Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (67 page)

There are countless biographies of Alexander the Great that discuss the campaign of Gaugamela. The most accessible in English are R. Lane Fox,
Alexander the
Great (London, 1973); W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, vols. 1–2 (Chicago, 1981); P. Green, Alexander of Macedon (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974); U. Wilcken,
Alexander the Great
(New York, 1967); and especially the excellent and sober portrayal by A. B. Bosworth,
Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great
(Cambridge, 1988). Despite the work of Bosworth, Green, and important journal articles by E. Badian, the romance of Alexander the Great as a philosopher king and advocate of universal brotherhood has again regained credence both in America and elsewhere in the current age of multiculturalism and renewed ethnic tension in the Balkans.

For the Western origins and traditions of decisive battle, see V. D. Hanson, The
Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
(Berkeley, 2000); and
The
Other Greeks: The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization
(Berkeley, 1999); D. Dawson,
The Origins of Western Warfare: Militarism and Morality
in the Ancient World
(Boulder, Colo., 1996); R. Weigley,
The Age of Battles: The Quest
for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo
(Bloomington, Ind., 1991); R. Preston and S. Wise, Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships with
Western Society
(New York, 1970); and G. Craig and F. Gilbert, eds.,
Makers of Modern
Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler
(Princeton, N.J., 1943). For the difference in primitive skirmishing and shock “civilized” collisions, see H. H. Turney-High, Primitive War: Its Practice and Concepts (Columbia, S.C., 1971).

General Persian sources are discussed under the prior chapter devoted to Salamis, but there are a few works specific to the later Achaemenid era, and especially to Darius III. See, for example, E. Herzfeld,
The Persian Empire
(Wiesbaden, 1968); A. Stein,
Old Routes of Western Iran: Narrative of an Archaeological Journey
(New York, 1969); and for a revisionist view, P. Briant, Histoire de l’empire perse (Paris, 1996).

Chapter Four: Citizen Soldiers
Cannae, August 2, 216 B.C.

Primary sources for Cannae are the historians Polybius (3.110–118) and Livy (22.44–50), with anecdotal information found in Appian, Plutarch’s
Fabius,
and Cassius Dio. The main problems of the battle lie in reconciling Polybius’s much larger figures for both the size of (86,000) and number killed in (70,000) the Roman army with the usually more suspect Livy’s smaller—and more believable—figures (48,000 killed). In addition, scholars still argue over Hannibal’s wisdom in not marching on Rome and besieging the city in the shocking aftermath of the slaughter. Less critical controversies surround the exact armament and tactics of Hannibal’s African and European allies—were they swordsmen or pikemen or both?—and the positioning of the Roman encampments.

Graphic accounts of the battle itself are available in M. Samuels, “The Reality of Cannae,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 47 (1990), 7–29; P. Sabin, “The Mechanics of Battle in the Second Punic War,”
Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
67 (1996), 59–79; and V. Hanson, “Cannae,” in R. Cowley, ed., The Experience of War (New York, 1992).

For the larger topographical, tactical, and strategic questions that surround Cannae, see F. W. Walbank, A Historical Commentary on Polybius, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1957), 435–49; J. Kromayer and G. Veith,
Antike Schlachtfelder in Italien und Afrika
(Berlin, 1912), vol. 1, 341–46; and H. Delbrück,
Warfare in Antiquity,
vol. 1 of
The
History of the Art of War
(Westport, Conn., 1975), (Berlin, 1920), vol. 1, 315–35.

The most balanced and researched account of the Second Punic War and the battle of Cannae is J. F. Lazenby’s excellent
Hannibal’s War: A Military History of the
Second Punic War
(Norman, Okla., 1998), which provides a narrative closely supported by ancient sources. For a more general study, see B. Craven,
The Punic Wars
(New York, 1980), and N. Bagnall,
The Punic Wars
(London, 1990).

For military biographies of Hannibal for the general reader, consult K. Christ, Hannibal (Darmstadt, Germany, 1974); S. Lanul, Hannibal (Paris, 1995); J. Peddie,
Hannibal’s War
(Gloucestershire, England, 1997); and T. Bath,
Hannibal’s Campaigns
(Cambridge, 1981). Questions of manpower and the potential of Roman military mobilization are surveyed in A. Toynbee,
Hannibal’s Legacy,
2 vols. (London, 1965), and especially P. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.–A.D. 14 (London, 1971).

There are good, accessible accounts of the history and institutions of ancient Carthage in D. Soren, A. Ben Khader, and H. Slim,
Carthage: Uncovering the Mysteries
and Splendors of Ancient Tunisia
(New York, 1990); J. Pedley, ed.,
New Light on Ancient
Carthage (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1980); and G. and C. Picard, The Life and Death of Carthage (New York, 1968). S. Lancel, Carthage: A History (Oxford, 1995), has a lively narrative of Roman-Carthaginian interaction. The larger strategic canvas of Roman imperialism and the Punic Wars is discussed in W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome 327–70 B.C. (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1984), and J. S. Richardson, Hispaniae, Spain, and the Development of Roman Imperialism, 218–82 B.C. (New York, 1986).

The traditions of civic militarism and constitutional government as they relate to military efficacy are thematic in D. Dawson,
The Origins of Western Warfare
(Boulder, Colo., 1996), and discussed in detail by P. Rahe, Republics, Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992). In a series of articles and books, B. Bachrach has made the argument for a military continuum in western and northern Europe without much interruption from imperial Roman times to the Middle Ages; see especially his
Merovingian Military Organization (481–751)
(Minneapolis, Minn., 1972).

The bibliography of the Roman army is vast; a good introduction to the legions of the republic is F. E. Adcock,
The Roman Art of War Under the Republic
(Cambridge, Mass., 1940); H. M. D. Parker,
The Roman Legions,
2nd ed. (Oxford, 1971); B. Campbell, The Roman Army, 31 B.C.–A.D. 37: a sourcebook (London 1994); and L. Keppie,
The Making of the Roman Army
(Totowa, N.J., 1984). For the influence of Cannae on later Western military thought, see J. Kersétz, “Die Schlacht bei Cannae und ihr Einfluss auf die Entwicklung der Kriegskunst,”
Beiträge der Martín-Luther
Universität
(1980), 29–43; A. von Schlieffen,
Cannae
(Fort Leavenworth, Kans., 1931); and A. du Picq,
Battle Studies
(Harrisburg, Pa., 1987).

Chapter Five: Landed Infantry
Poitiers, October 11, 732

We have almost no full contemporary account of the battle of Poitiers, since a number of the standard sources for late antiquity and the early Dark Ages end before 732. Gregory of Tours stopped his
Historia Francorum
in 594. The anonymous
Liber
Historiae Francorum
was completed at 727. Venerable Bede’s history leaves off at 731, a year before the battle.

Although the
Chronicle of Fredegar
ends at 642, a continuator left a brief account of the fighting in 732 (J. M. Wallace-Hadrill,
The Four Books of the Chronicle of
Fredegar with its Continuations
[London, 1960]), as did the anonymous continuator of the
Chronicle of Isidore
(T. Mommsen,
Isidori Continuatio Hispana, Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi,
vol. 11 [Berlin, 1961]). The absence of good firsthand accounts of the battle have led to widely contrasting appraisals of its conduct and importance. It is common to read in major surveys of the age—before 1950 almost exclusively in German and French—that Poitiers marked the rise of feudalism, the dominance of heavy knights in stirrups, and the salvation of Western civilization, even as more sober accounts deny that horsemen played much, if any role, at Poitiers, that feudalism as it later emerged was years in the future, and that Abd ar-Rahman’s invasion was merely one of a series of small raids that gradually waned in the eighth century, as the Muslim bickering in Spain and Frankish consolidation in Europe inevitably conspired to weaken Islamic expansion from the Pyrenees. Most likely, Poitiers was an understandable victory of spirited infantrymen on the defensive, rather than the result of a monumental technological or military breakthrough, a reflection of increasing Arab weakness in extended operations to the north, rather than in itself the salvation of the Christian West.

For the battle of Poitiers itself, see the monograph of M. Mercier and A. Seguin,
Charles Martel et la bataille de Poitiers
(Paris, 1944). Consult especially the work of B. S. Bachrach, “Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism,” in his
Armies and Politics in the Early Medieval West
(Aldershot, England, 1993). This volume of essays serves as a collection of Bachrach’s most compelling arguments about the relative importance of cavalry, horsemen, and fortifications during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods. See also his
Merovingian Military Organization
(Minneapolis, Minn., 1972), and “Early Medieval Europe,” in K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein, eds.,
War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds
(Washington, D.C., 1999).

On the Franks, the latter Merovingians, and the early Carolingians, there are good surveys in K. Scherman, The Birth of France (New York, 1987); P. Riché, The
Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe
(Philadelphia, 1993); E. James,
The Origins
of France: From Clovis to the Capetians, 500–1000
(London, 1982); and H. Delbrück,
The Barbarian Invasions,
vol. 2 of
The History of the Art of War
(Westport, Conn., 1980).

For the life of Charles Martel, see R. Gerberding,
The Rise of the Carolingians and
the Liber Historiae Francorum
(Oxford, 1987). For two famous narratives of the battle, consult J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 1, From the
Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto
(London, 1954), 339–50, and E. Creasy,
The
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo
(New York, 1908), 157–69.

European war making between A.D. 500 and 1000 is outlined in D. Nicolle,
Medieval Warfare: Source Book, vol. 2, Christian Europe and Its Neighbors
(New York, 1996), which has much comparative material. Perhaps the most accessible and analytical account is J. Beeler, Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730–1200 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971). General detail about arms and military service—albeit mostly after 1000—is easily accessed in a variety of standard handbooks, especially P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (London, 1984), and F. Lot, L’Art militaire et les armées au moyen age en
Europe et dans le proche orient,
2 vols. (Paris, 1946), which has a list of German and French secondary sources that concern the battle. Cf. random mention also in M. Keen, ed.,
Medieval Warfare
(Oxford, 1999); T. Wise,
Medieval Warfare
(New York, 1976); and A. V. B. Norman, The Medieval Soldier (New York, 1971). For the later warfare of the Franks and western Europeans, consult J. France,
Western Warfare in the
Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999), and Victory in the East: A Military
History of the First Crusade
(Cambridge, 1994).

Valuable essays on the cultural aspects of medieval warfare are collected in D. Kagay and L. Andrew Villalon, eds., The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on
Medieval Military and Naval History
(Suffolk, England, 1999). There are a number of excellent illustrations in T. Newark,
The Barbarians: Warriors and Wars of the Dark
Ages
(London, 1988).

Provocative ideas about the larger culture and history of Europe during the so-called Dark Ages are found in H. Pirenne,
Mohammed and Charlemagne
(London, 1939), and R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse,
Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins
of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983). For standard surveys of the intellectual cosmos of the Middle Ages in the West, begin with R. Dales, The Intellectual Life of Western Europe in the Middle Ages (Washington, D.C., 1980), and W. C. Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (Stanford, Calif., 1958). For more literary emphasis, see M. Golish,
Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual
Tradition, 400–1400
(New Haven, Conn., 1997). See also the classic survey and standard view of the Dark Ages by C. Oman, The Dark Ages, 476–918 (London, 1928).

The early history of Islam and the creation of an expansive Arab military culture are surveyed by P. Crone in Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980), and
Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam
(Princeton, N.J., 1987); cf. M. A. Shaban,
Islamic History, A.D. 600–750 (A.H. 132)
(Cambridge, 1971).

For the long-term significance of Poitiers, see the counterfactual speculations of B. Strauss, “The Dark Ages Made Lighter,” in R. Cowley, ed.,
What If?
(New York, 1998), 71–92.

Chapter Six: Technology and the Wages of Reason
Tenochtitlán,
June
24,
1520–August
13,
1521

The conquest of Mexico has taken center stage in the contemporary academic cultural wars, especially concerning the use of evidence that is drawn mostly from either Spanish eyewitnesses or Spanish collections of Aztec oral narratives. Often scholars accept Spanish descriptions of the magnificence of Tenochtitlán and the beauty of its gardens, zoos, and markets, but reject outright the same authors’ more gruesome accounts of cannibalism and systematic human immolation, sacrifice, and torture. European “constructs” and “paradigms” are considered inappropriate contexts in which to understand Aztec culture, even as Mexican art, architecture, and astronomical knowledge are praised in more or less classical aesthetic and scientific terms. Yet, our interests here are not in relative moral judgments, but in military efficacy, not so much the amorality of the conquistadors as the methods of their conquest.