Romano-British

[Old Guy]

Needless to say there is not a lot of information on Romano-British armies and equipment and from what we do have it is fair to say many different interpretations can be made. The army lists I use give the RB's the option of thrusting spear and light armour. I am a bit dubious about the thrusting spear as opposed to the normal throwing spear, I cannot see why British armies would go against the grain with this weapon. I also think that although some armour may be around for Milites, most would in fact be unarmoured.

Can anyone with a more in depth knowledge help me out?

[aligern]

We don't have much evidence for Romano Brits because they did not bury weapons with their dead, of course, if they did the grave would be identified as Saxon. It appears most likely that they usec a pair of spears, just as the Angles and Saxons did.
There is some ebidence for fighting style based upon Welsh poetry, but even this is a few centuries later, Dave Hollin reviewed A book by Koch in Slingshot that claims to be able to identify those parts of poems that are genuinely archaic through studying the language forms. Even if the poems are later the world they describe, of largely aristocratic warbands  rings true for the tiny county to region sized kingdoms that arose after the colkapse of the Roman state. The poems mention armour and white shields and it is likely that the top guys did have mailcoats.
Wargamers tend to show Post Roman Brits with Intercisa style helmets and Late aroman kut, but most of the country Celticused very quickly and the evonomy colkapsed so armour will have been rare.
Roy

[Imperial Dave]

Not strictly Roman British (alright no Romano at all!) but the Picts potentially used long spear if we interpret the Aberlemno stone a certain way. If they did then potentially the Northern (Romano) Britsih also did.

I cannot definitively speak on the armour aspect but as Roy points out, in any 'warband' or comitatus based society, the higher echelon warriors would almost certainly have armour to some degree.

Not specifically answering your questions but a couple of threads related to the period that may be of interest

http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=1110.msg9147#msg9147
http://soa.org.uk/sm/index.php?topic=881.0

[Justin Swanton]

I agree with Roy in that the Roman infrastructure in Britain seems to have collapsed pretty thoroughly after the Roman withdrawal early in the 5th century, which leaves what Romano-british troops were armed with a pretty open question. The best hypothesis would probably be improvisation. The Romans did teach the British how to manufacture Roman arms and presumably gave them some training on how to use them, but that would have applied only to military elites as the fragmented tribal society left precious few resources with which to equip an army.

My own take would be a force composed of a few Roman-looking 'household' troops, plus levies consisting of ex-coloni armed with whatever they could make or bring. They would probably opt for Roman-style weapons, at least initially until sufficiently impressed by the equipment of their enemies (they would not revert to traditional British-style warfare as they hadn't practised that for over 400 years and had only the Roman model to go on). So, shield, round or perhaps oval, thrusting spear, no body armour and, in many/most cases, no helmets.

[Duncan Head]

Needless to say there is not a lot of information on Romano-British armies and equipment and from what we do have it is fair to say many different interpretations can be made. The army lists I use give the RB's the option of thrusting spear and light armour. I am a bit dubious about the thrusting spear as opposed to the normal throwing spear, I cannot see why British armies would go against the grain with this weapon.

I wonder if this perhaps derives from the assumption that Late Roman infantry were using thrusting-spears, and that the Romano-Brits were merely continuing Roman practice? The idea of Late Roman spear-phalanxes is quite widely held - for example "The men in the front lines ...  carried a thrusting spear - essentially the old Roman hasta, or hoplite spear" (John Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts), though it is not by any means universal and I have never found it wholly convincing.

[aligern]

In several areas the Britons hired groups of foreign mercenaries. The Saxons of the upper Thames are very likely an example of this. It is very likely too that Irish raiders were hired as defenders in S Wales and the Severn Valley. There is also a suggestion that Saxons were hired to defend the 'Saxon Shore' against Saxon Sea raiders. In these cases there. is a strong possibilty that the mecenaries seized control.  I wouldn't see the Saxon or Irish foederati as changing their fighting style for the period that they were fighting on behalf of the. Britons. Of course, if such small, but coherent groups of mercenaries can seize the kingdom that argues that there is not a king with his own home grown comitatus to overawe them and I think that could be true for many of the Romanised Civitates of Southern England, where the large landowners did not have a unitary leader with a military firce, but their own groups of 30 or so guards.

Post Roman Britain has these small states that are Briish, Romano British, Saxon or Irish led . At one point, I think there are about 40 of them of various sizes. If we estimated the total population at about a million then the norm popukation of any one state is about 25,000 people. If half of those are female we have 12000 males, half of miltary age and fitness takes us to 6000 and then 50 percent of those are slaves which would mean 3000 men capable of fighting. ahowever, that s full potential, it probably means say 500 who are professional warriors. In one incident in Bede a soldier attempts to avoid capture by pretending to be a peasant bringing supplies to the host so clearly there were tes of free men that were not ehxpected to fight. There were also monks and priests, more resource wasted on them on the Christian, British side no doubt, but at the battle of Chester there are supposed to be 2000 of them.
Anther way to look at numbers is that it is the heads of households who fight and that a household probably averages 10 peopke so we could take the number of households (2,500 in my putative kingdom) and divide it by ten and then add on the 300 men of the king's comitatus.
Some kingdoms were bigger, some smaller. Some more warlike because they were a federate tribe such as the Votadini and militarised to start with. However, the question of numbers and the state of the economy rather drives the military options. In the Goddodin poem the Votadini recruit far and wide to get a mounted force of 300 together. Now 300 may be real, or it may be one of those magic nymbers, the ideal size of a royal comitatus, but it is a nymber that the peopke of the time obviously felt comfortable with as a well equipped and powerful force. If this troop of 300 is expecting to meet several thousand Angles at Cattraeth then they can give up at the beginning. They must be planning to meet a force that they can deal with so we expect the enemy to be proportional. A similar point is that we appear to get kings building forces through lordship relations. So Penda attacks Northumbria with a whole host of sub kings and yet is caught on his retreat by the Northumbrian king who cuts up his army at a flooded river crossing, by ambush. Some of Penda's allies sit out the battle further reducing his force.
That again argues that the army composed of many kings is not that huge.
So I would suggest that most armies are small, mobile, composed of well equipped royal retainers and often entirely mounted. There are footmen, but they are of low status, unarmoured and mostly used for defending lacations such as re activated hillforts. The likelihood is that even not all of the comitatus troops are armoured because armour is so expensive, but the comitatenses would be good fighters. When a king wished to launch a significant action he would get his sub kings to bring along their hearth troops and leading nobles rather than a levy of free men who would militarily be useless mouths.
Peoples like the Picts and Scots might well be different because they had a more tribal social structure and that would deliver more men to the fighting line. There is a Scottish document  which purports to give the fighting strength of the Dalriadans as , I think, 750 men and 750 rowing servants.

I know many wargames armies give the Britons massed armies of javelin throwing foot, Auxilia or LHI or whatever, but I just can't see how that fits with the evidence of the social structures, the ability of small mercenary groups to seize power,
So I suggest that looking at the social structures of the various types gives you armies of
Romanised Britons, small groups of buccellarii, hired Saxons or Irish, plus perhaps useless conscripted local foot who really would only be town wall defenders.
Celtic Britons
A decent comitatus of mounted men, some rather staic foot, but also some shepherd types with javelins and slings. A multi state army would have more comitatenses under their separate kings.
Saxons, A comitatus and, with under kings  several warbands of comitatus. Some rather more aggressive foot.
Roy

[aligern]

One of the best arguments for the thesis that the states of Post Roman Britain have small elite armies is the nature of the conquest . We now accept that the Saxons landed in small forces along the coast and established states. If the Post Roman Britons had decent armies of infantry plus cavalry they should have thrown these small Germanic groups back into the sea with ease, but they do not. Many of the Eastern British states probably had almost no army, more likely just paramilitary bully boys that worked for the estate owners. Their problem is that of a demilitarised society that finfds the professional military  withdrawn and has itself no weapons and armour apart from hunting kit and no tradidition of military organisation, comnand, control or manoeuvre and no system of raising troops. The civitates can man walls because they clearly did this when they were Romans, that is probably done by guild or sector if the city  and a small force of mounted men can ride out because the landowners have a few bully boys for collecting taxes. That is not units of Roman foot capable of operating in the open field. It is why the lowland Brits hire Saxons and Irish. The only areas with military equipment and some tradition of operating as units are those that face the Pucts and Scots , perhaps those in the West who already faced Irish raids and anywhere that there is a Roman unit left that keeps together and can command sustenance fro the locality....or is already farming it. I doubt any of thise systems produces operating infantry units of any size.
Roy

[Sharur]

It may be worth considering the cross-guard spear in this, which must have been a thrusting weapon, and was around in post-Roman Britain. While chiefly regarded as useful in hunting, particularly for boars, it would have been equally effective in human combats too.

[Erpingham]

Just scrolling back a second to the troops available to the civitates.  Doubtless we have the personal enforcers/guards of the wealthy.  But was there more to the militia than being able to man the walls?  In another thread, we are discussing the events of the Herul invasion of Greece in 267.  In this militia troops actually do a bit of field action, having been inspired by Thucydidean speeches.  Obviously much earlier but how common were these city militias and how capable might they be?  Turning back to post-Roman Britain, I am reminded of the Hallelujah Victory, where (ignoring the miraculous element) this militia force is staging an ambush beyond the city. 

[Patrick Waterson]

The other point perhaps worth considering is that irrespective of presumed resources, a disunited realm is not going to provide credible resistance against an invader.  Each princeling will, first and foremost, be securing his own nest against his neighbours.  Conversely, should the land be substantially united under, say, a Pendragon, then considerable forces can be mobilised and significant successes gained, although a basically Christian leadership might rate converting defeated heathens a higher priority than actually expelling them.

Regarding troops available to the post-Roman Britons, Geoffrey of Monmouth comments that the problem was not quantity but quality - all the real soldiers had emigrated to Gaul between AD 387 and 410, leaving only shopkeepers, ploughboys and the like to man the walls.  He goes into detail about the invaders going up to the walls with long, hooked poles to fetch down unsuspecting sentries for their amusement, which if true indicates a lack of soldierly qualities among the defenders.  Again according to Geoffrey, reversing this sad state of affairs required shipments of real soldiers back from Brittany to give some sort of backbone to an army to field against the invaders.

Such troops would presumably have been armed in late Roman fashion, or something very like it.  Subsequent troops raised in Britain itself would presumably have followed this pattern, too.

So - if we accept that Geoffrey may have been in contact source-wise with something resembling reality, do we have any record of Armoricans using long spears around this time?  If so, we may with reasonable safety assume that Brits did, too.  If not, then we should treat long-spear Brits around this time with suspicion.

Is the long spear view in fact extrapolated from later North Welsh armament rather than derived from contemporary accounts?

[Old Guy]

Thank you all for your replies, a lot of information to digest there. I am beginning to get the impression there was not a great deal of Roman in Romano-British, at least when it came to the military aspect, and to be honest from what I have been reading recently the Roman element seems to be fairly quickly dumped by most of the indigenous population.

All that aside I am coming down in favour of the ubiquitous throwing/thrusting spear, which in a wargaming context is not the kind of spear the Scots or Flemings used, but one around six feet long, ergo no extra ranks fighting.

My own Romano-British army however just cannot shake that link to Rome, so it probably suits the south-western civitates/Dumnonia and contains bits and pieces of Roman kit and looks distinctly different from my Saxons and anyone else on the island at the time.

It is an endlessly fascinating period despite the lack of information, or possibly because of it.

[Erpingham]

Is the long spear view in fact extrapolated from later North Welsh armament rather than derived from contemporary accounts?

It's possible.  The only real evidence we have of "long" spears near this time is the Aberlemno stone and the spear there is no longer than a hoplite dory.  The idea that the whole North and West of Britain had an ancient "Celtic" long spear culture would be to stretch a point (sorry couldn't resist ).  I'd certainly be tempted to go for a seven foot (or there abouts) spear.

[Duncan Head]

Thank you all for your replies, a lot of information to digest there. I am beginning to get the impression there was not a great deal of Roman in Romano-British, at least when it came to the military aspect, and to be honest from what I have been reading recently the Roman element seems to be fairly quickly dumped by most of the indigenous population.

But how quickly? Discussion in this thread has mentioned Germanus' Alleluia battle (c.429) and the Cattraeth battle of Y Gododdin (c.600). There's room for quite a bit of change between those dates - you can probably argue for civic militias and bits of Roman kit in the former case, but not the latter.

[Old Guy]

I don't know how quickly, I am guessing by 500AD at least, although that might be pushing it, but as you say, not 600AD. My own army would fit comfortably into 429AD.

[aligern]

Late Roman towns very likely recruited the militia by quarters. We know that this is how towns were fortified,bwith each section contributing to a length of wall. There may have been other organisations, at Antioch, there were clubs of young men, at Znaples the Jews manned a section of wall. Presumably the town council allicated responsibilities to groups.
That is very different, though to activity outside the walls. In the life of St Severinus it looks as though, once the paid for soldiers have gone a frontier town is untenable, though that is also because the citizens cannot safely work the fields, but that is also an argument for an ineffective military force.
Patrick,nI think Geoffrey is quoting Gildas when referring to people being hooked off walls.
As to Bretons the only reference to weaponry that I can recall is much later and is to javelin equipped cavalry.
So I am not a great fan of militias that can operate beynd the walls. In the Alleleulia victory the Britons are terrified of their enemies. 
i donwonder what the situation is in Gaul because in the sixth century we frequently hear of the 'men of Bourges' or of another town being summoned under their count, There are two good interpretations fir this, one is that these are the militarised inhabitants of the town and hence Gallo Romans,mthe other that they are the local nobility and their men, often including Franks and other barbarians settled on land in the civitatus territory.  I'd see military service as associated with landholding and personal loyalty rather than being a town dweller.
Bernard Bachrach has worked out the size of town garrisons based upon the circumference of the walls on the basis of one man every couple. of yards and that gives some sizeable firces of defenders. Of ourse there is a whacking great potential flaw in his reasoning which is that a garrison of a certain size can hold the walls with a few on each wall and a central reserve because the enemy cannot attack everywhere at once. it  takes twenty men to get a ladder against a wall and hold it whilst men go up it, it only takes two chaps on the wall to deal with each ladder.  A false impression, by the way, an erroneous impression is given in the assault on Helm's Deep in the LotR film where it appears all too easy for Orcs to get across the wall. After all, the man on the ladder has to hold on to it and then grab the wall to get across whilst the chap on the other side is pushing the ladder over with a forked  pole or smashing the escalador's head with an axe or sledgehammer.  If escalade were so easy attacking forces with superiority of say three to one would take towns easily and they do not.
when Merovingian monarchs summon the count and his men to an expeditio I believe they are getting full time warriors and men who hold land in the civitatus area on condition of military service, not a bunch of merchants, craftsmen and apprentices.
Roy