals, I began to re-think the whole argument about the reasons for avoiding battle in the Middle Ages. It occurred to me that there was an inherent flaw in the argument of the Gillingham school. Vegetius himself calls it the first rule of warfare that “all that is profitable to you is noxious and unprofitable to your adversary, and all that is helpful to him is harmful to you,” and that therefore one should do whatever one’s enemy would wish one not to do.26 In other words, it is generally not possible for the same action to be beneficial to both belligerents. Thus, if it is to one side’s advantage that no battle take place, it must generally be in the other side’s interest that a battle should take place. If one commander wishes to avoid battle, we would expect his enemy to try to seek it, barring special circumstances. 25

On these campaigns, and on the past misinterpretations of them, see my War Cruel and Sharp: English Strategy under Edward III, 1327–1360 (Woodbridge, 2000), or “Edward III and the Dialectics of Strategy, 1327–1360,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 4 (1994), pp. 83–102 (reprinted in Wars of Edward III). The quotation is from a letter of Edward III, describing his plans for the 1346 Crécy campaign. 26 “All that is profitable to the is noyous & vnprofitable to thin aduersarie, and all that is helpliche to him is vnhelpliche to the. Therefore do no thing that him lustith to be ydoo ne leue nothing vndo that he wolde were vndoon . . .” From The Earliest English Translation of Vegetius’ De re militari, ed. G. Lester (Heidelberg, 1988), p. 155; for the Latin see De re militari III.28, p. 714. Note also Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, 1976), I, i, 13 (p. 82), and Napoleon’s maxim no. 16, in Roots of Strategy, p. 412.

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An analogous idea applies to Gillingham’s argument that battle was unprofitable for the victor, but could be disastrous for the loser. In war, what could be more profitable for the victor than to inflict a disaster on the vanquished? Conversely, how “disastrous” can a battle be for the loser if the winner gains nothing much by doing his tactical success? Thus, battle cannot be, on general principle, both unprofitable for the winning side and disastrous for the defeated party. Which, then, is it? Unprofitable for both, or risky but potentially profitable for both? At first glance, Gillingham’s arguments concerning the limited gains to be won by victory in battle (due to the prevalence of castles controlling the countryside) seem to make a strong case in favor of the idea that battles were avoided because they could not accomplish much.27 There are many examples of medieval defenders who defeated invading armies without risk by putting strong garrisons in all endangered fortifications, shadowing the enemy, cutting off his supply lines, ambushing his foragers, and emptying out the land in front of his advance so that he could not live by plundering. Such a Fabian or Vegetian strategy was used to stymie the English in France in 1339–40 and in the 1370s, and also proved the ruin of the Anglo-Portuguese invasion of Castile in the 1380s. It was also the traditional response of the Scots to invasions by their stronger southern neighbors, implemented successfully for example during the “Burnt Candlemas” of 1356, and the normal style of warfare for the knights of the Crusader kingdoms in Outremer.28 It is important to emphasize, however, that all those successes for the Vegetian approach to warfare were scored by the side on the strategic defensive (as the Roman Empire itself was when Vegetius was writing), and that these defenders were successful precisely because they avoided general engagements, thereby avoiding the disaster of defeat in battle and denying to the enemy the potential profit of a victory. What “profit of victory?”, one might ask. Didn’t we just establish that the extensive fortification of the countryside and the cities alike in medieval Europe meant that there was little profit to be gained by a battlefield victory, since even after winning a general engagement the invader would be faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of reducing dozens of strongholds one by one? Well, that may have been true in some cases, but in many others it was not. One obvious and important exception was that in areas of medieval Europe where the defenders did not have numerous and strong fortifications to shelter

27

Jonathan Sumption, for example, accepts the idea of “the essential unimportance of battles as a means of achieving anything of long-term significance.” The Hundred Years War, vol. II: Trial by Fire (London, 2000), p. 11. 28 And see “Gud King Robert’s testiment,” quoted in Oman, History, 2:99. For the Crusader States, see Smail’s brilliant analysis, in Crusading Warfare, pp. 138–56. For 1339–40 and 1356, see War Cruel and Sharp. For the 1370s-80s, see Froissart, Oeuvres, 12:139–40, 304–5; 4:424; 9:278.

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behind, the Vegetian defensive strategy had limited effectiveness.29 The classic example, noted for example by Gillingham, is England in 1066, which had virtually no castles, and few strongly fortified towns. Thus it was, as William of Poitiers says, possible for William I to conquer “all the cities of the English in a single day, between the third hour and the evening.”30 It is also of the greatest importance to remember that, as the outstanding fourteenth-century commander Duke Henry of Lancaster observed, no castle can be stronger than the will of its defenders, “as has often been made clear in the wars.”31 Regardless of how powerfully fortified a region might be, it could rapidly be conquered by an army which held the field, if the people inside the fortifications were not strongly motivated to resist. Thus, for example, after Roger Flor’s Catalan Company eagerly sought out and defeated in two battles the Turks who had recently occupied western Anatolia, almost instantly they had “completely conquered” the region, “for they had swept away the Turks in such wise that hardly one dared show himself in all the kingdom.”32 Victory in battle in this case was the equivalent of victory in war; no sieges were needed to complete the conquest, for the mostly Christian and recently Byzantine inhabitants of the region had no interest in defending their fortified towns and cities on behalf of their Turkish oppressors.33 That was clearly an exceptional circumstance, but it seems that even elsewhere in the late-Byzantine empire victory in battle could equate to victory in war – at least Ramón Muntaner, the veteran captain who chronicled the epic of the Catalan Company, certainly thought so. He claimed, with some exaggeration, that after the Company’s victory at Apros “from that hour all [the Byzantine Empire] was conquered[,] and we had so put fear into their hearts, that we could not shout ‘Franks’ but they were at once prepared to flee.” Similarly, after Kephissos in 1311, Muntaner – this time quite accurately – states that the Company “had won the battle and all the Duchy of Athens . . . and so they divided amongst themselves the city of Thebes and all the towns and castles of the Duchy and gave the ladies as wives to the men of the Company, to each according to his importance, and to some they gave so distinguished a lady that he was not worthy to hold her bowl to wash her hands.” It is hard to imagine

29 30

31

32 33

Though difficult, mountainous, heavily forested terrain could substitute for fortifications in facilitating a Vegetian defense, e.g. in Scotland or Castile. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. and tr. R.H.C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), p. 143, and see p. 171. William contrasts this with the slow conquest of Troy by the Hellenes, and with the many slow sieges of the Romans. “Nul forteresce est si forte, qi garder ne le siet ne ne voelt, perdre la lui estut, sicom il est bien sovent apparant en ces guerres.” Le livre de seyntz medicines, quoted in W. Wetherbee, “Chivalry under Siege in Ricardian Romance,” in The Medieval City under Siege, ed. Ivy A. Corfis and Michael Wolfe (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 209n. Ramón Muntaner, Chronicle, tr. Lady Goodenough. 2 vols. Hakluyt Society, 2nd ser., nos. 47, 50 (London, 1920–21), 2:503, 504. The soldiers of the First Crusade had a similar experience in the same area. See France, Victory, ch. 6.

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a battle more decisive than that, but the thirteenth-century battle of Mahon in Minorca probably qualifies. After the King of Aragon sought and won that battle against the Moslem ruler of the island, he “had all the women and children taken, and the men who had remained alive, of whom there were very few, for those in the battle had died,” sold their persons and their goods at auction, and resettled the island with his own subjects.34 In each of these cases, though for varying reasons, the theoretical ability of each small fortified place to hinder or resist the onslaught of the victorious invaders did not prove very significant. In practice, even a heavily-fortified region could be expected to successfully resist an attempt at conquest only if (1) there were enough troops to man the defenses of the threatened strongpoints; (2) the garrisons were sufficiently motivated to bear the risks and costs of making resistance; and (3) the defending side could, in addition to garrisoning besieged places, maintain a substantial field force. The field force need not be comparable in strength to the besieging army, but it had be strong enough to prevent the invaders from dispersing; if it could do that, it could force the aggressors to tackle the forts one at a time, and could hope to win an ultimate victory by wrecking the invading force’s logistics.35 Furthermore, the existence of a field force was crucial to maintaining the morale of encircled garrisons, for if they had no hope of relief, they could not be expected to hold out to the bitter end.36 The defender whose army had been destroyed in battle might still, the day after the engagement, hold the castles which controlled his lands, but not be able to keep them for long, since he would find it difficult to persuade his subjects to put up all the resistance they were able to make. So it is quite clear that battlefield victory could indeed bring major strategic gains to the winner,37 and could make possible outcomes which would have been quite impossible without a general engagement – such as the Crusaders’ creation of new principalities in 1097–9, which certainly could never have been effected without the battles of Nicaea, Dorylaeum, Antioch, and Ascalon. A failed attempt to defeat an invader’s army – like Dupplin Moor, Poitiers, or Agincourt – could open the door for the victor to secure even the most ambitious political aims, like Edward Balliol’s coronation at Scone in 1332, like the English occupation of a third of France after the treaty of Brétigny in 1360, or like Henry V’s conquest of Normandy and the Treaty of Troyes between 1415 34 35

Muntaner, Chronicle, 2:413–17. A Vegetian defensive strategy aiming at the logistical defeat of an invader was of course easier to implement in winter, when it was more difficult for the invader to supply himself, and so defending commanders were significantly less likely to risk battle in the winter than, especially, just before the harvest. 36 There are in the chronicles an infinite number of variations on the phase, “the garrison, not seeing any hope of relief, treated for surrender.” 37 For two more examples among many, Louvain in 1357 and Auray in 1364, see Jean de Noyal, “Fragments inédits de la Chronique de Jean de Noyal, abbé de Saint-Vincent de Laon (XIVe siècle),” ed. A. Molinier (Annuaire-bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France, 1883), pp. 256, 264.

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and 1420.38 If an invader’s success on the battlefield could make conquests possible, it is equally true that a defender could put a decisive stop to an invasion by winning a major combat, as Harold Godwineson did at Stamford Bridge, as the English did at the Standard in 1138 and at Neville’s Cross in 1346, as Emperor Rudolf did at the Marchfeld in 1278, as the Scots did at Bannockburn in 1314, the Swiss did at Morgarten the following year, the Frisians did at Staveren in 1345, and the Portuguese did at Aljubarrota in 1385. Lisaeus, the seneschal of Geoffrey Martel, was thus not being unreasonable when he advised his lord to fight with an approaching enemy army. “Battles do not last long,” he observed, “but the victors secure the greatest possible gains . . . battles put peoples and cities under subjection to you, and those who are defeated in battle dissipate before their enemies like smoke.”39 This is simply the converse of Vegetius’ warning that “an open battle is decided in two or three hours, after which all the hopes of the defeated side fall away and are lost.”40 Thus it is clear that battle could well be as decisive in the Middle Ages as in other periods, which disposes of the idea that medieval battles were rare because they were unprofitable for the victors.41 Does this, then, bring us back to the conclusion – precisely because so much was at stake in battle, because battle was so risky – that medieval commanders generally avoided it because they did not wish to accept such risks? I do not think so. Battle has been risky for 38

Stephen Morillo (p. 27, below) objects that Poitiers was not a “decisive” victory, in that it did not cause the French to lose the war. Contemporaries disagreed, however (see War Cruel and Sharp, p. 419, note 192, and also pp. 384–6). Morillo’s view rests on the retrospective idea that the fighting which began in 1369, after nine years of peace, was a resumption of the old war rather than the outbreak of a new one. This is logically similar to arguing that the Western Front offensive of 1918 was not decisive because the Germans failed to fully carry out the Treaty of Versailles and launched another bid for world domination in 1939. Similarly, the fact that the control over most of Scotland which Balliol established after Dupplin was only temporary does not change the fact that because of the battle he did quickly win the submission of most of the realm. 39 The Latin text, from a chronicle of the counts of Anjou, is quoted in Delbrück, History, p. 329. 40 De re militari, III.9, pp. 698–9: “Sed conflictus publicus duarum vel trium horarum certamine diffinitur: postquam partis ejus, quae superata fuerit, spes omnes intercidunt.” 41 It is worth noting Norman Housley’s observation concerning the engagements at Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), Muret (1213), and Bouvines (1214): “it would be hard to find another example in European history of three battles, fought in consecutive years in different theaters of operation, which were so decisive in their impact.” Norman Housley, “European Warfare, c. 1200–1320,” in M. Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford, 1999), p. 118. Stephen Morillo (below, p. 27), says “of course, the decisiveness of medieval battle is not really at issue.” Perhaps there is no dispute that general engagements were sometimes decisive in the Middle Ages (though cf. the quotation from Jonathan Sumption, note 27, above); the question is whether it was exceptional or normal for a medieval battle to be strategically decisive. E.g. see Gillingham, “Richard I,” p. 199: “the fact that some victories in battle brought decisive gains – and these, of course, are the famous battles – should not lead us into assuming that most victories did,” and also the quotations from the same article in note 10, above. Indeed, Morillo himself, as already quoted above (p. 4), claims that battlefield victories “furthered the aims of strategy only indirectly,” which is hardly consistent with their being truly decisive.

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commanders in all ages, but human nature being what it is, there has never been a shortage of powerful people willing to risk much in hope of gaining much. That still leaves us, however, with the need to explain the apparently extraordinary rarity of general engagements in the frequent warfare of the high Middle Ages, as noted by Gillingham, among others.42 He observes, for example, that the famous warrior Richard I of England conducted military campaigns in twenty-five or twenty-six out of the twenty-seven years between 1173 and his death (having been imprisoned the one year when he definitely was not campaigning), yet in all that time he fought only two or three battles, of which only one took place in the West.43 It seems that William the Conqueror, similarly, participated in only one battle over the twenty years of frequent campaigning before 1066.44 Henry II, ruler of England and half of France, was involved in a great deal of warfare in his fifty-five years, but never once fought in a major battle.45 Isn’t this prima facie evidence that medieval generals usually avoided battle? No. The rarity of battle in these instances – like the absence of a battle in any of Edward III’s campaigns of 1327, 1334, 1335, 1339, 1340, 1347, and 1359–60 – was usually because one side did want a battle on a fair field, but the other did not, and was able to avoid it. Certainly there were some campaigns in which neither side wanted a battle, but, contrary to the current orthodoxy, these were probably even less common than campaigns in which both sides were seeking battle. That leads us to two more questions. First, the relative infrequency of battle in the Middle Ages indicates that the side that wished to avoid battle was successful more often than the side that sought battle. Why was this true in medieval campaigns when, in more recent times, the weaker side has usually not been able to avoid battle once campaigning began (except in the case of guerrilla insurgencies)? Second, under what circumstances did this typical pattern (of one side seeking battle while the other avoided it) not apply? In other words, under what circumstances was a battle most likely to occur? Why might both sides be seeking battle at the same time? Let us begin to explore these questions with an observation: normally the side which had what Clausewitz called a “positive aim” (that is, the side which was not satisfied with the status quo, which wanted to effect a change, such as the conquest of a territory) was eager for battle.46 The reason is simple: “battles,” to 42 43 44

Cf. France, Western Warfare, p. 150. “Richard I,” pp. 196–7. “William the Bastard,” p. 145. It should be noted, however, that this conclusion rests on Gillingham’s willingness to downgrade Varaville (1057) from a “battle” to a mere “engagement.” It is also worth noting that William fought at least two battles after Hastings: York in 1069 and Gerberoi in 1079. 45 “Richard I,” p. 197. 46 Thus, as Peter IV of Aragon observed, in the fourteenth century the English usually sought battle, because that was their way of “crushing” their enemies and securing their aims. Quoted in Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 533.

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quote Lisaeus again, “put peoples and cities under subjection to you” if you win them. Thus, someone who wanted to conquer peoples and cities would often want a battle, while the person who already controlled those peoples and cities would want to avoid giving the enemy the opportunity to subjugate them. The advantages of the defense in siege warfare were so substantial that the side which could win by simply relying on the Vegetian strategy of harassment and defense behind fortifications would often choose to do so, rather than surrendering the advantages of the defense. Why couldn’t the side that wanted battle force a fight on the side that wanted to avoid battle? Well, technically, it usually could, but only if the attacker were willing to assault the defender in a place chosen by the latter – which place might well be behind a city’s walls.47 Unless the disparity of forces was extraordinarily great, however, even a very small force, fighting from behind good walls, could drive away with loss an entire attacking army.48 Even if the defenders chose not to shelter behind stone walls, they might be expected to choose a position where the terrain gave them substantial advantages. The Scots who raided into England in 1327, for example, wound up taking a very strong position on some hills overlooking the river Wear, from which the English could not attempt to dislodge them without suffering a disaster, then sent a message to the young Edward III that “they had burnt and ravaged his kingdom, and if it displeased him, he might come and amend it, for they would tarry there as long as they liked.” Edward, in turn, took up a position for the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333 “where a single man might defeat three” because of the steep final approach.49 Choice of the terrain was not the only advantage that the defender had, especially in infantry battles. Another key factor was that the side taking the tactical offensive almost inevitably suffered from exhaustion and disruption during its advance, so that by the time it struck the defenders’ array its own formation would be starting to collapse. That meant defeat, for an army badly ordered was a terribly vulnerable army. Thus Geoffrey of Monmouth’s observation that “the side that stands firm in the first assault, achieves victory in the end”; thus Jean de Bueil’s admonition, centuries later, that “whenever men on foot make a frontal attack on their enemies, those who march lose, and those who stay in place and hold steady, win.”50 47

Cf. Malmesbury, Historia novella, pp. 127–9: “the nobility of the nobles of the empress’s party . . . mustered their forces at Wallingford with the intention of attacking the king if he would risk a fight in the open field. But it was not their plan to assail him within the city, which the earl of Gloucester had so strongly fortified with earthworks, that it seemed impregnable . . .” 48 There are any number of examples of this, e.g. in the various chronicles of the war between Stephen and Matilda, or in Fantosme. 49 See War Cruel and Sharp, chs. 2 and 4. 50 Monmouth: Bradbury, “Battles,” in Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 193. Jean de Bueil, and general discussion: see C.J. Rogers, “The Offensive/Defensive in Medieval Strategy,” in From Crécy to Mohács: Warfare in the Late Middle Ages (1346–1526). Acta of the XXIInd Colloquium of the International Commission of Military History (Vienna, 1996) (Vienna, 1997), 158–71.

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The consequence of this is that it was common in medieval warfare for the side which most eagerly wished to fight a battle to be given the opportunity to do so by its adversary, but only under cripplingly disadvantageous tactical circumstances. A corollary of that observation is that it was quite common in medieval warfare that both sides were willing to offer battle – contrary to the Gillingham school’s thesis that medieval generals usually sought to avoid battle – even though neither side was willing to attack the enemy on ground of the defender’s choosing.51 If both sides were willing to fight on their own ground, but neither was willing to fight on ground chosen by the enemy, then the likely result was that no battle would take place, and situations of this sort go a long way towards explaining the frequency of campaigns without battle in the late Middle Ages.52 The other reason that campaigns without battle have been less common in the eras since the end of the Middle Ages is that a combination of factors, particularly the development of effective gunpowder artillery from the 1420s and the increasing ability of governments to raise large armies and maintain them for extended periods, has made it more difficult for a passive defense to defeat an attempt at conquest. Modern armies can outlast opposing garrisons more often than medieval armies could. Thus, in modern times there is more pressure on a defender to risk a battle, because risky though it might be it holds a better prospect of success than refusing battle, whereas in the Middle Ages refusing battle often held a better prospect of success for a defender than did accepting a general engagement.53 That brings us to the second question. If the side with the aggressive aims usually desired battle as the best means to accomplish those aims, and the defender, wanting “not to do what the enemy would wish him to do,” recognized that he had a good prospect of victory in war without needing to risk battle, why would the defender ever choose to fight a battle except on very favorable terms? The simple answer is that while a well-conducted Vegetian defense offered a very high probability of victory in war, that victory was almost certain to be a costly one. Executing a Vegetian strategy was expensive in many ways. First, it required one to give up much of one’s territory – the lands outside the walls of castles and towns – to devastation by the enemy, for without giving battle, one could limit but not stop the destruction an enemy chevauchée could inflict. Indeed, fully implementing the Vegetian approach to strategy often required one to devastate one’s own territories in order to prevent the enemy from gaining the benefit in plunder and supplies of doing so: required, in other words, a “scorched earth” policy. The devastation of one’s land was costly in economic 51

Compare Gillingham, “An Age of Expansion,” in Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare, p. 79: “Only when very confident would [commanders] offer [battle], and in those circumstances their opponent was almost certain to avoid it.” 52 Cf. Clausewitz, On War, I.i.15–17 (Howard ed., pp. 83–4). 53 Cf. C.J. Rogers, “Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War,” in idem, ed., The Military Revolution Debate (Boulder, 1995), pp. 74–5.

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and fiscal terms, for, as the 1355 letter to the Treasurer of England quoted above implies, ravaged lands did not pay taxes. They also did not pay rents, so that the direct lords of the devastated areas were impoverished too, as were the common people.54 That meant that they were unhappy with their lords, who were supposed to protect them; to protect one’s vassals or subjects was the first duty of good lordship. A Vegetian strategy, thus, could cost a lord dearly in terms of the loyalties of those whom he had failed to protect, and in the Middle Ages, loyalty was one of the basic currencies of power. Another basic element of a lord’s power was his honor or prestige, and implementing a Fabian strategy could be very costly in this coin too. Philip VI of France employed a classic battle-avoiding defensive strategy against Edward III in 1339, and it did succeed in forcing the English king to leave France “having done little for his honor and nothing for his profit”; but it also greatly undermined the Valois king’s popularity with the martial nobility of France, so much so that many noblemen began to sport fox-fur caps “in detestation and mockery” of the King’s “foxy” (meaning cowardly) behavior.55 An earlier King Philip suffered the biting scorn of the troubadour Bertran de Born when he employed the same battle-averse strategy against Henry II of England: “Miserable mourning is never the equal/ of noble action” sang the poet, nor are rest and relaxation as good as war, trouble and action. Let [King Philip] know that! Never have we seen him smash an arm or a side, nor inflict a severe wound on a leg or head! Nor have we seen him at Rouen . . ., at the head of his men, or a great army. He should remember what men say of him: that he has never broken a lance on a shield.56

Now, it should be said that despite de Born’s verses, King Philip’s war against Henry went well enough, without the need to fight a battle, and he went down in history as Philip Augustus. But it is easy to see why a king or war-leader might be willing to take some risks to avoid such calumny. Earl Byrhtnoth’s speech to the Viking herald at the start of The Battle of Maldon reflects the importance of 54

“When the poor can no longer reap a harvest from their fields, then they can no longer pay their rents and this, in turn, impoverishes their lords.” History of William the Marshal, quoted in Gillingham, “War and Chivalry,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 256. Similarly, Froissart says that in 1360 the French were eager to make peace because their realm had been so devastated that the rents of the lords and of the churches were everywhere going unpaid. Oeuvres, 6:279. See also C.J. Rogers, “ ‘By Fire and Sword’: Bellum Hostile and ‘Civilians’ in the Hundred Years War,” in M. Grimsley and C.J. Rogers, eds., Civilians in the Path of War (Lincoln, 2002). 55 C.J. Rogers, “A Continuation of the Manuel d’histoire de Philippe VI for the Years 1328–1339,” English Historical Review, 114 (1999), 1266. 56 From “Al nou doutz termini blanc,” in The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born, ed. W.D. Paden et al. (Berkeley, 1986), pp. 357–9.

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reputation and honor in motivating a defender to give battle in the field. The Vikings offered the Saxons a safe but costly way to avoid battle, by paying tribute, but the earl refused, saying “My people would be shamed if ye loaded our booty upon your ships, and floated them off, unfought-for, to sea.”57 The same spirit echoes in Wace’s version of a speech employed by a vicomte of the Cotentin to inspire his men to do battle with an invading Breton army: “Barons,” he cried, “freeborn men, it is well known that you fight well, and love your lord. Look to your honour this day and protect your lord’s reputation. They will hold us cheap, those who come to take our reputation from us, who strive to gather and carry off the flocks. If this robbery happens before our eyes, and we do not recover our riches, great blame will attach to our heirs.” “Attack them fiercely,” he commands, and his men eagerly do so.58 Even Gillingham admits that “what was shameful was for the knight whose role it was to defend the people not to do so when the moment came.”59 But to defend the people was often, even usually, impossible without doing battle with the invaders. To say that medieval commanders were often willing to give battle for the sake of honor even when they could have defeated an invader with less risk by employing a Vegetian strategy of exhaustion is not to return to the old idea that medieval soldiers were ignorant of the art of war, or that they foolishly put reputation above sound strategy. On the contrary, in the Middle Ages just as today, honor and reputation are extremely important resources in the conduct of diplomacy and domestic politics alike, not to be sacrificed lightly or unnecessarily, and there is nothing wrong with taking account of political consequences when planning military strategy. War, after all, is only the continuation of politics with an admixture of other means.60 If the United States were to be invaded tomorrow by a marauding host of hockey-stick wielding Canadians, the American Army might calculate that the invaders would be more vulnerable after they had extended their lines of communication by a deep penetration into Michigan, and that an American victory would be more certain if the aggressors were destroyed near Kalamazoo rather than at the border; yet even so I am fairly certain that the military advantages to be gained by such a defense-in-depth would be outweighed by the political importance of meeting the enemy as near as possible to the border, and rightly so. Similarly, we can say with hindsight that Harold Godwineson in 1066 or Philip VI in 1346 would have been wiser to avoid the battles their opponents were seeking, yet it is not hard to understand why they succumbed to the temptation to fight. Indeed, Philip and Harold had a characteristic in common which may have 57

Battle of Maldon, tr. modified from J.D. Spaeth, Old English Poetry (New York, 1921; reprint, 1967), p. 166. Likewise, according to William of Malmesbury, Robert of Gloucester chose to give battle in 1141 in part because “he could not bear the shame of the situation” he was in. Historia novella, pp. 82–3. 58 Quoted in Matthew Bennett, “Wace and Warfare,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 243. 59 “War and Chivalry,” in Strickland, Anglo-Norman Warfare, p. 261. 60 Clausewitz, On War, VIII.6, B (Howard ed., p. 605).

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made fighting more of a necessity than a mere temptation. Neither was entirely secure on his throne; neither was the son of the previous king; each faced an opponent who claimed his throne. Many of the great battles of the Middle Ages were fought, on the strategically defending side, by rulers who had recently claimed, reclaimed, or usurped their thrones (this was true, for example, of Emperor Alexius at Dyrrachium, Guy of Lusignan at Hattin, Robert Bruce at Methven and Loudon Hill, Henry of Trastamara at Nájera and Pedro the Cruel at Montiel, and João I at Aljubarrota), and so did not have the political capital necessary to mount a Vegetian defense.61 A similar dynamic applied when a divided regency government ruled for a minor (Dupplin Moor, Halidon Hill), an absentee king (Falkirk) or a madman (Agincourt), and the dominant faction could not afford an appearance of weakness. The process of conducting war, furthermore, could be very expensive for both sides, and so each side might well calculate that the risks of battle, and the hope of a quick victory, were preferable to the certainty of an extended campaign that would cost the defender in honor, political support, and economic resources destroyed, not to mention wages, and which, from the attacker’s point of view, to quote Dubois again, might well “cost more for the king’s purse and his subjects than the conquest is worth,” a cost measured in time as well as wages and casualties.62 Particularly in cases of civil war, or other wars in which the disputed territory was subject to ravaging, both sides might wish to bring the war to a rapid close rather than see the destruction of what they hoped to gain by the war. Robert of Gloucester, for example, was, according to William of Malmesbury, willing to fight the battle of Lincoln in 1141 because he was so tired of seeing England suffer from the rapine and slaughter of civil war. “So great was the earl’s ardour to bring an end to these evils,” Malmesbury continues, “that he preferred to hazard the ultimate test, rather than prolong the calamities suffered by the country.”63 Similarly, Edward III in his challenge to Philip VI in 1340 wrote that he hoped for a battle (or personal duel) to rapidly resolve the issue of the war because such a great force of men as we have assembled (as we think you have as well) cannot long hold together, without causing harm and destruction to the people and to the land, something which every good Christian should eschew, and especially princes and others who hold themselves for governors of men.64

61

E.g., for Trastamara, see P.E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), pp. 88, 96. Note also Robert Bruce’s willingness to fight at Bannockburn. 62 E.g. see Lancaster’s warning that refusing the French peace offers of 1360 and continuing the war would force Edward III to spend time and money, so that he might even “use up [his] whole life,” even aside from the risk of defeat. Froissart, Oeuvres, 6:281. 63 Historia novella, pp. 82, 84. 64 PRO, SC1/37/135; trans. from Rogers, Wars of Edward III, p. 91.

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* Thus, we can see that there were many sound reasons why a medieval commander might want to fight a battle. Indeed, the commander of the side pursing aggressive war aims typically wanted a battle, for a battlefield victory was the quickest and cheapest way (and sometimes the only way) of gaining one’s goals, if such a victory could be had.65 Medieval generals fighting on the strategic defensive, it is true, did often prefer to avoid pitched battle, but even that generalization has many exceptions. A defender might choose to offer battle, or even to seek out and attack an invader, if his territories did not have the fortifications necessary for an effective Vegetian defense, or if he were uncertain of the resolve of the garrisons of the strongholds. He might be unwilling or unable to pay the costs in honor, wealth, and political support which a battle-avoiding strategy required. He might consider it necessary to give battle in order to break the siege of an important city or castle,66 or he might feel compelled to risk a decisive action if he expected that in the future he would be growing weaker while his enemy’s strength increased. Battles, for these reasons and many others, were actually not all that rare in the Middle Ages, the example of King Henry II notwithstanding, and furthermore they bore an importance out of proportion with their frequency.67 In any case, I hope you will agree that we can no longer accept the proposition that, as Philippe Contamine has claimed, “Medieval strategy does indeed appear to have been dominated by . . . fear of the pitched battle,”68 and that, on the contrary, we must rank direct battle on the same plane with siege and devastation as one of the main tools of the strategists of the Middle Ages.

65

On the other hand, even an aggressor might sometimes prefer a battle-avoiding strategy and seek to achieve his ends through raids and sieges without risking a decisive defeat, particularly if (1) his own base was relatively secure from retaliatory raiding, thanks to strong fortresses or difficult terrain; (2) he could not expect to have any substantial advantage in battle, because he faced an equally strong or stronger enemy; and (3) he was fighting for limited aims which could be achieved through a compromise peace. 66 And indeed this was one of the main reasons for a commander to begin a siege – to lure the enemy into battle. Examples of this pattern include Edward III’s sieges of Berwick in 1333, Cambrai in 1339, Tournai in 1340, and Calais in 1346. 67 As noted by Bradbury, “Battles,” p. 182. 68 Contamine, War, p. 291; his second general principle is actually effectively the same one.

2 Battle Seeking: The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy Stephen Morillo

Battle Seeking

Introduction Over the last decade or so a consensus has formed about the general shape of medieval strategy. Although R.C. Smail showed as long ago as 1956 that medieval strategy could be analyzed on its own terms,1 books and articles by Bernard Bachrach, John Gillingham, and others also showed that medieval strategy could be seen as following many of the fundamental precepts of Vegetius, the late Roman writer on military affairs.2 Thus, without getting into the question of whether medieval strategy was always or even often self-consciously Vegetian,3 we may take the term “Vegetian strategy” as convenient shorthand for the general contours of much medieval strategy. I shall outline the characteristics of this consensus view more fully in a moment. For now, it suffices to say that the patterns of Vegetian strategy were based largely in limitations imposed on medieval commanders by resources, transport technology, and geography. As these same factors constrained commanders in ancient and classical times – Vegetius was, after all, a classical author – Vegetian strategy also characterized much classical warfare. Indeed, because the conditions governing Vegetian strategy arose from the natural world and human interaction with nature (geography, agricultural productivity and seasonality, and so on), it is easy to take the patterns of Vegetian strategy as 1 2

R.C. Smail, Crusading Warfare 1097–1193 (Cambridge, 1956). See, for example, Bernard Bachrach, Fulk Nerra, Neo-Roman Consul (Berkeley, 1993); John Gillingham, “Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages,” in War and Government in the Middle Ages, eds. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984) and “William the Bastard at War,” in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher Holdsworth and Janet Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989); P. Flavii Vegeti Renati, Epitoma Rei Militaris, ed. Alf Önnerfors (Stuttgart, 1995) with selected translation available in Roots of Strategy, ed. T.R. Phillips (Harrisburg, PA, 1985). 3 As is argued explicitly and consistently by Bachrach: e.g. “The Practical Use of Vegetius’ De Re Militari During the Middle Ages,” The Historian 47 (1985), 239–255; for opposing views cf. Stephen Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), p. 118, n. 89 and Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven, 1996), pp. 186–187.

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“natural.” In support of this claim one could point out the similarities between the strategies advocated by Vegetius and those advocated by Sun-Tzu, the great Chinese military analyst who wrote a good 600 years before Vegetius.4 To cite only two cases: Vegetius: “The main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions and destroy the enemy by famine.” Sun Tzu: “Hence the wise general sees to it that his troops feed on the enemy, for one bushel of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of his; one hundredweight of enemy fodder to twenty hundredweight of his.” Vegetius: “Good officers decline general engagements where the danger is common, and prefer the employment of strategem and finesse to destroy the enemy as much as possible in detail and intimidate them without exposing our own forces.” Sun Tzu: “Thus, those skilled in war subdue the enemy’s army without battle.”5

That European warfare continued to follow Vegetian patterns well into the eighteenth century further supports the apparent “naturalness” of Vegetian strategy.6 I will not argue with Cliff Rogers’ emendation of the usual formulation of Vegetian warfare elsewhere in this issue: the Vegetian avoidance of battle has been overstated.7 But Vegetian patterns that were still somewhat battle averse, especially on the defensive,8 evidently remain a correct description of much medieval warfare. But in important ways Rogers’ criticism of the Vegetian 4

5 6

7

8

Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford, 1963). The similarities are most striking in precisely those areas most universally conditioned by the natural and agricultural constraints of the pre-modern world. Sun Tzu does not, of course, anticipate the specific organization and training of the Roman legion in Vegetius (though both stress organization and discipline), but then medieval commanders had no use for those sections of Vegetius either, sections whose utility did not become apparent until John and Maurice of Nassau, whose government’s abilities to raise and train troops in the Roman manner far exceeded any medieval government’s. Vegetius in Roots of Strategy, pp. 128, 143; Sun Tzu II.15 (p. 74), III.10 (p. 79). See, for example, Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge, 1977); Christopher Duffy, The Fortress in the Age of Vauban and Frederick the Great 1660–1789 (London, 1985). Clifford J. Rogers, “The Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’ in the Middle Ages,” above, pages 1–19. I want to thank Cliff for generously allowing me access to several drafts of his paper. I hope we have both benefited from exchanges which are reflected in our respective footnotes. See pages 25–28 for further comments on Rogers’ criticisms of the Vegetian paradigm in medieval historiography. See also the perceptive comments of John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, 1999), pp. 150–151, who notes the lure of decisiveness and the contexts of conquest and civil war as encouraging generals to risk battle, though he does not fully explain why these contexts promote battle seeking. My own formulations of the Vegetian paradigm do recognize a place for battle in a general’s tool kit; see Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, passim. Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfar’,” p. 14: “the side which could win by simply relying on the Vegetian strategy of harassment and defense behind fortifications would often choose to do so.”

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paradigm does not go far enough. What I propose to do is to examine the contexts and limits of Vegetian strategy, for if the history of human culture teaches us anything, it is that what seems most “natural” is often highly constructed, socially and culturally. Some of the contexts and limits I shall examine may be obvious, but some aren’t, and we need reminding, I think, of all of them because classical and medieval “sciences of war,” as Vegetian strategy has often come to be called in the new consensus, are also “cultures of war.” Recognizing this is important, for while the consensus view describes much medieval warfare, it does not describe it all, and exceptions to such a “natural” pattern would seem to call for explanation. This paper will sketch the outline of a general theory of pre-modern strategy, and attempt to place Vegetian patterns within that more general analysis.

Vegetian Strategy The major strategic principles embodied in what is called Vegetian strategy are logistical. Above all, they reflect the limited productivity of traditional agriculture and the seasonal patterns of both that agriculture and the availability of wild fodder for horses. Vegetius advises commanders to live, as far as possible, off the enemy’s land.9 Offensive campaigns should seek to support themselves by foraging and pillaging in enemy territory, activities which not only supply one’s own forces but deny the opponent’s own resources to him. If carried out widely and often enough, the devastation directly undermines the enemy forces’ economic capacity for continued resistance, and threatens the political coherence of enemy territory by exposing the inability of its leaders to protect its constituent parts. What is the defense to do in reply? One indirect response is to launch one’s own attack into the territory of the raiders, hoping to draw them back into defense of their own land. More direct responses include shadowing the invading army closely enough as to prevent their foraging. Short of supplies and frustrated by a lack of booty from plundering, the invaders, it is hoped, will go home. But ultimately, Vegetian strategy assumes the centrality of fortifications in the defense of territory. Even if raiders pillage their way through some of your land, if you keep your hold on the forts you keep your hold on the land and people and live to fight again another day. Thus, the second major activity attackers engage in is besieging fortifications. This again often resolves into a logistical battle. Can the besieging army keep itself supplied longer than the besieged strongpoint can? If the defenders can keep an army in the field in addition to a garrison in the fort, this army might again stay close enough to the besiegers to hamper their foraging and so drive them off. Given a vital fortification, a determined and well-supplied besieger, and a 9

Vegetius in Roots of Strategy, p. 128.

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determined relief army, a battle might result. But a final feature of Vegetian strategy, and the one that earned it the opprobrium of armchair generals weaned on Clausewitz, is its somewhat limited use of battle as a tool in warfare.10 Battle, in the contexts Vegetian strategy assumes, was often an indirect path to goals more directly reached by pillaging and sieges. Furthermore, it was a risky option: the vagaries of chance could steal from a superior force in one day what it had worked weeks or months to obtain. Though an attacking force, especially, might seek battle for strategic reasons, such battle seeking was closely constrained by considerations of topography, tactical systems, relative force, and so on; on the defensive, only dire necessity constituted a good reason for actively seeking battle without overwhelming advantages of terrain (including fortifications) or force.11 Logistical warfare; a central role for fortifications; a resulting paucity of battles: Vegetian strategy in a nutshell. Again, as long as we avoid the question of intentionality – that is, of whether Vegetius was the explicit teacher of such patterns to medieval commanders – it is widely agreed that this pattern describes much western medieval warfare, ranging from the career of William the Conqueror to many campaigns of the Hundred Years War, from Fulk Nerra’s Anjou to the Syrian frontiers of the Crusader States. As a quick reading of “On Skirmishing Warfare” shows, Byzantine defensive strategy from the seventh to the mid-tenth century was certainly Vegetian, as ambush, trickery, denial of supplies and counter-raids all precede offering battle in defense of Byzantine territory. As the Byzantine author notes, “When the situation is such that they cannot confront the enemy directly, they may employ this method, and they will preserve both themselves and their country from harm.”12 Much Islamic warfare, especially against the Byzantines and the Crusader States, conformed to this pattern, as did the warfare of many of Byzantium’s other neighbors and its successor in the area, the Ottomans.13 Apparent exceptions, such as Saladin’s battle seeking strategy of the 1180s or Edward III’s campaigns in France,14 appear on closer analysis to be the result of force disparities and other special circumstances that made battle seeking sensible at least for one side in a basically Vegetian context. Looking even more broadly, most Chinese warfare,

10 11 12

13

14

E.g. Charles Oman, History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (reprint of 1924 edn., New York, 1959), 2:201. Cf. Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” pp. 14–15. “Skirmishing” in Three Byzantine Military Treatises, ed. G.T. Dennis (Washington, DC, 1985), pp. 137–239, quote on p. 147; see also Mark Whittow, The Making of Byzantium, 600–1025 (Berkeley, 1996), p. 175–181. Whittow, ch. 8 and pp. 327–335; Patricia Crone, “The Early Islamic World,” in Kurt Raaflaub and Nathan Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 309–332; Rhoades Murphey, Ottoman Warfare 1500–1700 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1999). Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp (Woodbridge, 2001), makes a convincing case for Edward’s battle seeking as a central component of his strategy in France. See below, p. 40, for further analysis of Edward III’s campaigns.

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whether on the frontiers or internally, also followed Vegetian patterns (though a Sino-centrist might wish to call this Sun-tzu-ian strategy).15 Given Rogers’ criticisms of the Vegetian paradigm for describing medieval warfare, however, several further comments concerning some of his points may be necessary, though his general point that the place of battle in the paradigm has been unduly de-emphasized is certainly correct, as noted above.16 First, the place of battle in the paradigm. Rogers claims to find a logical flaw in the theory, in that if, as Vegetius advises, “one should do whatever one’s enemy wishes one not to do,” and one’s enemy wishes to avoid battle, then one should seek battle.17 This criticism confuses, I believe, ends and means. Yes, there will be times when this logic holds true, but there will also be times when Vegetius’ injunction applies to larger strategic goals, towards which battle is only a tool. In such cases, one could conceivably not seek battle and still be doing what a similarly battle-shy defender would not want one to do. My enemy wishes me not to besiege crucial town X. I move to besiege town X. He wishes to drive me off, and so threatens one of my castles. Perhaps I then retreat to defend my own castle; perhaps this operational dance results in an exchange of castles, as in 1094 when William Rufus moved against Robert Curthose’s stronghold at Bures. Robert responded by moving against William’s garrison at Argentan, and both places changed hands.18 In these and other cases, battle need not enter the equation, and yet each of us is trying to do what the other wishes us not to do. Second, the theory of Vegetian warfare, at least as I have written about it, recognizes a place for battles in the conduct of campaigns. Yes, I characterize it as a risky last resort, and so the conduct even of battle seeking generals proves it to be: before engaging in battle, such generals tried other means to secure their ends, and tried to secure every advantage of terrain, weather and numbers before entering into combat. And yet, certainly, battle was an option, a tool in the general’s toolkit. It was often closely associated with sieges, in which activity

15

Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier (Oxford, 1992); Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355–1435 (Stanford, 1982). 16 And his corollary, that the role of infantry has been overemphasized, is also on target. Rogers notes the important tactical and operational roles mounted troops played (Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” n. 24). The central problem with analyzing the roles of infantry and cavalry in medieval warfare, however, lies not in tactical or operational factors, but in the intersection of such factors with social structure, an intersection often obscured by our terminology for troop types which almost unconsciously imposes modern categories inappropriately on medieval data. See Morillo, “Milites, Knights and Samurai: Military Terminology, Comparative History, and the Problem of Translation,” in Richard Abels and Bernard Bachrach, eds., The Normans and Their Adversaries at War. Essays in Memory of C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 167–84. In short, it is not the role of cavalry but the role of a knightly military elite who usually rode horses that is underplayed by an undue emphasis on the role of men on foot. 17 Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” pp. 8–9. 18 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. T. Arnold (Rolls Series, 1879), p. 217.

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attackers engaged more frequently, I think, than battle seeking.19 As I wrote in Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, “if an enemy were in the process of attacking the realm, and in particular if it were threatening or actually besieging a friendly stronghold, the field forces moving to oppose them had three courses of action available to them to lift the siege: threaten or disrupt the besieger’s supplies, threaten him with battle, or bring him to battle.”20 In other words, sometimes battle was a normal part of the medieval general’s repertoire. And note that second option: threatening battle. Many of Rogers’ examples can be interpreted not as battle seeking behavior but as battle threatening behavior. Now if one is fairly certain that one’s enemy will refuse battle on the terms offered, threatening battle can in fact be part of battle avoiding behavior. And if, by chance, stupidity, or miscalculation one’s enemy accepts on one’s own terms, then the risky last resort has become worth the risk. In other words, seeking battle only when one has the advantage of terrain, topography, weather, or numbers – preferably all of the above plus any others, such as better morale or a superior tactical system (such as Edward III employed), one can muster – is a perfectly comprehensible corollary of the principles of Vegetian warfare. What about the advantages of battle that Rogers points out, that “battles put people and cities under subjection to you”?21 Well, of course they could. Let me quote myself again. Field forces could take hostile castles and cities in several ways. . . . Perhaps the most effective way . . . was to come into the field unopposed by enemy field forces. This carried the threat to the strongholds of a siege without hope of relief or distraction of the attacker, a situation properly construed as hopeless in most cases. How did armies achieve unopposed occupation of the field of war? . . . often, if the field of war were to be possessed alone, enemy armies had to be defeated in battle.22

Two points to stress here. First, the advantage of “clearing the field” by battle works only if one’s siege techniques are up to the job of exploiting the advantage. I assumed this in the context of Anglo-Norman warfare, but the difference between the post-battle strategies of Edward III and Henry V illustrates the difference this factor can make.23 Second, this was a high risk, high gain strategy, and many commanders were, rightly or wrongly, averse to taking the risk, preferring a slower, less risky but also possibly less rewarding path. William I, except at Hastings, generally preferred to move directly against enemy strongholds. In fact, he sometimes managed to achieve the same result as 19 20

21 22 23

This is one point on which a simple empirical investigation might prove worthwhile but has not systematically been undertaken. Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, p. 106. Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” p. 15 and p. 19 n. 66, is correct that ravaging (or undertaking a siege) could in fact be a means of provoking one’s foe into a battle on one’s own terms. Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” pp. 13–14. Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, p. 103. Though the differences between the two kings’ war aims also played a part in this divergence.

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a successful battle would have given him simply through sheer speed of action, as when he invaded Maine in 1073, appearing in the field so rapidly that no enemy field force opposed him and the county’s castles rapidly surrendered to him.24 But some – including of course William at Hastings – were willing to take the risks, for as Rogers notes, “battle could well be as decisive in the Middle Ages as in other periods.”25 But of course, the decisiveness of medieval battle is not really at issue,26 and only proves the riskiness of it. Now what about that riskiness? Does the admission that battle could be decisive undermine Gillingham’s claim that battle could be unprofitable for the winner and disastrous for the loser?27 Well, yes, in some cases. Again, it depended on how the battle was decisive, how decisive it was, and whether the winners had the means to exploit the victory. But it is not logically impossible, as Rogers claims, for both conditions to hold. I fight a battle to drive off an invader who has already ravaged much of my land. I win, and kill the opposing leader in the process. But the effort leaves me unable to exploit my victory. I have lost revenue from the ravaging; I have perhaps lost the loyalty of some of my followers, who go unrewarded for a hard campaign and may have seen their own lands ravaged; in short, I have not profited from the battle, except to limit further losses. And yet the battle has been a disaster for the invaders, the survivors of whom go home leaderless and in turmoil. It is especially a disaster for the dead leader, who may thereby have endangered his dynastic line even if his kingdom survives. Or another, concrete example. The English not only win at Poitiers, they capture King John of France: a disaster for the French. Yet the French do not lose the war, and the English attempts to exploit the victory draw them into an unprofitable occupation of territory and a period of expensive stasis following the Treaty of Bretigny.28 There is, in short, nothing inherently illogical 24 25 26 27 28

The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1969–80), 2:306–8. Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” p. 12. At least between Rogers and myself, as we agree that it was a potentially decisive element of medieval warfare. Rogers, “Vegeetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” p. 9. Rogers in fact makes a convincing case that Edward did achieve almost all his war aims in 1360 (War Cruel and Sharp, passim), and further claims (“Vegetian ‘Science of Warfare’,” n. 38) that including the post-1369 phases of the Hundred Years War in a judgement of Edward’s results “is logically similar to arguing that the Western Front offensive of 1918 was not decisive because the Germans . . . launched another bid for world domination in 1939.” This raises interesting philosophical, methodological and historiographical problems too complex to go into fully here. For one, it raises the problem of what we mean by “decisive” in referring to either a battle or a campaign (see Morillo, ed., The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations [Woodbridge, 1996], pp. xv–xvii, for a discussion of the meaning of “decisiveness”). No battle or campaign of the Hundred Years War was decisive in the way Hastings was, for instance, as William’s victory in 1066 not only effectively won the war, it precluded any further war along similar lines. This points to the problem of deciding whether Edward’s victory in 1360 could be considered a stable basis for a really lasting peace: did it eliminate the issues of contention that had led to the war in the first place? It is not unreasonable, I think, to say it did not: only a complete takeover of France by the English monarchy or the complete

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about the theory of battle avoidance as a central feature of Vegetian warfare, though the conditions in which this risky last resort could be undertaken have, as Rogers rightly points out, been underemphasized.

A General Theory Thus, the Vegetian paradigm, modified to recognize a regular place for battle, does describe much medieval European warfare, as well as much warfare beyond Europe throughout the pre-modern world. Again, Vegetian strategy describes a cross-cultural and apparently natural way of waging war in the conditions of pre-modern economics and technology. There are a significant number of exceptions to such apparently “natural” and cross-cultural patterns, however, exceptions that take place within conditions of nature and agriculture that might be expected to reproduce the patterns. Some occur in other societies than those already mentioned, though in the same broad time frame; some occur within the societies and times just outlined. What accounts for these exceptions, which are far more non-Vegetian than those cited by Rogers? For his paper leaves the underlying assumptions of Vegetian warfare intact. Those underlying assumptions are, briefly, as follows. First, that we can engage in a rational, materially based analysis of strategy, and that this is what medieval commanders did. Second, that the material basis of strategy consisted of land; that is, that warfare was territorial, or about the possession of castles, cities, and so forth. And third, that in making these analyses, state interest is paramount; or, put another Clausewitzian way, warfare is politics by other means, politics being construed as the dynamics of relationships between sovereign states. Whether these underlying assumptions really apply to all medieval (or pre-modern) warfare is open to question, however. Rather, I think there is a general principle that constitutes the often unexamined context of Vegetian strategy and explains the major exceptions to it.29 In brief, here are what I see as the prerequisites for the appearance of Vegetian strategy in the pre-modern world. First, that the entities involved in warfare are settled societies. This should be obvious, since territoriality plays such a central role in the patterns of Vegetian strategy, but some thinking about expulsion of English lordship from French territory could have done that (though the concepts of “French” and “English” in such a claim admittedly risk anachronism). Similarly, it is not in fact completely unreasonable to say from a broad, global and long-term perspective that the Western Front offensive of 1918 was not decisive for precisely the reason Rogers cites. It certainly was not as decisive as the Allied victory in 1945, for example. 29 While I shall focus as much as possible on exceptions within medieval western European military practice, I shall also draw upon non-European cases where they provide striking comparative data or make a point more clearly than European cases might. In addition to this practical matter of evidence, however, I also wish to make a philosophical point about the benefits of studying medieval western European warfare comparatively and in the global context of its times.

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the implications of this condition can lead in productive directions. Second, that the entities involved in warfare lack an agreed on context for dispute resolution. Such a context can consist either of universally accepted cultural norms that govern conflict, or it can reside in a superior power capable of enforcing cultural norms and/or legal rules. As we shall see, “superior power” can mean an entity which acts as the ultimate practical broker of military might, or an entity that constitutes the exclusive source of legitimacy within a system. The practical result of any sort of agreed on context for dispute resolution is to render warfare in important ways non-territorial; if such contexts do not exist, territoriality tends to become central and leads to Vegetian patterns. In other words, Vegetian strategy is the “natural” mode of pre-modern warfare only when the warfare occurs between sedentary (that is, agriculturally based) military actors engaged in “foreign” or external wars, that is wars that cross political (and often cultural) boundaries. In addition, Vegetian strategy usually (though not always) requires warfare that is guided by grand strategies of territorial aggrandizement or conquest and defense thereagainst, within a geopolitical context that does not allow for flight by an entire military-political entity as an option. In different ways, these preconditions are the implications of territoriality.30

Non-Vegetian Warfare: A Selection of Counter-Examples I shall try now to both explain and illustrate this principle via a set of counterexamples to Vegetian patterns of strategy. With variations, all these counterexamples follow a pattern of warfare that is non-Vegetian in specific ways. First, non-Vegetian wars do not revolve around fortifications, which tend to be either absent, rudimentary, or ignored in the main activities of campaigns. We immediately face a cart-horse problem here. It might be that the absence of knowledge or techniques for effectively fortifying strongholds is a prior condition, that then precludes the emergence of classically Vegetian strategy in certain areas. I think, however, that in almost every case examined below, effective fortifications (and thus Vegetian strategy) were possible. Indeed, in most cases they existed, or had existed, or quickly came into existence when conditions changed. Instead, the very strategic contexts and choices that made warfare non-Vegetian in these cases also account for the lack of fortification. That is, lack of fortifications was a strategic choice. 30

The sense in which I am using “territoriality” is limited to warfare that was directly about possession of landed wealth, that is in which armed force was the deciding factor in possession. John France, Western Warfare (p. 2), says that “warfare in this period was, therefore, nearly always proprietorial, or at the least influenced by proprietorial considerations.” While this is generally true, possession of land could be decided in ways that did not depend (at least directly) on warfare, and there are some instances, discussed further below, in which warfare was not, centrally or even primarily, about possession of landed wealth.

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It tended to accompany the other non-Vegetian feature of these counterexamples: that battle seeking strategies dominated their warfare. Offensive campaigns aimed at meeting and destroying defending forces directly (though pillaging and plundering were certainly a consistent concomitant of invasions, for both logistical and psychological reasons). Likewise, defensive forces sought to meet and defeat in battle any invading force. It is important to note that this is not the sort of one-sided battle seeking one finds with some frequency in medieval warfare,31 in which the ability (indeed expectation) of one side to refuse battle marks the still essentially Vegetian nature of the warfare. For if a battle seeking commander can be fairly sure that his opponent will seek to avoid battle, then his battle seeking behavior does not seriously violate Vegetius’ prescription to avoid battles – he gets the benefit of appearing bold and aggressive with little of the cost. Rather, non-Vegetian warfare looks very different indeed. Consider, for example, the campaign and battle of Barnet in April 1471. Edward VI, having returned from a brief exile in Flanders, gathered his Yorkist supporters and marched on London. The Earl of Warwick (the “Kingmaker”) gathered Lancastrian forces at Coventry and immediately pursued. After gaining entrance to the capital, Edward immediately turned about and marched out to attack Warwick’s force, though he was outnumbered by perhaps 9,000 to 12,000; the attack was launched in a heavy fog and, after a confused conflict in which each side’s right wing overlapped the other’s left, resulted in a complete victory.32 An earlier phase of the Wars of the Roses had witnessed six significant battles fought between September 1459 and March 1461, culminating in the bloody carnage at Towton, a battle fought in a blinding snowstorm.33 In short, non-Vegetian warfare was dominated by two-sided seeking of battle to the exclusion of other aims, often to the point of both sides actively seeking and agreeing on a mutually acceptable flat and open space on which to fight it out, calculations of numerical, meterological and topographical advantage be damned. Why did such exceptions to Vegetian patterns – indeed to the apparently sound advice Vegetius offers in favor of avoiding battle – arise? There are two groups of cases to consider. The first set of exceptions involve steppe nomads, and is relatively straightforward to explain. The second set involves settled societies. Warfare among steppe nomads was non-Vegetian for the simple reason that steppe nomad societies were not territorial in the way sedentary societies were. Obviously, fortifications were impossible for societies built on mobility. And possession of land for a nomadic tribe did not mean the same thing as it did for rulers of sedentary societies. The latter aimed at control over the administrative apparatus, however developed, that often resided in fortifications and that 31 32 33

As Rogers abundantly illustrates. Anthony Goodman, The Wars of the Roses (London, 1981), pp. 78–80. Goodman, pp. 41–53.

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connected rulers to their source of wealth, a subject peasantry farming the land. For nomads, possession of land meant actual occupation of grazing land so as to feed the source of their wealth, animal herds. Thus, in warfare between nomadic tribes, a territorial attack meant moving the present occupiers off coveted grazing land; defense meant direct resistance to such an attack. Nomadic groups could also hold in reserve the option of flight to other lands should an attack prove too difficult to resist, and could furthermore join their attackers in an alliance that had few if any permanent administrative consequences.34 For nomadic warfare was often almost totally non-territorial, in that warfare was a tool for establishing dominance hierarchies among tribes, an activity in which assassination and gift-giving complemented warfare. In these sorts of territorial or dominance disputes, battle was the clear and swiftly sought arbiter. The world view bred on the steppes tended to carry over in nomadic attacks on sedentary neighbors, as invading steppe armies preferred meeting (and beating) opposing armies directly when they aimed at conquest or widespread plunder. The Mongol invasions of Russia and Eastern Europe can serve as an example of this.35 Only when the defenders retreated to fortifications (in good Vegetian fashion) were nomadic invaders forced either to give up conquest in favor of simple plundering, or, if trickery could not gain them a city, to adopt sedentary siege techniques (usually by conscripting sedentary engineers). At that point, they became part of the “natural” Vegetian web of sedentary strategy, as they effectively became a sedentary army for the duration and in the vicinity of any siege warfare they conducted. Thus, war between settled societies was a precondition for Vegetian strategy. Under what conditions did warfare involving settled societies become nonVegetian? Simply, if warfare took place within a closed cultural or political world that in one way or another established rules that governed the meaning and practice of conflict, Vegetian strategy had no role to play. I see three main ways in which such rules appeared: as agreed norms in a cultural world; as agreed norms in a political system; or as legal rules within a political system. The existence of such norms or rules obviated Vegetian strategies by rendering warfare non-territorial, either directly or indirectly. Directly, such norms or rules could dictate that warfare was not, in fact, about territory, but was about prestige, hierarchy, or elimination of rivals. Indirectly, such norms and rules could make possession of territory contingent not upon occupation protected by fortification but upon

34

Whittow, Making of Byzantium, pp. 19–25, has a good summary with references of steppe nomadic geography, social and political structure, and style of warfare. One of the features that distinguished Genghis Khan’s unification of the steppes from earlier steppe empires was his invention of a new “tribe” system that replaced old tribal divisions, a form of permanent administrative consequence, but one very different from what would happen in sedentary societies. See David Morgan, The Mongols (Cambridge, 1990). 35 Denis Sinor, “The Mongols and Western Europe,” in A History of the Crusades, vol. 3 (Madison, 1975).

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legal or moral title conferred by some central authority. I shall illustrate each of these and show the similarities in the sort of warfare each produced. By agreed norms in a cultural world, I mean those areas in which warfare took place between entities which were independent politically, but which shared a culturally agreed on set of assumptions about how warfare was conducted, what it meant, and what it could decide. An good example is polis warfare in the Hellenic world, especially before the Persian wars. Victor Davis Hanson has shown that the tradition of face-to-face combat between phalanxes used to settle disputes between Greek city-states served the function of limiting campaigning and therefore economic disruption: Ultimate victory in the modern sense and enslavement of the conquered were not considered an option by either side. Greek hoplite battles were struggles between small landholders who by mutual consent sought to limit warfare (and hence killing) to a brief, nightmarish occasion. [emphasis added]36

In other words, city-states in conflict tacitly agreed to a large scale version of the “let’s step outside and settle this” system of dispute resolution, producing “mostly localized and increasingly ritualized warfare in a fairly balanced system of poleis”.37 Combat rarely resulted in large scale transfers or conquest of land, and compromised the political independence of the losing side only indirectly.38 Note that the “rules” of this system were nowhere written down, nor was there an overarching power that could enforce them. Note also how the system broke down. First, the Persian invasions introduced a player who did not know the rules. The result was the first emergence of large coalitions of poleis and the first real use of strategy by the Greeks. The subsequent growth of the Athenian Empire, both as a direct result and continuation of the Persian invasions and because Athens came to rely on naval power, further violated the tacit norms, the bankruptcy of which was fully revealed in the Peloponnesian Wars. In the absence of these cultural norms limiting conflict, it fell to the Macedonians and then the Romans to impose peace on Hellas.39 A very similar system of tacit cultural norms seems to have governed the world of Aztec warfare. Campaigns took place only at certain times of the year, according to apparently stereotyped patterns, and operated at greater or lesser levels of ritualism ranging from Flower Wars to full scale invasions of conquest. Unlike in Greece, conquest and political independence were at stake. Despite 36

Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way of War. Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New York, 1989), p. 4. 37 Kurt Raaflaub, “Archaic and Classical Greece,” in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, p. 140. 38 The gradual creation by Sparta of a dominion in the Peloponnese is the only real exception to this pattern, and happened in such a way as not to seriously undermine the cultural system: Sparta was in some ways recognized as a political and military exception. Raaflaub, “Archaic and Classical Greece,” p. 131. 39 Raaflaub, “Archaic and Classical Greece,” p. 147; Charles D. Hamilton, “The Hellenistic World,” in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, pp. 165–166.

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this, the constraints of the cultural system were such that no real equivalent of Vegetian strategy emerged in the Mexican world. Battle seeking predominated. Fortifications were effective when used because breaching them was difficult given the limited siege technology available, scaling was expensive in manpower, and sieges were logistically difficult to maintain. “Fortifications were seldom used, however, because, even if they were effective, the city could not be divorced from its wider social networks.”40 The presence of agreed norms in a political system is the second condition that could inhibit the emergence of Vegetian patterns. Kamakura Japan (1185–1333) provides an excellent example of this condition.41 The civil government in Kyoto headed by the emperor was accepted as the only source of legitimacy within this political system; what it legitimated was possession of income rights based on landed estates called shoen. The military government in Kamakura backed up the civil authority and with it constituted a greater central authority. Thus, for a clan to gain land, income, and power it had to exert control over this combined central authority. Battle seeking strategies made perfect sense in the context of factional struggles for control over central authority. Since occupation of any particular piece of land itself meant very little, almost nobody built fortifications of any size or complexity and consequently no one tried to remove rivals by besieging them or ravaging their land. There was no “their land” that was specifically identifiable, there were no castles to besiege. Instead, legitimation of income possession by the central government was universally accepted, and with no castles to take, a faction had to seek battle in order to kill its enemies so that the income rights those enemies held could be reassigned. The result is illustrated abundantly in war tales such as The Tale of the Heike: That day, Lord Kiso . . . grasped a rattan-wrapped bow and sat in a gold-edged saddle astride his famous horse Oniashige [Roan Demon], a very stout and brawny animal. Standing in his stirrups, he announced his name in a mighty voice. “You must have heard of Kiso no Kanja in the past; now you see him! I am the Morning Sun Commander Minamoto no Yoshinaka, Director of the Imperial Stables of the Left and Governor of Iyo Province. They tell me you are Ichijo no Jiro from Kai. We are well matched! Cut off my head and show it to Yoritomo!” He galloped forward, shouting. “The warrior who has just announced his name is their Commanderin-Chief,” Ichijo no Jiro said. “Wipe out the whole force, men! Get them all, young retainers! Kill them!”42 40

Ross Hassig, “The Aztec World,” in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, pp. 361–381, quote on p. 378; in more detail Hassig, Aztec Warfare (Norman, OK, 1988). 41 For general overviews of the Kamakura political and military systems and the warrior culture that dominated them see Paul Varley, Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales (Honolulu, 1994); Stephen Turnbull, The Samurai. A Military History (London, 1977); Morillo, “Guns and Government: A Comparative Study of Europe and Japan,” Journal of World History 6 (1994), 75–106. 42 The Tale of the Heike, ed. and trans. Helen Craig McCullough (Stanford, 1988), pp. 291–292.

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Here both the ritualized name calling, part of an individualistic mode of combat, and the intent to kill sit side-by-side with the official titles and offices that reveal the central role of imperial political legitimation within the political system. In general Kamakura warfare featured battle seeking strategies and warfare that combined some highly ritualized elements such as name calling and ritualized exchanges of arrows before battle with an unusually high level (by western European standards in the same centuries) of killing of elite warriors by elite warriors, including the prevalence of hara kiru, a form of suicide that dressed fatality itself in ritual. And as Wayne Farris notes, “A few expert warriors dominated the battlefield, fighting in a colorful, highly ritualized way. Such a military system presupposed a general agreement regarding what war was all about.”43 One might say that this is simply a case of civil war, and civil war tends to be non-Vegetian. I think this gets it backwards. Civil war tends to be non-Vegetian because civil war tends to happen within a political system with agreed norms or agreed legal rules (my next case). But not all civil wars conform to this condition. The way the Kamakura system of tacitly agreed norms broke down is instructive in this regard. The Kamakura regime ended in a civil war between two factions of the Imperial family that lasted from 1336 to 1392. This division of the imperial symbolic position undermined its ability to legitimate dispute settlements, and the war turned not only very messy and confused, but Vegetian, in that fortifications sprang up, and the weaker side resorted to ambushes, logistical warfare, and guerilla campaigning. The Muromachi regime (1336–1467) that emerged managed briefly to hold the vestiges of the political system together, but after the Onin War of 1467–77 Japan broke into fully independent states engaged in warfare that conformed pretty closely to Vegetian patterns, though the cultural legacy of the Kamakura age contributed, along with other factors, to keep battle seeking more common than it might otherwise have been.44 The boundary between my first two conditions, agreed norms in a cultural world and agreed norms in a political system, are fuzzy, as what constitutes a “political system” is often a matter of cultural agreement. By way of illustration, I think Anglo-Saxon warfare can be analyzed in either way. Why did Anglo-Saxon England not follow the same trajectory of castellation as the Continent, especially after 950 or so? Not because the Anglo-Saxons were backwards in military science or ignorant of effective methods of fortification, but because, even in the period of multiple Saxon kingdoms, the set of kingdoms formed either a cultural world, or even a political system headed by a high king (whether actual or only potential), that agreed on battle as the honorable mode of dispute resolution. Long warfare with the Vikings, who avoided battle to focus on easy plunder, upset this system in ways similar to the way the Persians 43

W. Wayne Farris, “Japan to 1300,” in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, p. 66 (emphasis added). And see S. Morillo, “Cultures of Death: Ritual Suicide in Medieval Europe and Japan,” The Medieval History Journal 4, 2 (2001), 241–57, on the connection between killing and strategy in Kamakura Japan. 44 Morillo, “Guns and Government,” pp. 86–87; Turnbull, Samurai, pp. 89–106.

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disrupted the Greek system (including provoking political unity, though in the Anglo-Saxon case through the elimination of all the native kingdoms save Wessex, as opposed to the Persian stimulation of Athenian empire building). Alfred’s burgh system was the Vegetian aspect of the Saxon response: a network of fortified cities designed to restrict any Viking raids and provide bases for the fyrd, the Saxon field army.45 But the continuing importance of this field army in Alfred’s system shows that the king retained the Saxon tendency to battle seeking even as he waged a somewhat more Vegetian style of warfare. Contrast the Saxon response with the contemporary anti-Viking strategy on the Continent, Charles the Bald’s fortified bridges. Though designed, like the burghs, to restrict Viking mobility, they did not house substantial numbers of troops, nor was there a French field army comparable to the fyrd backing them up and seeking battle with the invaders, as Charles’ realm was already devolving into fragmentation, private castellation, and Vegetian battle-avoiding strategy.46 And the reunification of England under the West Saxons aborted its Vegetian tendencies once the Vikings were defeated: unified Anglo-Saxon England reverted to its unfortified battle seeking ways, though for somewhat different reasons than before the Vikings, reasons that will bring us below to the third condition that often produced non-Vegetian warfare, legal rules in a political system. Agreed norms, political and especially cultural, since they operated either in the absence of a central authority or under one that could not militarily impose judgements, tended to be “policed” by notions of honor, face, and prestige. These were not just diplomatic coin to be expended in a strategy guided by rational material analysis,47 but cultural realities in and of themselves. In fact, the imperatives of honor, demanding immediate and decisive responses to affronts, could conflict pretty directly with the “rational” guidelines of Vegetian strategy. Much medieval warfare can profitably be read as manifesting a tension between the honor-based and therefore battle seeking imperatives of a European-wide cultural system whose ultimate rationale was “let God decide” in trial by battle, and the territorial-based and therefore Vegetian imperatives of a divided European political universe. The cultural system was too weak for its norms to dominate, but strong enough to complicate many approaches to strategy that might have profited from a more purely Vegetian approach. Philip Augustus’ conduct of the Bouvines campaign is a good example of this tension, 45

Richard Abels, Alfred the Great. War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1998), pp. 194–218. 46 Carroll Gillmor, “The Logistics of Fortified Bridge Building on the Seine under Charles the Bald,” Anglo-Norman Studies 11 (1988), 87–106. 47 Cf. Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of War’,” p. 16, who does analyze these notions in such terms: “Loyalty was one of the basic currencies of power. Another basic element of a lord’s power was his honor or prestige, and implementing a Fabian strategy could be costly in this coin too.” While certainly correct from one perspective, this analysis underplays, I believe, the independent role factors such as prestige could play in strategic decision making, drawing such decisions outside the realm of purely material (and often, state-centered) analysis.

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as the king seemed to move, sometimes by sheer force of circumstance, between one approach and the other; even if he did not actively seek the battle that resulted, he accepted (and subsequently exploited) it in terms reflecting the culture of trial by battle.48 Philip VI of France faced this dilemma even more acutely during Edward III’s invasions of 1339 and 1340, as his rationally calculated avoidance of battle conflicted with strong demands on the part of his aristocracy that he defend his own honor and by extension that of France.49 The fate of Harold Godwinson also comes to mind here. A number of modern commentators have criticized Harold for responding too eagerly to Duke William’s ravaging of the vicinity of Hastings, leaving himself open to William’s attack or perhaps choosing himself to attack. Analyzing William’s battle-seeking strategy in 1066, Gillingham says “Of course it takes two to make a battle. It may be that, as I have suggested elsewhere (Gillingham, “Richard I”, 85), Harold was adopting the standard defensive strategy [moving close enough to limit William’s foraging without actually offering battle]. Or it may be that, encouraged by his success in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, Harold himself wanted to repeat this new and intoxicating experience.”50 But of course, Harold may well have been seeking battle not to repeat a “new and intoxicating experience” but because the lands being ravaged, as part of his patrimony, raised a strong demand for an immediate response based in honor and prestige, a demand that Harold would have seen from the perspective of a political system in which battle seeking was more the norm than on the Continent, as I have just noted. The Vegetian response of trapping William on the Hastings peninsula and starving him to death may never have occurred to him or, if it did, could have appeared dishonorable.51 Resolution of this tension tended to move, over the medieval centuries, towards the Vegetian side of the equation, because the more European polities became territorially based, the more Vegetian their strategies became and the farther they moved from the cultural system, probably Germanic and tribal in its origins, that encouraged trial-by-battle-motivated battle seeking. Arguably, the 48

See France, Western Warfare, pp. 169–172; Georges Duby, The Legend of Bouvines. War, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Berkeley, 1990). Of course it is true that “honor” is a flexible notion, and that what confers honor or prestige can vary from culture to culture – honor need not compel face-to-face battle seeking. Ambushes, feigned flights, night attacks, and other trickery could all be honorable actions in a variety of warrior traditions, including the steppe nomadic, the Japanese, the Byzantine, and even the western European: William Marshal’s career abounds in ambushes (see David Crouch, William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 1147–1219 [London, 1993]). This was because the ultimate measure of honor and prestige was, usually, success, and such tactics raised the chance for victory. But, especially in the western European tradition with the influence of legal trial by battle, direct affronts to one’s “face” required a “face-to-face” response, in both the literal and figurative senses of the term. 49 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, chs. 7 and 9. 50 Gillingham, “William the Bastard at War,” p. 158 n. 107. 51 On Hastings, see Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, pp. 163–168; and The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 1996).

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warfare of strongly territorial seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe was more Vegetian, despite the presence of gunpowder weaponry,52 than the warfare of the weakly territorial Germanic kingdoms of the early Middle Ages. Or at least, the assumptions behind the Merovingian sources’ narratives seem to indicate the normality of battle seeking motivated by questions of honor and guided by divine judgement. An example from among many in Gregory of Tours: the widow of Clovis I, Clotilda, urges her sons to war with the Burgundian rulers Sigismund and Godomar because of the former’s palace murders, saying “be angry, I beg you, at this insult to me, and avenge with a wise zeal my mother and father’s death.” Led by Chlodomer, the Franks march to an immediate battle with the Burgundians in which Sigismund, “the divine vengeance attending on his footsteps,” is captured. Godomar rallies the Burgundians and regains his kingdom, however. Chlodomer then oversteps his role as divine avenger by killing Sigismund – an apparently rational act designed to prevent an uprising in the rear of his operations, but one warned against by abbot Avitus – before marching again against Godomar. Thus, Chlodomer wins the ensuing battle but is killed in the pursuit; the Franks “crushed the Burgundians and reduced their country to subjection,” but shortly after Godomar again recovers his kingdom.53 Thus, we are presented with warfare that features battle-seeking behavior on both sides, motivated by notions of personal honor and bravery. And though possession of landed kingdoms is apparently at stake, the ease of Godomar’s recoveries (as well as the actions of the Franks in killing men rather than taking fortifications) indicates that what really matters is possession of the loyalty of men. In such a weakly territorial context, as in Kamakura Japan, battle seeking and abundant killing made perfect sense, despite their irrationality from a Vegetian perspective. So strong territoriality corresponded with Vegetian warfare. Or at least, coming back to my basic principle, strong territoriality corresponded to Vegetian warfare when the polities involved fought external wars. The final condition that can lead to exceptions to Vegetian patterns is the existence of a system in which the legal rules of a polity govern and legitimate landed possession. Such conditions almost assume a strong territorial state, but the very strength of the state is what makes warfare within the polity only indirectly territorial. Here, the example returns us to England.

52

Especially at the height of what Christopher Duffy calls “the Old Fortress Warfare” between 1660 and 1715: Duffy, The Fortress in the Age of Vauban, pp. 1–63; also Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 37: “. . . eighteenth-century armies lived as their predecessors had always done, . . . by taking the bulk of their needs away from the country.” 53 Gregorio di Tours, La Storia dei Franchi, ed. Massimo Oldoni (Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1981): III.6 (1:218–220), translations adapted from Gregory Bishop of Tours, History of the Franks, trans. Ernest Brehaut (New York, 1969), pp. 55–56. In the episode immediately following, Theodoric leads the Franks against the Thuringi, which again results in an immediate battle: III.7 (1:220–22).

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I noted above that the reunification of Anglo-Saxon England54 aborted its Vegetian development. But this was not because the earlier world of tacitly agreed norms had been reestablished, though the earlier traditions certainly contributed to the formation of the post-Viking strategic consensus. Rather, possession of land and other matters of dispute were now policed by a relatively strong central authority.55 That is, the aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England looked to the central authority to protect their domestic titles to landed estates. A centralized legal system short-circuited any impetus towards private castellation, and Vegetian strategy had no soil in which to take root. The same royal power also protected the kingdom as a whole, though of course the warrior aristocracy constituted in themselves a significant part of the royal government’s military forces against outside invaders.56 But the centrally controlled, battle-seeking system that served the kingdom well internally and in disputes along its Celtic frontiers had, by its nature, a peculiar bi-polarity against major foreign invasions: it could marshal more significant forces than many weaker Continental polities could (as it did in 1066, defeating at least one major invader in Harald Hardraada57), but if it were defeated at the top (as it was by Cnut in 1016 and by William of Normandy in 1066), the victor stood a good chance of assuming control of the system from the center, roughly the same goal that internal disputants aimed at. The Norman conquest in 1066 introduced castellation to England, as the conquerors subdued their new realm through ravaging and a purely Vegetian display of territorial and logistical brute force.58 Vegetian patterns continued to predominate along the Welsh and Scottish borders of the kingdom, later in the Norman invasion of Ireland, and above all on the frontiers of Normandy. Within England, Robert of Bellême’s 1102 revolt against Henry II, the Civil War of Stephen’s reign (which, however, saw more battle-seeking behavior, at Lincoln and Wilton, than proved prudent for either side), and the Young King Henry’s rebellion of 1173–74 against his father Henry II were all conducted in Vegetian style – Henry II’s success at not fighting battles is often cited in defense of the Vegetian nature of medieval warfare. And Stephen’s reign shows that not all civil wars are non-Vegetian. But the Vegetian interlude within the kingdom in fact did not last long, because the long periods of peace that intervened in the twelfth century, as well as the nature of the settlements imposed after the Civil 54 55

56

57 58

Or as Kelly DeVries would properly say, Anglo-Scandinavian England: see The Norwegian Invasion of England in 1066 (Woodbridge, 1999). James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000) demonstrates clearly the power, sophistication, unity and wealth of the late Anglo-Saxon state. For the specifically military implications of royal control see Richard Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, 1988). As for example at Maldon in 991, where Earl Byrhtnoth’s forces displayed all the battleseeking, non-Vegetian impulses – based in both honor and royal duty – the Anglo-Saxon military system bred. DeVries, Norwegian Invasion. Gillingham, “William the Bastard at War,” p. 159.

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War by Henry II, in the years following 1154, reinforced and resulted from the foundations of royal power laid in the Anglo-Saxon period. Increasingly from Henry I’s reign and progressing rapidly after 1054, law – what evolved into the Common Law – became the arbiter of disputes about estate possession.59 By 1215 the relationship of the various parts of the political community within the political system had been considerably clarified, and the government as a whole was even stronger, even if Magna Carta formalized nascent restrictions on the king himself. Thereafter, warfare within England was not (directly) about landed possession, but instead was about influence over the central authority that guaranteed possession of landed estates. The result was warfare that was non-Vegetian because conflict was bounded by the legal rules of the political system. As in Kamakura Japan, contestants for control of the central authority sought each other out to settle dominance directly. The stark contrast between the castle-centered, logistical approach Henry I took in subduing Robert of Bellême’s rebellion in 1102 and Edward I’s battle-seeking 1265 Evesham campaign against Simon de Montfort, in which castles played only a minor role, shows just how far the parameters of strategy had been transformed by the evolution of central authority in England.60 By the Wars of the Roses, castles played almost no role and opposing forces sought each other out even in snow and fog for decisive, face-to-face contests for possession of the only thing that mattered, control of royal government and the legitimacy it conveyed. Even pillaging was limited. And just as in Kamakura warfare, the battles of the Wars of the Roses featured copious killing of nobles by other nobles as factions attempted not to take over land but to eliminate rivals for control of the central authority. But unlike in Japan, possession of the central authority here carried with it the ability to muster the force necessary to coerce cooperation within the system and the legitimacy to use it. Thus, from 1215 until the last Stuart uprisings in the eighteenth century, warfare within England was both rare and, when it happened, characterized by battle-seeking strategies aimed at eliminating rivals for control of a central authority whose presence and role were uncontested.61 Warfare outside England was of course another matter. There is no more 59

John Hudson, Land, Law and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994) is the best starting point for investigating this process. See also C. Warren Hollister, Henry I (New Haven, 2001), esp. pp. 349–369, who emphasizes the role of Henry’s imposition of peace in England on the stability of landholding. 60 1102: C. Warren Hollister, “The Campaign of 1102 against Robert of Bêlleme,” in Studies . . . Presented to R. Allen Brown, p. 1265: Nicholas Hooper and Matthew Bennett, Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare; The Middle Ages 768–1487 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67–69. The behavior of the rebels also illustrates the change, as Robert, in Vegetian fashion, holed his forces up in his castles and eventually fled to Normandy, while Simon actively sought battle in 1264, leading to his victory at Lewes, and though attempting to avoid Edward in 1265 still based his strategy on a field army capable of giving battle. 61 The contrast between the battle-seeking of the seventeenth-century Civil War in England and the Vegetian nightmare that prevailed for much of the Thirty Years War is another example of the English political condition.

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Vegetian conquest than Edward I’s subjugation of Wales. Many English campaigns in Scotland were Vegetian: forays such as William I’s in 1072 designed to inflict some damage and intimidate the Scots, with no expectation of battle (even sieges were infrequent); most Scottish campaigns into England were likewise glorified plundering raids that earned the Scots an evil reputation south of the border.62 And the French side of Edward III’s campaigns in France is perfectly comprehensible from a Vegetian perspective.63 As for Edward’s side, if we accept, as I think we should, Rogers’ reinterpretation of Edward’s intentions – that he did actively seek battle – several thoughts come to mind. Perhaps Edward was simply a bad strategist who failed to follow sound Vegetian advice. But since he not only sought but fought and won his battles and thereby gained most of his war aims at least temporarily,64 this seems unconvincing. Perhaps he sought battle only with every advantage of terrain he could get to exploit his weapons system, in other words, within an essentially Vegetian context.65 Perhaps he was torn between what he saw as the imperatives of honor and the guidelines of Vegetius. Or, most interestingly, perhaps his battle-seeking strategy is evidence, given what I’ve said above about political systems, that Edward really did think of his invasions of France as personal disputes with rival claimants to the French throne to be settled in the time-honored English tradition of fighting on the battlefield for possession of the central government, in which case his immediate operational problem (skillfully overcome in 1346) and his long-term dilemma was that his opponents did not play by the rules.

Conclusions This leads me to two points I want to stress by way of conclusion. My first point has to do with the predictive or analytic power of a theory. I hope by presenting the contexts of Vegetian strategy in such general and fundamental terms – by getting at the underlying assumptions of Vegetian warfare – that it becomes possible to reanalyze aspects of the past in new and enlightening ways. For example, if I am right about the preconditions for the emergence of Vegetian patterns in warfare, then the presence of Vegetian warfare should in turn predict 62

Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry. The Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066–1217 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 291–329. 63 As Rogers admits: Rogers, “Vegetian ‘Science of War, ” p. 16; though note also the tension I suggested between Philip’s Vegetian inclinations and the demands to defend his honor raised by the European cultural system: above, p. 16 and n. 48. 64 See above, pp. 27–8 and n. 28, on the problem of deciding whether Edward’s battle-seeking strategy ultimately worked. 65 This is the implication of Rogers’ analysis in War Cruel and Sharp, where Edward is shown, while seeking battle, to have maneuvered carefully to arrive at a battlefield and tactical situation of his own choosing: pp. 235–6. Crécy was not, in other words, Towton or Barnet. I think this possibility accounts for a good deal of Edward’s battle seeking: it was reasonable within a Vegetian context.

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a lack of agreed on norms of warfare or of accepted legal rules and arbiters thereof in the region being examined. For instance, unlike warfare in England, warfare in Capetian France tended to be Vegetian even when “foreign” players were not involved; or, put another way, most warfare within France had the character of “foreign” wars. In other words, this theory provides another way of seeing and analyzing a long-accepted difference between England and France in the Middle Ages: England was from fairly early on a unified kingdom (the universal acceptance of whose government as final arbiter created conditions for non-Vegetian warfare); France was a kingdom stitched together by “foreign” conquest, which reminds us of the very recent and constructed nature of French nationality and culture. My second point has to do with the role of culture in warfare. I have tried to show that strategic decisions happen in cultural contexts, and that different contexts make some strategies more useful than others. This may seem a simple point, but it is too easy to slip into analysis of warfare purely in terms of materialist rationalism, state interest (as opposed to the individual, familial, dynastic and class interests of rulers and elites), and Realpolitik, and so misunderstand what the historical actors we study were really about (or at least what they thought they were about, which matters a lot). Warfare is not just politics by other means, as Clausewitz said, it is also culture. Or if it is politics, pre-modern politics includes a lot more than just statecraft, and so might as well be culture in many cases. This is not to say that medieval strategists were irrational, though as in any age not all medieval generals were good strategists. It is to say that their rational concerns often included notions of personal honor, prestige, religious imperatives, superstition, and so on that we do not readily recognize as relevant to strategy, especially in the context of statecraft. My analysis of the assumptions underlying Vegetian strategy is therefore designed to remind us that “cultures of war” played a major implicit role in “sciences of war,” even when they weren’t explicitly obvious.

3 Italia – Bavaria – Avaria: The Grand Strategy behind Charlemagne’s Renovatio Imperii in the West Charles R. Bowlus

Italia – Bavaria – Avaria

Avaria, the land of the Avars, sometimes known in the Carolingian sources by its Roman name, Pannonia, became the southeastern frontier of Charlemagne’s sprawling empire in the closing decade of the eighth century following a series of spectacular campaigns. Einhard, Charles’ younger contemporary and biographer, wrote that “The (Avar) war was the most important which Charlemagne ever fought, except the one against the Saxons,” stressing that Charlemagne “waged it with more vigour than any of the others and with much greater preparation.”1 It is not difficult to understand why careful planning would have been necessary for the conquest of Avaria. The Carpathian Basin, a vast region of the middle Danube watershed consisting of flat and rolling country between the eastern Alps, the Carpathians, and the Balkans, was ideally suited for the tactics of mounted archers such as the Avars. This region was an open frontier, an ecological and cultural transition zone between the worlds of settled farmers and the nomads of the Eurasian steppes, who frequently settled there and who used their military skills to prey upon neighboring sedentary populations. Bands of predatory mounted archers launched pillaging raids against defenseless villages, demanded tribute from cowed lay and ecclesiastical officials, and served as mercenaries in the conflicts between various western European magnates. In light of Einhard’s remarks plus the formidable reputation that steppe peoples (Huns, Avars, and, later, Hungarians and Mongols) had as warriors, it came as a surprise when Rudolf Schieffer asserted in his plenary address to the annual meeting of the Association of German Medievalists in Leipzig, in March 1998, that Charlemagne’s “war against the Avars in Pannonia was for the most

1

Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, in MGH SS rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum, ed. G. Waitz (1905), Bk. 1, c. 13, p. 16. English translation: Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Middlesex, UK, 1969), p. 67. For recent detailed accounts of Charlemagne’s Avar wars, see Charles R. Bowlus, Franks, Moravians, and Magyars. The Struggle for the Middle Danube, 788–907 (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 46–60; Walter Pohl, Die Awaren. Ein Steppenvolk in Mitteleuropa 567–822 n. Chr. (Munich, 1988), pp. 315–23; Peter Csendes, “Zu den Awarenkriegen unter Karl dem Großen,” Unsere Heimat 41 (1970), 93–103.

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part a rush for booty (Beutezug) with a rather half-hearted intent of conquest.”2 To prove his point, Schieffer cited Timothy Reuter, who has insisted for some time that military activity in early medieval Germany consisted of small-scale raids for pillage, not real war.3 Reuter’s thesis, however, contains dubious assumptions and has not been universally accepted.4 What is more, Schieffer’s presentation did not really concern itself with Charlemagne’s Avar war per se, to which he devoted only a single sentence. Rather, he introduced Reuter’s conclusions concerning Carolingian warfare to support his overall thesis that Charlemagne was an opportunist, not a long-range planner. In his view, the king of the Franks was simply a leader whose cunning allowed him to seize opportunities whenever and wherever they arose. The man who reestablished the Roman Empire in the West had no long-term military goals in mind, no grand strategy for the conquests that ultimately justified his imperial coronation. At the conference in Leipzig I offered a contrasting perspective on the Avar war and subsequent Carolingian efforts to maintain military hegemony in Pannonia.5 Although Einhard and his contemporaries were obviously impressed by the fabulous Avar treasure that Frankish armies captured,6 the lure of Avar gold, I argued, could not have been the primary motive behind conflicts that continued in Pannonia long after the Avars had disappeared and their wealth dispersed. Not only was Charlemagne serious about the conquest of Pannonia, but also his successors were intent on holding on to it. Throughout the entire ninth century one Frankish ruler after another, Louis the Pious, Louis the German, Carloman, and Arnulf of Carinthia, exhibited a dogged determination to maintain military hegemony over the entire Carpathian Basin, despite much opposition to Carolingian rule. For more than a half-century they engaged in a series of brutal conflicts with the Moravian Slavs, who had settled there following the destruction of the Avar confederation.7 It was not until 907, when 2

3 4

5 6 7

Rudolf Schieffer, “Karl der Große – Intentionen und Wirkungen,” in Karl der Große und das Erbe der Kulturen, ed. Franz-Reiner Erkens (Berlin, 2001), p. 7: “Schon der aufwendig vorbereitete Krieg gegen die Awaren in Pannonien war zum guten Teil ein Beutezug mit eher halbherziger Eroberungsabsicht”. Timothy Reuter, “Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, 35 (1985), 75–94. Bernard S. Bachrach, Reuter’s best known critic, recently summarized his dissenting views, “They [the Carolingians] tended to avoid fighting merely for immediate material gain and focused their efforts on conquest,” Early Carolingian Warfare. Prelude to Empire (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 243. In this publication Bacharch primarily deals with the early Carolingians, Pepin II, Charles Martel, and Pepin III. He has, however, written an article on Charlemagne as a military planner, “Charlemagne’s General Staff,” which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Military History. This essay emphasizes the high level of planning and staff work that went into Carolingian warfare. Bowlus, “Carolingian Military Hegemony in the Carpathian Basin 791–907,” Karl der Große, ed. Erkens, pp. 153–59. Einhard, Vita Caroli, Bk. I, c. 13, pp. 16–17. For a detailed examination, see Bowlus, Franks. For a concise summary, Bowlus, “Frankish-Moravian Conflicts in the Ninth Century. A Turning Point in the History of the Carpathian Basin,” Thessaloniki – Magna Moravia (Thessaloniki, 1999), pp. 54–63. For the

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new arrivals from the Eurasian steppes, the Hungarians (also known as Magyars), overwhelmed the Bavarian leader Liutpold,8 that East Frankish attempts to dominate the region were abandoned, albeit for less than a half-century. Although the Hungarians’ victory had given them the opportunity to settle in the lands where the Avars once ruled, Otto the Great revived earlier Carolingian interest in conquering at least a portion of the Carpathian Basin even before his decisive victory over the Magyars at the battle of Lechfeld in 955. Already in 950 he dispatched his brother Duke Henry of Bavaria on offensive operations against the Hungarians. Moreover, Otto made sure that Henry was in control of Bavaria’s eastern passes through the Alps before embarking on his first Italian campaign in 951,9 by granting the Bavarian duke the margravates of Friuli, Istria, and Verona, which adjoined Bavaria to the southeast. These were the territorial lordships that could bar any Hungarian attempts to enter Italy. In fact, the Magyars did indeed try to prevent Otto’s conquest of the peninsula by invading Italy in 951, but they were defeated by Henry’s forces on two occasions.10 I suggested in my presentation in Leipzig that Charlemagne’s Avar campaigns, his successors’ protracted conflicts with the Moravians in Pannonia, and the subsequent Ottonian wars against the Hungarians must be interpreted within a very large strategic framework, one involving the geographic relationships between Italy, Bavaria, and Avaria. There was, I insisted, a geo-strategic connection between Carolingian and Ottonian imperial ambitions in Italy and the attempts of these rulers to conquer or at least to neutralize potentially hostile forces lurking in the Carpathian Basin that could pose threats to those ambitions. Moreover, such a grand strategy necessitated that Carolingian and Ottonian rulers exercise control over Bavaria as well, for this duchy was the hinge linking Francia to both northeastern Italy and to Pannonia. In this regard I consciously revived a hoary hypothesis that had been developed in the 1930s by Albert Brackmann,11 a point of view that is diametrically opposed to Schieffer’s position. Brackmann posited that the conquest of Avaria

8 9 10

11

settlement of Moravian Slavs in the territory of the Avars, Martin Eggers, Das «Grossmährische Reich» Realität oder Fiktion? Eine Neuinterpretation der Quellen zur Geschichte des Mittleren Donauraumes im 9. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1995), 29–99. Rudolf Hiestand, “Pressburg 907. Eine Wende in der Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches?” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 57 (1994), 1–20. Herwig Wolfram, “Bavaria in the tenth and early eleventh centuries,” The New Cambridge Medieval History 3, ed. T. Reuter (Cambridge, 1999), p. 304. Widukind von Korvey, Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum, in MGH SS rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 60. E.P. Hirsch and H. Lohmann, 2nd ed. (1933), pp. 95–96. Hagen Keller, “Entscheidungssituationen und Lernprozesse in den ‘Anfängen der deutschen Geschichte’,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 33 (1999), p. 35. Albert Brackmann, “Die Anfänge der Slawenmission und die Renovatio Imperii des Jahres 800,” in Brackmann, Gesammelte Aufsätze, second expanded edition (Darmstadt, 1967), 56–75. First published in Sitzungsbeichte der preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Phil. – Hist. Kl., 1931).

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was a carefully calculated move in the chain of events that led to Charles’ imperial coronation. Furthermore, in other articles he also attempted to establish a connection between Ottonian Ostpolitik and this dynasty’s renovatio imperii in the tenth century. Since World War II, however, Brackmann’s writings on this subject have not fared well. His works are hardly ever cited by current German-speaking medievalists, who are not particularly eager to write about either Ostpolitik or Kriegsgeschichte. Moreover the great authority on the Carolingian history, François Louis Ganshof, made it easy for subsequent historians to ignore Brackmann’s thesis when he asserted ex cathedra, “I do not believe that Charles’s conquest of the Middle Danube countries had any influence on the imperial coronation, as suggested by Brackmann.”12 Ganshof was technically correct in so far as no written evidence directly ties Charlemagne’s Pannonian campaigns to his putative imperial ambitions. However, it is interesting to note that Bernard S. Bachrach, himself a Ganshof student, has recently maintained that Charlemagne systematically pursued a long-term military strategy that culminated in his imperial coronation.13 He has even suggested that the conquest of Avaria must have been a part of that grand strategy – though he provides no details and does not cite Brackmann. Bachrach believes that Charles’ pursuit of the imperial crown was the major strategic innovation of his reign. In his most recent book, dedicated to Ganshof, Bachrach makes a major point that the early Carolingians, Pepin II, Charles Martel, and Pepin III, were exclusively concerned with reestablishing the regnum Francorum, not in rejuvenating a western imperium Romanum.14 Bachrach observes that Charles Martel pointedly refused a papal request to intervene in Italy. Although Pepin III conquered the Lombard kingdom, he did not pretend to rule it. He entered Italy reluctantly on two occasions, but extracted his armies as soon as possible, and never returned, despite papal entreaties to do so.15 Charlemagne, however, revised the strategic goals of his ancestors. When exactly he consciously began his pursuit of the imperial crown is a question that presumably Bachrach will answer in a sequel to his present book. I shall leave that for him. In the following essay I intend to avoid the thorny issue of when (or even if) this Frankish king decided to become a Roman emperor. One point is clear, however: from very early in his reign, Charlemagne, in marked contrast with Charles Martel and Pepin III, displayed a remarkable determination to commit 12

François Louis Ganshof, “The Imperial Coronation of Charlemagne,” in Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian History, translated by Janet Sondheimer (Ithaca, NY, 1971), 41–54. See especially p. 50. 13 Bernard S. Bachrach, “Charlemagne and Pirenne,” in After Rome’s Fall. Festschrift for Walter Goffart, ed. Alexander Murry (Toronto, 1998), pp. 56–75. 14 Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare. See especially pp. 46–50. 15 Ibid., p. 45: “Although Pippin’s operations in Italy during the campaigning seasons of 754 and 755 were beyond the frontiers of the regnum Francorum, these expeditions were not offensive, Pippin did not intend to conquer and rule the region nor indeed was he even eager to become involved militarily in Italy.”

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whatever military resources were necessary in Italy and to bring the Lombard kingdom permanently under his rule. Furthermore, once this commitment had been made, Charles demonstrated by his actions an awareness of its strategic implications: his position in the peninsula was precarious unless he resolved the military problems posed by Bavarians and Avars on the northern frontiers of the peninsula. Subsequently, he moved systematically over a period of almost two decades to bring first Bavaria and then Avaria under his control. In short, geo-strategic considerations arising from his Italian ambitions, not the lure of Avar gold, drove the Carolingian conquest of east-central Europe. Although the Avar khaganate in the late eighth century was primarily interested in preserving its territorial integrity, not in expanding at the expense of its neighbors, substantial portions of Avar territory were ecologically very well suited to sustain a large number of mounted archers who could potentially intervene in Italy.16 These agile warriors could tip the balance in favor of any Italian leader who would be willing to pay for or otherwise court their services against the Franks. The rulers of Lombardy had been in close contact with the Avars for centuries and had frequently used them as auxiliaries. Avar mounted archers could easily reach Italy by means of the relatively low passes through the eastern Alps.17 Thus, such a force could enter northern Italy to fall unexpectedly upon a Frankish army besieging one of the many fortified cities of Lombardy, such as Pavia, Verona, or Treviso. Even after taking these fortress towns in northern Italy, no Frankish leader could safely march down the peninsula in the direction of Rome without leaving an occupying force behind in the northeastern quadrant of the peninsula to secure the passes leading from Pannonia through the eastern Alps. Only by taking such precautions could the ruler guard against fierce Avar warriors, who might be tempted to attack from behind. Already during his first Italian campaign in 773 and continuing into the early years of the ninth century when the destruction of the Avar khaganate was finally assured, Charlemagne demonstrated an amazing perspicuity in this regard. During each of his Italian expeditions, the king moved rapidly and resolutely to secure the northeastern corner of the peninsula (Friuli, Istria, and Verona), through which invasion routes led from Avar Pannonia onto the plains of Lombardy. Yet Charlemagne’s strategic situation in Italy was not only precarious because of the Avars, but also because of the geographic position of a potential enemy who was nominally within the Frankish kingdom, the Bavarian Duke Tassilo III, who was Charles’ cousin and rival. If the Bavarian duke could manage to forge an alliance with the Avars, he would be in an excellent position to coordinate military operations between himself, the Avars, and the opposition

16 17

Pohl, Die Awaren, pp. 308–12. For the routes through the eastern Alps into northern Italy and the connections between the duchy of Friuli and Avar Pannonia, see Harald Krahwinkler, Friaul im Frühmittelalter. Geschichte einer Region vom Ende des fünften bis zum Ende des zehnten Jahrhunderts (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar, 1992), pp. 15–19 and 29–55.

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to Carolingian rule in Italy.18 Two of the best routes from northern Europe to Italy ran through Bavaria. The first of these was the via Claudia Augusta from Augsburg by way of Bozen, Trent, and Verona. The second was the Roman road from Regensburg over the Brenner Pass to Bozen, where the two routes joined to exit the Alps at Verona, a fortress-city on the northeastern fringe of the plain of the Po River.19 If Tassilo could dominate both of these routes, he could make it very difficult for Charlemagne to dispatch an army from Austrasia, his center of power, to that strategically crucial northeastern quadrant of Italy. Noteworthy also is the fact that Bavaria not only controlled these two prominent north-south connections, but also the termini of a large number of east-west routes running through the eastern Alps to Avaria.20 These were the avenues that the Avars would have to use, if they should invade northern Italy to attack Frankish forces bogged down in siege operations there. A Lombard – Avar – Bavarian alliance against the Frankish king was far from being a remote theoretical possibility, for Charlemagne eventually did depose Tassilo in 788 for conspiring with the Avars, “egged on by his wife,” Liutperga, a Lombard princess.21 Working together Bavarians, Avars, and Lombards might have prevented the Frankish conquest of Italy in the first place. Scholars have recognized Tassilo’s advantageous strategic position and have asked the question: why did the Bavarian duke wait until the 780s to conclude his pact with the Avars?22 By then the best opportunities for this “heathen” alliance against Charles had already passed. The most opportune moment had come and gone during the years immediately following the death of Pepin III, when relations between Charles and his brother Carloman were strained. These two Frankish leaders were not only Tassilo’s cousins, but all three of them had married daughters of the Lombard king Desiderius, who had a long-standing tradition of Avar alliances. In 769 a real possibility of an alliance between Carloman, Desiderius, and Tassilo against Charles existed.23 In that year we find Tassilo in Pavia to negotiate with Desiderius. Returning to Bavaria via Bozen, the duke founded the monastery of Innichen to serve as a base of operations to reestablish his control over the Slavs living in the Carantanian Alps, a necessary first step should he want to enter Italy with Avar auxiliaries. The list of witnesses in the foundation charter for Innichen demonstrates that in 769 Tassilo had the support of most Bavarian lay and ecclesiastical leaders, with the exception of Arbeo of Freising, 18 19

20 21 22 23

Bowlus, Franks, pp. 33–45. Wilhelm Störmer, “Zur strategischen Bedeutung der Veroneser Klause und des Gardasees für die Italienzüge deutscher Könige im Hochmittelalter,” in Geschichte und ihre Quellen: Festschrift für Friedrich Hausmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. R. Härtel (Graz, 1987), pp. 121–26. Wilhelm Störmer, Früher Adel. Studien zur politischen Führungsschicht im fränkischdeutschen Reich vom 8. bis 11. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1973), pp. 200–220. Annales regni Francorum a. 788, pp. 80–82. Wolfram, “Das Fürstentum Tassilos III, Herzog von Bayern,” Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Salzburger Landeskunde 108 (1968), pp. 157–76. Karl Bosl, “Die Gründung Innichens und die Überlieferung,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 33 (1970), pp. 452–56.

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Charlemagne’s implacable sympathizer. Even western Bavarian aristocrats, whom Friedrich Prinz has identified as being pro-Carolingian,24 stood by Tassilo when he issued the charter of Innichen in 769. This fact is of crucial importance, for without the support of these western Bavarian magnates, the duke could not control the via Claudia Augusta. In Tassilo’s entourage at Bozen was a certain Autachar, for example, an imperial aristocrat who had been closely tied to Pepin III, who held property in Bavaria, and who at that time supported Carloman and Desiderius.25 We shall hear more about him below. During the early of the 770s events came to a head. In 771 Charlemagne repudiated his Lombard bride and tensions between him and Carloman rose. Open conflict between the brothers was only avoided because of Carloman’s unexpected death. Immediately his widow fled with her children to Desiderius. Meanwhile, Tassilo moved to secure his ties with Lombardy by invading Carantania, attaining a spectacular victory over the Slavs in the eastern Alps, who had relapsed into paganism, a triumph that led some contemporaries to compare him with Constantine the Great.26 But Tassilo won more than praise. The most significant result of his victory was that he secured his hold on the eastern Alpine passes, his links to both Avaria and Lombardy. Shortly thereafter the Bavarian duke made a pilgrimage to Rome, where Pope Hadrian I christened and anointed his son – an act that had political implications. In view of these events it is difficult to understand why Tassilo failed to send Bavarian and/or Avar forces to assist Desiderius when Charlemagne launched his first invasion of Lombardy in 773. It has been argued that Tassilo played a strategically significant role because his control over the eastern Alps forced Charles’ armies to cross into Italy by way of the western Alpine passes, the Mont Cenis and the Great Saint Bernard.27 Since the Frankish king’s power base was in Austrasia, the eastern portion of the Frankish kingdom, the high western passes were more difficult for him to reach than the lower and more comfortable ones further east would have been. Moreover, Carolingian campaigns normally consisted of pincers that converged on enemy territory from several directions.28 In 773, however, the Frankish king did not dispatch a pincer into northern Italy

24

25

26 27 28

Friedrich Prinz, “Herzog und Adel im agilulfingischen Bayern. Herzogsgut und Königsschenkungen vor 788,” Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte 25 (1962), 283–311. Although his views on this question were challenged by Andreas Kraus, “Zweiteilung des Herzogtums der Agilolfinger?” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 112 (1976), 15–29, Prinz responded so convincingly that his thesis still holds: “Nochmals zur ‘Zweiteilung des Herzogtums der Agilolfinger’,” Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte 113 (1977), 113–32. Michael Mitterauer, Karolingische Markgrafen im Südosten: Fränkische Reichsaristokratie und bayerischer Stammesadel im österreichischen Raum (Vienna, 1963), pp. 52–53. Bowlus, Franks, pp. 78–79. Eugen Ewig, “Das Bild Constantins des Grossen in den ersten Jahrhunderten des abendländischen Mittelalters,” Historisches Jahrbuch 75 (1955), p. 22, note 117. Wolfram, “Das Fürstentum Tassilos,” p. 162. J.F. Verbruggen, “L’armée et la strategie de Charlemagne,” in Karl der Große 1, ed. H. Beumann (Düsseldorf, 1965), 420–36.

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from Alemannia, which he controlled, over the passes in Chur Raetia (the modern Swiss canton of Grison). The reasons why Charles failed to send a pincer through Chur Raetia in 773 are difficult to explain. He had already taken measures to ensure that these passes (the most direct routes from the Rhineland to Lombard centers of power in Milan and Pavia) were available for his Italian expedition. In 772, as Charles was planning this campaign, the Frankish king took Bishop Constantius of Chur under his “protection,” formally installing him as rector of Chur Raetia.29 A later letter of Alcuin’s indicates that Constantius and his successor Remedius had been responsible for maintaining facilities along the lines of march over the Chur Raetian passes.30 Yet despite his arrangement with Constantius, in 773 Charlemagne sent no forces from Austrasia and Alemannia through Chur Raetia onto the Lombard Plain, a relatively short route, which later became this ruler’s preferred line of march to Italy, as we shall see. A plausible explanation might be that in 773 Charles ordered some of his forces to take up positions in Chur Raetia and simply to wait there as a means of preventing Tassilo from coming to Desiderius’ aid. It would not have been difficult to maintain a relatively large army in Chur Raetia at that time, for there is much evidence of demographic and economic growth there (clearing and fish farming), which was connected with the construction of millponds to provide power and to slow Alpine torrents. In the low, relatively warm valleys the production of grain and wine was being intensified at that time, and a system of transhumance was being extended onto the higher pastures. Chur Raetia was not just self-sufficient in this era; it actually produced a surplus.31 The network of passes in Chur Raetia led not only directly south to Milan and Pavia, but also were linked to the very passes that connected Bavaria with Bozen and Verona, to the via Claudia Augusta and the Brenner routes. By maintaining an army in Chur Raetia, Charlemagne would have made it very dangerous for Tassilo’s Bavarians to enter Italy, for Frankish forces positioned at strategic places in Chur Raetia (around Müstair for example) could threaten the rear of any Bavarian army marching through the Alps to Lombardy. Although this hypothesis is admittedly speculative, it offers a plausible explanation for the puzzling behavior of Tassilo in 773. By gaining control over Chur Raetia Charles limited Tassilo’s radius of action. With Chur Raetia in Charles’ hands, a Bavarian army could only cross those passes directly under the control of the duke, which meant that it could exit the Alps no further west than Verona, far to the east of the Lombard capital of Pavia. It is worth noting that, following Charlemagne’s crossing of the western passes, Desiderius ensconced himself behind the formidable walls of Pavia which contained sufficient provisions to withstand a prolonged siege 29

Reinhold Kaiser, Churrätien im frühen Mittelalter. Ende 5. bis Mitte 10. Jahrhundert (Basel, 1998), pp. 51–53. 30 Bündner Urkundenbuch 1, ed. E. Meyer-Marthaler and F. Perret (Chur, 1955), p. 34. 31 For the economy of this region, see Kaiser, Churrätien, pp. 195–228. Also see my review of this work in Speculum 76 (2001), 746–48.

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lasting many months. Meanwhile, Desiderius had already dispatched his son Adalgisus eastward to Verona.32 The annals imply that Adalgisus’ flight was motivated by his concern for his sister Gerberga, Carolman’s widow, and her children. However, he unceremoniously abandoned Gerberga to her fate once Charlemagne appeared with an army that was obviously prepared to lay siege to the city. A more convincing explanation is that Adalgisus fled east to Verona to establish contact with Tassilo, and perhaps the Avars, which he could only do from Verona, given the fact that the Chur Raetian passes were in the hands of Constantius, Charles’ supporter. From Verona he could send messengers to Tassilo and the khagan hoping to persuade them to join him there and to march in relief of Pavia. Charlemagne apparently regarded Adalgisus’ presence there as a serious threat because he removed a substantial portion of his forces from the siege of Pavia and led them personally eastward to Verona.33 Autachar, the imperial aristocrat mentioned above, was the commander of the garrison in Verona. When he saw Charlemagne’s army he surrendered without resistance and Gerberga and her children were handed over to Charles. As for Autachar, he won back the good graces of the Frankish king who in 788 entrusted him with a command against the Avars.34 Adalgisus made his escape with his immediate following to the Adriatic, found refuge in Constantinople, and subsequently returned to Italy to challenge Charles’ authority.35 Meanwhile, Charlemagne journeyed to Rome, completed the siege of Pavia, deposed Desiderius, and took the crown of the Lombards for himself before departing for Francia. In 775 a Lombard rebellion moved the Frankish king to intervene again in Italy.36 This time he made a winter or early spring crossing of the Alps, probably over the more direct Raetian passes.37 Significantly, this revolt was centered in the northeastern part of the peninsula, in Friuli, bordering on Avar territory. The uprising collapsed when Duke Hrodgaud of Friuli fell in battle and the heavily fortified city of Treviso capitulated.38 In this conflict, Charlemagne moved 32 33 34 35 36 37

38

S. Abel and B. Simson, Jahrbücher des Fränkischen Reiches unter Karl dem Großen 1 (Berlin, 1888), pp. 150–52. Ibid. Annales regni Francorum, a. 788, p. 84. Bowlus, Franks, p. 47. Abel and Simson, Jahrbücher, 1:188. Adalgisus was well received in Constantinople where he was given the honorific title “patricius.” For the so-called Hrodgaud Rebellion, see Krahwinkler, Friaul, pp. 119–34. Charlemagne’s itinerary for this expedition is impossible to determine from the documents alone. A. Gauert, “Zum Itinerar Karls des Großen,” Karl der Große, pp. 307–24, assumes that Charlemagne crossed the western passes once again in 776. The sole basis for this questionable assumption, however, is that he had already used these passes in 773. On the other hand we know that Charles was in Thionville, just north of Metz, in October 775, and that he celebrated Christmas in Schlettstadt in Alsace. Since he was marching southeast, not southwest, it seems logical that he was planning to make a crossing via the central passes in Chur Raetia, especially since such a route would allow him to exit the Alps much further to the east, where the rebellion was centered. Because Charles had already managed to crush this uprising by mid-April, we must assume that he reached the theater of operations early in 775. Annales regni Francorum, a. 776. Krahwinkler, Friaul, p. 122.

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vigorously to establish his control over the northeastern quadrant of Italy, removing Hrodgaud’s many supporters from their posts and garrisoning the cities in this region with Franks.39 The campaign was over by Easter of 776. Even more impressively than in 773–74, the Frankish king demonstrated an awareness that his position in the rest of Italy was precarious without control over this northeastern quadrant. Moreover, there is evidence of direct Avar involvement in this rebellion, for a certain Lombard noble named Aio, a young man from a prominent family in Friuli, fled to the Avars.40 Years later, in 799, he was pardoned by Charlemagne, his confiscated possessions in Friuli and in the vicinity of Verona, Cividale, and Vicenza were restored, and he was given a comital office in Istria. In 811 Charlemagne dispatched Aio on an important diplomatic mission to Constantinople which resulted in an agreement between the two empires concerning their respective spheres of influence along the Adriatic. Harald Krahwinkler has speculated that during his years in Avaria, Aio may have negotiated with Greek diplomats who entered the region from Byzantine cities on the Adriatic.41 In 780, Charles headed for Italy yet again. Leaving Worms in late August, he must have crossed the Chur Raetian passes, for he arrived in Pavia in September where he wintered in the ancient palace of the Lombard kings.42 In March 781 he revisited the northeastern quadrant, stopping in Parma and Mantua, where he held an assembly.43 Among other measures, he issued a prohibition against distributing arms and breeding stallions outside of the boundaries of the kingdom, a regulation directed against merchants trading with the Avars.44 At the same assembly Charles issued a ban on trading pagan slaves in this region, not just Christian ones, thus indicating that arms and fine breeding stallions were being exchanged for slaves. After visiting this northeastern frontier, the Frankish king arrived in Rome in April.45 Meanwhile Duke Tassilo hurriedly dispatched a legation to the eternal city consisting of distinguished Bavarian magnates, ostensibly to accompany the duke’s wife who bore gifts for Pope Hadrian II. Charles, however, barred their way, allowing only Bishop Alman of Säben and Abbot Atto of Schlehdorf passage to the eternal city. The other envoys were unceremoniously sent back to Bavaria.46 Obviously relations between the cousins were strained. The Renaissance humanist Aventinus, who 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46

Although Krahwinkler, Friaul, pp. 134–35, believes that some officials were allowed to remain in their posts, the Annales regni Francorum is unequivocal: high officials were removed and replaced by Franks (disposuit omnes per Francos). Abel, Jahrbücher 2:472–73. Krahwinkler, Friaul, pp. 136–42. Krahwinkler, Friual, p. 142. Abel and Simson, Jahrbücher 1:369, believed that Charlemagne crossed the western passes. Yet they acknowledged in a footnote that there is good evidence that the Frankish king went by way of Constance and Dissentis (Chur Rätia), a much shorter route. Ibid., pp. 373–74. Ibid., pp. 375–76. Ibid., pp. 378–79. Ibid., pp. 381–83.

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may have had access to materials now lost, wrote that Tassilo (with Slavs and Avars as allies) nearly went to war against Charles because of this humiliating incident. He was restrained, however, by the pope, who sent an embassy to the Bavarian duke.47 From the contemporary Annales regni Francorum we know for a fact that Tassilo was summoned to appear before the Frankish ruler as soon as he returned to Worms.48 There the Bavarian duke was reminded in no uncertain terms that he had been guilty of treason when, many years earlier, he had deserted Pepin III’s army during an invasion of Aquitaine. Charles then forced Tassilo to swear a humiliating oath of vassalage. The duke’s star was clearly setting. These events must have made an impression on the Avars because envoys from the khagan appeared at an assembly in Paderborn early in 782.49 The following year the Avar leader, obviously nervous, ordered a large army (magnus exercitus) to the Enns River, the boundary between Bavaria and Avaria. This action was intended as a display of force, not an invasion. The sources agree that it did no damage.50 Although there are some reports of skirmishes between Bavarians and Franks in the vicinity of Bozen,51 the protracted Saxon wars prevented Charlemagne from dealing with Tassilo and the Avars again until 787. Once again there seems to have been an indirect connection between Tassilo’s fate and a campaign that Charles had undertaken in Italy. On this occasion the king crossed the Alps very late in the year 786. Since he was in Worms on 5 November and celebrated Christmas in Florence Charlemagne could have crossed the passes through Chur Raetia once again.52 It is more plausible, however, that on this occasion he took the via Claudia Augusta, which skirts the borders of Bavaria and Alemannia. The Reschen Pass from the Inn valley to the upper Adige provides a much easier and lower Alpine crossing than do the higher, steeper Chur Raetian ones, an important consideration at the onset of winter. At this point Tassilo’s support in the western portions of Bavaria had melted away. Therefore, Charles would not have put himself and his army in jeopardy by choosing the via Claudia Augusta. Indeed, in taking this route with a large army he could have intimidated Tassilo. In addition, this route had the added advantage of being the most direct one to Bologna and Florence.53

47 48 49 50

51 52 53

Abel and Simson, ibid., pp. 380–83, discuss this incident as well as the general question of the reliability of Aventinus. Annales regni Francorum, a. 781, pp. 58–99. Ibid., a. 782, pp. 60–61. This incident is ignored in the Frankish sources, but is reported in two Bavarian annals, Annales Emmerammi maiores, MGH SS 1, pp. 93–94, and the Annales Iuvavenses maximi, MGH SS, 30/2, p. 126. Abel, Jahrbücher 2:477. Abel, ibid., pp. 552–55, correctly concludes that later reports that Charles spent fourteen days in the monastery of St. Maurice on the route to the Great St. Bernard are not to be taken seriously. There is no evidence that Charlemagne went to the Lombard capital in 876. This is not an ordinary argument from silence, for, as Abel notes, ibid., p. 553, Charles normally issued numerous charters and other documents whenever he visited Pavia.

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This campaign, which Charles launched in March 787, was directed against Duke Arichis of Benevento and should not have involved Tassilo in any way. Nevertheless, there were obviously some undercurrents of mistrust between the Frankish king and his cousin. Immediately after Charles had defeated Arichis and returned to Rome, an embassy from Tassilo led by Bishop Arno of Salzburg and Abbot Hunrich of Mondsee arrived there to attempt to persuade Pope Hadrian to intercede with Charlemagne on Tassilo’s behalf concerning a dispute, the details of which are murky.54 Whatever they may have involved, these negotiations were unsuccessful. Before returning north of the Alps, the Frankish king inspected the northeastern quadrant (Ravenna and Mantua), the very region where his son Pepin, now co-ruler of Lombardy, would soon be gathering forces to attack Bavaria from the south later in the same year. Then, Charles proceeded up the Po valley to Pavia, whence he crossed the Chur Raetian passes for another assembly in Worms in July.55 It was at this gathering of Frankish magnates that Charles made his final decision to attack Bavaria. This invasion was a classic three-pronged one.56 One pincer assembled in Franconia, probably at the royal palace of Forchheim, and marched down the Altmühl watershed to the easy crossing at Pföring on the Danube between Ingolstadt and Regensburg. The second, under Charles’ personal command, proceeded from Worms, most likely marching up the Neckar valley through the Schwäbische Alb to Ulm and on to Augsburg on the Lech River which marked the boundary between Bavaria and Alemannia. The third pincer, theoretically under young Pepin’s command, attacked Bavaria from the south. Although the main part of this army marched north to lay siege to Bozen, which was garrisoned by Bavarians, Charles ordered Pepin to remain in Trent with a mobile force, probably to protect the besiegers to the north should they be attacked by surprise. Faced with invasions of his duchy from three directions, Tassilo had no choice but to give up. Convicted of conspiring with the Avars, in 788 he was stripped of his offices, tonsured, and sent with his son to a monastery.57 Between the years 773 and 787 Charlemagne had conquered most of Italy, assumed the crown of the Lombards, put down several rebellions in the Frankish kingdom, and subdued numerous uprisings in Saxony. He had accomplished all of this while avoiding an open conflict with Bavarians and Avars who, working together, could have threatened his Italian ambitions. It is difficult to imagine a better lesson in the principle of divide and conquer than the one Charlemagne taught Tassilo during these years. In 788 he removed the Bavarian duke from his office, and brought the duchy once more under his firm control. One more step remained, however: the conquest of Avaria. Charlemagne’s Avar war really began the very year in which he deposed Tassilo, not in 791 as is widely imagined. Illustrating Avaria’s geo-strategic 54 55 56 57

Abel, ibid., pp. 572–75. Ibid., pp. 577–82. Annales regni Francorum, a. 787, pp. 78–79. Ibid., pp. 80–85.

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relationship with Bavaria and Italy the Revised Royal Annals report that in 788, “The Huns [Avars], as they had promised Tassilo, prepared two armies and attacked the March of Friuli with one and Bavaria with the other.”58 These forays were repulsed, however, and the Franks vigorously counterattacked. Operating from Bavaria, two important commanders, Graman and Autachar, very probably the imperial aristocrat who had surrendered Verona to Charles in 773, won a celebrated victory over the Avars near Ybbs on the Danube. This action entailed an invasion of Avar territory along the Danube, for an encounter took place east of the Enns River, then the limes certus between Bavaria and Avaria. Although Carolingian sources describe this expedition as a response to Avar aggression, it was probably also a Frankish probe designed to test Avar reactions and to gather intelligence concerning their defenses. In 790 envoys of the khagan appeared at Worms for negotiations. Nothing came of them, however, and hostilities continued in the eastern Alps and on the borders of Friuli.59 Early in the summer of 891, Charles arrived in Regensburg to prepare for a truly massive invasion of Avar territory.60 He assembled an army consisting of forces drawn from all parts of the regnum Francorum. Even his young son Louis arrived with a following from Aquitaine. The preparations for the offensive had obviously been thorough, for Charles did not leave Regensburg for the Enns boundary until mid-August. In this first Avar campaign Charlemagne overwhelmed them by sending pincers into their territory from three directions. First a strike force (scara) attacked the Avar territory (defined as Illyricum and Pannonia) from Italy. This army was led by King Pepin, Duke John of Istria, two counts, numerous royal vassals, and a bishop.61 It plundered an (unknown) Avar fortress and returned with much booty and 150 prisoners. Perhaps this action could be called a Beutezug. More likely, however, it was a strategic diversion designed to prevent the Avars from massing all of their forces in the north against Charlemagne’s main thrust down the Danube. Just because this scara took spoils does not mean that booty was the primary motive for the mission. In early September Charles arrived at the confluence of the Enns with the Danube, the Avar frontier, where he received the news of the success of the southern army. Meanwhile he had already dispatched a third pincer from upper Franconia through Bohemia to attack Avar fortresses north of the Danube in the Kamp watershed.62 Undoubtedly the largest force was the one that Charlemagne commanded personally, which marched eastward on both sides of the Danube and was supported logistically by river craft. In order to frustrate invasions of their territory, the Avars had established fortifications in Lower Austria. In spite of these defensive works, however, the Avars, terrified by the prospect of 58 59 60 61 62

Ibid., p. 83. Translation: B. Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles. Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories (Ann Arbor, 1972), p. 67. Annales regni Francorum, a. 790, p. 87. Ibid., a. 791, pp. 84–8. For a detailed discussion of what follows, Bowlus, Franks, pp. 46–60. Annales Laureshamenses, MGH SS, a. 791, p. 34. Bowlus, Franks, pp. 49–51.

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dealing with two large armies simultaneously and probably aware of Charlemagne’s ruthless dealings with the Saxons, fled their fortifications, which the Franks destroyed. The pincers united near Krems and marched along the Danube east of the Vienna Woods to the confluence of the Raab River. Then the Frankish king marched up the latter river to Savaria (modern Szombathely), a crucial junction of Roman roads, where the hills of Burgenland give way to the rolling country of Transdanubia.63 In this strategic center a stone fortification was raised, straddling the crossroads. Obviously Savaria, the Roman city where a special Carolingian icon, Saint Martin, had been born, was the strategic goal of this well-planned and well-executed expedition. Although this was the only Avar campaign in which Charles personally participated, the Frankish king took this war very seriously indeed, as is illustrated by his presence in Bavaria during the entirety of 792 and most of 793, despite serious problems in other parts of his realms – famine, renewed rebellion in Saxony and Frisia, a putsch led by nobles who had coalesced around the royal bastard Pepin the Hunchback, plus trouble with Crimoald of Benevento. During his prolonged stay in Regensburg, the king ordered the production of special boats to support operations in the vast Danubian watershed east of the Vienna Woods.64 These river craft were constructed in such a way that they could be easily lashed together to function as pontoon bridges to convey forces quickly back and forth across rivers. Even more indicative of his comprehensive understanding of the strategic importance of river systems is his attempt to construct a canal to connect the Danube with the Rhine–Main watershed, a visionary undertaking that has left a mark permanently on the landscape between Bavaria and Franconia. Charles was, in fact, so committed to this canal that he remained in Bavaria until December 793, when, reluctantly, he left this faltering project to go by ship to Würzburg and, then, on to Frankfurt. Although the Avar khaganate had not been destroyed when Charles finally departed Bavaria, it is a mistake to assume that the campaign of 791 had been a failure.65 This operation was a very necessary one, which the Avars had been unable to fend off because of the sheer size of the operation. The systematic destruction of fortifications along the Danube made it now possible for smaller contingents of mounted forces to make unpredictable strikes into Avar territory. As long as the Avars had held these forts, it was impossible for Frankish forces operating in Bavaria to plunge deep into Pannonia do disrupt Avar attempts to recover from their defeat. The logic of the expedition of 791 is confirmed by 63

For the importance of Szombathley, see the following articles by E. Toth: “Zu den historischen Problem der Stadt Savaria und ihrer Umgebung zwischen dem 4. und 9. Jahrhundert,” Folia Archaeologica 27 (1876), 89–118; “Die karolingische Burg von Savaria-Szombathely,” Folia Archaeologica 29 (1978), 151–82; and “Bemerkungen zur Kontinuität der römischen Provinzialbevölkerung in Transdanubien (Nordpannonien),” Südosteruopa Jahrbuch 17 (1987), pp. 25–29. 64 Bowlus, Franks, p. 55. 65 Cf. Pohl, Die Awaren, pp. 315–18, and Csendes, “Zu den Awarenkriegen,” p. 100, who believe that the expedition of 791 was sufficient to demoralize the Avars.

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Einhard’s statement that subsequent operations were prosecuted most vigorously (strenuissime) by subordinate commanders.66 It is also significant that Charles carried the campaign as far east as Savaria, a civitas that had been the headquarters of the Roman governor general of Pannonia Prima. Control of the crossroads there gave the Franks a crucial base of operations against Avar forces who had fled further east, while, at the same time, it ensured communications with friendly forces operating from Carantania and Friuli. The Frankish occupation of Savaria was no afterthought, but rather it was a well conceived first step in the conquest of the entire Carpathian Basin. From this strategic center strikes into Avaria from Lower Austria and Carantania could be coordinated. Unfortunately, the annals do not provide details concerning military operations against the Avars during the years 792–94. We should not conclude from this silence, however, that inactivity prevailed. The annalists were concerned primarily with the king and reported military operations of lesser commanders only when they were notable successes or notorious failures. Raiding parties from Bavaria, Carantania, and Friuli must have been regularly sent out against the Avars, whose confederation was in the process of dissolution. One source informs us that civil wars had broken out among Avar princes in the wake of their defeat and that some of their leaders had been murdered by the troops.67 How can we explain this deterioration of discipline and morale, unless we assume relentless Frankish pressure? Had Charles simply plundered western Pannonia and then withdrawn all of his forces, the Avars would presumably have regrouped and recovered their confidence. In 795 a notably successful raid carried deep into Avar territory.68 Eric, the margrave of Friuli, dispatched a force under the command of the Slav Wonomyr, who despoiled the Avar “ring” of some of its fabulous treasure. One suspects that it was the sheer size of this hoard that caused this event to be reported, whereas numerous others must have been more routine and, hence, unworthy of notice. Nevertheless, this report does not prove that raids into Avar territory were simply Beutezüge. In war, the purpose of raids is to seize and destroy unprotected assets in order to disrupt and demoralize the enemy. The acquisition of a large cache of precious metal, while a welcome collateral outcome, need not be interpreted as the primary aim of such an expedition. Further evidence that Avar morale was collapsing under the pressure of relentless raids appears early in 796, when another Avar leader (called the tudan) journeyed with a large following to Aachen, where he formally submitted to Charlemagne’s overlordship.69 The Avar war was far from finished, however, for King Pepin led a large expedition in the summer of the same year, one that was certainly more than a 66 67 68

Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 13, 15–16. Annales Laureshamenses, pp. 162–63. Annales regni Francorum, a. 796, p. 98. For the date of this invasion (795 rather than 796), see Abel, Jahrbücher, 2:99, n. 3. 69 Annales regni Francorum, a. 796, pp. 98–99.

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gold rush. In contrast with the successful assault of the previous year, which had apparently involved only the margrave of Friuli and his subordinates, the young king led an exercitus that had been gathered in Italy, while Charles sent out Bavarians and Alemans to join him.70 The northern armies united with the Italian exercitus somewhere beyond the frontiers of Roman Pannonia, for the annals state that the combined forces crossed the Danube to attack the ring,71 which explains Charlemagne’s preoccupation with pontoon bridges, a requirement to convey men and material across such a large river. Although the destruction of the ring and the taking of an immense treasure may have earned this campaign the appellation “Beutezug,” it was quite clearly more than that. Once military operations there had ceased, Pepin convened a synod “on the banks of the Danube” for the purpose of organizing the Christianization of Avar territory,72 a sure sign that the Franks had come to stay. At this conclave the boundary between the jurisdictions of the sees of Salzburg and Aquileia was established as the course of the Drava River from the headwaters in Carantania to the confluence with the Danube in Lower Pannonia. While it is true that Einhard was fascinated by the Avar treasure, he also emphasizes that Charlemagne was bent on conquering all of Avaria. Included in Charles’ realm were “both provinces of Pannonia, the part of Dacia which is beyond the Danube, Istria, Liburnia and Dalmatia, with the exception of the maritime cities which Charlemagne allowed the Emperor of Constantinople to keep, in view of his friendship with him and the treaty which he had made.”73 The campaign of 796 was a devastating blow to any hopes that Avar leaders may have had to reconstitute their confederation. Nevertheless, pockets of Avar resistance remained, and Charlemagne was obviously determined to continue the pressure until he had crushed them. As late as 799, for example, two imperial aristocrats, Eric of Friuli and Gerald, Prefect of Bavaria and Charlemagne’s brother-in-law, fell in mopping up operations against the Avars.74 Three years after that, the Annals of St. Emmeram report that two other margraves, Cadaloc and Goteram, were killed along with many others at the castellum Guntionis.75 In 803 Charlemagne sent a large Bavarian expedition into Pannonia under the command of the new prefect of Bavaria, Audulf, and the margrave Werner, both high-ranking imperial aristocrats.76 Although the annalists do not report the details of this campaign, it must have been one of considerable magnitude because the aging emperor left Aachen for Bavaria to await the outcome. We 70 71 72

73 74 75 76

Annales Laureshamenses, a. 796, p. 37. Ibid. MGH Concilia aevi Karolini, vol. 2/1 (742–817), ed. A. Werminghoff (1906), no. 20, pp. 172–76. For just how seriously the religious aspects of this expedition were taken at the court, see J. Osborn, “Politics, Diplomacy and the Cult of Relics in the Northern Adriatic in the First Half of the Ninth Century,” Early Medieval Europe 8 (1999), pp. 382–83. Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 15, p. 17. Translation: Thorp, Two Lives, p. 68. Bowlus, Franks, p. 57. Annales Emmerammi Ratisponsis maiores, MGH SS vol. 1, a. 802, p. 93. Bowlus, Franks, pp. 56–58.

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know for a fact that Charles ventured as far eastward as Salzburg, where he received an embassy from Jerusalem in October. Since this expedition lasted well into late autumn, we must assume that it was a major undertaking. In November Charles was back in Regensburg, where an Avar leader “Zotan,” identified as the princeps of Pannonia, and many Slavs and Avars submitted themselves to the Frankish ruler. The campaign of 803 finally sounded the death knell of the Avar confederation, which had dominated the Carpathian Basin for two centuries. Early in 805 the khagan (with the Greek name of Theodorus), who had already converted to Christianity, arrived in Aachen to petition Charles to grant his people a territory on the Little Alföld, a small parcel of steppe southeast of Vienna.77 Because they were being attacked by Slavs, he complained, it had become impossible for Avars to continue to live in their former territories (the Large Alföld, vast steppe lands east of the Danube).78 It is clear that the conquest of Avaria was not simply a Beutezug, nor was it motivated by only “a half-hearted intent of conquest.” On the contrary, the Avar war consisted of a persistent series of systematic, well-planned expeditions which were strategically linked to Charlemagne’s Italian ambitions. Very early in his reign, the Frankish king chose to become deeply involved in Italy, and once that decision had been reached, he was compelled by geo-strategic considerations to secure the eastern Alps and the Carpathian Basin. Whether or not he had the revival of the western Roman empire in mind as early as 773 is beside the point, for, by uniting the crowns of Francia and Lombardy in his person, he was in effect reestablishing an empire in the West. There was no way that he could extricate himself from Italy without losing face. To conquer Italy and to maintain his position there, Charles had begun by establishing his dominance over the routes through the central Alps (Chur Raetia). The control of these passes allowed him to reach the northeastern quadrant of the peninsula quickly in order to prevent Bavarians and Avars from coming to the assistance of Desiderius or any other Lombard leader who might lead an organized opposition to Frankish rule. The western Alpine passes were far too cumbersome for Charles to cross on a regular basis given the fact that his power center was in Austrasia in the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom. The central passes of Chur Raetia allowed him to follow a more direct line of march from Austrasia (generally from Worms) to Italy. Although he crossed the western passes in 773, he chose the central passes in 775, 776, 781, and (perhaps) 787. The Saxon wars no doubt prevented him from dealing with Tassilo and the Avars as speedily as he would have preferred. However, in 787 when he made up his mind to solve the southeastern problem once and for all, he refused to be diverted from this goal despite renewed rebellions in Saxony, famines, and conflicts in other parts of his sprawling realm. He committed tremendous resources to this task, and he assigned some of his most talented commanders to it. The importance of these 77 78

Annales regni Francorum, a. 895, pp. 119–20. For Slavic settlement in the Great Hungarian Plain, the former home of the Avars, see Eggers, Das grossmährische Reich, pp. 69–90.

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eastern territories to Carolingian rulers is apparent in the policies of Charlemagne’s successors who tenaciously tried to hold on to them. Again, in the tenth century, Otto the Great followed Charles’ policy of securing the eastern Alps and the passes from Pannonia to Italy before reaching for the imperial crown. The Carpathian Basin was not simply a fringe area of little or no strategic interest before the turn of the first millennium. In the ninth and tenth centuries there was no strategic distinction between Ostpolitik and Italienpolitik. Military operations in the former Roman province of Pannonia were taken seriously by Carolingian and Ottonian rulers because they had imperial ambitions in Italy. Modern historians should take this theater of operations seriously as well.

4 The Composition and Raising of the Armies of Charlemagne1 John France

Armies of Charlemagne

The conquests of Charlemagne were so spectacular that inevitably historians have been deeply interested in the nature of his armies and the way in which they were recruited. In the last twenty years or so, two clearly opposed views on this subject have emerged; the strengths and weaknesses of both are examined in this article. On certain points these schools of thought agree. They reject the idea that Carolingian victories were based on the deployment of a new form of heavy cavalry using shock tactics.2 They both accept that the Carolingians enjoyed substantial advantages over their barbarian enemies in terms of weapons, as a result of their superior economic base. This should not, however, be exaggerated, because in 776 the Saxons employed siege machinery against Frankish fortifications.3 Above all they attribute Carolingian success to superior military 1

In 1999–2000 the author was granted a Leverhulme Fellowship and this was supported by funds for travelling from the British Academy. These enabled the author to do the research upon which this paper is based. Moreover Simon Coupland was kind enough to read the material and offer suggestions and ideas. For all this support the author wishes to express his gratitude. 2 The idea that Charles Martel (714–41) invented heavy “shock” cavalry and so laid the foundations of the Carolingian Empire was developed by H. Brunner. It was effectively demolished by two articles: D.A. Bullough, “Europae Pater: Charlemagne and his Achievement in the Light of Recent Scholarship,” English Historical Review 85 (1970), 84–90 and B.S. Bachrach, “Charles Martel, Shock Combat, the Stirrup and Feudalism,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7 (1970), 47–75. The whole controversy is usefully summarised in K. DeVries, Medieval Military Technology (Ontario, 1992), pp. 95–110. H.W. Goetz, “Secular and Military Institutions,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History volume 2, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1995), 451–80, is alone amongst modern writers on this subject in giving emphasis to the reign of Charles Martel and the emergence of cavalry. But this series in general is very limited in what it has to say on military matters, on which see J. France, “Recent Writing On Medieval Warfare: From the Fall of Rome to c.1300,” Journal of Military History 65 (2001), 441–73. 3 Charlemagne was anxious to prevent military equipment, especially hauberks and swords, from falling into the hands of his neighbours, on which see the “Double Capitulary of Thionville” of 806 in A. Boretius and V. Krause (eds.), Capitularia regum Francorum (Hannover: MGH, 1883–7), 44:123; for a good survey of military equipment see S. Coupland, “Carolingian Arms and Armour in the Ninth Century,” Viator 21 (1990), 29–50; F. Kurze (ed.), Annales regni Francorum 741–828 (Hannover: MHG SRG, 1895), translated as The Royal Frankish Annals

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tactics, logistical capacity and good techniques. However, their views on the raising of Carolingian armies are very different. Broadly speaking, one approach tends to see the army as an elite group, perhaps bulked out by camp-followers, while the other presents us with the view of a mass army raised from the whole body of freemen within the Frankish lands. This article proposes that the way in which Charlemagne raised his armies has to be understood in terms of his wider relationship with the political community of the Carolingian lands that were dominated by the high nobility. It suggests that there was no single Carolingian army, but rather that we should think in terms of different kinds of armies raised in particular circumstances and differing in make-up. This view is based specifically upon an examination of the sources for the reign of Charlemagne. Modern writers have perhaps been rather too anxious to read into this period the ideas and developments of later centuries. A substantial contribution to our understanding of Carolingian warfare has been made by two very fine articles written by T. Reuter in which he argued that the armies with which the Carolingians made their remarkable conquests were not so very different from those of the Merovingians, consisting primarily of great leaders, the leudes as they had been called in the Merovingian sources, with their warbands of professional followers.4 Such men, he suggested, went to war to profit from plunder, either by taking it themselves or receiving a share doled out by their leaders and ultimately by the king. Beneficed vassals of the king were a small element in these forces because they were the great men who led them. The majority were paid warriors, often landless, marching to war as predators in the followings of the great in the hope of gain. Reuter noted, as many had before, that in the capitularies of the later part of Charlemagne’s reign, there was provision for the enlistment on a selective basis of wider social groups. He argued that this general obligation was essentially defensive in nature, and pointed out that most of these references dated from a period when the empire had made a conscious decision to stand on the defensive. This created the need for a different and larger army, sections of which could be summoned for local defence. Essentially this suggests that the Carolingian conquests were made with quite small “elitist” forces, though Reuter did not deny the possibility, raised by K. Werner, that at least on occasion larger armies were brought together: this idea, however, was never fully explored.5 It would be difficult to overstate the impact these ideas have had upon Carolingian

by B.W. Scholz and B. Rogers in Carolingian Chronicles (Ann Arbor, MI, 1972), pp. 37–125, and, for Charlemagne’s reign only, by P.D. King in Charlemagne. Translated Sources (Lancaster, 1987), pp. 74–131. 4 T. Reuter, “Plunder and tribute in the Carolingian Empire,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985), 75–94; “The End of Carolingian Military Expansion,” in P. Godman and R. Collins (eds.), Charlemagne’s Heir. New Perspectives on the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40) (Oxford, 1990), pp. 391–405. 5 Reuter, “End of Carolingian Military Expansion,” 398 and n.38. For Werner’s ideas see below p. 69.

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studies in the last twenty years. However, there is room for considerable scepticism about them. In the first place they assume an automatic response by the magnates to Carolingian demands for military support. Nobody doubts that amongst the Franks the great men were expected to provide military service for the king by bringing substantial military followings to the host. However, we do not know how big these retinues were or how they were recruited. These magnates played a key role in Carolingian warfare. They formed the assembly of the Franks, the placitum, and were, in a real sense, the constituency of Charlemagne. Without their aid the extensive Carolingian conquests would have been impossible. However, when we consider these people in the light of Reuter’s ideas, we have to ask ourselves how far they looked to war as a means of income. In fact there is no doubt that land was the vital resource of the leaders of Carolingian society, and that it provided the enormous bulk of their wealth. Moreover, organisation of landed holdings was becoming ever more efficient and the peasantry were being bound more and more rigidly to the interests of the elite. The classical pattern of manorial society structured around a lordly demesne serviced by tied peasants had emerged, providing a rich economic base for the lords.6 This great wealth must have enabled them to equip themselves and their followers with the very latest and best in arms and armor and, at least sometimes, to provide horses. But wealth begets independence, and this must especially have been the case in a group of families who not only possessed great wealth, but were descended from people who had played a great role in early Frankish times. Wealth, lineage and independence made them personages with whom even the greatest of kings would have had to treat rather than command. The Carolingians had attracted into their service a number of families important under the Merovingians. Some of these lived beyond the Frankish lands. Count Aigulf of Maguelonne sent his son Witiza, later known as St Benedict of Aniane, to serve

6

See especially W. Davies and M. Fouracre (eds.), Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1995); W. Goffart, “From Roman Taxation to Medieval Seigneurie: Three Notes”, Speculum 7 (1972), 165–87, 373–94, and “Old and New in Merovingian Taxation,” Past and Present 96 (1982), 3–21; J.-P. Devroey, “Réflexions sur l’économie des premiers temps Carolingiens: grands domaines et action politique entre Seine et Rhin,” Francia 13 (1985), 475–88; G. Halsall, Settlement and Social Organization. The Merovingian Region of Metz (Cambridge, 1995); F. Theuws, “Centre and Periphery in Northern Austrasia (6th–8th Centuries). An Archaeological Perspective,” in J. Besteman, J. Bos and H. Heidinga (eds.), Medieval Archaeology in the Netherlands. Studies presented to H.H. van Regteren Altena (Maastricht, 1990), pp. 41–69, and “Landed Property and Manorial Organisation in Northern Austrasia. Some Considerations and a Case Study,” in N. Roymans and F. Theuws (eds.), Images of the Past. Studies on Ancient Societies in Northwestern Europe (Amsterdam, 1991), pp. 299–407; H.-W. Goetz, “Serfdom and the Beginnings of a ‘Seigneurial System’ in the Carolingian Period: a Survey of the Evidence,” Early Medieval Europe 2 (1993), 29–52; C. Hammer, “Land Sales in Eighth and Ninth Century Bavaria: Legal, Social and Economic Aspects,” Early Medieval Europe 6 (1997), 47–76.

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both Pepin III and Charlemagne.7 We hear a great deal about the way in which the Merovingians worked to create a consensus amongst the great in their realm.8 So did the Carolingians; the capitularies of Charlemagne and his son were the result of careful discussion. The splendor of Charlemagne’s reign tends to blind us to the precariousness that he evidently felt. The conspiracy of his son, Pepin the Hunchback, in 792 is often dismissed as a minor incident, but the lavish scale of the rewards he gave to those who had remained loyal at the assembly at Regensburg in that year shows just how deeply worried he was.9 Moreover, it was not an isolated event: in 785 Count Hardrad plotted to kill the king, and Peter, Bishop of Verdun, was suspected of the same thing in 794.10 There is no doubt that for nobles royal office was a vital source of additional riches and prestige, and all kings at all times used patronage as a means of playing off important men against one another. But the great had a virtual monopoly of office and undue manipulation could all too easily lead to faction. To reward men beyond their ranks was highly dangerous. Louis the Pious raised up from humble origins Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims, showing that social mobility was possible, at least in the Church. However, Ebbo was the subject of criticism, revealing that promotion of this kind was not common or commonly accepted within the Carolingian elite.11 The Carolingians lived in an aristocratic world. Saints’ lives commonly describe their subjects as “noble in spirit as well as birth,” and they single out holy men of humble origin with a contrasting phrase such as “noble in spirit although of humble birth.” The Carolingian family rose to power by forging close connections with other important Frankish families. Marriage agreements, conciliation and compromise were as much the foundations of Carolingian greatness as victory in war. Once in a dominant position Carolingian rulers, like their Merovingian predecessors, could not count on a machinery of command.

7

8 9 10 11

K.F. Werner, “Important Noble Families in the Kingdom of Charlemagne,” in T. Reuter (ed.), The Medieval Nobility (Amsterdam, 1978), pp. 137–202, stresses the number and importance of the Merovingian nobles who followed the Carolingians. He is followed by R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians 751–987 (London, 1983), pp. 95–6, though K. Schmid, “Structure of the Nobility in the Earlier Middle Ages,” in Reuter, Medieval Nobility, pp. 51–61, is less inclined to see an earlier lineage, while stressing the power and independence of those nobles we know about; Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur vela catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, ed. J. Bollandus and G. Henschenius, 70 vols (2nd edition, Brussels, 1863–1940), 12:611–21 (5 Feb.), and L. d’Achery and D.J. Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti, 9 vols (Paris, 1668–1701), 4:191–226. I. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 (London, 1994), especially pp. 221–38; P. Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (London, 2000), pp. 12–32. F.L. Ganshof, Recherches sur les Capitulaires (Paris, 1958), pp. 29–33; Annales Laureshamenses, MGH SS I, a.792. On Hardrad see below pp. 74–75; on Peter, Boretius, 1:75, No. 28, clauses 9–20. Thegan, Vita Hludovici imperatoris, MGH SS 2. 599.

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Everything depended on the personality of the king, his ability to manipulate and control his leading subjects.12 In fact the signs are clear that even at the height of his power Charlemagne, like most medieval kings, ruled by consensus and persuasion. This has considerable implications for the way in which he raised forces for war. Most modern writers are convinced that the waging of successful war was a vital factor that enabled Charlemagne to maintain the support of his nobles. War, as Reuter stressed, produced booty, while others point to the availability of new offices in the conquered lands which could be held out as an inducement. The high nobility of Germany who emerge in the early tenth century were all Frankish by descent. The Widones of Spoleto were of the same origins, and by the end of the ninth century they would aspire to the Empire.13 The scale of this patronage of aristocratic families is indicative of the great king’s need for support, just as his reaction to conspiracies reveals his sense of precariousness. We should never forget that at the beginning of his reign Charlemagne was essentially a parvenu whose position was not beyond challenge until the very end of the eighth century. His son, Louis the Pious, failed to manipulate the great as skilfully as Charlemagne, and paid a heavy price in terms of internal instability. The great Frankish families gained much from supporting Charlemagne. However, this was the consequence of success, and things must have looked very different without the benefit of hindsight. War is a risky business requiring the commitment of wealth, equipment, life and limb for an uncertain gain. The status and wealth of the great families do not at once suggest that they were so dependent upon the proceeds of war as to be prepared to obey the king’s call automatically. We do not know how they raised their armed followers, though relatively few of these seem to have been landed. It seems unlikely, therefore, that they were permanent bodies ever-ready for war which would defray the costs of keeping them. The chances are that individuals were hired at the need and discretion of the noble. It should be noted that, at least in Aquitaine, Charlemagne was not eager to foster these military followings and was very concerned to control the obvious dangers they presented. This should remind us that from the perspective of the magnates, these followings were raised to serve their own interests, and armed followings were vital factors in rivalries between Carolingian notables.14 Moreover, for much of his reign Charlemagne was campaigning in Saxony where the evidence is that hard knocks and harsh conditions were more readily available than plunder. These Saxon wars were very prolonged. There are 12

On the rise of Charles Martel see Fouracre, Age of Charles Martel. For the wider notion of the aristocratic state I am indebted to the ideas of M. Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: the Middle Rhine Valley 400–1000 (Cambridge, 2000). 13 H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire, tr. P. Munz of a 1949 German original (Oxford, 1957) takes this as a central thesis; G. Barraclough, The Origins of Modern Germany (Oxford, 1957), pp. 24–45; McKitterick, Frankish Kingdoms, p. 78. 14 B.S. Bachrach, “Military Organisation in Aquitaine under the Early Carolingians,” Speculum 49 (1974), 13–31.

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obvious reasons for this. Charlemagne was making war on a society in which some elements, perhaps mainly aristocratic, were prepared to come to terms, while others were emphatically not. Saxon society was decentralised and this made the process of conquest very difficult.15 There were no towns to besiege or Roman roads to move on. The lands of the Saxons were accessible from western Germany whose peoples feared Saxon aggressiveness and who had come to terms with the Franks. But Frankish armies had to concentrate in their own lands and then travel across them before facing their enemies. All this, the hazards of weather and the constant diversions of Frankish military power to meet threats from other directions go far to explaining the slow progress of the conquest of Saxony. Turning to the question of the apparently universal duty of freemen in the Frankish lands to serve the king in war, it is also evident that Reuter’s ideas need to be treated with some caution. He accepts, as almost all writers have, that there was such an obligation amongst the Franks. However his argument is that such an obligation could only have produced unwieldy and excessively large forces of often ill-armed people which would have been entirely unsuitable for the aggressive war of the period before 800. Rather, he suggests that we hear a lot about this obligation in the capitularies of the later reign of Charlemagne because it was purely defensive in nature, and, therefore, appropriate for an empire which in the later reign of Charlemagne had resolved to end expansionist war.16 This is not wholly convincing. In the first place almost all of the capitularies on all topics date from after 800 and we have no proper base for making a comparison with what earlier material might have said. Moreover, it is difficult to draw a sharp distinction between offensive and defensive warfare. Perhaps more importantly, the capitularies seem to envisage this obligation on all free men as being used for distant and distinctly offensive operations. There is an insistence in the capitularies that all should serve, as in those of 802, 807 and 808. This is equally notable in the capitulary of 793, but it was issued from Regensburg at a time when the king was clearly thinking of distant and highly aggressive operations. Even more explicit is that issued from Nijmegen in March 806 which ordains that when the Saxons should provide service for Spain or Avar land, they should provide fewer troops than for Bohemia. This might just represent a kind of service-tribute from a conquered people, but the Boulogne capitulary of October 811 restates the “ancient custom” that each person summoned to the host must bring provisions for three months. Moreover, it goes on to specify that this period begins at the frontier in each case. Thus those living north of the Loire would have to travel to the Pyrenees and then discharge their three months of service. Furthermore, while it is evident that great lords and their followings were very important to raising armies, a passage in the Boulogne Capitulary of 811 15

Fouracre, Charles Martel, pp. 115–17 has some interesting comments on Saxon society in this context. 16 Reuter, “Plunder and Tribute,” pp. 89–91.

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clearly bespeaks a different kind of organisation. It lays down that the military followers of a vassal attendant upon the emperor at court are to follow their local count to war. The Aachen Capitulary, which calls upon the counts to make sure that all should obey the summons, makes much reference to well-equipped and armored men who are the homines of the great, but differentiates these from others who should come with spear, shield, bow and twelve arrows. There is no reason why summonses to such wide ranges of people should have produced unwieldy and impossibly large armies. The king could control which comites and missi were instructed to summon troops and so spread the burden. These people evidently had much discretion which they sometimes misused to oppress those liable to service.17 Moreover, this view of elite-dominated military service is developed in writings that rather notably ignore the nature of military operations. In general terms, war in the middle ages was always labor-intensive. Its most basic form, reported time and again in our sources, is devastation of the lands of the enemy. If it was to be done effectively, a lot of soldiers had to be involved and it could result in a whole army being dispersed and vulnerable to counter-attack.18 Carolingian documents concerned with military matters lay a very heavy emphasis on providing what would now be called logistical support for the army. The obligation of petty people to pay the hostilitium seems to have been discharged by renders of oxen and carts, presumably along with drivers. The logistical requirements revealed in the Aachen Capitulary of 802/3 suppose the gathering of many servants, skilled engineers and others. Moreover, this capitulary demands that the great men bring with them not only ample supplies and general equipment but also siege-engines, fundibulas, together with men skilled in their use.19 Much Carolingian warfare turned substantially on capturing and building fortifications, an activity heavy on manpower. The

17

Boretius, 77:170–3, 48:134, 50:137, 25:66–7, 49:135, 74:166–7, 27:71–2, 73:164–5; K.F. Werner, “Missus-Marchio-Comes. Entre l’administration centrale et l’administration locale de l’Empire carolingien,” in W. Paraviccini and K.F. Werner (eds.), Histoire comparée de l’administration IVe–XVIIIe siècles (Munich, 1980), pp. 191–239, argues that in the late reign of Charlemagne the missi were given primary responsibility for the mobilization of troops. 18 The classic instance is the battle of Mont Gisard in 1177 when Saladin dispersed his army to loot the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, only to be defeated by Baldwin IV’s much smaller army: William of Tyre, Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, ed. R.B.C. Huygens, 2 vols (Tournhout, 1985/6), vol. 2. Book 21, chs. 20–22. 19 J. Durliat, “Le polyptyque d’Irminion et l’impôt pour l’armée,” Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 141 (1983), 183–208; Boretius, 77 Clause 10, 17 – it is just possible that slingers may be indicated, but siege-engines seems a better meaning; on the importance of fortifications in the Carolingian conquest of Saxony see J. France, “The Military History of the Carolingian Period,” Revue belge d’histoire militaire 26 (1985), p. 89; on the remains of these fortifications see W. Best, R. Gensen, P.R. Hömberg, “Burgenbau in einer Grenzregion,” in C. Stiegemann and M. Wemhoff (eds.), Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit (Mainz, 1999), pp. 328–46. See also the comments in B.S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare. Prelude to Empire (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 112–19.

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notion that Charlemagne operated with relatively small elite armies fails to take account of this. Furthermore, it has been pointed out that Charlemagne’s operations were at their most effective when two or even three armies were deployed against a hapless enemy. J.F. Verbruggen saw the strategy of employing two or three armies as one of the secrets of Charlemagne’s success, and this has been very widely accepted.20 The most important source for Charlemagne’s conquests is the Royal Frankish Annals [RFA].21 For 773 they record that Pope Hadrian’s request for aid against the Lombards was carefully considered in the assembly, and subsequently another assembly met at Geneva as the army moved to Italy. The circumstances of this war in which Charlemagne was also seeking to destroy the birthright of his nephews, the sons of the dead Carloman, were sensitive enough to warrant careful consultation. Subsequently there was a two-pronged offensive against the Lombards: Charlemagne crossed the Mont Cénis and his uncle, Bernard, the Great St Bernard. In 787 Charlemagne called an assembly at Worms which agreed the destruction of Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria. This was again a delicate matter. The Agilolfing dynasty was very ancient and Tassilo represented a collateral line of the Carolingian family. No wonder the RFA reveals the king’s careful negotiation with the pope to declare his war against Tassilo righteous, and his equally adept courting of the Franks in assemblies at Worms and Ingelheim where, in 788, the Bavarian duke was finally destroyed.22 In a military sense the great king was taking no chances. He led a Frankish army, but mobilised another made up of East Franks, Thuringians and Saxons which gathered on the Danube, while his son Pepin raised a third in Italy. Faced with this massive show of force, Tassilo capitulated, and in the following year was tried in the assembly at Ingelheim with the support of “loyal Bavarians” and deposed. In 791 Charlemagne convened his assembly at Regensburg, consulting with Franks, Saxons and Frisians to prepare for a great campaign against the Avars which Einhard says was most carefully prepared. In the event two armies, one north and one south of the Danube, marched against the Avars. These were supported by smaller forces that operated through Bohemia and out of Italy.23 It is possible that Charlemagne’s armies consisted of strike forces of elite troops supported by larger numbers of servants. In 806 Charlemagne sent a summons

20

J.F. Verbruggen, “L’armée et la stratégie de Charlemagne,” in H. Beumann (ed.), Karl der Grosse: Persönlichkeit und Geschichte, 5 vols (Düsseldorf, 1965–7), 1:420–34. 21 For the edition see above n. 3. 22 S. Airlie, “Narrations of Triumph and Rituals of Submission: Charlemagne’s Mastery of Bavaria,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 9 (1999), 93–119. 23 C.R. Bowlus, Franks, Moravians and Magyars. The Struggle for the Middle Danube 788–907 (Philadelphia, 1995), pp. 46–60; Einhard, Vita Caroli, ed. E. Holder-Egger (Hannover: MGH SUS, 1911), 2.13 emphasizes Charlemagne’s preparations which included, according to the RFA, an attempt in 793 to link the Rhine and Danube by a canal. There is a convenient English translation by L. Thorpe, Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. Two Lives of Charlemagne (Harmondsworth, 1969).

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to war to Abbot Fulrad. He was to come with his men of war, at least some of whom were to be mounted. They were to be supported by carts with food for three months and equipment, including many tools, for six. It is clearly envisaged that such a group would have had many servants with them.24 However, even this would barely account for what appear to have been very large forces, as gathered in 773, 787 and 791. This is particularly so because in dividing his army Charlemagne would have exposed each part to defeat in detail, unless they were all so big as to prevent, or at least minimize, this eventuality. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there is another view of the nature and scale of Carolingian armies. In 1968 K.F. Werner suggested that in a single year the king was able to mobilize as many as 35,000 heavily equipped soldiers to form the striking element in a total force of perhaps 100,000.25 These ideas were formulated in a polemical article directed against the views of earlier scholars who took a very minimalist view of the size of medieval armies. However, these figures have not found favour with many historians.26 Werner’s article was long disregarded, but it has recently found strong support, most particularly from B.S. Bachrach. Werner, naturally, sees the source of these large forces as the general levy, and Bachrach has consistently argued that “civilians of sufficient means . . . had military obligations that went well beyond participation in local defence.” In a recent statement he argues that from the time of Pippin II (died 714) the Carolingians refined the mass levy in order to develop a better-armed and better-equipped force capable of offensive action.27 Werner’s ideas were in part based on a careful analysis of the resources of the lands dominated by Charlemagne, and, therefore, could be regarded as a statement of military potential. This, however, ignored the very obvious frictions in the system, especially

24 25

Boretius, 75: 168. K.F. Werner, “Heeresorganisation und Kriegführung im deutschen Königreich des 10. und 11. Jahrhunderts,” Settimane de Studi de Centro Italiano sull’alto Medioevo 15 (Spoleto, 1968), p. 821. This article is reproduced in his Structures politiques du monde franc (VIe–XIIe siècles) (London, 1979). 26 Reuter, “End of Military Expansion,” p. 398, n.38 takes careful note of Werner’s article, comments on the problems of logistics and notes that no town north of the Alps could muster a population one third as great as the suggested total of heavily armed men. 27 B.S. Bachrach has written extensively on this subject and his views have now been distilled into a single work, Early Carolingian Warfare, but see also the following earlier works: “Medieval Military Historiography,” in M. Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), p. 208, but see also “Charlemagne’s Cavalry: Myth and Reality,” Military Affairs 57 (1983), 181–87; “Animals and Warfare in Early Medieval Europe,” in L’uomo di fronte al mondo animale nall’alto medioevo. Settimane de Studi de Centro Italiano sull’alto Medioevo 15 (Spoleto, 1985), 707–51; “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” in J.A. Lynn (ed.), Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present (Boulder, 1993); “Early Medieval Europe,” in K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein, War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 271–307; “Early Military Demography: Some Observations on the Methods of Hans Delbrück,” in D. Kagay and L.J. Villalon (eds.), The Circle of War in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 3–20; Bowlus, Franks, Moravians and Magyars.

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the failure of the counts to summon people and their tendency to show favor.28 More fundamentally, Bachrach, Werner and others, like Reuter, ignore the question of the king’s relations with the high aristocracy. The raising of armies is made to appear a purely mechanistic process and not one which involved negotiation and discussion in the context of a whole web of political relationships. Between the military potential, as analyzed by Werner, and military reality lay a political process of immense complexity. Bachrach clearly recognizes the diversity of the sources of manpower within the lands of Charlemagne and his immediate predecessors. There was, he argues, the mass levy, although like most who have considered this subject, he thinks Charlemagne placed heavy reliance on a select levy, by which groups of poorer freemen contributed to the raising of a single well equipped soldier. He accepts the importance of the armed followings of the magnates, but takes the view that the Carolingians relied on a system of military administration inherited from the Roman Empire, including frontier troops and city militias, as well as regular forces, in something like working order. This flies in the face of all modern perceptions of the Carolingian dominion, and totally ignores the powerful position of the magnates who were far from being the creatures of an all-powerful king.29 Moreover, the proponents of this view of an army raised by the mass levy have been over-impressed by Verbruggen’s emphasis on the occasions when Charlemagne gathered more than one army and overwhelmed the enemy with their pincer movements. In fact such events were actually quite exceptional. The examples of 773, 787 and 791 have been noted. In 775 the RFA report that the same tactic against the Saxons almost led to disaster. In 778 Charlemagne mustered two armies for an attack on Muslim Spain. They took different routes over the Pyrenees, but united in the face of the Muslims. On the return journey a part of this army under Roland became detached and was defeated by the Basques. In 784 the king operated with a major force and despatched his son “with a detachment” (cum parte exercitus) to attack from another direction, which is a rather different tactic but one that was used on other occasions, for example in 794 and 797.30 In other years, as we shall see, troops were raised in different places and sent in different directions. It seems likely that any debate about Carolingian armies in terms of large versus small, or noble elites versus universal service, will not make much progress. The case to be made here is that Charlemagne raised armies from both these sources and, indeed, from others, as opportunities permitted. The key 28 29

For example in Boretius, 33, Clause 7:93, 49:135–6, 50:137, 74:166–7. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, pp. 51–83 draws on a very clear view that Roman institutions in the West survived in viable form for a very long time. This article is concerned with a much narrower topic and cannot consider the general subject of continuity from Roman times. However, for a harsh assessment of the strength of Carolingian government see Fichtenau, Carolingian Empire. Bullough, Europae Pater, is kinder and recognizes the scale of Charlemagne’s achievements, but leaves the reader in no doubt as to their limitations. On the select levy see below, pp. 75–6. 30 On which see below, p. 77.

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factor to recognize is that he could not demand service or expect automatic enthusiastic obedience. The ability to raise armies was caught up in the political relations between the king, his magnates and others. It was imperative for Charlemagne to establish consensus and harmony amongst his great followers and meetings of the assembly were very important in achieving this. This body, variously referred to as a placitum, synodus, conventus and sometimes conditioned by such terms as generalis populi sui conventus, was aristocratic in make-up and had its origins in the gathering of the army, though its competence was far wider. Its meetings did not necessarily coincide with gatherings of the army. The Aquitanian Capitulary of Pepin III of 769 sets out the privileges of “a man who is travelling either on military service or to the assembly,” while in 790 no army was gathered, but an assembly is recorded.31 Most writers think that it met annually, but this is uncertain.32 While it is quite evident that in its origins the assembly was the meeting of the army, in the sense of a substantial gathering of Frankish magnates with their military followings and that there was always a close relationship between the two, it cannot, therefore, be assumed that mention of an “army” meeting is evidence of an assembly having taken place. Moreover, it will be suggested here that there is evidence that more than one kind of army was operating under Charlemagne. However, given the obvious importance of the assembly, it is puzzling that the key source for Charlemagne’s wars, the RFA, fails to mention an assembly in the years 768, 769, 774*, 778*, 781, 783, 790, 793, 796*, 797, 799*, 801*, 802, 803, 804, 805, 807, 808, 810. Ganshof, the great authority on the capitularies, can find no indication of an assembly being held in the five years which are starred.33 However, in 796 the distribution of the Avar loot to the king’s faithful followers is recorded, and this surely implies a placitum. Moreover, in 799 Pope Leo was received with great splendour at Paderborn, and it is difficult to believe that this was not an assembly.34 It should be noted that sometimes the RFA mentions an assembly only obliquely, as for 784 when it is recorded that Charlemagne decided upon a winter campaign “with the Franks.” Moreover, we are never given any real detail about discussions and debates in the assembly. The RFA, which run from 741 to 829, are the single most important narrative

31

Boretius, 18:42–3, tr. King, Charlemagne, p. 202; B. von Simson (ed.), Annales Mettenses Priores (Hannover: MGH SUS, 1905), a.790 [henceforth AMP]. 32 R.A. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987), pp. 113–14; L. Halphen, Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, tr. G. de Nie of a 1947 French original (Amsterdam, 1977), pp. 113–17; F.L. Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under Charlemagne, tr. B. and M. Lyon of a French original of 1965 (Providence, 1968), pp. 21–22; McKitterick, Frankish Kingdoms, pp. 97–8: J.T. Rosenthal, “The Public Assembly in the Time of Louis the Pious,” Traditio 20 (1964), 25–40. 33 Ganshof, Frankish Institutions, pp. 21–3, n.126. 34 AMP record a council more explicitly in 784, as they also do for 768, 790, 801, 803, 804. For the distribution of 796 see RFA and Annales Sancti Maximini MGH SS 13. On 796 see A.T. Hack, “Das Zeremoniell des Papstempfangs 799 in Paderborn,” in Stiegemann and Wemhoff, Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit, pp. 19–33.

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source for the reigns of Pepin III, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, but they pose many problems for the historian. There is debate about whether they are original or based on earlier sources, especially for the period 741–88. The period 789–93 is probably first-hand but not the work of a single writer, and the same may be true of 793–807. Thereafter a single person seems to have been at work down to 820, after which the entries are usually attributed to Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis. What is certain is that they were produced at the royal court and represented an annexation of the past by the Carolingian house to whom they are devoted. In the reign of Louis the Pious the annals between 741 and 812 were revised and enlarged by a “Reviser” who, while no less devoted to the memory of Charlemagne, expanded many of the entries and included information about Carolingian problems and reverses.35 It should be noted that the Reviser did not differ from his original about the occasions when assemblies are or are not noted. The authors of the RFA were clearly devoted to the Carolingian house. There can be no suggestion that they thought it in any way shameful to report the king consulting with his people. On the contrary, meetings of the king and the assembly are mentioned frequently, and it has been suggested that the repeated portrayal of Charlemagne in the assembly is part of a reconstruction of the gens Francorum to suit his dynasty.36 They fail to record an assembly only in rather less than half the years of Charlemagne’s reign. The writers were not, therefore, trying to conceal the king’s need to consult. On the other hand it seems unlikely that they simply forgot about such major events because the link between military affairs and the assembly is patent. The pattern of Charlemagne’s campaigns makes it apparent that he was often short of men. There were occasions when there was no time to call an assembly, and Charlemagne had to raise men as best he could. On other occasions it is likely that the need to preserve good political relations in the assembly precluded him from asking for wider support for his campaigns. This is why the RFA are so discreet in their accounts of these very important meetings. In 769 the RFA tell us that Charlemagne attacked Hunald of Aquitaine “with the support of only a few Franks,” and the revised version makes it clear that he was obstructed in bringing Hunald to heel by his brother Carloman. However, he gathered forces at Angoulême and these were enough to end the rebellion. No assembly is recorded, although the AMP suggests one was held. The implication is that in a struggle complicated by family rivalries, Charlemagne had to manage on his own resources. By contrast, in 772 a Saxon expedition was planned in the 35

R. McKitterick, “Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of the Royal Frankish Annals,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 7 (1997), 101–30, especially pp. 116–26, which supersedes the same author’s Frankish Kingdoms, pp. 4–7 with its critical introduction to the Royal Frankish Annals. On the revision see Scholz, Carolingian Chronicles, pp. 1–8. 36 McKitterick, “Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages,” pp. 127–8 suggests that before Charlemagne the term Franci meant Neustrians, and that in the RFA this was deliberately enlarged to include Austrasians.

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Worms assembly. The reassertion of Frankish power over the Saxons would have been welcome to the magnates, particularly as it provided an opportunity for aggressive raiding in a land as yet untouched. As a result, the RFA is able to record the triumphant destruction of the Irminsul. The Italian war of 773 fostered a Saxon revolt and the dangers posed by this aggressive people were underlined by raids in 774 deep into Frankish territory. Charlemagne’s immediate response was to send four detachments [quatuor scaras] against the Saxons.37 But no assembly is recorded in 774 and it was not until 775 that the assembly of Düren launched a full-scale expedition. It was at this time, the Reviser tells us, that Charlemagne resolved to reduce the Saxons to obedience, or to annihilate them. This new expedition was successful, but the revolt of Hrodgaud in Italy forced him to break off the campaign and in the next year the Saxons once again took the offensive.38 The Worms assembly of 776 led to a major expedition forcing a Saxon surrender on the Lippe. After their defeat the king in 777 “for the first time held a general assembly at Paderborn” to which came Franks and Saxons. His apparent success and the presence of a Muslim embassy combined to tempt Charlemagne to mount the expedition to Spain that took place in the following year and led to the disastrous defeat at Roncevalles. One consequence of this defeat was that the Saxons, led by Widukind, again took the offensive, ravaging as far as the Deutz close to Cologne and the Moselle. No assembly is known to have met that year, and all that Charlemagne could do was to raise scaram Franciscam to chase them off. The Reviser says that these scaras were drawn from East Franks and Alemanni. This seems to have been a major crisis for the regime, because although Charlemagne had celebrated Christmas at Herstal, early in 779 he went into Neustria, evidently to prepare for the assembly summoned for Düren. The subsequent campaign secured the lands west of the Weser and enabled the Franks to take hostages from those to the east of the river. In the following year all the Saxons came to an assembly at the Lippe which settled their affairs. Charlemagne then went to Italy and opened menacing negotiations with Tassilo of Bavaria which occupied him throughout 781. During this year the RFA record no assembly but the issuing of the Capitulary of Mantua suggests that one took place.39 The king’s absence was again the occasion of Saxon unrest, because after Charlemagne returned to Francia he mounted an expedition and held an assembly at the Lippe to which “all the Saxons came except the rebel Widukind.” No sooner has the great king gone than the Saxons, solito more, followed Widukind in revolt. According to the Reviser, some scarae, already despatched against the Slavs, were now reinforced by an East Frankish army and by Count Theoderic with such troops as he could scrape together from the 37

AMP rather grandly calls them legiones, a favorite word in this source. The use of such classical terms to describe quite different realities is one of the problems of using Carolingian sources. 38 AMP, a.775, makes it clear that only the western Saxons submitted. 39 Boretius, 90:190–1.

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Rhineland. But the Franks were defeated with heavy losses, including some notables, in the Süntel mountains. Hearing of this disaster, Charlemagne rushed there “with all the Franks that he could gather on short notice” and all the Saxons again submitted, handing over those responsible for the revolt, though Widukind had fled to the north. But this proved only to be a pause in the revolt for in 783 the Saxons rebelled again and Charlemagne could assemble “only a few Franks” [cum paucis Francis], though he was victorious at Detmold. He then returned to Paderborn where an army assembled: presumably he had previously relied on detachments. After a further victory on the Hase, the Franks crossed the Weser. 783 was a year without an assembly, but the fighting continued into 784 with the king and his son Charles devastating enemy territory as far as the Elbe. But this fighting seems to have been inconclusive, because the Saxons confronted the Franks again, this time on the Lippe, and Charlemagne returned to Worms where an assembly agreed on the extraordinary measure of a winter campaign. The difficulties of a winter campaign and the brutality with which it must have been fought need to be emphasised. This was an extreme measure intended to prevent the Saxons recovering. The campaign stretched on into 785 until Widukind finally surrendered, though he obtained terms from Charlemagne which suggests a degree of negotiation. The severity of the “Capitulary of the Saxons” of this year reflects the extreme measures to which the king had been driven in this phase of the Saxon wars.40 But what is of special interest here is that clearly at times over the course of this long war Charlemagne had been desperately short of troops. In 774 he was able to mobilise only a few detachments, and the serious business of conquest had to await an assembly in 775; much the same happened in the wake of the defeat of Roncevalles in 778. In 782 Charlemagne was caught off-guard by the defeat in the Süntel mountains and had to fight with what he could find, while in 783 he was fighting “with only a few Franks” before assembling an army later in the year. In 784 his campaigning was indecisive until the assembly at Worms resolved on a winter attack which bore fruit with the surrender of Widukind in 785. It is evident that to raise a large army and to gain a decisive result Charlemagne needed the support of his magnates as a whole, and evidently there were occasions when he did not get what he wanted, or perhaps, took care not to ask for it. In the grim fighting of 782–5 Charlemagne seems to have been holding his own, but sometimes with small Frankish forces; the decisive push comes only after assemblies are clearly indicated as giving support. The absence of references to assemblies in the RFA does not mean that they did not take place, but that the Frankish magnates were not forthcoming at this time. The reasons for that reluctance are not hard to find. The war in Saxony was harsh, probably offered little opportunity for booty and was not threatening to the interests of most of the magnates. In these circumstances they were probably willing to fight some of the time, but unwilling to fight repeatedly. It can hardly

40

Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, Boretius, 26:68–70.

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be coincidence that, according to the Reviser, 785 witnessed the conspiracy of Count Hardrad. Einhard attributed this to the cruelties of Queen Fastrada, but the Reviser tells us that the conspiracy was hatched amongst the East Franks, the very group on whom the burdens of the war must have fallen most heavily.41 It is not here suggested that the king needed approval to wage war. However, he did need to consider whether the magnates would be willing to provide troops on any particular occasion. Warfare imposed considerable burdens on the great, even if they did not serve directly. Moreover, in one way or another some of the costs would have fallen on the magnates and their client-groups, perhaps most obviously in the form of the donum publicum. Their dependents were liable to pay other taxes. The better-off might be liable to the haribannus, while poorer free tenants were paid the hostilitium.42 All these pressures profoundly affected the wealth and position of the magnates, so that it is hardly surprising to find the king short of men at various times. Charlemagne was able to continue the war because even if he could not risk asking for the host or even for large-scale aid from his notables, he could always draw on the royal lands where his personal followers lived and these probably always provided the core of his armies. He could use taxation, if on any given occasion he felt bold enough to impose it, notably the haribannus and hostilitium, to hire men, like the two brave bastards of Burgundy reported by Notker. Such paid followers may have been quite important, but it is unlikely that they ever amounted to regular forces, as suggested by Bachrach. Moreover, he could probably count on some of his magnates being prepared to offer some support, perhaps especially the ecclesiastical ones. The king could also raise troops from amongst the peoples of Western and Southern Germany who feared the expansionism of the Saxons, like Notker’s neighbor, Eishere of Thurgau or the people of Hess who the RFA says suffered very badly in 774.43 Gradually these allied peoples would become very important to Charlemagne. In fact Charlemagne probably used combinations of these military resources to raise an army on any given occasion, just like the later Anglo-Saxon kings of England.44 He could balance his demands on the magnates against what he could raise from these sources.

41 42 43

Einhard, Vita Caroli, Lib.II. 20. Durliat, “Le polyptyque d’Irminion et l’impôt pour l’armée,” pp. 183–208. On royal resources see McKitterick, Frankish Kingdoms, 85–7; Notker the Stammerer, De Carolo Magno MGH SS 2. Bk II.4 and 12; Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, pp. 51–83. The notion of Charlemagne maintaining regular forces, beyond guards and regular associates who happened to be soldiers, is surely untenable. Standing forces of any kind barely existed in Europe before the very late Middle Ages, and even then their maintenance was difficult. During the “Hundred Years War” the inability of France and England to create and maintain regular forces obliged them to rely on military entrepreneurs and a whole range of shifts and expedients which reduced their control over their “own” soldiers. This was an age of much greater wealth and infinitely more complex administration than under Charlemagne. 44 R.P. Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 181–2.

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What is striking in the capitularies is the determination of the king to enlist all conceivable men for war. In one capitulary it is laid down that six smallholders shall club together to send a properly equipped soldier to the host, while in 807 even holders of half a manse were to be involved with others in the provisions of troops and equipment. This refinement of the mass levy to produce fullyequipped soldiers was still being refined by Charles the Bald in the Edict of Pîtres of 864 when graded penalties were introduced for the haribannum according to the wealth of those involved. This repeated insistence is really quite impressive, suggesting a king determined to tap every source of useful soldiers. The existence of the hostilitium reveals a determination to involve even those of limited resources in the costs of war.45 But of course this could only be translated into reality by the agreement of the magnates. In 786 Charlemagne’s Seneschal, Audulf, attacked Brittany in what seems to have been a punitive expedition for non-payment of taxes. The defeated Breton leaders were brought to an Assembly at Worms which resolved to pacify Italy and an army marched off to do this, though the king had to compromise with the untrustworthy Arighis, Duke of Benevento. One reason for this was the growing tension with Tassilo of Bavaria which led to the events of 787/8 already examined. One notable feature of the armies which destroyed the Bavarian duke was their composite nature. Forces were raised from Franks, East Franks, Thuringians, Saxons and Italians, and from this time onwards we hear more and more of armies which are made up of Franks and other peoples, sometimes of other peoples perhaps under Frankish command.46 This was not entirely new: Bavarians and Lombards joined the Franks for the disastrous expedition of 778, according to the RFA, and the Reviser says that the Alemanni formed part of the scara which chased off the subsequent Saxon raids. It is interesting that suddenly from this time such contingents are regularly listed in the pages of the RFA. After Ingelheim in 788 the RFA record that Italians and Franks defeated the Greeks and the Avars in Italy and that Franks and Bavarians defeated the same enemy twice before the king came to fortify the frontiers of that duchy. In 789, after an assembly that seems to have included Saxons, a composite force of Franks, Saxons, Frisians, Sorbs and Obodrites attacked the Wilzi and forced their king to take oath to Charlemagne. 790 was a rare year of peace, but in 791 the king was at Regensburg where, in an assembly which included Saxons and Frisians, it was agreed to mount a great expedition against the Avars. This central European empire had enjoyed good relations with Tassilo, who confessed to having sought their support against the Franks. They therefore

45

For the references and a full discussion of this point see France, “Military History of the Carolingian Period,” pp. 86–88; Boretius 2:310, No. 273. clauses 26–7. 46 F.L. Ganshof, “L’armée sous les Carolingiens,” in L’ordinamenti militari in Occidente nel’alto Medioevo, 2 vols (Spoleto, 1968), 1:122, notes the presence of these and other peoples without commenting on its significance, as does Verbruggen, “L’armée et la stratégie de Charlemagne,” pp. 428–9.

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viewed the arrival of this great power on their frontier with concern, hence the fighting in 788 and an attack on Italy in 789.47 The Avar war which followed is usually seen as the culmination of all Charlemagne’s campaigns. But the destruction of the Avars, notable for the use of armies of many peoples, and the failure to achieve a total conquest of the territory once dominated by them, marks the point at which Carolingian expansionism ran into the buffers of the possible. Thereafter, although Charlemagne was quite prepared to contemplate aggressive and distant wars, constraints of time and space and political expediency meant that his wars were more often essentially defensive and conducted by frontier peoples under Frankish supervision. The great expedition of 791 seems to have destroyed the Avar strongholds in lower Austria and opened the way for highly effective smaller-scale raids thereafter. It also seems to have caused dissension amongst the Avar leaders which weakened their resistance. The year 792 saw Charlemagne still in Bavaria and a great council dealt with the heresy of Felix, but no expedition was possible because of the conspiracy of his illegitimate son, Pepin the Hunchback, which deeply preoccupied him. However, he ordered the building of a prefabricated pontoon bridge. In the following year, for which no assembly is recorded, a Saxon revolt and a major Muslim incursion from Spain held up the Avar campaign. After an assembly at Frankfurt in 794 Charlemagne divided his army to attack the Saxons, with one part under himself and the other under his son Charlemagne: the use of the word turmas to describe these sections suggests a small force. After the assembly of Mainz in 795, a major expedition was mounted to Saxony and even in the following year the king was himself campaigning there. In 795 a highly successful raid from Italy by Eric of Friuli and Slav allies pillaged the Avars and returned with a great treasure. In 796 King Pepin led another host from Italy reinforced by Bavarians into the Avar lands and broke their resistance, collecting a huge booty whose distribution to the gratified magnates we have already noted.48 Charlemagne returned to Saxony in November 797 and further Saxon resistance forced a major campaign following an assembly at Minden, this time in cooperation with the Obodrites. In 798 King Alfonso of Galicia and Asturias (791–842) appeared as an ally, presenting the king with a rich tent and, later, plunder from Lisbon. Even as late as 799 the RFA make clear that Charlemagne was still campaigning in Saxony. In 799 Eric of Friuli was killed fighting against Croats, Count Gerold of Bavaria perished fighting against Avars, the Balearics were defended against the Moors, Wido of the Breton march attacked Brittany and the Bretons submitted to Charlemagne. No doubt this kind of localised action utilizing local forces had happened before, but it now becomes a major theme in RFA. What had been bit-players now move to centre stage in the RFA’s theatre of Carolingian glory. 47

On the origins and course of the Avar war see Bowlus, Franks, Moravians and Magyars, pp. 46–60. 48 See above, p. 71.

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In 800 a great assembly resolved upon the royal expedition to Italy which resulted in the imperial coronation, but it was Charlemagne’s son Pepin, King of Italy, who pressed the war against the Lombards of Benevento in 800 and 801 and, presumably, later captured Chieti. The following year the cities of Ortona and Lucera fell to him though the latter was recaptured along with Duke Winigis of Spoleto.49 In 801 the RFA record the capture of Barcelona, and we know that this was the work of Louis the Pious, King of Aquitaine, with the aid of troops from Aquitaine, Provence and Burgundy.50 Charlemagne campaigned against Saxon rebellion in 804 and in the following year sent a Frankish army under his eldest son, Charles, against Bohemia, but in 806 it was troops from Bavaria, Alemannia and Burgundy who went against Bohemia, while Pepin of Italy protected Corsica. The Moissac chronicle for 806–807 records a campaign against the Slavs involving a force of Franks led by the young Charles, Bavarians led by Adulfus and Werinarus and Saxons whose leaders are not specified.51 The following year a Frankish fleet protected Corsica, but despite all efforts, by 810 Sardinia and Corsica were in Muslim hands, though Pepin remained aggressive in the Adriatic. But the great military concern of these last years was King Godefrid and the Danes. A meeting of the two kings arranged in 804 never materialized. In 808 Godefrid was enlisting Slav tribes against the Franks and their allies, the Obodrites, and built a great earthwork to protect the Jutland peninsula. In 810 Godefrid ravaged Frisia, provoking Charlemagne into building a fleet and raising a large army. But what promised to be another campaign of major conquest was called off because the Danish king was killed in internal wrangling. This saved the expense and toil of a distant and difficult campaign, though Charlemagne was apparently quite ready to contemplate one. The Slav tribes continued to be restless and in 811 armies were sent against them and the Bretons.52 The growing importance of Charlemagne’s sons, Louis in Aquitaine and Pepin in Italy, and the frequent use of troops from pacified areas were all part of the adjustments which Charlemagne was making in the face of new circumstances. The Frankish dominions could no longer expand; this was the result of circumstance and not, as Reuter has suggested, some deliberate decision to stand on the defensive.53 This change had slowly evolved since the early 790s. Although the Avar war is often seen as the culmination of Charlemagne’s military effort, it did not lead to a conquest of the Avar lands whose inhabitants, rather than subjects, seem to have become tributaries and allies. It was not

49 50

Annales Laureshamenses, in MGH SS 1.37–9. Ermold le Noir, Poème sur Louis le Pieux et épîtres au roi Pépin, ed. E. Faral (Paris, 1932), pp. 27–47; Chronicon Moissiacense, MGH SS I., a.802–5. 51 Chronicon Moissiacense, a.805–6. 52 On the Carolingians’ diplomatic dealings with the Danes see S. Coupland, “From Poachers to Gamekeepers: Scandinavian Warlords and Carolingian Kings,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998), 85–114. 53 Reuter, “End of Carolingian Military Expansion,” pp. 391–5.

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simply a matter of an ageing emperor who was unwilling to take the field because he remained active. Essentially Charlemagne seems to have recognised that there there was nowhere to go. In the south Muslim Spain was formidable: the RFA record Louis’s failure before Tortosa in 809. Moreover, the native Christians and the Basques were by no means friendly to Frankish dominion.54 In Italy and the Mediterranean Charlemagne waged war against the Byzantines for recognition of his imperial title, but he seems to have had no ambitions on imperial possessions, and his naval power was in any case inadequate, as we have noted by its failures in Corsica and Sardinia.55 On the northern and eastern frontiers the trackless wastes and the shifting patterns of Slavonic and other tribes made advance difficult. Charlemagne found the Obodrites useful allies, but their neighbours, the Wilzi, were a different proposition. In 789 castles were built to subdue them and they submitted, but the whole performance had to be repeated in 795, and by 808 they were Danish clients against the Franks. Expeditions against various Slav groups are quite frequent, notably that of the young Charles in 805 against the Sorbs. Any kind of settlement with such people would be costly and short-lived. Only in the Danube valley, where there were the remains of Roman infrastructure, was there any real prospect of advance, and that would take a very long time and even then be very limited. The empire had run into the buffers, and this was bound to have repercussions on internal organization and politics. Charlemagne always faced difficulties in finding troops. Whether troops were raised by some system of obligation, or by the attractions of plunder, he had to convince the magnates that participation in war was in their interests. Sometimes this was possible, and the RFA present us with the great king in the midst of his faithful, but at other times they draw a veil. It cannot be proven that when they do not mention an assembly this means that military aid had been refused, but the pattern, particularly of the Saxon war, and the discretion of the RFA suggest this. The Saxon war simply did not produce profitable campaigns like those against Bavaria, Italy and the Avars. Saxony for much of the time offered little threat to the bulk of the Frankish magnates, and almost always offered little positive incentive to them to fight. This does not mean that the great men were not sometimes willing to back Charlemagne. But it is likely that for much of the war the king fought with his own resources, those of such magnates as he could persuade to follow him on particular occasions, and sometimes with the aid of the host, though its size and quality may have varied from time to time. The absence of large-scale pincer-movements in the Saxon war is perhaps indicative of the limited resources at the great king’s disposal. 54

D.W. Lomax, The Reconquest of Spain (London, 1978), pp. 32–5; H. Kennedy, “The Muslims in Europe,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History vol. 2, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1995), 249–71. 55 On Charlemagne’s difficulties in Italy see G.V.B. West, “Charlemagne’s Involvement in Central and Southern Italy: Power and the Limits of Authority,” Early Medieval Europe 8 (1999), 341–68.

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As aggressive wars of conquest became rarer it must have been more and more difficult to persuade magnates to commit themselves, and, from their perspective, less and less necessary. This is the reality which underlies the prominence of allies in the later wars. But the defensive was never merely passive. Saxon revolts, Danish threats and Muslim attacks continued and the capitularies show us the anxiety of Charlemagne to maintain the ability to threaten and to strike at distant peoples. This was very draining for the class of freemen upon whom the levy fell. We may dismiss, for example, the Breton campaigns as minor, but they would have appeared differently to those who had to take part in them, and this is the root of the complaints which underlay the famous Memorandum on Military Matters of 811.56 The reliance on the subject peoples for war service would have required knowledge of their diverse military traditions and institutions because Charlemagne remained committed to the idea of the personality of law. Relatively little is known about this, though military organization in Aquitaine has been explored by Bachrach who remarks on the importance of the levy of freemen, and of the fortified cities and their garrisons in that area. He also notes work suggesting that in Italy all freemen seem to have been liable to service. There is some evidence of a system of military smallholders on the frontier with Spain, and fortified centers that defended East Saxony against the Slavs.57 What scale of armies could be raised from the dominions of Charlemagne? The difficulty we face is that our sources are silent on the question of numbers. The potential of the great king’s dominions for raising troops was enormous by c.790, as Werner has shown.58 But this potential was really very much smaller for the period of the 770s and early 780s when the Saxon wars were raging. In these decades, with rare exceptions, the RFA always speaks of the army of the Franks, but this must surely have included allies from the western provinces of Germany threatened by the Saxons. Moreover, the indications are that there was no single Frankish army, but armies of different sizes assembled at various times and in various ways according to whom the king could rely on at any particular moment. In these circumstances it is extraordinarily difficult to give any figures, except by guesswork. However, there are some pointers. There has been much discussion of the size of Viking armies. A very 56 57

Boretius, 73:164–5. Bachrach, “Military Organisation in Aquitaine,” passim, and for Italy p. 2 n.6; A.R. Lewis, The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society 718–1050 (Austin, 1965), pp. 30–3; K.F. Werner, “Les Principautés périphériques dans le monde franc du VIII siècle,” in I problemi dell’Occidente nel secolo VIII, in Settimane de Studi de Centro Italiano sull’alto Medioevo 20 (Spoleto, 1972), pp. 483–4; T.F.X. Noble, “Louis the Pious and the Frontiers of the Frankish Realm,” in P. Godman and R. Collins (eds.), Charlemagne’s Heir. New Perspectives on the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40) (Oxford, 1990), pp. 333–47; J.H. Smith, “Fines Imperii: the Marches,” in The New Cambridge Medieval History vol. 2, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1995), 169–89 and Goetz, “Secular and Military Institutions,” pp. 459–60. 58 See above n.25.

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systematic look at the subject was taken by P. Sawyer, who noted that while the sources often cite wild numbers for the size of armies, they could be much more specific on the size of fleets. Basing himself on archaeological evidence for the size of boats, he suggested that Viking armies should be numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands. N.P. Brooks, however, examined other archaeological evidence which suggested that Viking ships may have held as many as fifty to sixty men, twice the complement supposed by Sawyer, and on this basis was inclined to much larger figures. This is very interesting, but we do not really know how accurate contemporary figures were for numbers of ships, nor can we be certain of the size of all the ships in any given fleet. However, it seems possible to agree with a recent authority who thinks that at least the very largest Viking armies should be “numbered in thousands, but not tens of thousands.”59 But even if we agree that Viking armies of the ninth and tenth centuries were generally smaller than 10,000 and often very much smaller, to what extent does this help us on the size of the armies of Charlemagne? The answer is that it gives us an idea of what contemporaries regarded as large, but it has to be said that this is not very specific. Perhaps a different comparison provides more assistance. The Byzantine Empire at this time was regarded as by far the greatest Christian power. In the ninth and tenth centuries its nominal troop strength was of the order of 120,000. Actual armies were very much smaller: 4,000 seems to represent a sizeable force, and 12,000 an exceptional effort, though as many as 37,000 may have been mobilised in all for the unsuccessful assault on Crete in 911. It has to be remembered that in addition, Constantinople and the maritime themes maintained substantial war-fleets.60 Only the most optimistic view of Carolingian administration and wealth would suppose that larger numbers could be raised for the armies of Charlemagne. Perhaps the huge expedition against Bavaria in 787 or the massive effort made against the Avars in 791 involved very large numbers. We have it on the authority of Einhard that the Avar war was a quite exceptional and extraordinary effort, but unfortunately he does not quantify this.61 In the end we can only guess. The present writer would suggest, however, that no more than 20,000 were ever raised at any one time, even for such exceptional efforts as the Avar war. Such a mighty force would explain why the Avars surrendered their key fortresses, and subsequently fell to quarrelling amongst themselves. For the most part, however, the evidence of the Vikings and the comparison with Byzantium points to the idea that “large” armies were of the order of 59

P.H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (London, 1971), pp. 125–6: N.P. Brooks, “England in the Ninth Century: the Crucible of Defeat,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 29 (1979), pp. 2–7; S. Coupland, “The Vikings in Francia and Anglo-Saxon England,” in R. McKitterick (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1995), 194. 60 J. Haldon, Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World 565–1204 (London, 1999), pp. 101–103, and “Chapters II, 44 and 45 of De Cerimoniis. Theory and Practice in TenthCentury Military Administration,” Travaux et Mémoires 13 (1999), 331–46. 61 See above, pp. 76–7.

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between a few hundred and 3–5,000. These figures may seem very conservative, but the present writer is struck by how very small armies were for a very long time. The two great coalitions which fought at Bouvines in 1214 each only raised 7,000 effectives for the battle, although other French and English forces were in the field in Aquitaine. At Worringen, in 1288, each side had about 5,000 combatants. At the battle of Poitiers in 1356 only 6,000 English were pitted against 11,000 French. It is certainly true that there were occasions when much larger numbers were involved, notably at Crécy, and the total numbers of fighting men on each side was often very substantial during the “Hundred Years War”. Undoubtedly administrative sophistication, which by this time had developed far beyond anything known to Charlemagne, enabled monarchies to retain bigger armies, but the limitations of logistics, technology and roads still severely limited the size of armies, and would continue to do so for many centuries. Charlemagne had only a very limited administration. He was keenly aware of the problems of logistics and tried to insist that contingents coming to his armies should supply themselves. Even in his capitulary on the royal estates, De Villis, he ordered that supplies and resources should be made available for the army. But we are entitled to ask how effective all this was when the opening sentence of this capitulary expresses the wish that the king should receive the products of his own properties.62 Charlemagne was a king whose effectiveness depended on persuasion and influence, for whom kingship was a matter of personality and personal relations. He had no machinery of command such as had been enjoyed by the Roman emperors and which began to develop again after the twelfth century. He had to collect forces by whatever means came to hand and the very range of people historians have described in his army points to how difficult this was. The limitations of his government meant that ultimately his ability to raise troops depended on the state of his political relations with the magnates of the realm. He had to persuade them, to solicit their support. Sometimes he was successful, sometimes less so. This imposed severe limitations on the degree to which he could exploit the very substantial military potential of his dominions.

62

Boretius, 32:83.

5 Some Observations on the Role of the Byzantine Navy in the Success of the First Crusade Bernard S. Bachrach

The Byzantine Navy

Traditionally, specialists in the history of the medieval West who work on the First Crusade give insufficient attention to the role of the Byzantine empire in this enterprise and/or treat it in a more or less negative manner.1 There are several reasons for this Tendenz. First, Western eyewitness accounts of the Crusade and near-contemporary non-eyewitness Latin treatments of the campaign, based upon written and oral sources, minimize the role of the Byzantines in the success of the Crusade.2 Rather, these accounts tend to focus on the role of God in providing Western Christians with victory.3 Secondly, many of these Latin works, which serve as our narrative sources, are overtly hostile to the Byzantines and consider them to have undermined rather than to have supported Western efforts.4 This attitude would appear also to represent the views of various Crusade leaders who patronized the authors of these accounts.5 1

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Useful recent guides to the tradition of Crusade scholarship are provided by Giles Constable, “The Historiography of the Crusades,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, eds. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington, 2001), pp. 1–22; and Jonathan Riley-Smith, “The Crusading Movement and Historians,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford, 1997), pp. 1–12. Rather symbolic of this traditional neglect of the Byzantine role is Riley-Smith’s choice of essays in this volume where there is no chapter dealing with the eastern Empire and the Crusades. See, for example, Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades vol. 1 (Oxford, 1951), p. 227; and John France, Victory In The East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994), p. 210. Indeed, it is the parti pris of the sources that, in large part, has resulted both in the down-playing of the Byzantine logistic contribution while at the same time overemphasizing the suffering endured by the Crusaders during the siege of Antioch. A great deal of study will be required in the future, similar to the work of Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (550–800). Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988), before the works of these Crusade historians can be used to the greatest effect. France, Victory in the East, pp. 11–31. A very useful review is provided by Susan Edgington, “The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence,” The First Crusade: Origins and Impact, ed. Jonathan Phillips (Manchester, 1997), pp. 55–77, who singles out the frequently neglected work of Albert of Aix (pp. 60–73) for his positive treatment of the Byzantines as contrasted to the other Western writers. In large part, it is Edgington’s aim to show how Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 1:328–30, distorted Albert’s views and, by and large, she succeeds in doing so. Edgington, “The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence,” pp. 55–77, provides considerable

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For example, the chronicler Raymond of Aguilers is correctly depicted as having “hated and despised the Greeks.” In this, he likely represented the views of his patron Count Raymond of Toulouse.6 From another perspective relative to the neglect of the Byzantine role in the Crusades, specialists in the history of the West during the Middle Ages tend to have limited first-hand access to non-Latin sources. During the later twentieth century, medievalists generally have been untrained in classical Greek much less in Byzantine Greek and have little or no expertise in Arabic, Armenian, Syriac and the other putatively more exotic languages that provide information on the Crusades from a non-Western perspective. Modern translations of these works have limited value from the philological perspective which, in my view, is crucial to the use of any text.7 Moreover, within the narrow framework in which the non-Latin sources generally are considered by medievalists, there is a tendency to focus on translations of the Alexiad written by Anna Comnena, the daughter of the emperor Alexios.8 Her account often is considered as plain text. Thus, it is mined for factual details that often are taken out of context, e.g. the putative effectiveness of Western heavily armed mounted troops and the development of the counterweight trebuchet.9 At a more sophisticated level, the Alexiad is treated as purveying an anti-Western bias and recently has been characterized as “the most mendacious of the sources.”10 This approach, in turn, tends to color the treatment of other non-Western sources. These texts, in

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detail. See also Emily Albu Hanawalt, “The Norman View of Eastern Christendom: From the First Crusade to the Principality of Antioch,” in The Meeting of Two Worlds, ed. V. Gross and C.C. Bornstein (Ann Arbor, 1986), pp. 115–121. France, Victory in the East, p. 375, for the quotation. The basic text is Raymond of Aguilers, Le “Liber” de Raymund d’Aquilers, ed. J. and L. Hill in Documents relatifs à l’histoire des croisades (Paris, 1969). Regarding the Normans see Albu Hanawalt, “The Norman View of Eastern Christendom,” pp. 115–121. In an otherwise very valuable article, Edgington, “The First Crusade: Reviewing the Evidence,” pp. 73–74, devotes less than two pages to the non-Western sources and then focuses on translations. Anne Comnène, Alexiade: règne de l’empereur Alexis I Comnène (1081–1118), 3 vols., ed. and trans. Bernard Leib, 2nd printing (Paris, 1967–1989), remains the basic text but the translation, although of high quality, still must be used with great care. The debate regarding what Anna was trying to accomplish with this biography of her father and how useful her account is for the history of the First Crusade rages on, both in general terms and with regard to specifics. See, for example, John France, “Anna Comnena, the Alexiad and the First Crusade,” Reading Medieval Studies 10 (1983), pp. 22–32, with the literature treated there. On the whole the most recent collection of essays on the topic, Anna Komnene and Her Times, ed. Thalia Gouma-Peterson (New York, 2000), is rather disappointing in regard to advancing our understanding of Anna’s work. Anna, Alexiad, bk. V, ch. iv; bk. XIII, ch. viii, for cavalry, and bk. XI, chs. 1–2, for catapults. With regard to artillery see Paul E. Chevedden, “The Invention of the Counterweight Trebuchet: A Study of Cultural Diffusion,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 54 (2000), pp. 76–86, with the large controversial literature cited there. Concerning the heavily armed mounted troops of the Westerners, it is obvious from context that Anna is exaggerating their prowess for the purpose of making her father’s victory over them that much more impressive. France, Victory in the East, p. 382, for the quotation.

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general, are seen to demonstrate negative attitudes toward Westerners which therefore limit their value as sources for the First Crusade.11 In addition to accepting the basic orientation of the Western sources and rejecting or ignoring non-Western views, medievalists are misled generally in the study of military history by their failure to test the likely accuracy of their own sources through the use of Sachkritik.12 In the tradition of Greek historiography, this technique has been used to great effect by Donald Engels in his magisterial study, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, which provides an excellent working model for an examination of some of the more important material aspects of Crusading warfare.13 Indeed, both medievalists and Byzantinists were informed of these methods, although not in a methodologically consistent manner, almost a century ago through the voluminous researches of Hans Delbrück.14 However, little modern scholarly research dealing with the Crusades has been undertaken using these valuable techniques.15 Thus, in this article an effort will be made to employ various aspects of Sachkritik for the purpose of illuminating the order of magnitude of the logistic requirements of the Western armies of the First Crusade. It will be suggested in the course of this study that the material realities which undergirded the major operations executed by Crusader military forces depended substantially on naval assets. In this context, it is to be noted that Byzantine support in naval matters was largely ignored in the Latin sources, in part for the reasons noted above, and also largely unnoticed by modern scholars for many of the same reasons. Nevertheless, it will be argued here that

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A useful treatment and something of a corrective is Ara E. Dostourian, Armenia and the Crusades: Tenth to Twelfth Centuries (Latham, 1993), who provides an annotated translation of the Chronicle of Maththew of Edessa. More generally, see Robert W. Thompson, “The Crusaders through Armenian Eyes,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, ed. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington, 2001), pp. 71–82. For a very useful and clear explication of Sachkritik see Gordon A. Craig, “Delbrück: The Military Historian,” in Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret et al. (Princeton, 1986), pp. 332–337. This should be reinforced from an epistemological perspective with the concept of “brute fact.” Regarding this, see John Searle in many publications, but for easy access in relation to what is at issue here see The Construction of Social Reality (New York, 1995), pp. 34–35, 55–56. (Berkeley, 1978). The basic work is Hans Delbrück, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte (2nd ed., Berlin, 1923), vols. 2 and 3. For English readers see Hans Delbrück, History of the Art of War: Within the Framework of Political History, vol. 2: The Germans and vol. 3: The Middle Ages, trans. Walter J. Renfroe (Westport, Conn., 1980, 1982). For a critique of Delbrück’s methods see the discussion by Bernard S. Bachrach, “Early Medieval Military Demography: Some Observations on the Methods of Hans Delbrück,” in The Circle of War in the Middle Ages, ed. Donald Kagay and L.J. Andrew Villalon (Woodbridge, UK, 1999), pp. 3–20. See the discussion by Bernard S. Bachrach, “The Siege of Antioch: A Study in Military Demography,” War in History 6 (1999), pp. 127–146, with the limited literature cited there.

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Byzantine naval support was of decisive importance to the success of the First Crusade.16 By conservative estimate, the Crusader force gathered at Constantinople and in its environs just prior to the attack on Nicaea in the late spring of 1097 is put in the 60,000 range.17 For the purpose of the present study, which will focus on feeding the Crusader forces that besieged Antioch, this figure, though on the low side, will be used as the basis for discussion.18 In regard to large numbers, which many scholars who are not specialists in medieval military history may find problematic, it is of more than heuristic value to recall that Alexander the Great kept field armies of this order of magnitude in effective fighting condition for a great deal longer than the nine months that the Crusader forces spent at Antioch.19 In addition, exceptionally large Roman and Phoenician armies were also maintained under adverse conditions for lengthy periods of time.20 Finally, the primitive technology of the pre-industrial early modern era did not keep armies of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries at absurdly small levels.21 Indeed, the fortress city of Vienna was besieged in 1529 by a force of 125,000 men who had far fewer logistic assets than the Crusaders enjoyed at Antioch in 1097.22 First, it can be established by the methods of Sachkritik that the Western forces which laid siege to Antioch required such massive amounts of logistic support that they could not supply themselves by living off the land through foraging. To sustain a force of 60,000, at a minimum grain ration of approximately one kilogram of milled wheat for each person per day, a total daily requirement of sixty metric tons was needed.23 While this daily ration provides 16

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In an excellent but all too brief study, John France, “The First Crusade as a Naval Enterprise,” The Mariner’s Mirror 83 (1997), pp. 389–397, preceptively recognizes the crucial role of naval power in the success of the First Crusade and correctly points out, as well, that Western writers who dealt with the Crusade were not much interested in naval matters. However, while France deals largely with Western naval assets, less than a single page (390) is devoted to Byzantine naval efforts in the context of logistic support. In addition, France does not focus, in general, on the matter of logistic support. France, Victory in the East, pp. 122–142, for the figures used here. For a defense of larger numbers, especially as found in epistolary sources, which, on the whole, tend to be more reliable than chronicles, see Bachrach, “The Siege of Antioch,” pp. 127–146, with the literature cited there. In this context, the curious observations of Jean Flori, “Un problème de méthodologie. La valeur des nombres chez les chroniqueurs du Moyen Age, à propos des effectifs de la première Croisade,” Le moyen âge 99 (1993), pp. 398–422, is worth noting. Engels, Alexander the Great, pp. 146–152, regarding the order of magnitude of Alexander’s armies and passim concerning the logistic problems that he faced and overcame. Regarding these, see P.A. Brunt, Italian Manpower, 225 B.C.–A.D. 14 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 417–312, with special attention to the numbers of effectives recruited from Italy alone. See John Lynn, “Food, Funds, and Fortresses: Resource Mobilization and Positional Warfare in the Campaigns of Louis XIV,” in Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. John A. Lynn (Boulder, 1993), pp. 137–159. Christopher Duffy, Siege Warfare. The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494–1660 (London, 1979), p. 201, for the siege of Vienna. See Appendix.

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sufficient calories, it is neither healthful nor conducive to high morale and thus is used here only for the purpose of providing a minimalist model.24 In addition, at the start of the Antioch campaign, the Crusaders are estimated to have had at least 5,000 mounted troops.25 If each mounted fighting man had only a single horse – the usual number was three mounts – there was the need for an additional daily ration of 25,000 kilograms of grain, probably oats but spelt also could be used to feed these animals.26 The number of riding horses, pack horses, and draft horses with which the Crusaders began the campaign obviously was far in excess of the 5,000 war horses mentioned above.27 However, the number of draft animals that was retained by the Crusading army once the siege was initiated depended upon the extent of the foraging that, in the first instance, the leaders planned to undertake and, subsequently, what efforts in this endeavor they, in fact, did make operational. If we take a simple example, a total grain ration for human consumption of 60,000 kilograms required that each day 120 horse-drawn wagons or carts having a maximum load capacity of approximately 500 to 600 kilograms arrive at camp.28 A caravan of 120 wagons required some 250 horses (approximately ten per cent over the bare minimum of draft stock generally is needed to replace injured and perished animals). This means that each day an additional 24 25 26

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Regarding food supply and morale see Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude to Empire (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 136–138. France, Victory in the East, p. 142, sees a force of approximately 7,000 mounted troops in the Crusader army following the siege of Nicaea for the journey to Antioch. Concerning the usual number of mounts for each heavily armed horseman see the discussion by Bernard S. Bachrach, “William Rufus’ Plan to Invade Aquitaine,” in The Normans and Their Adversaries at War: Studies in Memory of C. Warren Hollister, ed. Richard P. Abels and Bernard S. Bachrach (Woodbridge, UK, 2001), pp. 31–63. In regard to the feeding of the horses see Engels, Alexander the Great, pp. 126–129. France, Victory in the East, p. 126, estimates that a minimum of 20,000 horses was needed merely to support the mounted troops. Regarding the load capable of being hauled by wheeled vehicles both in the Christian West and East at this time see the basic work by R. Lefebvre des Noëttes, L’attelage et le cheval de selle à travers les âges, 2 vols. (Paris, 1931). This basic research is supplemented by Albert Leighton, Transportation and Communication in Early Medieval Europe (Devon, 1972); Marjorie Nice Boyer, “Medieval Pivoted Axles,” Technology and Culture 1 (1960), pp. 128–138; and John Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation: The Use of Draught Animals in English Farming from 1066–1500 (Cambridge, 1986). Several efforts have been made recently to revise the state of the question on the basis of a reinterpretation of the archaeological evidence. With regard to harnesses see, for example, G. Raepsaet, “La faiblesse de l’attelage antique: la fin d’un mythe?” L’Antique Classique 48 (1979), pp. 171–176; idem, “Attelages antiques dans le nord de la Gaule: les systèmes de traction par équines,” Trierer Zeitschrift 42 (1982), pp. 215–273; and Jean Spruyette, Early Harness Systems: Experimental Studies: A Contribution to the Study of the History of the Horse (London, 1983). All these studies evidence considerable special pleading with regard to how an inefficient harness could be positioned to be less inefficient, but their arguments are not convincing. The arguments by C.W. Röring, Untersuchungen zu römischen Reisewagen (Koblenz, 1983), really add nothing new as the existence of a pivotable front axle was not in doubt.

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1,250 kilograms of grain, such as oats or spelt, would be consumed in order to provide these draft animals with what is to be considered the cereal portion of their daily feed requirements. Grass and or hay are thus not under consideration here as it is assumed that these were available on site. Using these figures and assuming, in the best case, that both the wagon drivers and caravan guards carried their own supplies and, in addition, that the latter all operated without mounts, the draft horses would consume each day approximately two per cent of the load. Thus, in a period of approximately fifty days, these animals would consume the entire load of supplies that had been foraged and which they were transporting. To put it another way, this type of futile exercise, which assumes maximum or ideal travel rates of 180 kilometers per seven-day period, i.e. an average of approximately twenty-five kilometers per day in the course of a week, and no significant loss of draft animals or wagons, means that such a foraging expedition could venture approximately 1,200 kilometers from base.29 Of course, on an outward journey of this distance, the wagons would have to carry from the camp some 1,250 kilograms of grain to feed the draft horses each day or approximately 60,000 kilograms over a fifty day period. Looked at realistically, a foraging expedition, which could be made operational for the purpose of bringing home for the troops a day’s grain rations of 60,000 kilograms with 120 vehicles, could forage under more or less ideal transport conditions within a radius of approximately twelve to fifteen kilometers from camp. This means, of course, that such an expedition was going to a place where sixty metric tons of already milled grain had been collected and was simply waiting in a specified location, protected from the weather, rodents, and human enemies, for the foragers to load it on wagons and take it back to camp. If the Crusaders had in mind collecting a two-day supply of grain, then 250 or so wagons were needed. If the Crusaders went foraging for a three day supply of grain and the source was about 100 kilometers from the camp, then approximately 400 wagons would be required (on average one could expect more equipment breakdowns and animal injuries the longer the journey) and seventy wagon loads of grain would be needed to feed the draft animals. The arithmetic for a spectrum of variations, all under the optimal conditions adumbrated above, should convince even the most skeptical of historians that living off the land by means of foraging for the nine-month siege at Antioch was not a viable option for the Crusaders.30 29

Regarding ideal rates of approximately 30 kilometers per day for horse-drawn carts or wagons for six days in any seven day period see Bernard S. Bachrach, “Animals and Warfare in Early Medieval Europe,” Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo 31 (Spoleto, 1985), pp. 707–764; and reprinted with the same pagination in Bernard S. Bachrach, Armies and Politics in the Early Medieval West (London, 1993). For actual rates of march during the First Crusade through the Balkans see J.W. Nesbitt, “Rate of March of Crusading Armies in Europe: A Study in Computation,” Traditio 19 (1963), pp. 167–182. 30 John France, “La stratégie arménienne de la première croisade,” in Actes du colloque: “Les Lusignans et L’Outre Mer”, Poitiers–Lusignan 20–24 Octobre 1993 (Poitiers, 1996),

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It seems clear that the besieging force at Antioch required that a regular system of supply be in place in order to sustain the Crusader camp at Antioch. In principle, such a supply effort could rely on land transport for the movement of logistic support or on water transport or on a combined system of both land and water transport. However it was done, the system had to be exceptionally well coordinated, for no community of 50,000 or 60,000 people or even 20,000 with thousands of animals could maintain constant readiness for hand-to-hand combat while in a state of semi-starvation even for a few days, much less for any longer period of time. Sending supplies by land or partly by land certainly was not impossible, at least in principle, and it is clear from contemporary sources that some caravans did reach the Crusader base.31 Nevertheless, as we have seen already, the problems that are inherent in this method of supply are not likely, on the whole, to have been surmounted on a regular basis in a systematic manner. In short, a caravan of 120 wagons would have to arrive at the Crusader camp each day in order to provide a population of 60,000 with a kilogram of milled wheat to be made into bread or biscuit as a base daily ration. This, of course, does not include provision of the grain rations that were required by the horses. A regular system of logistic support, and the emphasis needs to be placed on both regular and system, based largely on supply by sea would seem to have been the only viable option not only for the success of the siege at Antioch over a period of nine months but also for the very survival of the Crusading community. However, it is important to note that by whatever means the Crusaders may have been supplied by outside elements, those who brought supplies on a regular basis to the siege encampment at Antioch either had to be official components of the Byzantine government, e.g. imperial land-based or naval assets, or private businessmen. The latter, it must be emphasized, had to be licensed by the imperial administration at Constantinople or its agents, who were established outside the capital but who had been delegated the authority to issue the relevant documents. Terms such as praeceptum, concessum, and iussio are used in the Western sources to denote these official imperial acta which give permission to non-governmental entities to carry on trade with the Crusaders.32 pp. 141–149; France, Victory in the East, pp. 186–191, and summarized in France, “The First Crusade as a Naval Enterprise,” p. 390, who observes, “[T]he Westerners liberated a vast hinterland, Lesser Armenia, on which they drew for food and supplies throughout the siege of Antioch.” He does admit, however, that “once winter began communications except with Cilicia became difficult.” Unfortunately, France does not do the arithmetic in regard to getting the supplies to the besieging force by land in order to make this observation more than speculation, though undoubtedly accurate speculation. Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 66–68, 75, 87, places a great deal of emphasis on foraging but demonstrates no firm grasp of the order of magnitude of the logistic problems. 31 Albert of Aix, Historia Hierosolymitana, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–1895), 4: 435; and Gesta Francorum et Aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. Rosalind Hill (London, 1962), X, ch. 20. See the discussion by Runciman, The History of the Crusades, 1: 221, 229. 32 Regarding the need for formal permission from the Byzantine government to make a market, which includes all buying and selling, see Fulcher of Chartres, Historia (Fulcheri Carnotensis

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In this context, it is certainly likely that from time to time an unlicensed individual with a herd of sheep or a small ship with a cargo of grain might succeed in smuggling the odd bit of logistic support into the Crusader camp. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that however attractive such romantic initiatives might seem in the otherwise dull and unromantic world of logistical systems, anomalies should not be mistaken for the norm. Thus, when dealing with the supply of a population of 60,000, perhaps 5,000 very valuable war horses, and not counting riding horses, pack horses, and draft horses, for a period of nine months, ad hoc efforts at smuggling food and fodder are unlikely to have been the primary means by which the besieging force of Crusaders was supported in a regular and systematic manner. By comparison with the great difficulties fundamental to providing supplies by land, which have been discussed above, the Crusaders at Antioch could be supplied by water in a manner which was much less likely to fail. The Crusaders controlled the flourishing port of Saint Symeon, only twenty-seven kilometers from the walls of Antioch and several kilometers closer to their siege camps.33 They also controlled what might be considered the auxiliary ports at Latakia and Alexandretta.34 Indeed, it is very likely that so-called “English” fleets had captured these two latter ports on the orders of the Emperor Alexios several months prior to the establishment of the siege of Antioch.35 These naval operations were, in fact, undertaken in anticipation of a siege being established at Antioch and for the explicit purpose of providing bases from which the Crusaders could be provided with logistic support. Indeed, it is clear, even from

Historia Hierosolymitana (1095–1127), ed. Carl Winters [Heidelberg, 1913]), bk. I, ch. viii.9 (p. 176); ch. x.6 (p. 185); and Albert of Aix, Historia, bk. II, ch. xxviii (p. 321). Indeed, it is possible, but seems highly unlikely, that the Crusaders could obtain a substantial amount of food without imperial permission. Gesta Francorum, ch. vii (p. 14), ed. Hill, notes that Bohemund ordered that a great market (“maximum mercatum”) be established with seaborne traders and, thus, it is made clear that food came to the Crusader camp at Nicaea by both land and sea. However, the well-known hostility of the author of Gesta Francorum to the emperor would seem to have resulted in his leaving the latter out of his description of the administrative process. 33 With regard to communities of both merchants and sailors in the environs of Saint Symeon, see Baudry of Dol, Historia Jerosolimitana in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–1895), 4: 65. 34 France, Victory in the East, pp. 210–219. 35 The matter of the “English” fleets requires further study. Jonathan Shepard, “The English and Byzantium,” Traditio 24 (1973), pp. 53–92, argues that Anglo-Saxons working as Byzantine mercenaries operated fleets in the imperial service. By contrast Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago, 1988), pp. 19–21, argues for fleets from England to the exclusion of Anglo-Saxons serving as naval mercenaries for Byzantium. France, “The First Crusade as a Naval Enterprise,” p. 397, n. 24, is likely correct in seeing at least two English fleets, one operating under imperial command and the other coming from England. I hope to take a position on the putative role of Edgar Atheling in the First Crusade sometime in the near future. In the meantime, see Nicholas Hooper, “Edgar the Aetheling: Anglo-Saxon Prince, Rebel and Crusader,” Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985), pp. 197–214.

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the otherwise unforthcoming and often hostile Western sources, that Alexios promised to support the Crusader siege at Antioch.36 In this context, it is important to emphasize that the Byzantines had full strategic control of the sea lanes in this part of the eastern Mediterranean. However, the imperial navy could not be fully free of tactical difficulties that could be created by Fatimid fleets based in Egypt which, if permitted, could obtain fresh water at Tripoli and thus from time to time pose a threat to Christian operations in the area.37 Nevertheless, the government at Constantinople maintained a major naval and military base on the island of Cyprus, which was approximately seventy nautical miles from the port at Saint Symeon, under the command of the island’s governor, Eustathius Philokales.38 At this time, the Patriarch Symeon of Jerusalem was enjoying what would appear to have been a very pleasant exile on the island and neither he nor his court seems to have lacked for anything. In fact, the prelate is reported to have sent exceptionally lavish gifts from his palace on Cyprus to the Crusaders who were preparing to capture Antioch.39 Finally, the island would seem to have served as an off-shore headquarters of sorts for the Crusade as well as an entrepôt for storing supplies. Thus, not long after the siege was established formally at Antioch, Bishop Adhémar, the nominal commander-in-chief of the Crusade, visited the patriarch on Cyprus and there is reason to believe that the latter, undoubtedly with the support of the imperial government which controlled the island, played a role in helping to provision the Crusaders investing Antioch.40 36 37

France, Victory in the East, pp. 215–220, develops the evidence. France, Victory in the East, p. 210, n. 46, is rightly skeptical of the argument put forth by Archibald Lewis, Naval Power and Trade in the Mediterranean, 500–1100 (Princeton, 1951), pp. 225–249, that Byzantine naval power was in decline at this time. Byzantine naval power very likely was actually increasing in an absolute sense. See, for example, Helene Ahrweiler, Byzance et la Mer (Paris, 1966). However, Lewis is correct in regard to the relative position of Byzantium because of the growth in naval power of the Italian cities. In short, Western Christian naval forces were rapidly coming to be a major force in the Mediterranean. With regard to the particulars of the present situation, John H. Pryor, Geography, Technology and War: Studies in the Maritime History of the Mediterranean, 619–1571 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 117–120, affirms Byzantine naval superiority and argues that the Fatimid fleet in Egypt did not pose a threat because of a lack of fresh water to supply its crews. However, France, “The First Crusade as a Naval Enterprise,” p. 396, n. 8, is probably correct in pointing out that Egyptian naval assets had sufficient access to fresh water because they controlled ports along the Palestinian coast as far north as Tripoli. Why these assets were not utilized is a topic that requires further study. See the review of Pryor by Bernard S. Bachrach in Technology and Culture 31 (1990), pp. 183–185. 38 As part of gaining control of the eastern Mediterranean, the Byzantines recaptured Cyprus in 965 only four years after they captured Crete. See the discussion by Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War, pp. 102–110. N.B. Eustathius had sufficient troop strength and naval assets available to him on Cyprus to take over the port at Latakia from Duke Robert of Normandy and to place a Byzantine garrison there. See the discussion by Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 1: 255. 39 Albert of Aix, Historia, p. 489. 40 Albert of Aix, Historia, p. 489, is seen by Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 1: 222, to indicate that the patriarch played a regular role in supplying the Crusaders.

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There were a considerable number of ships available at Antioch’s port of Saint Symeon and on the Orantes river and these were not merely craft capable of ferrying Bishop Adhémar and his entourage for visits to Cyprus. For example, William Peter, one of Count Raymond of Toulouse’s more important functionaries, is reported to have been sent from Antioch to Cyprus by his commander for the purpose of securing food shipments from the island for the Aquitanian contingents that were engaged in the siege.41 Indeed, it has been estimated that William Peter traveled some 300 nautical miles in a period of six months for the specific purpose of obtaining supplies for the Aquitanians.42 In this context, the evidence is clear that ships could sail from Cyprus or, indeed, from any other place on the Byzantine-controlled coast or from even more distant places to Saint Symeon at most times of the year. Seaborne operations could be conducted even late in the autumn and during the late winter. For example, sailings are mentioned in the otherwise jejune accounts of naval matters for a Geneose fleet landing at Saint Symeon on 15 November and an English fleet is recorded as having arrived at the port very early in March.43 In the present context, it is to be reemphasized that all of this buying and selling of supplies could not proceed legally without imperial license, and since the Byzantines controlled the region under consideration these requirements could be enforced if and when such efforts might become necessary. The naval assets that were required to supply the Crusader camp, in addition to whatever protection had to be provided by war ships, was not of a great order of magnitude. Only one merchant ship of rather moderate size, i.e. carrying approximately 100 metric tons of cargo,44 was required to land at the port of Saint Symeon each day in order to provide well in excess of the kilogram of milled wheat required to meet the caloric requirements of each of 60,000 Crusaders encamped at Antioch for that day’s rations. Indeed, such a schedule of daily landings leaves some thirty or so metric tons of surplus grain capacity each day to be used for providing fodder for the horses or to be kept as a reserve for periods when poor weather or other unforeseen problems might result in the limitation of access to the port at Saint Symeon.45 Once a cargo of approximately 100 metric tons of grain was landed at Saint

41 42

Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, pp. 68–72. See the discussion by Bachrach, “The Siege of Antioch,” pp. 140–141, with the literature cited there. 43 Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, p. 49; Caffaro, De liberatione civitatum orientis, pp. 49–50 in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades: Historiens Occidentaux, 5 vols. (Paris, 1844–1895), vol. 5; and Die Kreuzzugsbriefe aus den Jahren 1088–1100, ed. H. Hagenmeyer (Innsbruck, 1902), no. XVII (pp. 165–167). 44 During the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries cargo ships in the Mediterranean were expected to carry loads in the 95–470 ton range. A capacity of 600 tons would seem to have been an upper limit by the mid-thirteenth century. Richard W. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, 600–1600 (London, 1980), pp. 123–126. 45 Engels, Alexander the Great, pp. 123–126; and Bachrach, “Animals and Warfare in Early Medieval Europe,” pp. 707–764.

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Symeon, some 200 vehicles and 400 draft horses were required to haul this load over the old Roman road from the port to the Crusader siege camp at Antioch. The journey required a full day’s travel if horse- or mule-drawn vehicles were used and close to a maximum rate of speed was maintained.46 However, the regular use of such a transport system on a daily basis would have required approximately 500 vehicles and 1,000 draft horses. At least two units would be needed on a regular basis because while one was bringing grain to the siege camp, a second unit of empty wagons had to be making its way toward Saint Symeon. The need for back-up wagons or carts and animals to make up for broken equipment and injured or perished beasts means that extra vehicles and draft horses were required. Indeed, it is clear from the Latin sources that wagons or carts as well as pack horses were used to make operational the transfer of supplies from the port at Saint Symeon to the Crusader siege encampments at Antioch. However, if any schedules or other systematic record of this process were kept, and it is my sense of Crusader administration at this juncture in the campaign that this was not the case, they have not survived.47 The Orantes river is reported to have been navigable and ran through the Crusader siege camps in the environs of Antioch to the port at Saint Symeon.48 In addition, there is contemporary evidence, which makes clear that the Crusaders were able to bring boats up the Orantes from the port of Saint Symeon to the siege camps at Antioch, itself.49 Indeed, grain shipped to Saint Symeon for transportation to Antioch could be off-loaded onto river boats in a considerably more economical manner than onto horse-drawn vehicles. This is the case partly because the Crusaders would not be faced with the need to feed and care for a thousand or more draft horses and to keep hundreds of vehicles in good repair. River craft, of course, require crews and maintenance, but a logistic analysis regarding the substantial differences between costs for the use of boats as compared to the use of horse-drawn vehicles throughout the ancient and medieval periods is so well established that the details need not be rehearsed here.50 In this context, there is substantial evidence that, when the Crusaders occupied the region between Saint Symeon and Antioch, they acquired a great many boats which previously had been used on the river. This was predictable by the 46

47

48

49 50

Bachrach, “Animals and Warfare,” pp. 716–726. If wagons were used instead of carts the number of vehicles could be reduced to about 180 per day with a concomitant reduction in the number of draft horses required. If ox-drawn carts were used the transport could not be accomplished in a single day. France, Victory in the East, pp. 254–255, discusses the famous example of the supply column led by Bohemund that was attacked by the Muslims. Albert of Aix, Hist., bk. II, ch. xxviii (p. 321) indicates that part of the Crusaders’ supplies were hauled by vehicula drawn by mula and equi. The Orantes was navigable up to Antioch even before the Romans introduced massive improvements. See Glanville Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria from Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton, 1961), pp. 18, 52–53, and esp. n. 28. Fulcher, Historia, bk. I, ch. XI, 4. A. Burford, “Heavy Transport in Classical Antiquity,” Economic History Review 13 (1960), pp. 1–18.

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Crusaders because there was normally a very substantial river fleet on the Orantes to ply its trade between the busy port of Saint Symeon and Antioch for supplying the needs of this great urban center on a regular basis.51 Thus, it comes as no surprise that the Latin sources report that the Crusaders, laying siege to Antioch, had access to so many river boats, as might be expected in regard to such an important river and the regular supply of a large fortress city, that they built a pontoon bridge supported by river craft across the Orantes in order to faciliate communications and transportation between various parts of the siege encampment.52 Unfortunately, none of the contemporary or near-contemporary authors who wrote histories of the First Crusade saw it as his task to record in a systematic manner the arrival of vessels carrying supplies for the besieging force to the port of Saint Symeon. In general, not much effort was spent reporting on the role of ships in the Crusade, itself, and as noted above, the positive aspects of the Byzantine role were, in general, given little attention.53 Nevertheless, these Latin writers do provide information regarding ships and supplies in a rather incidental manner which, because of the off-hand manner in which it is presented, also may be taken as an index of accuracy if not of fulsomeness.54 In regard to providing supplies by sea, there are references in the sources to fleets from the three major Italian maritime cities, Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, operating throughout the eastern Mediterranean in search of profitable connections.55 In addition, there is reason to believe that fleets or at least noteworthy numbers of ships from Norway, Denmark, Frisia, Flanders, and the city of Antwerp, in particular, were operating in the eastern Mediterranean at this time and helping to provide logistic support for the Crusade.56 The mention of several English fleets suggests that these likely were among the “Western” ships 51

52

53

54

55 56

Regarding supplying Antioch with food see Jean Durliat, De la ville antique à la ville byzantine: le problème des subsistances (Rome, 1990), pp. 350–381, with the literature cited there. Both Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, p. 49; and Fulcher of Chartres, Historia, bk. I, ch. XV, 6, speak of a plethora of boats available to the Crusaders and of the pontoon bridge they built on boats which they found along the banks of the Orantes river and commandeered for the use of the army. However, the Crusaders did not limit themselves to the use of river boats for the transportation of supplies. The prejudices, one might even say the “chivalric” prejudices, of the men who patronized these authors and, indeed, the prejudices of many of the authors, themselves, go a long way toward explaining why naval operations, in general, are given such very limited attention. Ships and sailors, like archers and artillery men, were not to be seen as heroes. If possible they were to be ignored. France, Victory in the East, p. 213, comments on the poverty of information concerning the fleets. France, Victory in the East, p. 210, after reviewing the data in detail, was compelled to observe that seaborne “logistical . . . support was essential for the Crusaders. . . .” France continued, “it is hardly possible to believe that without such Byzantine help they could have survived the siege of Antioch.” France, Victory in the East, pp. 209, 219. For a fleet from Norway see Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, p. 129; and for the others see France, Victory in the East, pp. 216–220.

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mentioned in the sources as carrying food to Antioch.57 Finally, and despite the bias of the Western sources, ships from the Byzantine empire also are indicated as playing a role in providing logistic support to the Crusaders.58 It can be assumed, in general, that all of the non-Byzantine ships operating to support the Crusaders had to obtain their supplies in Christian ports that were controlled by the imperial government. In addition, it must be concluded that the vast majority of these vessels had to be licensed by the Byzantine authorities “to make a market.” By contrast, those Greek ships that are mentioned by Latin chroniclers such as Raymond of Aguilers should likely be understood as naval assets under the direct control of the Byzantine emperor as they operated between Cyprus and the port of Saint Symeon.59 These supply efforts by Greek ships obviously were in fulfillment of the promise made by the emperor Alexius to provide the Crusaders with logistic support.60 In conclusion, I think that it is reasonable to suggest that ships from northern Europe, which played a role in sustaining the siege of Antioch, obtained the supplies that they carried to Saint Symeon in Byzantine territory and under imperial warrant. It seems highly unlikely that shiploads of grain were brought directly from Norway or from England for the purpose of supplying the Crusaders at Antioch. If this, in fact, were the case, it was surely a one-time occurrence as the sea route from the port of London to Saint Symeon was in excess of 7,000 kilometers and the route from southern Norway to the Crusader port added another 1,200 kilometers to the journey. By contrast, it is more likely that Geneose, Pisan, and Venetian ships may initially have brought food from Italy to the Crusaders. However, any role that these Italian ships may have played of a continuing nature in providing for the Crusaders likely meant that they too obtained supplies in imperial-controlled territory and did so with the proper documentation. Finally, since the Byzantines could not be certain of the continuing support to the Crusaders either of ships that came from northern Europe or of Italian ships, it is likely that naval assets under the direct control of the imperial government played the major role in supplying the besieging force at Antioch.61 57 58

This material is developed by France, Victory in the East, pp. 215–220. Baudry of Dol, Historia Jerosolimitana, p. 18; Ordericus Vitalis, Historia, bk. IX, ch. 4 (The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall [Oxford, 1969–1979]), vol. 5, p. 307; Raymond of Aguilers, Liber, pp. 134–135. 59 Liber, pp. 134–135; and France, Victory in the East, p. 209. 60 France, Victory in the East, p. 209, for a discussion of the promise made by Alexios and the observation that the Crusaders rapidly consumed the immense stock of food that they captured when they took over the region around Antioch. Indeed, the Crusaders failed to take the elementary precaution of storing surpluses or maintaining herds of livestock. This behavior may, indeed, suggest that it was firmly believed that the emperor would provide the supplies that he had promised. Of course, one can always fall back on the cliché of “bad leadership” to explain stupid behavior. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, p. 219, provides a rich picture of the assets acquired by the Crusaders. 61 France, “The First Crusade as a Naval Enterprise,” p. 389, believes that Byzantium “was the main provider of naval assistance” but does not develop the facts to sustain this position.

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Despite the hostility of the Latin sources and their general disinterest in naval operations, reports, noted above, of Greek ships providing supplies to the Crusaders, in apparent fulfillment of the promise made by the emperor Alexios, are of primary importance to our understanding of Western success. In this context, it seems very likely that the decision taken by the Crusaders after the victory at Antioch to take the coastal route southward toward Jerusalem, rather than the inland Damascus road, was directly conditioned by the support that the Byzantine government had provided previously. It seems clear that Alexios emphasized to the Crusaders that he would use Cyprus as the base from which he would send the supplies that he promised to the Westerners for the march on Jerusalem, who thus could be supplied by sea as they followed the coastal road southward.62 As a result, the Crusaders’ strategic decision to use coastal roads after their brilliant success at Antioch, following a nine-month siege, provides a strong basis for concluding that the Byzantine government, by and large, had met its obligations to provide logistic support to the besieging force during this campaign. Thus, the Western commanders may be seen to have had great confidence in Alexios’ commitment to provide the supplies that were required, contrary to the sniping of the Latin chroniclers. This confidence served as the basis upon which commanders such as Raymond of Toulouse concluded that logistic support would be made available to sustain their operations in the future.

62

See the discussion of this point by France, Victory in the East, pp. 209–210.

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Appendix Minimum Food Provisions The chart below depicts a spectrum of scholarly thinking with regard to the caloric requirements that were needed by soldiers in the pre-modern era. Chart Daily Caloric Requirements Scholar Engels Guilmartin Harari Jones Jusselin Lane Lynn

63 64

65

66

67

68

69

Historical Era Macedonian Army Early Modern Spain Med. Eng. Later Roman Empire Med. France Med. Italy Early Modern France

Quantity 3,60063 3,20064 3,25065 5,00066 3,25067 3,91568 3,00069

Alexander the Great, pp. 123–126, but cf. p. 18, where Engels develops his model on the basis of the work done by the soldiers and their body size. John F. Guilmartin, “The Logistics of Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century: The Spanish Perspective,” in Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. John A. Lynn (Boulder, 1993), p. 121. Yuval Noah Harari, “Strategy and Supply in Fourteenth-Century Western European Invasion Campaigns,” The Journal of Military History 64 (2000), pp. 301–305, assumes 1.25 kilograms would provide the total needed calories. However, he underestimates the number of calories for a kilogram at 2,000 when, in fact, a kilogram of biscuit would provide 2,500 calories as shown by Engels, Alexander the Great, p. 124, on a conservative estimate. A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284–602: A Social Economic and Administrative Survey, 2 vols. (Norman, Okla., 1964), 1: 447, 629, 2: 1261–1262, n. 44. This would seem to be a “paper” diet. Constantin Zuckerman, “Legio V Macedonica in Egypt: CPL 199 Revisited,” Tyche 3 (1988), p. 280, follows Jones as does Adrian K. Goldsworthy, The Roman Army at War: 100 BC–AD 200 (Oxford, 1996), p. 291. M. Jusselin, “Comment la France se préparait à la Guerre de Cent Ans,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes (1912), pp. 220–221, develops these estimates on the basis of a French campaign plan for 1327. See the discussion by Harari, “Strategy and Supply,” pp. 302–303. Frederic C. Lane, “Diet and Wages of Seamen in the Early Fourteenth Century,” in Venice and History, ed. Frederic C. Lane (Baltimore, 1966), pp. 264, 266, to which he adds fifty-two grams of salt pork. John Lynn, “Food, Funds, and Fortresses: Resource Mobilization and Positional Warfare in the Campaigns of Louis XIV,” in Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present, ed. John A. Lynn (Boulder, 1993), p. 140, demonstrates that early modern French troops received 1.5 pounds of bread per day plus a meat ration. Lynn, “The History of Logistics,” pp. 26–27, demonstrates that Martin Van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (New York, 1977), p. 34, is incorrect in asserting that the soldiers of the early modern French army received a total of two pounds of bread per day.

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Bernard S. Bachrach Scholar Perjés Prestwich Roth Stolle

Historical Era Early Mod. Europe Med. England Roman Army Roman Army

Quantity 2,75070 2,50071 3,39072 3,30073

In the chart, above, no distinction has been made between “paper” rations, i.e. what the government or some other support unit was willing to subvent in one or another way, and what soldiers actually consumed in relation to the wide variety of conditions that they faced.74 Thus, for example, Prestwich, who identifies food allotments for garrison troops (not charted above) found in various documents, notes that some texts record a total ration that reasonably can be converted by modern scholars to a ration of some 5,000 calories per day.75 However, it is unclear from these sources what quantities of food the men actually received or, in fact, what they actually ate. Prestwich is very skeptical as to whether the documents record real daily consumption rates and points out that 5,000 calories per man as a daily ration is “far in excess of what would be regarded today as appropriate.”76 Indeed, largely sedentary garrison troops consuming 5,000 calories per day on average would become fat rather quickly and likely lose much of whatever fighting edge they may be thought to have had previously.77 Thus, Prestwich evaluates a spectrum of evidence beyond the material found in the garrison accounts and concludes that a more likely figure is a daily ration for soldiers, as charted above, of 2,500 calories.78 The figures given by Jones in the chart are even more problematic. They were found in a papyrus of the sixth century from which it is not really possible to generalize either in regard to widespread usage or what was actually eaten by troops on the march. Like Jones, Jusselin worked only with a single document. 70

71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78

G. Perjés, “Army provisioning, Logistics, and Strategy in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 16 (1970), p. 13, to which he adds 33.3. grams of meat as an average ration. M.C. Prestwich, “Victualling Estimates for English Garrisons in Scotland during the Early Fourteenth Century,” The English Historical Review 82 (1967), p. 538. Jonathan P. Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army at War (264 BC–AD 235) (Leiden, 1999), p. 43, notes a total of less that 1.2 kilograms when biscuits are used. Franz Stolle, Der Römische Legionär und sein Gepäck (‘Mulus Marianus’): eine Abhandlung über den Mundvorrat, die gepälast und torister des Römischen Legionärs und im anhang Erklärung der Apokolpse 6.6 (Strasburg, 1914), p. 28, with a total of slightly more than one kilogram of food when biscuits are used. With regard to corruption see Ramsey MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven, 1988), pp. 173–175. Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven, 1996), pp. 247–248. Ibid. See also Prestwich, “Victualling Estimates for English Garrisons,” pp. 346–353. Harari, “Strategy and Supply,” p. 303, makes clear that these documents do not provide accurate information regarding what actually was consumed on a regular basis. See Prestwich, “Victualling Estimates for English Garrisons,” p. 538.

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However, the document that Jusselin used has the virtue of having been generated for an actual campaign in 1327 about which we are informed by other sources. By contrast with the reliance on single documents by Jones and Jusselin, Perjés examined a vast quantity of accounts of various types from a broadly based corpus of European sources. From his researches he derived figures, charted above, that were much closer to those calculated by Jusselin. Harari carried out what may perhaps be considered a meta-study of a selection of previous later medieval and early modern work for his conclusion that on average each soldier required 3,250 calories per day while on campaign. The documentary approach has the virtue of recording “real” numbers and quantities as these appear in operational orders or accounts of one sort or another. Converting the quantities into modern weights and measures has certain problems associated with it that require solution by experts.79 In addition, the process of ascertaining the caloric value of such foods also requires specialized research.80 Moreover, these documents, like all other written sources, are bedeviled by the normal historical problems inherent in the explication of texts. These range, as noted above, from innocent recording errors at one end of the spectrum to overt corruption at the other. The one major check on the vagaries of our written sources is what we know regarding both the fundamental constants and time-conditioned variables of human physiology. Engels, for example, used as his base line for the calculation of the calories needed to sustain a soldier on a daily basis the requirements recommended by the United States Army. However, he supplemented his historical evidence with a plethora of cross-cultural scientific studies which deal not only with calories and nutrition but also with such key variables as body types, especially height and weight, and work efforts. Engels also took into consideration the impact of climate and in the short term did not ignore weather conditions when dealing with specific requirements during military operations.81 However, now even Engels’ classic study has come under pressure for revision. Roth has reexamined the U.S. Army estimates in detail and found that Engels used the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for nineteen-year-olds. This RDA appropriately takes into consideration the key variables of maintaining good health, acceptable weight in relation to height, daily activity, and environment. However, what Engels failed to emphasize is that age is a significant variable and cannot be kept as a constant. In short, a soldier requires considerably more calories to do the same work under the same conditions at nineteen years of age than he does at twenty-five or thirty or forty years of age. As the soldier gets older, he requires fewer calories to do the same work under the same conditions while maintaining his weight and energy levels. The RDA 79 80 81

Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army, pp. 42–44. Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army, pp. 7–8. Engels, Alexander the Great, pp. 123–134, relied heavily on the synthesis of a great many studies done by Colin Clark and Margaret Haswell, The Economics of Subsistence Agriculture (London, 1968).

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for a nineteen year old is 3,600 calories but for a twenty-five year old of the same height and weight, i.e. 175.2 centimetres (5N 9O) and 70.5 kilogrammes (155lbs.) it is 3,200 calories.82 This reduction in caloric RDA of roughly eleven per cent in the course of a half-decade can be projected over time until the soldier, due to aging, can no longer carry out the same tasks in the same manner.83 As suggested above, Roth provides an even more detailed and refined approach to a broad spectrum of variables, both those found in the documents and in regard to human physiology, on a comparative basis. In terms of method, Roth may be thought to have established the state of the art as we presently understand the nature of the proper way in which to deal with this area of research.84 However, what emerges from the scholarly literature on the whole is the dominance of grain as the staple of the soldier’s diet in the pre-modern West.

82 83 84

Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army, pp. 9–12, and the plethora of literature cited there. Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army, pp. 7–13. Roth, The Logistics of the Roman Army, pp. 7–55.

6 Besieging Bedford: Military Logistics in 1224* Emilie Amt

Both logistics and siege warfare are subjects whose significance in medieval military history has generated new and sometimes heated discussion in recent years. Of course sieges have long been studied, and their importance long acknowledged, but there is now an emerging recognition that they were also more typical of medieval warfare than surveys of the subject, with their emphasis on battles, have traditionally suggested.1 Logistical matters, on the other hand, have come into the spotlight relatively recently, as historians have attempted to examine the practicalities of medieval campaigning and to place the subject in a long-term context.2 One of the difficulties in studying the supplying of medieval armies, however, is lack of evidence. It is the intent of this article to help fill that gap by looking at the logistics of one particularly well-documented thirteenth-century episode, a crisis which resulted not only in a protracted siege but also in a de facto reordering of military priorities for the English government. During the summer of 1224, in the midst of preparations to defend the English-held territory of Poitou against invasion by the king of France, an * An earlier version of this paper was presented in a session jointly sponsored by De Re Militari and the Society for Military History at Kalamazoo in 2000. I would like to thank Clifford Rogers for his close reading of the article and many valuable suggestions; David Baker for generously providing archaeological information; Christopher Gravett for reading the original paper and making helpful suggestions; Kelly DeVries and S.J. Allen for additional useful comments; Mark Hanna, Matthew Amt, and Stephen Bowden for information about siege warfare; and the Hood College Board of Associates and Summer Research Institute for funding the research. 1

Christopher Gravett, Medieval Siege Warfare (London, 1990), especially p. 3; John Gillingham, “Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages,” War and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J.O. Prestwich, ed. John Gillingham and J.C. Holt (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1984): 78–91; Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge, 1992), especially p. 71; Bernard S. Bachrach, “Medieval Siege Warfare: A Reconnaissance,” The Journal of Military History 58 (1994): 119–23. 2 John A. Lynn, ed., Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present (Boulder, San Francisco, and Oxford, 1993), pp. 3–101; Michael Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages: The English Experience (New Haven and London, 1996), pp. 245–62; Yuval Noah Harari, “Strategy and Supply in Fourteenth-Century Western European Invasion Campaigns,” The Journal of Military History 64 (2000): 297–333.

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isolated rebellion and hostage situation suddenly required the English government to besiege Bedford Castle in the English midlands. The consequent shift in military concentration was criticized by the pope, among others, though it has sometimes been defended by historians: for while Bedford was taken, Poitou was lost. The events at Bedford are richly documented in narrative, epistolary, and record sources, thus allowing us to observe in unusual detail how this extended and successful siege was conducted. This article will explore the logistical dimensions of the siege of Bedford and then briefly re-examine the question of how well the royal government balanced its military responsibilities in these crucial summer months. The background to this episode was complex and must be only briefly sketched here.3 At Christmas 1223, with papal approval, the sixteen-year-old English King Henry III (1216–1272) had assumed fuller royal powers; the decisions of government, however, were still almost entirely in the hands of his advisors, and most of all in the hands of the justiciar, Hubert de Burgh. (Thus, when the king is said, in the narrative that follows, to have issued an order or taken some official action, the documents were issued in his name but represent the decisions of Hubert de Burgh and other top ministers.) Hubert had long been working to bring more lands and castles back into the government’s hands, both on behalf of the king and for his own sake; the king’s minority encouraged maneuverings and rivalries among the king’s advisers and powerful subjects, and some resisted giving up estates and fortifications which they had come to regard as their own. The tension peaked at Henry’s Christmas court.4 Meanwhile the French crown continued its long-term efforts to whittle away at English territories on the Continent, of which only Gascony and Poitou now remained. In the early months of 1224, the English government was anticipating the renewal of a four-year truce with France, which was due to expire at Easter (April 14). Both sides had advantages to gain from a prolongation of the treaty. The English would be able to use a further period of peace to bring pressure to bear on the turbulent Poitevin noble Hugh de Lusignan, who had married Isabella, widow of King John and mother of Henry III. And they would be freed up to deal with problems closer to home: trouble in Ireland and the resistance to the resumption of lands and castles. The French too seemed to have reason to 3

The political and strategic aspects of the siege have been ably and thoroughly studied, most recently by D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990), pp. 343–75, on which the following background discussion is largely based, and by Robert C. Stacey, Politics, Policy, and Finance under Henry III, 1216–1245 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 27–32, 160–5. See also F.M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward: The Community of the Realm in the Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1947), 1:55–66; Kate Norgate, The Minority of Henry the Third (London, 1912), pp. 208–49. The story of the siege was told by A.R. Goddard in The Great Siege of Bedford Castle (Bedford, 1906). Extracts from the relevant record sources for the siege were gathered and printed by G. Herbert Fowler, “Munitions in 1224,” The Publications of the Bedfordshire Record Society 5 (1920): 117–32, but his commentary is very brief and quite misleading. 4 Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry Richards Luard (London, 1874–84), 3:82–3.

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avoid a resumption of hostilities with England: most significantly, the new French king, Louis VIII (1223–26), was preparing to move against the Albigensian heretics in southwestern France. The English fully expected him to renew the truce. Hence the rude shock when Louis announced in early May that he would not be doing so. A French crisis did not yet seem imminent, but King Henry’s advisors knew how quickly such a situation might develop and turned their attention to the matter of protecting Poitou from Louis. They assembled an expeditionary force, which arrived in early June to defend La Rochelle, the county’s chief port; they earmarked a total of 3,600 marks for the cause (2,000 for the expeditionary force and the rest as a payoff to Hugh de Lusignan); they dispatched representatives to Rome to seek papal support; and on May 23 they issued summonses for the great council to meet at Northampton, on June 16, to discuss the defense of Poitou. The need to act became much more urgent when, in early June, news reached England that Hugh de Lusignan had made an alliance with Louis which promised the French king Hugh’s assistance in taking Poitou and gave Hugh a stake also in any future French conquest of Gascony.5 Meanwhile, only one English baron, an old royal servant named Falkes de Bréauté, had failed to come to terms with the government over his lands and castles. At the same time, the royal courts were pursuing Falkes for a number of offenses including a capital charge. Overwhelmed by the government’s implacability and seeming ingratitude, and perhaps encouraged by previous episodes in which rebels had been leniently treated, Falkes conspired with his brother William.6 Their plans centered on Bedford Castle, which Falkes had long held for the king, and which he had enlarged and strengthened impressively with new curtain walls, a new keep, and stone-lined ditches.7 On June 17, William de Bréauté seized one of the offending royal justices, Henry de Braybrooke, who was also a well-known antagonist of Falkes, and threw himself into Bedford Castle, along with his prisoner and a garrison of eleven knights and seventy or more serjeants. The timing and location of this act of rebellion seem almost comically inept, as the king was at that moment meeting with his barons at Northampton, a town just twenty miles away from Bedford and perfectly located to serve as a staging platform for a military operation – a function which Northampton did indeed serve in the months to come. Henry de Braybrooke’s wife flew to the royal council there for help. The resulting decision to besiege

5 6

Carpenter, Minority, 355–6, 358–9, 371–3; Matthew Paris, 3:82–8. Annales Monastici, ed. Henry Richards Luard (London, 1864–9), 3:86; Matthew Paris, 3:84–5. 7 David Baker et al., Excavations in Bedford, 1967–1977 (Bedfordshire Archaeological Journal, vol. 13, 1979), pp. 10–11, 13–17, 31–35, 63–4; idem, “Bedford Castle: some preliminary results from rescue operations,” Château Gaillard: Etudes de castellogie médiévale 6 (1973): 15–22; R. Allen Brown et al., The History of the King’s Works, vol. 2 (London, 1963), pp. 558–9; Matthew Paris, 3:87; Walter of Coventry, The Historical Collections of Walter of Coventry, ed. William Stubbs (London, 1872–3), 2:253; Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London, 1875), p. 205.

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William de Bréauté was inevitable, unanimous, and swift. Three days after the kidnapping, the royal army arrived at Bedford Castle to invest it.8 Of course these three days had been a time of much activity. It was during them, and before the dispersal of the council that had endorsed the siege, that the basic steps necessary to raise the men and money for a siege had to be taken. The feudal host was summoned; many vassals (including all the knights of Kent, according to the pipe roll) appeared in person at the siege. A scutage of two marks per knight’s fee – much of which in fact went uncollected this year – was levied on those who did not provide knight service.9 Ecclesiastical vassals contributed a carucage at a rate of half a mark per plow on their demesne lands and two shillings per plow on the lands of their tenants; from this the king’s wardrobe eventually collected some £2,377.10 While the plans for the siege were being laid by the king’s barons and ministers, a demand for immediate surrender was sent to William de Bréauté, who refused and made it clear that he answered only to the absent Falkes. Enraged, the young king swore that he would hang the whole garrison.11 He and his court promptly left Northampton for Bedford, traveling by way of Newport (Pagnell), a place roughly equidistant from the two towns (though not on the most direct route), where numerous royal commands were issued on June 20 in preparation for the siege. Among the items being ordered at this point were supplies for siege-engines, ammunition for crossbows, pickaxes for miners, and wine for the king’s household.12 Thus the main military features of the siege as it was to unfold were already anticipated. Later on the same day, the royal retinue reached Bedford itself. It is clear that the king and his ministers had already resolved to use, and were in the process of mobilizing, what they hoped would be overwhelming force. The strength of Bedford Castle and its substantial garrison must have been well known to them, and taking such a stronghold was no easy matter. As Pierre Dubois was to remark a few generations later,

8

9

10

11 12

Matthew Paris, 3:84–5, 88–9; Walter of Coventry, 2:253; Ralph of Coggeshall, pp. 205–6. The makeup of the garrison is from Ralph of Coggeshall; the size of the force is widely attested and is consistent with what is known of garrison sizes in this general period; see John S. Moore, “Anglo-Norman Garrisons,” Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies XXII, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), especially pp. 217, 228–52. London, Public Record Office, PRO E372/68, rot. 9d and passim; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, ed. Emilie Amt (London, forthcoming), p. 150 and passim. References to this pipe roll below will be to both the manuscript and the forthcoming printed edition, which is in page proof at the time of this writing. Annales Monastici, 3:86; Roll of Divers Accounts for the Early Years of the Reign of Henry III, ed. Fred A. Cazel, Jr. (London, 1982), p. 51; Walter of Coventry, 2:254–5. The wardrobe accounts have been taken by historians to represent the total carucage raised, but they do not include all the ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief. Matthew Paris, 3:85–6. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, Vol. 1, 1204–1224, ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy (London, 1833), p. 605.

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A castle can hardly be taken within a year, and even if it does fall, it means more expenses for the king’s purse and for his subjects than the conquest is worth. Because of these lengthy, dangerous and arduous sieges, and because battle and assaults can be avoided, leaders are apt to come to agreements which are unfavorable to the stronger party. The besieger is on foreign ground, and is therefore bound to spend a disproportionately large amount in contrast with his enemy. He has to face greater dangers and suffer greater losses. The enemy can call up men from neighboring towns and fortresses and quietly await a favorable moment. . . . As well as this, it is difficult or even impossible for a large army to stay a long time in one place, because the nobility suffer. They are always rather dainty and sensitive on account of their upbringing and eating habits. They are not used to enduring the heat of summer and cannot do without luxurious food. They cannot stand the innumerable privations. . . . The huge number of horses cannot be kept in one place and they lose condition through lack of fodder and fresh water, and suffer from the myriads of flies. Disease may break out owing to lack of care and cleanliness in the camp.13

The difficulties of a siege, as described by Dubois, were considerably reduced when the object was, as in this case, an isolated rebel castle in the besieger’s own kingdom during peacetime. Still, the royal government took this siege with the utmost seriousness from the very beginning. The king’s advisors must have hoped that a massive and immediate investment would bring the affair to a quick close. And they knew that if they were in fact digging in for a long and painful fight, they had all the more reason to bring to bear all the strength they could. Hubert de Burgh and his colleagues were not unaccustomed to sieges, or even to laying a siege in this part of the country. In 1220 they had organized the quick and successful siege of Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire, less than 30 miles north of Bedford, and in early 1221 they had taken the castle at Bytham in Lincolnshire, less than 45 miles north of Bedford.14 The latter siege had been brief but whole-hearted. A scutage had been levied, siege engines had been moved north, and a specially appointed exchequer clerk had traveled to Bytham to supervise spending. Although the siege lasted less than a week, this official claimed his wages for 27 days.15 As far as we can tell, this administrative arrangement was not repeated for Bedford, but in other ways, as we shall see, the earlier episode laid some groundwork for 1224. And the two earlier sieges may have encouraged the initial decisions of the Bréauté brothers, for in 1220 and 1221 the rebels had not been severely punished. The speedy captures of Rockingham and Bytham were not a good omen for Falkes and William, but the brothers had faith that Bedford Castle would hold out longer and that other

13

Quoted in J.F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe during the Middle Ages: From the Eighth Century to 1340, tr. Sumner Willard and S.C.M. Southern (Amsterdam, New York, and Oxford, 1977), p. 273. I owe the reference to Clifford Rogers. 14 Carpenter, Minority, pp. 198, 229–33. 15 Pipe Roll 5 Henry III, ed. David Crook (London, 1990), p. xxxix; Divers Accounts, pp. 17–19.

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barons would rally to their cause. In the former matter, though not in the latter, they were correct. We have a great deal of information about the conduct of the siege of Bedford: the personnel involved, the technology utilized, the supplies ordered and received, and the dramatic moments in the story. When contemporaries described the scene at Bedford, they seem to have been most impressed by the siege-engines. The annalist at Dunstable, located about 17 miles south of Bedford, provides the most detailed overall picture: On the eastern side [of Bedford Castle] were a petrary and two mangonels, which attacked the keep daily. On the western side were two mangonels, which wore out the old tower. And there was one mangonel on the north side, and one on the south, each of which made an entrance in the wall closest to itself. In addition to these, two wooden machines were artfully erected higher than the top of the keep and the castle [walls], for the use of crossbowmen and spies. Furthermore, there were very many machines in which both crossbowmen and slingers lurked in ambush. And there was also a machine called a “Cat,” beneath which the underground diggers, who are called “miners,” were able to come and go, while they undermined the walls of the keep and castle.16

The mangonel on the south side of the castle must have operated from the opposite shore of the River Ouse; it was probably aimed at either the eastern or western end of the southern curtain wall (see figure 1). Just how quickly these great machines could be put into action at Bedford is unclear, but the first of the king’s frequent orders for supplies for the engines was issued even before he arrived at Bedford, and within eight days these items had started to arrive.17 Some of the machines, including the two tall siegetowers, were built on site; the monks of Warden, six miles to the southeast, saw the large trees around their abbey and in their woods cut down for this purpose.18 But some of the engines were brought to Bedford from other locations. By

16

“Ex parte orientali fuerat una petraria, et duo mangunella, quae cotidie turrim infestabant. Et ex parte occidentis erant duo maggunella, quae turrim veterem contriverunt. Et unum maggunellum ex parte australi, et unum ex parte aquilonari, quae duo in muris sibi proximis duos introitus fecerunt. Praeter haec erant ibi duae machinae ligneae arte fabrili supra eminentiam turris et castri erectae, ad opus balistariorum et exploratorum. Praeter haec, erant ibi pleraeque machinae, in quibus tam balistarii quam fundibularii in insidiis latitabant. Praeterea erat ibi machina, quae vocabatur Cattus, sub qua fossores subterranei, qui mineatores appellantur, ingressum et egressum habebant, dum muros turris et castri suffoderunt.” Annales Monastici, 3:87. See also Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 206; Walter of Coventry, 2:253; Matthew Paris, 3:85. 17 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605–7. 18 Matthew Paris, 3:86; Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 207. Warden also suffered damage to its fields near Bedford, for which the king promised compensation after the siege. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 617.

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Mangonel

Ditch Wall

Two mangonels

Barbican

Wall?

Ditch?

Petrary and two mangonels Inner bailey?

Waterg

ate

River O

use

Mangonel

Figure 1. Conjectural plan of Bedford Castle in 1224, showing the modern shoreline of the River Ouse and the approximate locations of the siege-engines. The motte survives today, and there is general agreement on the probable line of the outer ditch and outer curtain wall. I have followed suggestions in Baker, Excavations in Bedford, in locating the inner bailey in the southern part of the castle; alternatively, it may have lain in the northeast corner (as in Goddard, Great Siege, p. 16). A section of inner bailey ditch, with bridge abutments, has been excavated in the center of the castle area, as has a part of the watergate. A stretch of wall running west from the motte, and another along the southern edge of the castle, survived in the seventeenth century. The “old tower” mentioned in contemporary sources may have stood near the northwest angle of the inner bailey as shown here.

July 7, siege-engines had arrived from Lincoln.19 Mangonels were brought from Oxford, and the sheriff of Northamptonshire also moved engines along to Bedford.20 The records might seem to refer to whole engines moving along the roads of England, but it is more likely that the existing machines had been stored and transported in a partly disassembled state. Significantly, after the conclusion 19

On this date the king ordered a payment for moving expenses to the reeves of Lincoln. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 610. Prestwich calculates the rate of movement of siege engines in 1221 (for the siege of Bytham) as being about 10 miles a day. Armies and Warfare, pp. 289–91; Divers Accounts, p. 17. 20 PRO E372/68, rot. 2r, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 21, 123; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 638, 641. The engines from Oxford were apparently moved all the way to Bedford (PRO E372/68, rot. 4d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 65) and thus were not the same engines moved by the sheriff of Northamptonshire (Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 613, 638).

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of the siege, the sheriff of Bedford dismantled the petraries, mangonels, and siege-tower which had been in use there and sent them to the sheriff of Northamptonshire to be stored against future needs.21 Assembling the engines from their parts took some expertise, and while there is no explicit mention of specialized personnel involved with the siege engines at Bedford, such men were almost certainly present. The earl of Salisbury’s engineer, a Master William, had set up the royal engines at the siege of Bytham in 1221; he or someone with similar credentials may have been at Bedford as well.22 Masters Walter and Simon, carpenters from London, were paid to travel to Bedford and for their expenses there in the first week of the siege.23 They look very similar to the two unnamed master carpenters who traveled with some siege-engines from London to the siege of Bytham in 1221.24 To maintain and operate all these engines took manpower and matériel. Royal records are full of orders and receipts for supplies for the stone-throwing machines in particular. Aside from crossbow bolts, ropes for the engines are the supplies ordered in the greatest quantities during the siege, and the ones on which the most money was spent. The procuring of supplies for the machines received concentrated early attention. On June 20, before he arrived at Bedford, the king ordered from London several cartloads of ropes, along with cables and twenty slings for siege-engines; within eight days he had received, in response, 120 ropes, five large cables, four and a half pounds of grease for the engines, and, instead of the ready-made slings he had requested, twelve hides and four tools described as being specifically for the sewing of slings.25 In the meantime he had asked the bailiffs of Cambridge to send him “all the ropes and cables they could get in the town”; he had ordered from his bailiffs at Northampton some two dozen hides for slings; and he had sent for £10 worth of ropes each from Southampton and Dorset, and £20 worth from London.26 (Ten pounds would buy somewhere between 130 and 300 ropes; the length and thickness of the ropes are never mentioned and do not seem to have been a matter of concern, perhaps being standard.27) On July 14, he had to remind Southampton and Dorset officials to send “the rest” of the ropes he had previously ordered, and he

21 22 23 24

PRO E372/68, rot. 6d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 91; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 617. Divers Accounts, p. 18; see Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 284–7. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 607. Pipe Roll 5 Henry III, pp. xxxix, 99–100. Both pairs of carpenters were provided with horses. The engines sent from London to Bytham in 1221 had previously been stored in the cruta (yard?) of St. Paul’s. 25 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 606–7; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 83. 26 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 606–7; PRO E372/68, rot. 1r, rot. 5r, rot. 6r, rot. 8r, rot. 15r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 6, 72, 83, 123, 237. 27 The ropes sent from London at the beginning of the siege cost about 18d. each; those purchased at Boston fair in mid-July cost only about 8d. each, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum. pp. 607, 612. The former may have been expensive because they had to be purchased on short notice; the latter may have been snapped up because they were an especially good buy. The records make no distinctions of length or thickness.

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increased his total order by another £10.28 Some of the records identify specific sources of materials, as well as the logistical role played by churchmen: the bishop of Norwich, for example, sent more than £4 worth of ropes which he had bought at King’s Lynn.29 On June 22 the king asked the prior of Royston, about 20 miles east of Bedford, to send him “all the ropes left over from the siege of Bytham,”30 and on June 25 he ordered the sheriff of Huntingdonshire to send him ropes purchased at Hoyland fair that were presently at Ramsey Abbey.31 The sheriff of Lincolnshire sent 182 ropes specially purchased at Boston fair.32 Exactly what kind of stone-throwing machines were in use at Bedford? The heavy demand for ropes “for pulling the petrariae and the mangonels” (as well as the demand for men to pull them, as we shall see) makes it clear that most or all of them were traction trebuchets, the kind operated by teams of fifty to a hundred or more men pulling on ropes to swing a beam on a fulcrum and thus hurl a stone (from a sling) at the target.33 But despite the lack of precise engine terminology which is typical of medieval writers, some of the Bedford sources do seem to be referring to more than one kind of device – most clearly the Dunstable annalist, when he writes, “fuerat una petraria, et duo mangunella.”34 Royal sources also use both terms as if they mean two different things. The pipe roll’s references to both petraries and mangonels in the same phrase may be insignificant, having been written at the exchequer months after the end of the siege, but the same formula in royal letters close, issued at the siege itself, ought perhaps to be taken more seriously.35 If the different words do indicate distinctly different types of machines, the additional ones must have been either torsion-powered or counterweight machines. But many scholars doubt the persistence of large-scale torsion artillery in western Europe to the thirteenth century.36 It is easier to believe that oversized crossbows may have been used at Bedford (conceivably the ballistae that the king ordered from London were such devices),37 but contemporary writers are not likely to have grouped these with 28 29 30 31 32

33

34 35 36 37

Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 611, 636. PRO E372/68, rot. 12r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 189–90. King’s Lynn had also been a source of ropes for the siege of Bytham in 1221. Divers Accounts, p. 18. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 606. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 607. The ropes came from “St. Botulf’s fair,” i.e. Boston fair, and were taken directly from there to Bedford. PRO E372/68, rot. 4r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 50; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 612, 637. The saint’s feast day is July 17, and the ropes had arrived at Bedford by July 19. For the fair see The Victoria County History of Bedford, vol. 3 (1912), p. 304. pro cordis . . . ad petrarias et mangonellos trahendos, PRO E372/68, rot. 15r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 237. For the traction trebuchet, see DeVries, Medieval Military Technology, pp. 133–7; and Carroll Gillmor, “The Introduction of the Traction Trebuchet into the Latin West,” Viator 12 (1981), 1–8. Annales Monastici, 3:87. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605, 608, 617, 632. R. Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1992), pp. 254–66. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 607; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 82. For the use of such weapons see Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, p. 264.

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stone-throwers. A counterweight machine, or one combining a counterweight with traction,38 seems more likely than a torsion one to have been employed at Bedford, and it would fit the supply evidence, since ropes and men to pull them would also be needed, though in smaller numbers, to operate such an engine. Although the counterweight trebuchet seems to have been in use in western Europe in the early thirteenth century, scholarly opinion is divided over whether it had yet arrived in England at the time of the siege of Bedford.39 The Bedford evidence adds nothing conclusive to the historical debate over artillery types. Even if the two different terms were used with different meanings, they may refer to two different sizes of machine, to somewhat different designs of traction trebuchet, or even to similar engines launching different sizes of projectiles.40 To meet the need for muscle power, especially for the traction trebuchets, the church granted the king a levy of two men per hide from ecclesiastical lands to man the machines and haul stones to them.41 The Dunstable annalist referred to what he called “our men” participating in the siege, perhaps in just such a capacity.42 It was dangerous work; Ralph of Coggeshall reports that “more than two hundred of the soldiers and the men working around the machines (de servientibus et laborantibus circa machinas plusquam ducenti) were killed” in the course of the eight-week siege; he puts the number of knights killed at just six.43 The chroniclers agree in painting a picture of missiles raining down and many casualties on both sides. Matthew Paris says “some” of the king’s knights were injured by crossbow bolts (corruerunt aliqui de regiis militibus per spicula balistariorum obsessorum), and he names one who was killed that way.44 Such perilous conditions were expected by contemporary observers: one Master 38 39 40

41

42 43 44

Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 268–9. Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 257, 263, 265; DeVries, Medieval Military Technology, p. 138; cf. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, p. 293. Rogers, Latin Siege Warfare, pp. 265–6. For possible machines other than the traction trebuchet, see also Gravett, Medieval Siege Warfare, pp. 47–52; Stephen Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, 1066–1135 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 137–9; Bradbury, The Medieval Siege, pp. 250–70; John France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, 1999), pp. 26–7. Annales Monastici, 3:86–7; Ralph of Coggeshall, 206; Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III Preserved in the Public Record Office, A.D. 1216–1225 [Volume 1] (London, 1901), pp. 464–5. The levy is something of a puzzle. Ralph of Coggeshall seems to describe it as applying to the whole kingdom (Convocati sunt . . . per generale edictum duo homines de qualibet carruca, ex diversis Angliae comitatibus . . .), but with the number of hides in England totalling some 40,000 or 50,000, such a levy would be impossibly large. Since the other two sources mention the levy in close connection with the ecclesiastical carucage, and since the order of magnitude of the resulting workforce would be much more feasible, it seems likely that this was a levy only on church-held hides. Still, with roughly a quarter of the kingdom’s lands in church hands, many more unskilled laborers would have been summoned by such a levy than could be used – or supported – at Bedford. It is probable that only a fraction of the church’s hides sent men to Bedford. Annales Monastici, 3:87. Ralph of Coggeshall, pp. 206–7. Matthew Paris, 3:85, 89.

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Thomas was volunteered for service at Bedford by a royal justice because of his skill in the treatment of wounds.45 The rope-pullers, when they operated as a well-coordinated team in ideal conditions, might theoretically launch as many as 250 missiles from a single machine in an hour;46 the limiting factor was the availability of the ammunition. Depending on their size and design, medieval engines could launch stone missiles that weighed up to 250 pounds; excavations at Bedford Castle have found shaped stones now weighing between 22 and 40 pounds, which may well be trebuchet missiles from the 1224 siege.47 Obtaining a sufficient supply of stones for throwing was a major challenge in itself. Newnham Priory, just by Bedford, provided at least some of the stone for the engines.48 Quarrying was not something the canons could do for the king; hence his urgent call on June 30 for all the quarrymen and stonecutters in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to report for work at the king’s expense, bringing with them their “levers, hammers, mallets, wedges, and other tools needed to make stones for mangonels and petraries.”49 Producing the stones involved not only quarrying them but shaping them. Then the unskilled conscripts from ecclesiastical lands moved the stones from the quarry to the machines.50 Ralph of Coggeshall describes a constant bombardment of the walls at Bedford.51 Whether or not this was possible, heavy use wore out the leather slings that hurled the stones; the besiegers frequently needed hides for replacement slings. Altogether, twenty slings and about 100 hides are mentioned in the royal orders, and on June 25 the king’s order for hides from Northamptonshire included a request for two saddlers to come to Bedford, apparently to work on slings among other tasks.52 If the Dunstable annalist’s count of seven stone-throwing engines is correct, each machine (on average) wore out at least 14 slings during the eight-week siege. Simpler than the stone-throwers were the protective wooden structures such as siege-towers. Some were built on site; in addition to trees cut locally, a

45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52

Carpenter, Minority, p. 365 and n. DeVries, Medieval Military Technology, p. 137. Some of the Bedford stones may now be missing pieces and have originally weighed more; they are variously oval, disk-shaped, and irregular in shape and seem to have been worked by both chipping and tooling methods. They are now in the collections at Bedford Museum. Baker, Excavations in Bedford, pp. 17, 264; and personal communication. See also Gillmor, “Introduction of the Traction Trebuchet,” p. 4; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, p. 289. For some recent reconstructions of siege engines, see “Nova: Secrets of Lost Empires: Medieval Siege,” senior producer Lauren Aquirre (WGBH Science Unit), airdate February 1, 2000; and Peter Vemming Hansen, “Experimental Reconstruction of a Medieval Trébuchet,” Acta Archaeologica 63 (1992): 189–268, available at http://www.middelaldercentret.dk/acta.html. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 632. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 608; PRO E372/68, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 122. Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 206. Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 206. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605–7, 610, 613, 615–16, 634, 638, 640–1.

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portion of the finished lumber which the king ordered from afar during the siege was clearly destined for this purpose, and some of the many carpenters who we know were present on the site must have been occupied in assembling, building, and repairing these structures.53 (As will be seen below, carpenters and lumber were also employed in the miners’ tunnels.) The towers were manned primarily by archers, and in particular by crossbowmen; in addition the archers probably sheltered behind the special portable screens called “targes,” at least fifteen of which were ordered and received from London, beginning early in the siege.54 Crossbowmen are the only specific kind of fighting men, other than knights, mentioned in the records of the siege. Nineteen individual balistarii from London are named in a writ issued on June 30.55 A day earlier, another balistarius had been granted a house in London at the king’s pleasure.56 Of course most crossbowmen did not receive houses for their service, but the example suggests recognition of the military importance of their expertise. At one point early in the siege the king also ordered ten crossbows (baliste) and thread (bonum filum) for making strings for them, but this was unusual; for the most part the crossbowmen must have brought their own weapons with them.57 The king also received from a local goldsmith (who was probably holding them as collateral) two crossbows with stirrups, which belonged to one of the men currently in the Bedford garrison.58 Ammunition for crossbows figures prominently in the supply orders. While on the way to Bedford, the king ordered the sheriff of London to send him as many crossbow bolts as he could, and to set five or six London smiths to making them, as many as possible; within a week 2,300 bolts had arrived.59 On June 23 the king sent for “his” crossbow bolts, to the number of 15,000, from Corfe Castle, which was apparently an ammunition storage center (it was the only castle asked to make such a contribution).60 By the end of June, 4,000 more bolts had arrived from London and 2,000 from Herefordshire.61 These supplies may have lasted for most of July; unlike the stone-throwers, whose targets were always there to be shot at, the crossbowmen would have had little reason to shoot often unless the enemy appeared in view and in range. But Matthew Paris tells us that the archers commanded such a wide range from the siege-towers

53

54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Carpenters: Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 606–7, 610, and PRO E372/68, rot. 4d, rot. 6d, rot. 17r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 65, 91, 261; boards: Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 613–15, 634, 637–9, and PRO E372/68, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 123. The targes seem to have been reinforced with hurdles. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 606–7 (and cf. Divers Accounts, pp. 17–18); PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 82; Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge, 1992), p. 140. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 608; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 83. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 608. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 607; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 82. Patent Rolls, p. 453. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605, 607; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 83. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 606. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 608–9; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 83.

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that the defenders had to wear armor when moving around inside the castle.62 Shooting was probably used to inhibit such movement, yet it was probably not a heavy hail of shots at most times, and it probably did not keep the crossbowmen very busy. The numbers of bolts known to have been received suggest something on the order of 770 shots per day on average; over the course of fifteen hours of daylight that would be about 50 shots per hour – enough to be a constant danger to the defenders, but only a couple of shots each hour from each of twenty crossbowmen. By late July the king’s forces needed more bolts, and he sent urgently for 6,000 from Oxfordshire, 4,000 from Northampton, and another 10,000 from London, again ordering that qualified smiths were to be specially assigned to produce them. The London order seems to have been duly delivered, as were 1,000 of the bolts ordered from Oxford.63 The smiths who were working in the siege camp may have turned out bolts too. Metalworking supplies ordered and received include charcoal, which came from a forest in nearby Huntingdonshire and from other places; “Gloucester” iron ordered locally and from Southampton; and steel ordered from Northampton.64 After the siege was concluded, both unused and captured bolts were carefully stored for future use.65 A final category of personnel and their equipment is that of the miners. These men were specialists, brought in from mining regions of the kingdom: thirty of them came in a group from the neighborhood of St. Briavels in Herefordshire, led by John of Standon, who had also headed the mining operations at the royal siege of Bytham three and a half years earlier.66 The miners were well paid, at four-and-a-half to five pence per day. After the end of the siege some individual miners are named in the records and received special rewards, even grants of land in the forest of Dean. The records also include payments to two disabled miners.67 For the miners’ work, the king repeatedly placed orders for quantities of pickaxes, starting even before any miners could have been on the site. He asked London for 200 pickaxes on June 20 and had received them eight days

62 63 64 65

66 67

Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, 3:86. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 613, 638; PRO E372/68, rot. 2r, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 82. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 610–11, 613, 617, 634–6, 638. Of the 4,000 bolts ordered from Northampton, 900 were left over at the end of the siege – possibly because they had not been delivered in time – and were put into storage in Northampton Castle, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 617. All the bolts remaining inside Bedford castle after the siege were ordered sent to London, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 617. But another miner was named Roger of Cambridge. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 609, 617; Divers Accounts, p. 18; PRO E372/68, rot. 6d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 90–1. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 617; PRO E372/68, rot. 6d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 91. Although the pipe roll says that they are being paid for the period from Sept. 23 to Oct. 27 (a die lune proxima post festum Sancti Mathei apostoli usque in vigilem Sanctorum apostolorum Simonis et Jude), the close roll record of August 19 makes it clear that the pay is for the period they spent at the siege.

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later.68 About a month later, on July 18, he instructed the bailiffs of Northampton to find him 100 pickaxes, and he asked them for another 50 on August 5, and still another 50 a few days later. After the first order, the desired pickaxes are always described in terms of quality (“good strong pickaxes,” “good pickaxes made from good firm iron, well steeled”), perhaps suggesting that those previously supplied were not standing up well to the work.69 The miners worked in close cooperation with (and in some cases hired) the carpenters, who probably constructed the “Cat” under which the miners worked, and who also built props in the tunnels, to keep them from collapsing prematurely and to enable them to be fired when the time came.70 Despite the chroniclers’ emphasis on the stone-throwing engines and their success in opening up “entrances” in the walls, the end of the siege, when it came, was also very much the achievement of the miners, who helped to open up the way for assaults. At some point – the sources give no hint as to the date – the besiegers took the barbican by storm, with minor loss of life; the outer bailey was also taken by assault, with many casualties and also much plunder: the Dunstable annalist records that Dunstable men who were present managed to pick up horses, harness, armor (loricas), and crossbows, as well as cattle, pigs, salted pork, and other items; stores of grain and hay were torched.71 These riches apparently represented only a part of what the defenders had in hand even at this point, probably many weeks into the siege; Ralph of Coggeshall opines that the garrison was still in a strong position to hold out against any further assaults.72 But then the sappers set fire to the tunnel props, bringing down enough of the inner curtain wall to permit a third assault. This resulted in the occupation of the inner bailey, but at great risk: many of the occupiers were shot and killed by the defenders, who had now retreated to the keep, and ten of the attackers were even taken prisoner when they tried to storm the keep.73 Finally, on August 14, the miners lit the tunnels under the keep, opening a visible crack in the wall and filling the keep itself with smoke. At this point, the defenders sent out their women and prisoners (including Falkes’ wife and Henry of Braybrooke), but their attempt to negotiate terms – apparently the first time they had tried to do so – failed. When the garrison came out the following day, they met with no mercy: almost all of them, more than eighty, were hanged. (The justiciar and Archbishop Stephen Langton concurred in the executions.) Three members of the garrison were spared for service with the Templars in the Holy Land, and the castle’s chaplain was handed over to an ecclesiastical court. Falkes himself, who had not been present at Bedford, surrendered at about the same time, and was 68 69 70 71 72 73

Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605, 607; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 83. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605, 607, 612, 615, 637, 640; PRO E372/68, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 123. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 617. Annales Monastici, 3:87–8. The only date in the sources is for the firing of the last tunnels on August 14. Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 207. Annales Monastici, 3:88.

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eventually spared.74 After the siege the royal court, which had remained fixed at Bedford for so long, promptly removed itself from the stench and mess of the siege camp, relocating first to Kempston just south of Bedford on August 19, and then to Dunstable on August 20, St. Albans on the following day, and London the day after that.75 Most of the military equipment and supplies the king had ordered and received during the siege were paid for at the time by sheriffs and royal bailiffs; these officials were then allowed to write off the amounts they had spent when they accounted for the royal revenues they owed to the royal exchequer, which met later in the year to audit the sheriffs’ accounts. In other words, the king could fund many aspects of the campaign on a kind of short-term credit, using money collected by the sheriffs and bailiffs before it was received into the royal treasury. Throughout the siege, the king also ordered – and paid in the same way for – wine and luxury food items, mainly spices, to be brought from London and other towns.76 But many expenses had to be met out of pocket at Bedford itself: basic food items, the wages of soldiers and laborers, and other supplies bought locally. For these items, cash was obtained from a variety of sources (including the scutage and carucage described above) and handled in a number of ways. The king’s chamber77 and wardrobe78 both operated at the siege, taking in and paying out money; the royal treasury at Westminster sent large sums in cash;79 and the Templars and Hospitallers provided loans of 300 marks each.80 One modest source of money was the collection of the debts and confiscation of the possessions of the Bréauté brothers and their followers.81 Together, these sources and mechanisms allowed the royal household to stay planted at Bedford for two months and to keep constant pressure on the castle’s defenders by paying, feeding, equipping, and supplying the besieging army. Wages for “knights, soldiers, engineers, and other operators of petraries and mangonels,” as recorded in the wardrobe accounts, came to £1,311 18s. 2d.,82 or just over £23 per day on average. How many men did this amount support? Some idea of the cost of various military personnel can be found in the 1224 pipe roll, which records wages (mostly unconnected with the siege of Bedford) 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 207; Annales Monastici, 3:88; Walter of Coventry, 2:254, 267–8; Matthew Paris, 3:86–7. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 616–18. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 605, 608 ff.; PRO E372/68, rot. 5r, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 71, 82–3. PRO E372/68, rot. 13r (£80 received), rot. 17d (50 marks received); Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 205, 266. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 606 (£50 received), 638 (£43 received), and 613 ff., passim; PRO E372/68, rot. 7d (20 marks in scutage received); Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 115. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 606 (an order for 500 marks for expenses at Bedford), 615 and 640 (an order for £400 to be paid out). Patent Rolls, pp. 453 (300 marks from the Templars on July 17), 455–6 (300 marks from the Hospitallers on July 19); PRO E372/68, rot. 5r, rot. 8d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 72, 135. Patent Rolls, pp. 448–9, 451, 453, 456, 460; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 638. Divers Accounts, p. 52.

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of 5d. and 6d. per day for mounted soldiers (servientes equites), 7½d. for mounted crossbowmen, 2d. and 3d. per day for crossbowmen on foot, 3d. per day for a soldier and his man guarding royal houses, 4d. per day for soldiers guarding royal manors, 12d. per day for knights, and 18d. per day for a knight serving as constable of a castle. Miners working at the siege made from 2d. to 5d. per day, smiths making crossbow bolts received 5d. per day for themselves and one or two assistants each, and fletchers received 3d. per day, while a master carpenter not necessarily connected with the siege received a stipend of 1d. per day for the whole year.83 The conscripts doing unskilled labor would of course have received less than the specialists, and they almost certainly made up the largest group at the siege, if not an outright majority; they were probably also well represented in the 200 fatalities mentioned by Ralph of Coggeshall.84 If a figure of 2d. is used as an average daily wage for all the men on the royal payroll, the king would have been supporting more than 2,700 men at Bedford on an average day; if the average wage was 3½d., the number on an average day would have been under 1,600.85 In addition, there were royal vassals at Bedford doing their feudal service, and several earls were in attendance on the king during the siege.86 These latter may have brought and paid their own fighting men, thus increasing the size of the force at no cost to the wardrobe. Using some later thirteenth-century figures as the basis for further calculations, one can estimate that a camp of 2,000 men would consume somewhere between 1,100 and 2,400 quarters of grain (but probably an amount toward the lower end of the range) in the course of eight weeks, plus other non-grain foodstuffs to the value of several hundred pounds.87 In addition, there were people present in the siege camp who were not on the royal payroll, and horses would also require grain and fodder. The numbers, however uncertain, make clear the enormous demand for food during the course of the siege. The silence of the records on the subject of basic food items suggests that the king’s forces depended largely on local supplies, probably purchased by the men with their wages. It is also possible that the government brought in food and sold it to the troops, despite 83

84 85

86

87

PRO E372/68, rot. 3d, rot. 5r, rot. 6d, rot. 9r, rot. 14d, rot. 15d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry II, pp. 48, 67, 70, 91, 143–4, 235. The thirty miners who came from Hereford to Bedford were paid 2d. per day for the four days of their journey. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 609. Ralph of Coggeshall, pp. 206–7. For wages, see also Paul Latimer, “Wages in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century England,” The Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History, 9 (1997): 185–205; Moore, “Anglo-Norman Garrisons,” pp. 226–7; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, p. 126. The earls of Salisbury, Derby, and Surrey were present throughout most of the siege; the earls of Chester, Gloucester, Essex, Hereford, and Warwick were present at least occasionally; Patent Rolls, pp. 450, 458, 465. For feudal service, PRO E372/68, rot. 9d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry II, p. 150. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 247–8. The lower end of this range is in agreement with the figures used by Harari, “Strategy and Supply,” pp. 302–4, and by Bernard S. Bachrach, “Logistics in Pre-Crusade Europe,” Feeding Mars, p. 72; for more detail see Bernard S. Bachrach, “Some Observations on the Military Administration of the Norman Conquest,” Anglo-Norman Studies 8 (1985), 18–19.

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the absence of any records of such activity.88 Whatever methods were used appear to have been successful; the burning of the grain and fodder inside the castle during the assault implies that the besiegers had ample grain and fodder supplies of their own. The whole complex question of what living off local supplies actually meant is one of great importance for a siege, but it is one on which the Bedford evidence sheds very little light.89 A besieging army was certainly easier to feed and supply within one’s own kingdom – and a kingdom otherwise at peace – than as part of a foreign campaign on hostile soil. The only disadvantage for the royal government in this situation was the need to avoid plundering the surrounding countryside, since the land was inhabited by the king’s own subjects rather than by his enemies. The total amount spent by the royal government on the siege of Bedford cannot be known either. But the amounts that are recorded in the wardrobe accounts, the pipe roll, and the surviving computate orders to the exchequer can be added up. The totals are listed in Table 1, with the amounts paid by the exchequer listed first, by category.90 For several reasons, the final total in the table represents only a part of what must have been spent on the siege. First, amounts paid are not recorded for many supplies known to have been ordered and in many cases to have been received; this is the case for perhaps a third to a half of the military items mentioned in the king’s orders. Second, there are many items for which no payment of any kind is ever mentioned, and indeed for which payment may not have been expected, such as the trees cut down in the grounds of Warden Abbey and the stones quarried at Newnham Priory (after the siege, stone from the castle’s partial demolition was given to Newnham in compensation).91 Siege engines that had been built at least a few years earlier were available for just the cost of transport, but their construction had originally been a royal expense which the government could in a sense amortize by storing and reusing them. In arriving at the true cost of launching a thirteenth-century siege, such items must be taken into account, and they are incalculable for Bedford. Still, the table of recorded expenses does have some value, most of all in its clear revelation that by far the greatest cost borne by the king’s purse in the siege was the cost of men. In comparison to wages, the cost of supplies, even if it was double the amount in Table 1, was negligible. More accessible than a total of expenditure is an overall picture of how the royal forces gathered the men, money, and military supplies necessary for the 88

That there are gaps in what the sources record cannot be doubted; the survival of wardrobe accounts, for example, is extremely spotty. The pipe rolls can miss out even activities closely related to the exchequer; see Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 249–50, and Pipe Roll 5 Henry III, p. xxxix. 89 See John A. Lynn, “The History of Logistics and Supplying War,” Feeding Mars, pp. 15–17; Prestwich, Armies and Warfare, pp. 247–62; Harari, “Strategy and Supply,” pp. 297–311. 90 I have not included in this list the amounts spent on wine, spices, wax, and so on during the siege, which the king would still have purchased – though perhaps not in the same quantities – had there been no siege at all. Nor have I included the cost of shipping such items to Bedford. 91 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 632.

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Emilie Amt Table 1. Amounts expended on the siege of Bedford Wages paid by exchequer92 Ropes93 Hides94 Other catapult supplies Lumber95 Crossbow bolts96 Pickaxes97 Targes Transport98 Iron Iron, steel, and lumber99 Charcoal Bridge repairs Mixed accounts100

£ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £

Subtotal of amounts paid by exchequer Wages paid by wardrobe

£ 151 18s. 1½d. £1311 18s. 2d.

Total

£1463 16s.

14 11s. 10½d. 68 8s. 5½d. 6 14s. 5d. 1s. 4d. 1 17s. 5d. 22 18s. 6½d. 7 1s. 6d. 1 2s. 15 11s. 1 19s. 10d. 4 8s. 8d. 9s. 11d. 4s. 6 9s. 2d.

3½d.

siege. While supplies were a bargain compared to men, their mustering was a complex business requiring a thorough knowledge of the kingdom’s resources. During the siege, the only things required from every region of the kingdom were the most unspecialized of all: money (in the form of scutage and carucage) and unskilled labor (the levy of men from ecclesiastical lands to operate the engines and do other heavy work). Theoretically at least, these burdens fell fairly evenly on the kingdom as a whole – though I suspect that the church lands nearer Bedford supplied more unskilled laborers than did those at a great distance. At the other end of the scale were specialized labor and manufactured goods. The former were recruited from regions known for certain specializations 92

Includes amounts described as the “expenses” of individuals. Most of these wages and expenses seem to have been paid to persons for the time they spent travelling to Bedford. 93 Includes some shipping and storage costs, probably less than £1. 94 The amount given is for 64 hides out of about 100 ordered. 95 When lumber can be priced, it cost the king a little less than a penny per board; PRO E372/68, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 123; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 613, 639. 96 Crossbow bolts cost the king between 2½d. and 3½d. per dozen during the siege. Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 607–8; PRO E372/68, rot. 6r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 82–3. 97 Pickaxes cost the king between 3½d. and 5½d. each; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 607; PRO E372/68, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 123. 98 Includes cost of dismantling engines at the end of the siege (which seems to be about £5), and one shilling for storage of unspecified items; PRO E372/68, rot. 6d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 91. 99 A mixed account. 100 These are accounts in which the costs of different items are lumped together. They include harness, thread for crossbow strings, pickaxes, expenses for carpenters, transport, and unspecified items.

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Figure 2. Supplies and specialists obtained from towns and regions of England for the siege of Bedford.

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(like the miners from Herefordshire), from among those who had previously worked for the king (including the leader of those miners), and from major urban areas (such as the master carpenters who came from London and Lincoln101). There were three ways to acquire manufactured items: from existing royal stockpiles (as with the crossbow bolts at Corfe Castle), from regularly available markets (like the Boston and Hoyland fairs, where ropes were bought), and via special production (such as setting smiths to making crossbow bolts). In general, by drawing on nearby districts for relatively ordinary needs, and on more distant areas only for more specialized requirements (or for items required in very great quantities), the royal government acquired supplies in the most efficient way (see figure 2). Another way of looking at the supply network is geographical: the towns and regions involved in the siege were (1) those near Bedford and (2) larger urban areas located on major routes which connected them with Bedford – or, more accurately, with Northampton, which served throughout the two months both as a staging platform for the siege and as a major supplier in its own right.102 In the first category were Cambridge (supplying ropes and wine), St. Ives (wine), Ramsey (ropes), King’s Lynn (ropes), and the forest near Alconbury (charcoal). Northampton provided engines, ropes, crossbow bolts, pickaxes, steel, iron, and wine; locations right around Bedford itself provided stone, timber, ropes, quarriers, iron, and charcoal. In the second category (urban areas located on major routes to Northampton) were Lincoln (engines, lumber, ropes, carpenters, and wine), Oxford (engines, ropes, hides, and crossbow bolts), and above all London (ropes, lumber, pickaxes, hides, targes, crossbowmen, crossbows, crossbow bolts, carpenters, wine, and other items). A few other places supplied one or two special items, as we have seen. But the vast majority of towns and counties in England are never mentioned in the supply accounts. This meant that the inconvenience of traveling to or gearing production toward the siege – but also the opportunities for suppliers to profit from it – fell very unevenly on the kingdom, leaving many areas, including some wealthy ones, largely unaffected. Roads were also crucial factors in supplying the besiegers. All the men and supplies destined for the siege, except those coming from East Anglia, came first to Northampton and then were sent on to Bedford. The Bedford– Northampton road became the besiegers’ lifeline, and the bridge at Biddenham, just outside Bedford on that road, had to be repaired at the king’s expense during the siege.103 Additional collection centers probably emerged for supplies coming from a greater distance: Wallingford served as a staging point for ropes collected in Southampton and bound for Bedford.104 Routes seem to have been considered in longer-term planning as well. Royston Priory, the repository for 101 102 103

Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 607, 610. PRO E372/68, rot. 8r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 123; and see below. PRO E372/68, rot. 6d; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, p. 91; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, 617; Fowler, “Munitions in 1224,” p. 130. 104 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 607.

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“ropes left over from the siege of Bytham” in 1221, lay at the crossroads of Ermine Street and the Icknield Way.105 The sources are silent on the question of whether river transport was used. That this long siege occurred in a region where the king’s men had recently mounted two other sieges was a piece of logistical luck for the royal government. Some equipment and supplies could actually be re-used, but more important was the experience that had been gained. Northampton had played its pivotal role before, as had some other nearby towns, and the feasibility of various transport routes was well known. Mechanisms for mustering men and matériel and bringing them to this region had been tested: Rockingham and Bytham had served as dress rehearsals for Bedford. In another way, too, they affected the course of events in 1224. Royal leniency toward the rebels in the previous episodes probably influenced Falkes and William de Bréauté in their decision to take a stand at Bedford, and that fact certainly contributed to the terrible punishment of the members of the Bedford garrison.106 The teenaged king had been infuriated by their defiance, but the cooler heads of Hubert de Burgh and Archbishop Stephen Langton were no doubt thinking of the political message that had to be sent after three such rebellions. And what of Poitou? By the time Bedford had been taken, Poitou had slipped from English control. Already on June 24 French forces had been mustering on the borders of the county. With the backing of Hugh de Lusignan, King Louis then proceeded to pluck the towns and vassals of the English rulers: he secured a truce with the vicomte of Thouars, besieged and captured Niort in the first week of July, and then took Saint-Jean d’Angély without a fight. On July 15, he laid siege to La Rochelle, the chief port of the territory. On August 3, the town surrendered; ten days later the garrison gave up the castle. Poitou was effectively in Louis’s hands, and the entire campaign had been carried out while the English king was sitting outside Bedford Castle.107 The English government had not ignored the quickly developing situation in France. Messengers continued to move between Bedford and Poitou, and to some extent business as usual was conducted.108 In late June the king wrote to direct the spending of the 2,000 marks previously provided to the expeditionary force, and to arrange for further funds to be loaned to his supporters.109 On July 19 – with the siege of La Rochelle already underway – a further sum of £500 was earmarked for the relief of “our knights and soldiers” in Poitou.110 Yet the Poitevins complained that they received no useful support, and that simply 105

Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 606; M.W. Beresford and J.K. St. Joseph, Medieval England: An Aerial Survey (Cambridge, 1979), p. 188. 106 Walter of Coventry, ii.267–8; Carpenter, Minority, pp. 366–7. 107 Carpenter, Minority, pp. 370–1; Annales Monastici, 3:86; Matthew Paris, 3:83–4. 108 E.g., Richer of London, who departed around the end of July, Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 614; also Patent Rolls, pp. 457–8. 109 Patent Rolls, p. 447. 110 Patent Rolls, pp. 454–5; Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 612.

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by launching the siege of Bedford the English government had demonstrated its lack of commitment to their defense. The judgment of many other contemporary observers, too, was that the siege of Bedford caused the neglect and consequent loss of Poitou; the English chroniclers, for example, noted that the matter of Poitou was left aside at Northampton when news of the kidnapping reached the council.111 In their view, the relationship between Bedford and Poitou was an either/or one, and some of them argued that the English government had chosen to direct its resources toward the wrong crisis. Even carefully considered modern analyses, such as that by David Carpenter, have concluded that besieging Bedford was such an enormous enterprise that protecting Poitou became impossible.112 But the matter was actually more complex than this. The siege of Bedford did contribute to the loss of Poitou, but not wholly, or even mainly, for logistical reasons. Although the siege devoured a great quantity of resources, it is difficult to argue that resources were therefore simply not available for Poitou. The kingdom provided the men, money, and matériel for Bedford with relative ease and minimal disruption. The king continued to purchase luxury items throughout the siege.113 More significantly, he authorized substantial non-emergency military expenditures in England at the same time, including 100 marks in cash to be spent on work at Windsor Castle, £100 in cash for work at Dover, 50 marks authorized for further expenditure at Dover, and an indeterminate amount to repair buildings at the Tower of London.114 Within a few days of the end of the Bedford siege, a sum of £200 in cash was earmarked for Montgomery Castle, and 500 marks were sent to France to assist with the defense of Bordeaux.115 Moreover, the large number of knights who were apparently tied up at the siege of Bedford had little to do with its eventual outcome, especially as the siege dragged on and it became increasingly clear that no rebellious military force would be coming to the relief of the castle.116 Finally, there is no indication in the sources that the barons found the Bedford scutage particularly onerous, that the royal government collected it very energetically,117 or that the kingdom was truly stretched by the mustering of supplies for the Bedford siege.

111

Carpenter, Minority, p. 371; Walter of Coventry, 2:265; Royal and Other Historical Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. Walter Waddington Shirley (London, 1862), 1:543–4; Annales Monastici, 3:86; Matthew Paris, 3:85. 112 Carpenter, Minority, pp. 370–5. 113 E.g., in addition to a steady stream of wine and spices, silk banners at a cost of 32s., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, p. 609. 114 E.g., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 609, 613, 616, 634. 115 Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum, pp. 617–18. 116 Historians have sometimes overestimated the role of knights in sieges; did the royal government do the same in this case? See Bachrach, “Medieval Siege Warfare,” pp. 125–7. 117 At Michaelmas 1224, nearly 200 royal tenants still owed a total of over £1,000 for the scutage, and most made no payment at that time, while 340 other scutage debts had already been pardoned; PRO E372/68 and Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, passim.

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Some areas which contributed little to the siege might have been mobilized instead to succor Poitou. The port of Bristol, for example, a royal borough with a diverse and lucrative French trade, was barely involved with the Bedford siege, if at all, and would have been ideally qualified to play a major role in sending men, military equipment, and supplies to Poitou. Southampton, too, was little called upon to support the siege of Bedford and was well situated to serve as a base of support for defensive operations in the French territories.118 A modest tightening of the royal belt, the mustering of resources from relatively untouched areas of the kingdom, and a more realistic assessment of the relative worth of knights and miners in a siege might have freed up substantially more money and men for Poitou. Whether such an effort would have succeeded in keeping the county in English hands in the end is debatable; Hugh de Lusignan’s defection and the weakness of Poitevin ties to England were also important factors in the French conquest.119 In fact, though, the extra resources were not found for Poitou, and this was because the attention of the royal government was focused so very intensely on Bedford. The king’s men no doubt hoped the castle could be taken quickly; hence the swift show of massive force. They also knew that the complex was strongly built and munificently stocked; hence the need to assemble as overwhelming a military operation as possible, with the possibility of a long and difficult siege in mind. This meant they were especially occupied with Bedford in the early weeks of the siege, when the crisis in Poitou was at its peak. The single-mindedness of the king’s advisors eventually paid dividends at Bedford. But it may have been their attention to the multifaceted logistical demands of siege warfare that lost them their continental possession. “A castle can hardly be taken within a year, and even if it does fall, it means more expenses for the king’s purse and for his subjects than the conquest is worth,” Dubois was to write. What was the taking of Bedford worth? Because the goal was not conquest, gain for the king’s purse was not even a possibility, and the cost of taking Bedford included the loss of Poitou. But the political and military cost of not taking it would have been unthinkable. William de Bréauté held a royal justice hostage and a royal castle against the king; the king had no choice but to respond by besieging him. The government could not elect to ignore the problem, and, because the rebels were inside a formidable and well-stocked castle, facing it meant bringing many hundreds of men to Bedford and spending many hundreds of pounds on a siege. It meant an extraordinary administrative effort, too, in mustering personnel and supplies (and consequently not mustering them for Poitou) and in running the government from 118

For Bristol, see Mary D. Lobel, “Bristol,” Historic Towns, vol. 2 (1975), ed. idem, pp. 1, 6–7, 9–10. Bristol was probably involved in some aspects of the Irish campaign this summer, but the royal government had more or less contracted that out to private individuals; see Carpenter, Minority, pp. 345, 354–5, 370. For Southampton, PRO E372/68, rot. 1r; Pipe Roll 8 Henry III, pp. 5–7. 119 Carpenter, Minority, pp. 372–3.

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Bedford for two months. In this case, the logistical problems – which in Dubois’s judgment made a siege a poor choice – could not be avoided by avoiding a siege. And although this siege turned out to be shorter than in Dubois’s scenario, and the problems rather different, the cost proved just as high.

7 “To aid the Custodian and Council;” Edmund of Langley and the Defense of the Realm, June–July 1399 Douglas Biggs*

Douglas Biggs

On 1 June 1399 Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, became custodian of the realm for the third and last time. His nephew and king, Richard II, had gone to Ireland with a substantial force of men to quell rebellious subjects there and, no doubt, the aged duke expected to spend an uneventful year as titular head of the government. By the middle of June, however, Henry of Bolingbroke, disinherited Duke of Lancaster, had organized a small army, and left the port of Boulogne in France; he then lay off the southern coast looking for a likely place to invade the kingdom and reclaim his inheritance. Henry’s actions set in motion a series of events that would see the fall and deposition of Richard II by the end of September. These events surrounding the collapse of the Ricardian regime have received a good deal of recent historical attention. Chris Given-Wilson, Nigel Saul and Michael Bennett have recently produced narratives of the 1399 campaign,1 and much has been written on Richard’s army in Ireland,2 but in spite of the fact that a reasonable amount of untapped documentary evidence exists, Edmund of Langley’s defense of the realm is relegated in brief to the narrative of events.

* Much of the research for this paper was undertaken during the term I served as Visiting Professor at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York. I am grateful to my colleagues there for their comments and suggestions, and to Gloria Betcher, Chris GivenWilson, Michael Bennett and the late James Gillespie for their correspondence and discussion on this topic. 1

Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution (Manchester, 1993), pp. 247–53; Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven, 1997), pp. 405–17; Michael Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999), pp. 147–69. 2 For a general survey of the Irish problem in the 1390s see J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London, 1968); see also J.F. Lydon, “Richard II’s Expeditions to Ireland,” p. 135; Dorothy Johnson, “The Interim Years: Richard II and Ireland, 1395–9,” in England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages, ed. J. Lydon (Dublin, 1981), pp. 188–90.

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Often York has been charged with being a weak and ineffective leader, and is sometimes blamed by historians for failing to save Richard’s crown.3 This study challenges the existing historiography by undertaking a detailed analysis of Edmund of Langley’s attempts to defend Richard II’s kingdom in the face of invasion. It will not only discuss York’s initial military position and preparations, but also focus on the logistics surrounding the raising of his field army. Although Chris Given-Wilson has provided historians with a fine resource by printing some numbers for Duke Edmund’s army, these are incomplete. Unfortunately, Given-Wilson did not track the Exchequer’s largely successful efforts in calling the captains of various contingents to account for their troops and time served that were recorded on the Foreign Rolls (E 364). Although it took until 1407 for the Exchequer to track down some captains from York’s army, when these entries from the Foreign Rolls are collated and compiled, and added to the material available on the Issue Rolls, they provide a much clearer picture as to who served with York and allow for some prosopographical analysis of his field army. An investigation along these lines reveals Edmund of Langley was not the weak, vacillating leader that many historians have branded him. Rather, York, as Custodian of the Realm, faced a thankless task in June and July of 1399. He, like the rest of the political community, was caught between the policies and personalities of his two nephews. But, despite his personal leanings in favor of Henry, York worked to carry out his charge as Custodian. He employed sound military strategy, he recruited and provisioned a substantial army in less than three weeks, and he did his best to preserve the machinery of Richard’s government. York’s efforts were thwarted, however, by the defection of many in the political community to Henry’s cause and by the ineffective actions of Richard II and those of his supporters who remained in England. The problems facing the duke of York and the Council in late June 1399 were unenviable ones. Richard II had spent the previous eighteen months creating a substantial Irish expeditionary force, which had taken many of the most effective and experienced military personnel out of the country.4 Although 3

The historiography on this point is nearly endless. For good examples see J.A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), p. 8; H.F. Hutchison, The Hollow Crown (New York, 1961), p. 211; A.L. Brown, “The Reign of Henry IV,” in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. S.B. Chrimes, C.D. Ross, and R.A. Griffiths (Manchester, 1972), p. 7; May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959), p. 384. 4 Roughly 500 men-at-arms and archers were paid for garrisoning castles and cities in Ireland in 1396–7. Although the records for the last years of the reign are lost, there is nothing to indicate that this garrisoning of castles and cities did not continue (PRO, E 101/41/39). After the death of Roger, Earl of March, in July 1398, Thomas Holand, Duke of Surrey, became Lieutenant of Ireland. He drew over £3,750 to raise reinforcements for Ireland (PRO, E 403/561 m. 4, 5, 16). He recruited heavily from Cheshire with the king’s aid. Tim Thornton, “Cheshire: the Inner Citadel of Richard’s Kingdom?” in The Reign of Richard II, ed. G. Dodd (Stroud, 2000), pp. 86–7; N. Saul, Richard II (London, 1997), pp. 391–3; N. Saul, “Richard II, York, and the Evidence of the King’s Itinerary,” in The Age of Richard II, ed. J.L. Gillespie (Stroud, 1997), pp. 81–3. The first portion of these troops left for Ireland in August 1398 (CPR, 1396–9, p. 438); more reinforcements were raised through commissions of array in Cheshire that

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Richard saw to the defense of the northern marches and provided York and the Council with a standing body of men before his departure,5 the aged duke and Council were unprepared for Henry of Lancaster’s invasion. The first crisis Duke Edmund faced was the Lancastrian occupation of Pevensey under the leadership of Sir John Pelham.6 York and the Council quickly responded to this threat by ordering Roger Walden, Archbishop of Canterbury, to array men for defense,7 while Sir John Botiller, Sheriff of Kent, received orders to raise the shire levies and to keep Rochester castle.8 These defensive measures, perhaps overseen by York himself,9 were an undoubted success, and Pelham remained effectively shut up in Pevensey by the shire levies of Sussex and Kent even as late as 25 July.10 The success of keeping Pelham within the confines of Pevensey was rapidly overshadowed by the fact that York soon found many of John of Gaunt’s former estates and his more important castles were being held for Henry. Food and other goods had been purchased for Henry’s use and awaited him at the Lancastrian manor of Cromer in East Anglia,11 and Robert Swynhoe, one of his father’s retainers, held Dunstanburgh castle for him from 1 July.12 Henry’s great northern fortress of Pontefract also rose and his father’s steward there, Robert Waterton, met Henry immediately after his landing with 200 men from the honor.13 Kenilworth castle, one of the most important Lancastrian strongholds in

5 6 7

8

9

10 11 12 13

resulted in another 560 men taking ship to Ireland in on 17 May (Calendar of Recognizance Rolls of the Palatinate of Lancaster, 36th Report of the Deputy Keeper, [1875], p. 491). The last portion of the army, led by Richard himself, which arrived in Ireland in early June, brought the numbers of English troops in the emerald isle to nearly 10,000. This force contained a large number of king’s knights and esquires drawn mainly from the southern shires – the very regions where York would need to recruit troops in June and July (Chris Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity, cited hereafter as RH&KA [New Haven, 1986], pp. 221–2). Orders were sent to all the sheriffs in the kingdom to proclaim that all yeomen in royal livery were to go to London and await the orders of York and the Council. CCR, 1396–9, p. 388. CPR, 1396–9, p. 596; for the siege of Pevensey see Simon Walker, “Letters to the Dukes of Lancaster in 1381 and 1399,” English Historical Review 106 (1991), pp. 68–9. The date on the patent is 16 July and most certainly this order would have gone out much sooner to the Archbishop since Henry was known to be in the north at that time. CPR, 1396–9, p. 592. John Botiller, one of Richard II’s knights, and the sheriff of Kent were issued £20 for the purchase of artillery and other goods for the defense of Rochester on 12 July. PRO, E 403/562 m. 15. The Traison et Mort claimed that York and John Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset, “went to the west coast of the country to resist Henry,” but after three days returned to London. This is possible, but both York and Beaufort probably went without many troops of their own. Traison et Mort, pp. 183–4. Walker, “Two Letters,” p. 69. PRO, DL 42/15 f. 70v. PRO, DL 29/11987. PRO, DL 28/11987.

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the north midlands, was held from 2 June by Gaunt’s constable, Robert Harbottle, who purchased food and artillery for its defense.14 Even in Wales the lordship of Brecon held itself in armed readiness against King Richard from mid-June.15 The rising of Lancastrian estates for Henry was kingdom-wide, and Knaresborough was the only estate known to put up even token resistance.16 While it is impossible to determine York’s response to each Lancastrian estate that rose, his active response to the rising of the lordship of Brecon in Wales demonstrates these events did not paralyze him. His order to the sheriff of Hereford to hold Goodrich castle almost certainly represents a response to the Brecon rising since Goodrich lay less than thirty miles from the lordship.17 York sent similar orders to Edward Charleton, Lord of Powys, to hold his lordship of Usk, also near Brecon, in readiness to defend against Henry – until the enterprising Adam of Usk changed Charleton’s mind.18 It is probable that the risen estates acted as islands of Lancastrianism in the heart of the country and served as bases for raids into the countryside with the aim of disrupting the government’s lines of supply and communication. Certainly Sir John Pelham attempted such raids out of Pevensey throughout June and July, and it appears this kind of activity also took place at least in Kent, Middlesex, and Sussex.19 As he dealt with these matters, Duke Edmund still had to contend with Henry himself, who hovered off the northeastern coast. Although York did not know the exact spot that Henry might land, he probably surmised that Henry would land near his estates in north Yorkshire and Edmund did his best to defend against such an eventuality. The sheriffs of the city of York were ordered to assemble a force of sixty knights and esquires, together with one hundred archers, and concentrate at Ware. However, on 10 July fears of a Scottish invasion led to revised orders for the sheriffs to use these troops to hold the city of York for the king.20 Such a reversal of orders is somewhat puzzling and probably reflects the fact that the movement of troops off the northern marches made it essential to keep the city of York’s contingent home to defend the city. The northern marches offered the duke a rich supply of battle-hardened troops to mobilize in the defense of the realm. In the nine months prior to Henry’s invasion Edward, Duke of Albermarle, then warden of the west march, and Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy, warden of the east march, had drawn nearly £3,000

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

PRO, DL 42/15 f. 73. PRO, SC 6/1157/4. Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 133. CCR, 1396–9, p. 507. Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 157–8. CPR, 1396–9, p. 597. CCR, 1396–9, p. 518.

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for soldiers’ wages,21 and it seems York ordered some of these men mobilized against Henry. Quite probably Duke Edmund ordered Hotspur off the east march to intercept Henry of Lancaster.22 Unfortunately for the custodian of the realm and his king, rather than arresting Henry in north Yorkshire, Hotspur joined the Lancastrian cause after the disinherited duke promised the younger Percy that he had returned only to claim his inheritance. Hotspur’s defection at Bridlington was followed by the defection of his father, Henry, Earl of Northumberland;23 Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland; and a number of other northern barons after Henry’s more public oath at Doncaster, where he again claimed to seek only his rightful inheritance.24 Although York did not learn of these defections until mid-July,25 this was the first defeat for the royal cause, and one that made York’s position in the south all the more difficult. In addition to ordering the younger Percy off the northern march, Duke Edmund worked to hold what he could for the king in the northern shires. Not only was the city of York ordered to hold against Henry, so too did the sheriff of Nottingham receive orders to hold the castle there from 7 July,26 and Holt castle in Cheshire where the king had stockpiled arms and money received £36 for its defenses.27 Similar orders were sent to the southern and midland counties as well. The constables of Windsor,28 Leeds and Rochester castles were ordered to hold their fortresses against Henry,29 the bailiffs and men of Canterbury were

21

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24 25 26 27 28 29

Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy the keeper of Berwick castle and warden of the eastern march took £800 for wages on 13 May 1399 (PRO, E 403/561 m. 9). Edward of York, Duke of Albermarle, warden of the western march, drew £300 for soldiers’ wages on the western march on 6 Nov. 1398 (PRO, E 403/561 m. 4). John Stanley, keeper of Roxburgh castle took £160 for soldiers defending Roxburgh on 7 Dec. 1398 (PRO, E 403/561m. 7). Albermarle took a further £333 on 11 Feb. 1399 (PRO, E 403/561m. 14), and another £66 on 5 Mar. 1399 (PRO, E 403/561m. 16), and another £245 on 27 Mar. 1399 (PRO, E 403/561m. 17), and a final payment of £133 for the western march on 13 April (PRO, E 403/562 m. 1). Henry no doubt chose Bridlington to make final landfall because it was the only port of any size on the northeast coast that did not have a castle to defend it. In addition several northern chronicles note Henry there, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 133, 156. Northumberland’s defection was all the more significant because Edward, Duke of Albermarle, had asked the king to give the earl the wardenship of the western march and keeping of Roxburgh castle before Albermarle left to join the king in Ireland. Richard’s letter authorizing Northumberland’s appointment as warden was dated 11 July 1399. (PRO, C 47/22/11/10.) Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 192–3. Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 119. CCR, 1396–9, p. 507. Nottingham was one of the few royal castles in a good state of repair in 1399. Colvin, King’s Works, 2:764. PRO E 403/562 m. 10, 13 May. CCR, 1396–9, p. 507. Windsor, being a chief royal residence, was in good repair. Colvin, King’s Works, 2:883. Rochester was in a good state by 1400 (Colvin, King’s Works, 2:813), and so was Leeds castle (Colvin, King’s Works, 2:702).

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granted murage to reinforce their city walls,30 and large sums were disbursed for the defense of Wallingford castle where young Queen Isabel was in residence.31 Further orders for putting castles on a war footing went to the duke of Albermarle,32 the abbot of Peterborough, and Sir Gerard Braybrooke, and Sir Thomas Latimer, both king’s knights, to hold Rockingham castle between Leicester and Peterborough for the king.33 Last and not least, York also provided £1,133 6s 8d for the defense of Bristol castle where he expected Richard to make landfall.34 Duke Edmund also ordered ships from western ports pressed into service to ensure the return of as much of the Irish expeditionary force as possible. Exactly how many vessels were taken into the king’s service is difficult to determine, but certainly a number of relatively large Dutch and German ships were pressed into service during this period.35 In addition to ordering castles to readiness and troops off the march to intercept Henry, York covered the government’s move to Wallingford castle. The rationale for abandoning London is not clear. Perhaps York and the Council feared that raids from the risen Lancastrian estates would sever their communications with London, or perhaps they feared that London would not remain loyal to the king.36 For whatever reasons, they believed it necessary to move 30 31

32

33 34

35

36

The date of the grant to Canterbury was 14 July, CPR, 1396–9, p. 592. This grant was probably necessary considering the poor state of the castle there. Colvin, King’s Works, 2:589–90. A total of £1,296 12s 4d were issued for Wallingford’s defense on 12 July 1399. PRO E 403/562 m. 15. This payment no doubt followed patents issued to the earl of Wiltshire, Sir John Bushy, Sir William Bagot and Sir Henry Green for the joint keeping of Wallingford on 12 July (CPR, 1396–9, p. 588). Richard II had worked to keep the castle in a good state of repair and it was a formidable obstacle in 1399. Colvin, King’s Works, 2:851. It is possible that the government did not know exactly where Edward, Duke of Albermarle was at this point. He had just been up on the northern marches setting things in order before his absence and he probably did not leave the north until late May (Johnson, “Departure of Richard II from Ireland,” p. 788), and York might not have known of his actual date of departure. CCR, 1396–9, p. 510. Rockingham was one of the most well-kept royal castles in the midlands. Colvin King’s Works, 2:818. Quite probably the money sent to Bristol was to help pay wages for the men who were presumably coming from Irish ports rather than money to be spent on shoring up any physical defenses within the town. PRO E 403/562 m. 15, 12 July. See also, James Sherbourne, “Richard II’s Return to Wales, July 1399,” in War, Politics and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. A. Tuck (London, 1994), pp. 119–31. No orders for arresting these ships remain, but nine large Dutch and Hanse merchantmen were riding at anchor, still in royal hands, at King’s Lynn in March 1400. CCR. 1399–1402, p. 73. Clearly these had been used in transporting Richard’s army from Ireland as the name of a captain of one of the vessels is included in an inquisition carrying goods from Ireland to Plymouth. CIQMisc, 1399–1422, nos. 132–3. Holding pressed vessels in the king’s service for extended periods was the norm rather than the exception. See J.W. Sherbourne, “The English Navy: Shipping and Manpower, 1369–89,” in War, Politics and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (London, 1994), pp. 31–2. It appears that such thoughts went through York’s mind as on 18 July he sent a letter close from Oxford to the mayor and sheriffs of London ordering them not to sell any arms, artillery or other fencible goods to any except true lieges of the king on pain of treason. CCR, 1396–9, p. 509.

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some of the more important components of government away from the capital. Initially at least, the chancellor, Edmund Stafford, Bishop of Exeter, and the treasurer, William Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, accompanied the duke along with enough clerks to compose the proper writs and documents that York would need on his march westward. Documentary evidence suggests that the government had decided to remove to the safe environs of Wallingford by 15 July, since on that date a writ of aid was given to John Culleham, mason of Wallingford, to take masons and carpenters to that place for the king’s works.37 Part of the machinery of government stayed with York until he reached Oxford on 17 July. Remaining at Oxford was clearly out of the question since the castle there was in such a poor state of repair,38 and Chancellor Stafford moved to Wallingford, where he was issuing writs on 20 July. Possibly on 15 or 16 July Stafford had called for the rolls of Chancery to be sent on to him and Thomas Stanley, Keeper of the rolls, had sent them on to the chancellor by 21 July.39 From the safety of Wallingford, the government continued to operate in Richard’s name until August. Edmund of Langley also acted with speed and resolve in ordering and organizing a field force during the emergency, although several factors conspired to complicate his attempts. First, Richard II had spent nearly eighteen months prior to his departure in June 1399 mobilizing troops for his Irish expedition. The king had taken many of his most important retainers from the southern shires with him to Ireland leaving few socially prominent Ricardians in England to rally their local friends to the royal banner.40 Second, the difficulties of time and space compounded York’s difficulties. Delays were inevitable in collecting a military force of any size in the best of times,41 and trying to raise a battle-worthy force in a matter of weeks was especially difficult. Some of those Ricardians who remained in England and were available for military service probably had excuses for not serving.42 The time of year might have provided the main excuse for many who did not wish to serve – it was the beginning of harvest season.43 Nonetheless, York’s letters to the sheriffs produced an army of just over three thousand men in less than three weeks, which demonstrates the

37 38 39 40 41 42

43

The writ of aid for Culleham was given at Aylesbury. CPR, 1396–9, p. 589. Colvin, King’s Works, 2:774. In fact, Oxford castle was in such a state that prisoners were easily escaping from its gaol in the late 1380s. CPR, 1385–9, p. 442. CCR, 1391–1399, p. 511. Chris Given-Wilson, RH&KA, pp. 221–2. A.E. Prince, “The Army and Navy,” in The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, ed. J.F. Willard and W.A. Morris (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 1:355–64. A number of men in Yorkshire during Henry V’s reign had a variety of excuses for not attending Henry’s campaigns in France and it is more than likely that such a practice did not begin in the 1410s. A. Goodman, “Responses to Requests in Yorkshire for Military Service Under Henry V,” Northern History 17 (1981), 240–52. In late June and early July hay was harvested while from mid-July to September wheat, peas, beans, barley, rye and oats were harvested. Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties that Bound (Oxford, 1986), p. 126.

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willingness of substantial numbers of men to quickly respond to York’s call for aid. Ordering the raising of troops was only one component of Duke Edmund’s task in putting his army in the field. He also had to consider the logistics of his operation. York not only needed food to feed the men, along with horses and wagons for transport, but he also needed the very material of war. Without adequate supplies of food and transport, the troops could become surly and intractable; they could lose their discipline and cohesion and become little more than roving bands of terrorists foraging their way through the countryside, taking whatever struck their fancy. Duke Edmund possessed first-hand experience of this sort of collapse of discipline from his time in Spain in 1381,44 and he worked to ensure that he would not repeat the same failure. On 8 July John Ewell, one of the king’s esquires, received a writ of aid to take any and all horses deemed necessary into the king’s hands.45 At the same time members of the king’s household who had remained in England received writs of aid for purveyance.46 Ironically for York, the same harvest season that kept some who might have served from joining the army also made food and fodder plentiful as he trekked to the west.47 In addition to sustenance, York also had to consider adequately supplying his men with material of war: arms and armor, tents and saddles, shields and lances. Although technically men raised were to come with their own weapons, governments still found it necessary to provide them. Bows could be lost or broken, arrows could be used up, and even melee weapons could be in need of repair or replacement. On most campaigns the king’s privy wardrobe served as the logistical clearing-house for dealing with these matters. But, in June 1399 the king’s privy wardrobe had gone to Ireland along with its keeper, and the nearest stockpile of arms lay in Holt castle in Cheshire, far from Edmund of Langley and his army. In theory, stockpiles of bows, arrows, and arms were placed in the sheriffs’ castles in every county, but these stockpiles had to be maintained and replenished and, quite possibly, Richard had taken some of the weaponry in these castles for his Irish expedition. What supplies were left in the privy wardrobe in the Tower were no doubt requisitioned, but even with these

44

Peter E. Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), chapter 14. 45 CPR, 1396–9, p. 592. Exactly how many horses Ewell took into the king’s hands is unknown, but substantial numbers of horses were needed to keep an army on the move. For example, Richard II had taken at least 576 horses to Ireland earlier in the year. Bennett, Revolution of 1399, p. 147. 46 Two writs of aid for purveyance survive; one to John Caylock, a buyer of the household, and one to Robert Compnore, a king’s yeoman. They were dated 20 and 22 July respectively. Although these two writs were issued late in the campaign there is no reason to assume that other men had not received such writs and that the two writs referred to above actually represent a thorough attempt on the part of the government to ensure enough purveyors for the government’s needs rather than rely on too few. CPR, 1396–9, p. 587. 47 See above, note 43.

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York’s army was quite probably in dire need of weaponry. Such a need for weapons would explain Duke Edmund’s circuitous route from St. Alban’s to Bristol through Bedford, Oxford, and Gloucester, since all three were county towns that contained the sheriff’s castle – or in the cases of Bedford and Oxford, what was left of one. The letters that the duke of York sent to the sheriffs in early July produced a sizable, if polyglot, mix of forces comprising captains’ retinues, sheriffs’ posses, and minor retinues that possessed a wide range of military abilities and political loyalties.48 The leader of the army, Edmund of Langley, was fifty-eight and in poor health. He had been successful in war in the 1360s, when serving with his father and elder brothers, and had led moderately successful expeditions in his own right to Brittany in the mid-1370s, but his expedition to Portugal in 1381 to aid John of Gaunt in securing the Castilian throne had proven an unmitigated disaster.49 Except for his presence on Richard’s gloryless Scottish campaign of 1385,50 Edmund of Langley had remained out of military affairs until the summer of 1399. Unfortunately for Richard, the two magnates who led the larger contingents in York’s army both possessed less military experience than their chief. The first of these, John Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset, had taken the Cross in the 1390s, but other than this had seen limited service. The second magnate in York’s army, Michael de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, had led a contingent to Scotland in 1385 but had not been involved in military affairs since that time.51 The most martially experienced captain in the host outside York himself was the redoubtable Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich. Like York, Bishop Despenser had a mixed record of military achievement behind him. He had won great renown in 1381 by riding down various elements of the peasants’ revolt in East Anglia. But slaughtering ill-armed peasants and townsmen was poor preparation for real warfare, and the “Crusade” he led in 1382 to Flanders against the schismatic followers of Pope Benedict had ended, like York’s expedition to Iberia the year before, in disarray and defeat. He had not led men in war since that time. The remaining leaders in the army were a mixture of sheriffs with their shire levies, men of knightly rank leading small companies, and local gentlemen and even minor government officials leading small contingents from various counties. Some of the knights who brought contingents were solid supporters of King Richard. Sir John Bushy, Sir Henry Green, Sir William Bagot and Sir John Russell were the king’s closest knightly councillors and confidants. John Norton from Hampshire was a king’s esquire.52 Sir William Elmham had been in the 48 49

See Appendix I. Peter Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Reigns of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), Chapter 5. 50 PRO, SC1/56/96. 51 Pole’s contingent came to 80 men. Lewis, “Feudal Levy,” pp. 17, 22. 52 Norton had been a king’s esquire at least since 1396. CPR, 1396–9, p. 60.

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king’s retinue since 1386, and his commitment to Richard’s cause was so great that he later had his arms taken from him at Berkeley rather than defect to the Lancastrian cause.53 The sheriffs who led posses were also, at least nominally, pro-Ricardians. Of the ten sheriffs who came to the duke of York’s aid, only one of them, Robert Russell from Worcester, had been newly appointed in November 1398. All of the others were in their second or third year in office, and were men who had gained Richard’s trust. Some of them were intimate members of his affinity. John Worship, from Bedford and Buckingham, was one of the esquires of the king’s chamber, while John Golafre from Oxford and Berkshire was an esquire of the royal household. William Audley from Hampshire, Richard Mawardyn from Wiltshire, and Andrew Neuport from Cambridge and Huntington were king’s esquires. But these staunch royalists were heavily out-numbered by retainers of Richard’s former opponents, of the duke of York, or of the duke of Lancaster. Sir John Mulsho the Sheriff of Northampton had ties to Duke Edmund and his son Edward, Duke of Albemarle; on the other hand Sir John Trussel, Sir Thomas Astley and Sir Thomas Clinton were old Warwick retainers. Sir Giles Mallory not only served the house of Beauchamp, he also had been one of Thomas of Woodstock’s closest confidants. Mallory’s association with Woodstock had been so close and weighed so heavily on Richard II’s mind that the king had ordered Mallory and other former Gloucester retainers brought before him on suspicion of treason in April 1398.54 Sir Robert Turk, Sheriff of Hertford, and William Blake had also been in Gloucester’s retinue,55 while John Heron from Northumberland possessed strong family ties to the houses of Percy and Lancaster. York’s call for all those who would come to aid the royal cause also brought some unlikely men into his army’s ranks. John Gedney, the Clerk of the King’s Works, and Adam Scalby, Chauffer of Chancery, who heated the wax when the Great Seal was used, found themselves paid to recruit men.56 Even Laurence Dyne, who was too old and ill to continue in his duties as one of the coroners in Northamptonshire, received payment to bring three archers to the duke of York’s aid.57 The presence of men such as these in the ranks of York’s host yielded him little, and it is doubtful whether many of them possessed the military experience or training necessary to effectively fight in battle. 53

54 55 56

57

Elmham was a close friend of Bishop Despenser and served as a key member of the bishop’s “Crusade” in Flanders in 1383. James McGee, “Sir William Elmham and the Recruitment for Henry Despenser’s Crusade of 1383.” Medieval Prosopography 20 (1999), 181–90. CCR, 1396–9, p. 227. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 54. John Gedney had been Clerk of the King’s Works at least since 1391. CPR, 1391–6, p. 29. Scalby had had the office of Chauffer of the wax of Chancery since 1397. CPR, 1396–9, p. 116. For a discussion of the office of Chauffer see B. Wilkinson, The Chancery Under Edward III (Manchester, 1929), pp. 86–7. In 1398 the Sheriff of Northamptonshire received orders to find a new coroner because Dyne could no longer continue in his duties. CCR, 1396–9, p. 476.

Edmund of Langley

135

If these minor officials possessed little or no military experience, at least three of the knights and esquires named to raise contingents for York’s army were apparently not even in the country. William Meynil and Richard Cressey received protections for Irish service in May 1399, while Edmund Seymour took a protection for Irish service the previous autumn.58 None of their protections were revoked nor was the Exchequer ever able to track them down to account for their military service. The record of payment for their service with York’s army may suggest that they were nothing more than war profiteers who, like many of their fellows before and after, claimed payment for military service that they did not perform.59 This payment for service never rendered can be put down to the speed with which events moved in July; there was too much pressure on the government to do things neatly. In fact, the Exchequer was still tracking down some of the leaders of contingents for their accounts as late as 1407,60 and one wonders how many of the minor retinues were merely military fictions created by their captains for their own profit.61 The question of ghost contingents aside, it is clear that a substantial number of men answered the summons to join York’s army, and a total of around 3,000 men were raised, judging from the payments made.62 On paper at least, York’s army was similar in composition to other English armies of the late fourteenth century. The two orders to the sheriffs that survive mention that they were each to assemble a force of 60 men-at-arms and 100 archers. If the monies the ten sheriffs who served with York drew from the Exchequer are any guide, then it is probable that all the sheriffs received similar instructions. The sheriffs from the eastern counties such as Northampton, Bedford and Buckingham received enough money to pay for 60 men-at-arms and 100 archers for thirty days, while the sheriffs from the central and western counties received enough money for the same contingent for between fifteen and eight days.63 The dates of payments made to sheriffs’ posses suggest that Duke Edmund never intended to assemble the royalist army at Ware or St. Alban’s. He only waited north of London long enough to collect what troops he could from the eastern shires before moving westwards. The shrieval contingents alone should have provided Duke Edmund 58

59 60 61

62 63

Maynell took out a protection for Irish service on 9 April 1399 (CPR, 1396–9, p. 494); Cressy did the same on 20 April (CPR, 1396–9, p. 525); Seymour took out a protection on 28 October and again on 3 November 1398 (CPR, 1396–9, pp. 409, 429). K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 26–7. PRO, E 364/40. It is also possible that some war-profiteering soldiers may have left one retinue for another and sought double pay, or that captains of companies actually enticed soldiers from other companies to join theirs through bribery. Henry V had to face such difficulties in the 1410s and possibly York had these problems as well. R.A. Newhall, Muster and Review (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), pp. 11–12. A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), p. 216; Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 250–1; see Appendix I. The Sheriff of Gloucester received enough money to pay for a full contingent for ten days, the sheriff of Worcester for fifteen days, the Sheriff of Hampshire for eleven days, and the Sheriff of Wiltshire for nine days. PRO, E 403/562 m. 15, 12 July.

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with 600 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers with a ratio of 1.6:1 archers to men-at-arms: a good mix of troops who could have borne the brunt of a melee with sufficient archer support. Unfortunately this ratio of troop types and the desired numbers were not achieved. The duke of York’s contingent of 100 men-at-arms and 200 archers would have been difficult to assemble in a brief period of time. The most likely source of troops for the duke’s own contingent was his lands, the most significant of which lay north of the Trent centered on his manors of Sandal, Wakefield, Conisbrough, Doncaster and Thorne. Dorset supposedly raised a contingent similar to York’s in size and composition, but he too might have encountered difficulties since some of his troops had left for Aquitaine in February, while he had remained in England. Although a portion of his force raised for Aquitaine remained in England with Beaufort, the revocations of protections that were sealed between March and June demonstrate that this body of troops was beginning to disintegrate.64 Shrieval contingents also appear to have faced recruitment problems. Those contingents for which records survive fall far short of the desired figures, which further suggests Richard’s heavy recruiting in the southern shires had drained them of the best potential soldiery. For example, John Browning, Sheriff of Gloucester, could only find twenty men-at-arms and a hundred archers; John Golafre, Sheriff of Oxford and Berkshire, could only muster ten men-at-arms and sixty archers; while the sheriff of Hertford, Sir Robert Turk, could only raise one man-at-arms and ten archers. The most trusted Ricardian supporters in York’s army fared no better. Sir William Elmham could only find one man-at-arms (presumably himself) and thirty archers, and Sir John Russell could only find five men-at-arms and twenty-two archers. It is clear that some of these contingents had melted away from the army even before others joined. Sir John Golafre’s posse from Oxford composed of seventy men was paid only until 12 July. Sir John Browning’s posse from Gloucester and Sir John Russell’s contingent, which totaled 147 men, received wages until 24 July when they too left the duke of York. Many chroniclers recorded defections from Duke Edmund’s army, and although it is impossible to know the exact dates when individual men left him, the number of days for which certain contingents received payments provides some indication. Those men who received wages for twenty or more days were likely with York when he met Henry at Berkeley on 27 July,65 whereas those paid for fifteen days or less probably had melted away before then. The last date recorded from which contingents set out to join York was 12 July. If no troops set out to join Duke Edmund after that date it is clear that the eight men-at-arms and eighty-five 64

Six revocations of protection for service with Dorset in Aquitaine can be found on the Patent Roll for the period. CPR, 1396–9, pp. 490, 501, 573, 592, 594. 65 12 July was the last date recorded on either the issue roll or the various accounts that men set out to join Duke Edmund’s army. The addition of twenty days or more to this date comfortably allows for the possibility that all these contingents could have been at Berkeley.

Edmund of Langley

137

archers from the minor retinues of Hampshire, who were paid for only ten days, would have left York’s host about 22 July. Sir Almeric St. Amand’s Hampshire contingent, which received payment for only eight days, possibly defected even earlier, around 20 July. Contingents from the eastern counties, who would probably have been with York before he headed west from St. Albans on 13 July, most likely had left him before 20 July, and William Driby’s force of seven men-at-arms and thirty archers from Lincolnshire, who received only ten days’ wages, were long gone before York reached the Severn valley.66 The main reason so many members of the army melted away was that many in the army, from Duke Edmund on down, believed Henry of Lancaster’s cause to recover his confiscated inheritance was just.67 The aged duke went so far as to send ambassadors to Henry and even make his thoughts on Henry’s disenfranchisement public.68 The ease and speed with which many of the leaders of York’s army made the transition into the Lancastrian political world suggest a general defection among the ranks. One member of York’s army, Richard Mawardyn, a king’s esquire since 1390, quickly made peace with Henry. The new king confirmed Mawardyn’s grants from Richard II, and by 16 October 1399 Henry made Mawardyn was one of his king’s esquires.69 Although John Golafre preferred to have his arms taken from him at Berkeley rather than turn his back on Richard II, he too quickly made peace with Henry IV. Golafre received royal confirmation for several of his grants in October and November 1399, and by 3 November 1400 was being styled as a king’s esquire.70 A third notable defector, Sir Almaric St. Amand, continued to receive appointments as a justice of the peace for Hampshire from the new king, and his son received knighthood at Henry’s own hand on the eve of his coronation.71 The list of Ricardian retainers who received rewards from Henry for their support after leaving York’s army is long: Sir Walter Bitterley, retained as one of Henry IV’s knights with a £40 annuity in February 1400;72 William Trussell, appointed keeper of Northampton castle, and styled as a king’s esquire by the end of October 1399;73 John Holand, a king’s esquire by 12 November 1399;74 Richard Cressey was styled as a king’s esquire in 1399 and, by March 1400, a member of the royal household,75 and John Heron was an esquire to the king by 1401.76 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76

See Appendix I. Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 118. PRO, E 403/562 m. 15. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 72. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 369. For St. Amand’s appointment as JP (CPR, 1399–1401, p. 556) and for Henry knighting his son see F. Winkler, “The Making of King’s Knights in the Lancastrian Period, 1399–1461” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale, 1943), pp. 165–6. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 195. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 43. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 78. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 20. CPR, 1399–1401, p. 489.

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Douglas Biggs

Even the less significant members of York’s army received some of Henry’s largesse. John Drayton and William Blake were both styled as king’s servants within a month of Henry’s accession;77 even Adam Scalby, the Chauffer of Chancery, received rapid confirmation of his office and received a supplemental annuity in early 1400.78 Given such an analysis of York’s army it is now possible to provide a more detailed narrative of York’s campaign from London to Berkeley. York, with part of the government, left London for St. Alban’s on 7 July. They were at St. Alban’s until probably 12 July. The duke then followed a circuitous route to Oxford by way of Ware, where more troops were collected, and then to Bedford. Although Chris Given-Wilson suggests this was a move to challenge Henry in the north-midlands it seems such was not the case.79 Troops from the western shires had not yet reached York, and writs were sent from Ware to the sheriffs of Cambridge and Huntingdon, and Northampton ordering them to meet York at Oxford, suggesting otherwise. More likely the northern move to Bedford was for logistical reasons since it was a county town. Hence York probably took possession of all the worthwhile arms he could find and joined Sheriff Worship’s contingent to the army, before turning south through Aylesbury, which he reached on 14 July. The host then passed through Thame before reaching Oxford by 16 July. The ninety-mile route had taken seven days at a rate of nearly 13 miles per day. Presumably the bulk of York’s army collected at Oxford since letters addressed to several sheriffs ordered them to concentrate there by Thursday, 17 July.80 It is probable that York learned of the defection of the northern lords at Oxford and that Bushy, Green, and Wiltshire, now fearing for their own safety, rode on with some men to Bristol to prepare for Richard’s expected arrival. The flight of the most ardent Ricardian supporters left York and his army in a difficult position. Certainly, Duke Edmund had no desire to fight Henry and it seems that many in his company had similar sympathies toward Henry of Lancaster and his ever-growing army, who were moving inexorably south. Abandoned by Richard’s councillors, York continued on his odyssey westward out of Oxford about 18 July. Presumably he continued to pick up contingents from the western shires along his route of march. The chancellor, Bishop Stafford, with a portion of the government also left Oxford on 18 July heading south for Wallingford castle, which they safely reached on 19 July. York’s route took him to the royal manor at Woodstock, where he possibly picked up more transport and supplies,81 then to Stow-on-the-Wold and through 77 78

For Drayton see CPR, 1399–1401, p. 9, 147; for Blake see CPR, 1399–1401, p. 41. Scalby received letters patent confirming him in his office on 13 December 1399 (CPR, 1399–1401, p. 162), and a supplemental annuity of 2d. per day on 16 March 1400 (CPR, 13991–1401, p. 324). 79 Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 34. 80 PRO, C 47/2/61/31,32. 81 Woodstock was a royal residence of some standing and probably possessed much-needed supplies. Colvin, King’s Works, 2:1009–17.

Edmund of Langley

139

the northern shoulder of the Cotswolds before reaching Gloucester, possibly on 21 July. York covered the 40 or so miles from Oxford to Gloucester in four days. Duke Edmund probably left Sheriff Browning’s Gloucestershire contingent in Gloucester castle to cover his movement south through the vale of Berkeley toward Bristol.82 The pace for this final stage of York’s journey was much slower, as he covered the twenty or so miles from Gloucester to Berkeley in six days. York certainly had enough time to reach Bristol, especially if Sheriff Browning’s contingent remained at Gloucester to block Henry’s pursuit. Perhaps Duke Edmund moved slowly because he anticipated orders from King Richard who had landed in western Wales on 19 July;83 perhaps the proximity of Henry’s army brought all movement to a halt while the two sides exchanged ambassadors; or perhaps, as the monk of Evesham suggests, York chose to wait at Berkeley because he had already made up his mind to join Henry.84 When York did meet Henry face to face at Berkeley on 27 July, the duke’s strength had dwindled from the 3,000 men under his banner at Oxford, but he still had at least 1,000 men under his command, including Dorset, Suffolk, Norwich, Sir William Elmham, and Sir John Golafre, without his posse. Their contingents, coupled with those from the sheriffs’ posses and minor retinues who were paid for twenty days or more, provide a paper strength of at least 241 knights, esquires, and men-at-arms and 848 archers. York’s army at Berkeley relied heavily on men raised from minor retinues of questionable military value that accounted for around twenty-five men-at-arms and 214 archers. With such a heavy proportion of archers in the force York’s army was also deficient in the troops on whom the brunt of any melee would fall. At Berkeley York found himself faced with an untenable position – leading an army of mixed loyalties and questionable fighting value to face a much larger

82

This seems to be the most likely explanation for what happened to Browning’s contingent judging from the accounts. He was ordered to Ware by letters from the government but probably joined York at Oxford. Chris Given-Wilson argues that Browning’s contingent went to Bristol with Wiltshire, Bushy, and Green (Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 248), but since they were only paid until 24 July and Bristol was still held for the king until 28 July it seems likely they were not there or they would have received wages for the missing four days. It is also possible that they were left at Gloucester castle to cover York’s movement down the vale of Berkeley and act as a blocking force for Henry’s pursuit since Gloucester was in such good repair. Possibly Henry arrived at Gloucester on 23 July and convinced Browning, either through force of arms or promises of loyalty to Richard II, to surrender the castle to him. 83 Adam of Usk, Chronicon, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, 1904), p. 27; for a discussion of Richard’s landing in Wales see G.O. Sayles, “Richard II in 1381 and 1399,” English Historical Review 94 (1979), 822–3. 84 The reason why York did not continue on to so well fortified a place as Bristol will likely never be known, but the Monk of Evesham’s claim that York decided to stay at Berkeley suggests he wished to meet Henry on his own terms away from the influence of such pro-Ricardians as Wiltshire, Green and Bushy, who were in Bristol. Chronicles of the Revolution, p. 127.

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force led by one of the most renowned knights in all of Europe.85 York’s position regarding Henry was public knowledge and he and the vast majority of his army, for one reason or another, had little or no fight in them. What skirmishing did take place at Berkeley was both insubstantial and ineffective. Although some contingents were paid until 4 August, Duke Edmund’s army ceased to be a factor after his meeting with Henry at Berkeley on 27 July. Whatever agreement uncle and nephew reached before the altar at St. Mary’s church in Berkeley will likely never be known, but it was possibly something akin to the oaths Henry had already sworn at Bridlington to ‘Hotspur,’ and Doncaster to Northumberland, Westmorland and others. In any event, Duke Edmund joined the Lancastrian forces and moved on to open Bristol for Henry of Lancaster on 28 July. Thereafter he became part of the Lancastrian establishment.86 From the foregoing discussion Edmund of Langley’s response to Henry of Bolingbroke’s invasion comes into greater relief. Rather than react ineffectively to events, York acted with speed and resolve in organizing the defense of the realm. Not only did he see to a well-conceived nationwide defense of castles, forces under his lieutenant kept Sir John Pelham and his Lancastrian forces closely guarded in Pevensey. Duke Edmund ordered troops off the northern march to intercept Henry at Bridlington and then went on to raise a significant field force of over 3,000 men in just under three weeks. Such an achievement was no mean feat. The men who came to York’s aid were from parts of the country that had already seen heavy recruitment for Richard II’s Irish expedition, and came to the duke’s banner during harvest season. Nonetheless, the fact that the army was a mix of men with varying political allegiances and a wide range of military abilities gave the force questionable battle-worthiness. Even though he failed to hold England for the king the traditional view of Edmund of York as weak and vacillating clearly does not reflect the duke’s competent and pro-active leadership. Richard’s tyrannical actions had alienated too many members of the political community, leaving York to defend a policy and a kingship for which very few left in England would fight – and for many the final straw was the unlawful disenfranchisement of the popular Henry of Lancaster. Thus, Edmund of Langley found in July 1399, much as Robert de Vere had in December 1387, that the royal cause was lost before arms were taken to defend it.

85

Clearly Henry had a substantial force collected under his banner. For a discussion of this see Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 252–3. 86 See my article, “ ‘A Wrong Whom Conscience and Kindred Bid Me to Right’: Edmund of Langley, Duke of York and the Usurpation of Henry IV,” Albion 26 (1994), 253–67.

Edmund of Langley

141

Appendix I Edmund of Langley’s Army July 13991 Douglas Biggs

Lords’ Retinues and Retinues of Royal Councillors Name

Men-at-arms

Archers £ paid

Days paid

Accounted at Ex

Edmund, Duke of York

100

200

£5002

30 days

No, debt forgiven CPR, 1399–1401, p. 318

John Beaufort, Marquis of Dorset

100

200

£200

20 days

No, debt forgiven CPR, 1399–1401, pp. 410–1

Michael de la Pole Earl of Suffolk

293

109

£93

5–31 July

E 101/42/12 m. 7, E 364/35 m. 1

Robert, Lord Ferrers of Chartley

174

50

£34 5s

12–26 July

E 364/39 m. 5

Henry Despenser Bishop of Norwich

62

130

£134 18s 4d 6–28 July

E 364/35 m. 5d E 101/42/12m. 14

Abbot of Walden (Essex) 1

39

£20 10s

20 days

E 364/34 m. 4d

Sir William Elmham

30

£25

3–28 July

E 364/35 m. 4

145

Sir Henry Greene

approx. 150

£88 3s 4d

unknown

No, executed at Bristol, July 1399

Sir John Bushy

approx. 200

£130 8s 4d

unknown

No, executed at Bristol, July 1399 E 364/40 m. 2

Sir William Bagot

596

80

£93 6s 8d

12 July–4 Aug

Sir John Russell

5

22

£20

30 June–24 July E 101/42/12 m.15

1

2 3 4 5 6

This table is first based on the Issue Rolls of the Exchequer (E 403/562) and also on the few surviving Exchequer Accounts Various (E 101). These records were collated and published by Chris Given-Wilson in his Chronicles of the Revolution, pp. 250–1. Given-Wilson’s figures from the Issue Rolls and Accounts Various are supplemented by numerous entries on the Foreign Rolls of the Exchequer (E 364) which provide more information on numbers of men recruited and days paid. £200 was drawn by the duke without restrictions as to how it would be spent while the remaining £300 was to raise the troops, E 403/ 562 m. 14. This figure includes 4 knights who were paid 2s per day. This figure includes 8 knights who were paid 2s per day. This figure includes 8 knights who were paid 2s per day. This figure includes 2 knights who were paid 2s per day.

142

Douglas Biggs

Sheriffs’ Posses7 Name

Men-at-arms

Archers £ paid

Days paid

Accounted at Ex

John Worship Beds and Bucks

478

166

£137 10s

6–27 July

E 364/35 m. 4

Andrew Neuport Cambs and Hunts

33

49

£25 15s

12–21 July

E 364/34 m. 9

John Browning Gloucester

20

100

£46 13s 4d

10–24 July

E 101/42/12 m. 3,4,5

£50

unknown

No

William Audley Hampshire

approx. 160

Robert Turk Hertfordshire

1

10

£8

12 July–4 Aug

E 101/42/12 m. 1

John Mulsho Northampton

6

134

£133 6s 8d

6 July–6 Aug

E 364/35 m. 1d

John Golafre Oxon and Berks

139

46

£24 4s

12–25 July

E 364/35 m. 6d

Thomas Oudeby Rutland

10

59

£17

18–27 July

E 364/39 m. 4d

£38 18s

unknown

No, debt forgiven CPR, 1401–05, p. 61

£46 5s

12–27 July

E 364/34 m.9

Archers £ paid

Days paid

Accounted at Ex

No

Richard Mawardyn Wiltshire

Robert Russell Worcester

approx. 160

810

91

Minor Retinues and Individuals by County Name

Men-at-arms

Hampshire Sir Bernard Brocas

1

6

£4

15 days

Sir Ingelram Bruyn

8

13

£8

12–23 July

E 364/35 m. 1d

Sir Almric St. Amand

6

24

£9

13–23 July

E 364/35 m. 6d

Nicholas Merchant, esq

1

4

£8

20 days

No

Nicholas Bray, esq

1

3

50s

5–25 July

E 364/35 m. 1d

William Tauk, esq

1

25

£10 15s

6–22 July

E 364/35 m. 1d

William Kingsham, esq and William Tangley, esq

2

6

100s

3–23 July

E 364/35 m. 4

Nicholas Valence, esq

1

4

30s

6–16 July

E 364/35 m. 4

Philip Popham, esq

1

8

15s

6–14 July

E 364/35 m. 4

John Norton, esq

1

2

50s

5–30 July

E 364/35 m. 2d

John Campflour, esq

1

2

20s

10 days

No

7

It seems that all sheriffs were ordered to bring 60 men-at-arms and 100 archers in addition to all those who would come. See above, pp. 136–6. 8 This figure includes one knight who was paid 2s per day. 9 This figure includes one knight paid 2s per day. 10 This figure includes one knight paid 2s per day.

Edmund of Langley Name

Men-at-arms

David Benbury

?

Archers £ paid

143 Days paid

£2 15s

Accounted at Ex No

Gloucestershire Robert Thorley, esq

13

75s

10 days

No

Middlesex John Hall, esq

8

30s

5–13 July

E 364/34 m. 9d

John Lambkin, esq

8

30s

5–13 July

E 364/34 m. 9

William Blake of Ruslip, esq

19

£10

5–26 July

E 364/34 m. 9d

John Gedney and John Pertyng, valets

38

£20

5–26 July

E 364/34 m. 9, E 101/42/12 m. 6

20s

5–25 July

E 364/34 m. 9

Thomas Willesden

1

Northamptonshire Sir Giles Malory

2

18

£15 12s

6 July–4 Aug

E 364/35 m. 4d, E 101/42/12 m.11

Sir John Trussell

1

8

£7

6–4 Aug

E 364/39 m. 4d, E 101/42/12 m.10

Sir John Holand

1

8

£7

6–4 Aug

E 364/35 m. 1d, E 101/42/12 m. 9 E 364/41 m. 4

John Mantell, esq

1

2

40s

12–22 July

John Witherhale, esq

1

3

£4 4s

12 July–15 Aug E 364/41 m. 4

John Maryns, esq

1

4

72s

24 days

No

Thomas Langport, esq and Gerard Waldeneye, esq 2

2

72s

6–30 July

E 364/38 m. 2

John Preston, esq and John Hartwell, esq

2

5

£4 10s

24 days

No

8

36s

24 days

No

3

50s

6–26 July

E 364/36 m. 1

7

60s

20 days

No

George Everyngham, esq

6

£4

20 days

No

Thomas Foxton, esq

1

30s

30 days

No

30

£11 10s

6–17 July

E 364/38 m. 5

John Drayton, esq Lawrence Dyne, esq

1

William Trussell, esq Lincolnshire

William Driby, esq

6

Derbyshire Sir William Meynil11

?

10 Mks

?

No

John Stratham, esq

?

15s

15 days (?)

No

£30

6–27 July

E 364/35 m. 1d, E 101/42/12 m. 2

Hertfordshire William Barker of Ashwell, Hugh Heymes of Baldock, and Robert Wight of St. Albans, valets

11

57

Meynil had taken a protection for Ireland and was possibly not even in the country.

144

Douglas Biggs

Name

Men-at-arms

Archers £ paid

Days paid

Accounted at Ex

10

60

£20

12–23 July

E 364/41 m. 4, E 101/42/12 m. 3

5

£9 15s

12 July–1 Aug

No

18

£8 5s

?

No

Oxford and Berkshire Sir John Golafre12

Warwickshire Sir Thomas Astley and Sir Thomas Clinton Northumberland John Heron, esq

9

Essex Sir Bart. Boucher13

5

John Squerry, esq

95

£44 5s

12–28 July

E 364/34 m. 6

2

20s

?

No

6

30s

10 days (?)

No

8

30s

10 days (?)

No

Somerset Sir Edmund Seymour14 Cheshire Robert Mascy, Sgt-at-Arms Shropshire Sir Walter Bitterly

?

25 Mks

No

?

20 Mks

No

?

5s

No

110s

No

Leicestershire Sir Nicholas Hauberk Devon Walter Clifton, valet Cornwall 9

Richard Cressey, esq15

Unidentified men who served in York’s Army Name

Men-at-arms

Archers £ paid

Days paid

Alan Scalby, valet

?

10s

Sir Roger Siglem

?

20 Mks

No

John Parvenet, Sgt-at-Arms

?

100s

No

John Mitchell, Sgt-at-Arms

?

100s

No

Thomas Wodingfield, Sgt-at-Arms

?

5 Mks

No

12

?

Accounted at Ex No

Golafre accounted twice, once as sheriff and a second time for troops he apparently brought on his own initiative. 13 Boucher claimed 3s 4d per day for himself in his account at the Exchequer in his right as a baron. 14 Seymour had taken a protection for Ireland and was possibly not even in the country. 15 Cressey had taken a protection for Ireland and was possibly not even in the country.

8 Flemish Urban Militias Against French Cavalry Armies In The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Centuries J.F. Verbruggen Originally published as: “Vlaamse gemeentelegers tegen Franse ridderlegers in de 14de en 15de eeuw,” Revue Belge d’histoire militaire 24 (1981), 359–82.

Translated by Kelly DeVries

J.F. Verbruggen

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, most principalities of western Europe maintained a cavalry army and had also at their disposal the militias of their towns and the soldiers supplied by the communities of the countryside. The kingdom of France, the Holy Roman Empire of German states, the Spanish kingdoms, the Italian principalities had both types of soldiers: the knights and nobles, men-at-arms who fought as heavily armored horsemen, and townspeople and peasants who fought on foot. In the kingdom of England, the army also consisted of horsemen and common infantry, but the kings mostly undertook offensive wars in France and Scotland, and in those, alongside professional soldiers such as knights and nobles, footsoldiers who had been recruited from the countryside were used. Urban militias sent from the towns played no role in those wars, but could well appear in the event of a civil war or if the defense of a town was needed during the invasion of an enemy. The English infantry were above all recruited from the rural villages. The strength and the worth of the cavalry armies, urban militias and troops raised from rural villages changed from kingdom to kingdom, or from region to region. On most occasions an army was raised that contained both heavy cavalry and infantry. In the kingdom of France, the noble cavalry played the principal role, while the infantry was of little importance. In the English armies the nobles and men drawn from the countryside worked very well together. The infantry were mostly archers who were excellent fighting men and performed a very important task on the battlefield. But, without the cavalry and nobles, the archers could not form a strong line for the battle, because the nobles could fight either on foot or on horse and the archers assisted them during the battle. In the principalities of the Low Countries, the county of Flanders, the duchy of Brabant, the counties of Hainault, Holland, and Zeeland, the prince-bishopric of Liège, the county of Loon, and the county of Namur, armies existed also of these two

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elements, cavalry and infantry, nobles and commoners, with a cavalry army, urban militia, and army of rural villagers. In Friesland, it was only the rural villages who sent men into the army. In the territories that formed Switzerland, the towns had as their troops urban militias and soldiers from rural villages. In the county of Flanders and the prince-bishopric of Liège, the urban militias had become such a great majority, that in many engagements the entire army fought on foot and that even those nobles who were present there sent their warhorses away and took their place among the infantry. Also in Switzerland the infantry had become such a great majority that they performed the most important role and that the entire army largely fought on foot. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, thus, the troops of Flanders, Liège, Friesland, Dithmarschen, and Switzerland fought on foot, and, often, also the English army. In France, the hegemony of the cavalry units led to a number of confrontations.

The King of France and His Urban Militias According to Froissart During the Hundred Years War, a part of the population of the kingdom of France believed that the king had made too little use of the urban militias in the war against the English.1 This opinion was especially expressed by ecclesiastics who wrote chronicles and by burghers and artisans in the towns. The king of France and his nobility maintained that the English army fought better than their soldiers, so that the English often emerged the victor, despite generally being fewer in number.2 The French nobles were professional soldiers who normally were able to fight better than the English archers, who did not have as much experience in waging war on some campaigns. One element of this public opinion, ecclesiastics and townspeople, criticized the French nobles after the great defeats, and especially after Maupertuis (Poitiers) in 1356 and Agincourt in 1415.3 They had already done this earlier, after the French defeat at Courtrai in 1302, after the retreat of the royal army in September 1302, and after the campaigns which ended without battle in 1303, 1314, and 1315.4 After

1

P. Contamine, La vie quotidienne pendant la guerre de Cent Ans: France et Angleterre (XIVe siècle) (Paris, 1976), p. 256. 2 Contamine, pp. 241–42. 3 Contamine, pp. 241–42. 4 J.F. Verbruggen, 1302 in Vlaanderen: De guldensporenslag, Centrum voor militaire geschiedenis, Bijdragen, 13 (Brussels, 1977), p. 85; Verbruggen, De krijgkunst in west-Europa in de middeleeuwen (IXe tot XIVe eeuw), Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, Verhandelingen, 20 (Brussels, 1954), p. 125; J.F. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe During the Middle Ages from the Eighth Century to 1340, 2nd ed., trans. S. Willard and R.W. Southern (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 56–57; Frantz Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre: Les origines de la guerre de cent ans (Paris, 1896), p. 663; and Les grandes chroniques de France, ed. J. Viard, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1934), 8:301–02, 324.

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Maupertuis and Agincourt, it was especially asserted by this part of the population that the king ought to use his urban militias more frequently.5 In the third redaction of his famous chronicle, the manuscript of Rome, Jean Froissart wrote that the king of France in his last attempt to raise the siege of the town of Calais in 1347 only mustered nobles. He did not want the militias because they caused only difficulties and defeat, and on the battlefield they melted as snow in the sun. This was clearly shown at Crécy, at Blanchetaque, at Caen in Normandy, and in all the places where they had been used. The king wanted only the crossbowmen from the towns. Besides, he wanted the monetary contributions of the towns and municipalities so that he could pay the cavalry. The nobles were accustomed to practicing their professions as soldiers, thus the knights had the most experience in this area.6 Is this testimony from Froissart trustworthy? The chronicler wrote his third redaction around 1400, thus long after these events. There is a contradiction within the third redaction, with the town of Tournai having sent a militia. The strength of the Tournaisiens numbered, according to Froissart, 1,500 men.7 Gilles le Muisit, a Tournaisien who wrote in the years 1347–1349, gives a more accurate number and also the composition of the urban militia contingents which fought for Calais: 45 horsemen and around 1,000 infantry, among whom were 200 crossbowmen, 140 archers, and more spearmen and townspeople with other weapons.8 The Tournaisiens distinguished themselves during the engagement, as they captured by storm a wooden castle which was defended by 32 English soldiers near to the besieged town. The attack and storming were the work of common footsoldiers, aided by their archers.9 Moreover, Froissart was contradicted by his predecessor, Jean le Bel, whose chronicle he had used. Jean le Bel reports that the king of France in 1347 summoned both nobles and non-nobles for the expedition to Calais.10 One of the accounts from the Istore et croniques de Flandres confirms this.11 There were certainly also contingents from other militias as well there, as Froissart himself had written in his first redaction. One of the good eyewitnesses, who had supplied information to Jean le Bel for his chronicle, Jean de Hainault, was in the royal army at Calais as the leader of a unit of noble horsemen or bataelge.12

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Contamine, p. 256. Jean Froissart, Chroniques, ed. S. Luce, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1873), 4:270–71. Jean Froissart, 4:48, 277. Gilles le Muisit, Chronique et annales, ed. H. Lemaître, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1905), p. 183. Gilles le Muisit, p. 183; Jean Froissart, 4:48; and Jean le Bel, Chroniques de Jean le Bel, ed. J. Viard and E. Déprez, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1905), 2:157. Jean le Bel, 2:150. Istore et croniques de Flandres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Commission royale d’histoire (Brussels, 1880), 2:63, 68. Istore et croniques de Flandres, 2:68; Jean Froissart, 4:44; and Jean le Bel, 2:159.

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Froissart accused the militias of not having fought well at Crécy, Blanchetaque, and at Caen. But at Caen they had fought well, according to the testimony of the king of England himself, who was present as the commander of the English army.13 At Blanchetaque, there is no certainty that the urban militias were present. The French soldiers of the area, who fought there, had, according to Jean le Bel, performed well.14 And Crécy? According to the second redaction of Froissart, there was not one contingent from a town which took part in this battle.15 His model, Jean le Bel, does not say this. According to the Chronique Normande, the king did not want to wait for his militias and thus they were not present at the battle.16 The version in Manuscript 5610 tells of a flight of all townsmen except those of Orléans, who were with the king, and among whom almost all were killed, a report that has probably little truth to it, as the soldiers deployed at the side of the king did not fight at Crécy, and the English did not pursue those fleeing from the battlefield.17 In his account of the battle of Crécy, Jean Froissart has made all sorts of additions to the text of Jean le Bel, and some of these are very hostile towards the urban militias.18 Jean Froissart tells the story of the siege of Mauconseil in 1358. Soldiers on horse and foot were gathered there by the order of the regent of France, serving in place of the imprisoned king. Tournai sent a militia contingent: 800 men according to Jean le Bel, 700 according to Jean Froissart, 500 according to the Istore et croniques de Flandres.19 Jean le Bel speaks of all the towns of France; Jean Froissart restricts the mobilization to the towns of Picardy and the Vermandois and mentions explicitly those townspeople; the Istore et croniques de Flandres notes contingents of different townspeople and a few knights. The besieging army was, however, surprised by a relief army and suffered very heavy losses. According to Jean le Bel half of the Tournaisiens could not escape; according to Jean Froissart only a small number of Tournaisiens survived; and according to the Istore et croniques de Flandres all the Tournaisiens were killed or taken prisoner. Thus the regent called up the townspeople in times of need. Jean Froissart’s assertion regarding the ineffectiveness of the militias is to be seen as an opinion, which he gave a long time after the events, but which is in contradiction to the facts. The king of France had set a limit on the number of militia contingents when he led a campaign in which he used his large cavalry 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Jean Froissart, 4:xix, n. 1: “se defenderent mult bien et apertement, si que la melle fut très fort et lung durant,” following Edward III. Jean le Bel, 2:97. Jean Froissart, 3:417. Chronique Normande du XIVe siècle, ed. A. and E. Molinier, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1882), p. 80. Chronique Normande, p. 81 (Ms. 5610), and Chronique de Berne, in Istore et croniques de Flandres, 2:458–59. Jean Froissart, 3:174. Jean le Bel, 2:268–69; Jean Froissart, 5:122–23, 125; and Istore et croniques de Flandres, 2:92. P. Rolland, Tournai “Noble Cité” (Brussels, 1944), p. 35, has one of the 700 citizens return with the news of the deaths of the others.

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army. He limited the numbers of infantry, asking instead for a monetary payment to be made in place of the military service owed by a large number of townspeople. His military policy regarding the militias was not as simple as Jean Froissart says. Some nobles were very opposed to the militias, but others chose also to include militia contingents. This consideration of Jean Froissart, in hindsight, is in contradiction to the story in his first or second redaction, with Jean le Bel and the Istore et croniques de Flandres, and with some details about the Tournaisiens which exist in the three redactions. The king of France had a county in the north where the militias were famous for the very good results which they had achieved on the battlefield.

Was Courtrai the Only Victory for Urban Militias? In 1946 the great French historian Ferdinand Lot wrote: A Courtrai, des Flamands révoltés, des ouvriers armés d’une simple pique, des misérables, infligent une défaite écrasante à cette brillante chevalerie française, lui tuant des certaines de nobles barons, y compris le chef, un vaillant et expérimenté homme de guerre, le comte Robert d’Artois . . . Mais ce qui est digne de remarque et de méditation, c’est que cette victoire du prolétariat flamand ne se répéta jamais plus. A Mons-en-Pévèle (1304), à Cassel (1328), à Roosebecque (1382), à Gavre (1453), les Flamands subirent constamment des défaites désastreuses infligées par la chevalerie française et bourguignonne (à Gavre).20

Thirty years later Philippe Contamine gave this conclusion: Même les communes des villes flamandes et liégeoises qui comptaient pourtant parmi les plus solides, étaient à peu près régulièrement vaincues face à une armée de chevaliers. Leur succès de Courtrai (1302) représente l’exception: la règle, ce sont leurs défaites à Cassel (1328), Roosebeke (1382), Othée (1408), Gavre (1453), Brusthem (1468).21

This opinion of Lot and Contamine is widespread, and made without a thorough study of military history in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Considering only the great battles between the French and Flemish armies, the Flemish militias thrice gained victory and thrice were defeated. They won the battle of Courtrai in 1302, the battle of Arques in 1303, and the battle of Guinegate in 1479. They lost the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle in 1304, the battle of Cassel in 1328 and the battle of Westrozebeke in 1382. The Liégeois militias won a great victory at Vottem in 1346. The military historian must, therefore, take into account as many special circumstances as possible. For example, the battle of 20

Ferdinand Lot, L’art militaire et les armées au moyen-âge en Europe et dans le Proche-Orient (Paris, 1946), 2:427. 21 Contamine, p. 258, although the battle of Brusthem took place in 1467.

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Cassel was fought by the peasants of the Westhoek. The communities of these farmers differed from those of the burghers in the Flemish towns. The farmers were not so well armed as the townspeople. The battle of Gavere is a special case. The rebellious Ghentenaars fought against their lord, Duke Philip the Good. The circumstances in which this battle took place were also not normal. These too must be taken into consideration. The opinion of Lot and Contamine is not satisfactorily nuanced. In comparing the militias and the cavalry armies, one must take into consideration the numerical strength of both armies, the terrain, the difference in weaponry, and whether it was a simple political conflict, a civil war, a national war, etc. One should not limit one’s inquiry to the large battles. One must also take into consideration the entire course of the war and the more common fighting. So the Flemings won several small conflicts between 11 July 1302 and the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle on 18 August 1304, and they also lost some. During this period one might speak of a military equilibrium, with on certain occasions a Flemish preponderance.

Cavalry Armies and Urban Militia in the County of Flanders In the county of Flanders the cavalry was the principal element of the army until 1300.22 During the war of 1297–1300 the county cavalry was quite weak. Then the cavalry was crushed and surrendered in total defeat to the more powerful cavalry army of the king of France. A hundred Flemish nobles accompanied their count and two of his sons to prison in France. Other nobles remained in the occupied regions and were divided between the count’s forces and the king’s. They had become too few in number to fight the urban militias. During the rebellion against the French in 1302 only a small number of nobles took part. At Courtrai, the militia of Bruges was assisted by contingents of the militias of Ypres and Ghent, and by peasants. On this battlefield the rebels – townsmen, peasants and knights – all fought on foot. From then on the townsmen were the principal power in the comital army in Flanders.23 In the following large battles, the Flemings all fought on foot: at Arques, Mons-en-Pévèle, Cassel and Westrozebeke. At Guinegate, the nobles fought on horse: 825 heavy cavalry and 825 light cavalry, next to 11,000 Flemish pikemen, 3,300 archers and a number of cannoneers. The Flemish townsmen fought well on the battlefields of 1302–1304 against the cavalry army of the king of France, and they conquered a large part of Zeeland and pushed through Holland as far as Utrecht. Afterwards they suffered defeat because they had spread out their forces over too many battlefields and

22

J.F. Verbruggen, Het leger en de vloot van de graven van Vlaanderen vanaf het ontstaan tot in 1305, Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Letteren, no. 38 (Brussels, 1960), p. 76. 23 Verbruggen, 1302 in Vlaanderen, p. 92.

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over a too extended territory. Besides, the king of France still had allies: the count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland and the king of England. In the course of the fourteenth century, the townsmen dominated in the county. During the rebellion of coastal Flanders from 1323 to 1328, the count was not able to suppress the rebels. The king of France had to come against the farmers of the Westhoek with a powerful army to defeat them. During the administration of Jacob van Artevelde, Count Louis de Nevers also could not bring his recalcitrant subjects again under his governance. The nobles followed the count to France. There the count provided a contingent of cavalry to the royal army: 929 knights and squires from Flanders in 1340.24 His successor, Louis de Male, recruited knights from Brabant and Limburg in 1348 for his conflict against Ghent and Ypres. At times he had 1,500 nobles from Flanders, Hainault and Artois, but these were not sufficient when a large number of townsmen fought against the count.25 Following the example of his father, Louis de Male needed to be helped by the king of France and a powerful French cavalry army. In 1382, the royal cavalry army fought against Philip van Artevelde with the Ghentenaars and their adherents at Westrozebeke. But, after the victory the war was still not finished, as Ghent continued to fight. Sometimes the count could find success against rebels with an army composed of knights and of still-loyal townspeople. Philip the Bold, the first duke of Burgundy and count of Flanders, had available to him the nobles of both principalities and Artois. In 1382, he was able to correct the difficult situation of his father-in-law, Louis de Male, and then he arranged for the intervention into the county of the king of France with a magnificent army. He learned his lesson from these events. In order to cripple the political and military power of the large towns, he did not call on the militias. At Bruges he abolished the old arrangement with the militias. When his successor, John the Fearless, determined that he had need of the Brugeois militia, he restored the usual tradition. The dukes of Burgundy only called up the militias of the large towns twice. On 21 August 1411, a powerful Flemish army under John the Fearless advanced on Ham and Montdidier. Ham was taken by storm and the army came near to Montdidier. But on 27 September the Flemings wanted to march further against the enemy and to fight a decisive battle, in order thus to bring about a favorable conclusion and afterwards to return to their work. When the duke did not do this, they returned to their homes.26 Philip the Good called up the militias in 1436. They marched to Calais. After a few initial successes they left the siege in disorder. The English knew even before the expedition that Philip the Good would attack Calais, and at that time they strengthened their fortifications. They 24

J.F. Verbruggen, “La tactique de la chevalerie Française de 1340 à 1415,” Publications de l’université de l’état à Elisabethville 1 (1961), 41. 25 Jean Froissart, Chroniques, ed. G. Raynaud (Paris, 1897), 10:66, and Verbruggen, Het leger en de vloot van de graven van Vlaanderen, p. 76. 26 Chronique des Pays-Bas, de France, d’Angleterre et de Tournai, in Corpus chronicorum Flandriae, vol. 3, ed. J.J. De Smet (Brussels, 1856), pp. 340–41.

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made counter-attacks during which the Flemings lost men. Other militias also left their duke there, again following the example of the Ghentenaars. But the duke actually had not prepared the expedition well, and his fleet was put into position too late. A dangerous panic led to a disorderly retreat. After their return, the Brugeois remained in arms in order to seek compliance with some further demands, but in 1438 they were forced to surrender them.27 Later Ghent rose up in rebellion, and after a fierce armed conflict the city was defeated at the battle of Gavere. In fact, the dukes did not want the help of the large town militias, except when exceptional situations allowed for nothing else. Hugh de Lannoy wrote in 1435: “In the event of a war against the English with an attack on land and on sea, the duke finally required the people to arm themselves, a fatal solution in that afterwards popular movements and plotting were furthered, because the people are not used to carrying weapons.”28 The duke and his nobles feared that they would lose their military monopoly and their political power, or that they would see restrictions made on them by the large towns. The dukes had therefore only asked for a small number of 100 to 400 men per town, so that the urban contingent was not powerful; above all they wanted the towns’ financial help, materiel and artillery. After his two defeats against the Swiss, on 3 July 1476 at Salins in the Franche-Comté Charles the Bold said to J.-P. Panigarola, the ambassador of Milan, that he could get 150,000 men from his realm and associated states. But he was not in a hurry to have his people take up arms, as they were so proud that, once they had taken up arms, they would not so easily put them down again.29 With this Charles the Bold was thinking about the refusal of the militias from Bruges and Ghent to lay down their weapons after a campaign in the service of the duke. The militias of the Flemish towns could not be sent in a large body to Switzerland. That was too far and the campaign would last too long. Therefore, only small contingents would be used. In their own land, urban militias were well established. After Charles the Bold had suffered a third defeat at Nancy on 5 January 1477 and died, his daughter, Maria, had no army to defend her lands against the troops of the king of France. A number of nobles from the Burgundian realm had lost their lives in the three defeats of 1476 and 1477, and the foreign mercenaries had returned home; after Nancy the remains of the ducal army were scattered. Already by 9 January Louis XI gave an order to the lord of Craon to invade Burgundy and to attack the region. On 11 January the Bastard of Bourbon, admiral of France, and Philippe de Commynes traveled to the north, to the towns

27 28

Richard Vaughan, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London, 1970), pp. 75–82. J.F. Verbruggen, “De militairen: In de middeleeuwen en de bourgondische tijd,” in Flandria Nostra, ed. J.L. Broeckx et al. (Antwerp, 1960), 5:224, and Charles Brusten, L’armée bourguignonne de 1465 à 1468 (Brussels, 1954), pp. 130–31. 29 Lot, 2:124.

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along the Somme, to Picardy and Artois in order to conquer these territories.30 Louis XI followed on 18 January and took on the leadership in the north, where a number of towns joined the French camp without resistance.31 The lands which Charles the Bold had conquered returned quickly to Louis XI and were again lost. A number of the nobles joined the king of France, who found it quite easy to purchase the loyalty of nobles with the help of Philippe de Commynes. There were few Burgundian troops in the area. It was typical that the nobles who desired to join Louis XI at Abbeville first sent away 400 Flemings of the garrison before giving the town to the French.32 The Burgundian army had to assemble again after the defeat at Nancy. The Burgundian towns did not include as many nobles as France. Charles the Bold had therefore recruited nobles in Savoy and especially in Italy. At the beginning of 1476 the army of Louis XI consisted of 2,846 lances: these were 2,846 knights or heavy armored cavalry, mostly nobles; 2,846 costellieren or light cavalry; and 5,692 mounted crossbowmen. Along with this cavalry army the king had 16,000 francs archers, free archers, bow and crossbow archers, pikemen and vougiers [light spearmen].33 After the battle of Grandson, on 12 May 1476 at the camp at Lausanne, Charles the Bold had available more than 1,212 knights or heavy cavalry, 2,704 mounted crossbowmen and the noble cavalry and archers of the ducal household. Including the infantry in the count, the ducal army numbered perhaps 10,000 soldiers.34 This was then already much weaker than the army of Louis XI. At Nancy the army of Charles the Bold had become still smaller and in the battle were lost many men who were killed or taken prisoner, while a number of foreigners had returned home. In the first months of 1477 the Burgundian regular army was very weak and spread out over a number of locations. The duchess and the nobles in the face of invasion then were forced to call up the despised urban militias. But these militias had not fought for a long time. The town government was forced again to organize its army, to make lists of the names of able-bodied men and the places where they lived, to divide them in contingents and to name leaders, to see whether these men needed armor and arms, to make these weapons or buy them. “Flanders, which was powerful and proud, awakened an armed force,” wrote the Walloon Molinet. “The Ghentenaars, the Brugeois, the men of the Bruges Franc, the Courtraiers, and the Wervikers, gathered their soldiers. On foot and on horse they got ready, with foodstuffs, wagons, artillery, tents, pavilions and all equipment necessary for the

30 31 32 33

Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, ed. J. Calmette and G. Durville (Paris, 1924–25), 2:161–62. P.M. Kendall, Louis XI (Paris, 1974), p. 371. Philippe de Commynes, 2:163. P. Contamine, Guerre, état et société à la fin du moyen âge: Études sur les armées des rois de France, 1337–1494 (Paris, 1972), p. 285. 34 Richard Vaughan, “500 Years after the Great Battles,” Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 95 (1980), 379–80.

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war. They formed a powerful army.”35 The Ghentenaars were ready on 9 May and on that day marched to Spiere to counter an attack on Flanders from Tournai.36 On 17 May the militia marched out of Bruges.37 But the general, the duke of Gelder, put these contingents in too early. Rather than train these urban militias in the camp at Spiere and remain there until they were better prepared, he advanced against Tournai on 26 June. The next day, he turned back at dawn, an extremely dangerous march with townspeople without experience and with insufficient support from noble horsemen. When the French garrison made a surprise attack on the retreating troops, it was a massacre. The duke of Gelder paid with his life for his lack of caution and intelligence.38 The retreat brought confusion to Spiere. The French cavalry attacked the camp, and the Flemings fled in panic. The Brugeois, the Courtraiers and Wervikers returned to Spiere on 29 June, were attacked again and suffered severe losses. They retreated to Courtrai. The trek to Spiere ended in ignominious flight.39 The high-bailiff of Ghent, Jan van Dadizele, a noble who had fought in the service of Simon and Joos van Lalaing in the ducal army, had not journeyed with them to Spiere, because he observed that the Ghentenaars had not yet received their necessary training. He raised a new army in Ghent and marched to Courtrai. Jean of Luxembourg, captain of Flanders, was there, who of the three “members” of Flanders and the council of the duchy had received orders to raise an army of 2,000 cavalry and 2,000 infantry in order to protect the borders.40 Ghent, Bruges and Ypres put forth a great effort for the purchase and the manufacture of cannons, weapons and armor. They also paid for a detachment of soldiers who were placed along the border. Meanwhile, the advance of Louis XI was brought to a halt. The king had conquered Boulogne, Thérouanne, Béthune, Lens, Arras, Cambrai, Bouchain, Tournai, Mortagne, Le Quesnoy, Landrecies, Avesnes, and Chimay. His troops were stopped by the fortified towns of Saint-Omer, Aire, Lille, Douai, and Valenciennes.41 While the urban militias in the towns became equipped with better weapons, the nobles did their best to defend their domains, their property, and their villages in the countryside with the help of their peasants. They directed this defense personally. Along with them there were energetic men who together with their experienced friends and armed colleagues raised connections, in the 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

Jean Molinet, Chroniques, ed. G. Doutrepont and O. Jodogne, Académie royale de Belgique. Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, Collection des anciens auteurs belges (Brussels, 1935), 1:215. Jean de Dadizeele, Mémoires, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Société d’Emulation (Bruges, 1850), p. 8. Bruges, Town Accounts, 1476–77, fo. 144v. Jean Molinet, 1:216; Philippe de Commynes, 2:180, 206, 238; and De wonderlijcke oorloghen van keyser Maximiliaen, ed. W. Jappe Alberts (Groningen, 1957), pp. 12–13. Jean Molinet, 1:217–18 and Jean de Dadizele, p. 8. Jean de Dadizele, pp. 8–9, and Bruges, Town Accounts, 1476–77, fo. 151. Jean Molinet, 1:218–19.

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nature of the “Groen Tenters” whom the Ghentenaars had formed during their rebellion against Duke Philip the Good, and who elsewhere also existed in the prince-bishopric of Liège, and the counties of Loon, Gelder, and Utrecht. They were also called the “Gelapte Schoen” in Flanders in 1477.42 The first leader who was mentioned in this new warfare was Mahiu van Steenbeke, a coarse peasant who with his followers appeared at the Nieuwendijk, on the southern border of the county of Flanders. His people were “willing,” the word which also in another time was used for men who were prepared to fight efficiently to protect their livelihoods. The peasants of Mahiu van Steenbeke fought in the summer of 1477 together with Joos van Belle, lord of Zoeterstede, who had gathered his peasants to attack French plunderers. With the war-cry “Zoeterstede! Flanders the Lion!,” Joos van Belle fell on the rear of the French, while Mahiu van Steenbeke and his fellow soldiers controlled the front. They drove the enemy away, captured booty, and freed a number of their imprisoned countrymen.43 The town Bruges sent to the lord of Zoeterstede four iron serpentines, twelve chambers for these weapons, two half barrels of gunpowder, a barrel with 400 stones and 600 tampions for the cannons so that he might be able to outfit his men better.44 A Ghentenaar, Jan de Geest, was celebrated as commander of the “Groene Tent” or the “Gelapte Schoen.” He had formed a strong troop and appeared in the region between the Leie and the Scheldt. In September, when he learned that a French contingent was carrying on a chevauchée near to the Leie, he first sent a scout out, in order to determine how strong the French were and where they could be found. The French seneschal came to Watene and Mesen and burned these villages. Jan de Geest ordered his men to block the route of the enemy with their booty and prisoners. He made a surprise attack with a shout: “Flanders the Lion! Long Live Austria Burgundy!” His soldiers felled many Frenchmen with arrows. They were formidable opponents, because they preferred to kill the French rather than take them prisoner, and the enemy, knowing this, fled quickly. The captured weapons and armor were used in order to give his soldiers better equipment and to make his group stronger and more numerous. The booty was divided among the fighters. No one received any pay, but the “Gelapte Schoen” became still stronger. The men were also called “Groen Tenters” because they camped under the naked sky. They were so famous that their deeds were sung in songs along the streets of the towns and villages. They were known for fighting in battle with lead hammers. As strong peasants they could hit hard. These groups of the “Groene Tent” or of the local men could defend the countryside between the fortified towns and make things difficult for any French chevauchée.45 The attempt of Louis XI to quickly make himself master of the Burgundian realm was upset in the north by the stubborn resistance of the 42 43 44 45

De wonderlijcke oorloghen, pp. 12, 17, 34, 35, 36, 44, 163. De wonderlijcke oorloghen, p. 17. Bruges, Town Accounts, 1476–77, fo. 151v. De wonderlijcke oorloghen, pp. 34–36, 44.

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Flemings and Hainaulters who defended their towns and villages well. The king was required to strengthen his standing army. On 1 July 1477 he recruited 1,000 lances and brought the numbers of the established companies to their full level so that the professional army in the beginning of 1478 numbered 4,142 lances, for a total of 16,568 mounted soldiers.46 But it was too late for him to conquer the Netherlands.

Cavalry Armies and Urban Militia in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège The evolution of the cavalry army and the urban militia in the prince-bishopric of Liège occurred in various areas at the same time as the uprisings in the county of Flanders. The fourteenth century was a great time for the Liégeois militias. In 1307, the prince-bishop stood at the front of his troops against the rebellious townspeople and subjects at Vottem. He did not dare to fight a battle because the rebels were stronger than his own troops. In normal circumstances, the townspeople of the prince-bishopic, when satisfactory troops had been brought together, could take on the cavalry army of the prince-bishops. These then resorted to the recruitment of knights in neighboring principalities, who, as allies, as friends or as mercenaries came to fight with the prince-episcopal army. The Liégeois militias won their greatest victory at Vottem in 1346. The bishop needed one year to prepare his revenge and succeeded at Tourinne in 1347 by defeating the townspeople and their supporters. The militias of the princebishopric also won a number of combats against knights. In the fifteenth century, the Liégeois militias had the same opponent as the Flemings – the duke of Burgundy – who commanded a powerful professional army in defeating them in the battles of Othée, Montenaken, and Brustem.47 But, in judging the worth of the Liégeois militias, the numbers of the two opponents in battles or other combats must also be calculated.

The Numbers For the last great battle, Guinegate, the numbers of both armies is well known. This seldom occurs. Both armies were of almost even strength, about 16,000 men, without counting the cannoneers who in the fifteenth century were not often tallied with the other soldiers. As was the situation in all the battles from 1302 on, the royal army had a strong advantage in noble cavalry, while the Flemish infantry was stronger in numbers than the French infantry. The French army had about 2,000 complete lances, that is 2,000 heavy cavalry, 2,000 46 47

Contamine, Guerre, état et société, p. 285. Claude Gaier, Art et organisation militaires dans la principauté de Liège et dans le comté de Looz au moyen âge, Koninklijke Academie van België, Klasse der Letteren en der Morele en Staatkundige Wetenschappen, Verhandelingen, 59, v. 3 (Brussels, 1968), pp. 148–50.

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costellieren, 4,000 mounted archers of the regular army, 8,000 francs archers or free archers, the infantry. But the mounted archers also fought on foot. Thus in total there were 2,000 heavy cavalry, 2,000 light cavalry, 12,000 infantry and an unknown number of cannoneers.48 The army of Duke Maximilian of Austria numbered 825 lances (825 heavy cavalry and 825 light cavalry or costellieren), 300 English archers, 3,000 archers, crossbowmen, arquebusiers and coleuvriniers. In it the archers of the lances were counted.49 In addition, 11,000 pikemen were supplied by the county of Flanders, under the command of the man who had chosen and trained them, Jan van Dadizele.50 The total numbers for the army of Maximilian were: 825 heavy cavalry, 825 light cavalry, 3,300 archers of all kinds, 11,000 pikemen, or 15,950 soldiers plus cannoneers. For all the other important battles in the history of Flanders, there are almost insoluble problems in the area of numbers. The information is incomplete or uncertain, or completely in error. Courtrai, Arques, Mons-en-Pévèle, Cassel, Scheut, Nevele, Beverhoutsveld, Westrozebeke, Gavere; nowhere is there complete certainty, and sometimes the uncertainty exists for both armies. Accurate and trustworthy information is equally scarce for the military history of the prince-bishopric of Liège. There also the investigator must make all sorts of calculations or estimations for Vottem, Tourinne, Othée, Montenaken and Brustem, where a strong degree of uncertainty is found.51 Sometimes the information is even scarcer for the prince-bishopric. For the dukes of Burgundy there are accounts, but these do not always give the number of soldiers, or the sums of money paid, and the inaccuracy of the numbers continues to exist.52 The numbers are really a capital element in the estimate of the worth of the armies, and in an understanding of the tactics and strategy which were undertaken. As one changes the number in the estimation or judgement of one or both armies, one comes to very different results. And there always remains the uncertainty, after all the calculations and all the study, and after a careful weighing of all the possibilities. Only when one possesses complete certainty about the numbers of both armies, can one understand well the tactics and find the best solution in the description of the battle. A correct number can lead to a correct rendering of the conflict. In the wars of the dukes of Burgundy against the townspeople of the prince-bishopric of Liège it is possible that the army of the dukes was not only a professional army, and thus normally must have a greater worth, but that it also was in certain campaigns stronger in number. During the siege of Saint Truiden and the battle of Brustem in 1467, Charles the Bold had an army which numbered perhaps 18,000 soldiers. Saint Truiden was defended by 3,000 men,

48 49

Contamine, Guerre, état et société, pp. 285, 315. Jean Molinet, 1:302, 304: 825 lances, 3,000 archers. Philippe de Commynes, 2:274: 300 English archers. 50 Jean de Dadizele, p. 18: 11,000 pikemen. 51 Gaier, Art et organisation militaires dans la principauté de Liège, pp. 290–91, 295, 299–300, 313–15, 339–40, 343–44. 52 Brusten, L’armée bourguignonne de 1465 à 1468, pp. 60–71.

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but these could be held in place while the duke with his main force turned against the Liégeois at Brustem. These Liégeois and their allies were estimated at 12,000 townspeople and 500 cavalry.53 But it is also possible that there were only 8,000–10,000 townspeople, who would then be easier to defeat. A defeat can thus on some occasions be the result of the large preponderance of the enemy, aside from committing mistakes, the lack of experience, or too little discipline. Also, the terrain played a role.

The Terrain One of the weaknesses of a cavalry army was that it could not fight on every type of terrain. The townspeople thus chose by preference a position where they were able to defend themselves well and be attacked only with difficulty. When the terrain was not selected beforehand for an attack with heavy cavalry, these were forced to fight on foot. If they then were less numerous than the townspeople, their task was especially difficult in disadvantageous terrain. At Courtrai in 1302, Pont-à-Marcq in 1304, Nevele in 1381, or Vottem in 1346 and Brustem in 1467, the townspeople chose a good position which was difficult for the cavalry.54 In the choice of the terrain and in the provision of the battlefield, the commanders naturally played an important role.

Commanders and Composition of the Army In a number of wars, the militias had leaders from the nobles and also had their ranks strengthened by a number of nobles. This was the situation in each of the victories: Courtrai, Arques, Vottem and Guinegate. In evaluating the militias, one must always take into consideration the fact that rebels were not led by their normal commanders, when they fought against their prince. When they were helped by a number of nobles, they could make use of the military experience of these soldiers, who also strengthened their militia soldiers. For the battle of Guinegate, there were three nobles who recognized that a number of nobles would have to fight with the others on foot, directed the formation and provided the leadership.55 From there it was but a step for the 200 nobles to assist the

53

Brusten, L’armée bourguignonne de 1465 à 1468, pp. 66–67, and Gaier, Art et organisation militaires dans la principauté de Liège, pp. 343–44. 54 Verbruggen, 1302 in Vlaanderen, pp. 48–49; Chronique Artésienne, ed. F. Funck-Brentano (Paris, 1898), p. 83; Annales Gandenses, ed. F. Funck-Brentano (Paris, 1896), pp. 67–68; Istore et croniques de Flandres, 2:242; Gaier, Art et organisation militaires dans la principauté de Liège, pp. 291–92, 293, 296–97, 345; and Brusten, L’armée bourguignonne de 1465 à 1468, p. 162. 55 Jean de Dadizele, p. 19; Philippe de Commynes, 2:275; and Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, ed. H. Beaune and J. d’Arbaumont, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1883–88), 1:161–62.

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11,000 Flemish pikemen and to be awarded the honor of the victory: “the courage of these nobles helped the soldiers to take a stand, which was a wonder, since they saw their own cavalry fleeing,” wrote Philippe de Commynes. Olivier de la Marche went even further: the Flemings made a strong stand and remained in good order thanks to the presence of the more than 500 nobles fighting on foot with the pikemen. Also their experience in war played a large role in the performance of the militias. While the Ghentenaars and the Brugeois were quite easily put to flight at Spiere in 1477, this outcome did not occur at the battle of Guinegate on 7 August 1479.

The Victories of the Flemish Militias Guinegate is absent from the list of battles drawn up by Philippe Contamine.56 This impressive accomplishment of the Flemish townspeople and peasants is, indeed, little known. The five hundredth birthday of the victory was unnoticed and passed, quite wrongly, without celebration. The battle was an episode of the war between Louis XI and Maximilian of Austria. Maximilian raised his siege of the town Thérouanne and marched against the French army. The battle began on 7 August shortly after 14:00 in the environs of Bomy to the south of Guinegate and Thérouanne. In both armies the archers were in the front rank, together with the artillery. After these, there were two formations containing the 11,000 Flemish pikemen who had come from the towns and villages of the county; on their flanks were deployed the 825 lances of the Burgundian nobles. The French deployed a part of their heavy cavalry on the flanks, with the rest in the center behind the infantry.57 The count of Romont, one of the commanders of Maximilian’s army, during their advance against the French, performed a turning maneuver with the Burgundian army so that his soldiers had their backs to the sun and the French had the sun in their eyes.58 The French commander, Philippe de Crèvecœur, made an attack with two strong wings of heavy cavalry, which were more numerous than the 825 lances of Maximilian. The Burgundian nobles were put to flight. A part of them sought safety with the pikemen, others dismounted and stood with them, including Duke Maximilian. Philippe de Crèvecœur pursued them powerfully, which carried him and a large part of the

56

Translator’s note: Since the publication of this article, J.F. Verbruggen published a longer study on this battle, De slag bij Guinegate, 7 augustus 1479: De verdediging van het graafschap Vlaanderen tegen de koning van Frankrijk, 1477–1480 (Brussels, 1993). 57 Jean Molinet, 1:304–06, 313. 58 Jean Molinet, 1:308; De wonderlijcke oorloghen, pp. 80–81; N. Despars, Cronijcke van den lande ende graefscepe van Vlaanderen van de jaeren 405 tot 1492, ed. J. De Jonghe (Bruges, 1837–40), 4:192; Chronique des faits et gestes admirables de Maximilien, trans. and ed. O. Delepierre (Brussels, 1839), p. 227.

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French heavy cavalry from the battlefield.59 The rest of the 2,000 French heavy cavalry, the 4,000 archers and the 8,000 francs archers, and the artillery did battle against the 3,300 archers of Maximilian, the 11,000 pikemen, and their artillery. The French cavalry tried to drive the two formations of pikemen together, but they were not able to do so. The Flemings marched happily to the battlefield and showed their qualities of courage and fortitude. They were helped quite a lot by a few hundred nobles who fought with Maximilian, the counts of Romont and Nassau, and their Captain-General Jan van Dadizele among their ranks. All of the assaults of the French cavalry tried to crush the massed pikes of the Flemish townspeople, who made a brave stand although the professional army had been driven to flight.60 After an hour-long battle, the French were successful in an attack at a specific moment, capturing Maximilian’s artillery and turning the pieces in the direction of the Flemings. The count of Romont understood that their position was dangerous. He immediately gave the sign for an attack and advanced in formation with his pikemen who stood some distance behind the troops of Nassau. He relieved Nassau’s contingents and together they fell onto the enemy. They first overran the artillery. Then they dispersed the French troops and afterwards advanced with massed pikes towards the French camp. The French took to flight.61 Maximilian pursued them. Some of the Burgundian nobles had fled towards Aire, but Philip van Ravenstein rallied them together there and turned with them back to the battlefield. The pursuit was carried out with success, but a number of Burgundian nobles were killed or taken prisoner during these operations. Maximilian had driven the enemy from the battlefield and had won the victory. He had captured the camp of his opponent, but had lost his own train during the fight. The losses on both sides were almost equal. The Burgundian army spent the night in the French camp.62 The Flemish pikemen were rightly proud of their victory, which once again had shown their great worth. In a terrain that was very favorable to the French 59

Jean Molinet, 1:308–09; Jean de Dadizele, p. 19; Philippe de Commynes, 2:275; Jean de Roye, Journal connu sous le nom de Chronique scandaleuse (1460–1483), ed. B. de Mandrot, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1894–96), 2:91; Philippus Meyerus, Annales Flandriae, in Chroniques relatives à l’histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne (textes latins), ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, Commission royale d’histoire (Brussels, 1870–76), p. 501; and Jacob Unrest, Oesterreichische Chronik, ed. K. Grossmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum germanicarum, nova series, XI (Weimar, 1957), p. 75. 60 Jean de Dadizele, p. 19; Jean Molinet, I:311; Philippe de Commynes, II:275; Thomas Basin, Histoire des règnes de Charles VII et de Louis XI, ed. J. Quicherat, Société de l’histoire de France (Paris, 1855–59), 3:55; Ph. Meyer, pp. 192–93; N. Despars, 4:192–93; and Adrien de But, Chronique, in Chroniques relatives à l’histoire de la Belgique sous la domination des ducs de Bourgogne (textes latins), ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1870), p. 536. 61 Jean Molinet, 1:311–12; Jean de Dadizele, p. 19; Philippe de Commynes, 2:275; Thomas Basin, 3:56; De wonderlijcke oorloghen, pp. 80, 82; Ph. Meyer, pp. 501–02; J. Unrest, p. 75; N. de Despars, 4:193; and Olivier de la Marche, 1:161. 62 Jean Molinet, 1:310–12; Jean de Dadizele, p. 19; J. Unrest, p. 75; De wonderlijcke oorloghen, pp. 80, 82–83; N. Despars, 4:192–93; Histoire de Païs-Bas, in Corpus chronicorum Flandriae, vol. 3, ed. J.J. De Smet, Commission royale d’histoire (Brussels, 1837–65), p. 696.

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cavalry, they had kept them in check and afterwards had driven them off, while their own nobles had been put to flight. In 1477, the town of Bruges had given its pikemen pikes which were 20 or 14 feet long, so that they followed the example of the long Swiss pikes.63 The chronicler Philip Meyer spoke with full praise about the military worth of the Flemish townspeople. They proved that they could fight as well as the French veterans. The Flemish towns earned even more praise. “No other nation, except for the Ancient Greeks, at one time sent so many troops from their towns to war,” he wrote.64 The greatest victory of the Flemish townspeople was won in the battle of Golden Spurs at Courtrai in 1302. This was more important than Guinegate because of the annihilation of the French cavalry army and because of what followed. A year later they were victorious at Arques, but there the French knights retreated in time from the battlefield when they saw that they could not gain the victory.65

The Defeats of the Flemish Townspeople The first defeat took place near the village of Mons-en-Pévèle in 1304. The French knights did not dare to carry out a general attack against the strong formation of the townspeople, because they feared being defeated. They attempted to exhaust the Flemings with small engagements. But at the end of the day, the Brugeois, men from the Bruges Franc and other brave Flemings charged, while the Ghentenaars, Yprois, and Courtraiers made use of the French flight from the battlefield to retreat from the battlefield. The Brugeois, those of the Bruges Franc and their comrades pushed on to the French camp, while the French knights had withdrawn and their king had nearly been killed. The victorious part of the Flemish army did not stay in the French camp because night fell. They left the battlefield and thus lost the battle which they had actually won during the fight. The Brugeois considered themselves to be the victors.66 At Cassel in 1328 only the peasants of the Westhoek stood against a mighty royal army that numbered 4,000 knights and nobles, plus infantry. The Flemings numbered the same, but the French obviously had a great advantage in the quality of soldiers. Zannekin, the leader of the peasants, did not wait for the arrival of the Brugeois. He charged with three contingents at sunset, in the hope that the French would be taken by surprise in their camp. The assault was not successful because a part of the cavalry were able quickly to mount their horses 63 64 65

Bruges, Town Accounts, 1476–77, fo. 148. Ph. Meyer, p. 502. Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe, pp. 194–97; and Verbruggen, De krijgkunst in west-Europa, pp. 319–25. 66 Verbruggen, The Art of Warfare in Western Europe, pp. 198–203; and Verbruggen, De krijgkunst in west-Europa, pp. 325–35.

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and counter-attack. The three attacking formations of Flemings were halted, charged by the cavalry, and encircled. They defended themselves with the courage of despair and left at least 3,185 of their comrades slain on the field. They were too bold in making a charge, while they still did not know the technique of the charge.67 At Westrozebeke in 1382, Philip van Artevelde with the Ghentenaars and their adherents likewise with great courage attacked a very strong royal army which had become especially experienced by fighting in their war with England. The numbers in the royal army are not accurately known, but in 1383 and 1386 the king was able to enlist more than 15,000 or 16,000 soldiers in the armies which also entered Flanders. Perhaps both armies again numbered around the same, but the French had better commanders and better troops. They permitted Philip van Artevelde and his townspeople to make the attack, encircled them and destroyed their army. Philip van Artevelde died of dehydration in the mass of his too tightly packed soldiers.68

Campaigns Without Battles In September 1302, Philip the Fair came with a new army to the borders of the county of Flanders. He had 16,000 soldiers, cavalry and infantry, but did not dare to attack the Flemish townspeople. On 29 September the king left and dismissed his army.69 On 10 July 1303, a powerful French army stood against a Flemish army in the vicinity of Saint-Omer. The commander of the French army did not dare to do battle, despite a number of lords advising this. He divided his troops among the fortifications and fortified towns. The Flemish townspeople made use of this to enter France and to take the town of Thérouanne by storm.70 In 1314, the Flemings advanced on Tournai, but they could not take the town by surprise. They marched to Lille and began to besiege these fortifications. The king of France advanced against them with four large contingents, those which had been sent from Douai, Saint-Omer, Tournai and Lille. The borders were entirely filled with soldiers. The king still waited on the fortifications, while a French and an English fleet sailed against Flanders. But Philip the Fair did not dare to do battle against the Flemish townspeople.71 In September 1315, the most powerful royal army which had ever been raised in the war against the count of Flanders appeared on the borders of both lands. A fleet of the count of Holland sailed up the Scheldt to Rupelmonde in order to

67

68 69 70 71

Verbruggen, De krijgkunst in west-Europa, pp. 302–04, and Henri Pirenne, Le soulèvement de la Flandre maritime de 1323–1328, Commission royale d’histoire (Brussels, 1900), pp. xxviii–xxx. Lot, 1:450–52. Verbruggen, 1302 in Vlaanderen, pp. 80–85. Chronique artésienne, pp. 66–68, and Annales Gandenses, pp. 52–53. Funck-Brentano, Philippe le Bel en Flandre, pp. 655–56, 663.

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attack the Flemings. A French fleet appeared on the sea. The king of England had promised to launch a squadron against the Flemings. King Louis X, his two brothers and his two uncles stood at the head of the royal army, that was so noble that for a long time no other king of France had gathered such a powerful force. The army was concentrated at Bondues and marched from there in the direction of Courtrai as far as the Leie River. The Flemings formed themselves up on the other side of the river. The weather was very bad, with torrential rains, which made the transportation of supplies especially difficult. On 13 September, the king withdrew with his magnificent army. The tents of the camp were burned because they could not be loosened from the mud.72 When the king of France gathered a powerful army and afterwards had to retreat to his land empty-handed, this was naturally a victory for the Flemish townspeople in which their courage and enthusiasm rose, while the French knights were forced to acknowledge their impotence and their fear, and the French people became discontented with and complained about the wasted money they had to pay for the army. The French cavalry army was one of the best and most powerful in Western Europe and in this period probably the best. The superiority which the Flemish townspeople had acquired by their victory at Courtrai was manifest in the invasion of Zeeland in 1303.

The Flemish Townspeople Against the Zeelanders and Hollanders During the offensive operations of Guy de Namur with the fleet and the Flemish townspeople in 1303 and 1304, the Zeelanders and Hollanders were outclassed both strategically and tactically. On 23 April 1303, the Flemish fleet sailed out of Sluys to the straits Walcheren and South Beveland. The son of the count of Hainault, Holland and Zeeland, Guillaume de Avesnes, divided his troops into two armies. One defended Vlissingen, the other Arnemuiden. There he planned to embark on his fleet, but the ebb tide was in and this made the attack on the Flemings impossible. These remained with their fleet between Walcheren and South Beveland, so that they could disembark at Walcheren or at North or South Beveland. Guillaume de Avesnes felt that he was again required to divide his troops and to send soldiers out of Beveland to this district in order to defend against a possible attack by the Flemings. On 25 April, Guy de Namur attacked Veere while Jean de Namur stayed on the water with the remaining ships. With 3,000 Flemings and 800 Zeelanders, Guy landed on the former property of the lord of Borselen, and his family members fought among his numbers. The troops who landed were received very well by the people. Guillaume de Avesnes then again divided his soldiers. He himself remained at Arnemuiden in order to oppose the landing of Jean de Namur and sent his marshal with a division to Veere. A third division was to cover Middelburg. But the advancing 72

J. Vuylsteke, Uitleggingen tot de Gentsche stads- en baljuwsrekeningen, 1280–1315 (Ghent, 1906), pp. 174–77.

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Zeelanders were defeated by Guy de Namur. Meanwhile, Jean de Namur landed at Arnemuiden. After he had received the false news of a victory, Guillaume de Avesnes advanced quickly against the Flemings. He was in turn defeated, and his soldiers fled in panic to Arnemuiden. On the heels of the defeated the Flemings entered the town and conquered it. Guillaume de Avesnes was able to flee to Middelburg, but that town was immediately besieged, and, after nine days of encirclement, on 9 May, it had to capitulate. Guillaume was allowed to march away with his adherents, but the Flemings also conquered the other islands of Zeeland, except for the town Zierikzee on Schouwen, which held out. Finally, the Flemish fleet sailed out to make an attack on South Holland, but this journey was not carried out. Around July the Flemings received by the terms of an armistice all of Zeeland, except for Zierikzee.73 Thus was Zeeland conquered after a single-day battle on 25 April and a short siege of Middelburg, and only Zierikzee was able to hold out. On 18 March 1304, Guy undertook a new offensive against the count of Holland who had his fleet gathered between Schouwen and Duiveland. That night his soldiers went ashore, and the Frisians fell on the camp and the huts of the Zeelanders at Duiveland. Hereafter followed a night-time counter-attack by the Zeelanders and a contingent of Flemings against the Hollanders’ camp. The Hollanders and the Frisians fled in complete panic. Immediately, Zierikzee was again besieged, but when the town held out, Guy de Namur decided to attack South Holland. He left a part of his army before Zierikzee and, on 1 April, again sailed with his fleet. Guy de Namur and Jean de Renesse each advanced with an army and conquered many towns: Schiedam, Delft, Leiden, Gouda, and others. Only Kennemerland, around Haarlem, was able to escape the conquest, thanks to the Haarlem Moor Lake and Haarlem Wood, just as Dordrecht did with stubborn defense. Utrecht and its environs were also conquered. Two principalities were almost completely overrun in a short campaign after one night-time attack!74 The Flemish townspeople had similar success in Brabant in 1356.

The Flemish Townspeople Against the Brabantese in 1356 The offensive of Louis de Male against Brabant took place in four different directions: The army of the count advanced along the way from Ninove to Brussels; a Flemish fleet cruised towards Antwerp; on the border of Namur, in the region of Nijvel and Geldenaken, the count of Namur invaded the duchy of Brabant; and the prince-bishop of Liège did the same in the region of Sint-Truiden and Landen. Duke Wenceslas had strengthened the Brabantese cavalry and his townspeople and peasants with barons and knights from neighboring principalities: Arnold, count of Berg; Count Diederik of Loon; the count of Katzenellenbogen and other lords from Germany, Luxembourg, Hainault and 73 74

Verbruggen, Het leger en de vloot van de graven van Vlaanderen, pp. 179–80. Verbruggen, Het leger en de vloot van de graven van Vlaanderen, p. 181.

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Holland. He commanded a very impressive number of horsemen, as well as his infantry, drawn from the townspeople of Brussels and Leuven, and contingents from other towns and from villages and the countryside. In the decisive battle at Scheut on 17 August 1356, the Brabantese and their allies stood against a very strong Flemish army that had invaded the duchy and from all appearances had an impressive numerical advantage and, especially, a much greater experience in warfare. The Brabantese sounded hopeful in their war-cry: “Brabant hoge moed, Vlaanderen onder voet!” [Brabantese take heart, tear the Flemings apart!]75 The Flemings answered with “Flanders the lion!” In the Flemish army, all fought on foot. The Flemish townspeople received the charge of the Brabantese cavalry and the great lords and afterwards made their own attack. The cavalry of Brabant and the neighboring principalities had apparently not driven their attack very far into the ranks of the Flemings, with only a few exceptions, and afterwards retreated in order to eventually make a second charge after they had regrouped. This proved impossible because of the quick attack of the Flemings. The entire Brabantese army was immediately dispersed by the more experienced Flemish townspeople and their cavalry who fought on foot. The Brabantese took to flight and were pursued obstinately by the Flemings, who made themselves masters of their opponents’ camp. The cavalry could escape on their horses, but a number of the townspeople of Brabant and other infantry were killed. The Flemings advanced on Brussels, which surrendered without a fight. Leuven, Malines, Antwerp and other towns and villages recognized the count of Flanders as their governing lord, swearing the oath of fealty and giving hostages. The campaign took scarcely three weeks: “The quick and complete subjugation of such an extensive land as Brabant, that is so freedom loving, so rich and so populous, inspires awe.”76

They Dream of a New World! The two great victories of the Flemish townspeople over the French knights, at Courtrai and Guinegate, were won when the artisans had reformed their urban society to their liking and dreamed of a new, better world, with more prosperity, a more pleasant life and less taxes. Their ideal was fraternity, equality and liberty. For that they were ready to lay down their lives. The internal cohesion of their society, the merchants and the citizens, provided for the solidarity of the bonds which the townspeople made with each other, their town, their land and their sovereign. They were citizens or artisans of a large town, one of the pillars on which rested the splendid building of the principality of Flanders. Their capabilities as merchant, entrepreneur or artisan gave them the awareness that they 75

Translator’s note: the literal meaning original vernacular cry is: “Brabant high courage, Flanders under feet!” 76 Breve chronicon clerici anonymi, in Corpus chronicorum Flandriae, vol. 3, ed. J.J. de Smet (Brussels, 1856), pp. 29–30.

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belonged to the “good people” of their contemporary society. They marched as an army in brand-new tunics, a uniform which had been newly made for the conflict and at the same time showed how wealthy each man was. The townspeople were as well paid as noblemen, because they wanted to fight as well as noblemen.77 They handled impressive weapons and had at their disposal good equipment, wagons, tents, pavilions, and artillery. In 1477, there were arquebusiers, culveriniers and cannoneers with their powerful guns. Living together, working together, fighting together in the framework of a family, the work-place of the master and the journeymen, the trade in the districts of the town, these factors all provided for the strength of their units. The men who excelled in beautifully made cloth, the merchants, whose members were the best businessmen and the most clever entrepreneurs, wanted also to hold high the honor of their trade and their town on the battlefield. Their society was completely open in order to allow the journeymen the time to become masters and to acquire a better life with more prosperity. And they hoped someday to reach the level of merchants and entrepreneurs. The journeymen worked for their whole life so that they could learn their profession, a large responsibility that was only threatened by crisis or war. To be able to accomplish this good task, they might have to take part in the war in order to protect their society and to keep their way of life. The good relations between the master and his workers reminds one of the bonds in a family, the brotherhood of a trade, or of the confraternities which had been raised.

The Strategy of the Townspeople The urban militias were the military instrument of the towns, the life of industry and business. The townspeople had to work in order to earn their livings and the businessmen had to practice their professions. They could devote their men to war for only for a short time. They wanted to end a war as quickly as possible with a battle, if the circumstances were favorable and their army strong enough. The short war was preferable. A part of the militia was sent out in proportion to perform the task. When a battle was anticipated, they were able to send all of the townspeople with the utmost effort. But it had to be dealt with quickly, with no time and no money wasted by not fighting, because meanwhile the costs increased and there was not enough work done in the towns. The Flemish townspeople fought for the purpose of having a large battle which would immediately end the war, from 1302 to 1304, at Cassel in 1328, at Beverhoutsveld and at Westrozebeke in 1382. Powerful militias could recover from losses. The fortifications and water-courses had less importance in this method of fighting wars in 77

Verbruggen, 1302 in Vlaanderen, p. 36; Philippe de Commynes, 2:195: “faire ung monde neuf,” 2:207: “et le payoient très bien”; and Bruges Town Accounts, 1476–77, fos. 145, 149v, 151: the 2,000 horsed men received the same pay as the Rode Kaproenen, the mounted archers and the mounted costellieren, 8 groten per day each.

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relation to the strategy of the cavalry armies. The difference in strategy was made manifest in August 1302 when the king of France stood with a new army against the Flemings. Jean and Guy de Namur and Willem van Jülich decided not to attack this army of Philip the Fair, unless he invaded the county. The two sons of the count feared for the lives of their imprisoned father and brothers. However, in September, Willem van Jülich shared an idea with a number of towns: to fight a battle in order quickly to end the war or in order to finish the campaign and send the army back home.78 This was also the wish in 1411 for Montdidier, and in 1479 the town administrators of Ghent wrote to Jan van Dadizele that he must act.79 They were supporting enough troops. The members of the professional army could practice another strategy: during war not to do battle, not to endanger the lives of their brothers in arms, to live well, while the soldiers were necessary for the defense of the land, and to wait in the fortifications for the initiatives of their opponents, in order then perhaps to react, or in order to undertake a profitable chevauchée. This could be the best strategy at a certain period when they did not have the means to defeat their opponents. The townspeople were in principle not supporters of this, because they wanted to return to their trades. Their governments, which had to take care of paying for the armies, were also opponents of this. The professional army gave the prince several diverse possibilities, but led also to the wasting of money, to a special mentality, to numerous abuses at the expense of their people, and even to plundering and misdeeds.

Conclusion The Flemish and Liégeois urban militias had a great value at certain times. However, this is not to say that they were better than cavalry armies. If one counts the victory of the knights at Gavere, they had four victories and the townspeople three. Normally the knights must have been better, and individually or in equal numbers this was certain. But in the wars between the king of France and the Flemish townspeople, one can establish that in these six great battles, both armies were evenly matched in numbers. The defeat of the army could be the result of mistakes made by the commander or one of his subordinates, or to be due to the terrain. When the two armies had about the same strength, the smallest mistake was fatal for one of the two sides. Of the urban militias the Flemings achieved the best results. They were also the strongest in number. These good results were the fruits of their qualities as businessmen and burghers, the good armaments and the self-confidence which came from them. But as good artisans, they wished to return immediately to their work. The best infantry in western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries appear to have been the English longbowmen and the Swiss. However, the 78 79

Verbruggen, 1302 in Vlaanderen, pp. 82–84. Jan van Dadizele, no. 60, p. 94.

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archers had to make way for the arquebusiers and the culveriniers. The Swiss induced a revolution in the art of war, which made the infantry the most important arm on the battlefield.

APPENDIX Was There Artillery at the Battle of the Scheut? In his study of the artillery of the town of Brussels, L. Zylbergeld gives a series of hypotheses: the Flemings seemed to have used pyrotechnic artillery at Scheut, and this new artillery caused the sudden flight of the Brabantese army; as a result of the use of cannons at Scheut, the town of Brussels bought artillery in the years after 1356; Brussels would have owned artillery earlier than Leuven because Brussels was the premier town of Brabant; in the years 1361–62 this new artillery was shown to be very effective; and the strengthening of the town walls of Brussels after 1357 was influenced by the use of cannons.80 Not one of these five hypotheses can be proven. Not one can be accepted. Zylbergeld starts with the use of cannons in the Flemish fleet before Antwerp. But this proves nothing for Scheut. There was no artillery mentioned in the battle. Why would the cleric who wrote the story not have cited the cannon or the cannons? Why would the Brabantese and other chroniclers not speak about them? The cleric had no knightly mentality. The Flemings must have been proud of their cannons, if they had them at Scheut. There was not one reason for them to be silent. The oldest cannons of the town of Ghent, donderbussen, were purchased in 1363 or 1364 from Arnoud van Leuven, who had made them.81 The author speaks of four ribaudekens in the fleet, and described these carts or small wagons as batteries with three or four small cannons on mobile carriages. The presence of ribaudekens does not prove that there were cannons. The pieces had been bought at Tournai – dorniscsch voetboghe yscots – but a “foot-bow” is no firearm.82 The writer thinks that he has found a “pièce maîtresse” in the accounts of the town of Ghent in 1355–56. Six pounds of powder in the accounts proved the use of gunpowder.83 But this powder is mentioned next to saffron, mustard, vinegar, grape juice and sweetening media. It is a seasoning or spice used in the kitchen. Above all, this place in the account stands before the expedition to Scheut.84 The masters of the engienen were busy 80 81 82 83 84

Léon Zylbergeld, “L’artillerie de la ville de Bruxelles au milieu du XVe siècle d’après un inventaire de 1451–1452,” Revue Belge d’histoire militaire 23 (1979–80), 612, 615–17. Van Werveke, Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis en de oudheidkunde van Vlaanderen, p. 47. Zylbergeld, p. 616. Zylbergeld, p. 617. Van Werveke, Gentse stads- en baljuwsrekening, p. 223.

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with the siege machines and the other casting rigs, but this does not prove the use of cannons. With a similar enumeration of suppositions is the use of cannons at Scheut by engineers in the service of the county of Flanders “irréfutable.”85 The other hypotheses are just as unfounded. In a note he referred to Ch. Terlinden who also made a hypothesis that artillery had been used at Scheut, but he had even less proof. Also F. Braudel is cited. According to Braudel, artillery in Flanders originated around 1314 or 1319. F. Lot had already written that it was 1314 in Flanders.86 But these two great French historians have been misled by worthless articles from the nineteenth century without consulting the sources themselves. In the present state of our knowledge of the art of war in the fourteenth century, the first effective use of the new artillery was in was in the siege and conquest of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte in Normandy from 1372 to 1375 and in the defense of the town of Ypres in 1383.87

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Zylbergeld, p. 617. Lot, 2:465. A. Coville, L’Europe occidentale de 1270 à 1380, Deuxième partie: 1328 à 1380, in Histoire générale, under the direction of G. Glotz, Histoire du moyen âge, vol. 6 (Paris, 1941), pp. 629–30, for the siege of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte. For Ypres see Istore et croniques de Flandres, 2:313, 318, 319.