A History of Strategy Read Online Free PDF Page B

in battle; daring and impetuous as they are, they consider any timidity and even a short retreat as a disgrace.” However, “they are hurt by suffering and fatigue … [as well as] heat, cold, rain, lack of provisions (especially of wine) and postponement of battle.” Therefore, “in warring against them one must avoid engaging in pitched battles, especially in the early stages. But do make use of well-planned ambushes, sneak attacks, and stratagems.”
    Finally, part 12 of the
Strategikon
deals with infantry, an arm which, by that time, had been relegated to the sidelines. Taken as a whole, the work is a masterpiece of sorts. However, the other Byzantine works on military art which have come down to us—all that remains of a vast literature—are less comprehensive and less informative. The earliest of the lot is an anonymous 6th-century treatise whose main subjects are siege warfare on the one hand and the operations of the cavalry phalanx on the other. Then we have the
Tacticon
, an essay on military organization and battle-arrays attributed to Emperor Leo the Wise (866–912). Though usually mentioned in a single breath with the
Strategikon
, in fact it is much less interesting and less original. It is largely an abbreviation of its predecessor and also contains entire passages lifted straight out of Onasander. The list is completed by two late-ninth century essays. One is said to have been the work of Emperor Nicophorus and deals with skirmishing. The other, which is anonymous, examines the way campaigns should be organized.
    All these volumes reflect the workings of a highly sophisticated, articulated armed force with numerous subdivisions and an emphasis on combined arms. As might perhaps be expected from the “Byzantines,” all also display a strong penchant for secrecy, flexibility, cunning and guile in order to achieve victory. In this respect they resemble the Chinese classics. However, since war is regarded purely as an instrument in the hands of the emperor the underlying humanitarianism which makes the latter so attractive is entirely absent.
    During the time when the Byzantine Empire flourished much of Western Europe had been overrun by Barbarian tribes. Their preferred form of military literature, if that is the term, consisted of the
chansons de geste
. They were narrative songs in which the (usually legendary) exploits of (usually legendary) heroes were celebrated. So, for example, the
Chanson de Roland
as the most famous composition of all; so too many others of varying literary quality. Even later, when the higher classes at any rate ceased being illiterate, the Latin West in spite of its marked warlike qualities did not have either professional soldiers or standing armies. Possibly as a result, it produced remarkably little by the way of military textbooks.
    Since Byzantine works only became available after the humanist revival, the most popular treatises by far were Frontinus and Vegetius, as already noted. The latter in particular graced many a princely library of which we are informed, including that of Richard Lionheart. These two were supplemented by a number of others whose subject was not so much military theory and practice as the art of “chivalry” and the rules of war. An outstanding specimen is Honoré Bonet, whose Tree of Battles (
L’arbre des battailes
) was written around 1400. Bonet was a monk and a doctor of law. His professed goal was to help mitigate the evils of war—this was the time of the Hundred Years War—which, as a native of Provence, he could see all around him.
    In the introduction he defines war as “a discord or conflict that has arisen on account of certain things displeasing to the human will, to the end that such conflict should be turned into agreement and reason.” Next, to determine “whence came jurisdiction” (i.e. the origins of the laws which he cites), he gives a brief historical account of “the four great kingdoms of the past.” They are