Nikolaos Kanellopoulos, Η οργάνωση και η τακτική του βυζαντινού στρατού στην ύστερη περίοδο (1204-1461), Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Thessaly, Vólos 2010.

Nikolaos Kanellopoulos is a historian and a Faculty member of the Department of Military Science of the Hellenic Army Academy. He did his PhD in the department of History, Archaeology, and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly (2010). His papers concern aspects of the Late Byzantine warfare, such as, among others, the military training of the Byzantine army, the Byzantine battle tactics against the Franks in the 13th century, the Latin influence on Byzantine justification of war in the 13th century. His latest article was on “The Byzantine Influence on the Military Writings of Theodore I Palaiologos, Marquis of Montferrat”, in : A Military History of the Mediterranean Sea: Aspects of War, Diplomacy, and Military Elites (History of Warfare, Band 118), edited by George Theotokis and Aysel Yildiz, and published by Brill in 2018.

Kanellopoulos’ thesis presents and examines the military events of the period 1204-1461, as well as the Byzantine military tactics applied during this era. The treatise also addresses issues of military organization, armament, military training, and siege craft, when directly related to military tactics. The main idea of this dissertation is that, during the last three centuries, the Byzantine troops fought mainly by using tactics of “indirect” war, or, otherwise, guerrilla war, in combination with the tactics of assaulting cavalry forces (heavily or slightly armed cavalry and cavalry archers). Moreover, the author stresses the influence of the Catalans on Byzantine tactics, influence which had to do with the infantry’s increased role on the battlefield. The latest tactic is a prelude to the purely defensive strategy that the Byzantines were forced to follow, ending up implementing static defense (taking cover behind the walls of the cities/fortresses) from the end of the 14th century until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The structure of the thesis is helpful: The authors places the military events in chronological order, e.g. Battle of Pelagonia (1259), Conquest of Constantinople (1261), and as groups, e.g. The War in Thessaly (1273-1277), The War in Asia Minor (1280-1293). Then, he provides a chapter on the basic elements of organization and operation of the Byzantine army. Before the writer proceeds to the Byzantine war tactics, which is the last chapter, he briefly describes the tactics of the Empire’s enemies in order to compare them with the Byzantine ones, and to show how the former influenced the latter, while Byzantines were trying to find ways to deal effectively with their opponents. The dissertation is well written, and the researcher uses Greek, Western, and Eastern sources in describing and analyzing the events. The strongest point of the treatise is that it serves as a guide to all the military events of the last two centuries of Byzantium, with references to all the sources. Nonetheless, Kanellopoulos does not always provide a deep analysis on every episode, such as the agenda of the authors of the sources, or whether or not they describe the reality on the battlefield. There is also a lack of a broader historical context on each episode.

This treatise is useful to those who research on the warfare of the Late Byzantine period since it provides an examination of all the military events of this era, and of the sources that refer to these events. The thesis attempts to fill a gap in the literature by complementing the monography of Mark C. Bartusis, The Late Byzantine Army. Arms and Society, 1204-1453, Philadelphia 1992, a book that emphasizes on the organization and command of the army, as well as the social status and origin of the soldiers, but it does not study the military history of the era in detail. Regarding the army’s organization, Kanellopoulos uses also Kosmas Panagiotidis’ thesis (Η οργάνωση του στρατού κατά την ύστερη βυζαντινή περίοδο, 1204-1453, Thessaloniki 2004), but he disagrees with him on the meaning of the term allagia, which, according to Kanellopoulos, signifies a regular military unit of the Byzantine army (Bartusis first suggested that) and not an administrative subdivision of megala allagia, provincial military administrations of the Palaiologan period, as Panagiotidis proposes.

The dissertation could also be of use to a wider audience that wishes to have a general idea about the wars of the Byzantine empire in the age of its decline. Though not published as a book, it can be accessed online for free, but the language of the text (Greek) limits the readers to those who know modern Greek.