Were early medieval armies small warbands or much larger fighting forces? David Bachrach examines the fierce scholarly debate over army size and what it reveals about warfare after the fall of Rome.
By David Bachrach
There is perhaps no topic that is more fraught or which has been the subject of more polemic than the size of campaign armies during the early medieval period. For well over a century...
In this article, Bachrach argues against the common assumption that early medieval armies were small and poorly equipped. He asserts that historians have been unnecessarily focused on finding smaller armies rather than discovering their actual sizes. Bachrach emphasizes the need to adopt new methods for determining army sizes, such as integrating archaeological findings into historical research. This shift in focus would challenge long-held assumptions about early medieval Europe's military capa...