Early medieval militarisation

Ellora Bennett, Guido M. Berndt, Stefan Esders, Laury Sarti, Ellora Bennett, Guido M. Berndt, Stefan Esders, Laury Sarti

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781526138620
• eBook ISBN: 9781526138644
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The societies of ancient Europe underwent a continual process of militarisation, and this would come to be a defining characteristic of the early Middle Ages. The process was neither linear nor mono-causal, but it affected society as a whole, encompassing features like the lack of demarcation between the military and civil spheres of the population, the significance attributed to weapons beyond their military function and the wide recognition of martial values. Early medieval militarisation assembles twenty studies that use both written and archaeological evidence to explore the phenomenon of militarisation and its impact on the development of the societies of early medieval Europe. The interdisciplinary investigations break new ground and will be essential reading for scholars and students of related fields, as well as non-specialists with an interest in early medieval history.

1
Introducing early medieval militarisation, 400–900

Laury Sarti, Ellora Bennett, Guido M. Berndt and Stefan Esders

The military in the Frankish world, Anglo-Saxon England and Lombard Italy

Europe at the turn from Antiquity to the Middle Ages underwent a gradual evolution that may be characterised as militarisation. Depending on the geographic situation, historic background and military organisation, this process progressed at different rates and to different degrees. In north-eastern Gaul, for example, Romans and non-Romans lived for centuries in close contact both east and west of the Roman frontier. While the empire expanded, its frontiers were increasingly fortified. Armies were recruited from the population both inside and outside of the Roman territory, while those without Roman civic rights became part of the auxiliaries (foederati, laeti) and received such rights at the end of their service.¹ Thus, the provinces of Gaul and Germany created large recruiting pools for the Roman army. While other provinces paid the recruitment tax in gold as a substitute, it was the Gallic provinces that furnished ‘bodies’.² Despite laws forbidding the marriage of soldiers,³ many among those based in the border regions established families. These families lived in nearby canabae or vici, which soon became also the homes of farmers, artisans and tradesmen. The border that has attracted most scholarly attention is the north-western Rhine–Danube frontier which was home to a large number of military camps, among which places such as the castra Bonnensia (Bonn) or Vindobona (Vienna) grew into impressive settlements. From the later fourth century, these communities began to bury rather than cremate their dead and to furnish graves with weapons, one among the most impressive cemeteries being Krefeld-Gellep (between modern Duisburg and Düsseldorf).⁴ In contrast to the more central regions of the Roman Empire, this border population lived in close proximity to the potential threat of military violence and the military itself, a living condition that had only become the norm for Gaul's more central regions since the end of the pax Romana and the breakdown of the Roman limes in 406/7.

How did these changes impact society? While the sources describing life in Roman Gaul in further detail are rather meagre, subsequent testimonies portray a world that was increasingly characterised by military conflicts: the Goths expanded from southern Toulouse, where they had been settled in 418, while regular Burgundian inroads took place in the east, and Frankish conquests affected the north. The emerging kingdoms surrounded the remaining Roman territories, including the so-called kingdom of Soissons, which around 486 was conquered by the young king Clovis I and incorporated into the Frankish realm.⁵ Paradoxically, the late Roman separation between military and civil office-holding had not only allowed the senatorial aristocracy to survive and maintain its civil values well into the fifth century, it also offered non-Romans the opportunity to advance a faster career within the military sector alone and to establish themselves as a new elite.⁶ While most of the barbarian kingdoms emerged within already highly militarised late Roman societies, it is only in the face of the fifth-century confrontations that we also have evidence for the militarisation of the Roman senatorial elite.⁷

The Frankish kingdoms that absorbed most of Gaul over the course of the sixth century display a great variety of phenomena that are relevant here. The sources reveal a society wherein military conflicts could be fought out more or less anywhere, where forces were regularly assembled ad hoc from the local population and office-bearers were in charge of both military and civil functions. The kings retained small professional troops referred to in our sources as antrustiones and apparently organised as a numerus,⁸ which could be complemented by the recruitment of troops on a large scale from among the cities of Gaul.⁹ It also appears that some parts of the late Roman army based in Gaul became integrated within the Frankish army along with their military lands and resources.¹⁰ The most striking feature of militarisation, however, is the fact that most of the law-codes drafted in the sixth and seventh centuries under Frankish rule presuppose a general obligation of the free adult men to perform military service.¹¹ As it is inconceivable that men were sent to war without prior military training, the potential recruitment of the entire male population premises that this had somewhat become part of every boy's education. Although a document contained in the Formularies of Angers (nr. 37) mentioning a father thanking his son for having served in his place speaks for the existence of a specific strategy (for example, list of names to allow service in alternation or the drawing of lots) used to prevent the simultaneous recruitment of every suitable male of a certain region, this still suggests a far higher degree of militarisation of society than we encounter in the late Roman period. The bannus, a fine meant to punish the failure to follow a call to join the Frankish army whose application is mentioned in the narrative sources in reference to exceptional cases, i.e. when it was applied to ecclesiastical dependents,¹² was introduced to make sure that the lower rank and file complied with their military duties. Besides, the written and archaeological sources attest to the high esteem and significance attributed to military roles and identities – which were particularly prominent among the elite – ideals of manliness (virilitas) and usefulness (utilitas) being strongly linked to military skills and exploits, and even spiritual writings like homilies or hagiography now referred to military values and concepts.¹³ The Frankish law-codes are full of references to military concepts such as wergild or to offenses that were seen as diminishing a person's embodied honour.¹⁴

The success of the Frankish kingdom which eventually absorbed most other barbarian kingdoms cannot be explained without the huge military resources that were available in Gaul and now became concentrated in the hands of Clovis and his successors. The same may be said with reference to the early Carolingians whose military expansion and imperial consolidation rested on the mobilisation of human and other resources they found in the conquered territories¹⁵ as demonstrated, for example, by the large Carolingian armies recruited for campaigning against the Lombards and Avars.¹⁶ Moreover, there is ample evidence for the Carolingian rulers exerting military taxes such as the heribannus from among those parts of the population that were not recruited for their mostly annual campaigns.¹⁷

The situation of Britain was different inasmuch as it was defined by the region's remote and insular location. The Roman conquest and expansion, led by the military and trailed by Roman trade, administration and customs, allowed for the diffusion of Romanitas through the elites into the tribal communities.¹⁸ Yet, the conquest did not encompass the entire island of Britain; the Scottish Highlands never came under direct Roman control, and neither were parts of modern Wales and Cornwall fully integrated into the province.¹⁹ This resulted in border regions not dissimilar to those on the continent, with soldiers stationed at military outposts and leading social and economic lives in the adjacent vici. Military forts were generally consigned to the north and west of the island whilst the south and east remained more civil in character, giving the impression of two distinct ‘zones’.²⁰

The degradation of Roman administrative infrastructure and the gradual removal of Roman forces, the completion of which has been traditionally dated to c. 410 AD,²¹ were followed by a partial abandonment of Roman ways, including towns and coinage.²² Indeed, the extent to which Britain was less Romanised than Gaul is revealed through the rapid resurgence of military tribal societies, although these post-Roman British kingdoms capitalised on the physical remains of Roman military infrastructure, particularly in the north.²³ The lack of written sources between the late Roman period and the arrival of the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ shrouds the intervening years in uncertainty. According to the narrative of the British monk Gildas († 570), the Saxons were invited to the island as a safeguard against the raids of Picts and Scots but turned on their employers, effectively initiating the adventus Saxonum.²⁴ The Northumbrian monk Bede, writing in the eighth century, built on this narrative and supplemented certain details, such as the Anglian, Saxon and Jutish origins of the arriving forces.²⁵ Whilst the narratives of Gildas and Bede contain plausible grains of truth, reality was certainly far more complex.²⁶ By the end of the sixth century, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introducing early medieval militarisation, 400–900
• PART I: THE MILITARY AND SOCIETY
• PART II: WARFARE AND SOCIETY
• PART III: ETHICS OF WAR
• PART IV: PERCEPTIONS OF THE WARRIOR
• Select bibliography
• Index