Download PDF | Byzantine Cavalryman c.900–1204 , By Timothy Dawson (Author) , Giuseppe Rava (Illustrator), Osprey Publishing, 2009.
68 Pages
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR DR TIMOTHY DAWSON
gained his PhD in Classics (Byzantine Studies) from the University of New England, New South Wales, Australia in 2003. He has lectured for many years on Byzantine, Greek and Roman armies. He has also written extensively on this period. He is currently editor of 'Medieval History Magazine' and is a keen reenactor, particularly of the medival European period. Timothy operated Australia's first historical European combat school, Amyna (Greek for 'defence'), near Sydney from 1984 to 1987, and in 1985 published a training manual embodying techniques practiced at that time. Through the 1980s and 1990s Timothy was also known as one of Australia's finest makers of swords and other military equipment. This activity embodied and informed his research and teaching in both arms and armour and combat. Since then he has gone on to be internationally recognised academically as an expert on certain forms of arms and armour. He lives in Leeds, UK.
GIUSEPPE RAVA was born in Faenza in 1963, and took an interest in all things military from an early age. Entirely self-taught, Giuseppe has established himself as a leading military history artist, and is inspired by the works of the great military artists, such as Detaille, Meissonier, Rochling, Lady Butler, Ottenfeld and Angus McBride. He lives and works in Italy
INTRODUCTION
Consult a dictionary and under 'Byzantine' you will find it described as an adjective meaning something like 'complex, inflexible or underhand'. What should we make, therefore, of the suggestion that there was such a thing as the 'Byzantine Empire'. The answer to that lies in where and by whom the term originated. It first appears in print in 1557 from the pen of a German, Hieronymus Wolf. In the tenth century Germany had looked to Byzantium (medieval Greek Vyzantion) as a paradigm of power and opulence seeking patronage and royal marriages from the City of Vyzantion.
In the twelfth century their ambitions became much more grandiose, and led to formation of what they called the 'Holy Roman Empire' claiming the inheritance of the glory days of Old Rome. To take an inheritance, however, the ancestor must be dead, and the survival of the Roman Empire in the East was somewhat problematic. At first, the ideological expedient was to claim that with the schism between the Roman and Orthodox churches and supposed decadence, the Roman Empire was morally dead, despite its semblance of sometimes robust life. Wolf's expedient went further, by attempting to deny the empire's existence stripping it of its very name.
He could only do that from his place after the final fall, for during its life, its people held to their true Roman heritage with all due tenacity, as some Greek speakers have done into modern times. From as early as the first century AD the empire's residents called it 'Romania'. The adjectives for that were Romaikos and Romios, and to this day, descendants of the Greek-speaking population which had continued in Ionia, the portion of Anatolia bordering the Aegean Sea, who were expelled by the Turks in the early twentieth century, still call themselves 'Romiosi'. So what is 'Byzantine'?
Properly used, it should refer to anything pertaining to the City of Vyzantion, and that is the manner in which it will be used in this volume. Historical background The sack of the city of Rome in the fifth century happened largely because Old Rome and the western provinces had increasingly become seen as no longer at the core of the political and economic life of the empire since Constantine I designated an ancient Greek city in Thrace as the new capital in 330 AD, and renamed it the City of Constantine (Konstantinopolis). The rulers of the Roman Empire were never content to wave the West goodbye. Roman forces fought to recover and hold Italy for the empire with varying degrees of success right through to the late twelfth century. The most determined and successful effort to recover imperial territory was under Justinian I (528-65).
From the late sixth century to the end of the ninth century the concerns of the rulers were rather more pressing and closer to home. After Justinian, the ancient rivalry with Persia dominated military matters until it was conclusively settled with the destruction of the Sassanian Empire by Emperor Herakleios in 629. Along the way one of the most important monuments of Roman military literature was created around 602, the Strategikon, sometimes attributed to the emperor and successful general Maurikios. The Strategikon was to remain influential right through the middle Byzantine period. The rejoicing was short lived, however, as a new wave of northern barbarians culminated in the Avars besieging the capital itself in 628.
The fourth-century walls were more than enough to deter them, although the residents of Konstantinopolis themselves were of the opinion that the Virgin Mary, whose likeness had been paraded about the walls, deserved the credit. At about the same time a much more serious threat arose in the East with the advent of Islam. These newly proselytized Warriors of God conquered the southern and eastern provinces in a remarkably short time. It is commonly accepted that resistance in these areas was undermined by widespread disaffection prompted by religious policies emanating from Constantinople, which had tried to impose centralized Orthodoxy on a region that had very diverse traditions of Christianity, as well as substantial enclaves of older religions.
Muslim successes led to them mounting repeated sieges of the city between 668 and 677. Again, the walls of Theodosios were more than equal to the task, but could not have remained so indefinitely agains continuing assaults. This prospect was forestalled by the schism in Islam and ensuing civil war that created the division between Sunni and Shi'a, and ended the first Muslim expansion into Anatolia. No sooner had stable borders been established with Islam than the empire was racked internally by an argument over whether the use of religious icons constituted idolatry.
The seriousness with which Eastern Orthodoxy of the time took such religious debates, and the fact that the emperor had a crucial role at the centre of the church, meant that for a century the empire was violently divided against itself, body and soul. At the end of the ninth century the issue was resolved in favour of icons, and a period of stability and restoration ensued under the Macedonian emperors. Emperor Leo VI reformed the legal system. More significantly for our interest, he revived the study of military science at the highest levels. It is evident, despite the disruptions of the preceding century, that the development of new military techniques and adaptation to new circumstances had continued. Leo's contribution was to have these recorded and codified for the first time since the Strategikon. Leo's Taktika preserves those portions of the Strategikon that were till relevant, and adds the new developments, including the first mention of lamellar armour.
Leo was succeeded by his son, Konstantinos VII 'Born in the Purple' (Porphyrogennetos). Constantine Porphyrogennetos continued his father's literary activities, but on the military side his contribution is confined to a manual on imperial participation in military expeditions, which tells us much about the imperial encampment and arrangements, but nothing about ordinary soldiery. The third quarter of the tenth century was an erratic period for imperial administration, but an important one for this study. Two generals who had proved themselves under Constantine VII undertook to write military manuals. The more significant of these was Nikeforos Fokas, who had a short period on the imperial throne between 963 and 969. His manual, A Composition on Warfare, (more commonly known by a modern Latin title, Fraecepta Militaria) also shows a combination of continuities with and revisions of what has gone before, which tell us much of both his knowledge and his pragmatic experience.
The Taktika of the second of these later tenthcentury generals, Nikeforos Ouranos, owes a great deal to the Composition on Warfare, but also shows the benefit of Ouranos' campaign experience. Throughout late antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages the primary cultural influences on the empire came from the east, especially from Persia, despite the wars, and the destruction of the Sassanian Empire, and despite Iran's incorporation into the new Muslim caliphate. The extent of these influences cannot be underestimated, taking in religion, diverse aspects of everyday life, especially clothing, and also military matters. In 975 Basil II took the imperial throne. Basil was a man with austere personal habits, who ruled with consistency and firmness. Over the course of 50 years on the Golden Throne he stabilized imperial administration and campaigned effectively to expand the empire's borders to the greatest extent they had achieved since the seventh century. Basil was not an innovator by any means. His contribution was to consolidate, and to implement more consistently policies and practices developed or codified in the earlier tenth century. Basil was unfortunately followed by a series of much less effective rulers who ultimately squandered all of his gains and more. Initially events were merely mixed. Large areas of Sicily were wrested from Muslim control, and the Armenian homeland was brought back under imperial sovereignty. In contrast, territory in Italy, recovered for the Roman Empire by Justinian's campaigns, was gradually whittled away by encroachments of the Normans, who went on to take the newly recovered Sicilian possessions, and then turned their greedy eyes towards Greece. There were similar gradual losses in the East, including Antiokheia (modern Antioch) and Armenian Kilikia. The lowest point was the 'Terrible Day', the disastrous defeat at the battle of Manzikert, which resulted in the loss of the majority of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks in 1071. Shattering as the defeat at Manzikert was, the empire might still have held its core territories but for almost a decade of civil wars in which rivals contended for the throne.
The civil wars were eventually won in 1081 by another competent general, Alexios Komnenos, and only just in time, as the Normans set their sights on richer pickings in the Balkans. The civil wars had left the empire impoverished and its army in disarray. Nor were the divisions in the aristocracy really eliminated, yet Alexios was able to fend off the Normans and consolidate his power - and, again, only just in time as the armies of the crusade arrived on the borders of the empire. Happily, Alexios proved up to the challenge, moving them on towards Syria, and on the way making good use of them to recover Nikaia for the empire, and extracting a pledge that they would return another recent loss, the city of Antioch, to the control of Constantinople. Until 1118 Alexios continued his work to stabilize the empire both militarily and organizationally. Alexios' two successors both proved also to be reasonably effective rulers and competent military commanders. Building upon the stability created by his father, Ioannes (John) II set out to recover lost ground, especially to the East. He regained control of Kilikia, and forced the multi-ethnic, Frankish-ruled Principality of Antioch to honour its pledge of allegiance to Konstantinopolis. Ioannes also seems to have reformed the life of the court, and we can only speculate about how much more he might have achieved had he not died prematurely of septicaemia from an accidental arrow wound. Manuelos Komnenos set out to carry on the good work of his predecessors, but had somewhat mixed results. His early attempt to continue advances in the East by attacking the Seljuk sultanate based in Ikonion (Konya) failed, and there were renewed problems with Western armies travelling East to join the Crusades. After this, Manuelos turned his attention to the West and the recovery of territory in Italy. This achieved Roman control of Bari and much of Apulia by 1156, but unfortunately political incompetence by the expeditionary force's commander, which alienated allies, meant that these gains were short lived. Activities in the northern Balkans proved to be rather more successful, culminating in a major victory over the Hungarians at Semlin in 1167. Manuelos is said to have introduced western practices to the army, especially to the cavalry. The political situation of the empire became increasingly difficult as the twelfth century advanced. Assorted western entities were growing in power. These included the 'Holy Roman Empire' and the maritime Italian city-states. The growth of the Italian cities - Pisa, Genoa and especially Constantinople's old colony, Venice - was particularly problematical, for they steadily nibbled away the empire's greatest source of wealth - trade, especially in high value exotic goods such as silk and spices. The emperors tried to use time-honoured military/diplomatic tactics of playing one off against the other. Unfortunately the only way this could be done was by the granting of trade concessions, which only had the result of further reducing Roman revenues from trade and customs duties. Late in his reign Manuelos tried another direction, stripping various Italians of their trading rights and expelling them from the city. This proved in the long term to be even more counterproductive, leading the Italians to redouble their efforts and scheming to strip away Roman trade and possessions in the Balkans. The ultimate expression of this was Venice's hijack of the Fourth Crusade to sack Zara and then Constantinople in 1204. The empire's tendency to look to the East for its models of cultural sophistication had declined in the late eleventh century. The cultural and intellectual vigour that had characterized the Arab realm in the early centuries of the Islamic era had faded, and al-Islamiyya had much less novelty to offer.
The rise of the West and the great movements of crusade and trade meant that some of the need for novelty began to be satisfied from that direction as the twelfth century progressed, although the majority of cultural transmission was still from Romania to the West. The last 20 years leading up to the Fourth Crusade was a tragic period. The dynasty of the Komnenoi petered out with two emperors who only lasted three years each, and achieved nothing beneficial. The rulers of the Angelos family who followed fared little better, as the political elite of the empire was riven with dissension about how to deal with the western powers and threats. In the Roman Empire such dissension was never merely a matter of debate, but of coups, counter-coups and spontaneous civil and military unrest. Thus the elite of the empire proved incapable of forestalling the machinations of the Venetians, nor of resisting effectively once the armies of the Fourth Crusade had been diverted against the Queen of Cities.
The military background The fully professional armies of early Rome were long gone by the beginning of the middle Byzantine era. There were still professional units based in the capital and major cities, but now the majority of any major expeditionary army was composed of part-time troops whose families held agricultural land in exchange for military service, further augmented by temporary levies and mercenaries. The Roman army in the earlier period had been the infantry. Cavalry had been the province of foreign auxiliaries to begin with, and even when better established had only very specific and limited roles. Towards the end of Late Antiquity the empire faced new threats, and the army confronted unfamiliar military methods. Primary amongst these was the increased use of cavalry amongst Rome's enemies, and not just any cavalry, but heavily armoured horsemen riding armoured horses equipped with stirrups. The army lost no time in fully matching these eastern cavalry techniques. The Roman adoption of the stirrup in the later sixth century dramatically changed the balance of effectiveness in the forces, making the cavalry the pre-eminent offensive arm in the open battlefield. Even before this, the Romans had been fielding more heavily armoured horsemen riding armoured horses, as is shown by the lamellar horse's chest-piece from Dura Europos. In the wake of this, the infantry in the field became more of a moving fortress that often served to provide a solid base for the swifter striking of the mounted arm. It also made an essential focus for enemy action, for, of course, Roman cavalry was no less amorphous and capable of evading countermeasures than that of any other nation. In principle, the infantry retained the same capacity for offensive action it had always had, but the situations in which that offensive capability could be applied were fewer than they had been. Along with such cavalry methods, the Romans also enthusiastically adopted eastern archery techniques, to such a degree that the author of the Strategikon could speak of the thumb draw, devised originally by the nomadic horse-tribes for mounted use, as being the 'Roman draw', in contrast to the three-fingered draw of the Persians. From this time, as much was expected of Roman horse archers as of those of the nomads. The recovery from the so-called 'Dark Age', which began in the eighth century, led the Roman army to re-acquaint itself with two ancient, oriental forms of armour - scale and lamellar. Both are made of plates of solid material, which may be metal, horn or leather and which may be of very similar size, shape and form. The consistent difference between them in our period is that scales were fastened to a single substrate, a garment of cloth or leather and overlapped downward, while lamellae were first fastened together in rows and then tied together, normally overlapping upwards. Like mail, these armour pieces with their numerous, but modestly sized identical components had the advantage of being amenable to small-scale production units. Unlike mail, they both offered much higher levels of protection. The manuals of the beginning of the tenth century do not make much distinction between infantry and cavalry armour, but the status of the cavalry as the elite arm meant that they had first claim on these superior forms of defence, and this is explicitly acknowledged in the later tenth-century manuals. The combination of lightness, flexibility and relative cheapness of lamellar made of hide allowed the Roman army to embrace the practice of armouring the horses. This made for another leap in the cavalry's effectiveness, as theywere able to commit themselves to attacking more solid enemy formations and more sustained close-quarters combat with greater confidence than before. The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a period of economic growth, and evidence suggests that this meant that across the period the army had a tendency to be somewhat better equipped than hitherto. Of course war is a voracious beast, and there are notable exceptions to this tendency, as in 1081 when Alexios Komnenos was obliged to requisition civilian clothing to make fake surcoats in order to conceal his troops' lack of real armour. The Fourth Crusade, the consequential Latin occupation of Konstantinopolis lasting almost 60 years and the permanent impoverishment of the empire radically interrupted the culture of the army as much as any area of life. As one illustration, lamellar was never again seen amongst the equipment of the Roman Army.
Force structure and ranks The tagma or stratos was any expeditionary force. Its size was determined by the nature of the campaign traded off against the economic and logistical constraints on the manpower that could be raised. It was commanded by a strategos or general. The subdivisions of the cavalry seem all to have been done by threes. Thus a tagma was divided into three tourmai or mere, each commanded, unsurprisingly, by a tourmarkbes or merarkbos. Each tourma was split into three droungoi or moirai, led by a droungarios or moirarkbos. Below him were three kometes (counts), each commanding a 'banner' (vandon) which in the cavalry was also called allagion. The size of equestrian units could vary much more than that of the foot soldiers. The basic allagion was 50-strong, and this was apparently considered normal, but some, notably the imperial and Thracian allagia, could number up to 400. At the basic level, then, the units were built on allagia of 50, a droungos of 150, a tourma of 450 and the tagma of 1,350. As the larger allagia were, it seems, uncommon, the upper limit was probably much less than the 10,800 that such multiplications would suggest. Nikeforos Fokas stated that 5,000 cavalry and the aid of God were all a general needed. The equestrian battle line was conventionally much like the infantry block, being 100 men wide and five lines deep, and subdivided with the same sequence of junior officers - kentarkboi (the old centurion), pentakontarkboi (commander of 50), dekarkboi (leader of 10) and pentarkboi (head of five). These officers seem to have been apointed ad hoc, although presumably the kentarkbos and pentarkbos of each line of battle were the kometes of the two allagia that made up that line. Maintaining time-honoured practice, the primary functional unit of the cavalry expeditionary army was the unit of two troopers plus groom/servant who shared a tent.
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