The Empire is dead, long live the army

[Justin Swanton]

This passage is a good example of the effect a very small force can achieve against a very large one when it has the advantage of complete surprise. A careful reading of the passage however suggests that the entire force of Ecdicius was not as small as 18 men.

To give a bit of context: in 471 the Visigothic army of Euric began to besiege the towns of Auvergne  with the aim of annexing the entire region from the moribund Western Empire. This was during the time of dire Roman military weakness, when the disastrous failure of the attempt to reconquer North Africa from the Vandals was followed by open hostility between the western Emperor Anthemus and his Magister Militum Ricimer. No imperial troops, Roman or federate, were available to help the cities in Auvergne.

The only force able to resist the Visigoths was that raised by Ecdicius. He was the son of the former Emperor Avitus. The Aviti were among the foremost Gallo-roman senatorial families, possessing immense estates. Sidonius states that his brother-in-law had raised 'a kind of public army' publici exercitius speciem, which implies a force considerably larger than 18 men. Ecdicius's personal guard may have been good, but one does not undertake a campaign against a barbarian army with a squad of men this size.

His army had already made several surprise attacks against the Visigoths, killing a good number of them, before it reached Clermont-Ferrand. This implies a much larger force, probably of mounted men, that did not dare fight set-piece battles against the Visigoths but hit their forces at vulnerable moments. Ecdicius, clearly, was a master of ambush.

At Clermont the barbarian army was strung out around the city, not in fighting formation, relaxed and off guard. Waiting for the right moment, Ecdicius hit a part of it with his picked men. Since no-one in his right mind would attack an army of several thousands with 18 men, he counted on the barbarians assuming they were being attacked by the spearhead of a much larger force, and panic accordingly. His bluff worked. Without pausing 'to note how great their own numbers were and yours how small' the Visigoths pulled their scattered men together on to a nearby hill, waiting for the appearance of the rest of Ecdicius's force. This gave Ecdicius the time to enter Clermont.

It is quite possible, of course, that the Visigoths did exactly the right thing: i.e. Ecdicius did have more men waiting further back, ready to hit the Visigoths if they tried to move in on him before they were properly formed up. In other words, Ecdicius and his elite band were bait, to be used to turn a relief expedition into an opportunity to sting the Visigoths once again.

Everyone considered that Ecdicius, in facing off a foe several hundred times larger than his own company, had achieved something incredible. In other words, it was not normal for even an elite Gallo-roman force this small to have such an effect on Visigoths. Visigoths were not as a rule easily frightened rabbits.

The passage proves only what could be achieved by a well-armed and well-trained guard of veteran Roman mounted men at the right moment against an unwary barbarian foe. It does not prove any innate fighting ineptitude on the part of those barbarians.

[aligern]

Ecdicius also shows how the Gallo Romans have to cobble together a military force. If there was still a substantial Roman force in Gaul it would have been nice to see it intervening to reign in Euric.
roy

[Justin Swanton]

Syagrius would not have felt any compulsion to intervene on the behalf of cities nominally under the authority of an emperor he did not recognize and who looked like he was about to be removed by his Magister Militum anyway. It was a confused situation in which the normal thing to do was to await developments.

Presuming that the 'Arborychi began to fight for the Romans' = Syagrius rebuilt/augmented his army using Gallo-roman recruits (probably on the foundation of an existing but small force), he would not yet have been ready, since Procopius has the Arborychi active only after the Visigoths occupy Spain, which itself took place at about the same time as the Visigothic offensive in the Auvergne. I find it interesting that the reference to the Arborychi puts it about ten years or so before Syagrius finally takes a high hand with the Franks in 486. This would seem to suggest that he had a lot of preparing to do.

[Jim Webster]

 
The passage proves only what could be achieved by a well-armed and well-trained guard of veteran Roman mounted men at the right moment against an unwary barbarian foe. It does not prove any innate fighting ineptitude on the part of those barbarians.

Actually the passage proves what the passage says, that the military structures of Gaul were so decayed that you only needed a handful of enthusiastic and well equipped men to allow them to 'punch well above their weight.'
We have here an example of an eyewitness account, with numbers given. It Ecdicius had turned up with 300 men or a thousand men, there are plenty of literary antecedents for Sidonius to turn to,  whereas to the best of my knowledge eighteen merely happens to be a number without any homeric or other considerations.
It fits in nicely with the pattern that shows a degree of military ineptitude. There is no evidence that there were any more men lurking out of sight, they're not mentioned marching in later or in any way referred to.
Why on earth should the barbarians have been so military efficient? If non-latin speaking peasant farmers and their landlord's bucellarii/comitas/bodyguard were the peak of military efficiency, why on earth did anybody bother with the expense and hassle of a regular army?
The Barbarians took advantage of a combination of circumstances.
1) The weakness of the regular army due to an unwillingness to release recruits to it or money to pay it.
2) A series of civil wars that had weakened the army
3) A desperate shortage of men which led Emperors to allowing barbarians to settle within the Empire under their own leaders forming their own military units, as opposed to merely conscripting  them into the army proper.

Let's look at the Visigoths. They were settled in Gaul in 418. They defeated the Alans and drove the Vandals into Africa (Just how much driving was necessary is another point) and in 475 they were politically powerful enough for the Romans to grant them independence.
In 486 the last of Alaric's veterans had probably been dead forty or fifty years, the last men who had been formally part of a Roman army were in their dotage. They were a lot of soldier settlers with a limited military structure to support them, with the leader's  bucellarii as the professional spearhead and a lot of part-timers to call up to bulk out the army.

Jim

[aligern]

it is the very smallness of Ecdicius force that saves it because the Goths would not have believed that such a bold attack could have been launched by just a few men. Moreover, being few in number it will have made sneaking up a whole lot easier.

I said earlier that armies decay very quickly so I have a lot of sympathy with Jims POV, though these Visigoths have earlier crushed the Siling vandals and crushed the Alans. The contextual evidence for that is these two groups have to  submit themselves to the Asding Vandals for protection. To believe that these were not massacring defeats there would have to be a contrary source and  there is not one..
That said, those victories are Visigoths in the 430s which is a generation before the siege of Clermont, though not that long after Chalons where the Goths had fought well.
For me the clincher as to Roman forces is that
Aetius relies upon Huns around 430.
Litorius relies on Huns
Aetius puts t ogether a badbarian and limitanei force in Gaul. I do not recall any mention of regular Roman comitatenses.
Majorian is followed by a whole throng of barbarians when he goes to push back the Visigoths and to relconquer Africa.
The Procopius quote fits well with Roman style troops holding garrisons. There could even have been a Nominally Roman core of men around Aegidius and Syagrius, but these will have been bucellarii and very likely barbarians as individuals. Plus there will have been Gallo Roman landowners and their retainers and garrison units for the fortified cities that may well have been limitanei.
The killer is that , when Africa and Spain are lost, the money dried up. Local money in Gaul will have provided garrison troops, not a comital army which would have been hugely expensive.
As I said earlier, in400 the Western army is supported by the economy of Britain, Gaul, Africa, Spain and Italy.  There is just no wY in which a kingdom the size of a fifth to a quarter of Gaul can supply a large army. Armies after 450 have to be supported by the land and maybe Jim is right that that involves degrading the average warrior so that only buccellarii  are military professionals.
That is why I would still go with Syagrius having a force of buccellarii, garrisons and limitanei and then allied contingents, just like the forces of Aetius and Majorian, though I accept that the small force of retainers and garrisons alone is plausible.
To believe in an army of 10,000 well equipped and drilled Roman regulars would take some really strong evidence and that just is not available.
As a piece of contra evidence, if Syagrius had a comital army it should have whipped Clovis.....and clearly it did not.
Roy

[Jim Webster]

If Syagrius had a comital army ten thousand strong he could have invaded Italy, never mind whipped Clovis.
Remember that crushing the Alans and Siling Vandals is only an achievement if they are militarily formidable. If Barbarian forces are a core of comitas/bucellarii  and a far greater body of armed peasantry/yeomen/whatever who are not military professionals then suddenly once your bucellarii have beaten the other guys bucellarii, you're left with the situation that the other guys semi-trained rabble will disperse, flee or otherwise make for home.
Ecdicius and his bucellarii could have taken and held the field because whoever was in charge on the Visigoth side had an even smaller bodyguard, who were dispersed trying to keep order amongst the semi and untrained that they'd brought along to sit round the city and starve it into submission.
When the Empire is strong, they're basically taking Barbarian nobles and their comitas into the army as units. That's probably why we hear so much about barbarian princes (such as the one present when Constantine was proclaimed emperor, this is from memory) whilst ordinary barbarians wandering across the border were just drafted into regular units.
When the empire is weak all that's happening is that the noble and his comitas are being supported but at arms length and the other barbarians aren't being drafted into regular units, they're being supported as part of the noble's entourage. Sometimes the noble (like Alaric) would be given office and access to regulars, rather than just money (Theodoric's predecessors) and it maybe that Alaric used this to train his men to be soldiers.
But otherwise barbarian forces would be largely composed of men who didn't regard themselves as warriors, carried weapons because that's what free men did, and as far as I know there is no evidence that they were ever trained or drilled or even maintained on a permanent basis once they settled down on the land they'd managed to acquire.

Jim

[aligern]

I suggest that what you say is true some of the time Jim, but not all of the time:-)).
barbarian forces are much better at fighting when they are  not part time peasant soldiers and that is the situation when they are on the move and when they are kept in employment for some time. I suggest that is true for the Vandals and Alans in Spain, they have cossed the Rhine and kept moving for more than a decade and fought Franks, Romans and then Goths. Similarly the Alaric Goths keep together as a military force.

Once they move into Africa we can look at the Vandals as either being kept together as a military force supported by taxes or as a series of buccellary forces that stay militarised and mounted and a  lot of lower grade chaps who farm and degrade militarily. Unfortunately we just do not know for certain. It might be that both systems operate, it might be that the Vandals are a paid army and that only top Vandals get land.
Similarly with the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths in Spain, there is evidence both ways as it looks as though there are permanent garrisons. The thing that detrains a portion of the Visigoth army in Liguria, for example, is the threat to their families, not their farms. The Visigoths seem to have maintained permanent garrisons in the Basque country, though that does not preclude thyme from settling elsewhere and wee both believe that when a Goth gets enough money he buys an estate so there will have been leakage from paid soldier only status into farming over time.
Unfortunately the settlement details, which have been taken as settling the whole tribe on a rather democratic basis, fit just as well with only the better off getting land and the rest getting pay. The leaders of both major Gothic settlements had every reason to hold them together as paid armies and leave the land with the Romans once their Gothic nobles had been rewarded. These are not, after all, democracies.
We are probably on common ground that armies, even regular armies, that do nothing, decay.
IMO the Saxons suffer this in England and are found wanting and unarmoured when the Danes arrive, both in the ninth and the tenth centuries. The original Saxon settlement is, of course, different from the Visi and Ostro  Goths, Vandals and Lombards, because they do not arrive as an army, but in smaller groups and by and large , in Britain, there is not much of a state to support them as pure soldiers.

[Jim Webster]

The decay is what I was driving at.
The Visigoths who were the neighbours of Syagrius in 486 were 76 years from the death of Alaric. That's nearly four generations. Are you or I a soldier because our grandfathers and fathers (or in some cases Great grandfathers and grandfathers) were conscripted and spent years under arms fighting in the greatest wars to rend humanity?)

Indeed just paying people to be soldiers, to be garrisons, isn't going to make them soldiers either. At least if they reverted to being farmers they'd have kept physically fit :-)

Is there any evidence of any sort of programme of training, of drill? Or were they garrisons in that their duties would involve 'customs inspection' on the gates, patrols at night to keep order, beat up drunks and stop trouble. Frankly that sounds like city militia to me.

But yes, I've given strong emphasis to one side of the argument because I felt people were getting far too keen on the opposite argument which I felt lacked any real evidence. Someone with a disciplined regular force ten thousand strong wouldn't have huddled in a corner of the Empire, he'd almost certainly have restored order and marched on Rome  :-)

Jim

[Justin Swanton]

I've given strong emphasis to one side of the argument because I felt people were getting far too keen on the opposite argument which I felt lacked any real evidence. Someone with a disciplined regular force ten thousand strong wouldn't have huddled in a corner of the Empire, he'd almost certainly have restored order and marched on Rome  :-)

Jim

The argument that Syagrius was confident about his ad-hoc militia-grade force rests on the assumption that the barbarians at the end of the 5th century were no better as fighters, and probably worse. This too needs evidence.

What does the historical record say about the fighting ability of barbarians - specifically Franks, Alamans and Visigoths - at the end of the 5th century and into the beginning of the 6th?

Presuming that barbarians remained good fighters during this period, it makes sense that Syagrius with a smallish army of Comitatens-grade troops did not feel he could singlehandedly reconquer the Empire, even if he could manage a grouping of Salian Franks.

[rodge]

There are two papers of interest in this online PDF of 'War and Society in the Roman World'

http://tinyurl.com/oulyq77

Liebescheutz 'The End of the Roman Army in the Western Empire' Ch11. p265-276

Whittaker 'Landlords and Warlords in the Later Roman Empire' C12.p277-302

I read them a while back and am a tad busy to precis/comment right now.

[Patrick Waterson]

If Syagrius had a comital army ten thousand strong he could have invaded Italy, never mind whipped Clovis.

He would have to have done a lot better than Riothamus and his twelve thousand.

"Now Euric, king of the Visigoths, perceived the frequent change of Roman Emperors and strove to hold Gaul by his own right. The Emperor Anthemius heard of it and asked the Brittones for aid. Their King Riotimus came with twelve thousand men into the state of the Bituriges by the way of Ocean, and was received as he disembarked from his ships.  Euric, king of the Visigoths, came against them with an innumerable army, and after a long fight he routed Riotimus, King of the Britons, before the Romans could join him. So when he had lost a great part of his army, he fled with all the men he could gather together, and came to the Burgundians, a neighboring tribe then allied to the Romans. But Euric, king of the Visigoths, seized the Gallic city of Arvernum; for the Emperor Anthemius was now dead." - Jordanes XLV.237-238

The question is: if just the Visigoths under Euric can crush Riothamus, what does Syagrius need to keep his domain intact from Visigoths, Franks, Saxons and Burgundians?  Diplomacy has its limits.

There are two papers of interest in this online PDF of 'War and Society in the Roman World'

http://tinyurl.com/oulyq77

Liebescheutz 'The End of the Roman Army in the Western Empire' Ch11. p265-276

Whittaker 'Landlords and Warlords in the Later Roman Empire' C12.p277-302

I read them a while back and am a tad busy to precis/comment right now.

Liebeschuetz airs the view that Roman armies of the mid-late 5th century consisted principally (if not exclusively) of federated barbarian bands, drawing his argument from much the same examples as have already been mentioned in this discussion.  He argues from lack of direct mention that Roman units effectively no longer existed in the West.

Whittaker is a 'small tribes' enthusiast, albeit without any real evidence to back his views.  His main interest (and the thrust of his paper) is his focus on what he sees as the growing extent and influence of 'private armies'.  He has some perhaps useful thoughts on this subject, e.g. the following:

A good deal of the debate about bucellarii in the past has ranged around the question of whether they herald the advent of feudalism by virtue of the personal oath of allegiance they gave to their leader (e.g. Bachrach 1967; Gascou 1976). But, apart from the fact that medievalists now use the term 'feudalism' less freely than some classical historians, most of the argument about private—as opposed to public—armies is misplaced. Procopius is clear that the private contract (perhaps for what was later called paramone) was supplemented by the sacramentum to the emperor ( Vand. 4. 18). But obviously the public oath was of limited relevance if the patron rebelled, or if imperial rule was not recognized; the loyalty of the soldiers then became private obsequium.

This ambiguity is well captured by Sidonius when describing the siege of Clermont in 474, at a time when the ties with an unknown western emperor were of the most tenuous and there was no imperial army in sight. In a letter to Ecdicius, Sidonius lauds the exploits of this great landlord, who with a comitatus of barely eighteen sodales —'fewer than your table normally has guests'— managed to cut his way through and put to flight 'several thousand' Goths without loss (Sid. Apoll. Epist. 3. 3. 3–4).

Gregory of Tours improves upon these incredible figures by giving Ecdicius only ten companions ( Hist. Franc. 2. 24). But I think we are here victims of terminology rather than of rhetoric. Those who rate a mention are only Ecdicius' free satellites, his amici (whence the reference to his table), who are sometimes called clientes . No publicity was given to the far more numerous lesser clientes, servi and coloni in attendance on each companion—in Procopius' language, we have the doryphoroi without the hypaspists (cf. Procop. Secret History 4. 13).
This is not unlike like the example of Sarus, the Goth whom we know to have had two to three hundred personal followers. When he died fighting against Athaulf's army of 10,000, he is said to have had only eighteen or twenty men, according to the strict account of Olympiodorus (fr. 18, p. 183 Blockley).

All of this is helpful for Italy-based armies of the 5th century, but of questionable applicability to the question of whether northern Gaul under the Magistri Militum had or did not have an army, i.e. a regular palatini-type force.  While one would have expected the Domain of Soissons to be influenced by the prevailing trend, one would also expect the tradition of recruitment from Gaul itself to have been maintained, especially when years of peace permitted the ruling Magister Militum to raise and develop such forces as he saw fit - in line with what he could afford (which is of course another largely absence-of-evidence subject).  The point about the Domain is that the ruler was effectively his own emperor, so he held command over such Imperial forces as were stationed in that locality and was the man who would traditionally maintain, train and recruit the regular forces of the Empire.  The Domain thus seems (to me, at least) more likely to have had a regular Roman force than any other part of the Empire.

[Jim Webster]

They're both worth reading Rodge


Jim

[Erpingham]

While one would have expected the Domain of Soissons to be influenced by the prevailing trend, one would also expect the tradition of recruitment from Gaul itself to have been maintained ....

I think one of the key elements of the debate really is whether "the prevailing trend" and "recruitment from Gaul itself" are actually mutually exclusive.  Why should troops recruited from Gaul be assumed to be elite regulars?  If we assume there is a traditional of Gallo-Roman fighting prowess, why can it not be expressed as personal followers and clients with personal followers forming the core force?  Also, why the assumption that the Gallo-Romans, inheritors of this ethnic prowess, have no chance of standing up against "fierce" barbarians without forming a drilled regular force?  Maybe I've been corrupted by reading modern revisionist history but the logic of the reappearance of a revitalised Imperial Roman army in the far reaches of Gaul isn't working for me as well as a nominally Roman successor kingdom following the prevailing local trend in military organisation.

[Justin Swanton]

Perhaps the best approach is to look at the terminus a quo and ad quem, and try to form an idea of what existed between them.

Terminus a quo: Ad the end of the 4th century, an army of up to 200 000 men in the West (according to the Notitia) that was of a sufficient quality to beat +/- 25 000 Alamans at Argentoratum without too much trouble even though outnumbered 2:1. Those Alamans were no slouches either.

Terminus ad quem: surviving units of the old regular Comitatens legions in the early 6th century, who keep the customs, clothing, names and banners those legions had preserved through previous generations of soldiers (note the implication that soldiering was a hereditary occupation). These units have a strong sense of Roman identity:

'they handed down to their offspring all the customs of their fathers, which were thus preserved, and this people has held them in sufficient reverence to guard them even up to my time. For even at the present day they are clearly recognized as belonging to the legions to which they were assigned when they served in ancient times, and they always carry their own standards when they enter battle, and always follow the customs of their fathers. And they preserve the dress of the Romans in every particular, even as regards their shoes.'

One can disregard this passage, twist it (e.g. making 'customs' the tribal traditions of Celts/barbarians), or just accept it in its obvious sense.

In between these two points there must have been an army that perhaps varied greatly in size but remained substantially constant in its core discipline and military practice.

A common notion is that the western Army collapsed as a trained fighting force some time before the death of Stilicho, perhaps even before he fought Radagaisus for which he relied on barbarian mercenaries. After Stilicho there is no mention of a western Roman army, only of western Roman generals who relied almost exclusively on foederati, using the imperial paychest to keep the barbarians in thrall for three quarters of a century. If there was a Roman army what was it doing?

I wonder if the silence on the army is not perhaps due to a tendency of the writers of that time to write about armies only in the context of major battles and those events directly connected with major battles. An example: the historical record makes no mention of the Palatine army of Gaul (about 30 000 men in strength) during Stilicho's time. This army did not join Stilicho, nor did it do anything about the barbarian incursions in Gaul. It gets no mention at all during this calamitous period. The temptation is to conclude that it did not exist, that 30 000 men somehow disappeared even though their existence was recorded in the Notitia.

What is possible though is that the army was there all the time, but did nothing effective. It did not join up with Stilicho (political reasons?) nor did it stop the barbarian invasions. The latter is not surprising as Palatine legions were effective against barbarian raiding parties only if the barbarians stopped moving or congregated into large masses. There may simply have not been an opportunity to combat the many small groups of barbarians before they passed into Spain (notice that the barbarians did not settle in Gaul). The Gallic army is not mentioned, but that does not mean it did not exist.

An army may remain good in quality but become too small to fight major battles on its own. A lot of reasons for joining or belonging to the army evaporated in the course of the fifth century, which would leave - paradoxically - a core of dedicated and professional men, rather than the dregs who had nowhere else to go (they would find somewhere else to go). It is not necessary that an army be fighting all the time to keep up its standards. It is enough that it live in a time where it may be required to fight at any moment, i.e. when the situation is troubled and insecure. Look at the US army. The Roman generals of that time, Aetius, Aegidius, Majorian, Syagrius, Ecdicius certainly seem to have come from a professional military background. I suspect a certain lingering prowess of Roman arms would have been necessary to keep the barbarian foederati in line. The paychest by itself would not have been enough. That prowess would have had to go hand-in-hand with Roman discipline and fighting methods.  That was what made the Roman army what it was in the first place.

[Jim Webster]

  An example: the historical record makes no mention of the Palatine army of Gaul (about 30 000 men in strength) during Stilicho's time. This army did not join Stilicho, nor did it do anything about the barbarian incursions in Gaul. It gets no mention at all during this calamitous period. The temptation is to conclude that it did not exist, that 30 000 men somehow disappeared even though their existence was recorded in the Notitia.

It not merely didn't join Stilicho, it sat to one side and watched with bland disinterest as Constantine III invaded from Britain, declared himself emperor, and then proceeded to sit on the side lines ignoring the attempts to kick him out again.
Frankly I think that the only thing we can assume is that it didn't exist.
It may well have been that it is on a section of the Notitia that wasn't updated after, say 380AD.

Jim