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The late Byzantine period was a time characterized by both civil strife and foreign invasion, framed by two cataclysmic events: the fall of Constantinople to the western Europeans in 1204 and again to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Mark C. Bartusis here opens an extraordinary window on the Byzantine Empire during its last centuries by providing the first comprehensive treatment of the dying empire's military.
Although the Byzantine army was highly visible, it was increasingly ineffective in preventing the incursion of western European crusaders into the Aegean, the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe, and the slow decline and eventual fall of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire. Using all the available Greek, western European, Slavic, and Turkish sources, Bartusis describes the evolution of the army both as an institution and as an instrument of imperial policy. He considers the army's size, organization, administration, and the varieties of soldiers, and he examines Byzantine feudalism and the army's impact on society and the economy.
In its extensive use of soldier companies composed of foreign mercenaries, the Byzantine army had many parallels with those of western Europe; in the final analysis, Bartusis contends, the death of Byzantium was attributable more to a shrinking fiscal base than to any lack of creative military thinking on the part of its leaders.
- Sales Rank: #748111 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-12-22
- Released on: 2015-12-22
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"An essential tool for comparative historians, Byzantinists, Balkanologists, historians of the later Crusades, medieval Islamic, especially Ottoman, and western European medieval and Renaissance history. Its publication reinforces the reputation of Bartusis as a foremost authority on many dimensions of late Byzantine institutions and the related social and economic context."—Walter Kaegi, Journal of Military History
A History Book Club selection
From the Back Cover
Mark C. Bartusis opens an extraordinary window on the Byzantine Empire during its last centuries by providing the first comprehensive treatment of the dying empire's military. The late Byzantine period was a time characterized by both civil strife and foreign invasion and framed by two cataclysmic events: the fall of Constantinople to the western Europeans in 1204 and again to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. While the army enjoyed a highly visible presence during this time, it was increasingly ineffective in defending the state. This failure is central to understanding the persistence of the western European crusader states in the Aegean, the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe, and the slow decline and eventual fall of the thousand-year Byzantine Empire. Using all of the available Greek, western European, Slavic, and Turkish sources, Bartusis describes the evolution of the army both as an institution and as an instrument of imperial policy. He considers the army's size, organization, administration, and varieties of soldiers, including discussions of campaigns, garrisons, finances, recruitment, and the military role of peasants, weapons, and equipment. He also examines Byzantine feudalism and the army's impact on the economy and society. Bartusis emphasizes that the corps of heavily armed mercenaries and soldiers probably never numbered more than several hundred. He further argues that the composition of the late Byzantine army had many parallels with the contemporary armies in western Europe, including the extensive use of soldier companies composed of foreign mercenaries. In a final analysis, he suggests that the death of Byzantium is attributable more to a shrinking fiscal base thanto any lack of creative military thinking on the part of its leaders. The Late Byzantine Army is a major work of scholarship that fills a gap in the understanding of the late Byzantine empire. It will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval and Byzantine institutional history.
About the Author
Mark C. Bartusis is Professor of History at Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota.
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
The Late Byzantine Army by Mark C. Bartusis
By Emmett Strode
Mark C. Bartusis' book is a tightly written and well organized scholarly exploration of the Byzantine army in the final two-and-a-half centuries of the empire. Divided into two sections, the first part of the work is an overview of the army's role in the political organization of the empire. The section concludes with a very well-written short essay on the fall of Constantinople. The second section is a technical discussion of the organization and financing of the army. Coming to the book as a general reader with an interest in Byzantine history, I found the glossary of court and military terms very helpful. The bibliography provides a wealth of possibilities for future reading. Bartusis' writing is scholarly but it is not stilted and overly-formal as is the work of many scholar-historians. "The Late Byzantine Army" provides the general reader and the reader of military history with a brief but well-drawn and understandable portrait of the subject.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204-1453
By Eric Williams
The Late Byzantine Army: Arms and Society, 1204-1453. Mark C. Bartusis. 1997. 464 pages.
This is not a book about tactics, strategy, orders of battle, training, equipment or philosophy of war. It is not a military history and skimming the table of contents is deceptive. Along the lines of a quote by Graf Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf about the primary national requirement for a war being money and the second being money and the third being money, this book is largely about financing the Byzantine Military establishment.
The first section of the book discusses the size and use of the Imperial Military from 1204 to 1453. 1204 is the beginning of the Latin Crusader occupation of Constantinople which was taken back by the Byzantines in 1261. The Byzantine forces of this period and until the end in 1453 were very different in composition from those of earlier times. The composition was different but there were attempts to tie them to those earlier forces by function, title, or honorifics. There is some discussion of the fleet but 85% or more of the text is given over to ground forces their composition, source of recruitment and financing.
What becomes apparent is that warfare, especially civil war was constant even beyond 1261 and the re-establishment of the empires capital in Constantinople. Given the costs involved in warfare, there was reluctance by the Byzantines to use their own forces when surrogate forces could be had for payment at a cheaper rate. Consider the cost of recruitment, training, equipping, maintaining, and the need to replace that person in the civilian work force as well. Drawing a significant part of their sovereign forces from landholders meant that when the y were mobilized either they had to find some one else to work the land (source of income for soldier and through taxation for the state) or in the case of larger estates to oversee the workers. To fight a battle with your army is to risk losing it and possibly your state as well. This seems to have been well understood by the pragmatic Byzantine mind. To allow for the continued use of armed force as an aspect of statecraft and diplomacy the Byzantines preferred to hold their own native force in reserve and use other forces when ever possible in pursuit of their goals.
The various unit types or classification of these other forces and the native forces are well documented in this text. The bulk of the text discusses their recruitment, definition, role in the imperial system and how they were financed. It is very detailed and interesting but not for the general reader or the military specialist. It is easy to get lost in the details. There were surprises in the financial and legal aspects of the text. The first is the relationship between Church, Money, State and War. The encroachment and growth of monasteries' economic power had a serious impact on the solvency of the state. Some monasteries were charged with recruiting and paying for defenses including soldiers in the field.
I was interested in the late recruitment of the Varangians and other Imperial Bodyguards. They were initially Viking but in this later period they were predominantly English and the book detailed some of their civic and military responsibilities. What was interesting was their proclaiming in church (Saint Sophia) using English in the heart of Greek speaking Byzantium. The texts are clear that they proclaimed in their own language. The state seemed willing to forego any attempt at forced conversion or Hellenization as a way to insulate the forces from domestic politics.
The book is tedious though detailed in its writing. Not a casual or light read. I would not recommend it as a starting point or an intermediate point of entry into the world of Byzantium or military history. It has a function and it is well suited to that function, detailing the recruitment, structure, and financing of Byzantine ground force from 1204-1453. Beyond that function is little appeal.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Fighting a losing war?
By JPS
Mark Bartusis' book on the Late Byzantine Army remained for almost tenty years the only Reference on the shrinking Empire's armed forces during the last two centuries of its existence. Since the publication of Savvas Kyriakidis' work on Warfare in Late Byzantium (Brill, 2011), which completes it but does not superseed it, it is still one of the two references, although it is a bit dated in some areas. Ideally, both should be used together.
The first merit of Bartusis' book is to show that, unlike during the Komnenian period before 1204 (1081 to 1204), no part of the Empire was "immune to sudden and frequent attacks" and this meant that the army's importance increased correspondingly. This is what he means when mentioning that Byzantium was in a state of "permanent" war, especially after 1282 and the death of Michael VIII. In his own terms, it was "a highly visible institution". Although he does not quite manage to demonstrate that it was any more "visible" or more important than the armies of the Komnenes, what is probably meant is that it was increasin gly unable to both defend the Empire's existing territory AND reconquer lost territory and that, as time went by, the latter objective was dropped in practice, if not in theory, as it became increasingly difficult to defend what it already had.
Another merit of the book is to examine the components of the army - the mercenaries (mostly "foreign", although this needs also to be qualified), the pronoiars (holders of fiscal grants), which he shows as clearly different from feudal landholders, and the guards (whether palace guards or gerrisons). He shows that neither of the first two can be held responsible for the Empire's slow demise and shrinking territory and resources. However, one the explanations that he provides, that economy had been in decline since the XIth century, has been challenged by more recent works. The decline set in in the final decades of the XIIth century and over the XIIIth century, but the Empire was still prosperous enough, at least until 1180, to be able to afford the larger armies that it needed. This was no longer the case after 1204.
While interesting and fascinating, the detailed and technical presentation of the army's organisation and performances mask what it perhaps the main limit of this book. Although not entirely the author's fault, there is an assumption that the army and the state never had the resources their needed to fight winning and decisive battles and wars, rather than to just repel the multiple attackers and ennemies until the next time, where they would have to start all over again. While this was clearly and increasingly true after 1282, and Bartusis makes a strong and convincing case that the Empire's standing army forces should be counted in the thousands (a figure of 5000 is mentioned prior to 1282) rather than the tens of thousands, his arguments are somewhat less convincing for the period prior to 1282. Also, while the sources do make it very difficult to estimate numbers, whether those for specific campaigns or, and even more so, overall numbers for the army, it seems that until Michael's death in 1282, the Army did manage to put a larger number of men in the field than afterwards, as illustrated by the year 1262 when three armies seem to have been fielded on three different theaters of operations. Even if small (say 3000 each), this would be double the author's estimate.
Another strongpoint of this book is to show how Michael VIII was both highly successful over the short-term while undermining the Empire's strength over the medium to longer term. His campaigns in the the Balkans stretched the Empire's finances to the extent that his son had to drastically cut expenses and disband the fleet to avoid bankcruptcy, with very damaging consequences on the Empire's security. Second, by using and transplanting soldiers from Anatolia to Europe, he is blamed for considerably weakening the borders of the latter which was entirely lost to the Turks by the end of his son's reign. Third point, while he was devoting his limited resources to the reconquest of the West, a must for any Byzantine Emperor, he missed the "window of opportunity" that he had to crush the Turkish Emirates arising from the collapse of the Sultanate of Konya, and these Emirates, once united by the Ottomans, would prove irresistable by the time his son succeeded him.
Finally, there are the maps of the Empire's territory, which are excellent. In particular, they illustrate very well the Empire's strategic dilemna and show that at sone at it chose to expand on one front, it would be attacked on another one and lose territory and therefore substance and resources, as a result, making it that much weaker when the next confrontation came up.
An excellent book, highly recommended
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