Augustine Legionaries

Vikings and Saxon Warriors

It is not necessarily true, in fact probably is not true, either in the sense that the civilized armies were outnumbered, or that barbarians necessarily fought in an undisciplined way.

From my long-ago readings of Caesar, and later battles of the expanding Roman empire, I seem to recall that the legions were very often outnumbered by the assorted Gallic tribes, who were larger men wielding longer swords. Yet the locked Roman line, usually three deep, of shorter men with shorter swords the points of which were used to cut the inner thigh of the opponent and open the femoral artery, often chewed its way through the other force. Gauls were mostly into the warrior psychology, legions were made up of soldiers.

 

Josephus described legion training, in which the men practiced with leaden swords. His words were “their drills? were bloodless battles, their battles were bloody drills”.

 

Have not smaller forces achieved victory over much larger forces in numerous examples in ancient history? Can we not find any examples in which that is explainable primarily by the discipline and professionalism of the smaller forces The slaughter of the French knights by the English longbows might be considered another example of soldiers versus warriors.

 

Yes, not every “barbarian” army was undisciplined, and the “civilized” armies were not always outnumbered badly, but to dismiss the idea that disciplined military forces can and have defeated larger, less disciplined forces often would be a bit rash.

 

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My primary reference here as a Norwegian is of course the Viking warriors. While not representing any consolidated state, they appeared both barbarian and organized at the same time.

 

Vikings fought in lose formations made up of 10-15 men, a so called “sveit” (the term is to day used in Norwegian air power terminology), which proved both mobile and able to give the warriors mutual protection. If outnumbered, they entered into a “kringvern”, a 360 degree position where they fought back to back. The Norwegian infantry use this term today to describe a similar formation used when making halts during patrolling, disembarking from vehicles etc.

 

Also, the Vikings were able to launch comparatively lengthy sieges and campaigns in medieval Europe. Usually choosing retreat if faced by superior numbers, they also showed just as high level of discipline, training and resilience as soldiers representing much more complex societies. If having access to navigable waterways (and most were to the Vikings), they could bring supplies and reinforcements into places where their opponents would not think it possible. I.e. in 860, the Vikings attacked Constantinople, the capital of the East Roman Empire. They circumvented its mighty defences by rolling their ships over land on logs across the isthmus and attacked from the Black Sea side, taking the defenders by surprise.

 

During the winter 885-886, according to the saga, the Danes managed to lay siege to Paris with 30 000 men – a disputed figure, but of which only half would be an impressive number to command and organize over such a lengthy period in Medieval Europe.

 

As an anecdote, it can also be noted that Arabic traders held the Vikings in high regard for their personal hygiene – usually a feature of modern civilization? While contemporary fellow Europeans hardly knew the meaning of the word soap, the Vikings washed themselves once a week, making soap from cooking ash and sheep fat together. The modern day term for Saturday in Scandinavian languages is derived from Norse “laugardag” meaning the day for washing. Also, I read a protocol from a Norwegian court some later in the Middle Ages, where a man murdered another for making remarks on his body odors. Exposed to cold climate, good hygiene was probably more paramount to the Vikings than others.

 

And: it is archeologically certified that Medieval Scandinavians were much taller than their contemporaries, based on measuring excavated human remains. Many ex-Vikings served in the Imperial Guard of the Byzantine Emperor. They were preferred not only for their skills but also for their physical posture. Their physical features were owed not to a small degree to their varied diet during childhood, consisting of more dairy products, fish and meat than elsewhere in Europe. But genes also played a part, which is also visible in modern Scandinavian/Germanic peoples being slightly taller.

A Norwegian man is to day 179,9 cm (Swedes and Dutch are even taller), compared to the average American of European decent who is 176,7 cm.

A similar example of civilized barbarism is observable in Norse governance.

A quasi form of representative government was developed, where envoys of territorially defined constituencies met regularly to approve laws, later endorse election of kings and pass judgment in criminal matters. While similar bodies certainly existed elsewhere, it is interesting to note that the modern Icelandic “Allthing” can trace its roots directly back to the first parliament set up by Norse settlers in the 8-900s AD.

Frode Lindgjerdet

Norwegian Home Guard

 

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To wit, it is surprising how little we actually know of the Viking era. For me, the most telling point is that a period of great disruption and disorder in the North Sea basin _coincided_ with the rise of a commercial fishery penetrating inland markets according to recent archaeological work, and the abrupt rise of states or proto-states in Flanders and Normandy, in precisely the areas one would assume were most affected by this era of seaborne razzia.

(Tellingly, the “Northmen” emerged in the north of France at Seine-mouth at the very time of the famous siege of Paris. I would welcome any evidence that these Northmen were, in fact, Danes, much less Norwegians.)

 

We have attempted to understand these events in terms of externalities, in particular in the form of the barbarian, the savage and natural warrior, as opposed to the milites who manifests the virtues of civilisation. My usual cynicism provokes the suspicion that we are seeing scapegoats at work. The politics of the North Sea basin in the great era of the emergence of the English and French states was dark and dirty, and when cruel and dark deeds were done at Lindisfarne or Paris, it proved valuable for people, often people writing long after the date, to blame sea-wolves from beyond the fold.

 

At least, these are the meditations provoked by the blurb for the much-delayed Richard Hodges, _Goodbye to the Vikings_. The more interesting question  is how the milites came to be the despised side of the equation, the “warrior” the hero. Why are we setting ourselves against the state that can run a camp at Masada? It is not as though a victorious Temple would have been any the less organised. What, exactly, are we saying today when we embrace our “warrior” side?

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If it is any comfort, I doubt that historians today would see the Viking raid on Lindisfarne in 793AD as worse than other raids, in terms of “human-rights abuses”. It made a deep impression on the British chroniclers of the time, who were mainly monastics, but it is important to note the reason for this – it was a challenge to an established order. Despite Alcuin’s graphic comments, Simeon of Durham’s survey of contemporary accounts indicates that there was nothing particularly brutal about the raid by dark ages (or even medieval) standards. The raiders did not kill all the monks, probably only a few to terrorise the others into submissions, and they took slaves – hardly an unusual practice for a raiding party at the time.

 

I don’t think there is any reason to doubt that the raiders at Lindisfarne were Scandinavian, probably Danish. Anyone who challenges that theory should set forth their evidence. The idea of a scapegoat for local raiding is most unlikely – the manner in which the monastic chroniclers used the disaster to castigate the local Anglo-Saxon rulers for lack of piety, poor kingship etc indicates that they would have not have hesitated to blame them directly, if there had been the slightest evidence of their involvement.

 

Lindisfarne was an extremely tempting target, one that the locals were not able to exploit because its very existence as a treasury was due to local politics. But primarily, the Scandinavians were after land, not loot, as demonstrated in the ensuing decades.

 

 I am not sure that I follow your query re the siege of Paris (meaning the siege of 885 AD), but regardless, I would strongly recommend reading several Dark Ages commentators before concluding that these raiders were not Scandinavian. Several accounts are available in translation on the internet.

The commentators seem in little doubt that the raiders were “northmen”, and that many of them were “Danes”. This is not just restricted to commentators hostile to the Norman kingdom or its antecedents.

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From my long-ago readings of Caesar, and later battles of the expanding Roman empire, I seem to recall that the legions were very often outnumbered by the assorted Gallic tribes, who were larger men wielding longer swords. Yet the locked Roman line, usually three deep, of shorter men with shorter swords the points of which were used to cut the inner thigh of the opponent and open the femoral artery, often chewed its way through the other force. Gauls were mostly into the warrior psychology, legions were made up of soldiers.

 

Josephus described legion training, in which the men practiced with leaden swords. His words were “their drills? were bloodless battles, their battles were bloody drills”.

 

Have not smaller forces achieved victory over much larger forces in numerous examples in ancient history? Can we not find any examples in which that is explainable primarily by the discipline and professionalism of the smaller forces The slaughter of the French knights by the English longbows might be considered another example of soldiers versus warriors.

 

Yes, not every “barbarian” army was undisciplined, and the “civilized” armies were not always outnumbered badly, but to dismiss the idea that disciplined military forces can and have defeated larger, less disciplined forces often would be a bit rash.

 

From the top:

i) Both Julius Caesar and Josephus would amongst those ideologically-motivated sources I invited historians to critique. I think, on consideration, that Caesar might have had some ulterior purpose in claiming in letters to Rome that he was outnumbered when he won his glorious victories over the enemies of the Roman state to which he looked to hold further elective office, especially those offices elected by people of the same class as his centurions. As for Josephus, in his later days as a defected Jewish rebel and member of the Roman cognoscenti, ulterior issues just might have crept into his discussion of how Roman soldiery was so superior to, for example, Jewish rebels, that rebellion was futile.

ii) Every army that has ever fought a battle has been outnumbered. You just have to look for the right source from the right side of the battle. When I have to evaluate such questions, I look at logistics. Or I look at campaigns such as Alesia, where the idea that the Romans were outnumbered seems utterly unbelievable.

iii) Were Roman soldiers really smaller than Gaullic fighters? Crazed nineteenth century racial scientists apart, no-one claims to know enough about mass Classical medical history to put average heights forward, and our ancient sources may be, y’know, fibbing. We _do_ know that the Roman legions were highly selectively recruited for height among other things. Gallic tribal levies? Not so much.?

 iv) Roman soldiers had the advantage of training, to be sure. But Classical Greek armies had no more training than classic Viking armies, and we all know how important it is to “keep the shield wall together!”

v) And on a side note, without wishing to doubt the authority of Polybius, what the heck is it with swords? Yes, Roman soldiers carried hangers, which they later traded in for longer weapons. But longarms have always been the main weapon of infantry in formation, and there is no doubt that Roman soldiers carried spears, used spears, and relied on spears first.

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As a first-time responder to this forum, I would like to submit my comments regarding soldiers vs. warriors. Reading the previous posts has helped me to understand that I see the term soldier as a far greater compliment than is the term warrior.

 

There is an aspect to soldiering that is not contained within the  “warrior” construct: it is the ability and willingness to persevere, to continue  the march, to go on despite danger and discomfort, and do what soldiers  frequently do: sleep in the mud and the rain. The word “soldier” contains within it attributes of loyalty, commitment, courage and self-sacrifice not contained within the understanding of the term “warrior.” While soldiers are also warriors in the sense that they are trained — and willing — to kill the enemy, the term  “soldier” implies an understanding that there is a great deal involved in waging  war that is not glamorous or exciting, but rather is repetitious, pedestrian and  tedious.

 

To my mind, “warrior” connotes an individual going his own way in the world of violence. I would point to the American Indian who, while a warrior, was not a soldier in the strictest sense because he could always opt out. He could say, “You have a grievance with so-and-so and want to kill him, go ahead, that is no business of mine.” The Indian warrior’s commitment was to his family and his tribe. The soldier’s commitment is to his unit and his fellows.

 

Soldiers are unique in that they have been removed from their families and homes and have been placed in a context where their devotion turns inward to the unit and the fellows standing by their side. That is why the Army’s attempt at recruiting an “Army of One” failed so miserably.  One does not join the Army to be out there on the battlefield alone. You go with your mates into the fray. Side by side.

 

In literature and film, we can compare the warrior and the soldier and see the ultimate fictional warrior as “Conan the Barbarian,” but the ultimate soldier is the nameless man in the 45th Massachusetts Volunteers obeying the order to storm the walls of Fort Wagner knowing he was probably going to die.

 

The warrior is an individual; the soldier is part of a group. The warrior’s strength lies in his individual abilities, the soldier’s strength lies in his unit’s abilities.

 

This is not news. Every soldier who has experienced combat has testified to this reality. The problem with the Army is that it tends to forget the lessons it has learned over the years, and the generals, in their eagerness to be original, continue to tinker.

 

That is why I decry the Army Brass’ relentless interfering with unit make-up. Unlike the Marine Corps, which to their credit has a clear  understanding of the importance of tradition for unit cohesion, the Army is  forever saddled with Chiefs of Staff who feel it incumbent upon them to  “leave their mark” before they retire. In the 1950s they came up with the “Pentomic Divisions” before they went back to the “Square” divisions. At one point, they switched from brown boots to black boots. One Korea vet told me  of how when that order came down, they were all scrambling in search of black  boot dye in order to conform with that change. What difference did it make?  None at all.

 

The current mania is for brigades. They throw battalions from different regiments into the mix and make up a brigade. Regiments are passé as far as the brass-bound ladder climbers in the Pentagon are concerned. They are not interested in how regimental identity is critical to unit cohesion and morale; they are interested in their personal “legacy.” They believe that flattering the enlistee with glowing terms like “warrior” will promote enlistment.

And perhaps they are right; to the individual tech manning the radar scope, unit cohesion may not be that important, but for the soldier on the line it is a matter of life or death.

 

Being on the line is where it becomes important to know — as a  member of the 14th Infantry Regiment — that your motto “The right of the Line”  was a phrase spoken by General Meade when preparing for the Grand Review of the troops at the end of the Civil War. Because the 14th had always been to the front in battle, he said, they deserved the place of honor in the parade.

 

And if you’re with the 15th Infantry, it is important that you know that your motto, “Can Do” refers to the years between the wars when the 15th was posted in Tientsin, China, and through whose ranks passed names like George Catlett Marshall, Joseph Stilwell and Matthew Ridgway. And let’s not forget Audie Murphy in World War Two.

 

If you’re with the 9th Infantry, the “Golden Dragons,” it is  important that you know that your motto: “Keep up the Fire” were the last words  uttered by Col. Emerson Liscum as he lay dying before the walls of Peking on 13  July 1900.

 

If you’re with the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment, it is important that you know that your nickname “Rakkasans” comes from having spent years on occupation duty in Japan after World War II.

 

The ultimate example is the French Foreign Legion whose soldiers  are so removed from national identification and so focused internally that their  motto is, “Legio Patria Nostra,” The Legion is our Fatherland.

 

Unit identification — small unit, especially — is fundamental to a successful fighting force. It is all well and good to say that you were with the 101st at Normandy, but most of those old soldiers will tell you that they were with the 506th PIR or the 502nd PIR, or they walked onto the beach with the 327th. The men of the 11th Armored Division in that war don’t say they were with Patton’s Third Army, they say they were with the 11th Armored. And so it goes, the smaller the unit, the greater the identification.

 

In my experience, when talking with other vets of the Vietnam War, we begin by mentioning which division we were in, then working our way down to which regiment, then which battalion and if we find we were in the same company, we want to know what platoon you were in. Fourth platoon?  Me too!

 

One of the most pernicious acts perpetrated by the “modern” army (it is always striving to be “modern”) is to continually fiddle with what has worked over the years. It is clear we have too many generals with too little to do.

They need to screw with the uniforms, the head gear (they are all wearing berets now — one of the most useless pieces of cloth you can find — distinctive, but not functional), and the make-up of the units. Since they can’t do anything creative, they will make changes just to see what will happen. From what I’ve observed, the soldier today knows next to nothing about his regiment and I believe he suffers for it.

 

Because they are uninformed of their regimental history, many of today’s soldiers don’t see the continuity, the connection between themselves and the men who have been in the Army over the generations. And it is that continuity which gives one a feeling of being part of a larger whole, and it is that feeling which puts steel in your spine which you didn’t know you had. With that kind of identification, your allegiance expands to include not only the men of your squad, but also the countless unknown soldiers who have gone before you and to whom you now feel you owe a debt. The individual begins to see a connection with the history of the unit of which he is a part. That is the most significant difference between the warrior and the soldier. And because of that unit cohesion, I believe an equal number of soldiers will defeat in battle an equal number of warriors.

 

And if my peroration strikes some readers as being overly emotional, I apologize for that, but the subject is an emotional one for me.  Forgive me if I sound like I’m lecturing; I’m sure you are all aware of the  points I’ve made, but combat is emotional, and studying war while overlooking  that component of it would be missing the whole point.

Alex “Doc Ollie” Yaron

Co. A, 1st Battalion, 327th Airborne Infantry, 101st Airborne Division Vietnam 1968 — Fourth  Platoon

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I read Alex Yaron’s post with great interest: certainly emotional, but why not?

 

I just want to offer a couple of thoughts on the warrior, rather than on the soldier. I would not take for granted that warriors were not removed from families. Some could afford to travel with them while on campaign or to fight at little distance from them, but others embarked on long raid on land (the Scythians for instance, or the Crusaders in the Middle Ages) or the sea (the Vikings) which could last years. More important, I have the impression that, in order to build up that kind of psychological strength which was necessary to put up with the dangers and cruelty of war, both soldiers and warriors in pre-modern times (let’s say until at least 1600, roughly) could not really invest much emotionally on private and family life. In other words, they may have not been removed from their families physically, but they were removed from what we would consider now a “normal” family life. It is just a guess, I admit I did not do any research on the topic. On the other hand, family life as we see it today is pretty much a 19th century bourgeois invention.

 

Secondly, I am not sure that the warrior would go alone into battle. Certainly they were not trained to fight as a team, but they had some form of cohesion, otherwise they could not have survived. Some indeed fought alone like the Scandinavian berserkers, but they were a sort of “elite fighters” and were the exception rather than the rule. Perhaps they could step out and not join the fight, like the American Indians, but at what price in terms of social stigma? Certainly warriors were aware of this risk, so some societies (I am aware of the Germans, the pre-Islamic Turks, the Mongols, perhaps the Celts) created special groups (the so-called comitatus, as far as the German world is concerned) whose members pledged loyalty to each other with a sworn oath. The identification of these men with their “unit” was deep and sometimes it even modified their social habits. Only it was not a military unit in the modern sense of the word.

 

Thirdly, I most definitely would not say that warriors have no sense of continuity with the past and of being part of a tradition. In many pre-modern societies (nomadic or not, tribal or not), the cult or at least respect for the heroes and the ancestors is of paramount importance. Hence the importance of sagas, genealogies, epic poems and the like, from Homer up to the Highland clans before 1745. This continuity, and the necessity not to tarnish one’s family reputation, was one of the factors that forced the warrior to fight although he was not legally bound to do that.

 

Finally, I perfectly agree that eroding the regimental structure of a western army is not a good idea. On the other hand, it is just a consequence of the erosion of “tradition” and of its weight in western societies in general.

 

Giorgio Rota

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The distinction between warrior and soldier can sometimes be inherently subjective. In my eyes, the term soldier denotes not as much his qualities but his legitimacy as a participant in armed struggle. He is a figure abiding by the codes of war and represents an organized force with a formal command structure. The force he represents is also part of a political entity controlling territory and he is entitled to POW-status if captured by the enemy.

 

In short: he is a legal combatant, preferably representing an internationally recognized state, and a warrior is not necessarily this. The question is whether “soldier” simply is a narrower definition of the more general term “warrior” or something totally different.

 

Anyway, it annoys me big time when media reports calls the Taliban or Hams for soldiers- it is degrading for those of us who pride themselves of being – or once having been soldiers.

Frode Lindgjerdet

Norwegian Home Guard

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Allen Bass wrote: “Primarily, the use of the term “warrior” seems to me to be an effort to instill a fighting spirit, much like the “spirit of the bayonet” from the days in the bayonet pit.”

 

I have to say that to me, being born in 1964, the word soldier brings about images of soldiers from the Napoleonic wars or the two world wars, marching in a column or living in the trenches. I do not know which images do they bring to the mind of potential present-day recruits or of soldiers on active duty. Certainly the word “warrior” has more heroic, flamboyant connotations, although this is most probably due to our faulty knowledge of the past. So, perhaps Mr. Bass is right.

However, a useful way to make a distinction between soldier and warrior is probably going back to the etymological roots of the word “soldier”.

The soldier is the one who receives a pay, a regular amount of money (solde in French, soldo in Italian) in order to serve and fight. The German language developed two words, Soldat (soldier) and Soeldner (mercenary).

The necessity to pay the troops regularly required the creation of an administration that warriors don’t need. It also created new obligations, because both the employer and the employee are bound by a contract. The situation changed after the rise of modern nation-states with national standing armies, but in pre-modern times employers had to pay if they wanted to preserve the loyalty of their troops. I must admit that I know nothing about the importance of pay in Antiquity, for instance in Macedonian or Roman armies. Of course, also the warrior gains something from his participation in war, for instance booty.

However, he may be motivated by other and less tangible factors, for instance a fighting ethos which defines (or is supposed to define) the society to which he belongs. On the other hand, I am sure there was a number of people in say, Homeric or Viking armies, who would have gladly avoided taking part in military campaigns and who were more or less forced to do so. And on the other hand, what to say of the notion of glory, which was a powerful factor (especially among the officers) until recent times ?

So, perhaps drawing a line between soldiers and warriors is not so easy.

I do not completely agree with Frode Lindgjerdet when he writes: “In my eyes, the term soldier denotes not as much his qualities but his legitimacy as a participant in armed struggle. He is a figure abiding by the codes of war and represents an organized force with a formal command structure. The force he represents is also part of a political entity controlling territory and he is entitled to POW-status if captured by the enemy. In short: he is a legal combatant, preferably representing an internationally recognized state, and a warrior is not necessarily this”.

Probably we can agree on the fact that an 1870-style franc-tireur or a WW2-style partisan are not soldiers, at least not legally. But a Pashtun (not necessarily a Taliban) tribal fighter? or a 17th century Irish or Scottish clansman ? They have no doubt they have a legitimate right to fight, they have their own codes of war, and above all they fight in the only way they know, so their only choice is between fighting or not.

Giorgio Rota