The Empire is dead, long live the army

[Erpingham]

The sense of the passage can be seen as this: Aetius needed to meet Attila on equal terms, with the implication that he could meet him on unequal terms with what he already had - his regular Gallic troops. He buffed up his numbers by 'gathering warriors from everywhere', and these warriors were not his core army, they were his auxiliaries.

Given the number of auxiliaries listed, it would be logical though to assume they form a large part of the army.  There is, in this passage, no reference to a core "Roman" army.  This could be read, contra your interpretation, that such a force was not significant in the makeup of the army.  Not saying that's true but hardly a clincher.

Turning to your suggestion of looking at the original language, I think we should think about Jordanes literary style too.  I know nothing about this but we know some authors used more traditional latin than others.  Does Jordanes use military language technically or does he use it in a more literary style?  In this passage, are "auxiliaries" a reference to a type of military service, a classically-inspired reference to imply that these are not true Romans or just a common term for supporters?  This will also help with terms like testudo.  In Early Medieval Latin, this had already shifted meaning to "shieldwall".  Is Jordanes using it with this looser meaning, rather than a Roman drill formation?

[rodge]

'Notice that this is a pile of suggestions without a scrap of hard evidence.'
To be honest Justin there is very little hard evidence on this period as you know.
The evidence we have is fragmentary and capable of having wildy varying conclusions drawn from it; as this thread demonstrates.
Elton's conclusions are as valid as anyones (within reason).
Even ours.

Can you give a quick breakdown of the 10,000 troops you believe Syagrius had at Soisson please (apologies if it is buried somewhere in the thead) so we can all be sure how many ex/Army of Gaul disciplined Roman troops we are looking at?

[Justin Swanton]

'Notice that this is a pile of suggestions without a scrap of hard evidence.'
To be honest Justin there is very little hard evidence on this period as you know.
The evidence we have is fragmentary and capable of having wildy varying conclusions drawn from it; as this thread demonstrates.
Elton's conclusions are as valid as anyones (within reason).
Even ours.

Can you give a quick breakdown of the 10,000 troops you believe Syagrius had at Soisson please (apologies if it is buried somewhere in the thead) so we can all be sure how many ex/Army of Gaul disciplined Roman troops we are looking at?

Let me say right away that that remark was not directed at your good self. It just irritated me that the affirmation: 'Though often portrayed as an independent Roman state in north Gaul, Aegidius and Syagrius' 'kingdom' was probably not much bigger than a day's march from their army' could be made on the basis of the kind of cotton wool that writer seems to provide.

It's true that there is not much evidence. We are never going to be able to quote long primary sources giving a detailed description of the makeup of Syagrius's army. Everything we have confortably fits into a few pages and it will not get any bigger.

I feel, however, that one can play at Sherlock Holmes with the evidence, putting together the few pieces we have and coming to some definite conclusions. But this requires an acceptance of the literary record unless clearly refuted by other evidence. If one casts doubt on primary sources when they don't fit a popular theory then one must give up doing history altogether and write movie scripts or something (sorry, getting irritable again).

To answer your question:

I posit a terminus a quo and ad quem, and a point between them, all of which indicate the existence of a trained and professional Roman army in northern Gaul throughout the 5th century.

1. A quo: the Notitia describes the makeup of the Gallic Field army, headquartered at Paris, which puts its strength at about 32,000 men.  The account of the usurper Constantine make it fairly clear that he needed the support of these troops to have any hope of taking over the Western Roman Empire. The forces he had in Britain were nowhere near enough. Hence the Gallic Field army was alive and well even during and after the barbarian incursions after 406. I might add that similar incursions took place in the latter 3rd century without that implying that the Roman army in Gaul had ceased to exist. In times of civil war, the Roman generals were preoccupied with beating each other; barbarian raiders were a secondary consideration.

2. Midpoint: Aetius's Roman troops at Chalons. Jordanes contents himself with describing only the Auxilia of Aetius. Writers of the time seem to have preferred detailing the barbarian contingents under Roman command and devoting much less space to describing the Roman contingents if they described them at all, so nothing unusual about this. The Roman troops had to be large and professional enough to beat off a Hunnish/Gepid attack and dissuade Attila from attacking them again. At a guess we're talking between 10,000 and 20,000 men.

3. Ad quem: The Roman soldiers stationed along the Loire as described by Procopius. These were the surviving units of legions, respected for their quality, recognizably Roman and proud of being so. One of them can be identified: the 'legio bretonum' or II Britannica.

The question is, how large and Roman was Syagrius's army, situated between 2. and 3 (nearer 2)? It had to be large enough to stand up to Clovis's Franks with a good chance of success, and Clovis could easily have assembled an army of 20,000 men or more. So make Syagrius's Romans about 10,000 men. The pride and professionalism of Procopius's legions would mean that Syagrius's troops were just as professional, if not more so. They were full-time soldiers, it being a profession handed from father to son as affirmed by Procopius.

Nothing prevented Syagrius from maintaining an army this size. His territory had retained its economic and social infrastructure. Contrary to a popular notion, northern Gaul did not depend economically at all on the Mediterranean. Bulk goods were not shipped from the south to the north or vice versa (hence little use of olive oil in the north). Northern Gaul with Britain had had to provision a Roman army of several tens of thousands in the past. Syagrius's territory could easily supply a 10,000 man army.

I'll talk about the coinage in another post, enough to say for now that the distribution of solidi does indicate, at least to a large extent, a paid soldiery.

The picture hangs together and everything is accounted for. All that is missing is detailed and conclusive documentary evidence, a Vita Syagrii. But then we wouldn't be having this discussion....

[rodge]

'Let me say right away that that remark was not directed at your good self.'

It wasn't taken as such Justin  , but thanks for saying it.

The two (or more) camps in this discussion currently seem to be:

1) Northern Gaul was hale and hearty, Roman in nature, in military prowess (in terms of its troops, their formations and training and to some extent numbers) and administration (administration mechanics were, as far we know and to a certain extent, carried on into the reign of Clovis and beyond).

2) Northern Gaul was fragmented; it was a loose arrangement of Gallo-Romans, Britons, Alans etc and erstwhile Imperial soldiers and their families. It was not a last bastion, or echo of the Roman Empire, but was an area in flux and conflict and did not have a standing army based on the the model (nor a sizable proportion of the numbers) of the Army of Gaul.

Is that a fair summation?

[Justin Swanton]

I would say so, yes.

[Erpingham]

'Let me say right away that that remark was not directed at your good self.'

Is that a fair summation?

Almost exactly as I had it summarised in my head.  Each camp views the evidence through the prism of the viewpoint it has determined (including myself).  One person's Holmesian reasoning is another's flight of fantasy.  Even with more evidence of the same equivocal nature, I'm not sure how we can advance

[rodge]

I'm not sure how we can advance

I think we all need to agree that
1) the sources are equivocal
2) that there is no 'right' answer

I'm more than happy to continue under this kind of aircover.
It is an interesting and informative discussion and, who knows, may provoke a friendly and intelligently comparative piece in Slingshot...?

Off for a dig.....

[aligern]

i think logic and a sensible understanding of the evidence can give us a best fit picture, but it eill be more like a 60/40 likelihood than a 90/10 level of certainty. However, at 60/40 there would still be a right answer.
Its a bit like the question of King Arthur
To say that there was a King Arthur would be wrong.
To say that the Britons had a leader who defeated the Sacons causing a 50 year gap in their advance would be right.
We might go for an answer that has a relict Roman force in North Gaul if there was just no description of an army from the region, but we do have such a description, it is from Jordanes and fails to mention these Romans. There are plenty of other opportunities for this force to be mentioned... it isn't.  What the evidence does support is that Syagrius has a force of buccellarii and has perhaps other allied troops from the sort of source that Jordanes quotes for Aetius.

Having read through the posts since ny last post I would like to make a few points that refer to various contributions.
Patrick, Your piece quoting Sidonius is highly inconvenient for your case. Sidonius is writing in the Visigothic area of Gaul to other Roman notables in that area. So when you show that tax collection is going on and road repairs they are happening in an area that has no formal Roman army, the troops supported  are the army of the Visigoth king.( The obe caveat to this would be the fleet at Bordeaux, however that fits best with a model in which some limitanei and garrisons with a Roman history survive, not field armies)
Justin, you are asking too much of Jordanes. There is no mention of a regular Roman army there and implying that he has a force that needs a few extra auxilia to face off Attila is yet a further stretch.
Aetius brings a few troops from Italy. In Gaul he collects a whole string of allies who are not enough to face Attila until he gets the Alans and Visigoths too. If there is an unmentioned Roman contingent then clearly it is tiny.
Jordanes raids other texts for much of his description of the Goths early history. Attila's battle speech doesn't tell us much about Roman military methods a century before he wrote. it will have been written to put an appropriate oration in the text.
The most destructive part of Jordanes account for Justin's case is the contingent that were formerly Roman soldiers. Accidentally this tells us what happened to the field army that existed in 420, its units made their own local deal , almost certainly when the tax payments stopped.
The whole idea that Northern Gaul supplied the Rhine defences and the field army of itself is highly unlikely . The Romans have an extensive tax system that supports its own bureaucracy and the army and Rome and Constantinople. The big producers in this regime are, Egypt, the Eastern cities and North Africa. Because the Empire is split in two the West is highly dependent upon Africa and once those  revenues are list the payment  mechanism for troops is compromised and they are forced to default to their own locality. Even in Italy the army consists of hired barbarians. Given the list of troops that Aetius has that are non Roman i.e. no longer swear an oath to the emperor is it not likely that these people are using up the supplies in the area that would support soldiery, especially when the zone also has to support the buccellarii of the local notables.
Ji is right, we should not get hung up on the definition of a soldier as regular or irregular here. You could be a member of a regular unit that was split up in fortlets, spent its time doing police work and farming, was full of dead pays and was thoroughly inefficient or you might be a young well born barbarian who campaigned with his kin group annually and was thoroughly militarily efficient.Alaric wanted the position of Magister Militum per Illyricum so that he could feed and clothe his Visigoth army. Now would that have made them Roman soldiers?

Roy.

[Jim Webster]

I posit a terminus a quo and ad quem, and a point between them, all of which indicate the existence of a trained and professional Roman army in northern Gaul throughout the 5th century.

1. A quo: the Notitia describes the makeup of the Gallic Field army, headquartered at Paris, which puts its strength at about 32,000 men.  The account of the usurper Constantine make it fairly clear that he needed the support of these troops to have any hope of taking over the Western Roman Empire. The forces he had in Britain were nowhere near enough. Hence the Gallic Field army was alive and well even during and after the barbarian incursions after 406. I might add that similar incursions took place in the latter 3rd century without that implying that the Roman army in Gaul had ceased to exist. In times of civil war, the Roman generals were preoccupied with beating each other; barbarian raiders were a secondary consideration.

The problem here is the Notitia. There are a lot of arguments about the date, and whether various sections were updated together or were last updated. Indeed I've seen one argument http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/JRS/10/Notitia_Dignitatum*.html  that the notitia entry for Britain proves that it was still part of the Empire in the 420s.
However I know of no theory which suggests the Gallic entry is later than about 430. This is about sixty years earlier than the battle of Soissons, and given what has happened in Gaul since, is not necessarily a good indicator of the situation in 486.
Another thing to remember is that even assuming the units existed, we know from other evidence in other parts of the empire that units might only be shadows of their former selves with regards numbers. Some of the units could have dwindled to city garrisons, others might be a third or a quarter of their paper strength. This 'field army' might not have been able to field a field army of more than a couple of thousand men.

2. Midpoint: Aetius's Roman troops at Chalons. Jordanes contents himself with describing only the Auxilia of Aetius. Writers of the time seem to have preferred detailing the barbarian contingents under Roman command and devoting much less space to describing the Roman contingents if they described them at all, so nothing unusual about this. The Roman troops had to be large and professional enough to beat off a Hunnish/Gepid attack and dissuade Attila from attacking them again. At a guess we're talking between 10,000 and 20,000 men.

Remember here we're at least twenty plus years after the Notitia, and there has been a lot of campaigning by Aetius and others in Gaul. You're also arguing from silence. Jordanes didn't mention Roman regulars because it was unfashionable. Unfortunately he would also have failed to mention Roman regulars if they had not been present. Even if present, they could have come from Italy rather than Gaul.

3. Ad quem: The Roman soldiers stationed along the Loire as described by Procopius. These were the surviving units of legions, respected for their quality, recognizably Roman and proud of being so. One of them can be identified: the 'legio bretonum' or II Britannica.   

Indeed it's perfectly possible for city militias with long histories to hang on. The last units of limitanei in Egypt lasted up until the conquest of the Arabs.
Within the context of a city or town militia then this would give them their 'unit traditions', their source of recruits and their economic base. The unit traditions might even extend to them doing some basic drill.

The question is, how large and Roman was Syagrius's army, situated between 2. and 3 (nearer 2)? It had to be large enough to stand up to Clovis's Franks with a good chance of success, and Clovis could easily have assembled an army of 20,000 men or more. So make Syagrius's Romans about 10,000 men. The pride and professionalism of Procopius's legions would mean that Syagrius's troops were just as professional, if not more so. They were full-time soldiers, it being a profession handed from father to son as affirmed by Procopius. 

Remember it has been pointed out that there is no evidence whatsoever that Clovis could raise 20,000 men in 486, indeed the evidence points to him struggling to raise that sort of numbers far later in his reign.

Nothing prevented Syagrius from maintaining an army this size. His territory had retained its economic and social infrastructure. Contrary to a popular notion, northern Gaul did not depend economically at all on the Mediterranean. Bulk goods were not shipped from the south to the north or vice versa (hence little use of olive oil in the north). Northern Gaul with Britain had had to provision a Roman army of several tens of thousands in the past. Syagrius's territory could easily supply a 10,000 man army.

I'll talk about the coinage in another post, enough to say for now that the distribution of solidi does indicate, at least to a large extent, a paid soldiery.

The picture hangs together and everything is accounted for. All that is missing is detailed and conclusive documentary evidence, a Vita Syagrii. But then we wouldn't be having this discussion....

I'm afraid that I disagree with you about the area retaining its 'economic and social infrastructure'. Northern Gaul had been troubled by the Bagaudae, the slow steady erosion of territory by the Franks, who you feel could raise 20,000 men but could support them without apparently impinging on the rest of Gaul. The units on the Rhine were often fed with grain shipped from Britain, which obviously wasn't forthcoming any more, and as far as I know all the evidence is that villas in the north of gaul declined, agriculture was in recession.

Jim

[Andreas Johansson]

The whole idea that Northern Gaul supplied the Rhine defences and the field army of itself is highly unlikely . The Romans have an extensive tax system that supports its own bureaucracy and the army and Rome and Constantinople. The big producers in this regime are, Egypt, the Eastern cities and North Africa. Because the Empire is split in two the West is highly dependent upon Africa and once those  revenues are list the payment  mechanism for troops is compromised and they are forced to default to their own locality.

Are you suggesting here that the Rhine army was fed by Tunisian grain? That seems a little unlikely on logistical grounds. Or merely that Tunisian taxes paid for more locally sourced grain?

In Wickham's version at least, the idea that northern Gaul supported the Rhine army is primarily about raw materials. In his version, northern Gaul (and Britain) is largely cut off from the Mediterranean area as far as traffic in staples goes, because land transport is prohibitively expensive and the sea route around Hispania is too long.

[Jim Webster]

Interesting paper on supplying the Roman army on the Rhine

http://dpc.uba.uva.nl/jalc/04/nr02/a01

Also 5. Food supply to the Roman army in the Rhine delta in the first century A.D.

Whilst only really looking at the 1st and early 2nd century their conclusion is that some grain was produced further east along the Rhine for use on the Rhine but a lot was imported

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

Interesting. The writer affirms that part of the food supply would have had to be 'imported' i.e. brought in from somewhere outside the immediate Rhine area. That would be northern Gaul and Britain. In other words, the frontier regions of the Rhine would not, by themselves, have been able to feed tens of thousands of troops garrisoned there (keeping in mind this is a period when most of the army was stationed on the frontier). Fair enough.

I note this extract:

Although the agrarian population to the south of the Rhine was integrated in the Roman empire to a high degree, hardly any imported food plants have been found in the agrarian settlements. Based on these results, it is assumed that in the Roman period the rural population produced its own food and did not import food from elsewhere.

Which suggests the absence of long-distance trade between this region and the Mediterranean basin.

[Jim Webster]

I don't think anyone has seriously suggested that grain was hauled from the med, although the Rhone was a major artery for some commerce.
But the problem is that
1) Britain was no longer a potential source
2) A lot of the land on the Rhine was now in Frankish hands
3) The local area had struggled to provide the grain for the frontier garrisons, organised agriculture and villas were in decline (one reason for allowing the Franks in was that there was so much 'deserted' land available)

Finding the wealth to fund a large standing field army looks difficult

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

Not really.

1) A large part of Britain's produce had gone towards feeding the troops stationed there. Gaul had the lion's share of feeding troops stationed in Gaul.
2) And plenty remained in Roman hands. As we've seen earlier, If 5% of Syagrius's realm was committed to military support, that would have left him with an army well in excess of the figure we are contemplating.
3) No evidence either for a struggle or a decline. The only reason for 'allowing' Franks in was that it was easier to co-opt their support in exchange for land than to fight them. The policy was adopted with the Visigoths and it worked quite well. Natural to extend it to the Franks.

[aligern]

Taxes in non frontier provinces went to pay the soldiery who then bought food locally. When Jim talks agriculture I generally do not argue and a little while back he made the point that, if there is no profit in it, farmers soon stop producing because there is no market. Troops also consume oil, well fats, wine, beer, fish, meat, leather, wood, iron , armaments etc. The whole being dependent upon a tax system that stimulates local oroduction. Given the high number of expensive units on the Rhine and in Northern Gaul it would have been ruinous to concentrate all the demands of the army on local producers on a tax basis. If you tax basic production and agriculture too high the farmers up and leave which they of course did.
In theory the lands of the Empire could produce enough for a large number of troops, but in a Society such as medieval England , which is organised for war the actual number of men supported is quite small. This is because there are other demands such as the standard of living of the better off(luxuries) the support of the poor, monks, nuns, bureaucrats, farm managers, towns and all their costs (walls for a start ) .Hence there are many costs in a sophisticated society that have to be borne as well as just the cost of troops. Later arome was no different.
When we see symptoms of tax rebellion such as the Bagaudae  and resistance to conscription and the imposition of laws to force the middle classes to collect taxes and be responsible for their total payment that cause people to avoid public service, then we are seeing a society that cannot pay for its troops . That is further evidenced by granting land to barbarians in return for military service  without those barbarians being broken up  into small groups, but allowed to settle together. This happens because Rome can no longer afford the armies necessary to break the Visigoths and the franks.
Rome can be compared to the Soviet Empire in its inefficiency and corruption and in its response to military competition.
For the Romans it was a further disaster that the 406 invasion and the civil wars disrupted provinces and eventually removed the richest. From 430 onwards  the  loss of Spain, Africa, Southern Gaul and Britain must have crippled tax  receipts. In attempting to secure Gaul Aetius has to rely on settling Alans and Burgundians  and hiring a Hun field army. I just do not see how this situation is compatible. with the survival of any sort ofRoman field army.  Awtius activities only make sense if there is no Roman core and land must be ceded to create a counterbalance to Bagaudae and barbarians already settled on the basis that even back in the 410s  the Romans cannot take a major tribe head on and force it to submit and break up.
Roy