Savvas Kyriakidis, Warfare in Late Byzantium, 1204–1453 (History of Warfare 67), Leiden 2011

Savvas Kyriakidis is a historian who received his PhD in 2007 from the Centre of Byzantine, Ottoman, and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham. His specialization is in Byzantine military history. This book, based on the author’s dissertation (2007), examines late Byzantine military culture, influence of foreign cultures on Byzantine military practice and thought as well as the organization and effectiveness of the Byzantine army from 1204 to 1453. It fills a gap in modern literature regarding the Byzantine warfare in the aforementioned period and offers a more rounded understanding of the topic than what the work of Mark C. Bartusis (The Late Byzantine Army. Arms and Society, 1204–1453, Philadelphia 1992) does. The latter does not cover aspects such as the justification of war, the Byzantine attitudes towards warfare, battlefield tactics, foreign influences on Byzantine military ideology, the role of the fortifications in the defense of the empire, etc.

The book is structured into seven chapters. Chapter 1 deals with the way Byzantine emperors justified their wars and promoted their military image and policies through imperial propaganda. The role the emperor had to play in military affairs illuminates the relationship between the throne and the nobility whose members used to dominate the leadership of the army, as the author argues. Chapter 2 explores military command in Late Byzantium, which here implies the military character and the attitude of higher nobility towards warfare. The author also investigates the efficacy and the role of late Byzantine commanders on the battlefield and compares the character and notion of aristocracy to similar phenomena in Western Europe. Chapter 3 presents a categorization of Byzantine soldiers into five groups (pronoia holders, allagia, Nicaean frontier troops, proselantai, thelematarioi) and includes a separate study of the case of the Despotate of Morea. Apart from that, this chapter also examines the effectiveness of the troops on the battleground. Chapter 4 deals with the use of mercenaries in the Byzantine army and divides them into two categories: those hired for long-term service and those employed only for a specific occasion. Moreover, the author describes Byzantine authors’ views on mercenaries, and specifically on the foreign ones, who were the ones most used in the conflicts of this era. Chapter 5 investigates the way late Byzantine campaigns were organized and provisioned. Chapter 6 studies the role that fortifications played in the defense of the empire and the nature of the Byzantine siege warfare. Chapter 7 examines late Byzantine military tactics and their efficacy, focusing on three aspects: the role and employment of infantry and cavalry, the way the Byzantines adjusted their tactics by considering those of their foes, the Byzantine notions on the nature and strength of the empire’s opponents.

The central conclusions drawn in the study can be summarized as follows. Even if traditional Byzantine ideology towards warfare seems to have changed only slightly, its core ideas still variated depending on the individual emperors and their respective priorities, as well as on the political and military circumstances during their reign (p. 221). As for the military leaders, they used to be recruited – with very few exceptions – among the members of the social elite, which led to an increase of this elite’s influence on the emperor and an improvement of their position in the court hierarchy (p. 222). This militarized character of the nobility favored the development of a certain set of ideals, such as bravery in war and “heroic individualism”, according to Kyriakidis (p. 222). Soldiers employed during the late Byzantine period can be divided into those providing for themselves through an income by exploiting the land they owned, and mercenaries (p. 222). Overall, the latter group proved to be a more efficient military force covering, among other things, the tactical inadequacies of the imperial army (p. 223). Despite the negative attitude of the Byzantine authors, Kyriakidis concludes that the presence of mercenaries was not catastrophic for Byzantium (p. 223). The campaigns were organized in a simplified way and had limited geographical range, armies being small and the soldiers being expected to provide for themselves (p. 223). The costs for the upkeep of the army were covered by a special state tax imposed on the local population as well as by using markets and by the booty distributed to the troops, this last factor playing a major role (p. 223). Numerous wars of this era rendered the defense of cities, fortresses, and citadels through fortification more important than pitched battles, and thus the latter became far less frequent than sieges and blockades (p. 224). Finally, the tactics used by the Byzantines against the armies of Western Europe represented guerilla warfare, employing light cavalry archers against the heavily armored Latin knights (p. 224–225). To deal with the light cavalrymen of the East, the Byzantines tried to get into close combat with them as fast as possible (p. 225). The Byzantine empire failed to follow a significant late medieval development in Western Europe, the increasing importance of infantry (p. 225). The reason behind this was the continuous shrinking of the state that reduced its tax territory: thus Byzantium could not financially and geographically afford to assemble and train a substantial number of infantry troops (p. 225). The scarcity of resources and their mishandling, the general maladministration of the state’s affairs, and the domestic conflicts resulted in an inconsistent and short-term military policy and reduced the empire’s effectiveness in confronting its opponents (p. 226). The late Byzantine army, though small in numbers, did not lack military commanders capable of strategically thinking, inspiring the troops, and increasing their morale (p. 227). The Byzantine forces were not always losing in battle, but they could never inflict the final hit on their foes (p. 227).

The greatest advantage of this book is that it gives the reader an overview of the culture of war during the last two and a half centuries of Byzantium, covering many aspects with adequate and convincing analysis. It also uses all the relevant sources (historiographical, rhetorical, documents) and sufficient secondary literature up to the time of the publishing. Nevertheless, the author could provide a more detailed introduction on the culture of war of the previous years (323–1204) and how it evolved through the early and middle Byzantine period. Moreover, he could include more information about the influence of the Western European developments on the Byzantine culture of war and the interconnection between them.

The book would be useful for the researchers of Late Byzantine warfare without limiting them to one topic, since it covers a variety of aspects of the late Byzantine culture of war. The articulate and concise English of the book as well as its structure make it an easy to read even for a general audience not specializing in the field.