The early medieval period witnessed the migrations and invasions of numerous peoples into Europe. The incursions of Germanic tribes had been part of the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. Later, the expansion of Islam across north Africa and into the Iberian peninsula threatened Carolingian civilization and ended any hope of making the Mediterranean a Christian lake. But in the ninth and tenth centuries western Europe was besieged by a new wave of invasions of several non-Christian peoples. One old enemy, the Muslims, attacked from the south, and two new ones, the Magyars and Vikings, attacked from the east and north (Map 2.3).
The first wave of Islamic expansion ended under the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) in the middle of the eighth century, creating an empire which stretched from Spain to Persia. Gradually, Muslim commanders began to utilize sea bases in their occupied territories in north Africa, Spain and southern Gaul to attack the southern coastline of Christianized Europe. They invaded and occupied Sicily in 827 and raided Italy, even threatening Rome in 843. Muslim forces also destroyed Carolingian defences in northern Spain and conducted raids into southern France, attacking merchants and religious pilgrims crossing the Alps.
The Magyars were a Finno-Ugric speaking people from western Asia with many similarities to the Turks. When in the ninth century the Byzantine emperors bribed them into attacking the Bulgars, the latter in turn encouraged a people known as the Pechenegs to attack the Magyars. Consequently, the Magyars were forced into eastern and central Europe, and established themselves in the Carpathian basin. From their bases in Hungary, the Magyars launched devastating raids westward into Germany, France and Italy, some thirty in all, between the years 898 and 955. The Magyars fought as they had on the Eurasian steppes, as fast-moving and lightly equipped horse archers. Abbot Regino of Prum noted the Magyars ‘killed few with their sword but thousands with their arrows’. As mounted raiders, the Magyars sought slaves and moveable wealth and, like the Muslims and Vikings, were quick to take advantage of their enemy’s political dissension. In Germany, Saxony and Bavaria were hit hardest, and both regions paid tribute to the raiders in the 920s. But fortunes reversed for the Magyars in the 930s and 940s, and by the early 950s they were poised for what would be their final raiding expedition into western Europe.
Map 2.3 The Muslim, Magyar and Viking Invasions.
In 954 a massive Magyar army of over 50,000 men swept through Bavaria and central France as far west as Aquitaine. The Magyars had come west as the allies of the rebel Duke Conrad of Lotharingia, but their raids farther west showed their true inclinations. This transgression across southern Germany aroused the new king, Otto I, into action. The son of the Saxon king Henry I, ‘the Fowler’ (r. 919–936), Otto wanted to repeat his father’s decisive victory against the Magyars at the battle of Riade near Merseburg in 933. Otto assumed the throne in 936 and spent the first years of his reign putting down rebellions in Bavaria, Franconia, Lorraine and Saxony, and shoring up the frontier with the Magyars. But the size of the Magyar incursion in 954 convinced the German nobles to put aside their differences and rally around the royal standard. Otto put an army into the field in the late summer of 954, but failed to locate the enemy before the end of the campaigning season. The Magyar host retreated to Hungary and wintered on familiar soil.
In late June 955 the Magyars returned to raid Bavaria again with a large army, though historians are unsure precisely how large a host it was.33 Led by Lel, the Magyar gyula or general, the invading army laid siege to Augsburg on 8 August, but abandoned the city after only one day when news reached him of Otto’s approaching army. Instead of playing to the inherent strengths of light cavalry and avoiding a set-piece engagement as they had the summer before, the Magyars moved to the nearby Lech River and made camp, seemingly inviting a pitched battle.
Otto approached the Magyar position from the north-east, making camp upriver from the invaders. His army was made exclusively of heavy cavalry units pledged to him by his vassals in Bavaria, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia and Bohemia. Even Duke Conrad came true, adding his banner to the German king’s cause. Otto’s army numbered between 7,000 and 8,000 men, a purposefully small mounted force capable of strategic surprise and great tactical mobility. He hoped to use this small but better armoured cavalry army to defeat his more numerous but lighter protected enemy, just as his father had done twenty-two years earlier at Riade (Merseburg). The strategy of relying on the strategic mobility of cavalry to hunt down invading raiders had served Charles Martel well at Tours in 732, and it would also be a strategy used by the French in their conflict with English raiders during the Hundred Years War in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Ordering his men to fast and pray the night before the battle, and joining them at Mass on the morning of 10 August, Otto mounted his army and trotted toward the Magyars through broken terrain in order to counteract Magyar light cavalry skirmishers.
Like all medieval armies, the order of march was dictated by nationality, battlefield reputation and personal relationship with the leading lord. On this day, the vanguard was held by three divisions of Bavarians, followed by the Franks (commanded by the now amicable Duke Conrad). Otto commanded the Saxons in the middle of the column, followed by two divisions of Swabians and the Bohemian cavalry in the rear, charged with escorting the army’s baggage train. Each division had a strength of roughly 1,000 men. As the German host rode down the eastern bank of the Lech River, they failed to notice a Magyar light cavalry force riding in the opposite direction on the western bank, hidden by banks overgrown with foliage (Map 2.4(a)). The Magyar light cavalry crossed the Lech and attacked the rear of the German column, raining arrows on the Bohemians guarding the baggage, and the rout spread to the two Swabian divisions, who broke and fled (Map 2.4(b)). Instead of pressing their advantage, the victorious Magyars then stopped to pillage the baggage train, giving Otto much needed time to redress his lines. The German king ordered Duke Conrad and his Franks out of column and to the rear, where they quickly ran down the dismounted pillagers, then, forgoing pursuit, returned to assist their comrades in the major engagement (Map 2.4(c)). With his rear now protected, Otto ordered his army from column into line of battle, gambling that the weight of a heavy cavalry charge would overwhelm his opponent and win the day (Map 2.4(d)).
Map 2.4. The Battle of Lechfeld, 955. (a) Phase I: King Otto’s German host (including a contingent of Franks under the Magyars’ erstwhile ally Duke Conrad) moves towards gyula Lel’s invading army through broken terrain along the Lech River. On the opposite bank and screened by the rugged terrain, a Magyar light cavalry force moves to strike the rear of the German column (1). (b) Phase II: Striking swiftly, the Magyar horse archers rout the Bohemian contingent guarding the German baggage train (1). The panic spreads to the two Swabian divisions (2) and the Magyars pause to pillage the German wagons (3) rather than mount a pursuit. (c) Phase III: Otto orders Conrad and his Frankish contingent out of column to attack the now dismounted Magyar pillagers (1), who are swiftly destroyed (2). (d) Phase IV: With the rear of his column now secure, Otto re-forms his army (1) and the German column continues towards the Magyar position (2).
(e) Phase V: Otto orders his army to deploy from column to line (1). Lel’s Magyar cavalry follows suit, slightly overlapping the German flanks (2), the gyula placing his most reliable, better-armed horsemen in the front rank of his formation. (f) Phase VI: Seeking a quick decision, each side charges (1), the Germans depending on their heavier weight and greater shock power, the Magyars counting on their greater numbers and manoeuvrability to gain victory. As the opposing ranks converge, the Magyars loose a volley of arrows into the German ranks (2) but fail to check their enemy’s advance. Otto’s horsemen increase their gait to a full charge as they close with the horse archers. (g) Phase VII: Before the horse archers can launch a second volley of arrows, Otto’s heavy cavalry crash into their ranks (1). As the lightly armoured Magyar cavalry begin to give way under the onslaught of the armoured German lancers, Lel orders a portion of his army to feign retreat (2), hoping to induce a pursuit on the part of individual knights and turn the tables on his foe. (h) Phase VIII: The Magyar ruse fails, and under relentless German pressure Lel’s forces begin to break and flee (1) from the battlefield. Many of the refugees drown in attempting to cross the Lech in an effort to escape; those that attempt to hide in the area’s forests are betrayed by the local peasantry and are captured.
As the German heavy horse arrayed for battle, Lel ordered his own larger contingent of cavalry to mirror the enemy formation, slightly overreaching the German frontage. The gyula placed his most loyal and best-equipped troops in the forward line and the remainder of his horse in a second line. Magyar light cavalry, like the Scythians and Parthians before and Turks and Mongols after, fought primarily as horse archers with composite bows. In hand-to-hand combat, Magyar warriors wielded sabres with a slight curve or maces, and wore very little armour, if any at all. Lel knew his light cavalry were no match for the German heavy cavalry in front of him in shock combat, but he did enter the battle outnumbering his enemy five to one. Wanting a decisive encounter, both armies rode toward a fateful collision (Map 2.4(f)).
Otto’s heavy cavalry kept good order as they closed with the enemy, transitioning from a trot to a gallop to a full charge just before contact with the oncoming Magyar light cavalry. At this moment, Otto is said to have shouted: ‘They surpass us, I know, in numbers, but neither in weapons nor in courage. We know also that they are quite without the help of God, which is the greatest comfort to us.’ As the two armies closed, the Magyars let loose a volley of arrow shafts at the charging Christians, no doubt thinning their ranks a little, but the German line held and reached the enemy before a second volley could be launched (Map 2.4(g)). The Magyar formation began to collapse under the weight of the German heavy horse, and Lel ordered a portion of his light cavalry to fall back in the signature steppe warrior mock retreat, but the Christian nobles failed to take the bait (Map 2.4(h)). The Magyar lines collapsed as horse and rider scrambled to get out of the way of the charging lancers, only to be pushed into the Lech. Fighting continued for some ten hours. Casualty figures are not given for either side, though probably the German rearguard suffered heavily in the first exchange, and it is known that Duke Conrad was slain by a Magyar arrow piercing his throat, his reputation redeemed. Those few Magyars who escaped the river attempted to hide in the countryside, only to be pointed out to the pursuing Germans by local peasants. Instead of ransoming the Magyar princes and nobles back to their vassals as was customary for the time, Otto ordered them hanged, then sent the rest of the barbarians back to their homeland minus ears or noses.
The Magyars were crushed at the battle of Lechfeld by Otto I, a victory that won him the title of holy Roman emperor, an honour sanctioned by both Byzantium and the papacy. German holy Roman emperors would dominate the political affairs of central Europe for the next two and a half centuries. The battle of Lechfeld also ended once and for all Magyar raiding in western Europe. By the end of the tenth century the Magyars had converted to Roman Catholicism and settled down to establish the kingdom of Hungary. Under King Stephen I (r. 997–1038) and his descendants, it grew into a powerful Christian kingdom, one that would bear the brunt of other nomadic invasions from the east, most notably the Mongols and Ottoman Turks.
By far the most devastating and widespread attacks of the period came from the Vikings of Scandinavia. The Vikings were a Germanic people based in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and their movements constitute the final wave of Indo-European migration. Warriors, traders, superb shipbuilders and sailors, the Vikings in their trademark longships pushed south from their homeland and attacked the whole of Europe. Norwegian Vikings moved into Ireland and western England, while the Danes attacked eastern England, Frisia and the Rhineland, and navigated rivers to enter western Carolingian territories. Swedish Vikings controlled the Baltic Sea and pushed into Slavic areas in eastern Europe. Moving into north-western Russia, the Swedes sailed up and down that region’s rivers to Novgorod and Kiev, and established fortified ports in these areas, ultimately influencing the development of early Russian civilization. Sailing down the Dnieper and Don rivers to the Black Sea, they made contact with the Byzantine Empire as both traders and raiders, and the Byzantine emperor even hired Russo-Swedish Vikings, the Varangians, as his personal bodyguard. The Vikings also sailed west and settled in the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and, for a short time, North America.
The Viking age of expansion and conquest had its beginnings in a culture permissive of ship-based raiding. The shore raid or strandhogg was an age-old Viking tradition, one where warriors would beach their longship, round up cattle and sheep, then sail off. This form of medieval livestock rustling was even done in Scandinavia itself until it was outlawed by the centralized monarchies that rose in the ninth and tenth centuries, forcing the strandhogg into foreign waters. Incursions against continental Europe and the British Isles brought more opportunities, with Vikings returning from their seasonal raids with young women and healthy youths for the thriving slave trade.
Early Viking raids were carried out normally in the summer, with Scandinavian warriors sacking coastal villages and towns, destroying churches and monasteries, and easily defeating local, mostly infantry-based militias. In the first decades of the ninth century, Viking raiding involved small numbers of ships and was mostly directed against Europe’s coastline. But the death of Charlemagne in 814 and the chaos that followed under the weak rule of his son and successor Louis the Pious offered an attractive target for Viking marauders. As news spread of the wealth and vulnerability of the Frankish interior, Vikings appeared in greater numbers. By the 830s larger Danish fleets were threatening England as well with seasonal raids. During the winter of 840–841, the Norwegian Vikings switched from seasonal raids to wintering in enemy territory, staying for the first time on a small island off the coast of Ireland. When the Carolingian empire erupted into civil war at the death of Louis the Pious in 843, Vikings set up permanent bases at the mouth of the Loire and Seine rivers, then launched raids inland, sometimes on ships, sometimes on captured horses.
The size of Viking armies also varied depending on the period. Early ninth-century raids consisted of a few longships and maybe 100 warriors. But by 865 Viking activity in western Europe was concentrated in a ‘Great Army’ made up of fleets of hundreds of ships carrying thousands of Viking warriors and led by several Scandinavian kings. Between 865 and 879, and again between 892 and 896, the ‘Great Army’ plundered England, with the Danes occupying an area known as Danelaw in north-eastern England. Accepting Christianity, the Danes were eventually assimilated into the larger Anglo-Saxon kingdom, giving their greatest warriors, the huscarles, to the English king as bodyguards. On the continent the ‘Great Army’ devastated Flanders, raided deep into the Rhine valley, and even laid siege to Paris in the winter of 885–886 with perhaps as many as 40,000 men and 700 ships, though probably the numbers involved were much smaller.
But as widespread as the Viking raiding and invasion was, the Vikings were, in fact, not particularly good at winning battles. Many of their victories came from attacking soft, undefended targets such as churches and monasteries well stocked with ecclesiastical treasures and Mass wine. When regional armies finally organized and offered determined resistance in the late ninth century, the fortunes of the Vikings changed. In England the Saxon king Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) built walls around his towns, creating burhs, and founded the first English navy in 875 to intercept Danish fleets at sea. In France cities were walled (or if dilapidated by neglect, re-walled), and fortified bridges were constructed across major rivers to close access to the interior. Unaccustomed to fortifications, the Vikings usually moved on. Moreover, when battle was offered by the defenders of a realm, the Vikings often preferred negotiations or withdrawal to a set-piece engagement.
At the beginning of the ninth century, Viking warriors were not the well-armoured, disciplined fighting machines of legend, but rather traders and raiders who became well off as pirates. As word of the first Viking success spread among their countrymen, more and more Scandinavians entered the marauding profession. The core component of most Viking armies was composed of freemen bondi (sometimes drengs, thegns or yeomen). The bondi were the standard infantry levy units of the army and consisted of normal Viking men such as farmers and labourers. The bondi could be organized into the smaller ‘pirate bands’ or raiding groups or into larger infantry blocs when attached to a royal army or large territorial force. These troops ranged in fighting ability, and as the Viking age progressed, many men gave up their farms to become full-time warriors. Besides making up the bulk of the normal infantry, some of the bondi performed a skirmishing role and would have most likely been armed with bows or other missile weapons.
There was no standardized Viking panoply, but typical Viking arms and armour consisted of sword or battleaxe, spear, and a round, wooden shield 30 to 40 inches in diameter with a central iron boss. Chiefs and veterans might also wear a leather helm or metal spangenhelm (a forerunner to the Norman conical helm) and ring-reinforced leather jerkin or mail hauberk. Vikings, like their Germanic forebears, preferred the sword as their primary offensive arm, though the expense of this weapon often forced warriors to use axes and spears. The very best swords were imported from Frankish lands (despite Carolingian capitularies threatening capital punishment if arms sellers were caught), though Scandinavian craftsmen usually fitted them with ornate hilts and grips of precious metal, bone, horn and walrus ivory. Viking sword blades were usually pattern-welded and double-edged, averaging 32 inches in length, with a shallow fuller on each side to reduce the weight of these hefty blades.
Battleaxes and spears were also used by Scandinavian warriors. The axe, which had been nearly abandoned in warfare in the rest of Europe, found favour again in the hands of Vikings. Three types of battleaxe were used during this period: the skeggoxor ‘bearded axe’, so-called because of its asymmetrical blade and used in the eighth century; an intermediate type usually referred to as a ‘hand axe’; and the breidox or ‘broad axe’, first seen at the end of the tenth century and made famous by the huscarles at the battle of Hastings. The broad axe took its name from the blade’s distinctive crescent shape, large size (usually 12 inches along its curved edge), and 5 foot haft. This long-hafted axe also became the signature weapon of the Varangian Guard.
Viking spears were of light and heavy varieties: the former were thrown as javelins and had narrow blades and slim shafts, while the latter were used for shock combat and had broad, leaf-shaped blades and thicker, often iron-shod shafts. Both types of spear blade were socketed and some had short side-lobes jutting out just above the socket. This last type is often referred to as the Viking ‘winged’ spear. Finally, archery also held an important, if ancillary, place in Viking warfare, as can be seen by the role missile-fire played in both land and naval engagements. The bows themselves were of various types, including short and long varieties of self-bows. Composite bows were also used, perhaps because of contacts with steppe peoples.
In battle the Vikings attacked and defended in typical Indo-European fashion. Offensively, they utilized the ‘boar’s head’ wedge array, concentrating the shock impact of the attack on a small frontage with the aim of breaking through the opponents’ formation. Once the enemy’s line had been breached, Viking warriors broke into individual combat, cutting and slashing with their swords, or swinging their two-handed axes. Defensively, the Vikings formed a shield wall five or more men deep, standing close enough to lock shields and presenting a frontage of only 11/2 feet per man. If light infantry archers and javelineers were present, they usually stood behind their companions and fired over their heads at the enemy. Vikings rarely used cavalry as a tactical system; instead they mounted infantry for strategic mobility and dismounted for battle.