RICHARD ABELS’ CAREER-long emphasis on the intelligence and planning undertaken by Anglo-Saxon military leaders, especially Alfred the Great, has played an important role in providing a strong basis for a proper depiction of early medieval history. In helping to undermine the once traditional view that warfare was dominated by irrational and ignorant barbarian warriors, as pictured in poetic fantasies, Abels has advanced our understanding that Anglo-Saxon England was a part of the Late Antique world and not a mere chapter in the once popular Germanic Dark Age. Although he and I have disagreed on various points concerning the role of imitatio imperii in regard to early medieval military leadership, we do agree that Alfred's efforts, like those of Charlemagne, required in-depth planning and high levels of organization. Moreover, despite his intellectual acuity and organizational ability, Alfred, like Charlemagne, was not always successful.

It is widely known by medievalists, as a result of frequent scholarly and popular discussions of the Song of Roland, that Charlemagne undertook a failed invasion of the Iberian peninsula in 778. It is important to emphasize, however, that the capture of the Carolingian baggage train and the annihilation of Charlemagne's rearguard by Basque forces on 15 August 778 at Roncevalles, the focus of the Song of Roland, was, from a military perspective, a relatively minor incident and had no bearing on Carolingian military operations in Spain or beyond. It is well-documented that, several weeks prior to the debacle at Roncevalles, Charlemagne had recognized that the campaign, which he had launched in the spring of 778 to take control of the region north of the Ebro River, had failed. The purpose of the present study is two-fold. Initially, I will examine why the campaign failed by identifying the weaknesses in Charlemagne's strategy. Secondly, I will explore the impact of the failure in 778 on future Carolingian planning regarding military operations in Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian peninsula.

Background

By the end of 776, Charlemagne had crushed a revolt in northern Italy and had secured the conquest of the Saxon region, as then understood. The latter effort was accompanied by the large-scale conversion to Christianity of the Saxon leadership, as well as of many inhabitants in the region.

From the reign of the emperor Diocletian (AD 285–305) until the development of firearms in the fourteenth century, the essentials of military organization, strategy, and tactics in Europe display a startling continuity. This reflects in part the enduring dominance of Roman military topography – the surviving infrastructure of fortified cities, fortresses, ports, and roads created in the third to fifth centuries. After the gradual dissolution of imperial power in the western half of the empire during the fifth century, those responsible for military decision-making in Rome's successor states had neither the inclination nor the resources to eliminate Roman walls. Like Byzantine emperors in the east, the Romano-German rulers differed little from the later Roman emperors in the means they used to control and make effective use of these assets. Continuity also reflects the unchallenged superiority of ancient military science, which decision-makers could find in books such as Vegetius’ Concerning Military Matters and the substantial contact between the West and Byzantium which stimulated the exchange and study of ancient military techniques.

There is widespread agreement that during the last quarter of the third century the Roman imperial government initiated what ultimately would be a vast program of military construction throughout large parts of the Empire in the West and most particularly in Gaul. These efforts resulted in a great many previously unwalled or poorly defended urbes being converted at great expense and with considerable social disruption into fortress cities with extensive defenses and supporting construction, with many walls reaching in excess of ten meters in height. Regarding Gaul, the focus of this study, there appears to be a rough consensus that “It was probably Probus (276–80) who instituted the policy of fortifying the western Continental urban centers.” These military construction efforts were carried on throughout the fourth, and in some places can be identified even into the early fifth, century. The building process continued until some 85 per cent, at least, of the 125 previously largely unfortified, or as contemporaries evaluated the situation, inadequately defended, cities located within the borders of the “hexagon” of Gaul had been converted into urban fortresses. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what would appear to have been the military thinking that undergirded the effort focused on the fortification of urban sites in Gaul, and to ascertain whether this lengthy and very expensive process of construction merits consideration as a “grand strategy.”

Why Fortify the Cities of Gaul?

For a considerable time, scholars have argued that the third century and especially its second half was rent by a massive “crisis” that threatened the very existence of the Empire, and that this was true especially for Gaul. Today, the idea of a third-century crisis is no longer as prevalent or as strongly advocated as once was the case. Nevertheless, the supposed destructiveness of trans-Rhenish barbarian invasions remains a vital part of a model of third-century collapse. Luttwak, for example, in the most recent edition of his The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, maintains his previous views and claims that “the catastrophic invasions of the mid-third century” by trans-Rhenish barbarians are to be regarded as a crucial aspect of imperial decline if not, in fact, its fundamental cause.

In the West during the Middle Ages and beyond, the idea of empire was driven by the history of Rome as understood from the works of Roman historians and the survival of imperial material civilization. Although the Roman experience, in general, served as the imperial touchstone for Europeans, it was the later or more specifically the Christian Roman empire, which gradually emerged following the edict of toleration issued by emperor Constantine I (r. 306–37) at Milan in 312, that served to animate the future of the imperial idea. A matrix of images of the later Roman empire in the West was vitalized by the famous ‘coronation’ of Charlemagne (d. 814) at Rome on Christmas day 800. Subsequently, the efforts of the Ottonian dynasty, especially under Otto the Great (r. 936–73), maintained this process, first in regard to the so-called German empire and later (as Len Scales discusses in Chapter 10) the Holy Roman Empire.

The imperial idea was a subject of ongoing interest. This was especially the case in regard to those medieval rulers and their advisers who worked diligently to connect Rome's successor states to its erstwhile empire through what scholars have come to call imitatio imperii. Of importance to this process of maintaining a more or less close identification with the imperial past were a variety of religious ceremonies. These included traditional Latin prayers for the health of the ruler and his family, and for the success of his administration of the state. Perhaps the most elaborate ceremonies were those quasi-religious efforts engineered to celebrate military victories. Coinage, both denominationally with the continued use of solidi and denarii and in terms of images and legends, was yet another means by which the governments of Rome's early medieval successor states consciously maintained both ideological and material continuity with the imperial past.

The Later Roman Legacy

In a more mundane sense, and especially in Gaul, the later Roman empire left an enduring material and institutional inheritance to the Middle Ages. This included a large number of fortified cities and towns, a magnificent system of roads and bridges and excellent port facilities. However, the most important imperial legacy, at least from an administrative perspective, was the civitas, which later was often called the pagus (pl. pagi).

Introduction

A dearth of sound quantitative information generally is recognized to be a serious problem faced by scholars who try to understand the history of the Late Antique West. In this context, demography surely is among those areas of study in which the substantial lack of statistically significant data is felt most keenly. As a result, estimates regarding population sizes in the Late Antique era remain highly controversial. The same may be said for the size of urban populations and for the urban districts (civitates) or rural administrative districts (pagi) of which, in each case, the fortified city (urbs) was the capital or administrative center. In light of the dearth of reliable statistical data, it is even rare to find a consensus in regard to whether a particular population was growing or declining over time, or, for that matter, whether it saw no significant change.

Perhaps the most controversial area of Late Antique demographic research or, at least, the most frequently debated focuses on the size of so-called “barbarian” groups, which in the past were often referred to as “tribes.” This is especially the case for those who moved from beyond the frontiers of the empire and settled within its borders. For example, there seems to be no general consensus as to the order of magnitude of the population of barbarians, as a whole, during the period from ca. 300 to ca. 500.

Much is still controversial regarding the Norman conquest of England. Among important contested matters are the respective sizes of the forces deployed by Duke William and King Harold at Hastings. The traditional view that William’s army numbered in the 7,000 range rests on neither a contemporary nor a later source, and in my opinion it is untenable. By contrast, the Chronicle of Saint-Maixent provides a figure in the neighbourhood of 14,000 men for William’s total force. This is the only figure in any source that is not absurdly large. More importantly, the Chronicle was patronized by the court of Viscount Aimeri of Thouars in whose mouvance the monastery of St Maixent was to be found. The grandfather of the patron, also named Aimeri and also viscount of Thouars, played a leadership role at the battle of Hastings and was a major adviser to the Norman duke on the eve of his coronation as king of the English. In addition, the elder Aimeri was married to Ainor, William the Conqueror’s sister.

Obviously, in the wake of the Norman conquest, the family of the viscounts of Thouars and those men who served in their military households during the decades after Hastings had a far better opportunity than most to have accurate information regarding the size of William’s army. The men of Thouars, whose telling and retelling of their experiences became part of the historical memory of the viscomital court, later to be recorded in the Chronicle, had no reason to exaggerate in an upward manner the size of the Conqueror’s forces. Traditionally, among writers in both the ancient and the medieval West, the greater glory was regarded as going to a comparatively small force that defeated a larger one. If the Chronicle were to have been exaggerating, the likelihood was that it would have provided a dramatically lower figure for William’s army.

Regarding William’s effectives at Hastings, perhaps as many as 1,000 men were deployed at Pevensey to hold the fortifications there. Other troops were deployed to guard the fortifications at Hastings. In addition, several of William’s ships had been blown off course while crossing the Channel, and the troops whom they carried did not participate in this early phase of the campaign.

Introduction

For more than a century, specialists in medieval German history have labored diligently to establish a Sonderweg or special route for the history of the early medieval German kingdom. These efforts have focused, in their initial phase, on distinguishing and distancing the institutions of the Saxon monarchy (919–1024) in Francia orientalis from those of the French kingdom, i.e., Francia occidentalis. While often recognizing continuity between Carolingian institutions in the West into the tenth century and beyond, specialists in the history of the German lands have tried either to deny or to diminish the supposed role of continuity and even influence of their mutual Carolingian predecessors on the development of Francia orientalis.

According to specialists in this period of German history, the early Saxon kingdom was not an heir to secular institutions of Carolingian origin. Rather, all important aspects of governance are seen to have been based upon personal ties (Personenverbände) between the king and the great men of the regnum. In this context, royal “friendship” or amicitia with the great nobles was the technique used by the Saxon kings to rule over their kingdom. The concomitant argument is that the Ottonian kingdom did not possess a central administration (Verwaltung). Indeed, there is considerable controversy about whether it is even possible to describe the Ottonian kingdom as a state (Staat).

Saxon Military Forces

Since the late nineteenth century, specialists in German history, and particularly in German military history, have identified the contingents of secular and ecclesiastical magnates as dominating the armies that were commanded by the king.

Early in the 990s, the Norman ruler Richard I (d. 996) convinced Dudo, a canon of Saint Quentin, to write a history of the Norse who had settled in the western part of the French kingdom. Much history, of course, had been written during the previous two centuries that treated the activities of the Vikings and their posterity. The stories that related the invasions of the regnum Francorum from Scandinavia, the Norse settlement in Rouen and in the other civitates of Lugdunensis secunda were well known, as were the military activities of others of their Viking brethren. This history, however, had been produced at places such as Saint Bertin, Fulda, Prüm, and Reims, and the authors of these works portrayed the Norse in an exceptionally negative light. Indeed, a common epithet for them was pirates. It was time, Richard concluded, for the Northmen to have their story told in the way he wanted, a new story that would bring both glory and honor to his people.

Focus on the activities of a particular gens, whatever other motives might have been at issue for both patrons and authors, was hardly a new idea. As the first millennium of the Christian era was drawing to a close, this historical genre appears once again to have been gaining in popularity. For example, Widukind of Corvey had completed his Rerum Gestarum Saxonicarum a decade or more before Richard made contact with Dudo.

In their recent “Preliminary Discussion of Images of Antiquity and Altered Reality in Medieval Military History,” Richard Abels and Stephen Morillo suggest that some modern scholars have been seriously misled by the authors of various early medieval narrative texts. These authors, writing in Latin, often use traditional Roman military terminology and even incorporate imperial ideas about warfare into their narratives when describing operations undertaken by medieval commanders. The fundamental thesis presented by Abels and Morillo is that there was little continuity with regard to materia militaria in the West from the later Roman empire into what earlier generations of historians termed the “Dark Ages.” In postulating this thesis, Abels and Morillo ignore what has come to be the dominant pattern of periodization, i.e. the Late Antique, which is supposed to have lasted from c. A.D. 300 or even earlier to c. A.D. 1000 and perhaps even later. As will be seen below, this new construction of Western periodization, at least in regard to the continental mainland of the western half of the Roman empire, is seen by most specialists in this field as a viable replacement for the once dominant but now untenable “Dark Ages,” which often has been dominated by a racialist-motivated notion of Germanentum. The construction of Germanentum itself frequently resulted in the serious misrepresentation of early medieval texts. Not having heeded the Late Antique construct, Abels and Morillo are misled with regard to a broad spectrum of fundamental continuities from the later Roman empire to the early Middle Ages.

When, in 1954, J.-F. Verbruggen, who studied under Professor F. L. Ganshof at the University of Ghent, published De Krijgskunst in West-Europa in de Middeleeuwen, IXe tot Begin XIVe Eeuw, it was widely regarded as a pathbreaking work. Ultimately, it received two English editions. In his 1956 review of De Krijgskunst, Bryce D. Lyon, America's leading specialist in medieval Flemish history for a half-century, was not uncritical of Verbruggen's treatment of some topics. Nevertheless, he concluded very fairly, “Verbruggen has written military history as it should be written, and the reviewer, for one, looks forward to his next study.”

Lyon has been, and remains, an important scholar in regard to Flemish and especially Anglo-Flemish medieval history. He has maintained very close relations with the Pirenne historical school at Ghent and collaborated with Adriaan Verhulst. Lyon's teacher, Carl Stephenson, studied with Pirenne. Lyon, himself, not only has worked closely and collaborated in various scholarly endeavors with Pirenne's students, e.g. Ganshof, but also with Pirenne's son, an important intellectual figure in his own right. At least two of Lyon's students, including the present author, like Verbruggen, studied with Professor Ganshof. In 1988, a year after the publication of his seminal article, “The Role of Cavalry in Medieval Warfare,” in one of Belgium's most prestigious journals, the University of Ghent awarded Bryce Lyon the degree “Doctor Honoris Causa in de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte” for the ensemble of his contributions to the study of medieval history, in general, and medieval Flemish history in particular.