WARFARE AND SOCIETY IN THE BARBARIAN WEST, 450–900 Warfare was an integral part of early medieval life. It had a character of its own and was neither a pale shadow of Roman military practice nor an insignificant precursor to the warfare of the central Middle Ages. This book recovers its distinctiveness, looking at warfare in a rounded context in the British Isles and western Europe between the end of the Roman Empire and the break-up of the Carolingian Empire. The era was one of great changes in the practice of war. Guy Halsall relates warfare to many aspects of medieval life, economy, society and politics. He examines the raising and organisation of early medieval armies and looks at the conduct of campaigns. The survey includes the equipment of warriors and the horrific experience of battle as well as an analysis of medieval fortifications and siege warfare. Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West uses historical and archaeological evidence in a rigorous and sophisticated fashion. It stresses regional variations but also places Anglo-Saxon England in the mainstream of the military developments in this era. Guy Halsall is lecturer in medieval history at the University of York. He has published widely on the social history and archaeology of Merovingian Gaul and on violence in early medieval society, including Settlement and Social Organisation. The Merovingian Region of Metz (Cambridge, 1995). WARFARE AND HISTORY General Editor, Jeremy Black Professor of History, University of Exeter AIR POWER IN THE AGE OF TOTAL WAR John Buckley THE ARMIES OF THE CALIPHS: MILITARY AND SOCIETY IN THE EARLY ISLAMIC STATE Hugh Kennedy THE BALKAN WARS, 1912–1913: PRELUDE TO THE FIRST WORLD WAR Richard C. Hall ENGLISH WARFARE, 1511–1642 Mark Charles Fissel EUROPEAN AND NATIVE AMERICAN WARFARE, 1675–1815 Armstrong Starkey EUROPEAN WARFARE, 1660–1815 Jeremy Black THE FIRST PUNIC WAR J. F. Lazenby FRONTIERSMEN: WARFARE IN AFRICA SINCE 1950 Anthony Clayton GERMAN ARMIES: WAR AND GERMAN POLITICS, 1648–1806 Peter H. Wilson THE GREAT WAR 1914–1918 Spencer C. Tucker ISRAEL’S WARS, 1947–1993 Ahron Bregman THE KOREAN WAR: NO VICTORS, NO VANQUISHED Stanley Sandler MEDIEVAL CHINESE WARFARE, 300–900 David A. Graff MEDIEVAL NAVAL WARFARE, 1000–1500 Susan Rose MODERN CHINESE WARFARE, 1795–1989 Bruce A. Elleman MODERN INSURGENCIES AND COUNTER-INSURGENCIES: GUERRILLAS AND THEIR OPPONENTS SINCE 1750 Ian F. W. Beckett NAVAL WARFARE, 1815–1914 Lawrence Sondhaus OTTOMAN WARFARE, 1500–1700 Rhoads Murphey SEAPOWER AND NAVAL WARFARE, 1650–1830 Richard Harding THE SOVIET MILITARY EXPERIENCE Roger R. Reese VIETNAM Spencer C. Tucker THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN SOCIETY Harry M. Ward WAR AND THE STATE IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE: SPAIN, THE DUTCH REPUBLIC AND SWEDEN AS FISCAL-MILITARY STATES, 1500–1660 Jan Glete WARFARE AND SOCIETY IN EUROPE, 1792–1914 Geoffrey Wawro WARFARE AT SEA, 1500–1650 Jan Glete WARFARE IN ATLANTIC AFRICA, 1500–1800: MARITIME CONFLICTS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EUROPE John K. Thornton WARFARE, STATE AND SOCIETY IN THE BYZANTINE WORLD, 565–1204 John Haldon WAR IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD, 1450–1815 Jeremy Black WARS OF IMPERIAL CONQUEST IN AFRICA, 1830–1914 Bruce Vandervort WESTERN WARFARE IN THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES, 1000–1300 John France THE IRISH AND BRITISH WARS, 1637–1654. TRIUMPH, TRAGEDY, AND FAILURE James Scott Wheeler EUROPEAN WARFARE, 1494–1660 Jeremy Black WAR AND SOCIETY IN IMPERIAL ROME, 31 BC–AD 284 Brian Campbell MUGHAL WARFARE: IMPERIAL FRONTIERS AND HIGHROADS TO EMPIRE 1500–1700 Jos Gommans WARFARE AND SOCIETY IN THE BARBARIAN WEST, 450–900 Guy Halsall WARFARE AND SOCIETY IN THE BARBARIAN WEST, 450–900 Guy Halsall First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Guy Halsall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Halsall, Guy. Warfare and society in the barbarian West, 450–900 / Guy Halsall. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Military art and science—Europe, Western—History—To 900. 2. Europe, Western—History, Military—To 1500. I. Title. U37.H357 2003 355′.0094′0902—dc2l 2002013881 ISBN 0-203-93007-X Master e-book ISBN 0–415–23939–7 (hbk) 0–415–23940–0 (pbk) FOR MY TEACHERS CONTENTS List of illustrations xi Acknowledgements xiii Maps xv 1 Warfare and violence in the early Middle Ages 1 2 Warfare and society 20 3 Raising an army (1): post-Roman Europe 40 4 Raising an army (2): the Carolingian world 71 5 Raising an army (3): allies, mercenaries and training the troops 111 6 Raising an army (4): the size of armies 119 7 Campaigning 134 8 Weaponry and equipment 163 9 Battle 177 10 Fortification and siege warfare 215 Epilogue 228 Appendix: Military activity in the Frankish realms, 581–90 231 Notes 234 Select bibliography 297 Index 315 ix ILLUSTRATIONS Maps 1 The Merovingian world xv 2 Anglo-Saxon Britain xvi 3 Lombard Italy xvii 4 The Carolingian Empire xviii–xix Figures 1 Incidence of warfare and changes of king in Mercia, 600–850 28 2 English warfare 600–850: changing patterns or changing traditions? 139 3 Locational analysis of Anglo-Saxon battles, 600–850 158 xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This volume has been a long time in gestation and in many ways has had a difficult birth. I am immensely grateful to my editors at Routledge for their patience! I have accumulated a substantial number of other personal and professional debts in the difficult years during which this book was being written. My colleagues in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck College provided a fine environment in which to work and to study history at the highest level. My Birkbeck students, especially on my ‘Barbarian Migrations in Archaeology and History’ and ‘Urbanism in the First Millennium’ courses, have inspired, helped and usefully criticised my thinking on the early Middle Ages. They have also borne my digressions into the politics of the raising of armies – often during seminars on completely different subjects – with exem- plary forbearance! Steve Neate, a survivor of ‘Barbarians’, read the entire draft, made many helpful suggestions and spotted innumerable ‘typos’. Overall, my students’ input into this volume (as one put it, ‘a history of violent chancers’, which just about sums it up) is much more considerable than they realise. To write a book covering 450 years of the history of most of western Europe is, if one is honest, to walk into the caverns of one’s ignorance. I have been enormously fortunate to have had the assistance of numerous guides and lantern-bearers. Paul Fouracre read the whole book in draft and made many helpful observations, all of which have significantly improved the final version. I hope he has gained as much as I have from our debates on the nature of early medieval societies and politics over the last decade or so. Chris Wickham also read most of the volume, has been a merciless scourge of my woolly thinking and saved me from several factual errors in the process. Any qualities the Carolingian section may have are thanks in large part to thorough and critical reading (of more than one draft) by Simon MacLean. Kate Cooper, Falco Daim, Wendy Davies, Julio Escalona Monge, Mark Handley, Matthew Innes, Charles Insley, Jon Jarrett, Ryan Lavelle, Julia Smith and the late and much missed Tim Reuter have all provided discussions, help, information and references. Charles, Ryan and Tim also read substantial sections of the book and provided invaluable feedback. I have not always followed the advice I have been given, so although all the above have played an important part in giving this xiii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS volume any merits it may possess, they are not to be blamed for any errors, off- beam ideas and woolly thinking that remain. Paul Kershaw has taught me an enormous amount about early medieval history, not least by putting his voluminous knowledge of early medieval political thought and ideas of war and peace at my disposal, but also by being a very solid and reliable friend. To use a metaphor from this book, in the great shieldwall of life you could not have a better man at your right shoulder. I count myself exceptionally lucky to have worked with the other medi- evalists of the University of London and, as well as benefiting hugely from their friendship, I have learnt immeasurably from the other regulars at the Institute of Historical Research’s justly famous ‘Earlier Middle Ages’ seminar, especially Matthew Bennett, John Gillingham, Janet Nelson, Susan Reynolds, Alan Thacker, Andrew Wareham and Geoff West. There is nowhere better than London to learn the art of being an early medieval historian. Outside academia, I am grateful to Duncan Macfarlane, editor of Wargames Illustrated, who first published my thoughts on early medieval warfare in 1983, and has consistently (and with great patience and support) given me access to a broader non-academic audience ever since.