Chalons or Catalaunian Fields 452 AD

[Jim Webster]

Rapid strategic movement doesn't have to be fast. If you're doing 15 miles a day and the other guys are doing ten, you're the rapid one.
But the big advantage they had wasn't that they could cover vast distances in the blink of an eye, but that because they advanced behind the thick screen of horsemen, the enemy never really knew where the blow was going to fall.
If you're dealing with Huns etc advancing as they want to advance, your intelligence consists of a series of reports over a potentially hundred mile front saying 'they're here'. To react you have to hit and destroy their main force, and first you have to find it, and it can be anywhere behind that screen.
The Hunnic slow moving bit, be it wagons, horses, infantry is invisible, and all you can do is assume it is following the obvious line of advance. In Gaul geography constricts the numbers of obvious lines of advance, in other more open areas, they are less predictable

Jim

[aligern]

I like that Jim, it does not one whit destroy the point that with spare horses you are going to move a lot faster than an infantry force, probably three times as fast, but it adds a dimension.
One of the main points of the Mongols (for example) was arriving so quickly.  They went after the enemy army, hoping to catch it unprepared,  so in a way scouting them was not so important, itv was strategic surprise that wrong footed their enemies. In Attila's case he was besieging Orleans, having arrived before an opponent could gather forces, what he hoped was to break in and move on, not to be caught.  That part of Gaul is a large plain, but the fires and the refugees would tell you where Attila was.

Roy

[aligern]

Upon further consideration a thought occurred.  Could it be that Attila started out with a large cavalry force of kings and their comitatenses and then very deliberately subjugated tribes nearer Gaul such as the Franks in order to gain a infantry component for sieges. That's a lot cleverer than marching them there  and having to feed them.

Of course, for siege work all you need at base is conscripted peasants because they are good with spades.

Roy

[Jim Webster]

I was pondering this and then it struck me. We underestimate the skill of the 'navigator' or navvy. Actually most peasants would do no more spade work than the modern gardener if they could get away with it, the odd bit of drainage work and similar. Peasants plough.
Digging deep ditches (not three foot deep to let the water run away)  and raising banks (especially with brush wood facines or turf walls to stop them collapsing) are not peasant skills. Peasants could carry spoil and might be very useful, but they wouldn't be particularly good at the other stuff.
Also a great mass of conscripts need 'policing' especially if you haven't got the logistics in place to feed them.
I suspect that your ordinary Germanic infantryman would be no worse with a spade than the average peasant and would be more 'self motivated' or at least trapped within a kin and peer group that would keep him working long after the peasant had faded quietly away

Jim

[aligern]

These are Huns Jim, not the  Cumbria constabulary. If someone acts up they impale him and probably his village too. If they want stuff done it gets done.
Secondly, the Germanic warrior en masse is a peasant. If your peasant is not up to a bit of hard manual labour then neither is your German. Warfare for the top layer of Germans is a profession, for the mass it's a part time activity.

Pondering further, are Gallic cities taken with the spade?  Maybe it's a matter of escalade or treachery or piling brushwood against the gate.
In the Balkans the Huns have the services of Roman prisoners who can construct siege machines and either warriors from subject tribes or conscripted country people/prisoners, but I am unaware that the sieges are so formal in Gaul.

Roy

[aligern]

We might be better to look at the chronology of the campaign. When did Attila cross the Rhine, when was his army at Trier, when at Paris  and when at Orleans. I suspect that, given that snow makes campaigning difficult before March ( Attila has to move through Germany) and he is before Orleans by June it may be that there is not time for substantial siege.
The attack on Orleans is covered in the life of St. Anianus which migh be worth a look..

Roy

[Jim Webster]

These are Huns Jim, not the  Cumbria constabulary. If someone acts up they impale him and probably his village too. If they want stuff done it gets done.
Secondly, the Germanic warrior en masse is a peasant. If your peasant is not up to a bit of hard manual labour then neither is your German. Warfare for the top layer of Germans is a profession, for the mass it's a part time activity.

Pondering further, are Gallic cities taken with the spade?  Maybe it's a matter of escalade or treachery or piling brushwood against the gate.
In the Balkans the Huns have the services of Roman prisoners who can construct siege machines and either warriors from subject tribes or conscripted country people/prisoners, but I am unaware that the sieges are so formal in Gaul.

Roy

I suggest you read something about the economics of slave owning societies and slave workers. They had to be managed and policed. Impale one in his village and drive the rest off to work and maybe his son runs amok in your horse lines with a metal edged spade. The Huns knew this, the account of the visit to their camp and Roman officials meeting their slaves shows that slaves were not expendable pawns. (in fact senior hunnic nobles and officers may have been far more in fear of arbitrary violence than the slaves)
Solzhenitsyn made the comment that when you take everything off someone, you actually free them and lose control.
Yes, destroy a town, kill everyone in it as a warning, even take some away as slaves but sell them on sharpish.
And German warriors are not peasants. They are german warriors. They will do a bit of work, they will probably be able to do most things their labourers can do, but the fact that they can turn up and spend time on campaign pretty well proves they have people at home who can do the work whilst they are away. German warriors are perhaps better thought of as a combination yeoman farmer/squirearchy/farm manager
I would suggest that they weren't particularly different from the Greek hoplite, yes they farmed, but they had slaves/family/tenants to do the work whilst they were away.


Jim

[Patrick Waterson]

We might be better to look at the chronology of the campaign. When did Attila cross the Rhine, when was his army at Trier, when at Paris  and when at Orleans. I suspect that, given that snow makes campaigning difficult before March ( Attila has to move through Germany) and he is before Orleans by June it may be that there is not time for substantial siege.
The attack on Orleans is covered in the life of St. Anianus which migh be worth a look..

This is a useful approach if the period sources can oblige.

If there is any indication of how long it took Attila (or for that matter Aetius) to get from point A to point B, we might even be able to conclude something about army composition from distance covered per day, if we do not have to guess at things like weather and the state of the roads.

Ultimately we are going to need an OB for both sides well ahead of Battle Day, so while we think about the more debatable points might it be an idea to confirm those OB elements for which we have either good source evidence or, failing that, a consensus?

Patrick

[aligern]

Litacani in Jordanes might well be Laeti, barbarians settled on Roman land after defeat an surrender who were governed through tribal chiefs and  were liable to send a contingent to the Roman army and probably also supplied recruits to named units of auxilia.  Example the Taifali in the area of what is now Tiffauges who were possibly Sarmatian types settled by Gratian in the early 380s
There is a Taifali unit in the Notitia.


Roy

[aligern]

Patrick, there is a literature on ancient marching rates.  One example that comes to hand is Belisarius marching a mixed infantry cavalry force along the coast from Caput Vada to Carthage. it is in Procopius Vandal War and is likely to be accurate because was there and involved in the logistics of the march.

Roy

[Duncan Head]

This forum is getting busy - just two days offline  and I'm clearly way behind in this thread, let alone any others!

Litacani in Jordanes might well be Laeti ...

That's one common suggestion, yes.

Howard Wiseman, in "A British legion stationed near Orléans c. 530?", http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/wiseman/DECB/Wiseman-Dalmas-JAEMA.pdf suggests that "the Liticiani or Litiani (in various manuscripts) who are otherwise unrecorded" may be "an easily explicable scribal error for Litavii, that is the people of Litavia. This last is the name the Britons gave to Brittany, suggesting that the Litavians were Brittonic settlers." (If the Litavii were Britons in Brittany, the argument then goes, the Armoriciani "Armoricans" in the list must be Gallo-Romans from those areas of Armorica in its wider sense - Brittany plus Normandy roughly - that hadn't yet fallen to migrating Britons.)

As for the Olibriones, one theory (see http://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat.html?func=view&catid=20&id=126236&view=entrypage) notes that Jordanes' list Saxones, Ripari, Olibriones, quondam milites Romani... is copied in Paul the Deacon's Historia Romanorum as Saxones, Riparioli, Briones ... (the ex-Roman soldiers bit has gone). This suggests that the mss of Jordanes available in the 8th century had Briones, not Olibriones. It is in turn suggested that Briones was an earlier error for an original Britones.

This is possible but it raises two questions for me:
(1) Surely Litavii and Briones can't both be Britons? One suggestion must be wrong.
(2) If it was originally Riparioli, Bri[t]ones, then who are the Riparioli? Ripari could be either Ripuari, the well-known Ripuarian Franks, or else a variant of Riparenses, that is limitanei, the men of the ripae. But Riparioli? Who they?

cheers,
Duncan

[Duncan Head]

I might draw two conclusions that support a view that  Germanic troops of the Vth century could form shield wall.

I hope that we aren't starting to diverge and argue at cross-purposes here. My original argument was not, quite, that Germans couldn't form a shield-wall, but rather that Jordanes' use of testudo for the Romans suggested a difference between "Roman" infantry and non-Romanized Germans, and that the Germans'  smaller round shields wouldn't allow them to form such an effective or visually striking shield-wall as the Late Roman testudo-foulkon of large broad oval shields - not anything that an observer might call a testudo. And therefore that Aetius' troops from Italy were infantry armed in Roman style, whatever their ethnic origins.

Firstly the article itself says that Continental shields are towards the bigger end of the scale of diameters , so what might be true for A/S warriors in Britannia may well not hold true on the continent for other tribes.

But I think it does hold true, for Continental Saxons and Franks, at least. (And one might add Scandinavia, where the buckler-like shields in Vendel-era art certainly seem to be much smaller than later Viking-era shields.) This from Guy Halsall, Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, p.167:

"Many sixth-century shield-bosses from Germany, northern Gaul and Britain terminate in a circular disc, rather like a golf-tee. This was probably designed to catch the blades of enemy weapons. When coupled with the fact that earlier post-Roman shields in northern Europe appear to have been smaller than later examples, this seems likely to suggest that sixth-century fighting styles may have been rather looser."

One of Halsall's main sources, and probably the main source of the Angelcynn article, is Tania Dickinson and Heinrich Härke, Early Anglo-Saxon Shields (1992). This from pp.43-47:

"In the absence of English bog deposits or other waterlogged sites with Anglo-Saxon shield remains, the ost cmplete evidence for the shape and size of the wooden board is provided by pictorial sources. The earliest of these date to the eighth century: the Repton stone ... and the Franks casket ... Both appear to show circular shields of a very moderate size ... Late Saxon manuscript illuminations ... show markedly larger Anglo-Saxon shields (diameter about 2.5ft to over 3ft ....

Burials provide earlier, and more abundant, evidence for the shape and size of the shield-board, but it is often less conclusive; ... The twenty-three cases of probable board sizes inferred from the various types of evidence range from 0.42 to 0.92m ...

This evidence suggests the existence of at least three size groups of early Anglo-Saxon shields:

small - 0.34 to 0.42m (about 1 to just under 1.5 ft)
medium - 0.45 to 0.66m (about 1.5 to just over 2 ft)
large - 0.70 to 0.92m (about 2ft 4in to 3ft)

The medium size group, by far the best represented, ...

There appears to be some correlation between the age of the individual buried with the shield, and shield size. The youngest person in the sample ... juvenile, age 5-6 ... had a shield which cannot have been larger than 0.36m in diameter. The largest shields were buried with mature individuals ...

Indeed, the link between shield size and date is much more obvious. None of the small shields is associated with late boss types ... It seems, therefore, that shield boards increased in size towards the end of the Early Saxon Period. ...

In comparison with Continental shields, the Anglo-Saxon boards seem small, on average, although it is interesting that the tenth-century historian Widukind of Corvey (Res gestae Saxonicae, I.9) refers to the 'small shields' of the Continental Saxons."

So smallish shields seem to be used not only by the Anglo-Saxons but by Continental Saxons as late as the 10th century; and the correlation of shields getting bigger later on is stronger than the correlation with age or wealth of the wielder. All this supports the idea that at least the north-western Germanic troops at Catalaunium - perhaps not necessarily the Goths? - mostly carried round shields two feet, or less, across. This is very different from Roman-style shields.

Secondly they suggest that the better off you were the bigger your shield. Well, if Rome is supporting your unit maybe all can afford the larger shield and, in a formation where the better armoured and armed are in the front ranks that's where the bigger shields, more suited to forming a shield wall will be found.

Indeed, this is more or less my point: if Rome is supporting your unit - because your unit is an ethnically-German auxilium of the army of Italy - then your unit will have big oval Roman shields. If not, you'll have a mix of shields mostly two feet or less in diameter, with which you can't form the impressive testudo which Jordanes associates with the "Roman" contingent. I think this makes the identification of Roman-style "regular" infantry in Aetius' command quite strong: it's what Jordanes says, and in this case what he says fits the evidence.

We must debate the position of the Visigoths in the battle. I suspect that there are two forces of cavalry and that the princes are with Aetius , the king on the other flank. That could mean them leaving the Alans from either direction to move to the centre against the Huns. It also makes sense that, in searching for his father the prince blunders , in the dark, into the camp of Attila because that would be between the two Visigothic forces.

Or it might just be that, because the Alan contingent is much smaller than the Hun centre, that Hun centre also faces part of the Visigoth command on the allied right. So King Theoderic faces, and is killed by, the Ostrogoths while Prince Thorismund commands that part of the Visigoth line that's next to the Alans, opposite the Huns - the left extremity of the allied right wing. (That would probably imply that there are a lot more Visigoth than there are Ostrogoths, but given Jordanes' form as a cheerleader for the Amals it is hardly surprising if he exaggerated their role.) 

It is a sort of giant raid. I doubt that Attila thought that he could extract more than loot, punish the Visigoths (as part of a long running Hunnic Gothic feud and also because they had run off in 376). He might have extracted tribute now and in the future, but I can hardly see him expecting to  conquer and hold the areas concerned because of the distance and difficult geography. Was he going to move the Huns from above the Danube to the Loire?? I doubt it and so it is a raid.

By that definition, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was "a sort of giant raid". Even apart from attacking and sacking cities, Attila needed to be able to challenge the Gothic and Roman armies in the field, and to do that he'd have taken every man he thought he could feed, cavalry or infantry. It's not a binary "a campaign is either a conquest or a raid". Whatever your definitions, I don't find the concept of "raid" helpful in understanding this campaign, and I don't find the arguments for an all-mounted force, nor even for an initially mounted for picking up infantry in Gaul or western Germany, convincing for either side.

As for the Romans turning to cheaper infantry because of the economic crisis, that makes monetary sense except that the problem that they face is Vandal raids for which a cavalry force is most apt as the Vandals might appear anywhere along the coast of Italy.

And do we have any evidence that they adopted such a flexible defence - as opposed to just cowering behind city walls (manned by infantry)?

cheers,
Duncan

[aligern]

Excuse me if I take them one at a time Duncan!!
I have Dickinson and Harke and I am quite prepared to buy the thesis of change in fighting style over a period until the Anglo Saxons  (of course they are not that yet) move from raiding forces to being the armed force of substantial kingdoms.  It fits, I think , with their progression of shield bosses which moves from something that looks as though it is actively used to a much more rounded  shape that would suit better in passive ranks.  However, we should be careful of  being so deterministic because 'shieldwall ' carries such connotations of  armies fighting from behind the line of shields and being very static. There is a lot of romance in that image of the stolid Saxon shieldwall which may be misleading.  the linear formation may be  rather looser and involve more individual fighting. The buttons on shields might be more aimed at individual duelling that played a part in battles only at the end and was more related to looser everyday combat situations.  Shields in Lombard art are also small and they have buttons on the shield too.  It is also correct to say that Germanic art has small shields, for example the Pleizhausen disk.However, we have the contrary evidence of the Frankish shield wall at Rimini and the Ostrogoth king Teias having to change his shield when it has ten? javelins sticking in it. Those imply large shields.  Lombard shields are small on the Agiluf helmet plate, but the reconstruction that I have seen based upon the surviving iron work of the grip is much more like a 3ft diameter.

Jordanes impressive tested may just be a classicisation, however, Philip Rance makes a very good case that the foulkon formation is just a shield wall as well as an all round tortoise and that it is characteristically Roman. Of course, around 50BC Ariovistus men (and Celtic warriors much earlier) are forming such formations.  As I said, shield wall is a commonplace.

The shield size/age correlation is really interesting. Younger men have smaller shields Does this represent a formation that has big shields up front or are we talking about different tactical treatment here where young men form flexible units that advance and retreat and use as a base a unit of older men that holds position and gives a base for action?

As to Attila's raid... well that.s how I see it. That is how Attila operates. He doesn't invade the Roman Empire,  take territory and garrison it. He advances, loots cities, makes a demand for tribute and goes.  This raid fits into that concept because he starts with  a tour of Germany and North East Gaul. Supposedly he takes Rheims, Cambrai, Trier, Metz, Cologne, Amiens, Beauvais, Paris (maybe), Tongres Tournay, Therouanne . The list is a later compilation and reliant upon such sources as Saint's lives (Hodgkin, Italy and her invaders II p118). What does not seem in doubt is that this was a very extensive ravaging  and takes perhaps  two to three months (depending upon when the snows allowed him to start from Hungary and how easy the process was and the speed of his column.
I am not aware that Napoleon's invasion of Russia can be in any way compared, he does not divert off to St Petersburg to loot the palaces there or send a column off to Kiev. Napoleon is seeking battle and submission,  Attila is seeking cash .  That is unless you believe that he really thought that he could marry Honoria and obtain half the Empire. That and his claim against the Visigoths are pretexts for which he will accept a sum of money, though showing their subjects the length of reach of Hunnic revenge was always on the agenda.

You raise a good point that there might be a lot more Visigoths than Ostrogoths, of course that would be likely if the Ostrogiths are just the mounted contingents go the three ruling brothers and the Visigoths are a full levy from much nearer at hand.  You don't mention that the Visigoths also front the Gepids and that  a Gepid might well have slain Theoderid,  However, I think your deployment idea struggles in two areas. firstly the sense of Jordanes is that peoples face off and this is congruent with the style where warfare is 'heroic' and  the battle lines are not necessarily contiguous. Secondly Thorismund has to almost blunder into the Hun camp on his return.  That is a lot more likely if, having advanced a long way, the Hun camp is between him and his father. If he is alongside his father's contingent then he would just make a straight return to where he had left him.
We also have to account for the occupation of the hill. This is apparently done by Thorismund and Aetius. If  Thorismund is not in a separate body then   Aetius must be on the flank with him so where are the Alans???

Of course that doesn't preclude other deployments, it is just that we should strive for best fit and having Thorismund with Aetius and separate from the main Visigoth force does fit well.

I don't want to paint myself into a corner on the infantry or not point, but I don't find it convincing that Attila would take infantry from the Middle Danube to  Northern Gaul. I have given the reasons why not, perhaps the biggest being that he could command sufficient mounted men to provide an army that was entirely horsed. and that at least all the Germans in  that army could happily dismount.

Roy

[aligern]

Reference 'Briones'  There are in  the Tirolian Alps a people called the Breoni whom Wolfram claims are under the command of the Dux of Raetia. IIRC that's from a Letter of Theoderic via Cassiodorus. The Breones are a local militia of tough hillmen.
Now I am not sure how a militia from the Inn valley gets to be part of Aetius' army, but it is a similar name of a people with military potential.

Woffram 'History of the Goths' 1979, 1990 pp8, 301, 316

Roy

[aligern]

Another and wildcard thought on Briones or rather Olibrians.

We are reliant upon Jordanes , or rather Cassiodorus for this name for Roman troops.   If this is a piece of information that Jordanes has copied from him, though J's claim to have read C and not have a copy in front of him  makes the remembrance of such detail as this list  remarkable.  Is it possible that the troops in question are being referred to by an honorific title, such as Honoriani or Theodosiani.  They would then be troops who had been honoured by the emperor Olybrius. Unfortunately he reigned for  at most eight months in 472 which is 20 years after the battle.    There is just a chance that the unit(s) concerned were honoured by Olybrius for whatever reason in 472 and that Jordanes refers to them from the perspective of 550 AD when he was writing, by their subsequent honorific.  That sort of thing does happen. If asked who fought at Waterloo one might list out the regiments by their subsequent 1880 titles rather than by their  numbers  as that would mean more to the audience.

Anyway i offer you this tortuous logic for  the obscure name Olibriones.

Roy