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Warfare and History
Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West 450-900
Warfare was an integral part of early medieval life. This book looks at warfare in a rounded context in the British Isles and Western Europe between the end of the Roman Empire and the break-up of the Carolingian Empire.
341 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1998
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202 people want to read
About the author
Guy Halsall
18 books13 followersBorn 1964, Professor of History at York where he specialises in the late Roman and early medieval period with particular attention to the problems of the relationship between archaeology and documentary history.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 25, 2022
Brilliant. Detailed. Insightful.
Halsall gives us a detailed look at the methods and means of early medieval warfare. Keen to remind us how much we just don't know, but without giving into pessimistic agnosticism. Halsall's reasoning and grappling with medieval texts and other evidence is worth the price of admission alone, for showing us how we should approach these questions of the past. Love his digs at military historians, especially that one guy I won't name here.
Halsall gives us a detailed look at the methods and means of early medieval warfare. Keen to remind us how much we just don't know, but without giving into pessimistic agnosticism. Halsall's reasoning and grappling with medieval texts and other evidence is worth the price of admission alone, for showing us how we should approach these questions of the past. Love his digs at military historians, especially that one guy I won't name here.
Want to read
November 26, 2022Guy Halsall books:
Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West 450-900, Library-of-Congress U37 H357 2003
Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, Library-of-Congress HN380 Z9 V579 1998
Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, Library-of-Congress DA152.5 A7 H35 2013
all at Memorial Library.
Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West 450-900, Library-of-Congress U37 H357 2003
Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, Library-of-Congress HN380 Z9 V579 1998
Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, Library-of-Congress DA152.5 A7 H35 2013
all at Memorial Library.
April 10, 2020
Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West 450-900, by Guy Halsall, 2003, 230pgs,
This is a brilliant book. It is quite a detailed read, so one to have your wits about, but it is extremely rewarding and if you have an interest in the military side of things, one you can't afford not to read.
It opens, naturally enough, by talking about the sources. Halsall points out that not much was written about the cut and thrust of battles by contemporaries, possibly because battles were won by divine favour instead of human agency. He is very strong on how the period should be approached, stating that the early medieval world view was fundamentally different to ours and so expectations of the rational person are not to be pushed too far. Also there was a huge variety over western Europe in both place and time and so extrapolating from a shared Germanic culture, Roman heritage or alleged common values of a heroic society isn't really providing evidence, but is instead supposition. You certainly come away with the feeling that this was a dynamic age.
Halsall is diligent in pointing out when something is speculative and he's very careful not to extrapolate from later or earlier sources. The book is largely based on where the sources are, so it is mostly Frankish in content and then a relatively distant second are the Anglo-Saxons. However, there is more than enough in here for the Anglo-Saxonist. There are some tricky sources, such as a mention of Breton forces being raised through sedes. This literally means seats, so could be read as homes and hence a wide levy or it could be read as seats of power and hence a more elite force.
The chapters include: warfare and violence, warfare and society, raising an army (post Roman), raising an army (Carolingian), raising an army (allies, mercenaries and training), raising an army (size), campaigning, weaponry and equipment, battle, formation and sieges.
There is no end of aspects that stand out. These include the importance of expansionist warfare and the success in gaining booty, titles and land in binding the magnates to the king. The section on horizontal and vertical recruitment – vertical was from king to his lords and their retainers. This increased the status of the lords and made him reliant on them. Horizontal was to the thegnage directly as part of their obligations to the crown and this mostly bypassed the nobles and made it a direct relationship (or through the shire reeves) with an increase in royal power at the expense of the nobles.
There is a nice line comparing Alfred and Burgred's failure at Nottingham to the attack on York as being no more successful, albeit with fewer celebrity casualties. There's a fascinating section concerning Charlemagne's difficulty in recruiting warriors when the expansionist years of glory and booty were waning. The people who should have been serving were cheerfully playing the local lords off against the royal emissaries from the centre.
This is an absolutely splendid book.
This is a brilliant book. It is quite a detailed read, so one to have your wits about, but it is extremely rewarding and if you have an interest in the military side of things, one you can't afford not to read.
It opens, naturally enough, by talking about the sources. Halsall points out that not much was written about the cut and thrust of battles by contemporaries, possibly because battles were won by divine favour instead of human agency. He is very strong on how the period should be approached, stating that the early medieval world view was fundamentally different to ours and so expectations of the rational person are not to be pushed too far. Also there was a huge variety over western Europe in both place and time and so extrapolating from a shared Germanic culture, Roman heritage or alleged common values of a heroic society isn't really providing evidence, but is instead supposition. You certainly come away with the feeling that this was a dynamic age.
Halsall is diligent in pointing out when something is speculative and he's very careful not to extrapolate from later or earlier sources. The book is largely based on where the sources are, so it is mostly Frankish in content and then a relatively distant second are the Anglo-Saxons. However, there is more than enough in here for the Anglo-Saxonist. There are some tricky sources, such as a mention of Breton forces being raised through sedes. This literally means seats, so could be read as homes and hence a wide levy or it could be read as seats of power and hence a more elite force.
The chapters include: warfare and violence, warfare and society, raising an army (post Roman), raising an army (Carolingian), raising an army (allies, mercenaries and training), raising an army (size), campaigning, weaponry and equipment, battle, formation and sieges.
There is no end of aspects that stand out. These include the importance of expansionist warfare and the success in gaining booty, titles and land in binding the magnates to the king. The section on horizontal and vertical recruitment – vertical was from king to his lords and their retainers. This increased the status of the lords and made him reliant on them. Horizontal was to the thegnage directly as part of their obligations to the crown and this mostly bypassed the nobles and made it a direct relationship (or through the shire reeves) with an increase in royal power at the expense of the nobles.
There is a nice line comparing Alfred and Burgred's failure at Nottingham to the attack on York as being no more successful, albeit with fewer celebrity casualties. There's a fascinating section concerning Charlemagne's difficulty in recruiting warriors when the expansionist years of glory and booty were waning. The people who should have been serving were cheerfully playing the local lords off against the royal emissaries from the centre.
This is an absolutely splendid book.
June 15, 2020
Your attitude to this book will probably be defined by your response to a sentence like this one:
‘Contemporary written sources are so few and so unsatisfactory that they allow us to state no more than the barest facts-which we could guess without any documentary evidence-that Kings were able to raise armed forces!’ P52.
If you don’t like uncertainty and/or you want the Hollywood version, the early middle ages are a frustrating area to study. But for those of us addicted to the history of the period and the fact that so much cannot and will never be known, it’s always reassuring to see an historian moving cautiously amongst the evidence and admitting its limitations.
So in what is an exhaustive study of the topic, the strength of the book lies in Halsall’s knowledge of his sources, and his refusal to stray too far from them. Because so much was changing during this period, which means time and place and context become so important, he avoids the temptation to read backwards, to generalise or to assume that because something was happening in Spain it must have been happening in France and Britain.
When he does speculate he’s clear that he is doing so. He's also very good on how people in the medieval period were not modern people in strange clothing.
There are so many good things about this book. My major interest was in numbers, which he ruefully notes is the ’64,000 dollar question’.
The answer is again tied not only to place and time, but to context. Fifty armed men on the prowl and intent on mayhem could do a lot of damage, but might not be much use in a full scale battle. What might have been normal in Carolingian France might not have been in contemporary England and the early period and the end might have been very different.
Taking all this into account, however, he leans towards smaller numbers for early medieval armies, giving good reasons. Mynddog the Magnificent may well have excelled himself if he put together an army of three hundred experienced warriors. Though Halsall leaves the problems of Y Gododdin well alone.
But he also suggests that this habitual use of numbers which can't have been right reveals something about ways of thinking that distinguish then from now. He suggests that the large numbers quoted in some documents (when there were no muster rolls, it’s hard to believe anyone actually counted a Medieval Army) are a generic feature which the texts’ users accepted as such.
'Ultimately the audience of a given genre of historical writing knew what to expect, and that was not painstaking archival research and numerical precision.'
How users developed such generic competence is probably unknowable, but it’s a thought provoking suggestion. As is his caveat that the famous Anglo-Saxon definition of an army (here) as 35 men and upwards, should be read in the context of the law code it appears in.
If you’re interested in the subject, this is probably essential reading. But don’t go looking for the Hollywood version. Halsall keeps the particular nastiness of medieval warfare; personal, up close and desperately brutal, front and centre.
You might end up knowing how much can’t be known, but that’s not a bad thing either.
‘Contemporary written sources are so few and so unsatisfactory that they allow us to state no more than the barest facts-which we could guess without any documentary evidence-that Kings were able to raise armed forces!’ P52.
If you don’t like uncertainty and/or you want the Hollywood version, the early middle ages are a frustrating area to study. But for those of us addicted to the history of the period and the fact that so much cannot and will never be known, it’s always reassuring to see an historian moving cautiously amongst the evidence and admitting its limitations.
So in what is an exhaustive study of the topic, the strength of the book lies in Halsall’s knowledge of his sources, and his refusal to stray too far from them. Because so much was changing during this period, which means time and place and context become so important, he avoids the temptation to read backwards, to generalise or to assume that because something was happening in Spain it must have been happening in France and Britain.
When he does speculate he’s clear that he is doing so. He's also very good on how people in the medieval period were not modern people in strange clothing.
There are so many good things about this book. My major interest was in numbers, which he ruefully notes is the ’64,000 dollar question’.
The answer is again tied not only to place and time, but to context. Fifty armed men on the prowl and intent on mayhem could do a lot of damage, but might not be much use in a full scale battle. What might have been normal in Carolingian France might not have been in contemporary England and the early period and the end might have been very different.
Taking all this into account, however, he leans towards smaller numbers for early medieval armies, giving good reasons. Mynddog the Magnificent may well have excelled himself if he put together an army of three hundred experienced warriors. Though Halsall leaves the problems of Y Gododdin well alone.
But he also suggests that this habitual use of numbers which can't have been right reveals something about ways of thinking that distinguish then from now. He suggests that the large numbers quoted in some documents (when there were no muster rolls, it’s hard to believe anyone actually counted a Medieval Army) are a generic feature which the texts’ users accepted as such.
'Ultimately the audience of a given genre of historical writing knew what to expect, and that was not painstaking archival research and numerical precision.'
How users developed such generic competence is probably unknowable, but it’s a thought provoking suggestion. As is his caveat that the famous Anglo-Saxon definition of an army (here) as 35 men and upwards, should be read in the context of the law code it appears in.
If you’re interested in the subject, this is probably essential reading. But don’t go looking for the Hollywood version. Halsall keeps the particular nastiness of medieval warfare; personal, up close and desperately brutal, front and centre.
You might end up knowing how much can’t be known, but that’s not a bad thing either.
April 15, 2016
Perhaps a clue to why war is such an easy sell in today's West.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews