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The Armies of Belisarius and Narses 1 O’ROURKE: ARMIES OF BELISARIUS AND NARSES ARROW-STORMS AND CAVALRY PIKES WARFARE IN THE AGE OF JUSTINIAN I, AD 527-565 THE ARMIES OF BELISARIUS AND NARSES by Michael O’Rourke mjor (at) velocitynet (dot) com (dot) au Canberra Australia September 2009 1. Introduction: “Rhomanya” 2. Troop Numbers 3. Troop Types 4. Tactics 5. Selected Battles 6. Appendix: Arrows, Armour and Flesh “Rhomanya”: The Christian Roman Empire of the Greeks Having been conquered by the Romans, the Aramaic- and Greek-speaking Eastern Mediterranean lived for centuries under imperial rule. Its people had received full citizenship already in 212 AD. So the East Romans naturally called themselves Rhomaioi, the Greek for ‘Romans’. The term Rhomanya [Greek hê Rhômanía:‘Ρ ω µ α ν ’ι α ] was in use already in the 300s (Brown 1971: 41). Middle period examples denoting the ‘Eastern’ Empire are found in the 600s - as in the Doctrina Jacobi - and in the 800s in various entries in the chronicle of Theophanes (fl. 810: e.g. his entry for AD 678). Although we do not find the name Rhômanía in Procopius, fl. AD 550, or in Anna Comnena, fl. 1133, it does occur in the writings of emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, fl. 955. The later medieval West, after AD 800, preferred the style ‘Greek Empire’. After 1204 the Latins used the term Romania to refer generally to the Empire and more specifically to the lower Balkans (thus English ‘Rumney wine’, Italian vino di Romania). Our own name Rumania/Romania, for the state on the northern side of the Danube, was chosen in 1859. It proclaimed the Romance and thereby Romantic origins of Limba Româna, hitherto known to outsiders as the Wallachian or ‘Vlach’ language. Like Italian, Limba Romana descends from late Latin. Its speakers call themselves Români. 1 2 O’ROURKE: ARMIES OF BELISARIUS AND NARSES ‘Byzantine’ of course is an invented modern term for the later Roman empire in the East. Byzantium, used for the later Roman state, was introduced into scholarship only in the 16th century, by Hieronymus Wolf, d. 1580. Bowersock, Brown and Grabar state too starkly that the term "Byzantine Empire" is "a modern misnomer redolent of ill-informed contempt" (1999: vii). Perhaps so, but its use is deeply entrenched. Judith Herrin says that “until the seventh century, Byzantium was indeed the Roman Empire” (2007: xviii). For her, ‘Byzantine’ should be used only after about 610. For Treadgold 1997, however, there was in the East a Byzantine society already by the fifth century. Kinnamos, the 12th century Byzantine historian, refers poetically or archaically to the capital as ‘Byzantion’ and uses the phrase ‘empire of Byzantion’. But of course the ordinary Byzantine called her world the Roman Empire: Basileía ton Rhõmaíõn or hê [tôn] Rhômaiôn Basileía. In this paper, I have occasionally used "Romanic" and “Romaic”. The Roman Empire ended of course in 1453 when the Turks finally took Constantinople. But the term Rhomaioi continued to be used for ‘Greeks’ down to the 19th century. The Greek scholar Rigas Feraios, d. 1798, called on "Bulgars and Arvanites [Albano-Greeks], Armenians and Romans" to rise in arms against the Ottomans. Likewise the Greek patriot Athanasios Diakos, before his death in 1821, said: "I was born a Greek, I shall die a Greek": Ego Romios yennithika, Romios the na pethano. And General Makrygiannis, fl. 1847, recalled a friend asking him: "What say you, is the Roman (Romios) far away from coming? Are we to sleep with the Turks and awaken with the Romans?” (see under ‘Romiosini’ in Merry 2004: 376). But the 19th century was the Romantic Age. So a newly independent Greece chose as its name not Constantinian- Christian ‘Romania’ but Platonic-pagan ‘Hellas’. Territory and Population Before Justinian’s Western reconquests and before the great plague of AD 542, the Eastern Empire contained some 30 million people. They were distributed possibly as follows: Egypt 8 M; Palestine-Syria-upper Mesopotamia 9 M; Asia Minor 10 M; and 3-4 M in the Balkans (Mango 1980: 23). In 565, after the conquests of Justinian’s reign, the Empire again ruled the whole Mediterranean basin, from present-day Morocco and southern Spain to Lazica which is modern west Georgia, and from N Italy to Egypt. The only regions of the littoral not under imperial control were Visigothic Catalonia and Frankish Provence. Geographically, the nearest enemy to Constantinople was the recently established Avar Khanate, north of, and on, the lower Danube River. They were Turkic-speaking steppes-nomads who by 580 would extend their domination into the upper Danube basin and threaten the imperial lands south of the lower Danube. Justinian The emperor Iustinianos I ‘the Great’, born Flavius Petrus Sabbatius, was the nephew of of his predecessor, Justin I. Aged 34 at accession in AD 527, he ruled for 38 years. The Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, has two famous mosaic panels, 2 3 O’ROURKE: ARMIES OF BELISARIUS AND NARSES executed in 548 to celebrate the reconquest of Italy. On the left is a mosaic depicting Justinian, clad in purple with a golden halo, standing next to court officials, Bishop Maximian, praetorian guards and deacons. On the right side is a mosaic featuring a solemn and formal Empress Theodora - aged about 48 in 548 [she died later the same year] - with golden halo, crown and jewels, and a train of court ladies. Belisarius A precocious general, Flavius Belisarios was still only 27 or 28 years old when his troops suppressed (532) the ‘Nika’ riot in the capital caused by internal political strife. He then defeated (533-34) the Vandals, a Germanic people ruling ex-imperial N Africa. Then, in command (535) of the war against the Ostrogoths in Italy, he took Naples and Rome (536), as well as Milan and Ravenna (540). Justinian replaced him (548) with Narses, a protégé of Empress Theodora, but Belisarius returned (559) to drive the Bulgars from the walls of Constantinople. After a brief political imprisonment (562), he returned to favour in the years before his death (565). Belisarius may be the bearded figure depicted on Emperor Justinian I's right in the mosaic in the Church of San Vitale. Narses Nothing is known of the first half of Narses' life. Already aged 54, he was a koubikoularios or chamberlain and spatharios or senior palace official at the time of the Nika Rebellion in 532. Having risen thereafter to grand chamberlain (Lat. praepositus sacri cubiculi), Narses was given the command of Italy in 551. Although already old (73), and a eunuch, he nevertheless proved to be a general of brilliance. 2. TROOP NUMBERS Data from Treadgold 1995 and 1997. There were broadly two categories of soldiers: the professionals serving in the mobile or field armies, and the troops of the static frontier who were a kind of farmer-militia. Year Cavalry Infantry Navy Remarks / Reign [Oarsmen] 540: 29,000 elite 116,000 line 30,000. 145,000 field soldiers; and Early field infantry; 195,500 frontier soldiers. JUSTINIAN I: cavalry; and 79,500 Grand total land troops = and 97,500 frontier 340,500. Total state frontier cav. infantry. revenue in 540: Note that there were more 11.3 million Total cavalry than infantry nomismata 124,500. among the frontier troops. (gold coins). - Highest ever in the Eastern 3 4 O’ROURKE: ARMIES OF BELISARIUS AND NARSES Empire. 565: 30,000 field 120,000 field N/a. Totals: Later cavalry; and infantry; and 150,000 field; and 197,500 JUSTINIAN I: 97,500 100,000 frontier. frontier frontier Grand total 347,500 (Note Revenues: total cavalry. troops. 1). about 8.4 million Cavalry: infantry ratio in nomismata field armies = 1:4. But an (post-Plague). expeditionary force might comprise up to 40% cavalry. Note 1: Cameron p.52 regards the figure of “435,000” in John the Lydian as exaggerated. Field or Mobile Armies in 565 Treadgold 1997: 373 has offered the following guesstimates for the size of the Empire’s nine field armies at the end of Justinian’s reign (AD 565): Enemies on the nearest major border: (1) Spania [S Andalusia] Spanish Visigoths, who controlled most of Iberia. 5,000 men (2) ‘Africa’ [Tunisia and Berbers. Libya] 15,000 (3) Italy 20,000 Franks in the NW; Burgundians in what is now Switzerland. Also Bavarians and Lombards in our Austria. (4) Illyricum [NW Lombards in present-day Austria and Gepids in present-day Balkans] 15,000 Hungary. (5) Thrace 20,000 Avars on the lower Danube. (6 and 7) ‘Praesental’ n/a troops, i.e. those “in the emperor’s presence” at or near Constantinople: two armies, each 20,000 (8) Armenia 15,000 Persians. (9) The East [Syria] Persians. Also detachments could be sent to Egypt, where 20,000 there was no important external enemy. Total: 150,000. 4 5 O’ROURKE: ARMIES OF BELISARIUS AND NARSES 3. TROOP TYPES Like that of Alexander the Great, but unlike that of the Roman Republic, the army of the Eastern Empire was a “combined-arms” army, a judicious blend of many types who could be used in various combinations. The highly professional army of Constantinople was based around cavalry: lancers or pike-cavalry and horse-archers, typically wearing mail, who were well supported by infantry, both pikemen and foot-archers. Byzantine generals understood the intelligent use of pike-infantry and foot-archers as well as cavalry charges. 1. Cavalry Stirrups were still unknown in Justinian’s time; they appear only by about AD 590. One assumes that stability for lancers and other horsemen was still supplied by the ‘four-horned’ Celto-Romanic saddle of High Antiquity, which securely clamped the rider in around the thighs and buttocks (Connolly 1987; Molyneaux 1997: 27).
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