The Byzantine Art of War

274 Pages·2013·5.38 MB·English

by  Michael Decker

THE BYZANTINE ART OF WAR

MICHAEL J. DECKER

WESTHOLME
Yardley
This book is dedicated to my wife Katy, Will, and Joy
Frontispiece: Sixth century relief showing Roman troops of the V Macedonian legion. (Rheinisches
Landesmuseum, Trier, Germany) ©2013 Michael J. Decker
Maps by T. D. Dungan. ©2013 Westholme Publishing All rights reserved under International and Pan-
American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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CONTENTS
List of Maps
Introduction
1. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
2. LEADERSHIP
3. ORGANIZATION, RECRUITMENT, AND TRAINING
4. EQUIPMENT AND LOGISTICS
5. STRATEGY AND TACTICS
6. ENEMIES OF BYZANTIUM
7. THE BYZANTINE ARMY AT WAR
8. THE BYZANTINE ART OF WAR
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Maps
1. The Balkans
2. The Eastern Frontier, Fourth–Seventh Centuries
3. The Empire in the Sixth Century with Regional Armies
4. Rome's Desert Frontier
5. The Themes ca. 688 and ca. 900
6. The Empire ca. 780
7. The Themes ca. 1025
8. The Empire of the Komenoi
9. Medieval Italy and the Balkans
10. Successor States ca. 1218
11. The Road Network in Anatolia
INTRODUCTION
ON MAY 29,1453, the twenty-one-year-old Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II led his
80,000-man army through the breach in the walls of the ancient capital of eastern
Rome, Constantinople, where many of the 7,000 defenders lay dead. The
dramatic assault, made possible by one of the earliest and most impressive
displays of gunpowder artillery, punched through the hitherto impregnable
fortifications, and led to the death of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI
Palaiologos, who perished in the assault; his body was never found. Greek
legend holds that at the end of days, Constantine will return and rise from the
floor of the great cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to lead the Greek nation
to final victory and the restoration of God's Roman Empire on earth—the
Christian Byzantine state. In the spring of 1453, though, the noose that finally
strangled the last vestiges of Greek independent political life from the Balkans
was long in the tightening. Since 1356 the Ottoman Turks had made Edirne, in
eastern Thrace, their capital and steadily strengthened their hold on the empire's
former European lands. The Byzantines had been fatally weakened by the
sacking of the capital of Constantinople two and half centuries prior in 1204 by
the Christian crusaders from the West. This date marks the effective end of
Byzantium as a major military and pan-Mediterranean power; after the sack of
the capital, Latin warlords and their Venetian allies partitioned the empire while
disparate Byzantine rulers regrouped and attempted to mount an effective
resistance. Either date, 1204 or 1453, is arguably an appropriate one for marking
the end of the Roman Empire. Although for centuries prior to either conquest the
vast majority of the empire's inhabitants spoke Greek, and we refer to them as
Byzantines, they called themselves Romans and viewed their empire as the state
once ruled by Augustus or Trajan. After all, they were the direct inheritors of the
Roman Empire's territory in the eastern Mediterranean, continued its
administrative and legal framework without interruption, and, most important for
our purposes, relied on the military apparatus that evolved from the old Roman
legionary armies of antiquity.
The most striking thing about the Byzantine military, and Byzantine society
at large, was its remarkable longevity. These medieval Romans, with their Greek
speech and Christian faith, clung tenaciously to their culture in the face of
constant internal and external pressures. Warfare, although never embraced by
the majority of Byzantines as a virtue in the way that many western peoples
viewed it, was nonetheless an essential component of the Byzantine experience.
Foreign enemies were constantly at the door and they came from all directions,
especially at the end of the empire's existence, when westerners threatened the
shrinking borders of the state as much as did eastern and northern peoples. It is
impossible to find anything like the pax Romana of the emperor Augustus and
his successors, when Rome presided over one of the more tranquil periods of
European history, having slaughtered most serious foes and bloodily dispatched
of entire races in the process. However it was won, no parallel time of quietude
ever descended on the Byzantine realm. Although the citizens of the empire
probably fully expected a period of peace following the end of the brutal,
apocalyptic struggle with Persia in the 620s, their hopes were sorely dashed
when the ravenous armies of Arabia descended on the eastern provinces and rent
them from the imperial grasp forever. In a matter of decades the Arab foes and
bearers of the kernel of a new religion, Islam, were battering at the gates of
Constantinople itself, and the empire had lost most of its territory to the Arabs or
other invaders.
The survival of the embattled state and its much-reduced armed forces is one
of the miracles of history. Far outclassed in terms of manpower and wealth and
subjected to military challengers on multiple fronts, the Roman Empire of
Byzantium nevertheless survived the assaults they received in the Dark Ages and
emerged with a transformed state and society. The army, for which the
bureaucracy and its tax system existed, both absorbed the blows of its enemies
and dealt more shocks through rebellions and internal discord that marked the
seventh through ninth centuries. Despite the upheavals, societal trauma, and the
loss of so much territory and manpower, the Byzantine army adapted and fought
on. By the time the Macedonian dynasty, the greatest of the medieval empire,
came to power in the form of the usurper Basil I (867–86) the Byzantines were
poised to embark on a two centuries-long program of expansion. Their reformed
armies pushed the frontier into the borderlands of the caliph and reestablished
Byzantium as the predominant power in the Mediterranean world. No state in
European history absorbed such losses, survived, and revived to such
prominence. At the center of this revival was the army, and the collective action
of society, emperors, commanders, and soldiery make for one of the more
compelling stories in world history.
In the pages that follow, I provide an overview of the basics of the medieval
Roman army, including organization, logistics, armament, tactics, and strategy
as well as delve into how these were employed. Although it is doubtful that the
Byzantines ever thought of war in terms of grand strategy or professed military
doctrines based on perceived universal experiences in war, one can clearly detect
patterns to their approach to warfare with the benefit of hindsight. I call this the
Byzantine Art of War.

THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN for a nonspecialist audience and students of military
history and has been spurred by my own interest in the subject and by the
enthusiasm for which my lectures on the topic at the University of South Florida
have been received. In its crafting I am greatly indebted to the work of
outstanding scholars the world over, especially John Haldon, who has pioneered
much work on the Byzantine army, Timothy Dawson, Walter Kaegi, James
Howard-Johnston, Taxiarches Kolias, Eric McGeer, Philip Rance, Dennis
Sullivan, Warren Treadgold, and a host of other accomplished academics too
numerous to mention. The reader wishing to know more will find the references
necessary to pursue specific topics at their leisure—for this reason, and because I
anticipate an audience whose primary language is English, I have endeavored to
supply as many English-language secondary sources and translations as possible.
I reference these in the notes. Original language sources may be found in the
Abbreviations and Bibliography. Finally, in an effort to produce a text as
unencumbered as possible, I have limited diacritics in transliterating foreign-
language names, terms, and sources and restricted the number of notes. I trust
that those who wish to explore the subject further will find the bibliography an
adequate gateway into a vast and growing body of literature on Byzantine
warfare.