The Empire is dead, long live the army

[aligern]

Checked with  Wickham's Framing the Middle Ages and on pay 102ff he is less supportive of the case for the survival of the tax system in Northern Gaul
He gives the latest date for the occupation of the Rhine fort at Alzey as around 450 and says  'the one certain casualty of the century was the fiscal infrastructure which channeled money and produce taken in taxation to the Rhine. The only information that we have about food supply for the second half of the century consists of ad hoc local initiatives.
Whilst some of us might disagree about the provenance of  the permanent force of Syagrius, there seems little doubt that if he was to have  an army sufficient to march up a hill and down again it would have to be a seven nation army of the stripe that  Aetius or Majorian fielded and not a permanently embodied Roman force.


Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

The basis of Aegidius' forces may have been the remnants of the Army of Gaul, but these troops would not have presented the same threat the Gallic Comitatenses of the past offered.
More likely, when Aegidius broke with Rome, he used what was available; his own bucellarii (probably barbarian), foederati (some 'romanised' previously Comitatenses Franks) Coloni, Laeti, Limitanei, garrison troops and troops raised from recruitment (Gallo-Romans and most likely Franks).

Some of Aegidius' forces may have previously been in the service of Majorian's (largely barbarian) force that was led into Spain. From John of Antioch:
'When he crossed into Italy, Ricimer plotted his death. Majorian had already dismissed his allies after his return.'
Now they may have been dismissed anywhere, but if dismissed in Gaul it is possible (I stress possible) they went north and were snapped up by Aegidius.

We may like to look at how Aegidius' forces were used.  In 458-460 he marches into Burgundian and Visigothic territory as the northern prong of Majorian's campaigns.  The combined forces swiftly reduce the Burgundians and Visigoths to subjection.  Following the death of Majorian, Aegidius (who is an enemy of Ricimer, the power behind the throne in Italy) wins a fight against the Visigoths, whom Ricimer through Severus has prodded into action, then dies of either assassination or the plague while sending an embassy to the Vandals.

These look like the activities of a thriving military power rather than a last-ditch patchwork force.  Syagrius inherited the realm from his father, and apart from beating off a Saxon attack on Angers (with Frankish assistance) seems not to have done much meaningful campaigning until his final and fateful clash with Clovis.  His confidence that he had noting to fear from a Frankish army suggests he felt he had troops of respectable number and quality.

This of course tells us nothing about their ethnicity, but I would also suggest that the Army of Gaul had traditionally recruited locally, with troops such as Taifali and Alans being peripheral additions (laeti, perhaps).  Hence I would see Syagrius' forces as consisting principally of locally-recruited Gauls, on the basis that the manpower was present, he was cut off from Imperial authority (after 480 he was Imperial authority in the West) and native Gallic troops were less expensive and more reliable than barbarian bands, who might at this period be increasingly difficult to obtain as their parent nationalities were now settled in Roman provinces in well-defined kingdoms.  We see Syagrius using allied Franks against Saxons and trying to use Visigoths as allies against Franks, but his attitude seems to have been that this was icing on the cake, and that he could deal with Clovis by himself when it came to the crunch.

Checked with  Wickham's Framing the Middle Ages and on pay 102ff he is less supportive of the case for the survival of the tax system in Northern Gaul
He gives the latest date for the occupation of the Rhine fort at Alzey as around 450 and says  'the one certain casualty of the century was the fiscal infrastructure which channeled money and produce taken in taxation to the Rhine. The only information that we have about food supply for the second half of the century consists of ad hoc local initiatives.

This is not the picture one gets from contemporary letters, at least those I have seen: these suggest a still-flourishing economy, with a surprising amount of communication still going on between the dissociated parts of the Empire.  It also seems to me that drawing conclusions from the abandonment of Rhine forts when the frontiers of the Domain of Soissons were not actually on the Rhine is not wholly helpful as an indicator for Syagrius' realm.  As Andreas points out, the abandonment of a system which shipped resources to the Rhine could well see those resources freed for local use.

[Justin Swanton]

The 'legio bretonum' (the old II Britannica), still in existence in the mid 6th century, would be one of these units.

Justin, I would be very grateful if you could point me at the evidence for this.
I have read, in translation, the relevant section of the  'Vita Sancti Dalmatii' that mentions the 'legio bretonum'. Is there more?

Let me reproduce here my earlier post on the subject:

'As the devout one [Dalmas] was tirelessly hurrying to him [Theudebert] in the region beyond-Loire [or: beyond-Loir], it is said he enjoyed an evening's hospitality in a certain place where some sort of Breton [or: Brittonic] legion (so to speak) nearby was stationed [or: was waiting].'

Notice the author's hesitation about the nature of the legion. It is 'some sort' of Breton/British legion 'so to speak'. Why the hesitation? I can think of only two reasons:

1.  The author knew what a true legion looked like and realised that this particular entity didn't fit the bill. This however doesn't make sense. The author had no benchmark. The only 'legions' he would have known about were those units in sixth century Gaul that called themselves such. It's like a Malawian talking about 'some sort of battalion, so to speak' in the Malawi army. A Malawi formation calls itself a battalion, to a Malawian it's a battalion.

2. The author knew what British, or more exactly, Bretons, were like and realised that this legion did not resemble them remotely. This fits the picture better. He, like his contemporaries, would have lost sight of the source of the legion's name. That legion, centuries earlier, had been stationed in Britain and acquired the name of the territory it garrisoned, a name it retained after it was recalled to Gaul. The only formation that fits this description is the II Britannica. So we have here the last recorded reference to one of the oldest and best of the old Empire's legions.

(I would add to this that Bretons and British did not have legions, or any legionary tradition, which explains the author's puzzlement. It would be like talking about 'some sort of Phalanx, so to speak, in the British army')

This legion perfectly fits the bill of the 'other Roman soldiers' mentioned by Procipius. It is in the right place, at the right time, and it has the right name.

Right place: it is located north of the Loire, which is the only conceivable 'frontier of Gaul' that Procopius's 'other Roman soldiers' could have been guarding against the 'Arians' (Visigoths) which they refused to join after the final peace, throwing their lot and their lands in with the new Gallo-roman - Frankish union.

Right time: Dalmas went to see king Theudebert some time after 534 when he was crowned. Procipius was writing some time in the middle of the 6th century.

Right name: The Notitia Dignitatum mentions at least 2 vexillations of II Britannica, both in Gaul. The legion was very old and venerable, and old and venerable institutions have a habit of carrying on.

[Erpingham]

This is not the picture one gets from contemporary letters, at least those I have seen: these suggest a still-flourishing economy, with a surprising amount of communication still going on between the dissociated parts of the Empire. 

Even if we are to accept this, and those of you who know this period better than me seem divided, it is a long stretch from this to a fully-functioning, disciplined Roman army.  The personnel could be Gallo-Roman, they could be well equipped in contemporary terms and they may even have revered the standards of old Roman units but they may still be no more than militia stiffened with buccelarii of the major leaders, with various "barbarian" ally contingents/feodorati/laeti or whatever we wish to call them at this time.  Justin was right that we are in the realms of speculation but we seem to be dividing down the lines of precursors of what will follow in the early Middle Ages and the final flourish of a mighty Empire.  In the absence of concrete evidence, I'm afraid I find the former a more likely scenario (though I'd read the novel based on the latter  ).

[rodge]

Thank you Justin, and apologies, I seem to have missed that original post.
There is a paper on the issue of the 'legio bretonum' here:

http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/wiseman/DECB/Wiseman-Dalmas-JAEMA.pdf

I offer it for interest.

[aligern]

Oh Patrick.
Number one yu should not be dismissing the idea of a 'patchwork army" as I have pointed out this was the nature of the army of Aetius and that of the emperor Majorian. Actually it is the nature of the army of Belisarius, so you don't have much basis for claiming that an army with different contingents is worse than a homogeneous one. In fact the elites of several groups would make a very good army.

Secondly, you are missing something in your claim that letter writing shows that the empire was still alive and taxing in Nortern Gaul as evidenced by collections of letters. The letters come from Provence, from the Visigothic South West and from the Burgundian East. All these are places where the tax system DOES continue... and does not, incidentally,  However there are not the same letters from Northern Gaul where, I submit, the economy is much more disrupted. :-)
I don't doubt that Syagrius could put together a force to stand up to the Franks, but the logic is that this is an alliance not some sort of mini Comitatensian force.

In Italy where Roman troops and efficient taxes do continue on they are so few in number by 476 that they cannot stand up to Odovakar's barbarians when he launches a coup.

Roy

Roy

[Justin Swanton]

Checked with  Wickham's Framing the Middle Ages and on pay 102ff he is less supportive of the case for the survival of the tax system in Northern Gaul
He gives the latest date for the occupation of the Rhine fort at Alzey as around 450 and says  'the one certain casualty of the century was the fiscal infrastructure which channeled money and produce taken in taxation to the Rhine. The only information that we have about food supply for the second half of the century consists of ad hoc local initiatives.
Whilst some of us might disagree about the provenance of  the permanent force of Syagrius, there seems little doubt that if he was to have  an army sufficient to march up a hill and down again it would have to be a seven nation army of the stripe that  Aetius or Majorian fielded and not a permanently embodied Roman force.


Roy

Two solidi of Julius Nepos (473-475) and two tremissis of Zenon (Eastern emperor 474-491) have been discovered in Cote d'Armour, northern Brittany. Two of these coins were found at Castel Kerandroat, in Plésidy, a small Roman castrum where coins from Vespasian were also found. These could be seen as pay for Roman/Breton troops quartered in Brittany, which argues the persistence of a tax system in the 470's and beyond. Source here.

[Justin Swanton]

Thank you Justin, and apologies, I seem to have missed that original post.
There is a paper on the issue of the 'legio bretonum' here:

http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/wiseman/DECB/Wiseman-Dalmas-JAEMA.pdf

I offer it for interest.

Thanks Rodger. I've seen that article already. It is interesting, but I think Wiseman goes wrong in identifying the Armoricans (Arborychi) with the Bretons. Armoricans were the native inhabitants of Armorica, which is the whole region between the Seine and the Loire, not just the peninsula of Brittany. Bretons are never called Armoricans or vice versa in the primary sources. They were newcomers, foreigners, and the region they established control over was eventually named after them. Furthermore, they didn't intermarry with the Franks, whereas the Gallo-romans of Syagrius's former realm did. And they didn't become a great nation with the Franks, which, again, the Gallo-romans, melded with the Franks into a single state, did.

Truth to tell, there is actually no indication in the historical record that the Bretons had anything to do with the war between Syagrius's realm and the Franks, though one tends to think they helped the Romans. But it's possible they kept out of it until the peace of 496/7, after which they began to tussle with the Franks in their turn.

[Justin Swanton]

To flesh out the distribution of solidi in western Armorica: this article (in French) has some useful tables and maps showing where individual solidi (as opposed to hoards) were found, and the emperors under which they were minted. There is a total of 32 solidi found in western Armorica in the 5th century compared to 44 in the 4th. Of the 32, 14 were under the emperors Libius Severus, Julius Nepos and Zenon, i.e from the period 461 to 491 - a third of this century. Hardly indicative of a collapse of the monetary system, at least in what concerned payment of the military. Seems Patrick has a point.

The article unfortunately does not give figures for eastern Armorica, but I imagine the statistics are broadly similar.

[aligern]

Even if we accepted them as military pay... and they may not be, they are not in Syagrius area are they?
Roy

[Justin Swanton]

Even if we accepted them as military pay... and they may not be, they are not in Syagrius area are they?
Roy

Most of them are. I've pulled the map below from the article, giving the distribution of the solidi in the western half of Syagrius's realm. For the period 461-491 10 of the 14 coins are found outside Brittany, in territory directly controlled by Syagrius. Note that this is comparable to the coins found in the first half of the century. There's no sign of a decline at all.

I can't imagine any practical use for solidi in this period other than paying soldiers. A solidus had an enormous value and would not have been seen in a marketplace, and the huge and magnificent buildings they once paid for were a thing of the past.

[Jim Webster]

I'm not sure what you're counting as "local" here, but Wickham in Framing the Early Middle Ages has much of northern Gaul involved in feeding the Rhine army. This presumably ends once the Rhine frontier breaks down, but the resources previously sent east could potentially be used to feed troops in the future "Syagria". The question is, I guess, to what extent the infrastructure to extract them for military use remained.

A more usual thing to happen was that once the army stopped buying, production stopped. What's the point of producing grain that you cannot sell?
A lot of land went out of production in the North of England, or reverted to grassland and grazing animals.
If  the army couldn't pay, the grain wouldn't be forthcoming. Yes, giving a passing general an occasional load of grain as a gesture of support is fair enough, but you cannot run an agricultural economy on that basis. The agricultural economy changes and evolves and arable declines.

Jim

[Erpingham]

Even if we accepted them as military pay... and they may not be, they are not in Syagrius area are they?
Roy

I can't imagine any practical use for solidi in this period other than paying soldiers. A solidus had an enormous value and would not have been seen in a marketplace, and the huge and magnificent buildings they once paid for were a thing of the past.

I think you have fairly clear evidence of a connection with the wider world, either through trade or diplomatic gifts.  However, a scatter of high value coins doesn't archaeologically mean a functioning money economy.  You need a much larger number of lower denomination coins for that.  However, that is in itself a bit of a red herring.  Even if there was no money economy, gold coinage is a fairly good form of portable bullion so could still be used to pay soldiers.  What I am missing is why these soldiers, money economy or no, are Roman regulars.  Before this, the Romans were paying money to the barbarians in their midst.  Could they not be doing that now?  Could they not be payment to household troops or buccelarii, whatever their origin?

[Patrick Waterson]

There may be good reasons to assume that Roman regulars (as opposed to hired groups of barbarians) formed the basis of the army of the Domain of Soissons.

1) Gallic troops were still being recruited into Roman units long after Italians had largely given up serving.  Unlike in Italy, there seems to have been no tradition in Gaul of deliberately avoiding military service: the popular existence of the term murciones, indicating self-mutilation by removal of a thumb, indicated how widespread the problem was in Italy.

2) The Romano-Gallic military establishment had been run by Roman Magistri Militum for three generations, whereas the Romano-Italian military establishment had been run by barbarians for an even greater length of time (notably Arbogast, Stilicho, Ricimer, Odoacer).

To my mind, it seems reasonable to conclude that Gaul-based units would continue to recruit from the local populace, an option not open in Italy (but which was available in Illyria, which seems to have retained Roman-pattern formations up to the deposition of Julius Nepos in AD 480), and hence would not need to scratch around for barbarian bands to make up core numbers.

Italy-based armies, such as those fielded by Majorian, would have a large barbarian representation because of the general reluctance of Italians to serve and perhaps an inclination of generations of barbarian Magistri Militum to recruit from a barbarian manpower base.  There seems to be nothing in the Domain of Soissons to correspond to Odoacer's wholesale importation of Rugians into the army of Italy (and the Eastern Empire seems to have utilised its indigenous recruiting base as the core of a Roman-organised army, fleshed out with hired barbarian contingents).

The Domain of Soissons was, however, the realm of successive Roman Magistri Militum, men who could be expected to maintain the Roman military tradition - and who better than they?  In the absence of a late 5th century Notitia Dignitatum or tactical handbook we are reduced to deduction and surmise, and my deductions and surmise point to a still-regular Late Roman-style army in the Domain rather than a fudged collection of paid or unpaid barbarians gathered under some temporary standards.  The circumstances and personnel were right for the maintenance of Roman military tradition, if not at its shining best, and I feel this is more credible than simply assuming that the army of Gaul went down the Italian plughole.

[Justin Swanton]

I think you have fairly clear evidence of a connection with the wider world, either through trade or diplomatic gifts.  However, a scatter of high value coins doesn't archaeologically mean a functioning money economy.  You need a much larger number of lower denomination coins for that.  However, that is in itself a bit of a red herring.  Even if there was no money economy, gold coinage is a fairly good form of portable bullion so could still be used to pay soldiers.  What I am missing is why these soldiers, money economy or no, are Roman regulars.  Before this, the Romans were paying money to the barbarians in their midst.  Could they not be doing that now?  Could they not be payment to household troops or buccelarii, whatever their origin?

If coins are being used to pay for anything, then you have some sort of money economy. I tend to doubt that buccelarii or household troops belonging to landowning notables would be paid in coin. It would be simpler for their lord just to provision them from his own resources: why pay someone else to do something you can do yourself for less? Paying money to troops implies that someone else other than the payer is doing the provisioning. If the provisioner accepts solidi it is not because they are pretty and shiny, but because they are an accepted medium of exchange. Either they can be given to the local government in lieu of provisions as tax (monetary tax), or they can be given to other producers for their goods (monetary economy), or both. The payment of troops in coin also implies that they were in effect separate entities, not integrated into the villa communities of the local notables, even if they fell under their authority.

Procopius does not mention any barbarian foederati fighting for Syagrius against the Franks, but he does make the point that the Arborychi (Gallo-romans of Armorica) fought them. The implication is that the bulk of Syagrius's army was Gallo-roman. Gallo-romans had fought in the Roman military tradition for centuries, being to a large extent the backbone of Western Empire's legions.

So we have Gallo-romans, fighting for a Gallo-roman Magister Militum, in a territory that had remained under Roman control, did not have any known barbarian federates fighting for it after the 470's, had known Roman units still in it, possessed a functioning economy and a Gallo-roman nobility. Do we have to believe that Syagrius's forces were untrained barbarians under Roman banners?