The Battle of Chalons AD 451

[Jim Webster]

Hang on a minute, not so long ago the argument was that Attila was describing the Romans as weak and feeble and we were discussing whether they'd built field defences.

I may be losing the plot a bit because I had a nightmare of broadband problems for a fortnight :-(

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

Hang on a minute, not so long ago the argument was that Attila was describing the Romans as weak and feeble and we were discussing whether they'd built field defences.

I may be losing the plot a bit because I had a nightmare of broadband problems for a fortnight :-(

Jim

Bad luck with the broadband. Is the problem fixed?

My take is that the Huns had been shoved off the ridge by the Roman-Auxilia-Visigothic combination, proving that Roman infantry were better than Huns in a frontal fight, and Attila has to do some damage control with the morale of his men. He affirms that the Romans are only good if the terrain is in their favour or if they dig some protection for themselves on the flat ground. Remember, this is what Attila tells his men, not necessarily what Jordanes thinks. Attila had fought Roman armies before, and his last battle at the Utus against the Eastern Empire had cost him dear, even though technically it was a victory. He could not have thought Roman troops were easy meat.

It seems on a careful reading of the passage that the Romans did not actually build field defences at Chalons, since Attila describes them as only 'clamouring' for them. Roman foot evidently built such defences if they could as a standard counter to heavy cavalry. The Romans at Chalons may have been clamouring, but it is Attila who gives his own interpretation as to what they were shouting about (how could he have known? They were hardly chanting 'We-want-field-defences' in unison).

[Justin Swanton]

Option 1: the Indicative Option
Option 1a: the Romans have come down onto level ground, and are vulnerable and in need of defences, so Attila encourages his men to attack the Alans and Visigoths, presumably to give the Romans time to create defences, or
Option 1b: the Romans have come down onto level ground and are in need of supports: attacking the supports will leave the Romans out on a limb.  (The question here is which Visigoths are to be attacked, as Theodoric is on the wrong side of the battlefield to support Aetius - under this interpretation Attila is presumably encouraging an attack on Thorismund, who is ensconced on the high ground.)
[Is this a fair representation of the implications?]

Option 2: the Subjunctive Option
Option 2a: the Romans are sitting pretty on the heights, and Attila wants to use the opportunity to crack the Alan and/or Visigoth line before the Romans can organise an attack, so speaks dismissively of the Romans, or
Option 2b: the Romans are sitting pretty on the heights, and Attila needs to boost his troops' morale and make the best of a bad job, so he disparages the Romans before sending his main strength against the Alans and Visigoths.

What is clear is that after the initial repulse from the high ground, Attila is not going to take on the Romans.  Had they actually descended to the low ground, his rhetoric about them seems incompatible with his actions.

There is Option 3: a part of the Roman-Auxilia line occupies the heights along with Thorismud's Visigoths, but part of it necessarily extends into the plain, as the heights simply weren't long enough to accommodate the entire line of Roman infantry. In other words, Aetius couldn't make the Roman line shorter and the Alan line longer to fit the confines of the ridge. Or possibly he wasn't thinking of the possibilities of the ridge when he initially deployed. He was not fully in control of the allied army. He was able to decide the relative positioning of the various contingents, but could not fine-tune things after that. The allied army had to match the frontage of the Huns. Once everyone had shuffed into place, it turned out that the Roman foot would extend beyond the right of the ridge should the left wing of the army succeed in taking it (remember that the allied army did not deploy on the ridge to begin with). Aetius just had to live with that and hope for the best.

[Jim Webster]

Hang on a minute, not so long ago the argument was that Attila was describing the Romans as weak and feeble and we were discussing whether they'd built field defences.

I may be losing the plot a bit because I had a nightmare of broadband problems for a fortnight :-(

Jim

Bad luck with the broadband. Is the problem fixed?

My take is that the Huns had been shoved off the ridge by the Roman-Auxilia-Visigothic combination, proving that Roman infantry were better than Huns in a frontal fight, and Attila has to do some damage control with the morale of his men. He affirms that the Romans are only good if the terrain is in their favour or if they dig some protection for themselves on the flat ground. Remember, this is what Attila tells his men, not necessarily what Jordanes thinks. Attila had fought Roman armies before, and his last battle at the Utus against the Eastern Empire had cost him dear, even though technically it was a victory. He could not have thought Roman troops were easy meat.

It seems on a careful reading of the passage that the Romans did not actually build field defences at Chalons, since Attila describes them as only 'clamouring' for them. Roman foot evidently built such defences if they could as a standard counter to heavy cavalry. The Romans at Chalons may have been clamouring, but it is Attila who gives his own interpretation as to what they were shouting about (how could he have known? They were hardly chanting 'We-want-field-defences' in unison).

Using elderly router and system works.
I doubt very much the Romans had time to build field defences.
Another thing to remember is that the Huns might not have regarded themselves as heavy cavalry. I'm not saying that they insisted on skirmishing in open order, I'm perfectly happy with the fact they weren't glued to their bases and so could operate in any formation :-) ) But I wouldn't see them as the sort of cavalry which gave Roman infantry problems because they smashed into them and bowled them over. We're not talking Parthians or Sarmatians here.
My gut feeling is that Attila was concentrating his Huns on the Alans, who were probably similar cavalry over whom he hoped he had a morale advantage.
Any Roman infantry that were there, were  to him were something his men on the wings could cope with. After all if the centre won, the wins would probably fall anyway.

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

Hang on a minute, not so long ago the argument was that Attila was describing the Romans as weak and feeble and we were discussing whether they'd built field defences.

Description and reality may not be the same thing - we may note how Attila carefully avoided attacking the Romans he took such care to disparage.  I think he was just vapouring to keep up his troops' courage.

[Patrick Waterson]

There is Option 3: a part of the Roman-Auxilia line occupies the heights along with Thorismud's Visigoths, but part of it necessarily extends into the plain, as the heights simply weren't long enough to accommodate the entire line of Roman infantry. In other words, Aetius couldn't make the Roman line shorter and the Alan line longer to fit the confines of the ridge. Or possibly he wasn't thinking of the possibilities of the ridge when he initially deployed. He was not fully in control of the allied army. He was able to decide the relative positioning of the various contingents, but could not fine-tune things after that. The allied army had to match the frontage of the Huns. Once everyone had shuffled into place, it turned out that the Roman foot would extend beyond the right of the ridge should the left wing of the army succeed in taking it (remember that the allied army did not deploy on the ridge to begin with). Aetius just had to live with that and hope for the best.

Agreed that Aetius could not make the Alan line longer than it was, but he could add cavalry rather than infantry to its terminus to cover any space between massed Alanity and the ridge.

Lining up troop formations with terrain features seems to have been practised by regular armies (and not only regulars) since time immemorial.  I rather doubt that Aetius would fudge his dispositions because the ridge was too short - he would just shorten his infantry line to match, incidentally giving himself a flank-covering reserve.

My gut feeling is that Attila was concentrating his Huns on the Alans, who were probably similar cavalry over whom he hoped he had a morale advantage.
Any Roman infantry that were there, were  to him were something his men on the wings could cope with. After all if the centre won, the wings would probably fall anyway.

This does seem to be what his army did following his speech: never mind the Romans, let's bash the Alans!  Drive them off and the wings of the coalition army have exploitable inner flanks.

Unfortunately for Attila it also worked the other way around: his successful centre acquired open flanks, too.

[Duncan Head]

Bear in mind that the 'Romans' who fought at Chalons were not the Auxilia, as Jordanes makes clear:

dextram partem Hunni cum suis, sinistram Romani et Vesegothae cum auxiliariis occuparunt, relictoque de cacumine eius iugo certamen ineunt. The Huns with their forces seized the right side, the Romans and the Visigoths with the Auxilia the left, and then began a struggle for the yet untaken crest.

That would only be necessarily true (and clear) if Jordanes were using "auxiliariis" in the formal sense of "regiments of Auxilia". Strictly, any non-Roman troops fighting for Rome, regular or irregular, paid or allied, could be "auxiliares" - "auxiliares dicuntur in bello socii Romanorum exterarum nationum" (Festus). So it's not impossible that Jordanes could be contrasting Roman regulars (some of whom might be in units called auxilia) with non-Roman "auxiliariis" such as the Sarmatae, Saxones, etc etc who are broadly under Aetius', rather than Sangiban's or Theodoric's command. As so often we cannot be sure exactly what Jordanes thought he meant (let alone whether his usage matches Sidonius' usage of a similar word).

[Justin Swanton]

Bear in mind that the 'Romans' who fought at Chalons were not the Auxilia, as Jordanes makes clear:

dextram partem Hunni cum suis, sinistram Romani et Vesegothae cum auxiliariis occuparunt, relictoque de cacumine eius iugo certamen ineunt. The Huns with their forces seized the right side, the Romans and the Visigoths with the Auxilia the left, and then began a struggle for the yet untaken crest.

That would only be necessarily true (and clear) if Jordanes were using "auxiliariis" in the formal sense of "regiments of Auxilia". Strictly, any non-Roman troops fighting for Rome, regular or irregular, paid or allied, could be "auxiliares" - "auxiliares dicuntur in bello socii Romanorum exterarum nationum" (Festus). So it's not impossible that Jordanes could be contrasting Roman regulars (some of whom might be in units called auxilia) with non-Roman "auxiliariis" such as the Sarmatae, Saxones, etc etc who are broadly under Aetius', rather than Sangiban's or Theodoric's command. As so often we cannot be sure exactly what Jordanes thought he meant (let alone whether his usage matches Sidonius' usage of a similar word).

Jordanes does clarify what he means by 'Auxilia' two paragraphs previously:

Now these were his auxiliaries: Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricians, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Riparians, Olibriones (once Romans soldiers and now the flower of the allied forces), and some other Celtic or German tribes.

In other words, a mix of fighting men ranging from former professional Roman soldiers all the way to  barbarian warriors. My impression is that the Auxilia were not numerically predominant and the barbarians were only a component of them. Aetius's infantry in consequence was largely able to behave like a Roman army.

[Justin Swanton]

My gut feeling is that Attila was concentrating his Huns on the Alans, who were probably similar cavalry over whom he hoped he had a morale advantage.
Any Roman infantry that were there, were  to him were something his men on the wings could cope with. After all if the centre won, the wings would probably fall anyway.

This does seem to be what his army did following his speech: never mind the Romans, let's bash the Alans!  Drive them off and the wings of the coalition army have exploitable inner flanks.

Unfortunately for Attila it also worked the other way around: his successful centre acquired open flanks, too.

Yes. The weakness of Attila's plan was the Ostrogoths. It seems clear they could not keep pace with the Huns' attack on the Alans, getting held up by the Visigoths. Attila wanted to blow away the entire left half of the allied army, exposing only his own right flank which wasn't a problem since it fronted against Roman infantry who would not be able to attack it in time.

On the question of the 'heaviness' of Hunnic cavalry, Attila did feel his cavalry were weighty enough to frontally attack Roman infantry in the struggle to gain the heights, which suggests that Huns were rather like Belisarius's Clibinarii: able to skirmish or pack a powerful shock charge as needs dictated.

[Jim Webster]

On the question of the 'heaviness' of Hunnic cavalry, Attila did feel his cavalry were weighty enough to frontally attack Roman infantry in the struggle to gain the heights, which suggests that Huns were rather like Belisarius's Clibinarii: able to skirmish or pack a powerful shock charge as needs dictated.

What we have to remember is that Attila may not have known who his cavalry would be meeting when he sent them off to gain the heights. Even if he knew Aetius had stationed his Auxilia there, by the time the scouts who discovered this had got back to him with the information and he'd given the orders to move, hours  could have passed.
Think of the battles that have gone wrong because generals didn't know what was happening just over the crest, Waterloo is just one example.
It might be that Attila had expected to get there first, but the infantry had started off sooner than he knew and beat him to the draw. If his men had got there first he might have been assuming that with missile fire they could slow the infantry until the Gepids and others who were on that flank could get there to hold the crest.

Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

My impression also was that the Hunnic right was held principally by Gepids, who were considered good and effective melee cavalry.  While the Hunnic cavalry did have close-combat capability, these selfsame Gepids seem to have proved better at it when fighting at Nedao.

On the subject of 'milites' and 'auxilia', Jim has pointed out that:

Remember after Caracalla everybody within the Empire was a citizen. Unless Auxilia were recruited entirely from outside the Empire then they would have been composed of citizens. I suspect that in two hundred years the link between citizenship and auxiliaris might have broken down.

This is a very good point.  The 3rd century AD saw quite a mix-up with all facets of Roman life and administration, leaving us to wonder exactly what a Syrian archer, for example, would do for a military career.  We do see Julian in Gaul sending off barbarian captives for military service in the eastern half of the Empire and there are obiter dictu references to a 'castra peregrina' (camp for foreigners) at Rome (Ammianus XVI.12.60) and to Constantius' proposed arrangements with the Limigantes (XIX.11.7) in which they were to settle in Roman territory in return for providing recruits ('cohors augebat') - apparently a 'laeti' arrangement.

It looks as if what was happening was the creation of regular auxilia manned by non-citizen barbarians recruited from outside the empire and from laeti or equivalents within the empire.  Having become citizens as a result of their term of service, barbarians would then be able to hold Roman ranks (remember Julian making Nevitta the Frank a consul?) and, most significantly, military ranks - eventually up to the highest level.  Because of the separation of civil and military powers, a barbarian-turned-citizen could have an exclusively military career, bypassing the cursus honorum with its traditional training in Roman administration and values.

The increasing reluctance of Christianised citizens to perform military service would have brought these barbarian-manned regular auxilia into increasing prominence as the core and mainstay of the army, not least because they were easier to replace than trained legionaries.

[Jim Webster]

As an aside I'm not sure that Christianity had too much relevance, we know from the events of Diocletian's reign that there were Christians very senior in the Military.
With regard to Christian recruits, most recruits towards the end seem to be rural conscripts, and Christianity was an urban religion with very little rural take up, in Gaul for example, they're still dealing with rural pagans in the 6th century

I suspect a far bigger problem when it came to getting recruits was a refusal of the powerful to lose their agricultural labourers

This is an aside from the main point of the discussion

With regard to Auxilia, do we actually know enough about the careers of these men, for the early empire with have quite good accounts of individual careers from grave monuments and similar.
We see in saints lives Roman officers appearing but we know from examples form Egypt that men joining the army legitimately often adopted a Roman name, even though we'd consider them Romans.

Jim

Jim

[Duncan Head]

Jordanes does clarify what he means by 'Auxilia' two paragraphs previously:

Now these were his auxiliaries: Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricians, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Riparians, Olibriones (once Romans soldiers and now the flower of the allied forces), and some other Celtic or German tribes.

In other words, a mix of fighting men ranging from former professional Roman soldiers all the way to  barbarian warriors. My impression is that the Auxilia were not numerically predominant and the barbarians were only a component of them. Aetius's infantry in consequence was largely able to behave like a Roman army.

"Hi enim adfuerunt auxiliares": so he's clarifying who are the auxiliares, which may have nothing to do with the regiments of Auxilia. So yes, the "Romans" he mentions are not these barbarian and no-longer-Roman "auxiliares". Doesn't mean that they (or some of them) are not regular "auxilia" regiments.

[Erpingham]

Description and reality may not be the same thing - we may note how Attila carefully avoided attacking the Romans he took such care to disparage.  I think he was just vapouring to keep up his troops' courage.

I'd promised myself I'd just lurk on this one but this was a bit far.  Have we any evidence that Attila's speech was delivered exactly as Jordanes described  on which to attribute his motivations?  I accept that I don't have the Latin skills of many people here (and from what I've read I doubt Jordanes did either ) but this does seem a very uncritical approach to a standard literary device.  Not saying the speech doesn't contain valuable evidence about how Jordanes thought Attila approached the battle but verbatim reportage?

[Justin Swanton]

Jordanes does clarify what he means by 'Auxilia' two paragraphs previously:

Now these were his auxiliaries: Franks, Sarmatians, Armoricians, Liticians, Burgundians, Saxons, Riparians, Olibriones (once Romans soldiers and now the flower of the auxiliaries), and some other Celtic or German tribes.

In other words, a mix of fighting men ranging from former professional Roman soldiers all the way to  barbarian warriors. My impression is that the Auxilia were not numerically predominant and the barbarians were only a component of them. Aetius's infantry in consequence was largely able to behave like a Roman army.

"Hi enim adfuerunt auxiliares": so he's clarifying who are the auxiliares, which may have nothing to do with the regiments of Auxilia. So yes, the "Romans" he mentions are not these barbarian and no-longer-Roman "auxiliares". Doesn't mean that they (or some of them) are not regular "auxilia" regiments.

Oh, I see. The question is the difference between Auxilia and Auxiliares. Sidonius talks about Aetius leading a thin and meagre force without a soldier in the Auxilia (not Auxiliaris), which seems to imply that Auxilia for him were not necessarily just trained troops.

Jordanes' idea of Auxiliares seems to cover every imaginable type - Roman/romanised or not, trained or not - that were not part of the regular, paid army but were prepared to serve under a Roman general. Would our idea of regular 'Auxilia' for Jordanes have meant anything different from 'Romani'?