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Short description

Outsider skirmish rabble lacks any defensive equipment and their only offensive weapons are wooden darts with fire-hardened tips. Still, they throw those with remarkable force and over great distances.

Description

Outsider skirmish rabble lacks any defensive equipment and their only offensive weapons are wooden darts with fire-hardened tips. Made up of the dishonored and disenfranchised, they would have been poorly motivated. Still, they throw those darts with remarkable force and over great distances.

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.

Yet, not all Germanic warriors carried the shield and frameae into battle – or weapons of higher esteem, such as swords or pikes. There were some, whom Tacitus described as going into battle with little more than sharpened sticks of fire-hardened wood (Tacitus, Annales, 2.14). Such pitifully equipped men did clearly not possess the gift of weapons. That means they were not recognized as freemen by the nation they served, and were thus effectively considered outsiders without a nation. Most nationless outsiders had either been born into servitude or reduced to it – whether through war or debt. Even if set free, it was rare for a freed man to be accepted into the ranks of the freemen, as they jealously guarded their special status (Tacitus, Germania, 24-25). Aside from the servile castes, the outsiders may also have included a handful of freeborn outcasts. Those would have been cowards and miscreants who had either been deemed unworthy to join the community of freemen, or had been evicted from it due to their shameful display. Yet, they would have been very few, for such wretches did not live long in Germania (Tacitus, Germania, 6, 12, 14, 31).

Under normal circumstances, only freemen enjoyed the privilege of going into battle. Yet, if times were dire indeed, Germanic nations could and did press outsiders into military service. One such occasion was the existential threat facing Arminius’ coalition in AD 15-17, when Germanicus’ legions were rampaging through the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe. Tacitus’ account of the invasion includes the only extant attestation of Germanic warriors armed with nothing more than darts made of fire-hardened wood (Tacitus, Annals, 2.14). A few centuries later, when their very survival as a people was at risk, the Goths on a couple of occasions resorted to freeing and arming Roman slaves to bolster their outnumbered forces against the endless legions of Rome. In other words, just like Arminius before them, Gothic kings would only stoop to allowing outsiders to fight when up against an existential threat. Yet, apparently the Herules differed from other Germanics in this regard as Procopius claimed that it was the custom of Herul warriors to be accompanied into battle by armed slaves (Procopius, History of the Wars, 2.25.27-28).

Made up of the dishonored and disenfranchised, the outsider skirmish rabble would have been poorly motivated. They would not have stood their ground if under direct attack. Nor were they equipped to do so as they lacked any defensive equipment and their wooden darts would have served poorly as melee weapons. Their role in battle was to stay behind the main battleline and harass the enemy with showers of wooden darts. Yet, their projectiles would have been more effective if launched from a flanking position. What made the outsider skirmish rabble remarkable was that they could throw their missiles much further than other skirmishers.