The fall of the roman military power

[P. Lilius Frugius Simius]

hiyas there, Robert,

Yes, I see your point, let me finish this off by clariying some things and asking some questions... :-) )

True, but nobody pushed the Huns.

Hi David,
I think we see each others' point of view.
Just some remarks, then.
Did nobody push the Huns? How do you know?

(...)

The Huns in Europe of course were under pressure themselves, as had been the case with every nomad society before them and after them. If the Huns can indeed be equated with the Hsiung-Nu from Chinese sources, it was the Chine who presured them into moving West. Soon after the Hephtalite threat is gone, we already see the first true Turkish tribes appear in the form of the "Blue' or heavenly Turks (Kok-Türük).
Of course someone pressure the Huns.

I have never thought of this subject in these terms. My statement was referring to the fact that what destroyed Attila's Huns were internal factors, such as his Germanic and Iranian subject tribes uniting against Attila's sons and finally dissolving the Hun Empire, not as the Huns themselves did to basically everybody else, pushing them further and further.

The great Eurasian plains were spilling nomadic groups almost regularly, and those groups pushed everyone else, and they were being pushed by some unknowns, be it demographic pressure, natural catastrophes, climate changes, factions of their culture that did not had to migrate, or new, powerful enemies that entered from "Beyond".

But I think the 'Black' Huns that formed the core of Attila's Empire were simply installed there, not running away from other groups, but by following the trail of Roman gold. That's what I meant by 'nobody pushed the Huns'.

Thanks a bunch for this insight! Of course, if Huns were, indeed, uro-altaic, they had to be related with later Turkish waves that penetrated deep into the West in Asia and Europe, well before the Mongols.

Yes, Attila used infantry. And lots of it. Germanic, of course, but nonetheless many people see the Hunnic invasions as a) purely Hunnic and b) only cavalry.

I think it's only natural, as they were seen as nomadic and mounted archers. However the core of the Hunnic Empire in the West was surely well below the 50% mark, and that probably explains why it did fall so "easily" once Attila died.

Also, the great plains can only sustain so many horses... Heather's numbers, about 10 horses per man (to allow for rest to the other mounts) I see a bit high, maybe 5 horses per man would be enough (of course, it may also be a cultural trait, I don't have any numbers) but 50,000-100,000 horses only allow for some 5,000-10,000 Huns... The rest must have been Germans and Iranians, which would have about 1-10 ratio of horsemen to infantry, maybe a bit higher as late Germanic tribes had higher populations and economies... Therefore, in a huge army of 50,000 fighters, only about 15,000 would be cavalry, counting Huns, Germans from many tribes, Sarmatians and Alans.

(... Visigoths in Battle of Châlons ...) They did, but from an analysis of the Visigothic battles during the 5th c. (Elton, H. (1992): Defence in fifth-century Gaul, in: Drinkwater & Elton: Fifth-Century Gaul : A Crisis of Identity?, pp. 167-176) has shown that the Visigothic army, operating on its own, rarely scored big successes and mostly lost to Roman armies.

I didn't know that analysis, but it's a fact in itself that History shows: Goths were not really great fighters by themselves, and they routinely lost against Roman (and other Germanic tribes) when going by themselves: Stilicho defeated Alaric routinely, he defeated Radagaisus; then Constantius fought them in Narbonensis, until he got a new Visigothic king (Roman political interference, which was the norm for the Empire) and Gala Placidia (and, basically, access to the throne of Honorius's); then then Franks and the Burgundians took them out of Tolossa and pushed them into Hispania, the Byzantines took a good chunk of land around Cartago Nova, and it took them over a century to recover it (because Byzantium was weak elsewhere)... Late Visigothic armies (in the final years of the Kingdom of Toledo) were probably the best ones in terms of army equilibrium and strategical deploy, but by then the ranks of the Visigoths were exhausted by intestine wars between king wannabees, and they easily fell to the Arabs once they "invited" them to Hispania to help (battle of Guadalete and the following).

(...) Today with hindsight we of course see that different, but at the time for the locals there was no big difference between a Visigothic force exerting pressure by besieging a Roman town and a Roman general fighting another Roman general!

Interesting... One of the points I am thinking to put into Alaric's personality is his almost obsession for Rome to recognize him as a true Roman, and thus he's becoming magister militum. Of course if he was Roman, all the Goths were Romans, because he was their king, and this things get conveniently transitive... :-) )

Increasingly that changed from 'fighting for Rome' to 'fighting for Roman generals', which is the exact moment when they go their separate ways.

So, in this light, Radagaisus's Goths that joined Alaric after Stilicho's death were simply changing their allegiance to a new magister: instead of Honorius, Alaric? Sounds tremendously attractive... :-) )

Alaric did not try to get the purple for himself, therefore his troops could be seen as simply supporting the magister that followed the "true" emperor, Priscus Attalus, instead of that traitor of Honorius... Cool! :-) )

The Alans still living today are high up in the Caucasus Mountains. This will for sure have an impact on their ability to mobilise true steppe horse archers. Heavy cavalry seems more developed with tribes that are also more dependent on agriculture.

Nod, once you "only" have to wait for them to come to your piece of land, you want a good shock force, no need to run after them, even if you anihilate them all this time, others are bound to, eventually, come...

Which, in a way, was exactly the situation the Western Roman Empire found itself in the V century... However, the huge extent of the limites made the heavy infantry/heavy cavalry impractical, and I guess trying the Chinese-scale version of Hadrian's Wall was impractical, or they would have done it...

Well, thanks for a great thread, I've learned a lot...

gratefully salve!