[gothic-l] Gothic Cavalry Strength

[Tim O'Neill]

On Saturday, March 23, 2002 9:18 PM, Bertil Haggman [SMTP:mvk575b at tninet.se] wrote:
> Professor Quickley has a good description of cavalry and
> Adrianople in _The Evolution of Civilizations_:
>
> "The Roman army, which had conquered most of the known
> world by means of the legion, was unable, and probably
> unwilling, to transform itself into a force of heavily armed
> cavalry when this became necessary in the late fourth century
> of our era. As a result, the Roman army, and the civilization
> it was supposed to defend, were wiped from the earth by the
> charging horsemen of the [Goths and other Germanics], beginning
> with the dreadful defeat at Adrianople. The inability of fighting
> men to reorganize their ideas and their forces from infantry to
> cavalry was one of the vital factors in the replacement of pagan
> Classical civilization by Christian Western civilizations."

This sounds like a generalist work and it certainly demonstrates a
fairly erroneous view of Adrianople in particular and warfare in this
period in particular.  Far from the Roman Army being unable to
reorganise their forces from infantry to cavalry, the proportion,
importance and status of cavalry units had been increasing in
the Roman Army throughout the third and fourth centuries.

By the time of Adrianople cavalry formed 30% of the Roman Army
overall and made up a much higher proportion of the elite and
guard units.  About one quarter of Valens army at Adrianople
was cavalry, including very heavy *clibinarii*, mounted archers
and a range of other mounted troops types.  The Gothic forces
had an estimated 4000-7000 cavalry - mainly Greuthungian,
Alanic, Sarmatian and Hunnic allies, and so were likely to have
*less* cavalry than the Romans in this encounter.  Despite the
persistent myth that Adrianople was some epoch changing
victory of Gothic 'heavy cavalry' over outdated legions, it
was largely an infantry vs infantry affair, though the timing of the
sudden arrival of the Gothic allied cavalry swung the final result
in favour of the Goths.

This idea that the Germanic invaders were largely heavy cavalrymen
is nonsense - most fought as infantry.  Even those tribes that did
adopt steppe cavalry tactics (from the Alans and Sarmatians, not
the Huns) still largely fielded infantry armies, though the cavalry
played an increasingly important role.

Heavy cavalry did not come to dominate the battlefields of Europe
until after both the Western Empire and the Gothic kingdoms
were long gone - once the combination of the stirrup and the
couched lance made the new knightly cavalry an almost
unstoppable force.

Tim O'Neill

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