Freemen
Light Infantry(0.6.7)Side / Back
Short description
Armed with shields and frameae-spears, Germanic freemen fight tenaciously for their nations and their status as free men. They may lack armor, but only a fool would underestimate their determination – or the sharpness of their frameae!
Description
Armed with shields and frameae-spears, Germanic freemen fight tenaciously for their nations and their status as free men. They may lack armor, but only a fool would underestimate their determination – or the sharpness of their frameae! The place of these freemen was in the main battleline, right behind the pike-armed vanguard.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Early Germanic society rested upon the freemen caste. The freemen enjoyed political enfranchisement, and were in return expected to fight for their nations whenever called upon. Essentially, the Germanic nations practiced a form of universal military service where all able-bodied men constituted their nation’s freemen militia. Germanic men were therefore not born as freemen, but were only raised to that status after reaching adulthood and being deemed worthy. At that point, a man would present himself before the whole assembly of freemen to receive his first weapons: A shield, and the traditional Germanic spear called framea – a spear of about a man’s length, which had a short, but very sharp, tip of iron, and was as suitable for thrusting as throwing. The one handing him his weapons was either his father, another relative, or one of the chiefs. Yet, who bestowed them was of subordinate importance. What mattered was that the gift of weapons was a national act of adoption, whereby the freemen received the man into their ranks and thus made him a full member of his nation: A freeman (Tacitus, Germanica, 13). Later on, the growing power of Germanic kings eventually caused a reversal of that relationship. Importance shifted to the giver of gifts, and the customary gift of weapons turned into a personal form of adoption, wherein he who received it became a son-in-arms of the bestower. Or at least that became the case among the Germanic royals themselves. Even the Byzantine court adopted the personalized version of the custom when dealing with Germanic royalty, and many Germanic leaders, such as the Gothic king Theodoric the Great, were made sons-in-arms of Byzantine emperors.
Most Germanic freemen proudly brandished the same kind of arms that had once raised them to their status: Shields and frameae-spears. Each man carried several frameae and threw the extra ones as if they were heavy javelins, but kept one to use as a spear in melee. Men armed in this way historically made up the bulk of the Germanic battleline (Tacitus, Germanica, 6).
Even if they technically were a militia force, constant conflict ensured that they were a very experienced one. Moreover, in battle, they deployed according to clan and kin, which ensured the cohesion and morale of the unit – essentially it served as a natural substitute for discipline based on obedience. Accordingly, the freemen were both skilled and steadfast combatants, but their lack of armor put them at a distinct disadvantage in prolonged confrontations with heavy infantry. Yet, they could partly alleviate that weakness by forming up into a shield wall. Since each man carried several frameae, the freemen were tactically flexible and could also skirmish. All the same, the place of these freemen was still in the main battleline, right behind the pike-armed vanguard.