Walter Emil Kaegi, Jr.

Some Thoughts on Byzantine Military Strategy

© Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1983

 

Page 20

What they provided were some basic ways of thinking about war, including the elementary ones of order, discipline, and the creation of commonly understood verbal commands for movements or evolutions in combat. Their emphasis on these largely explains the Byzantine generals' and strategists' attentiveness to these problems. Devotion to strict order and discipline was a distinctive feature of Byzantine armies in the Middle Byzantine Period, as is evident from a reading of Byzantine strategic writings. But some of what critics regard as the most distinctive features of Byzantine warfare and strategy, the indirect approach, as Sir Basil Liddell-Hart expressed it, or Sir Charles Oman in his History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages, or what Drs. Lilie and Haldon perceive, correctly, in Byzantine defensive policies in Asia Minor in the late seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries -- avoidance of battle, warfare of slow attrition, initial passive resistance to invaders of the countryside, followed by a tactic of seeking to cut off and destroy the invaders piecemeal -- find their anticipation in some of the early Greek strategists and their extant works.

Consider, for example, this following passage:

"Often, a general, on hearing that the enemy are but a day's march distant, will callout his troops and lead them forward, hurrying to come to close quarters with the enemy, who, purposely retreating, do not make a stand against him; and so he assumes that they are afraid and pursues them. This continues until they come into a broken country, surrounded by mountains on all sides, and the general, unsuspecting, still attacks them; next, as he marches against their positions, he is cut off by the enemy from the road by which he led his army in. They seize the passes in front of him, and all the heights round about, and thus confine their enemies in a sort of cage. But the general is carried away by his impetuosity, in the belief that he is pursuing a fleeing enemy, without noticing who is approaching: and later, on looking before and behind and on both sides, and seeing all the hillsides full of the enemy, he and his army will be destroyed by javelins, or unable to fight and unwilling to surrender, he will cause all to die of hunger, or by surrender enable the enemy to dictate whatever terms they wish. Therefore, retreats on the part of the enemy should be suspected and not stupidly followed; the general should observe the country rather than the enemy, and notice through what sort of terrain he is leading his forces; and he should either refrain from advancing and turn aside from the route, or if he does advance, he should take precautions, leaving forces to hold the mountain passes and connecting defiles..." [28]

[28. Onasander 11.3.4 (trans. by Illinois Greek Club in: Aeneas Tacticus, Asclepiodotus, Onasander , Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge 1923,1962,431433)]

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