Late Roman Army during the 5th century

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Tim,

Elton claimed they were successful wherever they went, but other saw this differently: they controlled only the territory within a two days’ march in any direction. The truth may have been somewhere in between: superior but overextended.

Where was the old/regular force successful in the 430s? According to Heather, Aetius needed the Huns to defeat the Burgundians, and later the Visigoths. The Bagaudae (NW Gaul) were subdued by a Roman force with Alan allies. Seems the regulars couldn't do anything by themselves. The Bagaudae were just civilians AFAIK, so it may say something about the size or effectivenes of the regular forces that they needed Alans to deal with them. Note that Aetius overcame the enemies one at a time. Why couldn't he just concentrate the "overextended" regular units, instead of relying on Huns?

I think the ‘regulars’ were guarding the borders up to a point, and the ‘allies’ were used to do the dirty work. This was standard Roman strategy by the way, unchanged from the Republic down to the Middle Ages. Why blood your own troops (and weaken them) when you can convince or pay an ally to do it for you? Using the Huns against the Burgundians probably also helped to keep the peace with other Germanic tribes (after all the Romans could maintain that it was not them who attacked the Burgundians – the Nibellungenlied proves that this worked). And Attila’s invasion was of such a magnitude that the Romans army 9which was on it’s last legs anyway) would probably not have been able to handle it alone even if if they had had the resources of a century earlier.
About bagaudae, it’s not that they were civilians, they probably were guerillas – fighting ambushes and hiding in the general population. That’s a hard battle for any army, as every general knows, and preferably not fought by regulars. It involved more counterinsurgency actions than pitched battles, and it wears you down. Theodosius could not defeat Alaric in his marshes a century earlier, and the Alans were probably a better way to do this job than the regulars, who were not without work elsewhere. Plus, as with the Burgundians, it’s better PR to have non-Romans do such a dirty job .
The reason for Aetius’ inability to mass his troops was probably the same reason why this did not work for Stilicho when he did so against Alaric – everywhere he pulled his troops away to mass them in Italy, disaster struck. It took decades to repair most (but never all) of the damage of that action. Aetius could never repeat that.