Byzantine Warfare

The Byzantines did not regard war as an occasion for the winning of martial glory and renown, but as an unfortunate necessity, forced upon them by their hostile neighbors. Throughout most of the empire's history its conception of warfare was fundamentally defensive.

Divine aid, as the Byzantines understood it, was the most important element for military success, followed closely by the skill and enthusiasm of the commanders and soldiers. Sheer masses of troops and equipment were never considered the decisive element by Byzantine strategists and tacticians, who viewed was as a subject for intellectual study. These strategists and tacticians believed in the organization of men, materials and transportation. They perceived and portrayed themselves as protagonists in a world filled with enemies who often possessed greater material resources than themselves; they did not regard the situation as hopeless. By rational reflection and organization, they believed, one could achieve the most effective use of existing human and material resources. It is from their stategika and taktika, that is, manuals of strategy and stratagems, and of tactics, and from historical narratives and some rhetorical works, that one can gain the best understanding of Byzantine warfare.

The Byzantine science of military tactics rested on the basic assumption that there was a repetitiveness in warfare and that therefore, by mastery of various alternative patterns, one could avoid being surprised and overcome by the unexpected knowledge of military discipline and order in battle would help to overcome any surprises and unexpected enemy tactics. This was an attempt to make order and regularity out of what otherwise would be chaos.

The Byzantines always labored, in their analysis of war, under the burden of their Greco-Roman heritage. They used their knowledge of Greek and Roman history extensively to uncover precedents for particular military measures, and from time to time they attempted to understand and explain the reasons for Greek and Roman military successes. The format and language for tactical and strategic manuals owed much to such Greek strategists as Aelian, Arrian, Onasander and Aeneas Tacticus. Various Byzantine emperors encouraged the writing or actually wrote manuals themselves of tactics and strategy, some of the great families influenced the tone and content of such manuals, which therefore must be read with appropriate caution and discounting of biases and self-interest and self-glorification.

Byzantium's prevailing commitment to a policy of avoiding decisive battle for most of its history probably contributed to its longevity. There was a readiness to exploit uncertainties while minimizing one's own casualties, preferring a combination of artifices, diplomacy, delay, dissimulation, sowing dissension, corruption, and most of all, employing caution and an indirect approach to warfare, in an effort to reduce risk and gambling to a minimum in warfare. The Byzantines did not discover all of these approaches to warfare, but developed some proclivities in Greco-Roman military counsels.

The Byzantines appreciated order, discipline, the use of commonly understood verbal orders of command and drill, the use of advanced technologies, such as Greek fire, and experimentation with principles of mechanics and optics for the winning of military advantage.

The greatest weakness of Byzantine addiction to cleverness and deception in warfare was the development of excessive overconfidence and occasional intellectualism in military operations. It encouraged an admirable readiness to use one's head in studying war, yet it often created a dangerous or disastrous overconfidence in the ability of a strategist to overcome, through cleverness, quantitatively and perhaps qualitatively superior material and people.

The Byzantines appreciated the role of timing in warfare, the interdependence of strategic moves, and, above all, the unknown or unexpected element. Long distances and slow communications combined to affect the Byzantine armies and their foes. Making intelligent decisions in Constantinople with outdated information filtered through many persons was difficult. Warfare was often slow paced in that world of imperfect information.

Byzantine armies achieved a measure of success in protracted warfare, but those successes were precarious. In the long run, success in its wars of maneuvering and attrition depended upon two prerequisites. First, it was necessary for the emperor and his officials in Constantinople to have sufficient trust in their field commanders for the latter to be able to act flexibly and rapidly, with a wide latitude of authority to meet any contingency. Such absolute trust was impossible to achieve, and whatever trust there was broke down because of the rivalry of commanders who undercut and denounced each to the imperial court. Intrigues, rivalries and envy thrived because of and in the midst of the indecisive and protracted warfare, and contributed to the failure of commanders to commit all of their talents to the struggle against external enemies. Emperors never succeeded in finding a way to conduct external military operations on a large scale without potentially strengthening an ambitious general so much that he might become a threat to internal security. There was an inherent contradiction between the needs of the army and its generals for adequate people and resources, and freedom of action for the sake of maximum military efficiency, on the one hand, and the fears of emperors and their officials that such generals might create a domestic threat, on the other hand.

The second prerequisite for success was the maintenance of an efficient flow of supplies and money, which proved to be impossible. Indeed, the frequently protracted warfare resulted from and intensified the armies' logistical and organizational problems. It was difficult to procure and transport adequate provisions and money to the armies without causing excessive hardship to domestic agriculture, commerce and the civilian population.

Armies were small for operational purposes, probably exceeding 20,000 men very rarely, for a specific campaign; usually they were much smaller. Warfare often involved ambushes, ruses and rapid maneuvers of cavalry, and only rarely involved masses of men fighting in fixed positions. It was adapted to the relatively large amount of territory over which it could spread, terrain that was suitable for horses. The Byzantines did not commit all of their people to defending their lengthy frontiers, but preserved mobile field armies that sought to engage larger groups of foreign invaders who penetrated deeply. The civilian population sought the safety of fortified hills, fortresses, islands or even caves for the duration of a raid or invasion. Byzantine troops often endeavored to close mountain passes that the invading party would need to use for return to its own territory, as well as to cut off and destroy smaller units of invaders. The normal practice was to avoid a bloody pitched battle unless one possessed overwhelming superiority and other circumstances were very favorable.

Emperors and commanders sought to produce the maximum results from their soldiers by rewarding the most successful individuals and units for their deeds on the battlefield. They also sought to instill religious zeal, to stress that the soldiers were fighting as Christians often against non-Christians rather than solely as defenders of the empire. Religious services often preceded battle.

Slow and protracted warfare was not always the norm. There were moments of decisive and rapid strikes, such as some expeditions of Leo I, Justinian I, Nikephoros Phokas, John Tzimiskes, Basil II and Heraklios.

Although there were some improvements in techniques of combat, there was no disposition to believe that there would be further progress in warfare yet the historian Procopius was convinced in the sixth century that techniques in his day had progressed over those of antiquity. As their taktika and strategika attest, the Byzantines did adjust their methods of fighting to changing circumstances and te special techniques of their opponents, both in weapons and in ways of fighting. Yet there was no readiness to expect innovation in warfare let alone o regard it as something desirable and positive, to be cultivated assiduously. The answers to success in warfare were thought to be found in the empire's past, including its Roman antecedents. In general, those who wrote about war believed that any faults in their military system lay in neglect of exercise, tactical maxims and knowledge of ancient principles, and in the falling into disuse of older and correct military practices. From this followed, it was thought, lack of experience and knowledge, and the cowardice of soldiers and their commanders. The appropriate remedy was thought to be the revival of the older practices (eutaxia [discipline], gymnasia [exercise], and taxis [order]) that had worked so well.

Attributing any grand strategy to the Byzantine practice of warfare would be incorrect. The slowness of communications and logistical problems, and the absence of anything approaching a general staff, prevented the implementation of grand strategy in the modern sense. This does not mean, of course, that emperors such as Justinian or Constantine VII did not gave some conception of the interrelated features of diplomacy and warfare on various frontiers. Yet the strategika and taktika assumed that the general might have to direct his men in local situations in which he might be cut off from easy communication with his government; therefore he had to possess wide authority and initiative in waging war in the face of uncertainties and unknowns.

There was no refusal to borrow techniques, arms and even soldiers from other peoples if they functioned well in warfare. Performance was the critical measure. It was recognized that there were many different ways of fighting.

Mounted archers were important, especially starting in the sixth century, although their difficult techniques were falling into neglect by the tenth century, and that neglect contributed to the Byzantine inability to present an adequate resistance to the Seljuk Turks. Foot soldiers were far less important than cavalry to the effectiveness of Byzantine armies in combat. Mounted archers required an ample supply of arrows, which were procured from specific districts at least in the tenth century, and the supply train (touldon) might carry additional arrows among its many items, which included food, metals, leather, cloaks, containers, carpentry tools, chain-mail sleeves, shields, javelins, wine, siege machines, timber cloth and jars.

The empire's ability to wage war depended, of course, in part upon its financial resources and its financial, bureaucratic and military institutions. Warfare cost money, and it resulted, because of invasions and raids, in extensive physical damage to towns and countryside.

No one emperor was responsible for creating a distinctive Byzantine way of waging war; it evolved slowly from Greco-Roman and late Roman antecedents, adjusting to changing circumstances and limited resources, both human and material. Yet there was a failure, noticeable especially from the eleventh century on, to adapt and respond adequately to changes in warfare. The result was an increasing dependence on outsiders for maintenance of effectiveness in warfare.

Byzantine strategists and generals expressed confidence in the utility of studying history and writings on war, but they always remained cautious about the unexpected turns that violent conflict could take, especially in large-scale decisive combat. They accepted the use of military force. Nevertheless, they often realized their inability to predict, to control, or to direct the course of a war once full-scale hostilities had commenced.

There usually was a prudent preference to avoid the maximum possible level of violence within existing levels of weaponry. It was repeatedly within the capabilities of Byzantium to exterminate a defeated population, but the actual cases in which such polices were elected are very rare. The comparatively modern doctrine of the maximum concentration of force did not dominate military wisdom. Byzantine commanders and emperors were usually mindful of the difficulty of replacing losses among the soldiers, who were relatively expensive and difficult to recruit and train in that era of relatively small armies.

Terminating hostilities was sometimes difficult once they had commenced. In its protracted wars without absolute military victory, it was sometimes hard for the empire to decide when was the optimal time to agree to a settlement. It was the unexpected victories or campaigns that contributed the most to altering the course of negotiations in progress. In such wars the latest engagements exerted a multiplier effect on diplomatic bargaining. It was sometimes difficult for Byzantine leaders and negotiators to view matters in a long perspective in the midst f the pressures, uneven conditions and limited information that was available. Thus the unexpected, the hitherto undiscounted or disbelieved, had a tremendous effect on the course of negotiation and on the peace terms.

They often conducted fighting with an eye more to negotiations than to pure military objectives. Changes at the battlefront usually meant a quick change in the stance and mood of Byzantine diplomacy, yet maintaining lengthy control of a military situation during negotiations was impossible for Byzantine diplomats. At least as important for the course of negotiations in Byzantium's wars were factors beyond the trend of the negotiations and even beyond the fortune of battles: deaths, illnesses or other incapacitations of respected leaders, or internal dissension or conspiracy sometimes decisively affected the outcome of a war's diplomacy.

Byzantine diplomats and generals made many blunders and errors, but they were accustomed, in all the centuries of the empire's history, to simultaneous fighting and negotiating. The existence of mutual mistrust and mutual resort to stratagems, tricks and deception surely impeded the Byzantine Empire's negotiations with its adversaries in war, but the lack of absolute trust did not prevent termination of hostilities or the implementation of reasonable terms for peace, including exchange of prisoners.

Repeated problems in Byzantium's wartime diplomacy were (1) the timing and sequence of approved military evacuations; (2) the omnipresent monetary factor, which proved to be an efficient expediter and compensator in complex contexts there were two varieties of monetary levers, outright bribery of negotiators or enemy commanders, and payments to Byzantium's opponent for some of its alleged losses or expenses; (3) matters of status and prestige unreasonable insistence on certain points led to costly and dubious resumptions of hostilities or protraction of existing wars, as well as jealousy and ruinous acts by proud generals; and (4) territorial issues.

Provincial Armies and Frontier Defense

As Byzantine territory steadily shrank, provincial and frontier defense became effectively synonymous. Each of the themes, until the thirteenth century, continued to be governed by a doux, who was simultaneously commander of whatever armed forces available. Beneath him the military responsibilty for each town was in the hands of an officer called a kastrophylax or 'fortress guard.'

The Navy

The native fleet was revived by Manuel I, so that for the expedition to Damietta in 1169 he was able to provide twelve large warships, 150 galleys and sixty transports. However, the decline resumed under his successors. By 1196 there were only thirty galleys still afloat, and when the Fourth Crusade appeared before Constantinople in 1203, the twenty worm-eaten hulks that remained were only fit to be used as fire ships.

Greek Fire

Greek fire is frequently used in sea battles. Often being the turning factor for Byzantine victory. The Byzantines occasionally even used Greek fire "grenades."

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Last modified: Thurs Dec 10, 1998