The Empire is dead, long live the army

[Patrick Waterson]

The difficulty that we have in believing that there is a LRFA in Northern Gaul is that there is  no clear neat reference to it and just when it should be there it vanishes from the chronicled accounts.
If historical truth is defined by being the explanation that best fits all the reasonable evidence then the idea of Aegidius and Syagrius having polyglot armies from varied sources is the cear winner.

How about listing the 'reasonable evidence' and seeing what we get?

Lately The proponents of Aegidius LRFA Have fallen back on identifying this force with the Aremorici or Arborychi. These are the heroes who, after Syagrius' flight, hold back the Franks for ten years. They are identified as the Romans of the Tractus Armoricanus which according to some, has to be the core of the Syagrian realm or rather what gves it the scale to support a field force.

There are some inconveniences in this view. Rodger kindly sent me this article :
http://www.persee.fr/web/ouvrages/home/prescript/article/efr_0000-0000_1993_act_168_1_4349
It suggests that the Aborychi of Procopius that the Franks take over are not Gallo Romans, but the 'Grands Bructeri', a nearby German tribe of federates that are incorporated into the Salii as they grow. The case is aided by them being on the frontiers of Gaul whereas the Armorici are not and so does have  conformity with Procopius to its advantage.


That may or may not be, but if the Arborychi are indeed Armorici there is a problem for those using them to provide the LRFA and that is that they also appear as allies in the army listed for Aetius at Chalons.

A problem yes, but not an insoluble one if they grew closer to the Domain under Aegidius than they had been with Aetius.  It is not hard to consider them exchanging an arm's length relationship for a shoulder-to-shoulder one as the Visigoths grew more menacing.

I have said before that, if there were this Gallic LRFA that descends from troops available in the Notitia, then it should join Aetius and we should hear of it resisting Attila in its homeland. However, Armoricans that are listed as joining Aetius as allies cannot be a LRFA, they are clearly another contingent of the type of federates, laeti, limitanei and allies that join the coalition against the invader.

This is mixing things up a bit: Jordanes does describe a Roman contingent at Chalons, pinpointing it in the speech he puts in Attila's mouth.  Armoricans were allies at Chalons but once Riothamus had had his mishap they may well have drawn closer to the Domain of Soissons for mutual protection.

So , if the Arborichi are not the Bructeri, but  are Armorici then they are Gallo Romans like the Arverni , who have their own locally raised buccellary and town garrison forces and local militias based upon fortified towns are just the sort of challenge that might take the Franks ten years to subdue.

But Arverni are Arverni whereas Armorica is effectively a self-ruled separate entity since the 440s.  I am not sure such a comparison is of any value.

... there were very few of these decayed Roman troops, not an army of them. If they have survived  60 years from the collapse of Syagrius then somebody is feeding them, most likely the towns whose garrisons they provide. Are we to believe that within the Merovingian realm a large force of tax paid troops  is still being maintained in units that is not in garrisons??

This has some merit, but I do not see it being retrospectively applicable to the Domain of Soissons before the Franks took over - otherwise we could argue on the basis of the muster of Norman England that Saxon kings could not possibly have had huscarles ... 

[aligern]

I think you are wrong on all counts Patrick.
I hand others, have listed the reasonable evidence several times, it supports the case that the armies of Aegidius and Syagrius  are composed of contingents from various sources. I won't bore everyone  with reciting the contingents again, suffice it to say that the army of Aetius and of Majorian the model for a multi contingent force.
It is grasping at straws to claim that Jordanes pinpoints a Roman force at Chalons. His description can either be seen as pure rhetoric or as describing the formation of the Olibriones and Riparenses and limitanei. there are enough Roman style units there to form a  shieldwall.

As Jordanes says
warriors from everywhere to meet them on equal terms. Now these were his auxiliaries: Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricians, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Riparians, Olibriones (once Romans soldiers and now the flower of the allied forces), and some other Celtic or German tribes.
Those plus the buccellarii that come with Aetius are enough , when added to the Goths and Alans to stand up to Attila.
No sign of a LRFA there.
Roy

[Erpingham]

On the field army question, I keep in mind the terminus ad quem: Procopius's 'other Roman soldiers', who were held in high regard by the Gallo-romans and Franks, were very particular about their Roman identity, and were not town garrison troops: they 'carry their standards into battle', i.e. if Procopius is to be believed they were field troops, belonging to former legions of the field army. I made a case earlier for one of these residual legions being the II Britannica, which was not a limitaneus legion, even less a garrison or militia unit.

Others better read than me are offering a more evidence based rebuttal here but I think how we view these 6th century Romans is a key difference.  I personally have some time for Procopius (I tend to like unfashionable historians like Froissart too ) but I don't think we can assume the old divisions of field and garrison still held.  I also don't think that town militia or garrison units were automatically rubbish.  As to the II Britannica, the possibility that it established itself somewhere and faded into a garrison or transformed itself into military-political entity controlling its own home territory must be there.  What happened to the legions elsewhere - did they retain elite infantry status?

[Justin Swanton]

As Jordanes says
warriors from everywhere to meet them on equal terms. Now these were his auxiliaries: Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricians, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Riparians, Olibriones (once Romans soldiers and now the flower of the allied forces), and some other Celtic or German tribes.
Those plus the buccellarii that come with Aetius are enough , when added to the Goths and Alans to stand up to Attila.
No sign of a LRFA there.
Roy

I really need time to go into this in depth. Just briefly for now: notice that Jordanes in this passage does not give a complete inventory of the forces available to Aetius. He leaves out the Visigoths and Alans who together formed at least half of Aetius's line. He makes the point that this is a list of Aetius's auxiliaries, and reinforces that by making the Olibriones the flower of the auxiliaries. In other words he is describing those extra contingents that Aetius gathered to confront the Huns on equal terms, and then only those that were under his direct control.

Nothing suggests that all these contingents were numerically significant. The army assembled under Narses had one contingent numbering only 400 men, and Narses could be picky, choosing only those barbarians that were a real asset to him. Aetius was not picky: anyone who could bear arms was invited. Of Aetius's contingents, the only ones we know as being significant in their own right were the Franks (which includes the Riparians), Burgundians, Armoricans and to a lesser extent Saxons. The Sarmatians (if I'm right) had been part of the Roman army for some time, and we never hear of the other groups outside this battle. The implication is that they were not sizeable barbarian tribes, but small bands of fighting men from barbarian or Roman backgrounds. This leaves plenty of room for a regular army which is not mentioned because it is identified with Aetius himself.

Jordanes uses an individual to signify a force elsewhere, for example when he describes the son of the Visigothic king helping Aetius beat off the Huns:

Attila sent his men to take the summit of the mountain, but was outstripped by Thorismud and Aëtius, who in their effort to gain the top of the hill reached higher ground and through this advantage of position easily routed the Huns as they came up.

That doesn't mean that Thorismud trotted over to Aetius's wing by himself and then cheered the Romans on. He clearly had a force with him, mounted probably, which would have supplied the cavalry guard on the left flank.

As regards there being enough Roman style units to create a shieldwall without need of regular troops, one needs to keep in mind that this shieldwall defeated the Huns so thoroughly that Attila decided to cease attacking it and concentrate his efforts on the Visigoths and Alans instead. Rather impressive for a polyglot gathering of ex-Roman or sub-Roman troops.

[Patrick Waterson]

... suffice it to say that the army of Aetius and of Majorian the model for a multi contingent force.

Here we have what I consider to be the nub of the problem: Aetius and Majorian were mobilising every warm body of whatever nationality they could command or ally with, and as they could bring together quite a few (Aetius especially) they of necessity have a multi-contingent force.  However to assume that every Roman army of whatever size necessarily follows this pattern or template is inaccurate: we can point to Orestes' 'pure' Roman regular contingent at Placentia (where Odoacer defeated him) as evidence to the contrary, albeit this was an unusual concentration on account of the revolt of the foederati under Odoacer.  I would suggest that when not repelling a major Hunnic invasion Aetius would routinely mobilise only the troops from his Gallic domain plus any handy nearby tribe or tribes he could persuade to come along, as somebody had to do the dying.

Jordanes ... description can either be seen as pure rhetoric or as describing the formation of the Olibriones and Riparenses and limitanei. there are enough Roman style units there to form a  shieldwall.

Or as describing the formation of Roman regular infantry on the field, which it would fit more simply and more easily.

As Jordanes says
warriors from everywhere to meet them on equal terms. Now these were his auxiliaries: Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricians, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Riparians, Olibriones (once Romans soldiers and now the flower of the allied forces), and some other Celtic or German tribes.

And Jordanes does not add "By the way, he also brought along the Roman army under his command as Magister Militum", leading one to wonder if the office was actually redundant or alternatively that it would be taken for granted that he would bring them anyway.  Unfortunately Jordanes is no Polybius to summarise composition and numbers, and is, as Roy points out, a writer in quest of effect, in this case either showing the greatness of Aetius that so many allies would flock to his banner or the greatness of the occasion where so many turned up as Aetius' auxiliaries.  I do not believe it appropriate to conclude from Jordanes' exhausting but non-exhaustive listing of 'auxiliaries' that there was nothing substantial for them to be auxiliary to.

As to the II Britannica, the possibility that it established itself somewhere and faded into a garrison or transformed itself into military-political entity controlling its own home territory must be there.  What happened to the legions elsewhere - did they retain elite infantry status?

My impression is that the Illyrian units remained good up to AD 480, after which they seem to have been absorbed into the Eastern Empire.  The legions in the East are harder to pinpoint as at some time between AD 480 and 530 they seem to have adjusted to being predominantly long spear-armed anti-cavalry types (curiously a similar change seems to have taken place in sub-Roman Britain around the end of the 5th century but I have no idea if the two were in any way related).  They do seem to have remained in service, although writers cease to refer to them by designation, suggesting some form of reorganisation had taken place.

Cavalry became the elite arm of the Eastern Empire in the 6th century, but good disciplined infantry were a feature of Eastern Empire armies right up to Manzikert in AD 1071, which may allow us to suggest that where Roman administration survived reasonably good regular infantry could be found, too.

The puzzle in this case is the formations that seem to survive the demise of the Domain of Soissons; unless we suppose that Clovis and his successors retained a Roman administration to pay for them, their terms of service must have altered when he took over.  Exactly how may form the basis of numerous speculative studies if the period ever becomes one of major academic interest, though the persistence of use of coinage may be indicative (or it may not, but let us allow that it could be).  Procopius thinks that these troops perserved their arms, customs etc. unaltered and were recognisably Roman, which suggests either that he recognised them as having some similarity to the Roman infantry of his day or that he recognised earlier Roman usages.  Either way, I think we would be unwise to write off his testimony (and we would certainly emerge no better informed) despite the fact that his observation is hard to explain under current thinking.

[Justin Swanton]

Sorry Justin, but the patchwork army case does not rest upon discarding the passage from Procopius, it merely means that there were very few of these decayed Roman troops, not an army of them. If they have survived  60 years from the collapse of Syagrius then somebody is feeding them, most likely the towns whose garrisons they provide. Are we to believe that within the Merovingian realm a large force of tax paid troops  is still being maintained in units that is not in garrisons??
Roy

If we take Procopius in his obvious sense, nothing suggests that these troops were either decayed or very few. They are significant enough to make a stir that reaches the ears of Procopius. And this is 60-odd years after the final peace of 496. The implication is that they were an important force under Syagrius.

The Gallo-roman aristocracy of northern Gaul was certainly in a position to maintain them as bucellarii after the departure of Syagrius, paying them in kind rather than by tax. The fact that these units handed over their standards and the lands they had been guarding to the Franks/Gallo-romans suggests that their commanders were the landowners.

They would have joined the Franks for any major battles after 496, otherwise being left alone.

The reference to the' legio bretonum', by the way, does not mention it being in a town, just north of the Loire/Loir. Rather curious if it was a town garrison/militia.

[Erpingham]

The reference to the' legio bretonum', by the way, does not mention it being in a town, just north of the Loire/Loir. Rather curious if it was a town garrison/militia.

Not really.  I'd expect a mention if it was a peripatetic entity living under canvas but if it was based in a town or towns, it would seem unremarkable.

[aligern]

Unfortunately Justin a case built upon 'may have  been' and 'could have done ' is insufficient.

Sidonius tells us that Aetius brings with him few troops from Italy. He then desperately starts to build a coalition against Attila to make a sizeable enough force to take Attila on and he only moves when the Visigoths arrives. Even when all these contingents arrive the Aetian army is not enough to take on the Hun forces without the Goths.
Read Jordanes and Sidonius. It is so important to get the Goths that Attila sends Avitus twice.

The big Roman contribution to Chalons is logistical. What the Empire can do is keep its polyglot army fed..
As to Orestes in Italy his Roman troops ( which may well include foederati) are too few to challenge Odovakar. That strongly suggests that the regular army, even in Italy is of no great significance and Italy is in a lit better financial situation than Gaul!
The Procopian Romans need not be many. in Herodotean tradition they just need to be an interesting curiosity and by 540  AD it is highly unlikely that they are running any territory. Gregory and others do not mention them and they would be unlikely to have an independent jurisdiction. The normative organisation for Gaul in this period is civitates, city states with dependent lands, run by a count and a bishop. There also peoples, such ad the Taifali and the Sarmatians who have territories. We hear of these, but we don't hear of independent enclaves of Roman legions running their own territories.
Saying that these Romans might be running a. city for themselves  is not enough, we would need to know which city.
I have some sympathy with Roman frontier troops being maintained as buccellarii, however, that is not beinfg a regular Roman field army. it is being in a situation in the 430s and 40s where imperial pay stops so the officers find other paymasters, the local landowners who take in a hundred or so men each. that is not being a Notitia style army of comitatenses with legions and sagitarii and Illyricani and scutarii cavalry now is it? it?
And Justin, if you read Jordanes you will see that he does not list the Visigoths as with Aetius because he has already described them and they are not in the army of Aetius, but in the army of their own king.
Aetius arrives with few firces and then all these treaty troops come in and give him an army. No mention of him picking up the Roman field army at X or Y place. Maybe, as Patrick suggested he left it somewhere to guard something that Attila was not attacking:-))
For me the killer puece of evidence is that the Olibriones are former Roman soldiers. They are 'former' because there is no longer a Roman army to belong to, even in 452. v If we look for your Procopian Romans anywhere it is with them, the firmer Roman soldiers.
Of course soldiers who were no longer Romans , are indeed ex parrots , or rather expatriates, and cannot be members of the mythical Late Roman Gallic Field Army that you so desire.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

Unfortunately Justin a case built upon 'may have  been' and 'could have done ' is insufficient.

This would indeed be true, had such expressions been relied upon rather than 'the implication is' and 'would have joined'.  However I trust we are looking at evidence rather than building cases: cases only contain what can fit within their restrictive dimensions.

It is so important to get the Goths that Attila sends Avitus twice.

Presumably Aetius is meant rather than Attila?

As to Orestes in Italy his Roman troops ( which may well include foederati) are too few to challenge Odovakar. That strongly suggests that the regular army, even in Italy is of no great significance and Italy is in a lit better financial situation than Gaul!

Nevertheless they exist, and in Italy, which has lagged behind Gaul and Illyria as a recruiting area for centuries by the time in question.

The Procopian Romans need not be many. in Herodotean tradition they just need to be an interesting curiosity and by 540  AD it is highly unlikely that they are running any territory.

To paraprase an eminent member of this Society, a case built upon 'highly unlikely' is insufficient. 

The normative organisation for Gaul in this period is civitates, city states with dependent lands, run by a count and a bishop. There also peoples, such ad the Taifali and the Sarmatians who have territories. We hear of these, but we don't hear of independent enclaves of Roman legions running their own territories.

Procopius conveys an awareness that the situation he described was not a normative organisation.  To argue that the average result is the norm therefore all other results must be wrong is fallacious.

I have some sympathy with Roman frontier troops being maintained as buccellarii, however, that is not beinfg a regular Roman field army. it is being in a situation in the 430s and 40s where imperial pay stops so the officers find other paymasters, the local landowners who take in a hundred or so men each. that is not being a Notitia style army of comitatenses with legions and sagitarii and Illyricani and scutarii cavalry now is it? it?

The source for the stopping of Imperial pay in the 430s/440s being???  (I would like to know.)

For me the killer puece of evidence is that the Olibriones are former Roman soldiers. They are 'former' because there is no longer a Roman army to belong to, even in 452. v If we look for your Procopian Romans anywhere it is with them, the firmer Roman soldiers.

The source for this assertion that there is no longer a Roman army being???  (I shall be interested to see this in view of the existence of Orestes' regulars and the continuation of the office of Magister Militum.)

[Jim Webster]

At the sharp end of the pay scale mentioned in Sidonius' Letter V.7 (to Thaumastus) where he comments on corrupt and malignant officials who "grudge ... the soldier his pay".

The good bishop may merely be quoting scripture

Does any soldier ever go to war at his own expense? (1 Corinthians 9:7)

Jim

[Jim Webster]

"Rex" is at least as compatible - perhaps more so? - with "primus inter pares with the largest comitatus" as it is with "small-scale Emperor with a standing army".

Please explain. 

Because it's a "barbarian" title - no Roman has been a rex since Tarquinius Superbus - because it's thought of as a lesser rank than Augustus or Caesar, and because it doesn't necessarily imply very much power. The Alemanni had seven reges at Argentorate (and ten regales), so you don't need all that much power to be a rex, and you certaly don't need absolute or unshared authority.

S Fanning has an interesting article 'Emperors and Empires in 5th century Gaul' in 5th century Gaul, a crisis of identity
It seems Rex did come in in the late Empire. St Augustine in 'The city of God' apparently refers to the Emperor Hadrian as 'rex hominum' and regnum is used regularly, along with imperium, for the Roman Empire
Apparently Ammianus refers to Julian as rex (23.5.8  ) which I haven't checked.
Tertullian apparently equates imperium and regnum and SHA also uses the title rex for emperors.
Hilary of Poitiers calls Valentinian 1 as sanctus rex as well as just rex.
It looks as if by the 4th century the old fear of kings had broken down. With Christianity it might be that 'king' and 'king of kings' had taken on a different feel.

Jim

[Jim Webster]

Which, if true.....needs double-checking....leads to the question: who were 'those men in the province Armorica' who, without help from anyone else, were able to beat the Visigoths and kill the brother of the king?
Do I see a R _ _ _ _  F_ _ _ _  A _ _ _ ?

Personally I don't trust secondary sources at all, especially not for this period, something which makes my life difficult. 

If so it was a Roman field army that funded itself by luring slaves away from respectable friends of Sidonius

Jim

[Jim Webster]

It is not helped by approaching the primary sources with an a priori scepticism, discounting or distorting them when they do not fit a favourite theory.

I think Justin, we are demonstrating it is very difficult not to approach the problem with assumptions or prior theories.   I am still baffled as to why we should assume, if troops come from Armorica, they should be considered elite forces of regular field army, or why only powerful field armies can fight ten year wars.  It is perfectly possible to consider a ten year war indicates a low intensity conflict, with neither side having the resources or will to land the knockout blow.

True, it is difficult. I have held and discarded a number of hypotheses on this period, and having been wrong often in the past I'm quite prepared to be wrong again.

On the field army question, I keep in mind the terminus ad quem: Procopius's 'other Roman soldiers', who were held in high regard by the Gallo-romans and Franks, were very particular about their Roman identity, and were not town garrison troops: they 'carry their standards into battle', i.e. if Procopius is to be believed they were field troops, belonging to former legions of the field army. I made a case earlier for one of these residual legions being the II Britannica, which was not a limitaneus legion, even less a garrison or militia unit.

You are making too many assumptions.
There is nothing to stop town militia or limitanei or whatever having standards and carrying them into battle. The transfer of units into the pseudo-comitatensis was well known (the Gallic field army in the notitia had ten such legios. Similarly town militias were later to become the core of armies in Italy.
Jim

[aligern]

Apologies Patrick, of course it is Aetius who sends Avitus twice to request Visigoth help.
That there are Roman troops in Italy I have stated several times.  and you know this. I have referred to the Roman complaint that their own troops in Italy were too few to stand up to the. barbarians hired in from the 460s onwards. I also pointed out that there are still limitanei on the frontiers of Italy in Theoderic the Great's reign.

However, Italy is something of a special case , it is where the emperor is and has to be. defended not only against invasions such as that of Radagaisus in 405' but against Eastern intervention. Italy is. also a cash economy. the senate will pay barbarians out of taxes, but it will not give them land. (Of course in the 4th century Barbarians had been settled in Northern Italy, but then they were surrendered barbarians who then broken up and. settled in small groups. the senatorial objection was , no doubt, the settlement od unsurrendered barbarians in tribal units under their own leaders as had been the case with the Visigoths in Gaul.
In Gaul, the situation is such that barbarians are routinely settled to guard against other barbarians. As in Spain the Empire is firced to come to terms with barbarian groups that it cannot coerce. There the Visigoths and some imperial troops are used , but the Romans cannot apply enough force, it is the Goths who crush the Alans and the Siling Vandals.
The third century saw a large increase in the numbers if the army in both East and West, but this was so expensive that it led. to economic crisis , depopulation and economic decline. In the West the. armies of Africa and Spain are quite modest. The provinces are ravaged by barbarian invasion and by internal diversion and Bagaudic rebellion. Even relatively peaceful provinces like  Spain suffer from the Bagaudae. When the Vandals take Africa around 430 the granary and paychest  of the empire is cut off.

So the Roman situation is that the money has run out. Because they have lost Africa. I just don't accept that somehow a barter economy can suppirt the number of troops that Rome once had. If all the evidence of agricultural disruption were not enoughthen we also have the evidence of their own actions. Aetius and Litorius are forced to use Huns against the Goths, because there is no mobile field army. Aetius has to bring Burgundians across the Rhine to garrison the frontiers. Alans are settled , probably in two places. Saxons settle in Normandy and the mouth of the Loire. whether they are federates there to defend against their own kind or pirates that cannot be removed is irrelevant, the Romans in Gaul cannot remove them or provide for their own defence because there is no mobile field army.
The Romans in Gaul cannot coerce these barbarians and the settlement of barbarians that is meant to protect the empire is eating up the local revenues that might have paud for Roman armies. But then of course Rome.s system of agriculture has so depressed the farming population that it does not provide recruits.
Patrick, it is up to you to prove the existence of this ghostly Roman field army, not that it might have been there, but that it was there.  So far, we do not have any hard evidence fir its existence and everything in the wider picture points to it having faded away.

[Patrick Waterson]

Apologies Patrick, of course it is Aetius who sends Avitus twice to request Visigoth help.
That there are Roman troops in Italy I have stated several times.  and you know this. I have referred to the Roman complaint that their own troops in Italy were too few to stand up to the. barbarians hired in from the 460s onwards. I also pointed out that there are still limitanei on the frontiers of Italy in Theoderic the Great's reign.

However, Italy is something of a special case , it is where the emperor is and has to be. defended not only against invasions such as that of Radagaisus in 405' but against Eastern intervention. Italy is. also a cash economy. the senate will pay barbarians out of taxes, but it will not give them land. (Of course in the 4th century Barbarians had been settled in Northern Italy, but then they were surrendered barbarians who then broken up and. settled in small groups. the senatorial objection was , no doubt, the settlement od unsurrendered barbarians in tribal units under their own leaders as had been the case with the Visigoths in Gaul.
In Gaul, the situation is such that barbarians are routinely settled to guard against other barbarians. As in Spain the Empire is firced to come to terms with barbarian groups that it cannot coerce. There the Visigoths and some imperial troops are used , but the Romans cannot apply enough force, it is the Goths who crush the Alans and the Siling Vandals.
The third century saw a large increase in the numbers if the army in both East and West, but this was so expensive that it led. to economic crisis , depopulation and economic decline. In the West the. armies of Africa and Spain are quite modest. The provinces are ravaged by barbarian invasion and by internal diversion and Bagaudic rebellion. Even relatively peaceful provinces like  Spain suffer from the Bagaudae. When the Vandals take Africa around 430 the granary and paychest  of the empire is cut off.

That is a substantive point, and it would be interesting to be able to quantify it as I believe not all troops in the Western Empire depended directly on Africa for support - Aetius seemed able to put a fair-sized army in the field against Bonifacius despite not being able to access any revenues except those of Gaul (and not all of Gaul at that).

My understanding is that imported corn from Africa (and Sicily and to an extent Baetica in Spain) was important for feeding the still-swollen population of Rome rather than being necessary for supplying the army, and even this requirement dropped off after AD 410 and perhaps even more so after AD 455.

So the Roman situation is that the money has run out. Because they have lost Africa.

This I cannot agree with: money is where the mines and mints are.  What I believe you are trying to say (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that the loss of tax revenue from Africa would cause a balance of payments crisis which would result in an 'austerity programme' of noticeable dimensions.  What I seriously doubt is that even an emperor like Valentinian III would deliberately cut military expenditure before all other expenditure categories had been severely trimmed.  Given that assumption, which seems not unreasonable as the power of the emperor rested on the army and had done so since the 3rd century AD, if we find massive cuts in funds for civilian projects (roads, harbours, aqueducts etc.) we can assume the Imperial treasury was finding it hard to make ends meet, but we should not assume that military expenditure was necessarily being cut, or that it would be cut ahead of expenditure on civilian projects and upkeep.

I just don't accept that somehow a barter economy can suppirt the number of troops that Rome once had.

But I have seen no evidence that we would be looking at a barter economy: Sidonius' letters give quite the contrary impression.

If all the evidence of agricultural disruption were not enough

So far this seems to rest on the idea that abandonment of villas means the land ceases to be owned or usefully worked, which I consider a very questionable assumption.  Having barbarians traverse the territory would certainly depress revenues for a year or two, but once they had passed on the land and population would recover given time and security.  I have seen nothing to suggest that the Domain of Soissons was repeatedly invaded or even raided between AD 455 and 486.

then we also have the evidence of their own actions. Aetius and Litorius are forced to use Huns against the Goths, because there is no mobile field army.

Aetius lost one in his battle against Bonifacius, but seems to have rebuilt one by the time of Attila's invasion.

Aetius has to bring Burgundians across the Rhine to garrison the frontiers. Alans are settled , probably in two places. Saxons settle in Normandy and the mouth of the Loire. whether they are federates there to defend against their own kind or pirates that cannot be removed is irrelevant, the Romans in Gaul cannot remove them or provide for their own defence because there is no mobile field army.

I thought they by and large brought themselves, and this kind of 'squatting' by barbarians is not per se evidence of lack of a field army: if we look at Gaul when Julian was appointed Caesar we see much the same situation with tribes raiding and even settling in Roman territory.  We also see the occasional incursion with the connivance of the emperor in Constantinople.  There was a field army but it was simply not being used until Julian put it to work.  (Magnentius' revolt and the eunuchs' framing of Sylvanus had done nothing for its command chain.)

Patrick, it is up to you to prove the existence of this ghostly Roman field army, not that it might have been there, but that it was there.  So far, we do not have any hard evidence fir its existence and everything in the wider picture points to it having faded away.

Let us begin by asking: with what did Aetius fight Bonifacius and Bonifacius Aetius?  We can take things from there.