Re: Bachrach vs Halsall - Early Medieval Warfare

On May 24, 8:48 pm, "David Read" <david2...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Extract from "Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450-900" by Guy
Halsall. p.130-131.

"The armies of the late Roman Empire may also stand as a comparison. The
empire's total standing army has been estimated at around 400, 000 men. This
total was spread over a huge area and, after the economic crises (the
seriousness of which admittedly varied form region to region) of the third
century, had to be dispersed throughout the provinces for ease of supply and
maintenance. Large concentrations of troops of troops may have been
comparatively rare. At Strasbourg in 357, Julian's army was 13,000 strong,
according to Ammianus. Although Ammianus was not present, he may have had
access to reliable official documents. The army defeated by the Goths at
Adrianople in 378, in a catastrophe regarded as a second Cannae by
contemporaries, has been estimated as about 20,000-30,000 men The armies
assembled during the fourth-century Roman civil wars may have been of this
order of magnitude. Largest of all, probably, was Julian's expeditionary
force assembled for the invasion of Persia, allegedly totalling 60, 0000
men. This, however, from contemporary accounts was an extraordinary
concentration of soldiers, and Ammianus tells stories of the incredible
scale of the logistical preparations for the venture. Yet the Roman state
was enormous, even in the fourth century, more complex than that of any
successor state (even the Byzantine after About 620), and with the ability
to extract grain produce of fertile provinces such as Egypt and North Africa
as tax to feed its armed forces. It was also a more urban society. Yet even
here, many successful campaigns were waged with small armies of a couple of
thousand men. Thus in comparison with the late Roman state, it seems most
unlikely that any post-Roman kingdom could raise a campaigning army of
between 10,000 and 20,000 troops.

Finally, we may consider late medieval English armies. In spite of
contemporary chronicle estimates which occasionally place field armies in
the region of 40,000 men, the largest recorded in detailed administrative
documents, which of coursed are far more plentiful than in the early Middle
Ages, numbers 32,303, although even this army may not have been all
assembled before Calais, as the muster roll claims, but spread through the
English territories in France. Most field armies appear to have been much
smaller than that. The muster rolls reveal large expeditionary armies of
between 9,000 and 20,000 men. Again, we must think of the broader context..
Late medieval England was more populous, more urbanised, more developed in
terms of agricultural techniques and production, had a more advanced economy
and was a more complex state, than any kingdom of the period 450-900.

A few other points militate against large armies in this period. The first
is the distances over which wars were fought. This is clearly illustrated in
the eighth century campaigns of Charles Martel, his sons and grandsons.,
Armies campaigned over vast distances, sometimes from one side of the
_regnum francorum_ to the other, with frequent occasions when more than one
campaign was launched per year. In 786-87 alone, Charlemagne travelled 3,500
km or more. Apart from the time taken to assemble such forces (which,
obviously, would increase with the size of the army), we need to consider
the speed with which these forces moved. Speed of movement is related to the
size of the column of troops on the march, a column increased
correspondingly by attendant supply wagons and pack animals as the size of
the army grows. A force of 5,000 horsemen riding two abreast, would, at 2..5
metres per horse, have taken up over 6km (nearly 4 miles) of road. Adding
spare horses, pack animals and wagons to the above (but no foot soldiers,
attendants and other camp followers other than those needed to drive the
supply wagons and animals), would probably about double the length of the
column. We should, in addition, consider the time taken for the column to
leave camp at the start of a days' march and arrive at a new campsite at the
end of the day and the fact that 12 km probably means over an hour's
difference (more if one included wagons and foot soldiers) between the head
of the column and the end of the rear guard. This implies two to three hours
out of the day just to leave and enter camp. We should, furthermore,
remember that Rigunth's party of about 4,000 (admittedly with a probably
larger wagon train) managed only 5 miles in a day. Even with these generous
parameters (minimal supply train and numbers of camp followers) an army of
20,000-40,000, such as Bachrach envisages, could, like some Napoleonic
armies,  have barely covered 10  miles a day. All this argues that forces
much larger than a few thousand would be incompatible with the speed and
distances covered in eighth century warfare."


One more problem with the big armies is that they need much more in
the terms of a pure administration and command structure. Taking into
an account that the units from various areas had different strenght
and very little experience of fighting as a single greater entity or
even simply fighting (as schema of the peasant armies implies),
arranging them into a battle formation and controlling them during the
battle should be extremely difficult task unless this army sticks to
the very basics (stays still waiting for opponent's attack).

Then, of course, it is not clear who and how manages baggage train in
the army raised based on the alledged 'mobilization' schema. Each
soldier comes with his supplies and draft or pack animal but how all
these animals are handled on teh march? AFAIK, there is nothing in the
known regulations (which should be suppossedly taken literally) about
any centralization of this issue or lord's obligation to provide
animals, carts and train drivers for the freemen of his county. Which
means that unless these pools of the small landowners are providing
not only the soldiers but also the drivers (nothing in regulations
about this), these soldiers on the march should be acting as the
drivers. Would this be a practical arrangement?
.

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