So much for not being worth its own thread. Jesus, this is a long post and the format is very meh.
It is an interesting topic. (since we can't rely on any sources) my argument required context to support the theory that semi-nomadic tribes of 300,000 within the empire were possible. I don't think you can dismiss that in an empire of 50 million. But as we will see - I think most of the argument was unnecessary.
Except those casualty figures actually wouldn't exceed that number if you use, say, Heather's estimates, if he had any for total deaths.
An assertion, since you admit Heather provided no estimates
If someone claims they can estimate the size of barbarian armies then surely there are other sources you can accept that provide casualty estimates. It will only cover the documented battles for a whole CENTURY of barbarian invasions, but at least give you a point of reference.
Interesting that immediately after putting forward the prima facie absurd number of 50,000 warriors for the Goths, which hasn't been batted around by anybody in modern scholarship seriously, you claim to have such a familiarity with casualty estimates for all recorded engagements in a hundred-year span to be able to reject Heather's numbers out of hand. Intriguing.
Why is the relatively modest number of 50,000 prima-facie absurd ? That is an assertion on your part and claiming it hasn't been batted around is not really a factual counter-argument. It was a common enough number for Imperial armies before, and by this time the bulk of them were either Foederati or barbarian allies themselves, some of whom mutinied and joined Alaric's army ! The Goths entered the empire multiple times before 376, and were on a permanent war footing. The lands the Goths marched through were supporting cities of a few hundred thousand, such as Aquielia.
I'm not claiming to have more familiarity with estimates, hence I was prepared to factor in a 50% error, but that depends what source we are starting with; there still seems to be quite a disparity in range, such as between Treadgold and others. My perception comes from publications I've read since the 90s, though even wiki is pretty tight lipped about it.
Common sense would suggest that the following is an unreasonably low estimate, because it uses the Roman military organization as an attempt to estimate the size of the entire Roman-Visigoth-Frankish-Burgundian alliance that confronted Attila. It seems historians are afraid to go out on a limb when they bat these numbers around.
A better sense of the size of the forces may be found in the study of the Notitia Dignitatum by A.H.M. Jones.[23] This document is a list of officials and military units that was last updated in the first decades of the 5th century. Notitia Dignitatum lists 58 various regular units, and 33 limitanei serving either in the Gallic provinces or on the frontiers nearby; the total of these units, based on Jones analysis, is 34,000 for the regular units and 11,500 for the limitanei, or just under 46,000 all told. While the Roman forces in Gaul had become much smaller by this time, if we accept this number as the total of all of the forces fighting with Theodoric and Aetius, we should not be too far off. Assuming that the Hunnic forces were roughly the same size as the Romano-Gothic, the number involved in battle is just under 100,000 combatants in total. This excludes the inevitable servants and camp followers who usually escape mention.
Comparing total military deaths with these estimates may sound like a good idea, but the problem is that the source material is frankly so patchy as to make that a fruitless endeavor. Even for the larger engagements, the best we have are estimates of total strength; casualties, let alone fatal casualties, are virtually impossible to get, and those that people do throw out there are almost totally baseless by the very nature of the beast. So this particular criticism doesn't make sense.
yes it is tenuous. As an example: one of the largest estimates of strength I recall was one of 100,000 for Radagaisus' host, but it is unclear whether they are considering well-armed combatants or the usual mob of camp followers, some of whom are also armed. If it is the latter it is not hard to believe that Stilicho's modest forces were still able to deal with it. But regardless, there was a lot of displacement over a large area, and I do not think the size of tribes that were fleeing Atilla (or working in concert with him) was insignificant.
I'm not the one making this argument. I am myself rather emphatically not a migrationist; while I concede that people were moving around, I do not assign the migrations a starring role in the events of the fifth century, and I have a totally different view of precisely what these groups of people were that were moving around anyway. This is Heather's neo-migrationist argument that I'm attempting to elucidate for you, generally regarded as the most realistic modern formulation of the argument.
But as to what you're actually saying: huh? What point, exactly, are you trying to make here? These barbarian tribes theoretically had a high birth rate (possible, but that does not translate into a large population by any stretch, and is hardly axiomatic), could replace their fighting population within a generation through natural increase alone (unproven), and therefore this is why we see the same groups cropping up repeatedly in battles against the Romans. Pretty vague! It's not even clear which groups, in particular, you're talking about. But even if I'm to take your comment at face value, there is an alternative explanation for the reappearance of the same groups over and over again: they never really suffered heavy casualties in any of those military engagements, and thus were relatively unharmed by the "constant" fighting. Not sure what this is supposed to prove one way or the other, either.
The point is that given your context of the summation of an entire century, you cannot ignore the natural rate of increase of these peoples. It appeared you're argument overlooked a fairly simple scientific fact that in a hundred years, the reappearance of the same tribes is not the reappearance of the same people in that tribe, regardless of casualties. And if they never suffered heavy casualties, their strength would be even
greater. But as we shall see, it is not really relevant to Heather's argument.
Again, not my argument, it's Heather's. This is what happens when you butt in in the middle of a conversation. He lays a great deal of stress on the circumstances immediately surrounding the Gothic conflict in the 370s and the Rhine invasion/Gallic civil war/Gothic war redux in the 400s and 410s, and recognizes the role of Roman internal fighting, although continuing to emphasize that the migrating groups were the chief agents of Rome's problems. This makes his case slightly confused. I fully agree that the attempt to give agency to these groups is implausible, and that's one of the reasons I reject the migrationist argument.
Yes this was part of a migrationist / cultural dispersion argument, but this underpinning appears again and again in these forums so it is worth looking at in isolation./
You are confusing a total number of troops at the disposal of a given state and the total number of troops concentrated in one location. They are radically different things. Rome had at its disposal several hundred thousand soldiers in the fourth century; due to the logistical problems of concentrating them, the Romans could not put more than perhaps 50,000 in the same place, and even that number is generally higher than the actual sizes of field armies you see in the fourth century. In the case of the migrationists' Goths, Vandals, and so forth, however, they are essentially the same.
No I am emphatically not confusing the two. As I've noted elsewhere, 50,000 in any one place is quite reasonable, and I was only claiming that for the larger tribes as an estimate of peak strength.
As for troop-numbers and the reliability of ancient sources, in general, the classical numbers are infrequently any good for troop-numbers in large-scale engagements, and this problem is exacerbated for late antiquity. Thukydides and Prokopios are outside the scope of the fall of the West, so I don't know why you're bringing them (or Herodotos) up. More relevant to criticize/defend the numbers given in Hydatius, Victor of Vita, Prosper of Aquitaine, Zosimos, Olympiodoros, and so on.
I know. I noted they were irrelevant to the time period. It was late when I started that. I was using the classical examples because I am familiar with them - not these guys, who I agree you can't take to the bank. The sources I've read usually note this and provide some reasonable estimate, but 'reasonable' has changed over time.
Why do you think that way? Where did the number of 50,000 come from? Is it an ass-pull? If you're going to disagree with the established historical authorities on this question, you generally require some reason to do so other than "those numbers are too small and undramatic".
I'm not sure I'm disagreeing with authorities, but established authorities according to who ? It might seem like an ass pull, but it is based on my readings and interpretation of the circumstantial evidence, which by the looks of things, is no more of an ass pull than anyone else's estimate. The fact is there doesn't seem to be a way to magically extract much more truth from these estimates than they could a hundred years ago. It seems to be whatever is in current fashion amongst historians. This is not a jab at those who try, but as you've said yourself there isn't enough to go on. The summation of all these analyses over time changes the acceptable range, and I believe I am still in that range.
You will remember, of course, that many of the people you're differentiating, Heather actually has as the same people. He considers the forces of Alareiks to be identical to the combination of Tervingi and Greuthungi, for instance. The Hasding-Siling-Alan group that sacked Rome in 455 would be correlated with the dudes hanging out in Hispania in the 420s, and comprise the majority of the Rhine invaders of 405/6. That cuts down on the numbers somewhat. Your estimates for some of the groups are higher than his are. His total formulation, rather rough, is as follows:
yeah one has to be careful, they had a tendency to call everyone on the Rhine Alamanni and on the Danube, everyone was Scythians or Sarmatians for a while. But when tribes appear in the same sentence as fighting eachother I can usually take that to the bank. The tribes I listed were clearly in an independent context. And yes many of the Vandals-Alans-Suebi who crossed in 406 eventually made their way to Spain and sacked Rome in 455, but they weren't quite the same people, some were lost some were gained, and it was their grandchildren who accompanied Genseric to Rome.
Originally Posted by Peter Heather, "The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians", p. 446
Roughly, therefore, the main invaders of the west might have amounted to 40,000 Goths (in the two waves of 376 and 405/6), 30,000 Rhine invaders, maybe 15,000 Burgundians, and another 10,000 refugees from Attila's collapsing empire. To this figure of 95,000 fighting men we would need to add whatever might be represented by various smaller groups, especially the Alans who didn't follow Geiseric to Africa, and, above all, the Frankish forces who from the mid-460s played an increasingly prominent role in Gallic politics. Although after 476 the Franks quickly became powerful enough to rival the Visigoths for dominance in Gaul, in the events leading up to the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, probably no more than 10-15,000 Franks were active. Overall, this suggests that around 110-120,000 armed outsiders played some part in bringing down the western Empire.
Well here is my punchline Dachs, because now that I actually see what Heather is saying I don't really have a huge problem with it. A matter of degree perhaps, I would say his summation of the two Goth waves at 40,000 seems pretty thin, I think he neglects the Franks and Alans a bit, and the Anglo-Saxons appear to be outside his scope altogether. But taken as the lower end of a range I can almost accept it. The point is he is isolating his numbers to the size of hosts who took part in events at a single place and point in time. This is not a summation of all the barbarian forces that attempted invasions in a century, or the small bands of marauders that became squatters or set themselves up in farms and towns as the gradual assimilation began. It differs quite dramatically from my interpretation of your earlier quote.
Heather believes that the sources suggest "that around 110-120,000 armed outsiders played some part in bringing down the western Empire" - and this is a total, extended over a hundred years of narrative from 376 to 476.
