Download PDF | (The International Library of Essays on Military History) John Haldon (ed.) - Byzantine Warfare-Routledge (2016).
612 Pages
Series Preface
War and military matters are key aspects of the modern world and central topics in history study. This series brings together essays selected from key journals that exhibit careful analysis of military history. The volumes, each of which is edited by an expert in the field, cover crucial time periods and geographical areas including Europe, the USA, China, Japan, Latin America, and South Asia. Each volume represents the editor’s selection of the most seminal recent essays on military history in their particular area of expertise, while an introduction presents an overview of the issues in that area, together with comments on the background and significance of the essays selected.
This series reflects important shifts in the subject. Military history has increasingly taken a cultural turn, forcing us to consider the question of what wins wars in a new light. Historians used to emphasise the material aspects of war, specifically the quality and quantity of resources. That approach, bringing together technological proficiency and economic strength, appeared to help explain struggles for mastery within the West, as well as conflicts between the West and non-West. Now, the focus is rather on strategic culture - how tasks are set and understood - and on how resources are used. It involves exploring issues such as fighting quality, unit cohesion, morale, leadership, tactics, strategy, as well as the organisational cultural factors that affect assessment and use of resources.
Instead of assuming that organisational issues were driven by how best to use, move and supply weapons, this approach considers how they are affected by social patterns and developments. Former assumptions by historians that societies are driven merely by a search for efficiency and maximisation of force as they adapt their weaponry to optimise performance in war ignored the complex process in which interest in new weapons interacted with the desire for continuity. Responses by warring parties to firearms, for example, varied, with some societies, such as those of Western Europe, proving keener to rely on firearms than others, for example in East and South Asia. This becomes easier to understand by considering the different tasks and possibilities facing armies at the time - when it is far from clear which weaponry, force structure, tactics, or operational method can be adopted most successfully - rather than thinking in terms of clear-cut military progress. Cultural factors also play a role in responses to the trial of combat.
The understanding of loss and suffering, at both the level of ordinary soldiers and of societies as a whole, is far more culturally conditioned than emphasis on the sameness of battle might suggest, and variations in the willingness to suffer losses influences both military success and styles of combat. Furthermore, war is not really about battle but about attempts to impose will. Success in this involves far more than victory on the battlefield; that is just a pre-condition of a more complex process. The defeated must be willing to accept the verdict of battle.
This involves accommodation, if not acculturation - something that has been far from constant in different periods and places. Assimilating local religious cults, co-opting local elites, and, possibly, today, offering the various inducements summarised as globalisation, have been the most important means of achieving it over the years. Thus military history becomes an aspect of total history; and victory in war is best studied in terms of its multiple contexts. Any selection of what to include is difficult. The editors in this series have done an excellent job and it has been a great pleasure working with them.
Introduction
The essays in this collection deal with some of the most important facets of Byzantine military organization and attitudes to warfare and violence. In spite of its centrality to the nature and history of medieval eastern Roman culture and civilisation - commonly referred to as ‘Byzantium’ - warfare and all those social and cultural phenomena associated with it have not been a particularly well-studied area of the subject. This reflects the intellectual and scholarly priorities within the field on the one hand and the broader intellectual and academic fashions of the times.
Military administration had received some attention, especially where it intersected with the history of the state, or finance and politics, and general comments on the effectiveness of Byzantine armies and their superior tactics and strategy had appeared in several volumes dealing with the history of warfare in pre-modem times, mostly written by non-Byzantinists. But from the 1960s and 1970s this began slowly to change, and the recognition that warfare was an integral element of this medieval society, a perspective which had long been accepted in western medieval studies and indeed in many other fields of pre-modem history, began to be accepted among historians of the Byzantine world. Interest focused initially on aspects of armament and tactics, or on military politics, as represented by Walter Kaegi’s pioneering efforts regarding the use of archery in Byzantine armies of the middle period and the supposed role of iconoclastic thought in the motivations of soldiers and officers during the eighth and early ninth centuries.
From there, interest broadened to a discussion of military organization, financing and politics and, in recent years, to issues of logistics and resources. Weapons, tactics and strategy were also increasingly evident in the literature, although it is also true that both interest in and awareness of the centrality of warfare to Byzantium remains limited even now. Attitudes to warfare and violence have received a little more attention, in part because it is apparent from certain types of text that there existed a major contradiction between the apparently pacific political theology of the Byzantine church and state, and the pragmatics of having to fight to defend God’s empire on earth.
And finally, study of the ways in which military organization and the army, the need to defend the empire’s interests from hostile action, and the mobilisation and deployment of resources, interacted with Byzantine society at all levels, has now begun to receive the attention it deserves. For it is quite clear that the structure and shape, the very texture of Byzantine society, was both directly influenced and affected by warfare, and at the same time determined the ways in which the court and ‘government’ as well as provincial society were able to respond to these demands.
The modem interest in Byzantine military affairs and in the armies which defended the empire stretches back into the late nineteenth century and beyond. Already by the early twentieth century Sir Charles Oman’s The Art o f War in the Middle Ages had introduced an admittedly somewhat romanticised approach to the middle Byzantine army (the later period was ignored), in which Byzantium is portrayed as the noble victim of a doomed strategic situation, forced constantly to defend its beleaguered empire, seen as a bastion of Christendom and classical culture, against wave after wave of barbarian and infidel - a notion which still informs some popular writing on the history of that empire but which is, perhaps ironically, an attitude which takes its inspiration from the ideas of the Byzantines themselves.2
Nevertheless, Oman based his analysis on the so-called Tactica of the Emperor Leo VI ‘the Wise’ (886-912)3 and a much earlier treatise, upon which Leo’s is largely, but by no means exclusively, based, attributed to the emperor Maurice (582-602), although almost certainly written by one of his leading officers at about the turn of the sixth-seventh century.4
Oman was one of the first scholars to take this genre seriously as a source in an attempt to integrate the history of its army and of warfare into the broader pattern of Byzantine history, although at about the same time two Russian scholars, Uspenskij and Kulakovskij, were also beginning investigations of the ways in which military organization and administration were an integral part of the late Roman and especially of the Byzantine state and its structures.5 Oman was followed by the French scholar Aussaresses, who published a detailed commentary on the late sixthcentury Strategikon ascribed to the Emperor Maurice (582-602),6 but who seems to have been unaware of the equally pioneering work of Yu. Kulakovskij, the Russian Byzantinist and classical scholar, whose edition of a slightly later, tenth-century, military manual, attributed to the Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas (963-969) was accompanied by a short but useful commentary on technical terms, and makes a major contribution to our knowledge of middle Byzantine tactics and armament.7
In contrast, the pioneering work of the German military historian Hans Delbriick, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im Rahmen der politischen Geschichte, published first just after the First World War, presented the empire’s military structures and strategical and tactical arrangements in the context of a broader history of warfare, in which the empire’s longevity was seen as a result not of purely military influences but rather as the outcome of a range of geo-political factors. It is now available in a modem English translation, based upon the second edition published in Berlin in 1923.8 Even Delbriick devoted only twelve pages to Byzantine warfare and military organization, however, although his approach deserves continued attention and appreciation. Unconnected with this publication, and apparently unaware of many of the books already noted, the Greek scholar N. Kalomenopoulos devoted a monograph to the subject in 1937, but the work was heavily marked by romantic Hellenism and a nationalist perspective, and has little more than curiosity value today.9 And after the Second World War the French historian Ferdinand Lot also published a volume on the art of war in the Middle Ages, which has a still useful, but very old-fashioned, chapter on the Byzantine armies.10
Shortly after this the Soviet historian J.S. Rasin produced a somewhat different and often dogmatic, but nevertheless still insightful approach to the relationship between warfare and society, although it is marred, perhaps predictably, by the political and ideological exigencies of its time.11 A number of other writers, both in the field of Byzantine and medieval history, and in that of military history more particularly, have devoted sections or chapters to the armies of the Byzantine period. Some of these are factually inaccurate, however, and present a highly idealised, if not romanticised, picture, founded on somewhat simplistic views of Byzantine society and state organization.12 More recent works have adopted a more balanced perspective both with regard to the value and reliability of the sources as well as to the nature of the Byzantine state and its international context, but the army and soldiers, warfare and violence have, in general, still been treated en passant, and in relation to society and the state as a whole hardly at all.
The great majority of the works discussed so far are, of course, general works, which deal with the Byzantine army as an institution and relatively briefly as part of the broader picture of Byzantine history. But in contrast to the comparative dearth of single monographs on matters related to the army as an institution, there has been a very large number of specialist articles devoted to questions about the relationship between the history of the middle Byzantine state, indeed its very survival after the seventh century, and the efficacy of the empire’s military structures, since it has long been apparent that the survival of the state and the organization of its armies must have been closely causally related. In particular the question of the so-called ‘theme system’ gave rise to an extended debate, begun originally by the Russian scholar Feodor Uspenskij in the late nineteenth century, a debate which continues today, although many of the major issues appear to have been resolved.14
Particularly prominent was the work of the Italian scholar Agostino Pertusi, who was also the first to write on both the administrative, political and socio-cultural impact of warfare in the early Byzantine period, concentrating on post-Roman/early Byzantine Italy in the sixth century.15 Works which dealt with the relationship between Byzantium and its neighbours also stimulated reflection about Byzantine military and naval organization. Eickhoff and Ahrweiler are perhaps two of the most important names associated with work that has stimulated discussion in the area of both land-based and naval warfare and history and led to further debate and the questioning of both sources and traditionally-held views.16
It is worth noting that much of the stimulus for such discussion originated in work carried out on the later Roman army, which had received, and continues to receive, a great deal more attention, and it is largely out of studies of this period that historians of Byzantine military organization and of the relationship between warfare and society have drawn much of their inspiration - specific studies of late Roman institutions provided good examples of the issues that needed to be addressed if similar progress was to be made in understanding Byzantine military structures and developments.17 During the 1980s and 1990s articles on the relationship between the army and the fiscal system, the army and the politics of the state elite or aristocracy, on various aspects of Byzantine military administration, on weaponry and military technology, on strategy, and on the interface between the army and religion, proliferated.18 Until comparatively recently there were no monographs at all on the Byzantine army or its social and political role, but this picture has changed in the last 20 years or so.
In 1984 the present editor published a detailed history of the imperial elite forces from the sixth through to the early tenth century, which touched both upon the nature of the structural continuities and discontinuities from late Roman to Byzantine military organization, as well as the social position of soldiers and the units in question in the broader context of Byzantine history.19 In 1992 Mark Bartusis produced a survey and analysis of the history of the late Byzantine army from the thirteenth to mid-fifteenth century, a subject which had, with a few exceptions, been more-or-less entirely neglected in the literature referred to above.20 This is still the only detailed analysis in any language of the later Byzantine armies in their social, economic and political context (for the period 1204-1453), although new work is forthcoming.21
The first part of the book deals with the army as an instrument of state policy, providing a reignby-reign account of the army in action, its role in the social and political problems of the late empire. The second part analyses thematically the military structures of the late empire, examining mercenaries and their financing, the role and importance of soldier-smallholders and holders of state revenue grants (holders of pronoiai) to support their military service, the place of professional troops, the means of their recruitment, and the role of retainers and peasant militias. He proceeds to analyse campaign organization, tactical and strategic roles and differentiation between unit types, and weapons and equipment.
The book provides an excellent overview, and is especially informative on the vexed question of the pronoia, thought by many historians until recently to represent an element of ‘feudal’ social and economic organization, but shown by Bartusis to be no more than a fiscal device for the appropriation, distribution and consumption of particular types of resource in order to maintain military forces. The volume also examines the important role of soldiers in society and their position in the Byzantine world-view. In 1995 Warren Treadgold also published a book, covering the period from the third to the eleventh century, dealing with late Roman and Byzantine military organization, especially tactical structure, pay and numbers. He attempts to calculate the exact size of units of different categories in the later Roman and middle Byzantine periods and, in conjunction with a few scattered figures in the medieval sources, attempts to extrapolate therefrom exact figures for the military budget of the empire at certain key moments (fifth and sixth centuries, ninth century, eleventh century).
The attempt has not met with general acceptance. While the book contributes little to the discussion of the army in society, the debate on finances and numbers of which it is part continues, and in this respect is worth reading.22 In contrast, in his study of Byzantine military unrest published in 1981, Walter E. Kaegi essayed a survey of the history of Byzantine military intervention in ‘politics’ in the broadest sense, relating the rebellions and mutinies of the armies at different times over the period from the fifth to the ninth century to their conditions of service, the wider political and social situation within the empire, and to the relations pertaining between the East Roman state and its neighbours. Although there are criticisms to be made, this was, and remains, a pioneering work which has contributed a great deal to raising the profile of the study of the Byzantine army in its social and political context.23
In the same year as Treadgold’s volume appeared, Eric McGeer published a new and important edition, with English translation and critical commentary, of the Praecepta of Nikephoros II, first published in 1909 by Kulakovskij.24 The book presents an analysis of the Byzantine army in the 10th century, examines the evolution of tactics in the Byzantine armies from the 9th century onward, the fiscal basis for military service and recruitment, the weaponry and technology of Byzantine armies of the period, and the strategic development of imperial policy from the ninth century. It also presents an excellent analysis and account of the empire’s chief enemies in the east, while the importance of military expansionism at this period for the growth and consolidation of a relatively new magnate elite, which came to dominate the provincial and Constantinopolitan military administration, is also discussed.
McGeer’s excellent analysis provides a clear, concise and up-to-date picture of Byzantine military organization and effectiveness at this period.25 In 1999 the present writer published a volume which addressed the issue of warfare and society directly, and which presents so far the only synthesis in any language of the history of Byzantine military institutions and warfare across the whole period up to 1204, ending where Bartusis begins. The work is concerned with all aspects of imperial military history, but concentrates on social-cultural, administrative and institutional evolution, the ways in which the empire assessed, collected and consumed resources in manpower and materials to support its armies, and how this affected social relations as well as cultural attitudes and behaviour.
Within this framework, the book examines the evolution of the imperial forces from the sixth century, through the great transformation of the seventh and eighth centuries, up to the twelfth century, concentrating in particular on the metamorphosis of institutions, the evolution of strategy and tactics across the period as a whole, and the financing, recruitment and internal tactical administration of such units. In general terms the book underlines the relative lack of uniformity of structures and administrative arrangements which characterises the Byzantine armies of the period. It also emphasises lower numbers for units and divisions, arguing that the logistical base and the nature of communications and transport was insufficient to support the much larger forces which some figures derived from the sources might appear to suggest.
Beginning with a discussion of attitudes to warfare, the question of ‘holy war’ and the relationship between Byzantine Christianity, concepts of empire, and warfare, the book examines development of strategy across the whole period in the context of the changing priorities of the imperial government, including a chapter on the strategic geography of the empire. There follow chapters dealing with the administration of tactical structures - units, divisions, pay and conditions of service and related matters - the fiscal, administrative and logistical arrangements which evolved to support campaigning, the army in battle, including weapons, tactics and morale, the effects of warfare on Byzantine culture, and the social origins and role of soldiers as individuals in the society of the Byzantine world. In 1997 a conference held in Athens on ‘Byzantium at War’ resulted in a collective volume edited by N. Oikonomides, which offers insights into a range of related topics, with chapters by thirteen scholars on different facets of imperial military organization, attitudes to fighting and relations with the empire’s enemies.26
The relationship between landholding, recruitment and the maintenance of the field armies, the logistics of field expeditions, tactical and battlefield structures in theory and practice, the assessment of the field strength of the forces before battle, siege warfare, concepts of fighting and bravery, military intelligence, diplomacy and related issues are all examined, providing excellent insights into the warfare and attitudes to warfare in the period from the ninth to twelfth century. There emerges a picture of a dynamic and responsive military organization which was both flexible but which at the same time represented a particular reservoir of ideological attitudes and preconceptions which determined how Byzantines responded to external threat, and which evolved as society evolved to reflect the changes in the social and economic structures of the empire.
Finally, in 2001 John Birkenmeier’s book on the army of the Komnenian period - one area which had hitherto received no monographic treatment, although scholars who had written on the Komnenoi had devoted some limited space to its military institutions and administration and to the role of the army in society27 - filled an important gap.28 Two very different fields of interest have also generated specialist articles in recent years. The subject of Byzantine attitudes to warfare and violence has proved especially fruitful, given the paradox of a nominally pacific or at least pacifistic Christian culture and its struggle to survive in a hostile political and ideological environment. A useful collective volume was published in 1995, in which a range of articles took up issues such as Byzantine notions of just or holy war, attitudes to killing, the role of the clergy in the army, and so forth,29 while the whole issue of whether Byzantine culture evolved a notion of holy war had already been taken up in the careful analysis of A. Kolia-Dermitzaki. Although her conclusions have not met with general acceptance, the book stimulated an important discussion which continues today.30
In contrast, study of Byzantine weaponry and military technology has lagged, chiefly because of the almost complete absence of archaeological material, although some work - see essays IV, 1 and 2 below - has been done in recent years, and the excellent analysis of the available written sources by Kolias has moved this area forward very considerably.31 Finally, that most crucial of organizational aspects for warfare, the allocation and distribution of resources, logistics, has recently received a growing amount of attention, a subject which necessarily re-integrates the study of military structures with that of the general economic organization of society and state at large.32 The study of Byzantine and late Roman warfare and military organization still has a considerable way to go before it begins to catch up with similar work done on the Roman and Hellenistic periods.33
Apart from the relevant chapters or sections in the military treatises of the sixth and tenth centuries already alluded to, there are some important texts which touch on this area, and which have now begun to receive the attention they merit - notably the short treatises on imperial expeditionary forces compiled in the tenth century, some of the material dating to the ninth century or possibly earlier; and the well-known but extremely problematic accountants’ lists of men and equipment for the expeditions to north Syria in 910-911 and to Crete in 949.34 It is perhaps in this area that there is the greatest scope for comparison between late Roman and Byzantine traditions of military administration, tactics and strategy, as well as the social and political role of ‘the military’ and of soldiers or warriors more broadly, and those of neighbouring societies and cultures.
Again, very little has been done in this area, although it is a potentially rich field of enquiry.35 One area relevant to this general theme which this volume will not address is that of the history of the empire’s naval organization, of warfare at sea, and of marine technology, partly because many of the associated organizational issues are taken up in the literature on military organization in general, and partly because very little specific to the subject has appeared in reproducible article form. This does not mean that the area has been neglected. Quite the contrary - a number of substantial works have appeared, ranging from the monographs by Ahrweiler and Antoniadis-Bibicou in the 1960s36 to that of Eickhoff or Christides.37 Most recently, the whole question of Byzantine marine technology and warfare has been studied in depth, in many respects with radical new conclusions, by Jeffreys and Pryor.38 This is an area that in many respects now requires a volume to itself.
Byzantium was in many ways constantly at war, for it always had an enemy or a potential enemy on one front or another. This fundamental and unavoidable feature of the empire’s existence necessarily inflected its whole history and determined in part at least its social structure and the way in which the state as well as the political system could evolve. Defence was the primary concern of Byzantine rulers and generals. Byzantine military dispositions were necessarily defensive in orientation, a point noted quite clearly by a mid-tenth-century visitor from Italy, the Ambassador Liutprand of Cremona, in respect of the precautions taken to secure Constantinople at night.39
The emphasis placed by Byzantine writers and governments on effective diplomacy is not merely an issue of cultural preference informed by a Christian distaste for the shedding of blood - on the contrary, the continued existence of the state depended upon the deployment of a sophisticated diplomatic arsenal, as the history of Byzantine foreign relations, as well as the theory and practice of Byzantine diplomacy, demonstrate. Diplomacy had a significant military aspect as well. Good relations with the peoples of the western Eurasian steppe were essential to Byzantine interests in the Balkans and Caucasus, because they could also serve as a weapon that might be turned on the enemies of the empire. Such contacts were also a source of information, and considerable efforts were put into the gathering of intelligence which might be relevant to the empire’s defence. Eastern Roman generals and rulers were generally fully aware of the relationship between the allocation and redistribution of resources - soldiers, supplies, equipment, livestock and so forth - and the ability of the empire to ward off hostile military action or to strike back at its enemies.
Logistical resources were administered upon a consistent and well-considered basis. Military handbooks and treatises dating from the sixth to eleventh centuries make it apparent that the imbalance in resources between Byzantium and its enemies was recognised. Commanders of armies in the field were exhorted not to give battle in unfavourable conditions, because this might lead to waste of life and resources. The dominant motif in these works is that it was the Byzantines who were compelled to manoeuvre, to use delaying tactics, to employ ambushes and other strategems to even the odds stacked against them, and that it was quite clearly a main war aim to win without having to fight a decisive battle. Victory could be achieved through a combination of delaying tactics, intelligent exploitation of enemy weaknesses, the landscape, seasonal factors, and diplomacy. Wars were costly, and for a state whose basic income derived from agricultural production, and which remained relatively stable as well as being vulnerable to both natural and man-made disasters, they were to be avoided if at all possible. Manpower was a vital consideration in imperial strategic thinking.
From the Byzantine perspective the empire was always outnumbered, and strategy as well as diplomacy needed to take this factor into account in dealing with enemies. One way of evening the balance was to reduce enemy numbers: delay the enemy forces until they could no longer stay in the field, destroying or removing any possible sources of provisions and supplies, for example, misleading them with false information about Byzantine intentions - these are all methods which the military treatises recommend. Avoiding battle, which was a keystone of Byzantine strategy, would also increase the possibility that the enemy host might be struck by illness, or run out of water and supplies. Going to war was in consequence rarely the result of a planned choice made by emperors or their advisers, for the empire was perpetually threatened from one quarter or another, and was thus in a constant state of military preparedness.
The difference between war and peace in the frontier areas became a matter of the part of the empire in which one found oneself, rather than of the state of the empire as a whole in relation to its neighbours. Recovery of former territories was permanently on the ideological agenda, but efforts to implement such a policy reflected responses to unforeseen advantages gained through victories in battle and the exploitation of favourable circumstances. The actual potential for the reconquest and restoration of lost territories was severely limited. Strategy was determined by the interplay between resources and political beliefs, inflected by ideological pragmatism: most Byzantine warfare was fought not on the basis of delivering a knock-out blow to the enemy, but on that of attempting to reach or maintain a state of parity or equilibrium, though attrition, raid and counter-raid, and destruction of the enemy’s short-term potential.
Members of the government and imperial court may have shared common ideals in respect of their relations with the outside world, but the strategic dispositions of the armies of the later Roman and Byzantine empire were not necessarily arranged with these concerns as a priority. Resources were a key element in strategic thinking, for obvious reasons - armies cannot fight without adequate supplies, equipment, training and shelter. But warfare was not necessarily conducted with a purely material advantage in mind, since ideological superiority played an important role in Byzantine notions of their own identity and role in the order of things. Nor was warfare conducted with any longer-term strategic objective in mind, although a generallyaccepted, if somewhat vague vision of the future held that the Christian Roman empire, as God’s chosen people on earth, was destined eventually to overcome its enemies immediately before the Second Coming.
Any damage to the enemy was a good thing, but some ways of hitting the enemy also carried an ideological value - strategically wasteful attacks against symbolically important enemy fortresses or towns were carried out by all medieval rulers at one time or another, since the short-term propaganda value, associated perhaps also with a raising of morale, was often considered as valuable as any real material gains. By the same token, some theatres were ideologically more important than others. Fighting the barbarians in the Balkans and north of the Danube was regarded as much less prestigious and glorious than combating the religious foe, the Muslims in the East. Warfare was not conducted to gain resources that could then be deployed in a coherent way to further a given strategy, except in the sense that more territory and the wealth that usually accompanied it were desirable in themselves. Rather, the infliction of maximum damage to the enemy’s economy and material infrastructure were clear immediate aims - enslavement or killing of populations, destruction of fortifications and urban installations, devastation of the countryside.
By the same token, measures to protect one’s own side had to be taken, and by the middle of the tenth century both aspects of such warfare had been developed to a high degree. But this is not to suggest that there was never a longer-term strategic aim or ulterior motive at issue - the case of the accelerated eastward expansion in the tenth century and in the slightly later, but closely related conquest of Bulgaria under Basil II, are cases in point. In the first case, through an aggressive imperialism towards the minor Muslim powers in Syria and Jazira, the extension and consolidation of the empire’s territorial strength in the area was clearly an important consideration; in the second case, and partly stimulated by the first development, the creation of a new resource-base for the emperors and Constantinopolitan government, independent of the power and influence of the eastern magnates, was a significant consideration; but it was also in the context of an equally practical decision to eradicate the threat from an independent Bulgaria and re-assert imperial dominance throughout the Balkan regions.
Both facets of these processes reflect specific structural tensions within the Byzantine state, and at the same time they also demonstrate particularly clearly the extent to which the foreign policies and military strategy of a state can reflect power relations within the society as a whole. Warfare for ideological reasons alone was very rare. Clearly, all defensive warfare could be justified on a range of such grounds - the threat to the empire’s territory and population, the challenge to Orthodox rule and God’s appointed ruler, the emperor at Constantinople, challenges to Roman sovereignty, and so forth. Offensive or aggressive warfare was, in the Christian Roman empire, a little more difficult to justify, but it was readily accomplished. But Byzantium survived as long as it did because it was able to raise and efficiently manage the resources necessary to defend itself effectively, intelligently exploit natural frontiers or boundaries in the crisis years of the seventh and eighth centuries, and exploit diplomatic and political relationships thereafter. And whatever the specific details of the process of its political-historical withering away after 1204, the gradual demise of the empire went handin-hand with its declining ability to muster the resources necessary to defend itself. Strategy was, in practical terms, a matter of pragmatic reaction to events in the world around the empire, only loosely informed by the political-ideological imperatives of the Christian Roman empire. In this respect, the political and strategic conditions of existence of the East Roman or Byzantine state rendered a grand strategy in the narrower sense irrelevant - the strategy of the empire was based on maintaining the conditions appropriate to political, cultural and ideological survival.
The contributions to this volume have been organised under seven major headings, partly in order to bring problems and source materials of a similar nature together - this is merely a convenience for the present volume and alternatives could be argued. They were selected on the basis of three criteria, although the choice was not always easy: there are many more essays worthy of inclusion, which had to be omitted because of constraints on space. These criteria were: 1 whether an article made a substantial contribution to the debate in respect of challenging or verifying hitherto unproven or problematic assumptions, 2 whether or not it asked new questions of older material and suggested new ways of approaches to key questions, and 3 whether it offered useful surveys of a particular debate and provided those readers who might be unfamiliar with key aspects of Byzantine warfare and its social and cultural context with reasonable access to the major topics.
Part I deals with ideas and attitudes to warfare, is prefaced by Miller’s excellent short survey of the topic and the relevant literature (Chapter 1), and offers a useful guide to the major issues. The three essays which follow each take up a particular theme, although all focus on how exactly we can define the notion of ‘holy war’, and the extent to which it can be found in Byzantium. All contributions make the point that there was never an explicit and acknowledged concept of holy war in the Byzantine world, yet at the same time, that warfare was justified on the grounds of defending the orthodox faith, the Christian Roman empire and its God-appointed rulers.
Implicitly, therefore, and in the sense that Byzantine warfare was waged, at least in theory, to defend orthodoxy and not for reasons of mere aggression or expansionism (even if the reality was often very different), it was by definition sanctified, since it served God’s chosen people, the Christian, Roman empire, understood in the Byzantine eschatological and apocalyptic literature as Christ’s empire, an empire which would ultimately be victorious over its earthly enemies, before the Second Coming. Part II deals with financing armed forces and recruitment. This is a complex area, dependent in part on a series of often obscure technical documents, and one which has been the focus of a great deal of attention, since it was to certain reforms attributed to the Emperor Heraclius that the salvation of the empire was ascribed by many scholars writing in the period before the 1950s and in some cases until much more recently.
Rather than repeat the debate, however, I have chosen here to reproduce a series of essays, which more or less encapsulate contemporary ideas on these subjects and will provide readers with both the background literature to the earlier discussions as well as concise analyses and accounts of the relevant sources and the ways in which the evidence can be interpreted. Study of military financing and warfare inevitably goes hand-in-hand with study of state finance and the economy in general, so it is not surprising that these articles also reflect substantial advances in our understanding of the military aspects as our knowledge and appreciation of state taxation and resourcemanagement has improved.
Three key developments stand out: first, that the development of the so-called ‘military lands’ of the middle Byzantine period was probably a long and patchy process which did not reach maturity until the later ninth century, by which time it was already becoming obsolete in terms of the needs of the state - Haldon (Chapter 5), with a somewhat divergent argument in Oikonomides (Chapter 6); second, that the government tried to deal with issues of control over resources and manpower by introducing what amounted in effect to a ‘privatization’ by the imperial government of fiscal lands, in order to protect the tax-base from the incursions of the political and social elite; and third, that the attribution of fiscal revenues, whether on a large or a small scale, should not be understood as a process of ‘feudalisation’ in the simple sense of an abandonment of central authority, but on the contrary as a carefully-monitored, although easily-abused, means of exploiting the available resources in revenues and manpower to maintain military effectiveness in the provinces - Magdalino (Chapter 7).
Part III addresses issues of tactics and strategic organization, and the contributions generally show how Byzantine defensive strategy evolved a permeable frontier that could soak up enemy resources while allowing the defenders to regroup and deal with invaders on ground chosen by Byzantine generals - Kaegi (Chapter 10), Obolensky (Chapter 13), and Arvites (Chapter 14). The aggressive expansionism of the later tenth century changed this, but at the same time resulted in a substantial change in tactical structures, with consequences for both finance and the command structure of the older ‘thematic’ system - McGeer (Chapter 15), McGrath (Chapter 16) and Kaegi (Chapters 11 and 12).
Associated thematically with these contributions, Part IV, dealing with weapons and armour, illustrates both the limitations of the evidence - very little archaeology, in comparison with either the preceding Roman period or the medieval west - as well as the relative flexibility of Byzantine military culture in the face of new techniques and innovations from outside the empire, especially the Eurasian steppe zone. Part V takes up a range of issues that have only recently found favour in discussions about either Byzantine or ancient and medieval warfare. The extraction, distribution and consumption of resources for waging war, both in respect of manpower as well as livestock, food, water and so forth, is a crucial, indeed determining factor in the outcome of war.
Evidence for Byzantine logistical arrangements is sufficient to reveal a sophisticated and relatively efficient system, the existence of which goes some way toward explaining the empire’s survival, against the odds in many respects, in the crisis period from the middle of the seventh century to the middle or later eighth century - Haldon (Chapter 20) and Kaegi (Chapter 19) - and which also accounts for its resilience at a later period, when it was strategically as well as economically at a substantial disadvantage in comparison with its Balkan and Anatolian neighbours. Part VI deals with fortifications and siege warfare - a subject on which the literature is still very limited, again largely a reflection of a lack of sufficient archaeological data, although the bringing together and analysis of the vast amount of scattered archaeological information from many reports for sites across the late Roman and Byzantine worlds is certainly a desideratum.
A few monographs have appeared on the subject, and a number of technical essays in archaeological journals, but I have chosen here to reproduce two contributions that look at the problem of siege warfare, rather than the material evidence for fortifications as such, through the eyes of Byzantine texts.40 And finally, Part VII, deals again with a relatively under-discussed subject, namely the role of spies, on the one hand and - because the two were often assumed to overlap, and certainly did so on many occasions - prisoners-of-war. Byzantine attitudes to prisoners-ofwar varied very much according to context, as we might expect, and pragmatism founded on a broadly philanthropic approach to captives was the norm.
In theory prisoners were to be treated honourably, although in practice this depended very much on the exigencies of the moment. Prisoners were regularly exchanged with both Balkan and eastern enemy powers, yet massacres of prisoners were also not unusual, sometimes intended as an especially pointed warning or threat to an enemy, sometimes because of circumstances - the need to move quickly and to avoid burdening one’s own forces with additional mouths to feed, for example.41 Prisoners also played a role in ceremonial, of course, representing a tangible symbol of imperial victory and enemy defeat - Simeonova (Chapter 25). Spies represented, in contrast, a more complicated issue.
Byzantine military treatises speak of spies as a regular, usual and entirely necessary aspect of warmaking, but were also keenly aware of the dangers of spies in one’s own camp - whether traitors, or prisoners who had deliberately surrendered in order to gather intelligence, or passing merchants. While the information to be gleaned from the sources is not particularly full, enough evidence can be extracted to give some idea of how spies were employed and how they were regarded and treated at certain periods - Koutrakou (Chapter 24).42
Byzantium made war against its enemies over a period of some 700 years, from the seventh to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this sense, we might also assert that war made Byzantium what it was. The essays collected in this volume represent work over the last twenty five or so years on many of the key aspects of Byzantine warfare, and will offer the reader a way into some of the most important areas of the study of Byzantium. The study of the Byzantine military, of warfare and of organising for war, in all their complexity, can only be properly understood in the context of Byzantine culture, society and economy as a whole, and it is hoped that the essays that follow will provide the reader with an adequate introduction.
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