The Empire is dead, long live the army

[Patrick Waterson]

I have not been giving Roy the attention he deserves, so ...

The Empire was always a negotiation between the military power, generally the emperor or. his representatives, and the landowners. I think it is a complete flight of fancy to think that A Magister Militum could just set himself up as dictator and set the tax rates he liked. Whatever they did would have to be in conjunction with the people who controlled big agriculture.

One must ask why, given that Aegidius or Syagrius was the ultimate authority in his domain.  The theoretical chain of command had ceased to operate at the highest level once Ricimer had Majorian murdered.

Someone earlier talked about landowners moving into towns and there is some evidence for this. In insecure areas this will have led on to the abandonment of outlying areas. That has tax implications. If I am a farmer I do not plant all my land, I plant what I can eat or sell. If there is a tax placed on me then I plant more land in order to pay the tax. This is why low levels of tax are an economic stimulant.

If landowners move into towns the land is not necessarily abandoned - tenant farmers and estate slaves continue to farm or die.  If land is actually too insecure to sustain coloni (where in the Domain of Soissons actually fitted this bill?) the logical step is to plant soldier-farmers (see remarks on laeti, below).

However, if barbarians raid the area or if my peasants run away to avoid having to work hard then the area that is abandoned comes directly off the area of land whose produce pays the taxes. So in a sophisticated economy with a full time soldiery, supported by tax the loss of say 20% of agricultural production is a disaster for the military. For a year they could coerce payment, but that initiates a downward spiral which will remove more production next year.

Not necessarily - it represents a 20% drop in revenue, but as I understand Late Roman arrangements the military had first call and civic projects (roads, aqueducts, new buildings) got what was left once the soldiery had been taken care of.  Hence a drop in revenue meant a decline in civic amenities rather than troops and would not necessarily initiate a downward spiral.

However, if  one looked at the fields the vast majority of them, 80%, would still be full of grain. In such a situation it is much easier to keep an infantry unit in being by getting the chaps out to work in the fields than it would be to keep a cavalry unit going. Of course, some units will collapse completely as the garrison of Patavis does, some will reduce in numbers, some join the buccellarii bands of landowners and city states that are  now looking after themselves. That I think, explains the former Roman soldiers that join  Aetius and the antique uniforms story in Procopius.

I believe this was the idea behind the laeti system: barbarian types were settled on land which they farmed and they provided recruits instead of taxes (it is not wholly clear whether this was on a basis of leaving the fields to fight when called or of providing a set number of recruits per year to join regular units permanently).  Whether Procopius was actually referring to laeti I am not sure: he could equally have been referring to limitanei units which had been taken over as a going concern, although these would probably have been in the soldier-farmer category by that time.

Clearly troops are still maintained and can be raised by such as Ecdicius, but they are personal retainers rather than regular soldiers in units and  the economic surplus to support them is being spent on them and not on a non existent field army.

Although Sidonius c.AD 474 does refer to troops being deprived of their pay by state officials, which is inapplicable to bucellarii and similar personally-retained types.

Halsall's view IIRC is that local aristos become Franks and compete to be more Frankish than the Franksand there could be a lot of useful truth there. in Spain it looks like the local landowners find it useful to become Goths, because the upper classes of any groups in close proximity have more in common than with each other than they do with the lower classes of their parent culture and language. That all makes a lot of sense, especially when there is no competing way of advancement via imperial service and you are having to defend yourself and your land with forces raised from that land. One is reminded of Theudis he Goth who married a rich Roman lady in Spain and maintained a force of 2000 men on his estates. also the laws of Euric which codify the relationship between the buccellarius  and his master.

All well and good, but would local aristocrats in northern Gaul have become honorary Franks, so to speak, before the Franks took over?

As Anthony said earlier, if a situation starts with army type A , then goes through a dark period, then emerges with army type A we can accept as fact that during the dark oeriod the army was type A.
When the army type start as A, the regular Notitia force and after the dark oeriod emerges as type B, a force based upon personal relationships, tribal groupings and relict garrisons we have to look for a change. In the case of Northern  Gaul that change has to take place before the actions of Aetius in 450 because we have  of Aetius army and we know that it did not include a large force of regularly embodied Roman troops from the old regular army.

This begs some fairly important questions, notably whether such a change took place in northern Gaul prior to Aetius (who is fielding what look very like Roman troops at Chalons and who seems to hang onto them in Gaul once Attila has gone) and whether we do indeed "know that it did not include a large force of regularly embodied Roman troops from the old regular army".

Otherwise the logic is impeccable. 

Actually Patrick, if you read Drinkwater's paper you'd realise he concentrates on the 5th century. His entire paper is about the 5th century Bacaudae

Yes, sorry, I was referring to your summary of the book as a whole (Drinkwater being the main co-author/editor along with Elton) as it deals with villas (notably Percival's article), not Drinkwater's individual paper.  These collaborative books consisting entirely of articles are a bother to refer to in short form.

The process in Southern Gaul was slower, because there was still more order and control

Not from where I sit - after Aetius northern Gaul looks relatively untroubled whereas after Majorian southern Gaul starts to be troubled by what we might politely call questions of imperial succession.

As for there being no evidence to the contrary that there was order in North gaul, have you ever bothered looking at the archaeology?
It's not that we're arguing from silence, it's that your stance is only possible if you ignore the archaeology
I posted a bit about the villas which just happen to be taken from books I have about. But Drinkwater uses the archaeology as do a lot of the other historians. G Halsall has a fascinating paper on 'The Origins of the Reihengraberzivilisation forty years on' which might explain a lot about the aristocracy in the north.

Yes, unfortunately at the end of the day this comes down to interpretation and I feel that while we can conclude that late 5th century northern Gaul was not the same sweet and sunny land with wide-spreading peaceful estates as 1st-2nd century AD Gaul, we can not conclude that it was too impoverished to support a modest (say 10,000 or so) standing army and a Roman administration - Illyria, which had received a rather more thorough combing than Gaul during the 5th century at the hands of Alaric and Attila, was still able to support a Roman administration and army up to AD 480.

There is a large amount of work that has been done on the issue, and you're just ignoring it.

Not so much ignoring it as questioning the conclusions being advanced under its shadow. 

[Erpingham]

All well and good, but would local aristocrats in northern Gaul have become honorary Franks, so to speak, before the Franks took over?

I think the point is the wealthy and powerful morph into what they need to be.  The shapers have ceased to be the central authorities and have become individuals making up allegiances which will best advance/secure their position.  Eventually, they help shape their new world order (unless we believe in some pure blooded barbarian takeover, which Halsall clearly doesn't).

On the other points, I'll happily let Roy and Jim reply, as they are better informed

[Jim Webster]

I have not been giving Roy the attention he deserves, so ...

The Empire was always a negotiation between the military power, generally the emperor or. his representatives, and the landowners. I think it is a complete flight of fancy to think that A Magister Militum could just set himself up as dictator and set the tax rates he liked. Whatever they did would have to be in conjunction with the people who controlled big agriculture.

One must ask why, given that Aegidius or Syagrius was the ultimate authority in his domain.  The theoretical chain of command had ceased to operate at the highest level once Ricimer had Majorian murdered.

This one is very simple to answer, where do you thing the officers who controlled the units you assume Aegidius or Syagrius commanded came from? At the very least they were the potential sons-in-law of the local nobility if not their sons. If Aegidius or Syagrius alienated them then they'd simply manouevre one of his officers into his place. It is hardly an unprecedented thing to do.

Jim

[Jim Webster]

All well and good, but would local aristocrats in northern Gaul have become honorary Franks, so to speak, before the Franks took over?

I think the point is the wealthy and powerful morph into what they need to be.  The shapers have ceased to be the central authorities and have become individuals making up allegiances which will best advance/secure their position.  Eventually, they help shape their new world order (unless we believe in some pure blooded barbarian takeover, which Halsall clearly doesn't).

On the other points, I'll happily let Roy and Jim reply, as they are better informed

This we see in Sidonius's letters as he remonstrates with 'Romans' who have become 'Visigoths'. He was merely one of the last to realise that the Empire in Gaul was dead and to finally move across to regarding the Visigoths as the legitimate rulers.
In the north, if you can support a bodyguard of a score of cavalry and raise 300 useful infantry from your estates, the Franks would doubtless be happy to accept you as one of their allies/subordinates.

Jim

[aligern]

One of the conundra of the Anglo Saxon takeover of lowland Britannia is that there are relatively few of them invading yet they have had a huge effect upon culture and the gene pool. the same is true of the Arabs in N Africa and Spain. one key driver of this is discriminatory laws and practices. People move to new identities that have power and rights. In Vth century Gaul this was facilitated for the rich Romans because they already had a lifestyle that fitted with the top Franks and vice versa. For liwer class Romans the impoverished situation would hit their birthrate as I believe it did in Britain. Thus as the Franks spread  in the North they crowd out the Romans and better off Romans join the winning cause. This process is certainly beginning in the fourth century as the Franks and others take over the lands at the mouth of the Rhine that were once Romanised and then spread South.

As to tax receipts, I still hold to the view  that the main call on harvests is the producer, not the military as the rate of return on lands falls and the army ceases to offer effective defence the landowner provides his own protection, not so much for theoretical likelihood of an army of barbarians passing through as  for the much greater danger of small bands of barbarians or the Bagaudae  and runaway soaves. In 452 Attila has a Bagaudic leader in his entourage and one of Aetius chief concerns beforehand and reasons for the settlement of barbarians  in the interior of Gaul is the need to control groups who have abandoned the Stalinist harshness of  life as coloni.
That sort of thing augurs badly for the birth rate and economic productivity. Landowners do not pay their taxes when the extra land needed to do so is abandoned. Landowners do not pay up when they are having to pay their own military forces, though as Jim says they may well then send a son with this military force to a muster in return for protection.
Patrick seems to see Late Roman Gaul as like Britain in the Socialist sixties and seventies...it is not, it is much more like the  Thatcherite eighties with privatisation of military function the norm.
Roy

[aligern]

Are aegidius and Syagrius 'the  ultimate authority in their domain'  as. Patrick thinks?  I wonder if that is not a misreading of the extent of their power. Far more likely that they are simply primus inter pares  with other leaders, effectively just the guy with the most buccellarii with the bolster of an imperial title, now unrecognised. In so far as he could coerce others he probably  but as Rodger showed us this power might not be effective much further than a days march from his camp.

When Syagrius is defeated by Clovis, there is no further resistance, it is not as if he headed a state with resources that are commensurate with Justin's map. Given that Clovis is just one Frankish king with one ally it is odd that an area that is the size of England and apparently well run on teaditional imperial lines with walled cities and a functioning tax system just falls into Clovis hands.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

Certainly we see in the later empire a lot of comments from various places about 'peasant' flight. In Egypt there are records of appeals from people who were the only ones left in the village but were being forced to pay the assessment for the entire village.
On problem the Empire had was that large landowners refused to release men for the Army, Stilicho boasted he'd beaten barbarians without asking for recruits. This is one reason why I find the idea of a locally recruited field army 10,000 strong in north gaul so improbable.
From the landowners point of view they needed their coloni, if numbers fell, they lost production and income
From the states point of view,if you got this fall in production, you got a fall in revenue, which is probably one reason why the state didn't press too hard for recruits.
You must remember that even on large estates, Roman agriculture was labour intensive and not particularly efficient.
They struggled with heavy land, valley bottoms were often to wet and even if drained the soil could be too heavy, they preferred the terraces half way up the side of the valley.

With regard on who has the main call on production, it is always the producer. If the army takes too much the produce hasn't got seed corn and you don't get a crop next year. 25% to 30% of the crop might be kept for seed!
It's easy to reduce yield and efficiency, run off the plough oxen and areas planted will plummet, and they can take years to replace.
Lose too many men and women in their twenties and thirties and yields will plummet as well.

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

When Syagrius is defeated by Clovis, there is no further resistance, it is not as if he headed a state with resources that are commensurate with Justin's map. Given that Clovis is just one Frankish king with one ally it is odd that an area that is the size of England and apparently well run on teaditional imperial lines with walled cities and a functioning tax system just falls into Clovis hands.
Roy

It did not fall into his hands. Clovis, as Procopius makes clear, did not gain control of Syagrius's territory until his baptism ten years (at least) after his victory at Soissons. One can argue about who the Arborychi were (though I cannot see them being anything other than the Gallo-roman inhabitants of Armorica), but one cannot argue about the fact that they fought Clovis to a standstill - a bit odd if they were just one element in a polyglot ragtag army Syagrius persuaded to follow him, or of one of the local minor bigwigs who consented to give him some help.

[Jim Webster]

It's only odd if you make the unfounded assumption that in 486 Clovis had a major military force. We've been through this before. At this period he was one amongst a group of petty chieftains jostling for power.

Clovis wins Battle of Soissons 486
At some point after this he has the Frankish king Chararic imprisoned and executed.
"A few years later," he killed Ragnachar, the Frankish king of Cambrai, along with his brothers.
In 491 he defeated some of the Thuringians and had united all the Franks west of the River Maas except for the Ripuarian Franks
In 496 with his Frankish subkings he beat the Alamanni in the Battle of Tolbiac
Around this point he makes Paris his capital
In 500 Clovis the Burgundians at Dijon but couldn't subdue them.
He campaigned against the Visigoths with Armorican support and defeated them at Vouille in 507

In 507 he needed the Armoricans to defeat the Visigoths, without them in 500 he cannot overcome the Burgundians.

In 486 he was not a major power. He didn't even control all the Franks

Jim

[Andreas Johansson]

Halsall's view IIRC is that local aristos become Franks and compete to be more Frankish than the Franksand there could be a lot of useful truth there. in Spain it looks like the local landowners find it useful to become Goths, because the upper classes of any groups in close proximity have more in common than with each other than they do with the lower classes of their parent culture and language. That all makes a lot of sense, especially when there is no competing way of advancement via imperial service and you are having to defend yourself and your land with forces raised from that land

A lot of sense if you're a Gallo-Roman aristocrat looking to gain preferential treatment - rather less if you're already a Frank and asked to share. I tend to find Heather more convincing than Halsall on this point.

Note that if Romans were turning into Goths in Sidonius' day, they'd remained Romans in up to 2-3 generations.

(But yeah, sure, assimilation eventually takes place. By 1800 or so they're all French.)

[aligern]

But are the Franks being asked to 'share'. It appears that they take over land with a fair degree of legal formality. So imperial land becomes the kings to dispose of, plus any that has been taken from those being openly resistant. The rest has legal Gallic landowners who Clovis is keen to woo. At the very least it enables him to run some imperial systems and to keep on the right side of the bishops in the fortified towns and generally Merovingians are keen to have episcopal support.
The people who got land were Frankish nobles who received estates, there was not Imo a general handing of land to all Franks, with one exception, that is in the Belgic provinces where it appears that Frankish settlement was en masse.
So generally Frankish optimates got land and kept their groups of followers. That left plenty for those Roman landowners who accommodated.

The difference in England was that the Saxons took over an empty land with the cities in ruins and did not maintain  traditional structures. In Gaul the land was studded with fortified cities and  they surrounded by cultivated land. Sensibly the Franks kept this going and needed men who knew how to run the local economy.
Roy

[Erpingham]

Clovis, as Procopius makes clear, did not gain control of Syagrius's territory until his baptism ten years (at least) after his victory at Soissons. One can argue about who the Arborychi were (though I cannot see them being anything other than the Gallo-roman inhabitants of Armorica), but one cannot argue about the fact that they fought Clovis to a standstill

The significance of the Arborychi fighting Clovis to a standstill depends on a couple of variables.  Firstly, how powerful was Clovis?  Secondly, how intensive was this ten year war?  Do we have records of towns besieged and falling, pitched battles etc.?  Without them, we might just have some annoying skirmishing between small bands.  Jim suggests Clovis is not too powerful at this time.  Justin presumably has contrary evidence and details of the war?

However, what did strike me was that the Arborychi were only finally subdued (or brought into the political sphere of Clovis) after his conversion to catholicism.  Maybe the Arborychi were catholics or their leaders were and Clovis' willingness to convert enabled the sides to conclude a peace?  Politically astute conversion wasn't unknown at this time.



 

[aligern]

There is a problem with the Arborychi/Armorici linking. That is that the Armorici are Romans. Why would they be described as once working for the Romans f they always were such?
Roy

[Patrick Waterson]

All well and good, but would local aristocrats in northern Gaul have become honorary Franks, so to speak, before the Franks took over?

I think the point is the wealthy and powerful morph into what they need to be.  The shapers have ceased to be the central authorities and have become individuals making up allegiances which will best advance/secure their position.  Eventually, they help shape their new world order (unless we believe in some pure blooded barbarian takeover, which Halsall clearly doesn't).

Does this mean that a) northern Gaul lacked central authority (never mind that contemporaries referred to Syagrius as a 'rex', a king, one with unitary overall civil and military power over his domain) and b) the local Athanasian notables rushed to turn themselves into pagan Franks rather than Arian Visigoths?  I do not quite follow the cultural argument here.

Are aegidius and Syagrius 'the  ultimate authority in their domain'  as. Patrick thinks?  I wonder if that is not a misreading of the extent of their power. Far more likely that they are simply primus inter pares  with other leaders, effectively just the guy with the most buccellarii with the bolster of an imperial title, now unrecognised.

We can point to the title of 'rex' given to Syagrius by contemporaries as a clear indication that he was firmly in charge, and not just chasing a transient purple dream like the ephemeral 'emperors' in southern Gaul.

Thus as the Franks spread  in the North they crowd out the Romans and better off Romans join the winning cause.

But how does one reconcile this belief with the Franks being a subordinate collection of disunited tribes prior to AD 486 (as Jim has so kindly pointed out), not a 'winning cause'?

As to tax receipts, I still hold to the view  that the main call on harvests is the producer, not the military as the rate of return on lands falls and the army ceases to offer effective defence the landowner provides his own protection, not so much for theoretical likelihood of an army of barbarians passing through as  for the much greater danger of small bands of barbarians or the Bagaudae  and runaway soaves. In 452 Attila has a Bagaudic leader in his entourage and one of Aetius chief concerns beforehand and reasons for the settlement of barbarians  in the interior of Gaul is the need to control groups who have abandoned the Stalinist harshness of  life as coloni.
That sort of thing augurs badly for the birth rate and economic productivity. Landowners do not pay their taxes when the extra land needed to do so is abandoned. Landowners do not pay up when they are having to pay their own military forces, though as Jim says they may well then send a son with this military force to a muster in return for protection.

There are several assumptions here.
1) That the lot of coloni became worse, not better, under Aegidius and Syagrius.
2) That Bacaudae continued to be a problem.
3) That land in the Domain was abandoned.
4) That regular military units were no longer maintained.

And would it be possible to explain what is meant by "the main call on harvests is the producer"?

Underlying the assumption of economic collapse and non-maintenance of a regular force is the flawed idea that the abandonment of villas signifies a loss of agricultural production.  To me it suggests precisely the opposite: a landowner decides after a number of barbarian raids in the 4th century to blow this for a game of farmers and so moves to the town.  He now has an abandoned villa with several hectares of no-longer-idyllic parkland, so what does he do with it?  The obvious answer is to turn it into productive land and actually increase his revenues.  Sooner or later the nice understanding gentlemen who collect money for the government will become aware of this and tax receipts will, if anything, increase along with overall production.

It's only odd if you make the unfounded assumption that in 486 Clovis had a major military force. We've been through this before. At this period he was one amongst a group of petty chieftains jostling for power.

That was a short three days; welcome back, Jim.  Actually I would beware underrating Clovis' military power, as although his triumphant progress through Gaul took years and seemed hesitant and prone to the occasional setback, so was Julius Caesar's!

[Erpingham]

Does this mean that a) northern Gaul lacked central authority (never mind that contemporaries referred to Syagrius as a 'rex', a king, one with unitary overall civil and military power over his domain) and b) the local Athanasian notables rushed to turn themselves into pagan Franks rather than Arian Visigoths?  I do not quite follow the cultural argument here.

I think some threads are diverging a bit here.  You asked what the fluid ethnic identification question had to do with non-Frankish areas then we drift back to Franks again.  Also, according to Justin, by the time the Franks consolidate their power they are at least nominally catholic - an ideal time to throw in your lot with them if you are a catholic Roman who can spot a winner   As to your question about central authority, I think we do have enough evidence of at least a nominal Roman kingship (was rex an Imperial rank?  If not are contemporaries seeing Syagrius like all those other barbarian "kings" scattered around).  The debate seems to be around the nature of this central authority.  Was it quite like the barbarian kingdoms about or like a fully functional Roman bureaucracy, with taxes, fabricae and elite drilled regular soldiery in large numbers?  Did its authority rest on official sanction or on other Roman successor elements like Church and the traditional aristocracy, now with armed followings?