Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

‘It is a disgrace’, says Tacitus, ‘for the chief to be surpassed in battle ... and it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived the chief and returned from the field.’

This statement explains the reckless daring with which the scattered groups of Germans would fling themselves time after time against the disciplined Roman phalanxes. The women shared the hardihood of the race, bringing and receiving as wedding-gifts not ornaments or beautiful clothes but a warrior’s horse, a lance, or sword.

‘Lest a woman should think herself to stand apart from aspirations after noble deeds and from the perils of war, she is reminded by the ceremony that inaugurates marriage that she is her husband’s partner in toil and danger, destined to suffer and die with him alike both in peace and war.’

Chaste, industrious, devoted to the interests of husband and children, yet so patriotic that, watching the battle, she would urge them rather to perish than retreat, the barbarian woman struck Tacitus as a living reproach to the many faithless, idle, pleasure-seeking wives and mothers of Rome in his own day. The German tribes might be uncouth, their armies without discipline, even their nobles ignorant of culture, but they were brave, hospitable, and loyal. Above all they held a distinction between right and wrong: they did not ‘laugh at vice’.

It is probable that in the days of Tacitus his views were received throughout the Roman Empire with an amused shrug of the shoulders, for to many the Germans were merely good fighters, whose giant build added considerably to the glory of a triumphal procession, when they walked sullenly in their shackles behind the Victor’s car. With the passing of the years into centuries, however, intercourse changed this attitude, and much of the contempt on one side and hatred on the other vanished.

Germans captured in childhood were brought up in Roman households and grew invaluable to their masters: numbers were freed and remained as citizens in the land of their captivity. The tribes along the borders became more civilized: they exchanged raw produce or furs in the nearest Roman markets for luxuries and comforts, and as their hatred of Rome disappeared admiration took its place. Something of the greatness of the Empire touched their imagination: they realized for the first time the possibilities of peace under an ordered government; and whole tribes offered their allegiance to a power that knew not only how to conquer but to rule.

Emperors, nothing loath, gathered these new forces under their standards as auxiliaries or allies (foederati), and Franks from Flanders, at the imperial bidding, drove back fellow barbarians from the left bank of the Rhine; while fair-haired Alemanni and Saxons fell in Caesar’s service on the plains of Mesopotamia or on the arid sands of Africa. From auxiliary forces to the ranks of the regular army was an easy stage, the more so as the Roman legions were every year in greater need of recruits as the boundaries of the Empire spread.

It is at first sight surprising to find that the military profession was unpopular when we recall that it rested in the hands of the legions to make or dispossess their rulers; but such opportunities of acquiring bribes and plunder did not often fall to the lot of the ordinary soldier, while the disadvantages of his career were many.

A very small proportion of the army was kept in the large towns of the south, save in Rome that had its own Praetorian Guards: the majority of the legions defended the Rhine and Danube frontiers, or still worse were quartered in cold and foggy Britain, shut up in fortress outposts like York or Chester. English regiments to-day think little of service in far-distant countries like Egypt or India, indeed men are often glad to have the experience of seeing other lands; but the Roman soldier as he said farewell to his Italian village knew in his heart that it had practically passed out of his life. The shortest period of military service was sixteen years, the longest twenty-five; and when we remember that, owing to the slow and difficult means of transport, leave was impossible we see the Roman legionary was little more than the serf of his government, bound to spend all the best years of his life defending less warlike countrymen.

Moving with his family from outpost to outpost, the memories of his old home would grow blurred, and the legion to which he belonged would occupy the chief place in his thoughts. As he grew older his sons, bred in the atmosphere of war, would enlist in their turn, and so the military profession would tend to become a caste, handed down from father to son.