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Short description

Carrying just shields and several frameae, the freemen cavalry may appear like mere skirmish cavalry. Yet, these men are cavalry killers employing clever counter-cavalry tactics to strike way above their weight-class.

Description

Carrying just shields and several frameae, the freemen cavalry may appear like mere skirmish cavalry. Yet, these men are cavalry killers employing clever counter-cavalry tactics to strike way above their weight-class. A wise commander would use them to control the battlefield, rather than as a hammer to shatter enemy lines.

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.

Sources do not explicitly state from which social group the earliest Germanic cavalry was drawn. That said, the lack of a large aristocracy or sizeable retinues among the Germanic nations of the day leaves little other alternative than to conclude that the horsemen too were freemen. Since most freemen would not have been able to afford riding a horse into battle, the freemen cavalry must have been made up of the wealthiest of their kind. Yet, wealth disparity was quite limited within Germanic society at the time, and even these most affluent ones were no better armed than their peers on foot. Indeed, even one and a half century after the Germanic and Roman worlds had first collided, Tacitus still described Germanic cavalry as being armed with nothing more than shields and frameae (Tacitus, Germania, 6). So, although standing retinues of warriors had made their appearance by that time, Germanic horsemen were still armed the same way as their ancestors who had invaded Gaul under the Suebian king Ariovistus (Caesar, Gallic War, 1.46). Apparently, their mounts were rather unimpressive as well: Remarkable for neither beauty, nor swiftness, according to Tacitus (Tacitus, Germania, 6).

Yet, despite lack of proper armaments or warhorses, Germanic cavalry were still considered first-rate by the Romans. Indeed, once Caesar was able to recruit riders from across the Rhine, he immediately deprived the rest of his cavalry of their mounts and gave them to his Germanic recruits (Caesar, Gallic War, 7.65). Later on, the most elite cavalry regiment of the Roman military, the imperial bodyguards, would be made up of Germanic cavalry. Roman sources do not just attest the superior quality of Germanic cavalry, but many authors even considered Germanic cavalry the very best they could possibly recruit (Aurelius Victor, de Caesaribus, 21.2. Caesar, Gallic War, 4.2, 4.12. 7.65, 7.67, 7.70. Cassius Dio, 55.24.7. Strabo, 4.4.2. Tacitus, Annals, 2.11, 2.21).

Germanic cavalrymen were arguably superb riders and very capable of sophisticated cavalry maneuvers (Tacitus, Annals, 2.11). Yet, their unorthodox counter-cavalry tactics were what made them truly formidable. Germanic riders would leap from their horses in the middle of a melee, in order to dive beneath enemy mounts and bring them, and their riders, down with stabs to the animals’ guts. So, despite their reputation as cavalrymen, Germanic horse had a tendency to fight more like mounted infantry when confronting enemy cavalry (Caesar, Gallic War, 4.2, 4.12. Maurice, Strategikon, 11.3).

The skirmishing ability of Germanic horsemen made them tactically flexible, but they were truly unsurpassed at hunting down and annihilating enemy cavalry. But neither of those capabilities made them particularly apt at charging into enemy infantry. A wise commander would thus have used them to control the battlefield, rather than as a hammer to shatter enemy lines.