***
VIATOR
MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE STUDIES
Volume 35 (2004)
PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE CENTER FOR MEDIEVAL AND
RENAISSANCE STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS
ANGELES
THE CAROLINGIAN
ARMY AND THE STRUGGLE
AGAINST THE
VIKINGS
by Simon Coupland
There have been many previous
studies of the Carolingian army, but none
examining the ninth-century
armies which faced the Viking invasions. Earlier works
have tended to focus on the age
of expansion in the eighth century, particularly the
capitularies and campaigns of
Charlemagne.' Yet the armies which fought
Charlemagne's offensive campaigns
differed significantly from those which
defended the Empire against the
Vikings in terms of their composition, size,
armament and purpose. The present
study will thus begin by considering the
different types of defensive
force which opposed the invasions: the host, the coast
guard and the lantweri. The
royal army has naturally been the focus of previous
studies, but against the Viking
incursions the initial line of defense was the coastal
guard, both at sea and on land.
Another form of resistance was that offered under the
lantweri, the defense of
the realm in case of invasion, which was obviously of
primary importance against the
Vikings, but which has been accorded scant attention
in the past. The article will
then turn
to
three more general issues: the size of the
Frankish armies which fought the
raiders, the leadership and muster of those armies,
and the particular role played by
the cavalry. The final
three
sections will address the
range of military tactics
employed against the Northmen: the strategy of
containment, by which the Franks
attempted to confine Scandinavian fleets to the
rivers; siege warfare; and
finally pitched battle. Throughout the study a more
fundamental question will also be
kept in view, namely, why it was that the a11-
conquering war machine of
Charlemagne's time apparently found itself unable to
deal with the Scandinavian
incursions barely half a century later.
After a long period in which the
only interest shown in Carolingian military matters
was in the form of short survey
articles, two significant recent books have
turned the spotlight on warfare
in the Carolingian period. The first, by Bernard
Bachrach, considers the Frankish
military in considerable depth, though again it
concerns itself primarily with
the eighth rather than the ninth century.i The second is
Guy Halsall's important survey of
warfare and society in the early medieval period,
including discussion of the ninth
century and paying particular attention to the
Viking raids.' However, the
fact that Halsall discusses a 450-year period across the
whole of Western Europe allows
the present study to go into detail where he uses a
'se, for example, an
article about
the
Carolingian anny
by F.-L. Ganshof
contained such a preponderance
of references to the reign of
Charlemagne that the English translation was entitled "Charlemagne's
Anny": "L'armee sous les
carolingiens" in Ordinamentl militari in occidente nel/'alto medioevo,
2
vols., Settimane 15 (1968)
1.109-130, trans. in F.·L. Ganshof, Frankish Institutions under
Charlemagne (New York 1970)
57-68.
2Bemard S. Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare: Prelude
to Empire (Philadelphia
2001).
3G. HaIsaII. Warfare and
Society in the Barbarian West, 450--900 (London 2003).
50 SIMON COUPLAND
broader brush; and the
conclusions reached here will frequently complement those in
his work. As for earlier studies
of the Carolingian army, a valuable detailed survey
can be found in a bibliographical
article by France published in 2001, though as was
noted earlier, the great majority
of these sources concentrate on the era of
Charlemagne," The occasional
references to the struggle against the Vikings in these
previous works tend to be brief
and relatively superficial.' One incident which has
received unusually close
attention is a battle between Franks and Vikings at the Dyle
in 891, whose significance for
the role of cavalry will be discussed below, but this is
a rare exception." The
present study is consequently long overdue. It should be
emphasized that this article will
focus exclusively on the armies which opposed the
Viking invasions; broader
defensive strategies employed by the Franks, such as the
fortification of bridges, the
payment of tributes and the hiring of Viking leaders as
mercenaries, have all been
discussed elsewhere, as has the role of the church in
resisting the invasions.'
MILITARY SERVICE (1): COASTAL DEFENSE8
The first reference to defensive
measures taken specifically against sea-borne
raiders from Scandinavia dates
from 800, when Charlemagne ordered a fleet to be
stationed on the North Sea coast
against "pirates."? Ten years later further measures
were taken, and in 811 the
emperor inspected ships of the newly constructed
fleet at Ghent and Boulogne." Despite this,
there is no record of a North Sea fleet
ever having seen action, and in
820 it was the shore-based guards who repelled an
attempted Viking raid on Flanders
and the Seine mouth. I
I A
North Sea fleet was
not mentioned again until 837,
when Louis the Pious ordered the construction of
ships in Frisia to counter
repeated Viking raids on the region around Dorestad.
FCJ.France, "Recent writing on
medieval warfare: from the fall of Rome to c. 1300," The Journal of
Military History 65 (April 200 I)
441-473, esp. at 445-450.
'Bachrach, Early Carolingian
Warfare (n. 2 above) mentions them just five times in his index; see
also C. Oman, A History of the
Art of War in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., 2 vols., (London 1924) 1.101-
107; F. Lot, L 'Art militaire
et les armees au moyen age en Europe et dans le proehe Orient, 2 vols.,
(Paris 1946) 1.105-111; J. F.
Verbruggen, "L'art militaire dans I'empire carolingien (714-1000),"
Revue beIge
d'histoire militaire 23.4
(1979) 289-310, at 302-306; 23.5 (1980) 393-412, at 406-407;
P. Contamine, "L'espace
carotingien: dilatation, dislocation, invasion" in P. Contamine, ed., Histoire
militaire de la
France, 4
vols. (paris 1992-1994) 1.36-42.
6See below, "The role of the
cavalry."
's. Coupland, "The fortified bridges of Charles the
Bald," Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991)
1-12; "The Frankish tribute
payments to the Vikings and their consequences," Francia 26/1
(1999)
57-75; "From poachers to
gamekeepers: Scandinavian warlords and Carolingian kings," Early
Medieval
Europe 7.1 (1998)
85-114; "The rod of God's wrath or the people of God's wrath? The
Carotingians'
theology of the Viking
invasions," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42 (1991) 535-554,
esp.
547-553. For the construction of
fortifications against the Vikings, see F. Vercauteren, "Comment
s'est-on defendu, au IXe siecle
dans I'empire franc contre les invasions normandes?" Annales du AXXe
congres de la
Federation archeologlque et historique de Belgique (1935-1936)
117-132; R. M. van
Heeringen, P. A. Henderikx and A.
Mars, eds., Vroeg-Middeleeuwse ringwalburgen in Zeeland (Goes
and Amersfoort 1995); and S.
Coupland, "Charles the Bald and the Defence of the West Frankish
Kingdom Against the Viking
Invasions, 840-877" (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University 1987) 167-186.
·See also H. Sproemberg, "Die
Seepolitik Karls des Grossen" in Beiträge zur belgisch-niederländischen
Geschichte (Berlin 1959)
1-29; and John Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power (London and
New York 1991) 118-130, both of
which concentrate on the first quarter of the ninth century.
9Annales Regni
Franeorum [ARF] 800
and 800 (revision); ed. F. Kurze, MGH Scriptores rerum
Germanicarum in usum scholarum
(hereafter MGH SSrG) (Hanover 1895) 110-111.
IOCapirulare
missorum Aquisgranense primum c. 16: MGH Capitularia regum Franeorum
(hereafter
MGH Cap.) J.J53;ARF811 (n. 9) 135.
IIARF820 (n. 9 above) 153.
12Annales
Bertiniani [AB] 837:
ed. F. Grat, 1. Vielliard, and S. Clernencet, Annales de Saint-Bertin
THE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 51
This implies that the existing
coastal defenses, which had been reorganized in 835
and again in early 837,13 did not
include a fleet at that time. Although the ships
were definitely built," there
is no reference to them actually being deployed
against the Viking raids, and the
lack of an attack in 838 was said to be due to a
storm which sank part of a Scandinavian
fleet on its way south." There is indeed
no indication that any Carolingian
ruler ever used a naval force at sea against
Scandinavian attack, in contrast
to the explicit references to the deployment of
Carolingian fleets against Arab
raiders in the south 16
and
also to the naval
victories won by Kings Ethelred
and Alfred against the Vikings on the other side
of the Channel."
On land, it was the coast guard
which had the dual function of keeping watch
for sea-borne raiders and
defending the shore if such raiders attempted to land.
Although no one text describes how
the system functioned, a number of details
can be gleaned from various
sources. For instance, in 800 all the North Sea ports
and river mouths navigable to
ships were guarded by detachments of troops. IS
Where such guards might come from
is revealed in a letter of Einhard, abbot of
St.-Bavo in Ghent, in which he
reported that the abbey's men had been unable to
attend the autumn assembly of 832
because they were serving in the coast guard.
Einhard complained that it was
unfair to fine these men for failure to perform their
military service when they were
defending the coast at the emperor's command."
The maintenance of the coastal
defense was evidently the responsibility of the
aristocracy, for in 865 Pope
Nicholas I wrote that "the majority of the bishops and
other royal vassals are guarding
the coast day and night against sea-borne
raiders," in this case
undoubtedly from Scandinavia.2o If
danger threatened,
everyone living along the coast
had to turn out to support the regular guards. Free
Franks who failed to respond faced
a fine of twenty solidi,
while
the unfree would
pay half this sum and receive a
flogging.i' To sound the alarm, some sort of
signaling network was employed,
though it is unclear whether it involved
beacons, flags, bells, or some
other means of communication."
The potential effectiveness of the
system was illustrated in 820, when thirteen
Danish ships tried to plunder the
coast of Flanders. They were repelled, managing
to steal only a few cattle, and so
sailed on to the mouth of the Seine, where they
met even stiffer resistance from
the coast guard, losing five of their men in a skirmish.
In the end they were forced to
travel as far as Bouin in Aquitaine to find a
(paris 1964) 22; ed. and trans. J.
L. Nelson, The
Annals of St-Bertin (Manchester
1991) 37.
13AB 835, 837 (n. 12):
Grat 18,21; Nelson 33, 37.
"Annales
Fuldenses [AFJ 838,
ed. F. Kurze, MGH SSrG (Hanover 1891) 28; T. Reuter, ed. and
trans., The Annals of
Fulda (Manchester
1992) 15.
"AB 838 (n. 12
above): Grat 24; Nelson 39.
'~aywood, Dark Age Naval
Power (n.
8 above) 113-116.
"Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle 851,
875, 882, 885, 896: D. Whitelock, D. C. Douglas and S. I. Tucker,
eds., The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle (London
1961) 43, 48, 50, 51, 57-58.
'IARF 800 (n. 9 above)
110; Einhard, Vita
Karoli Magni c.
17, ed. F. Kurze, MGH SSrG (Hanover
1895)21.
'9Einharti
epistolae no.
23: MGH Epist. Karo!. Aevi 5.121; trans. in P. E. Dutton, Charlemagne's
Courtier (Ontario 1998) 139.
7I:iNicolaiI epistolae no. 38: MGH
Epist, Karo!. Aevi 6.309.
2'Capitulare
missarum specialia (802)
c. 13: MGH Cap. 1.100-101.
~ithard, Historiarum libri
Illl
3.3:
P. Lauer, ed., Nithard:
Histoire des fils de Louis le Pieux
(paris 1926) 94. The word signum can have all
these meanings: J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis
lexicon minus (Leiden 1976)
971.
52 S[MON COUPLAND
site which was sufficiently poorly
defended for them to pillage.P Yet by the late
830s the increasingly successful
Scandinavian raids on Frisia and Aquitaine indicate
that the system was breaking down,
and after 840 Viking fleets apparently
penetrated Frankish rivers at
will, with repeated raids on the Seine, Loire, and
elsewhere.r' A monk at
Noirmoutier, Ermentarius, blamed the civil war: "Their
disagreement gives strength to
foreigners ... the defense of the shores of the ocean
is abandoned.?" Another
monastic chronicler, this time on the Seine, blamed the
cowardice of the magnates, who
"prepared to flee rather than to resist, being absolutely
terror-struck.?" A third
factor, not mentioned by contemporaries, was the
increased size of the Viking
fleets. Whereas earlier raiders had operated in small
groups-such as the thirteen
vessels of 820 or the nine which raided Noirmoutier
in 835-a fleet which attacked
Nantes in 843 numbered sixty-seven ships, and
two years later 120 ships entered
the Seine."
Nevertheless,
in 854 Charles the
Bald issued a capitulary decreeing
that the coastal defense should be deployed
with the usual vigilance,"
and the papal letter cited earlier proves that some kind
of defense was still being offered
in the 860s. The Flemings also repelled an
attempted Viking landing on their
coast in 864,29 but the regularity and apparent
ease with which the Vikings
entered Frankish rivers suggests that-as
Ermentarius of Noirmoutier
claimed-the coastal guard was largely inoperative or
ineffectual, so that increasingly
the fight had to be taken to the Vikings on land.
If a Scandinavian fleet overcame
any resistance offered by the coast guard and entered
Frankish territory, the king might
muster the royal host to oppose them.
Mobilization of the army could be
cumbersome and slow, however, and it has been
claimed that this was one of the
reasons for the Vikings' success." What this
argument overlooks is that there
was a second, much more rapid type of
mobilization, specifically intended
to counter invasion. This was the lantweri, when
"all shall come to the
defense of the fatherland, without any excuse.,,32 The
distinction between the usual
situation and the lantweri, "that is, the defense of the
2JARF820 (n. 9 above) 153-154.
2"1be raids in the 840s are
discussed exhaustively in
Coup
land, "Charles the Bald" (n. 7 above) 7-
32.
2'Ennentarius, De
translationibus et miraculis sancti Filiberti, preface to bk. 2, in R.
Poupardin,
ed., Monuments de /'histoire
des abbayes de Saint-Philibert (Paris 1905) 60.
26Translatio
sancti Germani Parisiensis c. 3: Analeeta Bollandiana 2 ([883) 72.
27ARF 820 (n. 9 above)
153; Ermentarius, preface to bk. 2, 2.11 (n. 25 above) 59, 66-67; AB 845
(n. 12 above): Grat 49, Nelson 60.
See further S. Coup land, "The Vikings in Francia and Anglo-Saxon
England to 911" in R.
McKinerick, ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History 2 (Cambridge 1995)
190-201, at 194.
28Capitulare
missorum Attiniacense c.
2: MGH Cap. 2.277.
29AB 864 (n. 12
above): Grat 113, Nelson 118.
3'Mentioned briefly, without
discussion, by Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare (n. 2 above) 53-
54; Contarnine, "Espace
carolingien" (n. 5 above) 399-400; and T. Reuter, "The End of
Carolingian
Military Expansion" in P.
Godman and R. Collins, eds., Charlemagne's Heir. New Perspectives on the
Reign of Louis
the Pious (Oxford
1990) 391-405; idem, "The recruitment of armies in the Early
Middle Ages: what can we know? in Military
Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European
Perspective, AD 1-/300 (Copenhagen 1997)
32-37, at 34-35.
llA claim made, e.g., by Oman (n.
5 above) 1.101; H. DelbrĂĽck, Geschichte der Kriegskunst im
Rahmen der
politischen Geschichte, 7 vols. (Berlin 1900-1936) 3.76; A. d'Haenens, Les
Invasions
normandes, une
catastrophe? (Paris
1970) 55.
12Edictum
Pistense (864)
c. 27: MGH Cap. 2.322.
THE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 53
fatherland/'" is most clearly
expressed in Charles the Bald's proclamation at
Meerssen in 847: "It is our wish that
a man serving anyone of us [se, Charles,
Lothar I, or Louis the German] ...
shall join the army with his lord or perform his
other duties, unless, God forbid,
an invasion of the land should occur, which is
called lantweri, in which
case all the people of that land shall turn out together to
repel it.,,34 The lantweri thus
involved the conscription of the entire Frankish
population, both those who
regularly served in the host and those who were usually
exempt. Even those who were
normally forbidden from bearing weapons on
penitential grounds were permitted
to take up arms against pagan invaders; at times
like these every able-bodied
fighting man was expected to turn OUt.35 Another
example of the way in which the
customary criteria for conscription were ignored
under the lantweri can be
found in the Capitulary of Quierzy of 877. In the decree,
provision was made for any royal
vassal who might wish to relinquish his benefice
to his heir on the king's death,
declaring that the only duty required of such a man
would be to turn out in defense of
the realm."
The procedures to be followed in
the event of invasion were laid down in detail
in a capitulary of 865.37 The missi in
charge of the region under attack were
responsible for assembling an army
to oppose the invaders. The local bishops,
abbots, and abbesses were
instructed to send their full complement of troops, fully
equipped and led by a
standard-bearer, while counts and royal vassals were to
command their contingents in
person. Although the capitulary referred to the
defense of Burgundy against
hostile incursions from neighboring lands, similar steps
were almost certainly taken when
any local army was raised to resist the Vikings. It
has been suggested that the
aristocracy were less motivated to defend their own
kingdom than when taking part in
potentially profitable foreign campaigns.P but the
fact that these men were defending
their own territories and ultimately their own
properties seems to me to outweigh
such considerations. Likewise, although such
forces were undoubtedly less well
equipped than the regular army, since many of the
common people were too poor to
afford much more than a spear or bow," the fact
that the men were defending their
own region with their local leaders means that
their morale and loyalty may have
been as high as or even higher than that of the
royal host. It would also have
been possible to mobilize such troops much more
quickly than the regular army.
Many of the recorded instances of
opposition to the Vikings almost certainly represented
examples of the lantweri, even
if the term was not used in contemporary
accounts. For instance, in 869 the
Loire Vikings were defeated by the Transsequanani,
that is, the men from between the
Seine and the Loire, under the command of
3~is definition is found in an
otherwise unknown capitulary included in Paris, BN lat. 10758 and
4628A, reproduced in MOH Cap.
2.71, note.
)4Hlotharii,
Hludowici et Karoll conventus apud Marsnam primus, Adnuntiatio Karoli c. 5: MGH
Cap.2.71.
3lK. J. Leyser,
"Warfare in the Western European Middle Ages: The Moral Debate" in K.
J. Leyser,
Communications
and Power in Medieval Europe: The Gregorian Revolution and Beyond (London
1994) 189-203, at 197. Cf.
Coupland, "Rod of God's wrath" (n. 7 above) 547-548.
36Capitulare
Carisiacense c.
10: MGH Cap. 2.358.
37Capitulare
Tusiacense in Burgundiam directum c. 13: MGH Cap. 2.331.
31HalsaII, Warfare and
Sociery(n. 3 above) 134, cf. 90-91.
39S.Coupland, "Carolingian arms and armor in the
ninth century," Vialor 21 (1990) 30, 42, 46-47,
48-49.
54 SIMON COUPLAND
the local counts, Hugh and Gauzfrid." Similarly, in
880 Abbot Gauzlin of St Denis
"sent word to the people on
the other side of the Scheldt that they should come on an
appointed day, and with one group
on each bank of the river, they would between
them annihilate the
Northmen.?" In
areas
where royal authority was weak, local
resistance might be organized
independently. This seems to have been the case in
867, when the Viking chieftain
Rorik was driven out of Frisia by the local inhabitants,
as a result of which Lothar
called up the host to defend the kingdom against
Rorik's expected return.f Local
initiatives were not always so successful, however.
In 880 Gauzlin's army not only failed to
achieve any success, but only just managed
to escape by fleeing in disgrace,
and a great many of them were captured or killed.
The potential weakness of these
local forces was even more forcefully brought out in
882, when the inhabitants of the
region around Prilm banded together to try to drive
off a Viking army. As Regino commented,
because they were "not so much
unarmed as lacking any military
discipline," they were slaughtered by the Northmen
"not like human beings but
like brute beasts.?" In
859
it was the common people
between the Seine and the Loire
who were massacred, not on this occasion by
Scandinavians, whom they had
actually defeated in battle, but by the local Frankish
magnates. The reason was that
exasperation with their leaders' failure to offer
resistance had led the local
people to form a sworn association (coniuratio) to fight
the Vikings, and such armed
groups were seen as too dangerous to the authority of
the establishment to leave
unchecked."
MILITARY SERVICE (3): THE HOST4S
It is clear from contemporary sources that
the entire army of the kingdom, the royal
host, was called up to fight the
Vikings on numerous occasions. To give two early
examples, in 845 Charles the Bald
"ordered that the whole army of his kingdom
should, once summoned, mass
together to fight," and in 852 Charles and Lothar I
besieged the Vikings at Jeufosse
''with their entire army.?"
Arrangements
for
conscription were largely
unchanged from earlier in the century, as is evident from
the repetition of earlier capitularies."
Every
man who could afford to go on campaign
was ordered to join the army, and
those owning a horse had to bring a mount
as well. The less well-off had to
pool their resources, enabling one man to serve with
the help of up to four others,
while the poorest free men were exempt from
conscription. Even so, a point which
has been insufficiently appreciated in the past is
that even these pauperi played
their part in financing the army's campaigns through
the payment of the army tax, the hostilitium. A number of
references in ninthcentury
texts suggest that this tax was
levied on those who owned property worth
less than one pound.
The first indication is in the
Edict of Pitres of 864, in a decree about the heriban-
4°AB 869 (n. 12
above): Grat 166, Nelson 163.
41Annales
Vedastini [AV] 880,
ed. B. de Simson, MGH SSrG (Hanover and Leipzig 1909) 47, 48.
42AB 867 (n. 12
above): Grat 137, Nelson 139-140.
4lRegino ofPrĂĽm, Chronicle 882,
ed. F. Kurze, MGH SSrG (Hanover 1890) 118.
«AB 859 (n. 12
above): Grat 80, Nelson 89. SeeJ. L. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London
1992) 194.
45A fuller discussion of the
question of military service can be found, with references to the secondary
literature, in Coupland,
"Charles the Bald" (n. 7 above) 85-93; see also Halsall, Warfare
and
Society (n. 3 above)
93-101.
46Translatio
sancti Germani c.
12 (n. 26 above) 78; AB 852 (n. 12 above): Grat 65, Nelson 75.
47E.g., Praeeeptum pro Hispanis
(844) c. 1 (MGH Cap. 2.259) repeats a capitulary of 815: MGH
TIlE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 55
num. Originally a fme
on those who failed to perform their military service, this
came to signify a payment in lieu." The full heribannum
was a fme of sixty solidi,
but the Edict of Pitres repeated
a system of graded penalties which required
individuals owning property worth
more than one pound to pay according to their
means/" Those free men
who were even poorer than this were apparently exempt,
suggesting that they were not
required to serve in the host. Secondly, a tribute
payment to the Vikings in 866
differentiated between those who paid the
heribannum and those who
farmed free mansi, suggesting that the latter did not
serve in the army;" and an Italian
capitulary of the same year similarly distinguished
between those who could afford to
serve in the host, either independently or with
assistance, and ''the poor,"
who were required to defend the coast and country, or, if
they owned less than ten solidi,
exempted from any duties whatsoever/" Ninth century
polyptychs likewise record that
differing military obligations were required
of tenants according to their
means. The wealthy few served in the host, as for
example those at St, Maur-des-Fosses
who owed ''the heribannum for two oxen,
twenty solidi."52 The
vast majority of free tenants, however, paid a tax to the army,
the hostilitium, evidently
instead of serving in the host themselves. The maximum
appears to have been four solidi,
just below the smallest amount levied under the
heribannum, five solidi.s3
Given that the latter sum was exacted from men owning
property worth only one pound,
the obvious conclusion is that those who paid the
hostilitium possessed even
less than that. The overwhelming majority of free tenants
on the great ecclesiastical
estates were consequently too poor to serve in the host,
even with the assistance of
others, but paid the army tax instead.
One other aspect of the hostilitium
is significant in the present context. Records
from the early ninth century
indicate that the tax was originally paid in oxen and
carts," and its primary
function was evidently to provide the army supply train.ss
Even at the beginning of the
century, however, the payment could be in cash rather
than in kind,56and this had
apparently become the norm by the time of the Viking
invasions. Even so, the carts and
oxen which Charles the Bald sent to the
fortification work at
Pont-de-I'Arche in the 860s were presumably provided through
the collection of the hostilitium.S7
According to the Edict of Pitres,
the hostilitium was not the only duty imposed
upon those free Franks ''who
cannot join the army." They were also required to
work on the construction of new
fortifications, bridges and swamp crossings, and to
Cap. 1.261; Edictum Pistense (864)
c. 27 (MGH Cap. 2.321) reproduces one of829: MGH Cap. 2.7.
"See, e.g., Capitulare
Bononiense (811) cc. 1-2: MGH Cap. 1.166; Nienneyer (n. 22 above) 481.
.9Edictum Pistense c. 27: MGH Cap.
2.322.
50AB 866 (n. 12
above): Grat 126, Nelson 130. See Coupland, "Tribute payments" (n. 7
above) 62-
64.
51Constilutio de expeditione
Beneventana e.
1:
MGH Cap. 2.94.
52C.6: B. Guerard, ed., Polyptyque de l'abbe Irminon, 2 vols. (Paris
1845) 2.284.
53Coupland, "Tribute
payments" (n. 7 above) 64.
54F._L. Ganshof, ed., "Le
polyptyque de I'abbaye de Saint-Bertin
(844-859),"
Memoires de
l'institut
national de France, Academie des inscriptions et belles-lettres 45 (1975) 57-200,
at 80, 81,
82 (twice) 83, 84, 85, and St. Maur-des-Fosses:
Guerard (n.
52 above) 2.285 (c.
9).
55A. Longnon, ed., Polyptyque
de l'abbaye de Saint-Germain des Pres, 2 vols. (Paris 1886-1895)
1.121-123; 1. Durliat, "Le
polyptyque d'Inninon et l'impöt pour I'armee," Bibliotheque de l'ecole
des
chartes 141 (1983) 185,
197; see also Nienneyer (n. 22 above) 504.
56t.ongnon (n. 55) 1.122.
57AB 869 (n. 12
above): Grat 153, Nelson 153-154; cf. AB 862, 866 (carts alone): Grat 91,
127,
Nelson 100, 131.
56 SIMON COUPLAND
perform guard duty in forts and
border regions." Charles the Bald emphasized that
these duties were required
"following ancient practice and that of other nations"
(iuxta antiquam
et aliarum gentium consuetudinem). The reference to "other
nations" probably refers to
the Anglo-Saxons, while "ancient practice" may refer to
established Frankish custom-a
charter for Metz cathedral of 775 described the
duties of the church's free
tenants as military service, guard duty and work on
bridges-or possibly to late Roman
precedents.i" At this time, 864, the king was
undoubtedly keen to assemble
sufficient manpower to continue the important
defensive works at
Pont-de-l'Arche." while the bridges and swamp crossings served
to increase the army's mobility
against the Viking raiders.
THE SIZE OF ARMIEs
The size of Carolingian armies has
long been a subject for debate, with the
discussion typically focusing on
the size of the expansionist forces of Charlemagne
in the late eighth century. On the
assumption that the Carolingian administration was
too primitive to raise large
forces, DelbrUck offered the guesstimate of 5000 to 6000
troops in anyone army, though this
figure appears to have been plucked from thin
air.61 It has been roundly rejected by Bachrach,
whose own estimate of "a total
mobilization of armies for
expeditionary operations on all fronts in the 100,000
range" would nevertheless
have few supporters.f Verbruggen proposed that
Charlemagne's armies might have
contained 2500 to 3000 cavalry and between
6000 and 10,000 infantry, a figure
followed by Contamine, though again neither
offered any real justification for
these figures." A minimalist view has been put
forward by Reuter, proposing
armies "numbered in two or at most three figures,"
though he did emphasize the
difficulty if not impossibility of assessing the size of
anyone particular army."
These variations are due in large
measure to the paucity of figures in contemporary
sources, and the likely
unreliability even of those that are reported. From the
ninth century I am aware of only
two authors who specified the number of troops in
a Frankish army, Regino of PrĂĽm
and Abbo of St. Germain. Regino stated that
Charles the Bald had over 50,000
men at Andernach in 876, but the qualifying
phrase "so people say" (utfenmt)
and Regino's unreliability about events earlier in
the century raise considerable
doubts about the accuracy of his report." Figures
5BEdictum
Pistense C.
27:
MGH Cap. 2.321-322. For other instances of civitas meaning
"fortification"
see, e.g., ARF 809,817 (n. 9
above) 129, 147.
59C. GiIlmor,
"Charles the Bald and the small free farmers, 862-869" in Anne Nergärd Jergensen
and Birthe L. Clausen, eds., Military
Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD
1-/300 (Copenhagen 1997)
38-47, at 39-40; J. L.
Nelson,
'Translating Images of Authority: the
Christian Roman Emperors in the
Carolingian World" in
M.
M. MacKenzie and C. Roueche, eds.,
Images of
Authority; Papers Presented to Joyce Reynolds on the Occasion of her 70th
Birthday
(Cambridge 1989) 194-205, at 197. •
6OCoupland, "Fortified bridges"
(n. 7 above) 4-6; C. Gillmor, "The logistics of fortified bridge
building on the Seine under
Charles the Bald," Anglo-Norman Studies 11 (1988) 87-106, at
99-106.
6JDelbrUck, Geschichte der
Kriegskunst (n. 31 above) 3.16.
62B. S. Bachrach, "Early
Medieval Military Demography: Some Observations on the Methods of
Hans DelbrUck" in D. J. Kagay and L. J. A. Villaion, The
Circle of War in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge
1999) 3-20; Early Carolingian
Warfare (n. 2 above) 58.
63J. F. Verbruggen,
'L'armee et la strategie de Charlemagne" in W. Braunfels, ed., Karl der Grosse,
Lebenswerk und
Nachleben, 4
vols. (DUsseldorf 1965) J.42a-436; Contamine, "Espace carolingien"
(n. 5 above) 30.
64Reuter, "Recruitment of
armies" (n. 30 above) 36.
·'Regino 874, 876 (n. 43 above)
107, 112. On Regino's unreliability see at nn. 79, 135, and 136 be
THE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 57
given by Abbo in his poem about
the siege of Paris are scarcely more credible,
including the claim that a
Frankish army of just 1000 men defeated 19,000 Vikings
at Montfaucon in 888.66 Although no
concrete evidence exists to contradict Abbo's
figure, throughout his work the
Franks are said to have overcome massively superior
odds: in the most extreme case a
force of at most 200 Franks is supposed to have
resisted a force of 40,000
Vikings."
This highlights the hyperbole in
many contemporary accounts. For instance,
Hildegarius of Meaux described the
army which Charles the Bald mobilized against
a Viking incursion in 845 in the
following terms: "We can but marvel at how large
an army the kingdom fruitlessly
brought there with its king, Charles: the earth could
scarcely sustain it, and
overshadowed the sky under its covering, though we do not
know how many there were.'.68
Given that the Viking fleet in question numbered
120 ships, it is likely that the
Frankish force was a sizeable one, but hardly of the
magnitude suggested by
Hildegarius. As Halsall has recently underlined, reflection
shows that medieval clerics are
unlikely to be reliable guides as to the true size of
contemporary armies, for even if
they had the testimony of eyewitnesses, the
numbers involved were too large,
their ability to estimate too poor, and their concern
for precis.e accuracy too Ii'mi.te d.69
Given this dearth of trustworthy
material, some authors have tried a more deductive
approach. Ferdinand Lot drew on
nineteenth-century census figures to assess the
potential number of West Frankish
troops from the area of Francia he regarded as
loyal to the king, but
unfortunately his unsupported assumptions about the criteria
for conscription and the
equivalence of the rural population in the ninth and
nineteenth centuries render his
conclusions worthless.I"
Karl
Ferdinand Werner
consequently put forward two other
methods for estimating the size of Carolingian
armies." The first was to
multiply the number of districts (pagl) by an estimated
minimum of fifty horsemen per
district; the second to assume that each royal vassal
could have mustered at least
twenty mounted followers, a figure amply supported by
contemporary sources. These
calculations were not intended to determine the size of
any particular army, but rather to
give a ball-park estimate of the kind of numbers
involved. If we apply Werner's
calculations to the supposedly vast army assembled
in 845, they suggest that Charles
the Bald had a potential pool of 7500 to 13,000
horsemen, not including
footsoldiers." Given that not all the available troops would
low; also S. Coupland, "The
Vikings on the Continent in Myth and History," History 88 (2003)
187-
203,at 193-194,199-200,202.
"Abbo, Bella Parisiacae
urbis 2, lines 492-493, 496-497: H. Waquet, ed., Abbon: Le siege de
Paris par les Normands (Paris 1964) 102,
104.
67Abbo I, lines 114-115 (n.
66) 24. This figure is also quoted in N. P. Brooks, "England in the
Ninth Century: the Crucible of
Defeat," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser.,
vol. 29
(1979) 1-20, at 4, who judged Abbo
"in a class of his own as an exaggerator": 6. Wallace-Hadrill was
unwilling to believe that Abbo was
"simply employing a literary device to highlight their heroism" but
it seems to me that in this
instance at least that is precisely what Abbo was doing: J. M. Wallace-
Hadrill, The Vikings in
Francia (Reading
1975) 5.
61Vita Faronis c. 122: MGH SS
rer. Mer. 5.200.
6'11alsall, Warfare and Society
(n. 3 above) 12Q...124.
wr.ot, Art militaire (n. S
above) 1.94-98.
71K. F. Werner,
'Heeresorganisation und KriegfUhrung im deutschen Königreich des 10. und 11.
Jahrhunderts" in Ordinamenti
mi/itari (n. Iabove) 2.791-843,
at 813-822.
72Based on ca.ISO West Frankish pagi
or some 650 royal vassals, i.e., ISO counts, 300 vassi
dominici (following Wemer,
who doubled the number of counts), 70 bishops, and an estimated 130
abbots.
58 SIMON COUPLAND
have mustered on any given
occasion, the West Frankish army would have been
smaller than this.
A further pointer to the scale of
Frankish armies is the size of the Viking forces
they opposed. Again contemporary figures
must be handled with caution: for example,
when the Viking leader Rodulfwas
killed on Oostergo in 873, were 500 Danes
killed with him, as the Annals
of St. Bertin and Annals of Xanten reported, or 800, as
the Annals ofFulda claimed?73The
correct answer is undoubtedly "a large number,"
probably several hundred; we
cannot be more specific than that, nor should we try to
be. Although Sawyer proposed in
1971 that even the Scandinavian "Great Army"
consisted of no more than a
thousand men, this has since been demonstrated to
have been an underestimate, and a
more likely figure is that the armies contained
thousands, rather then hundreds,
of men." This is consistent with most contemporary
reports of Viking fleet sizes,
casualty figures, and references to raiding parties
such as those on the Seine in 865
numbering 200 and 500 men, or at St. Omer in
891 consisting of 550 men.7S The
figures on the Frankish side are likely to have
been similar: armies numbering in
their thousands, but not tens of thousands, a conclusion
also reached by Halsalllooking at
a broader range of evidence." At the same
time it is important to bear in
mind that the Frankish armies which opposed the Vikings
were not always the entire host,
but individual squadrons (scarae) which presumably
numbered only in the hundreds. For
instance, in 868 Charles the Bald sent
his son Carloman into Neustria
with a single squadron, and in 871 it was only the
Neustrians whom Gauzfrid and Hugh
the Abbot led against a Viking camp on the
Loire."
Finally, one ninth-century text
which has been overlooked in previous
discussions provides valuable
support to these conclusions. In a detailed account of
the battle of Saucourt in 881, the
Annals of SI. Vaast described how a few Northmen
attacked the Franks, "and
killed many of them, namely up to a hundred men.,,78
Whether plures is
understood as relative to the size of the army or as an absolute, the
implication is clearly that the
army was sufficiently small for the loss of a hundred
men to have made a noticeable
difference. It therefore seems highly unlikely that
such an army could have killed
eight or nine thousand Vikings, as claimed by
Regino and the Fulda annalist
respectively"
LEADERSIllP AND COMMAND
The overall commander of the
Carolingian army was the king; he gave the order to
mobilize the host, and on major
campaigns led the army in
person.
For example,
Charles the Bald defeated a Viking
army besieging Bordeaux in
848,
capturing nine
enemy ships and killing their
crews, and eight years later the same king won a re-
73AB 873 (n. 12
above): Grat 193, Nelson 184; Annales Xantenses [AX] 873, ed. B. de
Simson,
MGH SSrG (Hanover and Leipzig
1909) 32-33; AF873
(n.
14 above): Kurze 80, Reuter 72.
"Coupland, "Vikings in
Francia and Anglo-Saxon England" (n. 27 above) 194-195 engages with
earlier discussions by P. H.
Sawyer, The
Age of
the Vikings,
2nd
ed. (London 1971) 128; and Brooks
(n. 67 above) 4-11.
"AB 865 (n. 12
above): Grat 123, Nelson 127; Miracula sancti Bertini c. 6: MGH
Scriptores
15.1.512.
76Halsall, Warfare and
Society (n.
3 above) 123-133; see also T. Reuter, "Carolingian and Ottonian
warfare" in M. Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare:
A History (Oxford
1999) 13-35, at 28-30.
77AB868, 871 (n. 12
above): Grat 151, 181, Nelson 152, 174.
71AV881 (n. 41 above) 50.
79AF 881 (n. 14
above): Kurze 96, Reuter 90; Regino 883 [sic] (n. 43 above) 120.
THE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 59
sounding victory over the
Northmen in the forest of Perche." There was evidently
an expectation that in times of
crisis the ruler should take on this significant role, so
that when Paris was besieged by
the Great Army in 886, Count Odo left the tOMIto
plead that Charles the Fat should
bring the host to their rescue." Although Charles
did assemble an army and
eventually assume personal command, it was his inability
to defeat the Vikings which
reportedly led to his deposition shortly afterwards/" By
the same token, it was
undoubtedly Odo's heroic resistance at Paris which made him
the popular favorite to succeed
to the throne of the western kingdom.
Although the king was the supreme
army commander, conscription, mobilization,
and command were organized on a
regional basis by the magnates. The first step
was the creation of lists
recording how many men in each district were liable for
conscription. The Edict of Pitres
repeated the demand for such rolls to be
maintained, and Hincmar of Rheims
is known to have supplied just such a list for
Count Theoderic's campaign
against the Vikings in 882.83 The magnates were
subsequently responsible for
mustering their followers and leading them to the place
of assembly. Thus Abbot Odo of
Ferrieres wrote in 840 that illness had forced him
to dispatch his men with the
local count.84
They
also commanded squadrons in the
field: a capitulary of Lothar I
from 846 reveals that each squadron was led by
between two and four miss;,85 though it
appears that many squadrons which opposed
the Vikings were commanded by
just one missus, accompanied by one or more other
magnates. For instance, in 854
the Vikings on the Loire were prevented from
attacking Orleans by Bishops
Burchard of Chartres, a royal missus'" and Agius of
Orleans." To give another
example, a squadron sent against the Vikings on the
Seine in 866 was commanded by
Rohert, missus
in
charge of western Neustria, and
Odo, count of'Troyes/"
The same capitulary of Lothar I
from 846 reveals that the second important group
in the military chain of command
consisted of the standard-bearers. It listed between
three and six per scara, all of them
royal vassals, several of them counts." Standard-
bearers were clearly officers of
high rank, although subordinate to the missi.
One of the functions of standards
was to act as symbols of authority, so that to capture
the enemy's banners was proof of
victory. Robert the Strong proudly presented
standards captured from the
Vikings to Charles the Bald in 865, and Adrevald wrote
that in 843 Lambert had failed to
carry off Rainald's victory standards
(yictricia
10AB 848 (n. 12
above): Grat 55, Nelson 65; Annales Fontanellenses [AFont] 848, 855: J. Laporte,
ed., "Les premieres annales
de Fontanelle," Melanges de la Societe de I'histoire de Normandie, XVe
serie (Rouen and Paris 1951)
63-91, at 81, 91; Tertium missaticum ad Francos et Aquitanos directum
c. 3: MGH Cap. 2.285.
"AV 886 (n. 41 above)
60. On military command as an essential attribute of the monarchy, see Halsall,
Warfare and
Society (n.
3 above) 25-30; K. J.
Leyser,
"Early Medieval Canon Law and the
Beginnings of Knighthood" in 1. Fenske, W.
Rösener and T. Zotz, eds., Institutionen; Kultur und
Gesellschaft im
Mittelalter (Sigmaringen
1984) 549-566, esp. 560.
12AV887 (n. 41 above) 64.
11Edictum Pissense c. 27: MGH Cap.
2.321; Flodoard, Historia Remensls ecc1esiae 3.26: MGH
Scriptores 13.545; for the dating,
see AB 882 (n. 12 above): Grat 246, Nelson 223.
"'Lupus of Ferrieres, letter
15: L. Levillain, ed., Loup
de Ferrieres: Correspondance,2 vols. (paris
1964) 1.94.
ISHlotherii
capitulare de expeditione contra Sarracenos facienda: MGH Cap. 2.67-68.
II>Capitularemisserum
Silvacense, list
of misst,
c.
9: MGH Cap. 2.276.
17AB 854 (n. 12
above): Grat 69, Nelson 79.
uAB 866 (n. 12 above): Grat 125, Nelson 129.
19As n. 85 above.
60 SIMON COUPLAND
signa).'XJ That they also
served a tactical purpose, by giving signals to the army, is
evident not only from the term signum itself, but also
from the recurrent use of
phrases such as levatis
vexillis or erectis vexillis to indicate the army's departure,"
and from the comments of Hrabanus
Maurus that soldiers should use their position
in relation to the standards to
keep in formation.92
No
contemporary text describes
the appearance of a
standard," though manuscript illuminations depict simple
three-tailed banners and a dragon." The latter
probably consisted of a metal head
attached to a cloth windsock, to
judge from a comparable Roman standard found in
Germany." Horns were also
used to give commands, such as setting the army in
motion or summoning aid in battle," and are likewise
pictured in contemporary
manuscripts."
Although the king was
commander-in-chief of the army, he was utterly reliant on
the magnates who controlled the
military organization beneath him. Therein lay a
major weakness, for if the
magnates failed to fulfill their obligations, not only was
the king's authority undermined,
but also the kingdom left defenseless. This was
precisely the charge leveled
against Bishop Hincmar of Laon in 871
when he
retained men who, it was argued,
should have been fighting the Northrnen."
Furthermore, the loyalty and
determination of the common soldiers frequently
depended on their lord, and if he
were killed, they would often give up the fight.
Several instances of this are recorded,
such as in 885, when "as soon as they came to
join battle, it so happened that
Duke Rainald of Maine perished with a few others,
and as a result they all turned
back in deep despondency, having achieved nothing of
any use.,,99Similarly, if the magnates
withdrew their support, the king would be left
powerless. This occurred in 858,
when the blockade of a Viking camp on the Seine
had to be abandoned because many
of Charles the Bald's leading men defected to
his brother Louis, who had
invaded the West Frankish realm.i'"
These factors must be taken into
account in the ongoing debate about the degree
to which the Carolingian army
(and indeed the Carolingian state) was centralized
90AB 865 (n. 12
above): Grat 122, Nelson 127; Miracula sancti Benedicti c. 33: MGH
Scriptores
15.1.493. See also Halsall, Warfare
and Society (n. 3 above) 199-200.
9IE.g., AB 876 (n. 12
above): Grat 208, Nelson 196; Regino 891 (n. 43 above) 137; or Hincmar, De
fide Carolo regi
servanda: Patrologia Latina 125, col. 963; compare also Ludwigslied I. 27: Huob her
gundfanon ul W. Braune and
E.A. Ebbinghaus, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, 16th ed. (TObingen 1979)
137.
92Bachrach, Early Carolingian
Warfare (n. 2 above) 97, 189, citing De procinctu Romanae
miliciae, c. XIII.
9lIt has been suggested that the amictum
/ auribus inmodicis croceum carried by two signiferi was
an oriflamme, but the meaning of
the phrase is unclear: Abbo I, lines 153-155 (n. 66 above) 26-28,
esp. 28, n. I.
94A. Goldschmidt, Die
Elfenbeinskulpturen aus der Zeit der karolingischen und sächsischen Kaiser,
4 vols. (Berlin
1914-1926) I, pI. XIX and XX; or Psalterium aureum 140-141: F. MĂĽtherich
and
J. E. Gaehde, Carolingian Painting
(London 1977) pI. 46-47.
9sR. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton
Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 vols. (London 1975-1983) 2, fig. 312.
~rmold the Black, Carmen in
honorem Hludowici line 1589: E. Faral, ed., Ermold le Noir: Poeme
sur Louis le
Pieux et epitres au roi Pepin (Paris 1964) 122; Abbo I, lines 91-92;
2, lines 234-235,
511-518 (n. 66 above) 22, 82-84,
104.
97DerStuttgarter
Bilderpsalter, 2
vols. (Stuttgart 1965-1968) I, fol. 88r; San Paolo Bible, fol. 59v:
C.R. Dodwell, Painting in
Europe. 800--1200 (Harrnondsworth 1971) pI. 43.
91Concilium
TuJ/ense 1apud Saponarias, Epistola
synodalis ad Wenilonem; Concilium Duziacense
I: I.-D. Mansi, ed., Sacrorum
conciliorum col/ectio IS, col. 530; 16, col. 662.
99AV 885 (n. 41 above)
57; see also AV 886, 62; Regino 867 (n. 43 above) 93; AF 882 (n.
14
above): Kurze 97, Reuter 91.
If"LibeJlus
procJamationis adversus Wenilonem c. 5: MGH Cap. 2.451.
THE CAROLINGlAN ARMY 61
and controlled.!"
On
the one hand Carolingian monarchs such as Charlemagne,
Louis the Pious, and Charles the
Bald clearly pursued an imitatio imperii, not least in
the appearance of the royal
guards;I02 and the apparatus of state, including the
arrangements for equipping,
mobilizing and directing the host, represented
significantly more than the
leadership of a loose confederation of magnates'
warbands. On the other hand, as
Charles the Bald found to his cost in 858, the
Frankish rulers' leadership of
the army was completely dependent on the magnates.
They could and did let their
royal masters down, sometimes through negligence,
sometimes through weakness and
sometimes through their own deliberate fault.
When royal concerns and
aristocratic interest coincided, the Franks could offer a
potent defense against the
Scandinavian raiders; when they differed, as often as not
it was the Vikings who benefited.
As a result, the
Franks' internal conflicts
repeatedly gave the Northmen a
window of opportunity. This was not just the view
of the monk Ermentarius; the St.
Vaast annalist explained the devastating arrival of
the Great Army from England in
879 as follows: "While they were quarrelling
amongst themselves, the Northmen
who were situated across the sea heard about
their discord and crossed the
sea,,103Finally, another harmful consequence of the
Frankish internecine struggles
noted by contemporaries was the fact that the deaths
of the flower of the Frankish
nobility in the civil war and its aftermath deprived the
land of some of its ablest
defenders, men who would otherwise have offered stout
resistance to the Vikings.l"
THE ROLE OF 1HE CAVALRY
There is widespread agreement
among historians that cavalry formed an important
element in Carolingian armies,
though disagreement over whether horsemen outnumbered
infantry, or vice-versa 105 A passage
relating to a battle against the
Vikings has been central to the
debate and much misunderstood, and so deserves
close consideration.l'" At
Louvain in 891, a Scandinavian camp was protected on
one side by the river Dyle and on
the other by a swamp. King Arnulf therefore
hesitated to advance, because the
situation gave the cavalry no chance to attack, and
because Francis
pedetemptim certare inusitatum est.107 This was long held to
indicate that the Franks no
longer used infantry,108but that is clearly incorrect: for
IOIThe Problemstellung is
usefully summarized in
Halsali,
Warfare and Society (n. 3
above) 89-
101.
I02Coupland, "Carolingian
arms and annor" (n. 39 above) 41; Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare
(n. 2 above) 70-71, 86.
1.3N.25 above; A V 879 (n.
41 above) 44.
I04Miracula
sancti Benedicti c.
33: MGH Scriptores 15.1.494; Andreae Bergomatis Historia, MGH,
Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum
et ltaIicarum 221; Regino 841 (n. 43 above) 75.
losGanshof, "Charlemagne's
Army" (n. I
above)
66; Lot, Art militaire (n. 5 above) 1.92-93; Oman
(n.5 above) 1.l03-105; B. S.
Bachrach, "Charlemagne's Cavalry: Myth and Reality," Military
Affairs
47 (1983) 181-187; J. France, "The
Military History of the Carolingian Period," Revue beige d'histoire
militaire 26 (1985) 81-99;
Verbruggen, "Art militaire" (n. 5 above) 295-297, 304-310.
I06B.S. Bachrach, "Charles
Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism," Studies
in Medieval and Renaissance
History 7 (1970) 47-75, at SO-53; J. France, "La guerre dans la France
feodale a la fln du IXe et au Xe siede," Revue
beige d'histoire militaire 23 (1979) 177-198, at 191-
192; Verbruggen,"Art
militaire" (n. 5 above) 305; Reuter, "Carolingian and Ottonian
warfare" (n. 76
above) 30; Halsall, Warfare and
Society (n. 3 above) 186-188.
107AF891 (n. 14 above):
Kurze 119-120; Reuter 122.
100See,e.g., L. White, Medieval
Technology and Social Change (Oxford 1962) 3; Lot, Art militaire
(n. 5 above) 94; J. F. Verbruggen,
The Art of Warfare in
Western Europe during the Middle Ages
(Amsterdam, New York and Oxford
1977) 96.
62 SIMON COUPLAND
instance, foot-soldiers defended
the monastery ofSt. Bertin in 891 and infantry were
deployed in Conrad's army in 906.109 Reuter,
believing he was following Bachrach,
translated as ''the Franks are
not used to fighting while advancing step by step,"!"
Bachrach has since explicitly
contradicted this interpretation, however, setting out
his own understanding of the
passage as rather that "in this context ... the Franci
were unaccustomed to advancing
slowly over very rough terrain under a barrage
of enemy missiles.t''!' This may have
been true, but it is hardly a plausible
translation of the Latin text,
which makes no mention of missiles or terrain. The
more straightforward and likely
interpretation is that these particular Franks
(compare primores
Francorum-"Ieaders of the Franks"-in the same sentence)
were unused to fighting on foot,
a fact which was amply demonstrated by
subsequent events.112 In other words,
this text indicates that there were Carolingian
troops in the late ninth century
who fought only on horseback. but not that
Carolingian armies consisted
exclusively of such men.
The composition of ninth-century
Frankish forces is seldom described; a rare exception
is a reference to the army at
Paris in 845 as
consisting of equitum
et peditum.
113 The general
impression is nonetheless that the host was predominantly
mounted, as at Louvain in 891.114 For instance,
when in 835 a Viking attack on
Noirmoutier was repulsed by the
local count, Rainald of Herbauge, it was reported
that the Frankish casualties
included ''very many horses killed and several horsemen
wounded."m Or when the
Vikings launched a counter attack on King Louis III at
Saucourt in 881, it was said that
the Franks would have fled "had not the king
swiftly dismounted from his horse
to give his men courage and a point of
resistance,"!"
Evidently the king, and presumably also at least some of his men,
were fighting on horseback. This
is consistent with reports of engagements which
did not involve the Vikings:
Nithard stressed the importance of horses in the armies
of the civil war, and the battle
of Andernach in 876 evidently included cavalry, since
Charles's troops were described
as trying to spur their horses into the battle.'!" It is
also consistent with the
contemporary pictorial evidence, since several Carolingian
manuscripts depict pitched
battles on horseback. including the Stuttgart Psalter and
San Paolo Bible.lls These
illustrations can be taken as reliable indicators of
'I»Miraeula
sancti Bertini c.
7: MGH Scriptores 15.1.512; Regino 906 (n. 43 above) 151.
II°Reuter (n. 14 above) 122,
citing Bachrach, "Charles Martel" (n. 106 above) 51-53.
IIIBachrach, Early Carolingian
Warfare (n.
2 above) 320 n. 108, in which he states clearly: "There
is no reason to suggest on the
basis of this text that the Franci were unaccustomed to advancing in a
'step by step' fashion."
1I2Coupland, "Charles the
Bald" (n. 7 above) 105. See also Halsall, Warfare and
Society (n.
3
above) 186-188.
113Audradus Modicus, Liber
revelationum: L. Traube, "0 Roma nobilis: Philologische
Untersuchungen aus dem
Mittelalter," Abhandlungen
der bayrischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
philosophisch-philologische
Klasse 19
(1892) 297-395, at 380.
'''References to the presence of
horses are not necessarily significant, since troops may have dismounted
to fight, and the army's baggage
was usually transported on horseback: AF 896 (n. 14 above):
Kurze 127, Reuter 132.
'''Ermentarius 2.11 (n. 25 above)
66-67.
116AV881 (n. 41 above) 50.
117Nithard2.6, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 3.6
(n. 22 above) 56, 60, 66, 72,112; AF876 (n. 14 above): Kurze 89,
Reuter 81.
IIIDer
Stuttgarter Bilderpsalter, 2 vols. (Stuttgart 1965-1968) I, fol. 71v; 1. E.
Gaehde, "The
Pictorial Sources of the
Illustrations to the Books of Kings, Proverbs, Judith and Maccabees in the
Carolingian Bible of San Paolo
Fuori Le Mura in Rome," FrĂĽhmittelalterliche Studien 9 (1975) 359-
389, pI. 75, 100 (fol. 83r, 243v);
A. Boinet, La Miniature
carolingienne (Paris
1913) pI. 124 (fol. 59v).
THE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 63
contemporary conditions because
they include ninth-century Frankish military
equipment, even if their
composition may have been influenced by antique
iconography.i" The
significance of horses in resistance to the Vikings is underlined
by the provisions in the Edict of
Pitres for all Franks with the means to own horses
to bring them on campaign, and the
warning to state officials not to hinder such men,
although these could of course
have been for mobility as much as for combat.120
The proportion of cavalry would
undoubtedly have been higher in the royal host
than in local forces raised under
the lantweri
given
the high cost of horses: up to
twenty or even forty solidi in the mid-ninth
century.'!' For example, when a Viking
army landed between Bordeaux and
Saintes in 845 and Count Siguin of Bordeaux
raised a local army to resist
them, the ensuing battle was fought on foot (pedestri ...
proelio). It was a disaster
for the Aquitanians: Siguin was captured and killed, and
after suffering heavy casualties
the remainder of the army fled.122 Similarly,
when
the common people at PrĂĽm turned out to
fight the Northmen in 882, there were no
horsemen, but "a countless
mass of foot-soldiers, gathered together from the fields
and villages into a single
unit.,,123Here, too, the result was a massacre, and even
though on this occasion the lack
of military discipline and armor were doubtless also
contributory factors, such defeats
as these help to explain why Carolingian rulers
concentrated on raising a
well-armed, well-trained fighting force containing a
significant proportion of cavalry.
STRATEGY AND TACTICS (1): CONTAINMENT
When Viking fleets began to
penetrate ever deeper into the West Frankish river
system in the 840s, Charles the
Bald had to develop tactics to stop them. He
adopted a policy of containment,
lining the banks with troops to restrict the invaders
to the rivers. This was first
employed on the Seine in 845, but failed when the
Northmen unexpectedly landed on
the south bank and put the Frankish troops to
flight. Realizing that the Vikings
could not be expelled by force, the king agreed
to pay a tribute.!" This highlights
the fundamental weaknesses of the strategy: the
soldiers on the banks were unable
to reach the enemy but were themselves vulnerable
to attack. and the tactic was
dependent on the discipline, courage and loyalty
of the Frankish forces, who were
not always equal to the task.
Nevertheless, Charles adopted the
same strategy against a Danish fleet which
camped on an island on the Seine
in 852.125
Once
again his plans were frustrated,
because the Franks evidently
lacked the right sort of ships to launch an assault on
the island. Although river craft
were employed in military operations, they invariably
acted as ferries, not as
springboards for attack, since they had a deeper
draught than the Viking longships
and so could not land on the flat, sloping shores
119Coupland,"Carolingian anns
and armor" (n. 39
above)
31-50.
,21>Edictum Pistense c. 26: MGH Cap.
2.321.
'1'20 solidi:
Gesta sanetarum Rotonensium 1.7: C. Brett, Irans. and ed., The Monks of
Redon: Gesta
Sanetarum
Rotonensium and Vita Conuuoionis (Woodbridge 1989) 128-129; L.
A. J.
W. Sloet, ed.,
Oorkondenboelc
der grofschappen Gelre en ZutJen (The Hague 1872-1876) 43; 40 solidi:
Miracula
sancti Vedasti
1.5: MGH
Scriptores
15.1.398.
'Z2Lupus letter 44: Levillain (n.
84 above)
1.186;
cf. Annates
Engolismenses 845:
MGH Scriptores
16.486.
'13Regino 882 (n. 43 above) 118.
""Vita
Faronis c.
122: MGH SS
rer. Mer. 5.200;
Translatio sancti Germani c. 12 (n. 26 above) 78;
Coupland, "Tribute
payments" (n.
7
above) 59--60.
123AB 852, 853 (n. 12
above): Grat
65,
66, Nelson 7S.
64 SIMON COUPLAND
of islands.i" Faced with the
inability of his troops to mount an assault, Charles
subsequently abandoned the siege
and paid a tribute to one of the Viking leaders.
127
In 854 Bishops Burchard and Agius
nonetheless proved that the strategy of
containment could be made to work
with the help of river vessels. They prevented
the Vikings from advancing up the
Loire "by making ready against them ships
and soldiers": presumably the
ships blocked the river while the troops lined the
banks.128 It was perhaps this
episode which inspired Charles the Bald and Lothar
11to deploy a river fleet
"the like of which had never before been seen in our land"
when another Viking band camped on
an island at Oisse! in 858.129 The ships
were presumably moored in
midstream to prevent the Vikings' passage up- or
downriver, while the army
blockaded the island from the shore. Yet as was
mentioned earlier, the siege had
to be abandoned when Louis the German invaded
the West Frankish kingdom, and in
the subsequent debacle, the entire fleet fell
into the Vikings' hands.l3O Only two other
attempts to attack Viking island bases
are recorded, both similarly
ending in failure. In 864 Lothar 11fitted out ships to
launch an assault on an island on
the Rhine, but his men refused to attack, and
seven years later Hugh the Abbot
and Count Gauzfrid of Le Mans tried to capture
an island camp on the Loire, but
made little headway and suffered heavy losses.'!'
The Vikings' island camps appear
to have been virtually impregnable.
Despite its repeated failures,
Charles the Bald nonetheless still believed in the
strategy of containment, and in
862 he at last found a defensive tactic which could
enforce it effectively. He managed
to trap a Viking fleet by blocking a bridge
across the Marne at
Isles-les-Villenoy and deploying troops along the banks as
usual. The Vikings were forced to
come to terms, and the king subsequently
pressed ahead with the
fortification of a bridge at Pont-de-I' Arche to try to
achieve the permanent exclusion of
the Vikings from the upper Seine.l32 The
inherent weaknesses of containment
were again exposed in 865, however, when a
fresh fleet entered the Seine.
First the guards failed to turn up on time and then the
raiders fell on one of the
Frankish detachments, which turned and fled.m This is
the last occasion on which the
strategy is known to have been pursued; Charles's
successors appear to have
abandoned it. It
had
seemed inherently sound, and had
indeed succeeded on one notable
occasion, but consistently failed because of the
inability of the Frankish troops
to land on the Vikings' island bases and their consequent
vulnerability to surprise attack.
STRATEGY AND TACTICS (2): INvEsTMENT
The Franks were past masters in
the art of siege warfare,
and Bachrach in particular
has underlined the central role
played by the engineers in the Carolingian army
under Pippin the Short and
Charlemagne.l" Yet the Vikings' mobility, coupled
126B.Almgren, "Vikingatäg och
vikingaskepp," Tor
8
(1962) 192.
I21Coupland, "Poachers"
(n. 7 above) 94-95, and "Tribute payments" (n. 7 above) 60.
mAB 854 (n. 12
above): Grat 69, Nelson 79.
129Vita Faronis c. 125: MGH SS
rer. Mer. 5.201.
I30Vita Faronis c. 125: MGH SS
rer. Mer. S.201; AB
858
(n. 12 above): Grat 78, Nelson 88.
IJIAX864 (n. 73 above) 21;AB 871 (n. 12
above): Grat 181, Nelson 174.
Il2Coupland, "Fortified
bridges" (n. 7 above) 2~.
133AB86S, 866 (n. 12
above): Grat 123, 125; Nelson 127, 129-130.
134Bachrach, "Charlemagne's
Cavalry" (n. 105 above) 181-187; "Charles MarteI" (n. 106 above)
lHE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 65
with their habit of keeping to
their ships or camping on islands, meant that they
rarely allowed themselves to be
trapped by the Franks. In fact, during the whole
period of the Scandinavian
invasions there are only three occasions when Viking
armies are known to have been
besieged: at Angers in 873, Asselt in 880, and a
small fortress in the Hesbaye in
885.135
In any siege, the attackers' first priority
was to surround the enemy, sometimes
throwing up a rampart around the
site as well, as is attested at Angers in 873.
They would then seek to stop all
food and water reaching the beleaguered
garrison, a tactic which is said
to have proved decisive in the Hesbaye, where the
Franks had reportedly captured the
Scandinavians' supplies before the blockade
began. A protracted investment
could, however, also create logistical problems for
the besieging army, and Regino
claimed that the Franks at Angers began to run
out of food, as well as being
stricken by sickness. Even though the historicity of
Regino's account is dubious, as we
shall see, clearly such situations did occur in
contemporary sieges.
Apart from undertaking a direct
assault, the assailants might try to undermine
the walls, scale the ramparts on
ladders, or burn down the stronghold. Siege engines
could also be employed, though not
apparently at any of the places where the
Vikings were besieged; in all three cases it appears that the
Franks settled in to
starve their opponents into
submission. At Angers this was successful: the
Scandinavian leaders commended
themselves to Charles the Bald and promised to
leave the kingdom as soon as the
winter was over. This is the version of events
reported in the contemporary Annals
of St. Bertin, and it is not only quite different
from the account in the later Chronicle
of Regino of PrĂĽm, but also significantly
more reliable. As well as claiming
that the Franks used siege engines, Regino
alleged that Charles the Bald took
a tribute from the Vikings and asserted that the
deciding factor in the Frankish
victory was a Breton plan to divert the Maine by
the digging of a channel "of
amazing depth and width," leaving the longships high
and dry. If the second detail
is implausible, the third is impossible. The river was
nearly 100 meters wide at Angers,
rendering the task beyond the capability of the
army in the time available. By way
of comparison, the fossa Carolina dug in
Bavaria in 793 was only some 30m
wide, 1500m long and 6m deep, yet it has
been calculated that it would have
taken a work-force of 4700 men ten weeks to
excavate.l36 Less dramatic but
much more plausible is Hincmar's report that the
Northmen were simply worn down by
the length of the siege, a claim which is given
added weight by the likelihood
that Hincmar was himself present at the siege."?
Once the Vikings had agreed to
leave the town, the king ordered the fortification of
47-75; and most recently Early Carolingian
Warfare (n.
2 above) 102-118.
IJSAngers:AB 873 (n. 12 above):
Grat 193-195, Nelson 183-185; Regino 873 (n. 43 above) 105-
107; Asselt: AF 882 (n. 14
above): Kurze 98-99, 107-109; Reuter 92-93, 104-106; AB 882 (n. 12
above): Grat 247-248, Nelson
224-225; Hesbaye: AF
885
(n. 14 above): Kurze 102, Reuter 97. Although
Regino described a purported siege
at Brissarthe in 866, his account cannot be trusted: Regino
867 [sic] (n. 43 above) 92-93. (1)
The encounter is wrongly dated to 867; (2) Regino makes no mention
of details in other, more reliable
sources, such as the presence of Bretons, the context of a raid on
Le Mans, or the fact that the
raiders were mounted; (3) he states that the Franks intended to use siege
engines, even though they had
intercepted the Vikings with no expectation of a siege; (4) he names the
Viking commander as Hasting, a
notorious leader by the time Regino was writing, but not otherwise
attested on the Continent before
882.
I*H. H. Hofmann, 'Fossa Carolina"
in Braunfels, ed., Karl
der Grosse (n.
63 above) 1.446.
Il7Nelson,Annals of St-Bertin (n. 12 above) 185
n.17.
66 SIMON COUPLAND
the bridge over the Loire at Les
Ponts-de-Ce to prevent them from returning
upriver.':"
As for the siege at Asselt, our
understanding of events is complicated by the fact
that conflicting accounts are
given in the two continuations of the Annals of Fulda.
They at least agree on the
outcome of the siege-one of the Viking leaders, Godfrid,
commended himself to Charles the
Fat, while the rest left on payment ofa tributebut
differ significantly over why it
was lifted. One version claims that the stronghold
was about to surrender, and
attributes the deal to bribery, treachery and weakness,
but the author is deeply hostile
to those counselors who brokered the agreement. The
other, which is more likely to be
reliable,139reports that the presence of large numbers
of putrefying corpses (it was
July) spread not only disgust but also sickness
among the besieging army. This is
not only highly plausible but also perhaps paralleled
at Angers, as we have seen. Even
so, it did nothing for the emperor's
reputation.
In sum, the Franks suffered the
frustration of having an army which was skilled
in siegecraft, but fighting an
enemy which hardly ever allowed itself to be
trapped.l'" When it did come
to a siege, the Franks apparently held the upper
hand, in that two of the three
occasions on which Viking forces were besieged
were clear Frankish victories.
This was the case at Angers, where the
Scandinavian leaders were forced
to come to terms, and in the Hesbaye, where the
Northmen fled by night. The
third, the siege of Asselt, was seen at the time as a
capitulation by Charles the Fat,
but did result in Godfrid's commendation, which
was a proven and effective method
of turning an enemy into an ally."!
Furthermore, we have seen that
the emperor's failure to press home the siege was
probably due to the spread of
sickness among his troops, a common hazard of
siege warfare, especially in the
summer.
STRATEGY AND TACTICS (3): ENGAGEMENT142
Nemine
resistente: "resisted
by no-one"; the phrase echoes as a plaintive litany
through an array of ninth-century
clerical sources describing the Viking raids.!"
Yet it should not be thought that
the Franks fought shy of engaging the Vikings in
battle. The description of Charles
the Bald in the Annals
of Xanten as
"suffering
frequent onslaughts from the
pagans, continually offering them tribute, and never
emerging victorious in
battle" owes more to political rhetoric than historical reality.
l44Time and again Frankish armies
and Carolingian rulers (including Charles the
Bald) came against the Vikings in
battle, sometimes suffering defeat, but sometimes
emerging victorious. Any roll of
honor would include Noirmoutier (835), the Dordogne
(848), Poitiers (855 and 868), le
Perehe (856), the Charente (865), the Loire
(862, 865 and 869),.Oostergo
(873), West Frisia (876), Saucourt (881), Avaux
13BCoupland,"Fortified
Bridges" (n. 7 above) 9-10.
139Coupland,"Myth and
History" (n. 65 above) 198-199.
J~e present discussion has been
kept short for this reason.
J4JCoupland, "Poachers"
(n. 7 above) 108-114.
J42Seealso Halsall, Warfare and
Society (n.
3 above) chap. 9, "Battle."
J4JThe phrase or an equivalent is
found in the Annals
of St. Bertin, Annals of Fulda, Annals of St.
Vaast, Chronicle
of Nantes, Life of St. Faro, Miracles of St. Benedict, Miracles of St.
Germanus,
Miracles of St. Remaclius, Translation of
St. Philibert and
works by Abbo and Audradus Modicus.
J44AX869(n. 73 above) 27; Coup
land, "Tribute payments" (n. 7 above) 71-72.
THE CAROLINGlAN ARMY 67
(882), Montfaucon and the river
Aisne (888), Louvain (891), and le Vimeu (898).145
These victories were, moreover,
won by a variety of Frankish forces. In 848, 856,
881, and 882 it was the king
leading the host who was victorious; in 835,862,865,
and 869 a local count, possibly
under the auspices of the lantweri; while at Poitiers
in 855 and 868, on the Charente in
865 and in Frisia in 873 and 876 it was the local
populace who were defending their
territory. These military successes serve as a
reminder that the weaknesses of
the Frankish military machine and the failings of
locally raised forces should not be overestimated.
This list of triumphs over Viking
armies would also undoubtedly be longer were
it not for the raiders' frequent
avoidance of battle. For example, on the Seine in
841 "Wulfard, a royal vassal,
opposed them with an army, but the pagans were not
at all prepared to fight"l46
The Vikings' aim was to acquire plunder, not to win
battles, so why risk their lives
and loot in combat when a tactical retreat would
preserve both? As a result, they
generally sought to pillage poorly defended
targets and withdraw without
risking casualties, particularly in the earlier
incursions. Thus when a warband
was intercepted at Vardes in 852, they fled into
the woods to escape the Frankish
horsemen, who could not pursue them among
the trees.147The same tactic was
used by the Great Army in 891 when they were
attacked by Odo at Wallers, and
the armalist adds that the Northmen had been
deliberately traveling through
inaccessible areas (invia
loca).148What
was more, if
Viking forces were defeated they
often simply withdrew and regrouped. The
lament uttered by the St. Vaast
annalist after Carloman's victory at Avaux applied to
many similar situations:
"When battle commenced, the Franks emerged victorious,
but this engagement did nothing to
subdue the Northmen.,,149
Contemporary sources reveal
regrettably little about the tactics employed by
the Franks against the Vikings,
though one vital factor was intelligence. Scouts
were seen as extremely important
in keeping abreast of the enemy's movements
and trying to predict their
intentions. ISO
Thus
when Louis III defeated a Viking
army at Saucourt in 881, it was
after "he sent out scouts, who reported that they
were coming back laden with
plunder."lsl Twenty-five years earlier, Charles the
Bald's successful attack on a
Viking warband in the forest of Perehe followed his
muster of the Franks at Neaufles,
where, Hincmar wrote, ''we were keeping watch
against the Northmen's
incursion."m Equally useful was misinformation, to mislead
or trick the enemy. For example,
in 873 Charles the Bald was planning to
attack the Vikings at Angers, but
announced a campaign into Brittany in order to
lull them into a false sense of
security .IS3
Virtually nothing is recorded
about Carolingian battle tactics against the Vi-
I"See at on. 40, 66, 73,
80, and 115 above, n. 168 below; also AB 848, 855, 862, 868
(n. 12 above):
Grat SS, 71, 89, 166,
Nelson 65, 81, 99, 152; AF 876,891 (n. 14 above): Kurze 86, 119-121,
Reuter
79, 121-123; AV881, 882,
888, 891, 898 (n. 41 above) SO-51, 53, 65, 70, 80.
If6AFont 841 (n. 80 above)
75.
147AFont851 (n. 80 above)
89; see also Regino 892 (n. 43 above) 138.
I"AV89I, cf. 898 (n. 41
above) 69, 80. See also at n. 163 below.
149AV882 (n. 41 above) 53.
uOCf.Bachrach, Early Carolingian
Warfare (n.
2 above) 188-189; Halsall, Warfare and Society (n.
3 above) 147-148, 157.
IIIAV881 (n. 41 above) 50.
112AFont855 [sic] (n. 80
above) 91; Flodoard, Historia
Remensis ecclesiae 3.16:
MGH Scriptores
13.506; Hincmari
Epistolae no.
131: MGH Episto1ae 8.1.72.
mAĂź 873 (n. 12
above): Grat 192, Nelson 183.
68 SIMON COUPLAND
kings, though presumably they were
similar to those employed against other
opponents in other campaigns.
These could include dawn attacks, ambush,
feigned retreat, and attacking
from two or three directions in order to stretch the
enemy forces and probe for weak points.P' The latter
maneuver seems to have
been used at Fontenoy during the
Frankish civil war, and had also been favored
by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious
in the earlier expansionist campaigns.F" The
Frankish cavalry evidently charged
at speed in close order, as is described in
Regino's account of a battle
fought between Franks and Bretons in 851.156
Although Regino is not always
reliable on earlier events, in this instance his
account is corroborated by Ermold
the Black, who personally campaigned in
Brittany, and by Nithard's
description of Frankish military games fought in
842.157 Regino records that the Franks
were drawn up en masse (in unum
conglobatii and unlike the
Bretons, who were armed with light throwing spears,
held onto their lances, using them
as thrusting weapons, as well as fighting hand
to hand with drawn swords. The
Bretons advanced towards the Frankish line
hurling their javelins, then fell
back in an attempt to lure their opponents to break
ranks and pursue them. This
underlines the Franks' preference for fighting in
close order, in contrast to the
wheeling, darting Breton cavalry, and King Odo's
command to his men to keep close
together as they charged at Montfaucon in 888
suggests the same tactic was still
being employed against the Vikings.I" By
contrast, though it is possible
that ninth-century Carolingian armies sometimes
fought in a wedge formation or
phalanx, the use of the term cuneus by
contemporary authors should not
necessarily be interpreted in that sense. By this
time the term could simply denote
a body of troops, including units which were
not in battle formation, or even
in a wholly non-military context to describe a
crowd of church-goers.i"
Although the Carolingian armies were
well armed, highly mobile and very experienced
in mounted warfare, the Vikings
quickly developed effective tactics
against them. As we have seen,
warbands tended to return to their ships or camp
on islands where the Franks could
not reach them. The rare defeat at Noirmoutier
in 835 was only possible because
the tide had gone out, allowing Rainald and his
horsemen to cross a causeway from
the mainland. On land, the Vikings learned to
use the local terrain to their
advantage. To avoid encountering Frankish troops
they kept to invia loca, inaccessible
regions.!" including forest and marshland:
Il4Halsall, Warfare and Society
(n. 3 above) 188-191, 195-196, 204-206; Bachrach, Early
Carolingian
Warfare (n.
2 above) chap. 5, "Battlefield Tactics."
mNithard 2.10 (n. 22 above) 76-78;
Verbruggen, Art of Warfare (n. 108 above) 280-282; Halsall,
Warfare and
Society(n. 3
above)
147.
156Regino 860 (n. 43 above) 78-79 (recte
851: see AFont 851 [no 80 above] 87; Annales
Engolismenses 851: MGH
Scriptores 16.486). See also Halsall, Warfare and Society (n. 3 above)
194-
197.
J57Ermold lines 1494, 1680-1683
(n. 96above) 114, 128; Nithard 3.6 (n. 22 above) 110-112. Cf.
l-C. Cassard, "La guerre des
Bretons armoricains au haut moyen äge," Revue historique 557 (1986) 3-
27.
InARF(revision) 782 (n. 9 above)
63; Abbo 2,line 507 (n. 66 above) 104.
I'"AB 864, 869 (n. 12
above): Grat 116, 165, Nelson 121 ("companies"), 162
("formations");
Ermentarius 2.2 (n. 25 above) 63.
A passage in Richer (1.9) sometimes cited as evidence that the wedge
formation was still employed in
the late ninth century is unreliable: R. Latouche, ed., Richer: Histoire
de France (888-995), 2
vols. (Paris 1930-1937) 1.24 and n. I; see ix-xi of the same work and Lot, Art
militaire (n. 5 above)
1.102.
160As n. 148 above.
THE CAROLINGIAN ARMY 69
the Vikings at Louvain camped with
a swamp on one side and the Dyle on the
other precisely to preclude a
mounted attack. On land, Viking armies regularly
surrounded their camps with a
rampart topped by a palisade, and perhaps ditches
as well."! The effectiveness
of the latter was proved at Paris in 886, where the
commander of the army sent to
break the siege, Duke Henry, rode into just such a
ditch. His horse fell and threw
him, whereupon a group of Danes hiding nearby
jumped out and killed him.162Here
again we see how the resourceful Scandinavians
repeatedly found ways of blunting
the edge of the Carolingian war machine.
SUMMARY
This article set out to consider
why the Frankish armies which had proved so effective
against other opponents under
Pippin III and Charlemagne were apparently
ineffectual against the Vikings in
the ninth century. The last section in particular has
highlighted the fact that this is
largely a misconception. Carolingian armies won numerous
victories against the Vikings, but
to their frustration found that military success
alone was insufficient to deal
with the Scandinavian menace. The Northmen
would simply retreat, regroup and
later return. What was more, they were masters of
the avoidance of battle, not only
through their choice of territory through which to
travel and the location of their
camps, but also through their willingness to beat a
strategic retreat. This was
equally true in 841, when Wulfard found his opponents on
the Seine unwilling to fight, and
fifty years later, when "King Odo caught up with
[the Northrnen] at Wailers, but
not in the way that he wanted, for, having abandoned
their loot, they escaped by
scattering through the woods, and so regained their
camp.,,163The reason for this
behavior is clear, namely that the Vikings were not an
invading army seeking territory to
conquer, but a series of fast-moving warbands,
each hungry for loot. Normandy was
not conquered by Rollo as Saxony was by
Charlemagne, but granted by
Charles the Simple much as tracts of Frisia had been
given in benefice to other
Scandinavian chiefs by Frankish rulers before him,
perhaps even including
Charlemagne.!" This made it particularly difficult for the
Carolingians to crush the raiders,
for defeat in battle might remove them in the short
term, but only some kind of
agreement offered the hope of lasting exclusion. That is
why Frankish rulers ended up
offering benefices in exchange for conversion and
commendation, or, like their
Anglo-Saxon counterparts, paying tribute in exchange
for a promise of
departure.l'"
We have also considered the
possibility that weaknesses in the Carolingian military
organization might have undermined
the defense of Francia and benefited the
Viking attackers. Previous authors
have suggested that the mobilization of the army
was too slow to deal with these
fast-moving raiders and that the lack of booty might
have lessened the resolve of the
Frankish nobility.l'" We have concluded that both
these explanations lack substance,
since under the provisions of the lantweri local
armies could have been raised
relatively quickly, motivated to defend not simply the
161AF891 (n. 14 above): Kurze 119-120 (sepibus
more eorum munlcione septa securi consederunt]
Reuter 121; Regino 891 (n. 43 above) 138 (ligno et
terrae congerie more solito se communiunl).
162 AV886 (n. 41 above) 61; Regino 887 (n. 43 above) 126.
163As nn. 146 and 148 above.
164Coupland,"Poachers"
(n. 7
above)
esp. 87-88.
16sCoupland,"Tribute
payments" (n. 7 above) 68-69, 72.
166Seeat nn. 31 and 38 above.
70 SIMON COUPLAND
kingdom, but also their own homes
and families. Some of these armies were admittedly
poorly trained, armed and
equipped, and paid the penalty for their shortcomings,
167but others were more than
equal to the task. Their zeal and potential
effectiveness was exemplified in
865, when Robert the Strong led one local force
which "killed more than 500
of the Northmen who were based on the Loire, without
loss to his own side," and
an army of Aquitanians "battled with the Northmen who
were camped on the Charente under
Sigfrid, and killed around 400 of them, while
the rest fled back to their
ships.,,168The principal weakness of the Frankish forces
which has been identified here
was the lack of assault ships which could attack the
Vikings' island bases, leaving
the initiative always with the Scandinavians and the
Franks vulnerable to surprise
attack.
Ninth-century authors offered
other reasons for the Franks' inability to overcome
the Vikings. One blamed the
cowardice of the army's commanders.l'" but this
almost certainly reflected the
strongly held view of the clerical writers of the day that
it was the duty of the laity to
defend the church and the kingdom by defeating and
expelling the pagan
enemy.'?" There is ample evidence of resistance to the Vikings
by the aristocracy, several of
whom gave their lives in the defense of the realm.i"
Other contemporaries, such as
Ermentarius and the St. Vaast annalist, saw the
problem as the Franks' internal
divisions.l72
This
was clearly a factor which
contributed to the Vikings'
success, and here there is a significant difference
between the reign of Charlemagne
and the later ninth century. Charlemagne of
course faced internal dissent and
had to win over his magnates with gifts of wealth
or prestige. Yet he never risked
a rival Frankish ruler invading his kingdom while on
campaign, as happened to Charles
the Bald and Lothar IT in 858,173nor suffered
incursions from pagan enemies
while he was seeking to consolidate his grip on the
throne, as happened to Charles
the Bald in the early 840s. Worse, contemporaries
reported that those enemies had
been encouraged to attack the West Frankish
kingdom by Lothar I, initially as
a way of weakening the position of his father,
Louis the Pious, and later in
support of his dream of empire during the civil war.'?'
In the memorable phrase of Gwyn
Jones, "It
must
have appeared to Charles [the
Bald] as though he was a man with
a wolf at his throat and a wasp in his hair, and in
this menagerie of menace the
Danes were the wasp.,,175
In short, it appears that it was Frankish
politics and Scandinavian tactics, including
their choice of island bases,
which represented the most significant obstacles
to the Carolingian armies in
their struggles against the Vikings, rather than
any innate weakness in their
military structures or strategies.
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167Seeat nn. 39, 43, and 121 above.
I6IAB 865 (n. 12 above): Grat 122, 124; Nelson 127,128.
169Seeat n. 26 above.
17°Coupland,"Rod of God's wrath" (n. 7 above) 547-549; "Tribute
payments" (n. 7
above)
71.
I7IE.g.,at nn. 40, 17, 99,115, and 122 above.
JnSee at nn. 25 and 103 above.
I7lSee at n. 100 above.
I74See Coupland, "Poachers" (n. 7 above) 90--91.
mG. Iones, A History of the Vikings (London 1968)
213.