The Empire is dead, long live the army

[Jim Webster]

One can presume a sharp social distinction between the ordinary Roman soldiers, mounted and foot, who didn't have that much social prestige, and their commanders who did.

What percentage of the land of a mediaeval hide was under agriculture? Was most of it forested? Late Roman agriculture did not substantially decline in areas that preserved the Roman social and economic structures, and Syagrius's region was agriculturally rich. I really can't see it needing hundreds of acres to feed the labourers, artisans and specialists required to husband a horse and equip a single rider.

Given the situation, one can also presume that landed gentry would have spared all the land they could to equip as large a force as possible. These were practical times: the Syagrian nobility dropped the luxurious country-villa lifestyle of their southern compatriots without a qualm.

I just checked. Remember Gaul had a lot of trouble with Bagaudae. According to http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Bagaudae (which is hardly a prime source)  The main area of the revolt was located between the Seine and Loire rivers (where extensive deep forests provided excellent shelter).
Please don't think of it as an area of rolling arable acres. Remember the river valleys would be wooded and/or marshy. The main arable areas were the drier lands higher up the sides of the valley, and such land is less productive (but far easier to plough)

Why would they have backed Syagrius? And why did they continue resisting the Franks after he fell? I suggest that they were beginning to feel their identity was threatened. Through the greater part of the 5th century I don't get the impression the Gallic aristocracy seriously considered that the Roman social order was on its way out. It was as if they felt the barbarians would eventually be assimilated into the Roman system or at least leave it intact. Serious resistance to the barbarians began only in the latter half of the century and climaxed in the war between Syagrius's realm and the Franks, in which a city like Paris would starve rather than surrender. Clovis could not be incorporated into the Roman structures. He was no longer a foederatus and he was not baptized: he had to be resisted at all costs.

It's possible of course that the Gallo-roman resistance was in part a popular movement and the nobility had no choice but to go along with it. The result was the same: they felt obliged to oppose Clovis or go under.

I think we can ignore a 'popular' movement. Remember the Bagaudae. Popular movements might be anti-Roman.
It may well be that they needed forces to hold down their own coloni and keep them working and until they could trust the Franks to provide the same service that the Visigoths had provided further south, they couldn't allow the Franks in

Jim

[aligern]

Patrick, it really is nonsense to credit the Vandals with 20,000 warriors. There might just have been 80,000 Vandals and Alans. and their families, servants and slaves who crossed frpm Spain to Africa, but even this is likely. to be wrongly based upon Geiseric creating 80 millenarii or thusundifaths 'leaders of 1000' who did not necessarily lead 1000. Or it may be that 80,000 is just a big number.

Large numbers in Procopius are not believable.
Roy

[Erpingham]

Here's another comparator, closer in space and time.

According to figures given in this article

http://www.academia.edu/4184131/Comitatus_to_Crusader_An_Analysis_of_the_Development_of_the_Medieval_Knight_as_a_Mounted_Combatant

A carolingian cavalryman needed 12 mansi to maintain his estate.  A mansus is another of those sliding measure areas but the author thinks it is equivaalent to a hide.  Put another way, the surplus required to support a cavalryman would need 12 families of peasants to maintain.  Obviously we don't know the size of a mansus equivalent in Syagrius area but if we take the classic Roman figure as per wikipedia

In the Roman Empire, a family of 6 people would need to cultivate 12 iugera/ 3 hectares of land to meet minimum food requirements (without animals).[10] If a family owned animals to help cultivate land, then 20 iugera was needed.


So, a cavalryman by this sort of level of production would need around 90-100 acres.  It's looking fairly consistent to me.

[Jim Webster]

I crunched a lot of numbers when I did the article Anthony
The numbers are very consistent. The Athenian and the Byzantine Cavalryman needed the land to produce 12 tons of wheat, the Norman Miles in England was expensive and needed 19-20 tons of wheat. The latter might have been because William handed out land with a generous hand because he had to tempt people to stay as he depended entirely on their support.

Jim

[aligern]

Patrick, it really is nonsense to credit the Vandals with 80,000 warriors. There might just have been 80,000 Vandals and Alans. and their families, servants and slaves who crossed from Spain to Africa, but even this is likely. to be wrongly based upon Geiseric creating 80 millenarii or thusundifaths 'leaders of 1000' who did not necessarily lead 1000. Or it may be that 80,000 is just a big number.
i have a sneaking suspicion that Victor Vitensis claims the Vandals had. 80,000 people and that is likely to be the source of Procopius misinterpretation.
Roy

Large numbers in Procopius are not believable.
Roy

[aligern]

Jim, let me lend my support on the five hide proposition.
I am reasonably convinced that. the AS had a universal military obligation for all free men to serve in bridge building, fortification and in the field. However, large field armies of Egberts with a spear and shield were too slow and ill equipped to meet the Vikings , what was. needed was armoured men on horses, probably attended by a servant, perhaps also mounted . That meant five families, or rather the land that would support five, combining to fund one chap with the kit.  Universal military service was, I believe retained for manning burghs.
Norman England was relatively systematically settled and organised for war as was the Byzantine Empire once it  became thematised. Syagrius realm, was not, as far as we know, so organised. Whilst that might give us  a theoretical number of cavalry that could be provided, is there any evidence for that sort of organisation. Well, in a way there is. When settling barbarians on the land the Late Empire appears to have allowed one third of the land or one third of the taxes from land to support the barbarian military charged with protecting the area. what we do not know, of course is the rate that this land supported troops at.

[Justin Swanton]

So, a cavalryman by this sort of level of production would need around 90-100 acres.  It's looking fairly consistent to me.

Makes sense. It was the 1200 acres that I found a bit odd.

I just checked. Remember Gaul had a lot of trouble with Bagaudae. According to http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Bagaudae (which is hardly a prime source)  The main area of the revolt was located between the Seine and Loire rivers (where extensive deep forests provided excellent shelter).

From what I've read on the Bagaudae it seems a bit simplistic to see them as anarchistic peasants, as the pro-governmental writers of the time portrayed them. There appears to have been an element of the lower gentry who joined them. They arose out of a desire to escape the oppressive taxation or tax fraud that characterised the late Empire. It is perhaps better to think of them as local disaffected inhabitants who represented several classes of society and in all respects lived fairly normal lives except for the fact that they had decided to dispense with imperial authority. Aetius defeated them by 450 and there is no mention of them in this area after that. Agriculture would have been as central to their existence as it was to anyone else so one can assume they kept the farms going.

In any case I don't know if it is possible to form some idea of the proportion of land between the Seine and Loire that was actually under the plough in this period. Does anyone have any figures?

[aligern]

You are right Justin, Bagaudae are rebels, not just bandits. One of their leaders sought out Attila at his court and solicited him to come to Gaul after the Romans had campaigned against them.
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

Large numbers in Procopius are not believable.

But may nevertheless be true.  One may remember this same territory of Africa supporting quite large Carthaginian armies in earlier centuries, even if a fair amount of the manpower came from Gaul and Spain.

Might it be an idea to clarify what we are attempting to establish?  As I see it, we are looking at the following facets of the Dominion of Soissons.

1) The size of the armed establishment (hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands).

2) The nature of the forces (regular legions and auxilia, hired barbarian warbands, loose collections of estate guards or whatever).

In connection with this we are looking at the potential revenue (which is more than just a matter of land area, although the latter is an important part of it), presumably as a means of estimating the number, type and quality of troops that could be maintained.  If so, we ought to be devoting some attention to the pay scale, as far as is known or deducible.

Indications that some regular units may have survived into the late 5th century are very useful for delineating the possible existence of a regular army.  Absence of mention of Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians etc. as part of Syagrius' core forces (as opposed to allies) may be an indication that recruitment relied upon the Gallic population.

We may also wish to comb contemporary literary sources for hints as to relevant economic factors and general activities: the epistolary Sidonius Apollonaris, in between extravagant literary effects, gives us a number of observations in his Letters, e.g. to Domitius, wherein he describes his own country property - and it is quite extensive, including (among other things) "plenty of sheep in its pastures and plenty of savings in the shepherds' purses".  Wading through Sidonius is not a task for the faint-hearted, but might be fruitful in allusions and descriptions which help to fill out the bigger picture.

[Justin Swanton]

There might be an easier way of doing this. The Western Empire at the end of the 4th century had an army in the region of 200 000 men. Most of these were stationed on the ever-threatened Rhine and Danube frontiers. They would have been fed from local areas of agrarian production, since the Empire did not have such a developed infrastructure that it could cheaply transport bulk goods like grain long distances overland (and in fact bulk goods were not transported between the Mediterranean and northern Gaul).

For the Rhine troops that meant Britain and northern Gaul. The economy in these areas had to have been organised to feed and equip large numbers of soldiers, somewhere between 50 000 and 100 000 troops on or near the Rhine.

The distribution of Argonne and Mayen ware, pottery types widely disseminated throughout northern Gaul, did not cease in the 5th century, though their range lessened somewhat. Indeed, a new pottery type, ceramique biconique, was introduced and spread throughout northern Gaul in the late 5th century.

This argues the survival of a system of exchange across northern Gaul and the persistence of a wealthy class - these are fine wares, sought after by the affluent. The implication is that the landowning elite remained intact, and that their estates, many of which had fed the army, continued to transfer goods across northern Gaul, as the survival of the trade network suggests.

Would the portion of this system that remained under Roman control in northern Gaul been sufficient to supply a respectable army? The region is certainly big enough. Syagrius's realm was at least as large as Ireland, perhaps as large as England. I can see no reason why it could not have equipped at least 10 000 men, probably more.

[Erpingham]

So, a cavalryman by this sort of level of production would need around 90-100 acres.  It's looking fairly consistent to me.

Makes sense. It was the 1200 acres that I found a bit odd.

Actually, it is my statement that doesn't make sense.  It isn't consistent, in the sense of acreage, only of number of family units whose surplus provides the armoured horseman.

I've done some Google searching and I can say definitively that the mansus varied in size quite a bit   But in The Birth of the Western Economy: Economic Aspects of the Dark Ages by Robert Latouche, which is pretty recent, he goes for the range 12-70 acres, which does cover most other estimates.  So our cavalryman needs 144-840 acres.  Our Roman figures  are just a bit better than the best of these but aren't from Gaul and they aren't late Roman (as far as I can tell, they're Republican).

[Erpingham]

Would the portion of this system that remained under Roman control in northern Gaul been sufficient to supply a respectable army? The region is certainly big enough. Syagrius's realm was at least as large as Ireland, perhaps as large as England. I can see no reason why it could not have equipped at least 10 000 men, probably more.

I don't think there is any doubt that the land area could support a large army.  You used the area 80,000 k² earlier, which, given the sorts of areas we have been bandying around could support 15-25000 equipped men, provided it was structured to do so.  But we return to the social organisation question - how much of this surplus production will be turned into soldiers and, of those soldiers, how are the accessible are they to a central authority?  Patrick, for example, is assuming a centralised government with a tax system (presumably the late Roman in kind type) which supports regular units based (again presumably) in garrisons whereas Jim sees more the idea of major landholders raising their own troops to safeguard their interests, which may then be available in part to the central authority.  There are presumably other models, like a city based model where nobles live in the cities but have most of their wealth in that city's rural hinterland (what the Italians would later call the contado).  The amount of wealth available becomes a question of how effective the relationship between contado and city are and your military objective becomes protecting that relationship.  More collective than the landowner in the countryside model, less centralised that the small state model.

[Patrick Waterson]

Would the portion of this system that remained under Roman control in northern Gaul been sufficient to supply a respectable army? The region is certainly big enough. Syagrius's realm was at least as large as Ireland, perhaps as large as England. I can see no reason why it could not have equipped at least 10 000 men, probably more.

Equipment would have been more or less independent of overall resources in any event, as it depended largely upon the fabricae, centres for the production and storage of armour and weapons.  The Notitia Dignitatum mentions the following in Gaul (about a century earlier than Syagrius' swan song, but these things tend not to move around much):

Argentomagensis armorum omnium (Argenton-sur-Creuse, central France) - makes everything
Matisconensis sagittaria (Macon, Burgundy) - makes bows and arrows
Augustodunensis loricaria, balistaria et clibanaria (Autun, Burgundy) - makes infantry armour, artillery and cavalry armour
Augustodunensis scutaria (ditto) - makes shields
Suessionensis........ [blank or unclear in original]  (Soissons) - might be another armorum omnium, but no way to tell
Remensis spatharia (Reims) - makes swords
Triberorum scutaria (Trier) - makes swords
Triberorum balistaria (ditto) - makes artillery
Ambianensis spatharia et scutaria (Amiens) - makes swords and shields

Aegidius and Syagrius thus had most of the fabricae within their domain [names in bold], and the remainder close to the borders.  Whether these latter remained operational under barbarian occupation is an open question, and there would be logic in removing the personnel and functions of these no-longer-controlled locations to Soissons, the central city of the Domain, which already possessed its own fabrica.

... Patrick, for example, is assuming a centralised government with a tax system (presumably the late Roman in kind type) which supports regular units based (again presumably) in garrisons whereas Jim sees more the idea of major landholders raising their own troops to safeguard their interests, which may then be available in part to the central authority.  There are presumably other models, like a city based model where nobles live in the cities but have most of their wealth in that city's rural hinterland (what the Italians would later call the contado).  The amount of wealth available becomes a question of how effective the relationship between contado and city are and your military objective becomes protecting that relationship.  More collective than the landowner in the countryside model, less centralised that the small state model.

Patrick makes the assumption that the central authority figure (Aetius, Aegidius or Syagrius) was quite strong, and his writ ran to the limits of his domain (and his influence beyond, at least up to AD 486).  To Patrick, this would be associated with the likely maintenance of the Roman system under notionally Roman authority, but with a nod to Jim's thinking and Justin's point about major landholders being incorporated in the war machine.  This Patrick would read as a probable adjustment to the limitanei part of the system, with the nobility and their locally-raised troops taking over from the traditional (and by this date questionably effective) border troops maintained by the central authority (at least as long as the men sent to collect the pay chest do not come back empty-handed and/or dead).  They would protect with vigour against border incursions and in theory turn up when summoned to join the main army.  I would feel inclined to rate these troops similarly to Nikephorian Byzantine akritoi, well-motivated and capable but of limited discipline.  They would probably adhere to formal patterns of organisation, if only to provide an easy command structure.  Procopius' comments would also point to the maintenance of a formal military organisation, but much of it not under central authority (making its own decisions after Syagrius' defeat).

The picture would thus involve semi-mobilised limitanei round the borders but a core of palatini troops based at the capital (Soissons) and neighbouring localities, numbers being anyone's guess but the historian Priscus considered them 'strong forces', which relative to 5th century armies probably means the low tens of thousands.  If I had to guess, I would say 10,000+ for the palatini and double or triple that for the limitanei, the latter being rather spread around so unlikely ever to concentrate all in one place.

One may note that once Syagrius had lost his palatini he did not attempt to defend the rest of his realm, but fled to the Visigoths.  This might be seen as undermining Patrick's thoughts about a strong central authority, or it may be an indication that the central authority was strong only when it had an army of palatini at its beck and call.  Either way it looks as if the palatini were a necessary part of that authority and once they were gone Syagrius had nothing to fall back upon - a pointed picture of the nature of Imperial authority in the Late Empire.

[aligern]

It just seems so unlikely that the tax collection system in Gaul stays productive enough to support fabricae into the 480s, or sophisticated military units. Ecdicius, when fighting against the Visigoths has a very small number of troops to relieve a city. this and examples such as Avitus battle with the Hun in defence of his own estate bespeak more of an economy that gas fallen back to the basics, that is about individual cities with their counts and bishops and local troops. If you have surplus you can hire barbarians, ir, most likely, give them some land to settle in return for military service. On that model limitanei who are already peasnt farmers can survive.  I would not rule out a field army for Syagrius of 10,000, but that would be  composed of his and other large landholders comitatensenses, limitanei, laeti , allied barbarianssuch as the Ostrogoths and perhaps Taifals and Alans (laeti), perhaps the Bayeux Saxons , Britons etc. These are the sort of armies that followed Aetius and Majorian and are what is listed even before Syagrius' time. They are forces that are close to the land and so not dependent upon a monetary economy.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

I was just thinking, 10,000 men is an awfully large field army for the period.
Stilicho sent Mascezel with only 5000 men to recover north Africa, Belisarius had perhaps 15,000 to invade north Africa and by great efforts, stripping Gaul, Germany and Italy, Stilicho raised a reputed 30,000 men.
Frankly I doubt that Syagrius had a central force of more than 2000 men, some of whom would have to be garrisons to ensure control.
If you describe the estate militia and suchlike as limitanei then you might have a model

To put things in proportion, the field army of the Comes Britanniae in the Notitia is perhaps 4,800 men (6,600 if you assume the cavalry were in units 600 strong, not 300 strong.)

Jim