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Battle Seeking: The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy

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Battle Seeking:
The Contexts and Limits of Vegetian Strategy

Stephen MoriIIo
t

Introduction

Over the last decade or so a consensus has formed about the general shape of
medieval strategy. Although R.C. Smail showed as long ago as 1956 that medi-
eval strategy could be analyzed on its own terms,l books and articles by Bernard
Bachrach, John Gillingham, and others also showed that medieval strategy
could be seen as following many of the fundamental precepts of Vegetius, the
late Roman writer on military affairs.2 Thus, without getting into the question of
whether medieval strategy was always or even often self-consciously Vegetian,3
we may take the term "Vegetian strategy" as convenient shorthand for the
general contours of much medieval strategy.
I shall outline the characteristics of this consensus view more fully in a
moment. For now, it suffices to say that the patterns of Vegetian strategy were
based largely in limitations imposed on medieval commanders by resources,
transport technology, and geography. As these same factors constrained
commanders in ancient and classical times - Vegetius was, after all, a classical
author - Vegetian strategy also characterized much classical warfare. Indeed,
because the conditions governing Vegetian strategy arose from the natural world
and human interaction with nature (geography, agricultural productivity and
seasonality, and so on), it is easy to take the patterns of Vegetian strategy as

1 R.C. Smul, Crusading Warfare 1097-1193 (Cambridge, 1956).

2 See, for example, Bemard Bachrach, FuIk Nena, Neo-Roman Consul (Berkeley, 1993); John
Gillingham, "Richard I and the Science of War in the Middle Ages," in War and Govemment
in the Middle Ages, eds. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1984) and "William the
Bastard at War," in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, eds. Christopher
Harper-Bill, Christopher Holdsworth and Janet Nelson (Woodbridge, 1989); P. Flavii Vegeti
Rlenat| Epitoma Rei Militaris, ed. Alf Önnerfors (Stuttgart, 1995) with selected translation
available in Roots of Strategy, ed. T.R. Phillips (Harrisburg, PA, 1985).
3 As is argued explicitly and consistently by Bachrach: e.g. "The Practical Use of Vegetius' De
Re Militari During the Middle Ages," The Historian 47 (1985), 239-255; for opposing views
cf. Stephen Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings 1066-1135 (Woodbridge, 1994),
p. 118, n. 89 and Michael Prestwich, Armies andWarfare in the Middle Ages: The English
Experience (New Haven, 1996), pp. 18G187.
22 Stephen Morillo
"natural." In support of this claim one could point out the similarities between
the strategies advocated by Vegetius and those advocated by Sun-Tzu, the great
Chinese military analyst who wrote a good 600 years before Vegetius.a To cite
only two cases:
Vegetius: "The main and principal point in war is to secure plenty of provisions
and destroy the enemy by famine."
Sun Tzu: "Hence the wise general sees to it that his troops feed on the enemy,
for one bushel of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of his; one
hundredweight of enemy fodder to twenty hundredweight of his."
Vegetius: "Good officers decline general engagements where the danger is
conìmon, and prefer the employment of strategem and finesse to destroy the
enemy as much as possible in detail and intimidate them without exposing our
own forces."
Sun Tzu: "Thus, those skilled in war subdue the enemy's army withoutbattle."s
That European warfare continued to follow Vegetian patterns well into the eigh-
teenth century further supports the apparent "naturalness" of Vegetian strategy.6
I will not argue with Cliff Rogers' emendation of the usual formulation of
Vegetian warfare elsewhere in this issue: the Vegetian avoidance of battle has
been overstated.T But Vegetian patterns that were still somewhat battle averse,
especially on the defensive,s evidently remain a correct description of much
medieval warfare. But in important ways Rogers' criticism of the Vegetian
4 Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Grifnth (Oxford, 1963). The simila¡ities are most
striking in precisely those areas most universally conditioned by the natural and agricultural
constraints of the pre-modern world. Sun Tzu does not, of course, anticipate the specific orga-
nization and training of the Roman legion in Vegetius (though both stress organization and
discipline), but then medieval commanders had no use for those sections of Vegetius either,
sections whose utility did not become apparent until John and Maurice of Nassau, whose
govemment's abilities to raise and train troops in the Roman manner far exceeded any medi-
eval govemment's.
5 VegetiusinRootsofstrategy,pp. 128,143; SunTzuILl5(p.74), III.10(p.79).
6 See, for example, Ma¡tin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton
(Cambridge, 1977); Christopher Duffy, The Fortess in the Age ofVauban and Frederick the
Great 1660-1789 (London, 1985).
7 Clifford J. Rogers, "The Vegetian 'science of Warfare' in the Middle Ages," above, pages
l-19. I want to thank Cliff for generously allowing me access to several drafts of his paper. I
hope we have both benefited from exchanges which are reflected in our respective footnotes.
See pages 25-28 for further comments on Rogers' criticisms of the Vegetian paradigm in medi-
eval historiography. See also the perceptive comments of John France, Western Warfare in the
Age ofthe Crusades, 1000-1300 (Ithaca, 1999), pp.150-151, who notes the lure ofdecisive-
ness and the contexts of conquest and civil war as encouraging generals to risk battle, though
he does not fully explain why these contexts promote battle seeking. My own formulations of
the Vegetian paradigm do recognize a place for battle in a general's tool kit; see Morillo,
Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, passim.
8 Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of Warfar'," p. 14: "the side which could win by simply relying on
the Vegetian strategy of harassment and defense behind fortifications would often choose to do
so."
Battle Seeking 23
paradigm does not go far enough. What I propose to do is to examine the
contexts and limits of Vegetian strategy, for if the history of human culture
teaches us anything, it is that what seems most "natural" is often highly
constructed, socially and culturally. Some of the contexts and limits I shall
examine may be obvious, but some aren't, and \rye need reminding, I think, of all
of them because classical and medieval "sciences of war," as Vegetian strategy
has often come to be called in the new consensus, are also "cultures of war."
Recognizing this is important, for while the consensus view describes much
medieval warfare, it does not describe it all, and exceptions to such a "natural"
pattern would seem to call for explanation. This paper will sketch the outline of
a general theory of pre-modern strategy, and attempt to place Vegetian patterns
within that more general analysis.
Vegetian Strategy
The major strategic principles embodied in what is called Vegetian strategy are
logistical. Above all, they reflect the limited productivity of traditional agricul-
ture and the seasonal patterns of both that agriculture and the availability of wild
fodder for horses. Vegetius advises cornmanders to live, as far as possible, off
the enemy's land.e Offensive campaigns should seek to support themselves by
foraging and pillaging in enemy territory, activities which not only supply one's
own forces but deny the opponent's own resources to him. If carried out widely
and often enough, the devastation directly undermines the enemy forces'
economic capacity for continued resistance, and threatens the political coher-
ence of enemy territory by exposing the inability of its leaders to protect its
constituent parts.
V/hat is the defense to do in reply? One indirect response is to launch one's
own attack into the territory of the raiders, hoping to draw them back into
defense of their own land. More direct responses include shadowing the
invading army closely enough as to prevent their foraging. Short of supplies and
frustrated by a lack of booty from plundering, the invaders, it is hoped, will go
home. But ultimately, Vegetian strategy assumes the centrality of fortifications
in the defense of territory. Even if raiders pillage their way through some of your
land, if you keep your hold on the forts you keep your hold on the land and
people and live to fight again another day. Thus, the second major activity
attackers engage in is besieging fortifications. This again often resolves into a
logistical battle. Can the besieging army keep itself supplied longer than the
besieged strongpoint can? If the defenders can keep an atmy in the field in addi-
tion to a garrison in the fort, this army might again stay close enough to the
besiegers to hamper their foraging and so drive them off.
Given a vital fortification, a determined and well-supplied besieger, and a
9 Vegetius in Roors of Strategy, p.728.
24 Stephen Morillo
determined relief army, a battle might result. But a final feature of Vegetian
strategy, and the one that earned it the opprobrium of armchair generals weaned
on Clausewitz, is its somewhat limited use of battle as a tool in warfare.lO Battle,
in the contexts Vegetian strategy assumes, was often an indirect path to goals
more directly reached by pillaging and sieges. Furthermore, it was a risky
option: the vagaries of chance could steal from a superior force in one day what
it had worked weeks or months to obtain. Though an attacking force, especially,
might seek battle for strategic reasons, such battle seeking was closely
constrained by considerations of topography, tactical systems, relative force,
and so on; on the defensive, only dire necessity constituted a good reason for
actively seeking battle without overwhelming advantages of terrain (including
fortifications) or force. 1 1
Logistical warfare; a central role for fortifications; a resulting paucity of
battles: Vegetian strategy in a nutshell. Again, as long as we avoid the question
-
of intentionality that is, of whether Vegetius was the explicit teacher of such
patterns to medieval commanders - it is widely agreed that this pattern describes
much western medieval warfare, ranging from the career of William the
Conqueror to many campaigns of the Hundred Years War, from Fulk Nerra's
Anjou to the Syrian frontiers of the Crusader States. As a quick reading of "On
Skirmishing Warfare" shows, Byzantine defensive strategy from the seventh to
the mid-tenth century was certainly Vegetian, as ambush, trickery, denial of
supplies and counter-raids all precede offering battle in defense of Byzantine
territory. As the Byzantine author notes, "'When the situation is such that they
cannot confront the enemy directly, they may employ this method, and they will
preserve both themselves and their country from harm."l2 Much Islamic
warfare, especially against the Byzantines and the Crusader States, conformed
to this pattern, as did the warfare of many of Byzantium's other neighbors and
its successor in the area, the Ottomans.l3 Apparent exceptions, such as Saladin's
battle seeking strategy of the 1180s or Edward III's campaigns in France,14
appear on closer analysis to be the result of force disparities and other special
circumstances that made battle seeking sensible at least for one side in a basi-
cally Vegetian context. Looking even more broadly, most Chinese warfare,
10 E.g. Charles Oman, History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages (repnnt of 1924 edn., New
York,1959),2:201.
1l Cf. Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of Warfare'," pp. 14-15.
12 "skirmishing" inThree Byzantine MilitaryTreatises, ed. G.T. Dennis (Washington, DC, 1985),
pp. 137-239, quote on p. 147; see also Mark Vy'hittow, The Making of Byzantium, 600-1025
(Berkeley, 1996), p. 175-181.
13 Whittow, ch. 8 and pp.327-335; Patricia Crone, "The Early Islamic World," in Kurt Raaflaub
and Nathan Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The
Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica (Canlùrndge, MA, 1999), 309-332; Rhoades
Murphey, OttomanWarfare 1500-1700 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1999).
14 Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp (Woodbridge, 2001), makes a convincing case for
Edward's battle seeking as a central component ofhis strategy in France. See below, p. 40, for
further analysis of Edward III's campaigns.
Battle Seeking 25
whether on the frontiers or internally, also followed Vegetian patterns (though a
Sino-centrist might wish to call this Sun-tzu-ian strategy).l5
Given Rogers' criticisms of the Vegetian paradigm for describing medieval
\ilarfare, however, several further comments concerning some of his points may
be necessary, though his general point that the place of battle in the paradigm
has been unduly de-emphasized is certainly correct, as noted above.16 First, the
place of battle in the paradigm. Rogers claims to find a logical flaw in the
theory, in that if, as Vegetius advises, "one should do whatever one's enemy
wishes one not to do," and one's enemy wishes to avoid battle, then one should
seek battle.lT This criticism confuses, I believe, ends and means. Yes, there will
be times when this logic holds true, but there will also be times when Vegetius'
injunction applies to larger strategic goals, towards which battle is only a tool. In
such cases, one could conceivably not seek battle and still be doing what a simi-
larly battle-shy defender would not want one to do. My enemy wishes me not to
besiege crucial town X. I move to besiege town X. He wishes to drive me off,
and so threatens one of my castles. Perhaps I then retreat to defend my own
castle; perhaps this operational dance results in an exchange of castles, as in
1094 when William Rufus moved against Robert Curthose's stronghold at
Bures. Robert responded by moving against \üilliam's garrison at Argentan, and
both places changed hands.18 In these and other cases, battle need not enter the
equation, and yet each of us is trying to do what the other wishes us not to do.
Second, the theory of Vegetian warfate, at least as I have written about it,
recognizes a place for battles in the conduct of campaigns. Yes, I characterize it
as a risky last resort, and so the conduct even ofbattle seeking generals proves it
to be: before engaging in battle, such generals tried other means to secure their
ends, and tried to secure every advantage ofterrain, weather and numbers before
entering into combat. And yet, certainly, battle was an option, a tool in the
general's toolkit. It was often closely associated with sieges, in which activity
15 Thomas Barfteld, The Perilous Frontier (Oxford, 1992); Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming Chinø:
A Political History, 1355-1435 (Stanford, 1982).
16 And his corollary, that the role of infantry has been overemphasized, is also on target. Rogers
notes the important tactical and operational roles mounted troops played (Rogers, "Vegetian
'Science of Warfare'," n. 24). T\e central problem with analyzing the roles of infantry and
cavalry in medieval warfare, however, lies not in tactical or operational factors, but in the inter-
section of such factors with social structure, an intersection often obscured by our terminology
for troop types which almost unconsciously imposes modern categories inappropriately on
medieval data. See Morillo, "Milites, Knights and Samurai: Military Terminology, Compara-
tive History, and the Problem of Translation," in Richard Abels and Bemard Bachrach, eds.,
The Normans and Their Adversaries at War. Essays in Memory of C. Warren Hollister (Wood-
bridge, 2001), pp. 167-84. In short, it is not the role of cavalry but the role of a knightly
military elite who usually rode horses that is underplayed by an undue emphasis on the role of
men on foot.
17 Rogers, "Vegetian 'Science of Warfare'," pp. 8-9.
18 Henry of Huntingdon, HistoriaAnglorum,ed.'1. Amold (Rolls Series, 1879), p. 217.
26 Stephen Morillo
attackers engaged more frequently, I think, than battle seeking.le As I wrote in
Wørfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, "if an enemy were in the process of
attacking the realm, and in particular if it were threatening or actually besieging
a friendly stronghold, the field forces moving to oppose them had three courses
of action available to them to lift the siege: threaten or disrupt the besieger's
supplies, threaten him with battle, or bring him to battle."2O In other words,
sometimes battle was a normal part of the medieval general's repertoire.
And note that second option: threatening battle. Many of Rogers' examples
can be interpreted not as battle seeking behavior but as battle threatening
behavior. Now if one is fairly certain that one's enemy will refuse battle on the
terms offered, threatening battle can in fact be part of battle avoiding behavior.
And if, by chance, stupidity, or miscalculation one's enemy accepts on one's
own terms, then the risky last resort has become worth the risk. In other words,
seeking battle only when one has the advantage of terrain, topography, weather,
or numbers - preferably all of the above plus any others, such as better morale or
a superior tactical system (such as Edward III employed), one can muster - is a
perfectly comprehensible corollary of the principles of Vegetian warfare.
What about the advantages of battle that Rogers points out, that "battles put
people and cities under subjection to you"?21 Well, of course they could. Let me
quote myself again.
Field forces could take hostile castles and cities in several ways. . . . Perhaps the
most effective way . . . was to come into the field unopposed by enemy field
forces. This carried the threat to the strongholds of a siege without hope ofrelief
or distraction of the attacker, a situation properly construed as hopeless in most
cases. How did armies achieve unopposed occupation of the field of war? . . .
often, if the field of war were to be possessed alone, enemy armies had to be
defeated inbattle.z2
Two points to stress here. First, the advantage of "clearing the field" by battle
works only if one's siege techniques are up to the job of exploiting the advan-
tage. I assumed this in the context of Anglo-Norman warfare, but the difference
between the post-battle strategies of Edward III and Henry V illustrates the
difference this factor can make.23 Second, this was a high risk, high gain
strategy, and many commanders were, rightly or wrongly, averse to taking the
risk, preferring a slower, less risky but also possibly less rewarding path.
William I, except at Hastings, generally preferred to move directly against
enemy strongholds. In fact, he sometimes managed to achieve the same result as
19 This is one point on which a simple empirical investigation might prove worthwhile but has not
systematically been undertaken.
20 Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, p. 106. Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of
Warfa¡e'," p. 15 and p. 19 n. 66, is correct that ravaging (or undertaking a siege) could in fact
be a means of provoking one's foe into a battle on one's own terms.
21 Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of Warfare'," pp. 13-14.
22 Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings,p.103.
23 Though the differences between the two kings' war aims also played a part in this divergence.
Battle Seeking 27
a successful battle would have given him simply through sheer speed of action,
as when he invaded Maine in 1073, appearing in the field so rapidly that no
enemy field force opposed him and the county's castles rapidly surrendered to
him.u But some including of course William at Hastings were willing to
- -
take the risks, for as Rogers notes, "battle could well be as decisive in the
Middle Ages as in other periods."25 But of course, the decisiveness of medieval
battle is not really at issue,26 and only proves the riskiness ofit.
Now what about that riskiness? Does the admission that battle could be deci-
sive undermine Gillingham's claim that battle could be unprofitable for the
winner and disastrous for the loser?27 Well, yes, in some cases. Again, it
depended on how the battle was decisive, how decisive it was, and whether the
winners had the means to exploit the victory. But it is not logically impossible,
as Rogers claims, for both conditions to hold. I fight a battle to drive off an
invader who has already ravaged much of my land. I win, and kill the opposing
leader in the process. But the effort leaves me unable to exploit my victory. I
have lost revenue from the ravaging; I have perhaps lost the loyalty of some of
my followers, who go unrewarded for a hard campaign and may have seen their
own lands ravaged; in short, I have not profited from the battle, except to limit
further losses. And yet the battle has been a disaster for the invaders, the survi-
vors of whom go home leaderless and in turmoil. It is especially a disaster for
the dead leader, who may thereby have endangered his dynastic line even if his
kingdom survives. Or another, concrete example. The English not only win at
Poitiers, they capture King John of France: a disaster for the French. Yet the
French do not lose the war, and the English attempts to exploit the victory draw
them into an unprofitable occupation of territory and a period of expensive stasis
following the Treaty of Bretigny.28 There is, in shof, nothing inherently illogical
24 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis,6 vols., ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford,
1969-80), 2:306-8.
25 Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of Warfare'," p. 12.
26 At least between Rogers and myself, as we agree that it was a potentially decisive element of
medieval warfare.
27 Rogers, "Vegeetian 'science of\Varfare'," p. 9.
28 Rogers in fact makes a convincing case that Edward did achieve almost all his war aims in
136O (War Cruel and Sharp, passim), and further claims ("Vegetian 'Science of Warfare',"
n. 38) that including the post-1369 phases of the Hundred Years War in a judgement of
Edward's results "is logically similar to arguing that the Vy'estern Front offensive of 1918 was
not decisive because the Germans . . . launched another bid for world domination in 1939."
This raises interesting philosophical, methodological and historiographical problems too
complex to go into fully here. For one, it raises the problem of what we mean by "decisive" in
referring to either a battle or a campaign (see Morillo, ed., The Battle of Hastings: Sources and
Interpretations [Woodbridge, 1996], pp. xv-xvii, for a discussion of the meaning of "decisive-
ness"). No battle or campaign of the Hundred Years War was decisive in the way Hastings was,
for instance, as William's victory in 1066 not only effectively won the war, it precluded any
further war along similar lines. This points to the problem of deciding whether Edward's
victory in 1360 could be considered a stable basis for a really lasting peace: did it eliminate the
issues of contention that had led to the war in the first place? It is not unreasonable, I think, to
say it did not: only a complete takeover of F¡ance by the English monarchy or the complete
28 Stephen Morillo
about the theory of battle avoidance as a central feature of Vegetian warfare,
though the conditions in which this risky last resort could be undertaken have, as
Rogers rightly points out, been underemphasized.
A General Theory
Thus, the Vegetian paradigm, modified to recognize a regular place for battle,
does describe much medieval European warfare, as well as much warfare
beyond Europe throughout the pre-modern world. Again, Vegetian strategy
describes a cross-cultural and apparently natural way of waging war in the
conditions of pre-modern economics and technology. There are a significant
number of exceptions to such apparently "natural" and cross-cultural patterns,
however, exceptions that take place within conditions of nature and agriculture
that might be expected to reproduce the patterns. Some occur in other societies
than those already mentioned, though in the same broad time frame; some occur
within the societies and times just outlined. What accounts for these exceptions,
which are far more non-Vegetian than those cited by Rogers? For his paper
leaves the underlying assumptions of Vegetian warfare intact. Those underlying
assumptions are, briefly, as follows. First, that \rye can engage in a rational,
materially based analysis of strategy, and that this is what medieval commanders
did. Second, that the material basis of strategy consisted of land; that is, that
warfare was territorial, or about the possession of castles, cities, and so forth.
And third, that in making these analyses, state interest is paramount; or, put
another Clausewitzian way, warfare is politics by other means, politics being
construed as the dynamics of relationships between sovereign states.
Whether these underlying assumptions really apply to all medieval (or
pre-modern) warfare is open to question, however. Rather, I think there is a
general principle that constitutes the often unexamined context of Vegetian
strategy and explains the major exceptions to it.2e
In brief, here are what I see as the prerequisites for the appearance of
Vegetian strategy in the pre-modern world. First, that the entities involved in
warfare are settled societies. This should be obvious, since territoriality plays
such a central role in the patterns of Vegetian strategy, but some thinking about
expulsion ofEnglish lordship from French territory could have done that (though the concepts
of "French" and "English" in such a claim admittedly risk anachronism). Similarly, it is not in
fact completely unreasonable to say from a broad, global and long-term perspective that the
Westem Front offensive of 1918 was not decisive for precisely the reason Rogers cites. It
certainly was not as decisive as the Allied victory in 1945, for example.
29 While I shall focus as much as possible on exceptions within medieval ìvestem European mili-
I
tary practice, shall also draw upon non-European cases where they provide striking
comparative data or make a point more clearly than European cases might. In addition to this
practical matter of evidence, however, I also wish to make a philosophical point about the
benefits of studying medieval western European warfare comparatively and in the global
context of its times.
Battle Seeking 29
the implications of this condition can lead in productive directions. Second, that
the entities involved in warfare lack an agreed on context for dispute resolution.
Such a context can consist either of universally accepted cultural norms that
govern conflict, or it can reside in a superior power capable of enforcing cultural
nonns and/or legal rules. As we shall see, "superior power" can mean an entity
which acts as the ultimate practical broker of military might, or an entity that
constitutes the exclusive source of legitimacy within a system. The practical
result of any sort of agreed on context for dispute resolution is to render warfare
in important ways non-territorial; if such contexts do not exist, territoriality
tends to become central and leads to Vegetian patterns.
In other words, Vegetian strategy is the "natural" mode of pre-modern
warfare only when the warfare occurs between sedentary (that is, agriculturally
based) military actors engaged in "foreign" or external wars, that is wars that
cross political (and often cultural) boundaries. In addition, Vegetian strategy
usually (though not always) requires warfare that is guided by grand strategies
of tenitorial aggrandizement or conquest and defense thereagainst, within a
geopolitical context that does not allow for flight by an entire military-political
entity as an option. In different ways, these preconditions are the implications of
territoriality.3o
Non-Vegetian Warfare: A Selection of Counter-Examples
I shall try now to both explain and illustrate this principle via a set of counter-
examples to Vegetian patterns of strategy. With variations, all these counter-
examples follow a pattern of warfare that is non-Vegetian in specific ways.
First, non-Vegetian wars do not revolve around fortifications, which tend to be
either absent, rudimentary, or ignored in the main activities of campaigns. We
immediately face a cart-horse problem here. It might be that the absence of
knowledge or techniques for effectively fortifying strongholds is a prior condi-
tion, that then precludes the emergence of classically Vegetian strategy in
certain areas. I think, however, that in almost every case examined below, effec-
tive fortifications (and thus Vegetian strategy) were possible. Indeed, in most
cases they existed, or had existed, or quickly came into existence when condi-
tions changed. Instead, the very strategic contexts and choices that made warfare
non-Vegetian in these cases also account for the lack of fortification. That is,
lack of fortifications was a strategic choice.
30 The sense I
in which am using 'territoriality" is limited to warfare that was directly about
possession of landed wealth, that is in which armed force was the deciding factor in possession.
John France, Western Warfare (p. 2), says that "wa¡fare in this period was, therefore, nearly
always proprietorial, or at the least influenced by proprietorial considerations." While this is
generally true, possession of land could be decided in ways that did not depend (at least
directly) on warfare, and there are some instances, discussed further below, in which warfare
was not, centrally or even primarily, about possession of landed wealth.
30 Stephen Morillo
Ittended to accompany the other non-Vegetian feature of these counter-
examples: that battle seeking strategies dominated their warfare. Offensive
campaigns aimed at meeting and destroying defending forces directly (though
pillaging and plundering were certainly a consistent concomitant of invasions,
for both logistical and psychological reasons). Likewise, defensive forces
sought to meet and defeat in battle any invading force. It is important to note that
this is not the sort of one-sided battle seeking one finds with some frequency in
medieval warfare,3l in which the ability (indeed expectation) of one side to
refuse battle marks the still essentially Vegetian nature of the warfare. For if a
battle seeking commander can be fairly sure that his opponent will seek to avoid
battle, then his battle seeking behavior does not seriously violate Vegetius'
prescription to avoid battles - he gets the benefit of appearing bold and aggres-
sive with little of the cost.
Rather, non-Vegetian warfare looks very different indeed. Consider, for
example, the campaign and battle of Barnet in April 1471. Edward VI, having
returned from a brief exile in Flanders, gathered his Yorkist supporters and
marched on London. The Earl of Warwick (the "Kingmaker") gathered
Lancastrian forces at Coventry and immediately pursued. After gaining entrance
to the capital, Edward immediately turned about and marched out to attack
Warwick's force, though he was outnumbered by perhaps 9,000 to 12,000; the
attack was launched in a heavy fog and, after a confused conflict in which each
side's right wing overlapped the other's left, resulted in a complete victory,32 An
earlier phase of the Wars of the Roses had witnessed six significant battles
fought between September 1459 and March 1461, culminating in the bloody
carnage at Towton, a battle fought in a blinding snowstorm.33 In short,
non-Vegetian warfare was dominated by two-sided seeking of battle to the
exclusion of other aims, often to the point of both sides actively seeking and
agreeing on a mutually acceptable flat and open space on which to fight it out,
calculations of numerical, meterological and topographical advantage be
damned.
-
Why did such exceptions to Vegetian patterns indeed to the apparently
sound advice Vegetius offers in favor of avoiding battle - arise? There are two
groups of cases to consider. The first set of exceptions involve steppe nomads,
and is relatively straightforward to explain. The second set involves settled
societies.
Warfare among steppe nomads was non-Vegetian for the simple reason that
steppe nomad societies were not teffitorial in the way sedentary societies were.
Obviously, fortifications were impossible for societies built on mobility. And
possession of land for a nomadic tribe did not mean the same thing as it did for
rulers of sedentary societies. The latter aimed at control over the adrninistrative
apparatus, however developed, that often resided in fortifications and that
3l As Rogers abundantly illustrates.
32 Anthony Goodman, The Wars of the Roses (London, 198 1), pp. 78-80.
33 Goodman, pp.41-53.
Battle Seeking 31
connected rulers to their source of wealth, a subject peasantry farming the land.
For nomads, possession of land meant actual occupation of grazing land so as to
feed the source of their wealth, animal herds. Thus, in warfare between nomadic
tribes, a territorial attack meant moving the present occupiers off coveted
grazing land; defense meant direct resistance to such an attack. Nomadic groups
could also hold in reserve the option of flight to other lands should an attack
prove too difficult to resist, and could furthermore join their attackers in an alli-
ance that had few if any permanent administrative consequences.3a For nomadic
warfare was often almost totally non-territorial, in that warfare was a tool for
establishing dominance hierarchies among tribes, an activity in which assassina-
tion and gift-giving complemented warfare. In these sorts of territorial or domi-
nance disputes, battle was the clear and swiftly sought arbiter.
The world view bred on the steppes tended to carry over in nomadic attacks
on sedentary neighbors, as invading steppe armies preferred meeting (and
beating) opposing armies directly when they aimed at conquest or widespread
plunder. The Mongol invasions of Russia and Eastern Europe can serve as an
example of this.3s Only when the defenders retreated to fortifications (in good
Vegetian fashion) were nomadic invaders forced either to give up conquest in
favor of simple plundering, or, if trickery could not gain them a city, to adopt
sedentary siege techniques (usually by conscripting sedentary engineers). At
that point, they became part of the "natural" Vegetian web of sedentary strategy,
as they effectively became a sedentary army for the duration and in the vicinity
of any siege warfare they conducted.
Thus, war between settled societies was a precondition for Vegetian strategy.
Under what conditions did warfare involving settled societies become non-
Vegetian?
Simply, if warfare took place within a closed cultural or political world that in
one way or another established rules that governed the meaning and practice of
conflict, Vegetian strategy had no role to play. I see three main ways in which
such rules appeared: as agreed noÍns in a cultural world; as agreed norms in a
political system; or as legal rules within a political system. The existence of such
nonns or rules obviated Vegetian strategies by rendering warfare non-territorial,
either directly or indirectly. Directly, such noÍns or rules could dictate that
warfare was not, in fact, about territory, but was about prestige, hierarchy, or
elimination of rivals. Indirectly, such norms and rules could make possession of
territory contingent not upon occupation protected by fortification but upon
34 Whittow, Making of Byzantium, pp.19-25, has a good summary with references of steppe
nomadic geography, social and political structure, and style of warfare. One of the features that
distinguished Genghis Khan's unification of the steppes from earlier steppe empires was his
invention of a new "tribe" system that replaced old tribal divisions, a form of permanent
administrative consequence, but one very different from what would happen in sedentary soci-
eties. See David Morgan, The Mongols (Cambridge, 1990).
35 Denis Sinor, "The Mongols and Western Europe," in A History of the Crusades, vol. 3
(Madison, 1975).
32 Stephen Morillo
legal or moral title conferred by some central authority. I shall illustrate each of
these and show the similarities in the sort of warfare each produced.
By agreed norrns in a cultural world, I mean those areas in which warfare
took place between entities which were independent politically, but which
shared a culturally agreed on set of assumptions about how warfare was
conducted, what it meant, and what it could decide. An good example is polis
warfare in the Hellenic world, especially before the Persian wars. Victor Davis
Hanson has shown that the tradition of face-to-face combat between phalanxes
used to settle disputes between Greek city-states served the function of limiting
campaigning and therefore economic disruption:
Ultimate victory in the modern sense and enslavement of the conquered were
not considered an option by either side. Greek hoplite battles were struggles
between small landholders who by mutual consent sought to limit warfare (and
hence killing) to a brief, nightmarish occasion. [emphasis added]36
In other words, city-states in conflict tacitly agreed to a large scale version ofthe
"let's step outside and settle this" system of dispute resolution, producing
"mostly localized and increasingly ritualized warfare in a fairly balanced system
of poleis".37 Combat rarely resulted in large scale transfers or conquest of land,
and compromised the political independence of the losing side only indirectly.3s
Note that the "rules" of this system were nowhere written down, nor was there
an overarching power that could enforce them. Note also how the system broke
down. First, the Persian invasions introduced a player who did not know the
rules. The result was the first emergence of large coalitions of poleis and the first
real use of strategy by the Greeks. The subsequent growth of the Athenian
Empire, both as a direct result and continuation of the Persian invasions and
because Athens came to rely on naval power, further violated the tacit nonns,
the bankruptcy of which was fully revealed in the Peloponnesian Wars. In the
absence of these cultural norns limiting conflict, it fell to the Macedonians and
then the Romans to impose peace on Hellas.3e
A very similar system of tacit cultural norrns seems to have governed the
world of Aztec warfare. Campaigns took place only at certain times of the year,
according to apparently stereotyped patterns, and operated at greater or lesser
levels of ritualism ranging from Flower.Wars to full scale invasions of conquest.
Unlike in Greece, conquest and political independence were at stake. Despite
36 Victor Davis Hanson, The Western Way
of War. Infantry Battle in Classical Greece (New
York, 1989), p.4.
37 Kurt Raaflaub, "Archaic and Classical Greece," in Raaflaub and Rosenstein War and Society,
,
p. 140.
38 The gradual creation by Sparta of a dominion in the Peloponnese is the only real exception to
this pattem, and happened in such a way as not to seriously undermine the cultural system:
Sparta was in some ways recognized as a political and military exception. Raaflaub, "Archaic
and Classical Greece," p. 131.
39 Raaflaub, "Archaic and Classical Greece," p. 147; Charles D. Hamilton, "The Hellenistic
World," in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, pp. 165-166.
Battle Seeking 33
this, the constraints of the cultural system were such that no real equivalent of
Vegetian strategy emerged in the Mexican world. Battle seeking predominated.
Fortifications were effective when used because breaching them was difficult
given the limited siege technology available, scaling was expensive in
manpower, and sieges were logistically difficult to maintain. "Fortifications
were seldom used, ho\ryever, because, even if they were effective, the city could
not be divorced from its wider social net\ryorks."40
The presence of agreed norrns in a political system is the second condition
that could inhibit the emergence of Vegetian patterns. Kamakura Japan
(1185-1333) provides an excellent example of this condition.ar The civil
government in Kyoto headed by the emperor was accepted as the only source of
legitimacy within this political system; what it legitimated was possession of
income rights based on landed estates called shoen The military government in
Kamakura backed up the civil authority and with it constituted a greater central
authority. Thus, for a clan to gain land, income, and power it had to exert control
over this combined central authority. Battle seeking strategies made perfect
sense in the context of factional struggles for control over central authority.
Since occupation of any particular piece of land itself meant very little, almost
nobody built fotifications of any size or complexity and consequently no one
tried to remove rivals by besieging them or ravaging their land. There was no
"their land" that was specifically identifiable, there were no castles to besiege.
Instead, legitimation of income possession by the central government was
universally accepted, and with no castles to take, a faction had to seek battle in
order to kill its enemies so that the income rights those enemies held could be
reassigned. The result is illustrated abundantly in war tales such as The Tale of
the Heike:
That day, Lord Kiso . . . grasped a rattan-wrapped bow and sat in a gold-edged
saddle astride his famous horse Oniashige [Roan Demon], a very stout and
brawny animal. Standing in his stimrps, he announced his name in a mighty
voice. "You must have heard of Kiso no Kanja in the past; now you see him! I
am the Morning Sun Commander Minamoto no Yoshinaka, Director of the
Imperial Stables of the Left and Governor of Iyo Province. They tell me you are
Ichijo no Jiro from Kai. We are well matched! Cut off my head and show it to
Yoritomo!" He galloped forward, shouting.
"The warrior who has just announced his name is their Commander-
in-Chief," Ichijo no Jiro said. "Wipe out the whole force, men! Get them all,
young retainers! Kill them!"42
40 Ross Hassig, "The Aztec World," in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, pp. 361-381,
quote on p. 378; in more detail Hassig, Aztec Warfare (Norman, OK, 1988).
41 For general overviews of the Kamakura political and military systems and the warrior culture
that dominated them see Paul Varley, Warriors of Japan as Portrayed in the War Tales (Hono-
lulu, 1994); Stephen Tumbull, The Samurai. A Military History (London, 1977); Morillo,
"Guns and Govemment: A Comparative Study of Europe and Japan," Joumal of World History
6 (1994),75-106.
42 The Tale ofthe Heike, ed. and trans. Helen Craig McCullough (Stanford, 1988), pp. 291-292.
34 Stephen Morillo
Here both the ritualized name calling, part of an individualistic mode of combat,
and the intent to kill sit side-by-side with the official titles and offices that reveal
the central role of imperial political legitimation within the political system. In
general Kamakura warfare featured battle seeking strategies and warfare that
combined some highly ritualized elements such as name calling and ritualized
exchanges of a¡rows before battle with an unusually high level (by westem
European standards in the same centuries) of killing of elite warriors by elite
warriors, including the prevalence of hara kiru, a form of suicide that dressed
fatality itself in ritual. And as Wayne Farris notes, "A few expert warriors domi-
nated the battlefield, fighting in a colorful, highly ritualized way. Such amilitary
system presupposed a general agreement regarding what war was all about."43
One might say that this is simply a case of civil war, and civil war tends to be
non-Vegetian. I think this gets it backwards. Civil war tends to be non-Vegetian
because civil war tends to happen within a political system with agreed norrns or
agreed legal rules (my next case). But not all civil wars conform to this condi-
tion. The way the Kamakura system of tacitly agreed norms broke down is
instructive in this regard. The Kamakura regime ended in a civil war between
two factions of the Imperial family that lasted from 1336 to 1392. This division
of the imperial symbolic position undermined its ability to legitimate dispute
settlements, and the war turned not only very messy and confused, but Vegetian,
in that fortifications sprang up, and the weaker side resorted to ambushes, logis-
tical warfare, and guerilla campaigning. The Muromachi regime (1336-1467) thaf
emerged managed briefly to hold the vestiges of the political system together, but
after the Onin \üar of 1467-77 Japan broke into fully independent states engaged
in warfare that conformed pretty closely to Vegetian patterns, though the cultural
legacy of the Kamakura age contributed, along with other factors, to keep battle
seeking more conìmon than it might otherwise have been.4
The boundary between my first two conditions, agreed nonns in a cultural
world and agreed norms in a political system, are fi,nzy, as what constitutes a
"political system" is often a matter of cultural agreement. By way of illustration,
I think Anglo-Saxon warfare can be analyzed in either way. Why did
Anglo-Saxon England not follow the same trajectory of castellation as the
Continent, especially after 950 or so? Not because the Anglo-Saxons were back-
wards in military science or ignorant of effective methods of fortification, but
because, even in the period of multiple Saxon kingdoms, the set of kingdoms
formed either a cultural v/orld, or even a political system headed by a high king
(whether actual or only potential), that agreed on battle as the honorable mode of
dispute resolution. Long warfare with the Vikings, who avoided battle to focus
on easy plunder, upset this system in ways similar to the way the Persians
43 W. Vy'ayne Farris, "Japan to 1300," in Raaflaub and Rosenstein, War and Society, p.66
(emphasis added). And see S. Morillo, "Cultures of Death: Ritual Suicide in Medieval Europe
and lapan," The Medieval History Journal 4,2 (2001),241-57, on the connection between
killing and strategy in Kamakura Japan.
44 Morillo, "Guns and Govemment," pp. 86-87; Turnbull, Samurai, pp. 89-106.
Battle Seeking 35
disrupted the Greek system (including provoking political unity, though in the
Anglo-Saxon case through the elimination of all the native kingdoms save
Wessex, as opposed to the Persian stimulation of Athenian empire building).
Alfred's burgh system was the Vegetian aspect of the Saxon response: a
network of fortified cities designed to restrict any Viking raids and provide
bases for the fyrd, the Saxon field army.a5 But the continuing importance of this
field army in Alfred's system shows that the king retained the Saxon tendency to
battle seeking even as he waged a somewhat more Vegetian style of warfare.
Contrast the Saxon response with the contemporary anti-Viking strategy on the
Continent, Charles the Bald's fortified bridges. Though designed, like the
burghs, to restrict Viking mobility, they did not house substantial numbers of
troops, nor was there a French field army comparable to the fyrd backing them
up and seeking battle with the invaders, as Charles' realm was already devolving
into fragmentation, private castellation, and Vegetian battle-avoiding strategy.a6
And the reunification of England under the West Saxons aborted its Vegetian
tendencies once the Vikings were defeated: unified Anglo-Saxon England
reverted to its unfortified battle seeking ways, though for somewhat different
reasons than before the Vikings, reasons that will bring us below to the third
condition that often produced non-Vegetian warfare, legal rules in a political
system.
Agreed norns, political and especially cultural, since they operated either in
the absence of a central authority or under one that could not militarily impose
judgements, tended to be "policed" by notions of honor, face, and prestige.
These were not just diplomatic coin to be expended in a strategy guided by
rational material analysis,aT but cultural realities in and of themselves. In fact,
the imperatives of honor, demanding immediate and decisive responses to
affronts, could conflict pretty directly with the "rational" guidelines of Vegetian
strategy. Much medieval warfare can profitably be read as manifesting a tension
between the honor-based and therefore battle seeking imperatives of a Euro-
pean-wide cultural system whose ultimate rationale was "let God decide" in trial
by battle, and the territorial-based and therefore Vegetian imperatives of a
divided European political universe. The cultural system was too weak for its
nofins to dominate, but strong enough to complicate many approaches to
strategy that might have profited from a more purely Vegetian approach. Philip
Augustus' conduct of the Bouvines campaign is a good example of this tension,
4s Richard Abels, Alfred the Great. War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London,
1998), pp. 194-218.
46 Carroll Gillmor, "The Logistics of Fortified Bridge Building on the Seine under Charles the
Bald," Anglo-Norman Studies 1l (1988), 87-106.
47 Cf. Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of War'," p. 16, who does analyze these notions in such terms:
"Loyalty was one of the basic currencies of power. Another basic element of a lord's power
was his honor or prestige, and implementing a Fabian strategy could be costly in this coin too."
'While
certainly correct from one perspective, this analysis underplays, I believe, the inde-
pendent role factors such as prestige could play in strategic decision making, drawing such
decisions outside the realm ofpurely material (and often, state-centered) analysis.
36 Stephen Morillo
as the king seemed to move, sometimes by sheer force of circumstance, between
one approach and the other; even if he did not actively seek the battle that
resulted, he accepted (and subsequently exploited) it in terms reflecting the
culture of trial by battle.as Philip VI of France faced this dilemma even more
acutely during Edward III's invasions of 1339 and 1340, as his rationally calcu-
lated avoidance of battle conflicted with strong demands on the part of his aris-
tocracy that he defend his own honor and by extension that of France.ae The fate
of Harold Godwinson also comes to mind here. A number of modern commenta-
tors have criticized Harold for responding too eagerly to Duke William's
ravaging of the vicinity of Hastings, leaving himself open to William's attack or
perhaps choosing himself to attack. Analyzing William's battle-seeking strategy
in 1066, Gillingham says "Of course it takes two to make a battle. It may be that,
as I have suggested elsewhere (Gillingham, "Richard I", 85), Harold was
adopting the standard defensive strategy [moving close enough to limit
William's foraging without actually offering battlel. Or it may be that, encour-
aged by his success in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, Harold himself wanted to
repeat this new and intoxicating experience."5O But of course, Harold may well
have been seeking battle not to repeat a "new and intoxicating experience" but
because the lands being ravaged, as part of his patrimony, raised a strong
demand for an immediate response based in honor and prestige, a demand that
Harold would have seen from the perspective of a political system in which
battle seeking rüas more the norm than on the Continent, as I have just noted.
The Vegetian response of trapping William on the Hastings peninsula and
starving him to death may never have occurred to him or, if it did, could have
appeared dishonorable.s 1
Resolution of this tension tended to move, over the medieval centuries,
towards the Vegetian side of the equation, because the more European polities
became territorially based, the more Vegetian their strategies became and the
farther they moved from the cultural system, probably Germanic and tribal in its
origins, that encouraged trial-by-battle-motivated battle sèeking. Arguably, the
48 See France, Westem Warfare, pp.169-772; Georges D,aby, The Legend of Bouvines. War,
Religion and Culture in the Middle AB¿.r, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Berkeley, 1990). Of course
it is true that "honor" is a flexible notion, and that what confers honor or prestige can vary from
culture to culture honor need not compel face-to-face battle seeking. Ambushes, feigned
-
flights, night attacks, and other trickery could all be honorable actions in a variety of warrior
traditions, including the steppe nomadic, the Japanese, the Byzantine, and even the westem
European: William Marshal's career abounds in ambushes (see David Crouch, William
Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevín Empire 1147-1219 [London, 1993]). This
was because the ultimate measure of honor and prestige was, usually, success, and such tactics
raised the chance for victory. But, especially in the westem European tradition with the influ-
ence of legal trial by battle, direct affronts to one's "face" required a "face-to-face" response, in
both the literal and figurative senses of the term.
49 Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, chs. 7 and 9.
s0 Gilüngham, "William the Bastard at Wa¡," p. 158 n. 107.
5l On Hastings, see Morillo, Warfare under the Anglo-Norman Kings, pp. 163-168; and The
Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretallons (Woodbridge, 1996).
Battle Seeking 3',7
warfare of strongly territorial seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe was
more Vegetian, despite the presence of gunpowder weaponry,s2 than the warfare
of the weakly territorial Germanic kingdoms of the early Middle Ages. Or at
least, the assumptions behind the Merovingian sources' narratives seem to indi-
cate the normality of battle seeking motivated by questions of honor and guided
by divine judgement. An example from among many in Gregory of Tours: the
widow of Clovis I, Clotilda, urges her sons to war with the Burgundian rulers
Sigismund and Godomar because of the former's palace murders, saying "be
angry, I beg you, at this insult to me, and avenge with a wise zeal my mother and
father's death." Led by Chlodomer, the Franks march to an immediate battle
with the Burgundians in which Sigismund, "the divine vengeance attending on
his footsteps," is captured. Godomar rallies the Burgundians and regains his
kingdom, however. Chlodomer then oversteps his role as divine avenger by
killing Sigismund - an apparently rational act designed to prevent an uprising in
the rear of his operations, but one warned against by abbot Avitus before -
marching again against Godomar. Thus, Chlodomer rüins the ensuing battle but
is killed in the pursuit; the Franks "crushed the Burgundians and reduced their
country to subjection," but shortly after Godomar again recovers his kingdom.s3
Thus, we are presented with warfare that features battle-seeking behavior on
both sides, motivated by notions of personal honor and bravery. And though
possession of landed kingdoms is apparently at stake, the ease of Godomar's
recoveries (as well as the actions of the Franks in killing men rather than taking
fortifications) indicates that what really matters is possession of the loyalty of
men. In such a weakly territorial context, as in Kamakura Japan, battle seeking
and abundant killing made perfect sense, despite their irrationality from a
Vegetian perspective.
So strong territoriality corresponded with Vegetian warfare. Or at least,
coming back to my basic principle, strong territoriality corresponded to
Vegetian warfare when the polities involved fought extemal wars. The final
condition that can lead to exceptions to Vegetian patterns is the existence of a
system in which the legal rules of a polity govern and legitimate landed posses-
sion. Such conditions almost assume a strong territorial state, but the very
strength of the state is what makes warfare within the polity only indirectly terri-
torial. Here, the example returns us to England.
52 Especially at the height of what Christopher Duffy calls "the Old Fortress Warfare" between
1660 and 1715: Duffy, The Fortess in the Age of Vauban, pp. l-63; also Van Creveld,
Supplying War, p.37: ". . . eighteenth-century armies lived as their predecessors had always
done, . . . by taking the bulk of their needs away from the country."
53 Gregorio di Tours, La Storia dei Franchi, ed. Massimo Oldoni (Fondazione Lorenzo Valla,
l98l): III.6 (l:218-220), translations adapted from Gregory Bishop of Torxs, History of the
Franks, trans. Ernest Brehaut (New York, 1969), pp.55-56. In the episode immediately
following, Theodoric leads the Franks against the Thuringi, which again results in an imme-
diate battle: lll.7 (l:220-22).
38 Stephen Morillo
I noted above that the reunification of Anglo-Saxon Englandsa aborted its
Vegetian development. But this was not because the earlier world of tacitly
agreed noÍns had been reestablished, though the earlier traditions certainly
contributed to the formation of the posrViking strategic consensus. Rather,
possession of land and other matters of dispute were now policed by a relatively
strong central authority.s5 That is, the aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England
looked to the central authority to protect their domestic titles to landed estates. A
centralized legal system short-circuited any impetus towards private
castellation, and Vegetian strategy had no soil in which to take root. The same
royal power also protected the kingdom as a whole, though of course the warrior
aristocracy constituted in themselves a significant part of the royal govern-
ment's military forces against outside invaders.s6 But the centrally controlled,
battle-seeking system that served the kingdom well internally and in disputes
along its Celtic frontiers had, by its nature, a peculiar bi-polarity against major
foreign invasions: it could marshal more significant forces than many weaker
Continental polities could (as it did in 1066, defeating at least one major invader
in Harald Hardraada5T), but if it were defeated at the top (as it was by Cnut in
1016 and by William of Normandy in 1066), the victor stood a good chance of
assuming control of the system from the center, roughly the same goal that
internal disputants aimed at.
The Norman conquest in 1066 introduced castellation to England, as the
conquerors subdued their new realm through ravaging and a purely Vegetian
display of territorial and logistical brute force.58 Vegetian pattems continued to
predominate along the Welsh and Scottish borders of the kingdom, later in the
Norman invasion of Ireland, and above all on the frontiers of Normandy. Within
England, Robert of Bellême's 1102 revolt against Henry II, the Civil V/ar of
Stephen's reign (which, however, saw more battle-seeking behavior, at Lincoln
and Wilton, than proved prudent for either side), and the Young King Henry's
rebellion of lI73-74 against his father Henry II were all conducted in Vegetian
style - Henry II's success at not fighting battles is often cited in defense of the
Vegetian nature of medieval warfare. And Stephen's reign shows that not all
civil wars are non-Vegetian. But the Vegetian interlude within the kingdom in
fact did not last long, because the long periods of peace that intervened in the
twelfth century, as well as the nature of the settlements imposed after the Civil
54 Or as Kelly DeVries would properly say, Anglo-Scandinavian England: see The Notwegian
Invasion of England in 10óó (\Voodbridge, 1999).
55 James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London, 2000) demonstrates clearly the power,
sophistication, unity and wealth of the late Anglo-Saxon state. For the specifically military
implications of royal control see Richard Abels, Inrdship and Military Obligation in
Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley, 1988).
56 As for example at Maldon in 991, where Earl Byrhtnoth's forces displayed all the battle-
seeking, non-Vegetian impulses - based in both honor and royal duty - the Anglo-Saxon mili-
tary system bred.
57 Devries, Norwegian lnvasion.
58 Gillingham, "William the Bastard at V/ar," p. 159.
Battle Seeking 39
War by Henry II, in the years following 1154, reinforced and resulted from the
foundations of royal power laid in the Anglo-Saxon period. Increasingly from
Henry I's reign and progressing rapidly afrer lO54,law - what evolved into the
Common Law - became the arbiter of disputes about estate possession.5e By
1215 the relationship of the various parts of the political community within the
political system had been considerably cla¡ified, and the government as a whole
was even stronger, even if Magna Carta formalized nascent restrictions on the
king himself. Thereafter, warfa.re within England was not (directly) about
landed possession, but instead was about influence over the central authority
that guaranteed possession of landed estates. The result was warfare that was
non-Vegetian because conflict was bounded by the legal rules of the political
system. As in Kamakura Japan, contestants for control of the central authority
sought each other out to settle dominance directly. The stark contrast between
the castle-centered, logistical approach Henry I took in subduing Robert of
Bellême's rebellion in Il02 and Edward I's battle-seeking 1265 Evesham
campaign against Simon de Montfort, in which castles played only a minor role,
shows just how far the parameters of strategy had been transformed by the
evolution of central authority in England.60 By the Wars of the Roses, castles
played almost no role and opposing forces sought each other out even in snow
and fog for decisive, face-to-face contests for possession of the only thing that
mattered, control of royal government and the legitimacy it conveyed. Even
pillaging was limited. And just as in Kamakura warfare, the battles of the lVars
of the Roses featured copious killing of nobles by other nobles as factions
attempted not to take over land but to eliminate rivals for control of the central
authority. But unlike in Japan, possession of the central authority here carried
with it the ability to muster the force necessary to coerce cooperation within the
system and the legitimacy to use it. Thus, from 1215 until the last Stuart upris-
ings in the eighteenth century, warfare within England was both rare and, when
it happened, charactenzed by battle-seeking strategies aimed at eliminating
rivals for control of a central authority whose presence and role were uncon-
tested.61
'Warfare
outside England was of course another matter. There is no more
59 John Hudson, Innd, l¡tw and Lordship in Anglo-Norman England (Oxford, 1994) is the best
starting point for investigating this process. See also C. Warren Hollister, I1enry 1(New Haven,
2001), esp. pp.349-369, who emphasizes the role ofHenry's imposition ofpeace in England
on the stability of landholding.
60 ll02: C. Wanen Hollister, "The Campaign of 1102 against Robert of Bêlleme," in Studies . . .
Presented to R. Allen Brown, p. 1265: Nicholas Hooper and Matthew Bennett, Cambridge
Illustrated Atlas of Warfare; The Middle Ages 768-1487 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 67-69. The
behavior of the rebels also illustrates the change, as Robert, in Vegetian fashion, holed his
forces up in his castles and eventually fled to Normandy, while Simon actively sought battle in
1264, leadrng to his victory at Lewes, and though attempting to avoid Edward in 1265 still
based his shategy on a field army capable of giving battle.
61 The contrast between the battle-seeking of the seventeenth-century Civil Vy'ar in England and
the Vegetian nightmare that prevailed for much of the Thirty Years War is another example of
the English political condition.
 40 Stephen Morillo
Vegetian conquest than Edward I's subjugation of Wales. Many English
campaigns in Scotland were Vegetian: forays such as William I's in 1072
designed to inflict some damage and intimidate the Scots, with no expectation of
battle (even sieges were infrequent); most Scottish campaigns into England
were likewise glorified plundering raids that earned the Scots an evil reputation
south of the border.62 And the French side of Edward III's campaigns in France
is perfectly comprehensible from a Vegetian perspective.63 As for Edward's
side, if we accept, as I think we should, Rogers' reinterpretation of Edward's
intentions - that he did actively seek battle - several thoughts come to mind.
Perhaps Edward was simply a bad strategist who failed to follow sound
Vegetian advice. But since he not only sought but fought and won his battles and
thereby gained most of his war aims at least temporanly,e this seems uncon-
vincing. Perhaps he sought battle only with every advantage of terrain he could
get to exploit his weapons system, in other words, within an essentially Vegetian
context.6s Perhaps he was torn between what he saw as the imperatives of honor
and the guidelines of Vegetius. Or, most interestingly, perhaps his battle-seeking
strategy is evidence, given what I've said above about political systems, that
Edward really did think of his invasions of France as personal disputes with
rival claimants to the French throne to be settled in the time-honored English
tradition of fighting on the battlefield for possession of the central government,
in which case his immediate operational problem (skillfully overcome in 1346)
and his long-term dilemma was that his opponents did not play by the rules'
Conclusions
This leads me to two points I want to stress by way of conclusion. My first point
has to do with the predictive or analytic power of a theory. I hope by presenting
the contexts of Vegetian strategy in such general and fundamental terms - by
getting at the underlying assumptions of Vegetian warfare - that it becomes
possible to reanalyze aspects of the past in new and enlightening ways. For
example, if I am right about the preconditions for the emergence of Vegetian
pattems in warfare, then the presence of Vegetian warfare should in turn predict
62 Matthew Strickland, War and Chivalry. The Conduct and Perception of War in England and
N ormandy, 1 066- I 2 I 7 (Cambridge, I 996), pp. 29 l-329.
63 As Rogers admits: Rogers, "Vegetian 'science of War, " p. 16; though note also the tension I
suggested between Philip's Vegetian inclinations and the demands to defend his honor raised
by the European cultural system: above, p. 16 and n. 48.
64 See above, pp.27-8 and n. 28, on the problem of deciding whether Edward's battle-seeking
strategy ultimately worked.
65 This is the implication of Rogers' analysis i¡War Cruel and Sharp, where Edward is shown,
while seeking battle, to have maneuvered carefully to arrive at a battlefield and tactical situa-
tion ofhis own choosing: pp.235-6. Crécy was not, in other words, Towton or Barnet. I think
this possibility accounts for a good deal ofEdward's battle seeking: it was reasonable within a
Vegetian context.
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Battle Seeking 4I
a lack of agreed on norrns of warfare or of accepted legal rules and arbiters
thereof in the region being examined. For instance, unlike warfare in England,
warfare in Capetian France tended to be Vegetian even when "foreign" players
were not involved; or, put another way, most warfare within France had the
character of "foreign" wars. In other words, this theory provides another way of
seeing and analyzing a long-accepted difference between England and France in
the Middle Ages: England was from fairly early on a unified kingdom (the
universal acceptance ofwhose government as final arbiter created conditions for
non-Vegetian warfare); France was a kingdom stitched together by "foreign"
conquest, which reminds us of the very recent and constructed nature of French
nationality and culture.
My second point has to do with the role of culture in warfare. I have tried to
show that strategic decisions happen in cultural contexts, and that different
contexts make some strategies more useful than others. This may seem a simple
point, but it is too easy to slip into analysis of warfare purely in terms of materi-
alist rationalism, state interest (as opposed to the individual, familial, dynastic
and class interests of rulers and elites), and Realpolitik, and so misunderstand
what the historical actors we study were really about (or at least what they
thought they were about, which matters a lot). Warfare is not just politics by
other means, as Clausewitz said, it is also culture. Or if it is politics, pre-modern
politics includes a lot more than just statecraft, and so might as well be culture in
many cases. This is not to say that medieval strategists were irrational, though as
in any age not all medieval generals were good strategists. It is to say that their
rational concems often included notions of personal honor, prestige, religious
imperatives, superstition, and so on that we do not readily recognize as relevant
to strategy, especially in the context of statecraft. My analysis of the assump-
tions underlying Vegetian strategy is therefore designed to remind us that
"cultures of war" played a major implicit role in "sciences of war," even when
they weren't explicitly obvious.