Part 60: The Return to Spain
Part LX: Return to Hispani
The initial invasion force landed at Cartagonova, the Gothic city erected where Carthago Nova had once been centered, in mid-June of 1030, and consisted of about five thousand men. This force was led by Romanos Abbasios, and were supported by two hundred ships given the vital task of keeping whatever Frankish ships might be in the area off of the sea. If the supply lines back to Sardinia and Sicily were closed for any reason the entire expedition would starve, as would the reinforcements currently being marched the remainder of the journey across Africa to Tingi for a less dangerous crossing.
Until the Emperor arrived Abbasios would have to hold back the far larger Frankish army marching south out of Tarracon. Abbasios did the natural thing. He attacked. In a harbinger of what was to come Abbasios led two thousand light cavalry north into Tarracon, and they ravaged the countryside. Fields were trampled, towns burned, and people killed. Along a mile wide front the force advanced, destroying everything in their path.
When the local forces rallied to drive the Romans out, Abbasios retreated, leaving twenty miles past the border ravaged. He met up again with his main force, and began drawing recruits from among the local Gothic population. Baetican knights were added to the Roman force, as were local militia forces until Abbasios commanded a force of about eleven thousand.
Note, that while when the word knight is used we typically think of the heavily armored horsemen of the Franks or the Normans, the Gothic knights in this case were actually mostly heavy infantry. Cavalry wasn’t widely used in Hispani at this point for a variety of reasons. Chief among these was simply that anyone who was skilled at riding a horse and wasn’t a nobleman typically got on a boat and sailed for Constantinople, or another Roman city. Even during the military decline of the previous two centuries skilled horsemen could always find employment in the thematic armies.
Abbasios set up his headquarters at Sebastis, a town about halfway between Cartagonova and Tarracon. The town was fortified in the fashion of Roman fortresses, and a phrourion was erected in the town center from which Abbasios aimed to exert local control when the inevitable Tarracon counterattack came. I should also probably note here that I am using the modern border as a point of reference, not what existed at the time, as Baetica officially did not extend to the Tarracon border at this time, but as the local lords had joined their southern neighbors in the more general revolt, and will in the future be part of the same overall administrative structure the shorthand is preferred. Especially since the Carthagensis at this stage was split between the Baeticans and the Tarraconi
It did so in early August, but was small and badly organized. A Turkic force came upon them while out foraging, and a brief skirmish ensued. After half an hour of fighting the Tarroconi retreated back toward Segobris, a Baetican town which they had taken.
Soon however the Franks arrived as well, and when combined with their Gothic allies numbered nearly twenty thousand. Feeling highly confident the Frankish commander, a maternal cousin of Emperor Louis named Frederik whose family will be important later, advanced south, inflicting his own raids upon the local Gothic countryside. As he marched, he also extracted homage and promises of fealty from Gothic lords, ceasing plundering of their lands if they submitted. Frederik was looking for nothing less than full annexation of Hispani into the Frankish Empire, which would truly give the Emperor a claim to be the Western Augustus.
Abbasios missed precisely none of the symbolism, and as such he committed one of the rare blunders of his military career. He decided that the danger of letting Frederik advance unchallenged was too great, and so the smaller Roman force had to provoke a battle. Abbasios chose his ground carefully, putting a forest at the back of his men that they could retreat into, and digging a hidden trench along both of his flanks he hoped to provoke the Frankish cavalry into charging into. To bolster the temptation of this target he put the Gothic infantry on the flanks, while leaving the main Roman troops firmly in the center. His hope was that the Franks would put their knights on the flanks, charged into the trenches, and then their lighter infantry forces would be annihilated by the Roman cavalry and levied troops.
This is not what happened. Instead on August 28, 1030 Frederik looked at the Roman lines, and decided that the actual best strategy would be to test the discipline and courage of the Roman troops in the center, whom he correctly deduced had never faced a heavy cavalry charge before. Remember that at this stage the Romans had been fighting only the lighter forces of the Turks and the Berbers. The Frankish knight was a completely different beast. What’s more, the entire Roman heavy cavalry force was currently crossing the Straits and unloading at Malacca, from which they could ride to meet up with the infantry who were unloading at Abdera.
All of this meant that the Roman infantry were now facing something they had never encountered before. When battle was joined the Frankish knights, who were all in the household forces of the Emperor’s family, moved forward as one. They silently came on, never slowing or hesitating as crossbow bolts whizzed through them. When a horse fell it was avoided by the men behind, but still they came on. Lances were lowered, and the knights began to sing a prayer to Michael the Archangel, seemingly free from any terror of battle at all.
The Romans broke and ran. Spears, crossbows, and shields were thrown down in terror as the Romans made for the safety of the woods. Hundreds died as the knights ran them down, and then turned to their right and left, where the Goths were engaged with the Frankish infantry forces, who had been completely unbothered by the ditches. Suddenly finding themselves flanked the Goths tried to run away, but many of them were killed and the rest captured.
Abbasios himself was forced to dress as a slave and flee, throwing aside his armor, badges, and fine clothing to do so.
Needless to say, the Battle of Setabis was a debacle for the Romans, and had Manuel not already arrived in southern Hispani by this point and was already setting about getting support from the local lords, it is entirely likely the Hispani project would have ended there. Invading the peninsula was not exactly an orthodox plan in retaking Italy after all, and keeping the fleet constantly at sea like this was enormously expensive. Indeed, by the end of this year the Imperial treasury had spent two million nomismata more than it had collected in tax revenue, and was now rapidly descending into heavy debts, which will eventually lead into the wider backlash against the Emperor, and more particularly his wife.
But for now, Manuel was in Spain, and he had thirty-five thousand men with him. When word reached him of the defeat the Gothic lords were horrified, but the Emperor claims to have shrugged off the setback, saying that no one doubted the power of the Franks, but that God would in the end give victory to the side of the righteous.
That said, in the short term the Goths of eastern Baetica did homage to Frederick, and swore to serve the “Most Holy Emperor of Rome”, making sure to emphasize that point just in case. They really didn’t want to end up on the losing side of the coming struggle. Frederik for now was forced to settle in and lay siege to the castle at Sebastis, where a small Roman garrison held out doggedly against Frankish attacks. The only significant weakness of the Franks was on display here, their siege ability was not well developed. They were not as terrible at sieges as say the Turks, or indeed the Goths had been so many centuries before, but their own warfare revolved heavily around long sieges by rather small armies. As such keeping such a large force in the field of a small siege was heavily taxing on the similarly limited logistical ability of the Frankish army.
Worsening their position was that the countryside had already been stripped bare of food by the Romans before the battle had been fought. Finally, as consumption began taking root inside the Franksih camp Frederik was forced to withdraw back toward the north, leaving the Roman garrison intact.
He swore however to return and put the entire Roman force to the sword for defying him.
As soon as the next year’s campaign season began Frederik was good to his word, charging out of Tarracon at the head of his army and heading straight for Sebastis. The garrison was now down to only a small store of food, and suffering their own bouts with sickness and asked terms for surrender. Frederik refused all terms, and instead slaughtered the Romans when they were too weak to fend off an assault.
He was however soon regretful of his choice when Manuel’s army suddenly appeared on the horizon, led by a now reclothed and rehonored Abbasios, one of the points in Manuel’s favor even in the face of some rather obvious mistakes in hindsight, was his willingness to overlook errors in judgement from otherwise competent and loyal men. A lesson that many kings and Emperor never properly learned.
That Abbasios had been around the Emperor his whole life may also have had something to do with it.
Despite the Roman numerical advantage however Frederik once again moved his force out to do battle. His previous victory had required minimal losses, and the Romans didn’t even have a knightly class for God’s sake. What could go wrong.
Once again Frederik deployed his heavy cavalry in the center of his line, and readied his infantry to attack the Roman flank.
Abbasios surveyed the field and ordered his own heavy cavalry to dismount and fight on foot, and that the mopping up would be left to the Turks. The Roman knights were placed with Gothic auxiliaries on the flanks to bolster them against Frankish infantry attack, while the Romans themselves once again took the center. This time however there was a key factor that was different. Behind the central Roman line was the Emperor, his banner waving and the Emperor himself on foot, showing quite clearly that he had no intention of running away if the battle went south.
This was absolutely critical to what’s about to happen. Manuel was very popular with the common soldiers. He felt like he was one of them, like he cared for them, and now running away would mean abandoning the Emperor to death at the hands of these barbarians. Now let’s not overstate the Emperor’s personal courage here. He might have been on foot, but had things started to go south he certainly would not have stayed that way. Manuel has a very well oiled sense of self-preservation and will show later in his life that he was not above running away and hoping to get another shot at winning some other day. But that wasn’t important here.
What was important was that when the Franks charged the Romans didn’t even blink. The pikemen stood stock still, shoulder to shoulder, the crossbowmen fired their bolts into the Frankish knights, and the charge…failed. Straight up failed. The Romans did not break, they didn’t waver. There was a great clash of metal as the French cavalry failed to break the line, and in the subsequent melee hundreds of knights were knocked from their horses by Roman spears, and then were stabbed as they struggled to rise again. Seeing the difficulties of their center the Frankish infantry began to panic, only compounded as the Roman center began to move forward, splitting into two lines which began firing crossbows into the flanks of the lightly armored infantrymen. A rout followed. The Turks ran down hundreds of fleeing Franks, and many others were captured. Among these was Frederik himself and nearly one hundred knights and lords.
These men expected to be ransomed as was the Frankish custom, but Manuel laughed in their faces at the very idea. No, no, these men had set up a claim of equality with the vice-regent of God on Earth, had erected an anti-pope in Rome to sway men away from the true faith, and had refused all offers of salvation when the Thessalonikan Council was called.
No, they were heathens so far as the Emperor was concerned. And they would die for their offense. Each man was beheaded in full view of the army, and at each turn their crime against God and the Emperor was announced to the cheering of the Roman troops, and probably some quiet cheering among the common Frank prisoners for particularly hated nobles.
In the end ten thousand Franks were killed, six thousand taken prisoner, and the rest scattered. Of the prisoners the nobles and knights were all executed, and the commoners were mostly loaded on boats and sent to Africa to act as reinforcements for the local garrisons. Many of them, mostly the unmarried men, would end up settling there, particularly in and around Thapsus.
The rest were let loose to return home as they wished, and were given an oath not to take up arms against the Roman Emperor ever again. With this oath they were granted a piece of cloth which they were to display if a Roman army was in the area. If the cloth was so displayed any of their holdings would spared the ravages of war. In theory at least, whether that was ever actually followed is questionable.
When all of this was complete Manuel marched north, occupying Tarraco itself in May 1031, and laying the groundwork for his July campaign, when he planned to cross along the coast at Emporiae and strike at southern Aquitaine. With the Frankish army broken nothing at all stood in his way, and until Louis heard about the fate of his Hispani army noting would be moved either.
Next time then we will cover the Roman return to Gaul after six hundred years of absence, and the strategy which no one in the Frankish Empire had a clue how to counter.
