1 - Feudalism, Romanticism, and Source Criticism: Writing the Military History of Salian Germany

Summary

The military history of the German kingdom in the eleventh century remains to be written. The most recent monographic treatment that considers the Salian kings at war, Bruno Scherff's 1985 dissertation “Studien zum Heer der Ottonen und der ersten Salier (919–1056),” ends with the death of King Henry III (1039–56) and is notable for the topics that it explicitly avoids, including military equipment, logistics, numbers, military levies, fortifications, and above all, sieges. There are no monographic studies of the conquest of the Burgundian kingdom by King Conrad II of Germany (1024–39) in his two-year campaign of 1033– 34. Since the end of the nineteenth century, scholars have assiduously avoided investigating the wars of Conrad II, Henry III, and Henry IV (1056–1106) in Poland and Hungary. Even the civil wars within Germany during the final quarter of the eleventh century and the first decade of the twelfth, which have received considerable attention from a political perspective, have inspired only limited commentary regarding military matters. At an even more basic level, the enormous volume of source materials pertaining to warfare in the Salian century, including narrative texts, letters, charters, and archaeological evidence, has not received the kind of detailed critical analysis that has become the norm in Anglo-Saxon, Carolingian, and increasingly Ottonian military history.

The lack of scholarly attention to the military history of the German kingdom generally, and to the Salian period, in particular, is due to several factors. First, until very recently non-German-speaking scholars, including military historians, generally avoided the history of Germany altogether. Second, German-speaking historians largely have avoided topics in military history, especially since the end of the Second World War. Finally, the one consistent exception to this aversion to military matters, namely the focus on social and economic questions regarding the relationship among military service, nobility, and feudalism, has actually served to hinder a thorough investigation of the nature and conduct of war, and the concomitant examination of its institutional, material, and human elements.

Even before the 1940s, many topics that are currently understood as the province of military history were largely ignored in the German scholarly tradition. These include, but are not limited to, logistics, siege warfare, military technology, military organization, recruitment, military institutions such as local and expeditionary levies, pay, morale, education, and military training.