Walter Emil Kaegi, Jr.

Some Thoughts on Byzantine Military Strategy

© Hellenic College Press, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1983

 

Page 24

In part, because of the slowness of communications and other logistical difficulties, the military texts and narratives do not justify any effort to impute a "grand strategy," or rigorous comprehensive or total strategy for all frontiers of the empire; the lack of anything resembling a Joint Chiefs of Staff or General Staff reinforced that absence. The closest approach to any grand strategy would be the broader world view of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos in his De Administrando Imperio, in which there is an interlocking diplomatic and military perspective.

Byzantine manuals of strategy and tactics assume a general who is responsible in a specific local situation, and who may often be cut off from contact with the capital and the emperor and who, therefore, must be expected to possess wide authority and initiative in waging war.

Finally, such concepts as center of gravity, emphasized by Clausewitz, or the American one of escalation, are not present in Byzantine strategic works.

However limited these Byzantine manuals on strategy and tactics may appear to be, they have no real counterpart, to my knowledge, in medieval western Europe, where it appears that translations of the Late Roman military writer Vegetius, virtually unchanged, are the only extant formal studies of principles of warfare. One possible explanation (suggested to me by my colleague, Professor Peter Dembowski, who is a specialist on Old French literature), is that it was contrary to the prevailing values of medieval western European warriors to engage in the intellectual study of warfare. If such is the case, the Byzantine adaptation and continuation of Graeco-Roman reflections on warfare are unique. It is not surprising that in the sixteenth century various Byzantine strategic manuals such as the Taktika of Leo VI served as important models for the efforts of Maurice and Johann of Nassau to reorganize military tactics, formations, commands, and drills. (On this see, especially the important researches of Werner Hahlweg and Michael Roberts.)

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