War and Peace ^*

792 was an unusual year for Charlemagne. In this year – as the chronicler of the Royal Frankish Annals noted with slight astonishment – no military campaign was carried out. Military activities were thus the norm rather than the exception in the Carolingian realm, or, to put it another way, »practically endemic in this political order« (»Krieg war in dieser politischen Ordnung praktisch endemisch«, 3). Despite this generally well-known aspect of Carolingian rule, the actual organisation of the army has so far played only a minor role in (German-language) research, just as the entire field of (medieval) military history remained a largely underdeveloped area of research in Germany, especially during the second half of the 20th century. Haack’s PhD thesis, written under the supervision of Steffen Patzold at Tübingen, attempts to fill this‍‍‍ research lacuna by focusing on »Kriegsdienste als Prozesse gemeinschaftlicher Organisation um 800«. It is thus not about war as an event, mentality or memory; rather, Haack seeks to propose a new model of how Carolingian armies were raised and organised. Because of the significance of war in the Carolingian period, he argues that a greater understanding of the Carolingian army simultaneously achieves a new understanding of the Carolingian realm’s political community. In analogy to the original title of Leo Tolstoy’s over two-thousand-page historical portrait of the Napoleonic Wars, one might say that the core of Haack’s work is less about war and peace than about war and society.

The structure of the book follows an almost formalistic rigour and brevity. After a concise introduction (1–9), Haack first outlines three different models of Carolingian military organisation proposed by earlier researchers (10–68), in order to subsequently demonstrate why he considers them inadequate (»Dekonstruktion«, 69–110). He then goes on to develop his own theory on the basis of‍‍‍ six case studies (»Konstruktion«, 111–209). Five‍‍‍ equally short »Thesen« (210–228) conclude his discussion and summarise his results. An index‍‍‍ of persons and places as well as a subject index facilitate orientation within the volume in an exemplary manner.

Haack’s approach is completely compelling in its own logic: he starts with the previous research literature, challenges the source base of existing models of the organisation of Carolingian armies, and afterwards elaborates its own description on the basis of a series of sources that can be used to infer the organisation of military units. Moreover, his own model – that the decisive organisational mechanism for raising and deploying armies was personal ties – has a high explanatory potential and fits well into the current medieval research para|digm, which pays particular attention to agents and networks beyond the king. For this reason, however, it is at least a missed opportunity that Haack decided, for ease of use, to present a tightly focused bibliography, which led him to omit various works of recent research. Thus, neither Volker Scior’s essays on access to the ruler¹ nor Jörg W. Busch’s book on Die Herrschaften der Karolinger² or Jürgen Strothmann’s thoughts on the Carolingian political order as an association of groups (»Verband der Verbände«)³ are to be found. These studies would have been particularly valuable to Haack’s analysis, since Strothmann combined the institutional approach of older research with its antithesis represented by the »New German Constitutional History« (Neue Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte) into a synthesis of a trans-personal system (instead of trans-personal institutions) of collectives whose status did not derive from the king, but who should not be understood as an alternative focus of political loyalty to the king, either. Indeed, Haack, too, is concerned with the fact that »the equation of the public with the institutional state and the private with the personal […] is not helpful to understanding the nature of political communities in the early Middle Ages« (»die Gleichsetzung des Öffentlichen mit dem Institutionenstaat und des Privaten mit allem Personalen […] [ist] für die Frage nach dem Charakter politischer Gemeinwesen des frühen Mittelalters nicht sinnvoll«, 214). Instead, the personal networks themselves formed »structures of public order « and »therefore were neither in opposition to nor in competition with a state as the public order« (»[standen] damit nicht einem Staat als der öffentlichen Ordnung gegenüber«, 216). Here, fruitful connections could certainly have been drawn to Strothmann’s and also to Busch’s work. However, Haack’s approach to recent research is also reflected in his equally selective use of older research and his efforts to distance himself from its models. The rigid presentation style, especially in the first chapter, thus has its pitfalls, and Haack’s description of »Lehnswesen« as a historical model from Paul Roth to François Louis Ganshof’s féodalité (16–34) would have benefitted from much more detail and nuance. The subsequent contrasting pair of a Frankish »Wehrpflicht« (obligation to military service, 34–46) and the anthropological conceptions of warrior groups and war for the sake of booty (46–59) does not really feature as a mutually exclusive dichotomy in the previous literature. The older historiography suggested neither that Carolingian armies were tightly organised military units in the unbroken tradition of Roman military organisation nor that they were small bands of professional warriors who earned their living entirely from plundering. The three juxtaposed models thus appear a little like strawmen, making it relatively easy for Haack to »deconstruct« them in his second part, which, in this case, means making visible the often sparse source base and the preconceptions necessarily inherent in each model. A summary (59–68), in which many points of his own model are already touched upon, acts as a link to his third section.

This part, at one hundred pages by far the most extensive, offers a multi-layered and comprehensive examination of the specific organisation of military units. Taking into account different types of sources, Haack is also able to demonstrate the various campaigns’ specific contexts. This enables him to distance himself from overly systematising interpretive models, although the question arises whether his own model could not also be understood as a »system«, for example, in Luhmann’s sense, particularly since the decisive condition for social systems in Luhmann’s systems theory is communication (there is a short reference to Luhmann, but without taking up this point, on p. 7 note 44).|

The third section’s first subchapter then deals first with the »Krieger der Kapitularien« (»the warriors of the capitularies«, 112–122). Haack argues that the two frequently used and interrelated terms senior and homo should be understood as relative notions that could express all possible forms of a hierarchical relationship, which one must also imagine in principle as »patron-client relationships«. Haack then illustrates the significance of these relationships, using the example of Einhard on the basis of his surviving letters (122–139). The function of these relationships as a »mechanism of military organisation« then becomes clear: »magnates formed the interface between the political centre and local communities« (139). According to Haack, the same applied to religious institutions (139–155), and the emergence of church property registers around 800 thus contributed to the systematisation of military service. The following two specific examples further substantiate his results achieved so far. First, Haack deals with John the Spaniard, a »warrior« of Louis the Pious, and his very unique position in the structure of the Carolingian powers in a peripheral area of the empire (156–172). As his second example, he analyses the general conditions of Lothar I’s expedition to Corsica in 825 (172–187), a campaign that has thus far received little scholarly attention. The book deals lastly with the situation in 829 (187–206), when a general sense of anxiety in the lead-up to the first rebellion against Louis the Pious led to the production of an extensive set of texts touching on military issues. For Haack, these texts should be seen as »Verschriftlichung von Anweisungen, Tagesordnungspunkten und Diskussionen« (»the writing down of instructions, agendas for discussion and summaries of meetings«) in preparation for a general assembly in 829 (187). Haack interprets these texts as the »practical organisation of military service« (205). A brief summary concludes this section (206–209). In a nutshell, Haack argues that military service relied on networks of personal relationships and was founded on multiplex patron-client relationships. The »Krieger der Karolinger« were therefore not professional fighters, but only belonged to the Carolingian army temporarily and on a case-by-case basis: »War thus appears to have been part of the life-world of the Carolingian world’s elites, down to those who, when times were bad, had to band together to furnish and equip one warrior. However, the Carolingian capitularies do reveal that these men often tried to escape military service, particularly in times of crisis.« (»Krieg scheint so einerseits ein fester Teil der Lebenswelt der Eliten der karolingischen Welt gewesen zu sein, bis hinab zu all jenen, die in schlechten Zeiten gemeinsam einen Krieger stellen mussten. Nach Ausweis der karolingischen Kapitellisten versuchten diese Männer andererseits oft, sich dem Kriegsdienst zu entziehen, besonders in Notzeiten«, 208).

Haack evades the resulting question regarding the size of the Carolingian armies by saying that he would tend to assume larger units (212), without committing himself any further.⁴ Also, the role of the serfs who, according to Haack, would only occasionally have been called upon for military service, is discussed only cursorily (for example on p. 224). A comparison with the Ottonian period would also have been helpful, especially since relevant work has been done on Ottonian army organisation.⁵ Nevertheless, the book is a valuable contribution, and it is hoped that the new edition of the capitularies will produce further studies on the norms of social order in the Carolingian period, because – despite the fundamental justification of the deconstruction(s) of the idea of a »feudal system« – it has not yet been possible to formulate another meta-theory as a central explanatory model for the early medieval period. Perhaps it would (also) be helpful to conduct basic research on the history of research on »Lehnswesen« (and »feudalism«) itself. Because not everything that is old is obsolete, and not everything that is labelled as new is new. |