The outcome of armed conflict is rarely, if ever, determined by the quality of the soldiers and their leaders alone—aspects we will examine in the next chapter—but, crucially, by the degree and nature of the logistical support which makes fighting between relatively complex social-political organizations possible in the first place. In this respect, the East Roman empire up to the twelfth century was well served by an efficient—indeed, ruthless—fiscal and logistical system which, by maximizing the often limited resources at the state’s disposal, gave the imperial armies an advantage which on occasion meant the difference between success and failure, and certainly facilitated the survival of both the military and civil administration of the empire in times of adversity.
Arms, equipment and livestock: from the late Roman to the Byzantine system
Until the middle of the seventh century, clothing, mounts and weapons for the army were provided by a combination of taxation or levy in kind (for example, certain items of clothing and boots appear to have been raised in this way), and through state manufactories. Of the latter, the arms factories were among the most important. Weapons and clothing were, by the later sixth century, bought by the soldier, either directly or through the regimental actuary, with a cash allowance issued for the purpose. Maurice (582—602) tried to reform this by returning to the older system of issuing such materials in kind, but it is unclear if he was successful. Horses were provided partly by levy, partly through purchase at fixed prices. Imperial stud farms contributed a proportion of the mounts required, but again, cannot have provided for all mounted units. The so-called Strategikon of Maurice, composed at the end of the sixth century, advises generals to establish winter quarters in areas where such supplies will be readily available for purchase, or to make it possible for traders and others to reach the army in order to provide the required provisions and equipment. Iron ore, charcoal and wood were also provided by levy, sometimes remitted from the tax-burden of the area or community in question, sometimes raised through compulsory impositions upon certain categories of the population.1
The cost of moving all these supplies was considerable. Transportation was cheapest by sea, but this was rarely relevant to inland campaigns, either on the eastern front or in the Balkans. Usually, the public post—cursus publicus—was employed in either its “fast” or “slow” versions (the former using horses and mules, the latter oxen) to transport materials not directly connected with the army.2 The army itself provided guards and transport for weapons, as laid down in Justinian’s regulations of the middle of the sixth century, although it should be stressed that we have no way of knowing to what extent these prescriptions were actually followed.3
Field armies on campaign were provided with their supplies by a complicated process involving liaison between local and central fiscal departments. According to the sixth-century regulations preserved in the legislation of Justinian, the provincial officials are to be given advance notice of the army’s requirements in foodstuffs and other goods, which are to be deposited at named sites along the route of march. The materials, food supplies and other requirements demanded by the provincial authorities on behalf of the central government were referred to as embole, a term which meant simply that part of the regular tax assessment owed by each taxpayer (whether an estate, an individual peasant freeholder or whatever) not paid in coin. Exact records of the produce supplied by the taxpayers as embole were to be kept and reckoned up against the annual tax owed in this form; if more supplies were required than were due in tax, then the extra was to be supplied by the taxpayers, but this was then to be paid for, at a fixed rate established by the appropriate state officials, out of the cash revenues collected in the regular yearly assessment from that particular province. This process was referred to as a coemptio in Latin, or synone in Greek, effectively a compulsory purchase. If the provincial treasuries in question had insufficient local cash revenues left over to pay for these extra supplies, then they were to be paid for instead either from the general bank of the praetorian prefecture, in other words the coemptio was still applied, or they were to be collected anyway and then their value (at the prices fixed by the state) deducted from the following year’s assessment in kind.4
The provision of raw materials for weapons had been achieved in the late Roman period through the regular taxation (iron ore, for example, formed part of the tax burden—synteleia—of those who extracted ore in the Taurus mountain region) together with compulsory levies in wood and other materials. The tenth-and eleventh-century evidence suggests that a similar combination of levies (wood, charcoal, etc.) and purchases (or compulsory purchases) was operated, as noted above. But in contrast to the later Roman arrangements, the production of different types of weapon was commissioned and passed on to provincial craftsmen and manufacturers of items such as spears, arrows, bows, shields and so forth. After the period of the initial Arab conquests in the 630s and 640s, most of the late Roman workshops were outside the imperial frontier; of those that remained within the state—at Sardis, Nicomedia, Adrianople, Kaisareia, Thessaloniki—virtually nothing is known, although there is very slight evidence that production may have been resumed at Kaisareia.5 Arms workshops continued to exist in Constantinople, but whether the official in charge of these—the archon tou armamentou—was in charge of the provincial establishments as well as these is unclear.6 There is some evidence that state officials known as kommerkiarioi, originally responsible only for the import or redistribution of luxury goods, in particular silks, may have been given some responsibilities, on an interim basis, for the commissioning of weapons and related military requirements during the second half of the seventh century: there is a degree of coincidence between evidence for certain military expeditions, on the one hand, and the activities of these officials in areas from which logistical support might be drawn, either overland or by sea. But the exact nature of their role remains unresolved.7
Eighth-century evidence suggests that some provincial soldiers were responsible for obtaining and providing their own weapons and armour— signalling the abandonment of the state monopoly which had been introduced by Justinian. There is some evidence in inscriptions as well as texts for provincial armourers and weapon-makers. By the ninth century, the provincial military officers, through their own officials, were commissioned with raising the necessary extra weapons and equipment, which was done by applying compulsory levies on provincial craftsmen and artisans.8 The government departments of the eidikon and the vestiarion appear as major repositories and suppliers of a whole range of requirements for the fleet and the army, alongside the armouries established in Constantinople itself.9
The supply of animals for the army was always a major expense as well as a central concern of the government. Cavalry mounts were provided in the later Roman period from imperial stud farms, as were pack-animals, although requisitions from private sources were also made. After the sixth century, imperial stud farms for cavalry horses as well as animals for the imperial post and for the army’s supply train continued to be maintained—the best-known was that at Malagina in northwest Anatolia. The metata, or stock-raising ranches, of the provinces of Asia and Phrygia are the most prominent in the middle Byzantine period, but certainly existed long before this: the ranch in Phrygia was situated in the triangle formed by the small towns of Synnada, Dokimon and Polybotos. There were also metata in Lydia. As a result of territorial losses, these ranches had moved by the middle of the twelfth century, mostly to Europe. Malagina still served as an imperial base after the 1140s, when it was recovered by Manuel; but the main ranches and bases were in the Balkans, in the themata of Dyrrhachion, Berroia, Hellas-Peloponnesos and Nikopolis. They continued in the charge of the chartoularios, now entitled the megas chartoularios (originally a subordinate of the logothetes ton agelon, the logothete of the herds); and they were referred to no longer as aplekta or metata, but as chartoularata. Their function was unchanged.10
Close cooperation between the imperial official in charge of these establishments, the military logothete (responsible for military expenditures and accounts), the komes tou stablou (in charge of the imperial stables) and his representatives at Malagina, and other fiscal departments was essential. Although the titles of the officials involved, and the relationships between their various departments within the imperial administration, changed over time, particularly from the reign of Alexios I, the fundamentals of this system remained the same until the end of the twelfth century. In the sixth century there had also been military stock-raising estates in Thrace as well as eastern Asia Minor; imperial studfarms in Cappadocia had raised racehorses, and may have specialized in other types of animal also—the Villa Palmati near Tyana was well-known in this respect, as was the estate of Hermogenes in the Pontos. But a wide variety of different sources of animal was exploited. If the imperial household was involved, then all the main state departments, the leading civil and military officers, the metropolitanates and the monastic houses of the empire had to provide a certain number of mules or other pack-animals to transport the household and its requirements. For regular non-imperial campaigns the main sources for the army were the imperial stud farms referred to, requisitions from the estates of the church, from secular landholders and from the soldiers themselves. In the late Roman period, horses were provided, or at least made available for purchase using special grants issued for the purpose. During the middle Byzantine period in the provinces the thematic soldiers were often supposed to provide their own horses, although this sometimes caused problems. Tagmatic units seem generally to have had their mounts provided for them, or were required to purchase their requirements on the market using grants incorporated in their salaries and campaign payments.11
The supply of horses for the cavalry would also need to cater for remounts, of course. The ratio of remounts to soldiers in the late Roman and Byzantine army is difficult to assess. The rate of replacement of horses for the public post was set at 25 per cent per annum in the fourth century. It was probably much lower for a field army on the move, but a rate of replacement of 10 per cent would only barely cover average rates of loss. According to the late sixth-or early seventh-century Strategikon, the remounts which accompanied cavalry units into battle numbered only some 5—6 per cent of the total. But the same text also notes that remounts should be held back at the base camp with the rest of the baggage train, so that this was clearly a minimum provision for the battlefield only. Similar provisions are mentioned in an independent text, the Praecepta of Nikephros. The tenth-century treatise on imperial military expeditions suggests a remount stock of about 20 per cent —100 animals for 482. Two of the later tenth-century treatises imply a remount rate for advance units and the main lancer division (as opposed to mounted archer units) of 1:1. Yet the Praecepta of Nikephros II also specifies that not too many spare horses should be taken along with raiding parties lest they unnecessarily encumber the raid. Similarly, in the report sent by Heraclius to Constantinople of his campaign in 627—8, mention is made of the cavalry being ordered by the emperor to leave their spare horses in the houses of Kanzak, near which he had established his main base, and that each soldier should retain only one horse. The implication is that at least one spare animal per soldier was available.12
Supplying campaign forces after the seventh century
A very similar process operated in the ninth and tenth centuries and after, according to a treatise on military expeditions compiled by the magistros Leo Katakylas, describing very probably the campaign practice of the emperor Basil I. Here it is noted that the protonotarios of each thema through which the imperial force passes must provide certain supplies in kind from the aerikon (the cash resources of the province) and the synone, which by this time no longer meant a compulsory purchase but was an equivalent for the older embole, that portion of the state’s revenues collected in kind rather than in cash. If this was not sufficient, then the protonotarios was to obtain the necessary produce from the eidikon, the central treasury at Constantinople which dealt with tax in kind and with imperial reserves.
The thematic protonotarios was to be informed in advance as to the army’s requirements, which was to be provided from the land-tax in kind and the cash revenues of the thema and stored at appropriate points along the route of march. An exact account of the supplies was to be kept, so that (where the thematic taxpayers provided more than their yearly assessment demands) the amount could be deducted (from the assessment for the following year). Both passages note that, where supplies could not be paid for out of the local fiscal revenues, the cash (or the supplies—the text does not specify which, although the former would be far more likely) was to be taken from the bureau of the eidikon, just as in the sixth century the cash was taken from the general bank of the prefecture. The second text notes that the final accounts were worked out in the eidikon after the expedition had been stood down.13
It is clear from these texts that the basic mechanism in the sixth and in the ninth-tenth centuries was effectively the same. The protonotarios was now the link between the provincial thematic fiscal administration and the central government. He belonged to the department of the sakellion; but he worked with the eidikon, as well as with local officials of the department of the genikon, responsible for the general land-tax and related state demands.14 The protonotarios replaced earlier officials, eparchai or prefects, who were the successors of the ad hoc praetorian prefects referred to already responsible for liaising between the army and its demands on the one hand, and the provincial fiscal officials in whose area the army was operating on the other.15
Fragments of several tenth-century archival collections dealing with expeditions in 910—11, 935 and 949, referred to above, can supplement this basic information. They list troops, vessels, supplies and armaments,16 and provide a wealth of information about the organization of an expedition. It is clear that in addition to the regular supplies to be provided by the thematic protonotarioi, extra supplies in foodstuffs and in kind had to be raised. Large amounts of coined gold and silver were required, not only for the campaign pay and largesse issued to the soldiers, but also for the fitting out of the ships involved. This was supplied until the eleventh century through the eidikon and from other revenue-producing departments through the sakellarios, the chief treasury official in the empire, whose supervisory capacity permitted him to exercise a general control over expenditures. At Constantinople, several departments had associated with them warehouses or storehouses, workshops and the like: the evidence for the expedition of 949, for example, shows that the eidikon had a storehouse which maintained supplies of raw materials, including iron ore,17 lead and a range of other items for the equipping of both land forces and warships; similarly the imperial vestiarion stored items of naval equipment, clothing and even cooking utensils. In addition, and continuing the practice established during the late Roman period, the public post was employed in the movement of supplies and material for the army. Although little is known in detail of its functioning in the period after the sixth century, it acted essentially as a state transportation system operating both a rapid courier as well as a (probably quite limited) slower transport service, supported by its own stock-breeding ranches and with a complex administration based at Constantinople and in the provinces.18
The theme protonotarioi were made responsible for raising additional supplies for the expedition, working with officials of the genikon, a point supported by evidence from the earlier ninth century. In certain circumstances, imperial officials were despatched to the themata to assist in collecting and transporting the supplies: an imperial officer—described simply as “a certain basilikos”—was sent to the Anatolikon region in 910/11 to raise barley, biscuit, corn and flour for the Kibyrrhaiotai forces. Specific directions were given for the route by which it was to be transported. After the changes introduced during the later eleventh century, especially by Alexios I, the provisioning of the fleet was placed under the supervision of the megas doux and the megas domestikos. As well as his purely military attributes, the former was also given a substantial administrative function, insofar as the coastal regions of certain provinces, in particular Hellas-Peloponnesos (of which the megas doux was the general governor anyway), were organized into districts or oria, serving probably to provide the resources, manpower and supplies for the fleet. A similar procedure to that of 949 was probably followed in most such cases, as in 1169, for example, when a naval expedition to Damietta in Egypt was provided with three months’ supplies from the provinces.19
Armies were usually accompanied by a supply train, the touldon. The late tenth-century treatise on campaign organization stipulates a basic supply of 24 days’ rations of barley for the horses, which according to other sources was similarly to be put aside by the thematic protonotarios for collection by the army en route;20 historians’ accounts of campaigns frequently mention the baggage train or the supplies and fodder it carried.21 Not all these supplies were derived from the regular land-tax, however: depending on the local circumstances, much of it must also have been raised through compulsory exactions, as in the late Roman period. This was certainly the case when the emperor was present.22 Similarly, the protonotarioi of the affected themes had to provide supplies that could be transported by wagon or mule to the army on enemy territory if the surrounding districts had been devastated. But smaller units clearly foraged for their own fodder and supplies, whether in enemy territory or on Roman soil, which must have caused some hardship to the communities affected, while once on hostile terrain the commander must either have arranged to keep his supply lines open by detaching small units to hold key passes and roads,23 or let the army forage for all its requirements once the supplies had run out.24 Some incidental evidence from the contemporary historians illustrates these methods in operation.
The burden of supporting soldiers passing through on campaign had always been onerous, as a number of sources from the later Roman period through to the tenth century testify. This was not just because of the demands made by the army on local productive capacity, but reflected also the fact that state intervention into local exchange relations on such a large scale could adversely affect the economic equilibrium of an area. In the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries there is very clear evidence of the distortion of prices by these means: either through the state’s fixing artificially low prices for the sale of produce to the army, thus harming the producers, or by sudden heavy demand driving prices for non-state purchasers upwards. Even more telling is the evidence of the sixth-century legislation on the situation in Thrace and the combined effects of barbarian inroads and military supply demands on the economy of the region. The establishment of the quaestura exerdtus was aimed at resolving one element of this problem, for through the administrative linkage between the Aegean islands and coastal regions concerned with the Danube zone the troops in that theatre could be supplied from relatively wealthy productive areas by sea and river transport.
But the problem remained acute enough for Maurice to attempt to have his armies winter on the non-Roman side of the river in 593 and 602.25 Leo VI advised generals to carry sufficient supplies with the army and to forage on enemy territory.26 Even where proper administrative arrangements were enforced, large numbers of soldiers, their animals and their followers will rarely have been welcome.27 The provincial administrators do seem to have tried to minimize the effects of passing military forces, and one should not over-exaggerate the problem. But several letters of the ninth-tenth centuries appeal to state officials against the burden imposed upon them, or their clients, through the imposition of mitaton (the billeting of troops) and related expenses; these are on several occasions related explicitly to the effects of the
Presence of soldiers on campaign. In the early thirteenth century, Niketas Choniates writes that at times during the later years of Manuel I the Roman lands were “ravaged by our own soldiers”. And while we must allow for some degree of hyperbole on the part of the more privileged and literate elements in society, some of the complaints are on behalf of those less fortunate than the writers themselves.28
The pattern of catering for expeditionary forces changed very little between the later tenth and later twelfth centuries. Provincial officials were, as before, told of the necessary requirements which had to be prepared in advance ready for the army to collect, and supplies provided were set against the annual tax demand for the region in question. But one important development does bring about some changes. For from the early eleventh century, if not already a little earlier, the majority of the soldiers were no longer stood down for much of the year and called up only when a major expedition was planned or when an attack threatened. This system, which had evolved from the middle of the seventh century, had the obvious advantage—from the standpoint of the management and distribution of resources—that soldiers thus supported themselves, at least to a substantial extent, and constituted only a limited burden on the taxpayers. With the change to an aggressive mercenary army soldiers must have been present all year round in many regions, needing to be fed, housed, their animals catered for and so on throughout the year.
We are fortunate to possess a number of imperial grants of exemption for the tenth century and beyond which give some idea of what sort of demands were made. The burdens were, in themselves, not new: the impositions of billeting and feeding soldiers and officers, of grinding corn and baking bread, of providing extra supplies for units passing through or based in a district, of providing craftsmen and artisans for public and military works, of burning charcoal, of providing labour for the maintenance or construction of roads and bridges—these had existed from Roman times and were still found in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.29 By the tenth century, if not already long before, a group of new impositions had evolved, including the provision or fabrication of weapons and items of military equipment, as we have seen, a reflection of the breakdown of the late Roman system offabricae or state arms factories. For other materials, cash could be issued from the central bureaux, especially the eidikon, with which to purchase iron or similar requirements from provincial sources for the production of specialized items, for example for naval construction.
During the eleventh century, a number of landlords, both lay and monastic, succeeded in obtaining exemptions for their estates from the levy of weapons and other supplies. Furthermore, since units of mercenary or tagmatic soldiers were often based permanently in a particular location through the winter season—eis paracheimasian as it is called in the sources—such demands seem to have occurred both more frequently and on a more arbitrary basis, according to the needs of individual units and their commanders, than hitherto.30
Contemporaries were perfectly aware of these burdens: in the eleventh century the intellectual and courtier Michael Psellos writes a letter about the weight of the burden of state exactions in the form of demands for livestock, probably horses, which were needed when the army was present, and an anonymous author remarks on the burden imposed upon the taxpayers when the imperial cortege and troops pass through a region.31
In the period before the changes of the later tenth century, it is likely that the overall burden on the rural population of the provinces was fairly evenly distributed, and that, although the transit of imperial forces did involve unusually heavy demands on the communities closest to the routes used by military detachments, such demands were neither frequent nor regular, the more so since the emperors seem to have maximized their use of the system of base camps or aplekta as points for the concentration of smaller forces from a wide area. Thus very large armies marching across imperial territory will have been comparatively unusual—and hence also the much more devastating consequences when civil strife broke out (as in the civil war between Michael II and Thomas the Slav in the early 820s, for example).
The presence of many more full-time units, whether indigenous or foreign, needing supplies, fodder, housing and other necessities throughout the winter and possibly all year round, and who could not draw upon their families and their own resources, must have considerably increased the overall burden on the rural populations which provided these provisions. The result was, in effect, the extension of the traditional system for maintaining armies on campaign, which had been in operation from late Roman times but which had affected most provinces only occasionally,32 into the standard or regular means of maintaining all the imperial forces. In contrast to the general situation in the ninth and earlier years of the tenth century, the bulk of the provincial soldiery could no longer be said to support itself over the greater part of the year. Furthermore, unlike the older thematic “militia”, the fulltime soldiers generally had no common interest with the provincials who supported them. Exemptions, particularly those granted to monastic foundations, are instructive and show that the number of groups of foreign mercenaries, for example, who were directly dependent upon the local population increases very sharply from the 1040s.33 But the process was already under way from the middle of the tenth century. Thus the most costly units and a greater proportion of the armies came to be maintained at the direct expense of a rural or sometimes urban population. But there were probably substantial regional variations, evidence for which is lacking, so that some districts, especially those from which the imperial forces conducted operations over several seasons, will have been more drastically affected than others. The rapacity of imperial officials in extracting the resources needed to maintain the soldiers was notorious, and even though many landlords, particularly those with access to imperial patronage, attempted to free themselves from such impositions through obtaining grants of exemption, the needs and demands of the local military meant that such privileges were often ignored entirely.34
In spite of tactical organizational developments, however, and changes in the internal political context, the basic organization of military expeditions and campaigns in the eleventh century remained the same as in the preceding centuries. The information for the process of supplying and maintaining forces in the field to be found in the details of some eleventh-century campaigns, including the campaigns of Romanos IV in 1068 and that which led up to the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, and in the preparations made by Alexios I to deal with the passage through imperial territory in the Balkans of the Crusader armies, show that the same principles operated, and that the same pattern of collection, concentration and redistribution of military provisions was maintained. And although the administrative departments responsible had evolved or changed somewhat from the period before Alexios I, the same arrangements were still in place for the campaign mounted by Manuel I which ended in defeat at Myriokephalon in 1176. The imperial armamenta in Constantinople continued to function as weapons repositories. (Along with the imperial vestiarion and the bureau of the eidikon, they could clearly contain substantial stores, for when he was faced by the rebel army of Leo Tornikes at Constantinople in 1047, the emperor Constantine IX was able to equip and arm a considerable scratch force from this source.35)
One important change which is worth noting involved an expansion of the authority of the thematic kritai, or “judges”, civil officials seconded from Constantinople whose authority grew in the older themata in proportion to the decline in the importance of the thematic armies and their strategoi, and a corresponding reduction of the importance of the protonotarioi, a process which reflects the efforts made by the central government from the later tenth and into the eleventh century to extend the judicial authority of its fiscal departments in order to retain control over taxable resources.36
The enormous demands made upon the ordinary population of the empire when a military expedition was undertaken required an administrative structure which could deal with all facets of the armies’ needs, whether in terms of raising and equipping new recruits or in respect of supplying the vast number of men, horses, mules and other animals which an army on the march needed. But it is evident that the basic structures which had evolved by the late Roman period retained their relevance even as they continued to evolve in response to the changed context, fiscal needs and political emphases of the period after the sixth century.
World History
