Roman tactics in the Middle Ages question.

Isn't the Byzantine army what the WESTERN Roman Empire's army would have been like, pretty much? Sure, the nomenclature would have been in Latin and not Greek, but why would the formations and tactics be significantly different, especially considering that if the West had survived it would have remained in some sort of close relationship with the East, every now and then sharing campaigns etc?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Mostly a matter of the differences between campaigning in Gaul vs. Anatolia, but otherwise, the "Byzantine" army shows exactly what the Roman army in the Middle Ages would have looked like because it was the medieval era Roman army - having adopted to the fact heavy infantry-based legions weren't the best of all possible ideas but kept up a professional army with the administration to support it right up until the 1300s.
 
Isn't the Byzantine army what the WESTERN Roman Empire's army would have been like, pretty much? Sure, the nomenclature would have been in Latin and not Greek, but why would the formations and tactics be significantly different, especially considering that if the West had survived it would have remained in some sort of close relationship with the East, every now and then sharing campaigns etc?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
It's...ah...not clear.

The thing is, the army underwent very serious alterations in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. According to Haldon and Treadgold, the only formations that were regularly paid in cash (as opposed to, say, paid in cash on campaign and holding land in emphyteusis otherwise) were the tagmata, which in the eighth century made up a fairly small part of the aggregate imperial combat strength. While this changed dramatically over the course of the next several centuries (such that by the reign of Basileios II the imperial army was arguably entirely comprised of tagmata-equivalent formations), I don't think anybody's sure just how well that lines up with the early imperial Roman way of doing things. The creation of themata and other military reforms were responses to rather specific crises that the Western Empire might or might not have had to deal with.

Also, I can totally envision a scenario in which the survival of the Western Empire causes the demise of the East. :p
 
Both West and East campaigned in the Balkans and in N Africa together, so I was thinking there would always be some degree of cross-fertilisation if the West survived, especially if in order for the West TO BE ABLE to survive it had to retake Carthage - and there were 2 expeditions to do that, one of which was aborted when the Huns invaded the East, the other of which got sunk by the Vandals. If, for sake of argument, the latter had succeeded - landed the Romans away from Carthage, true, but not in the process got itself sunk, then a viable Western empire could have been rebuilt - but do note it is being rebuilt with EXTENSIVE Eastern help (they even pretty much chose the emperor).

Obviously the emergence of the Muslim Arabs would add a third strong force into the equation BUT it is not unlikely that the East would have had in return help from the West to fight them, and maybe been able to hold them off, or at least hold onto more.

Counter-factual history is getting too vague by this time to even posit what it would be by 1200 or so.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Some things could have survived and made a difference. For example, the early Anglo-Saxons used the angon, which was a javelin quite similar to the pilum, in addition to their main weapon, the thrusting spear. But they didn't use it in the Roman manner...i.e. thrown in massed vollies just prior to impact with the enemy line. Instead, they used it primarily for duels between champions. This may have been because the Anglo-Saxons were one of the least Romanized groups among the Germanics, but oddly enough, the old Roman way doesn't seem to have survived among the other barbarians either. There doesn't seem to be a good reason for this.

The Anglo-Saxons already fought in a shield wall. It would not have taken much training to teach people to throw their javelins at a signal...at the blast of the horn, for example. But they never did that, and the angon went out of use by the end of the pre-Viking period. If somehow the Roman manner of use of the angon/pilum had survived among the Anglo-Saxons, however, Duke William and his cavalry would have had a rude shock at Hastings.

Zhmodikov argues, on the basis of battle narratives, that the Romans didn't use all their pila in the initial charge; they used some during the battle; to me, this suggests that the gap between Roman and Anglo-Saxon fighting techniques might not have been so wide.
 
Isn't the Byzantine army what the WESTERN Roman Empire's army would have been like, pretty much? Sure, the nomenclature would have been in Latin and not Greek, but why would the formations and tactics be significantly different, especially considering that if the West had survived it would have remained in some sort of close relationship with the East, every now and then sharing campaigns etc?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

I think this is a pretty good point.

I have read about Byzantine heavy cavalry, but don't know much about their infantry. How were they organized?
 
I think this is a pretty good point.

I have read about Byzantine heavy cavalry, but don't know much about their infantry. How were they organized?

In which period?

In the Strategikon, the battle cavalry [defensores] are paired with half as many scouting/archery cavalry [cursores]. In theory, both forces were supposed to train with the others' weapons. It's unclear how often the early Byzantine defensores used horse armor, but, given their role, it's unlikely the cursores used horse armor. Ideally, both the cursores and defensores are professional troops, though Belisarious sometimes hired mercenaries to add to the cursores. If the cavalry operates apart from their infantry, they form 2 1/2 lines, with up to 2/3 of their strength in the first line and flanking forces, most of their reserve in the second line, and small forces in the third.

By the time of the Praecepta Militaria, fully-armored cavalry [kataphraktoi] form a wedge in the center of the first line and, if enough are available, in the third line, but they rarely account for more than 1/10 of the cavalry. I think the tagmata are regular troops, while the thematic troops are drawn from the military lands. If the cavalry operates apart from the infantry, they form three lines, with roughly 3/10 of their strength in the first line, 4/10 in the second, and 3/10 in the third.

In the Strategikon, the infantry appear as something of an afterthought, and their organization has been cribbed from post-Hellenistic Greek military theorists such as Aelian. So the Stretegikon isn't trustworthy here, and their organization probably resembled Late Roman infantry organization and/or Early Byzantine cavalry organization. And they included spearmen and archers.

I think they switched from spears/shield walls to pikes by the time of Leo VI and back to spears/shield walls by the time of Nikephoros Phokas. The infantry were to form a square to protect the baggage during battle. They were organized into forces of about 1,000 infantry each, including spearmen, specialist anti-cavalry spearmen, archers, and javelinists.

Eric McGreer's book is a good starting point, but it only covers one period, and Byzantine tactics changed considerably between different periods.
 
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