THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 04

The Roman Legions of Vegetius

1.03. The Roman Legions of Vegetius

A picture of the state of the imperial army in the Western provinces, drawn precisely at this period, has been preserved for us in the work of Vegetius, a writer whose treatise would be of far greater value had he refrained from the attempt to identify the organization of his own day with that of the first century, by the use of the same words for entirely different things. In drawing inferences from his statements, it has also to be remembered that he frequently gives the ideal military forms of his imagination, instead of those which really existed in his day. For example, his legion is made to consist of 6,000 men, while we know that in the end of the fourth century its establishment did not exceed 1,500. His work is dedicated to one of the emperors who bore the name of Valentinian, probably to the second, as (in spite of Gibbon’s arguments in favour of Valentinian III) the relations of the various arms to each other and the character of their organization point to a date prior to the commencement of the fifth century.

A single fact mentioned by Vegetius gives us the date at which the continuity of the existence of the old Roman heavy infantry may be said to terminate. As might be expected, this epoch exactly corresponds with that of the similar change in the East, which followed the battle of Adrianople. ‘From the foundation of the city to the reign of the sainted Gratian,’ says the tactician, ‘the legionaries wore helmet and cuirass. But when the practice of holding frequent reviews and sham-fights ceased, these arms began to seem heavy, because the soldiers seldom put them on. They therefore begged from the emperor permission to discard first their cuirasses, and then even their helmets, and went to face the barbarians unprotected by defensive arms. In spite of the disasters which have since ensued, the infantry have not yet resumed the use of them.... And now, how can the Roman soldier expect victory, when helmless and unarmoured, and even without a shield (for the shield cannot be used in conjunction with the bow), he goes against the enemy?’

Vegetius​--​often more of a rhetorician than a soldier​--​has evidently misstated the reason of this change in infantry equipment. At a time when cavalry were clothing themselves in more complete armour, it is not likely that the infantry were discarding it from mere sloth and feebleness. The real meaning of the change was that, in despair of resisting horsemen any longer by the solidity of a line of heavy infantry, the Romans had turned their attention to the use of missile weapons,​--​a method of resisting cavalry even more efficacious than that which they abandoned, as was to be shown a thousand years later at Cressy and Agincourt. That Vegetius’s account is also considerably exaggerated is shown by his enumeration of the legionary order of his own day, where the first rank was composed of men retaining shield, pilum, and cuirass, whom he pedantically calls Principes. The second rank was composed of archers, but wore the cuirass and carried a lance also; only the remaining half of the legion had entirely discarded armour, and given up all weapons but the bow.

Vegetius makes it evident that cavalry, though its importance was rapidly increasing, had not yet entirely supplanted infantry to such a large extent as in the Eastern Empire. Though no army can hope for success without them, and though they must always be at hand to protect the flanks, they are not, in his estimation, the most effective force. As an antiquary he feels attached to the old Roman organization, and must indeed have been somewhat behind the military experience of his day.

It may, however, be remembered that the Franks and Allemanni, the chief foes against whom the Western legions had to contend, were​--​unlike the Goths​--​nearly all footmen. It was not till the time of Alaric that Rome came thoroughly to know the Gothic horsemen, whose efficiency Constantinople had already comprehended and had contrived for the moment to subsidize. In the days of Honorius, however, the Goth became the terror of Italy, as he had previously been of the Balkan peninsula. His lance and steed once more asserted their supremacy: the generalship of Stilicho, the trained bowmen and pikemen of the reorganized Roman army, the native and foederate squadrons whose array flanked the legions, were insufficient to arrest the Gothic charge. For years the conquerors rode at their will through Italy: when they quitted it, it was by their own choice, for there were no troops left in the world who could have expelled them by force.

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