Info needed on late Byzantine Military

Hey, Im currently working on a short novel about the Siege of Constantinople by the Turks. Problem is, there is next to no info about the makeup of the military of the Byzantines, or the Turks.

I know they have 7,000 professional soldiers at the time the city was besieged. I'm guessing they would have been heavy infantry, but would they still use Kataphractoi at this time? Would the Greeks still employ horse archers/med cav?

Another thing is the 700 men under the command of Giovanni Giustiniani who was a Genoese Mercenary leader, what would they have been armed like, again I guess they would be heavy infantry in the European style, but would they have used horses and fought on foot?

What about the makeup of the Turkish forces? I infer that their cavalry would actually take some of the Mongolian tactics and even employ Mongolian mercenaries or soldiers, because the Mongols did fight the Ottomans a few hundred years before.

If you cant give me info off hand, what are good sites to use. Wikipedia is pretty much expunged of info at this time, so what are good military sites.

I'm gonna finish reading the Art of War by Machiavelli, but what other books are good that would have info on European, Byz, and Turkish military and tactics around 1460?

The Osprey campaign book on the siege is quite comprehensive. Might be worth checking out.

Don't even think about posting the novel in the Mead Hall...It's already done by me. ~D ~;)

Byzantines
7.000 professional soldiers?! When?! In 1204 maybe.
They had about 4.000 regular Byzantine soldiers and 3000 latin troops.

They weren't heavy infantry. Even the Varangians dissapeared.
Apart from the Emperor himself, who still had a horse, there was no cavalry.

They were normal militia units. And the mercenaries were sort of medium infantry, with chain mail and swords.

Turks

Bashibuzouks
Anatolians
Janissaries

Bashibuzouks - light armour and curved swords, fanatics
Anatolian Infantry - medium infantry, medium armour, sword
Janissaries - elite infantry, heavy armour, sword and halberd like weapon

Archers - light armour, dagger, composite bow

Sipahis - heavy cavalry

This is what they used, apart from the artillery.

Thanks:bow: , and no unfortunately, I have bigger things in mind then fan-fic forums. ~:cheers:

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Originally Posted by edyzmedieval

Don't even think about posting the novel in the Mead Hall...It's already done by me. ~D ~;)

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Now, now children, play nicely....~D

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Originally Posted by AtorianPaladin

Thanks:bow: , and no unfortunately, I have bigger things in mind then fan-fic forums. ~:cheers:

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We might have the same one......

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Originally Posted by AtorianPaladin

....What about the makeup of the Turkish forces? I infer that their cavalry would actually take some of the Mongolian tactics and even employ Mongolian mercenaries or soldiers, because the Mongols did fight the Ottomans a few hundred years before....

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I think the Christians at the Turkish army at the siege of Constantinople in 1453 were far more than those that were inside the walls.At the first days the attacks were carried out by Christians.Then the Turks completed the task....There are some good Osprey books about Turkish armies of that period.

As far as cavalry goes the backbone of Ottoman armies were the spahis (or sipahis, both spellings are used), a well-equipped, professional heavy cavalry type. They were recruited on a basis probably derived from the old practice of landholding 'amirs the Middle Eastern Muslim kingdoms worked by for about the entire Middle Ages (not counting the Mamluks, natch). Basically landholders were to raise and maintain an unit of spahis for the Sultan, the exact numbers depending on the extent of their lands, and were encouraged to "invest" in the number of troops by being rewarded after a succesful campaing proportional to the size of the contignent they sent.

The spahis were heavy shock cavalry of the classic Middle Eastern sort, with good weapons and armour - they didn't have nearly the sheer impact power of European chivalry, but on the other hand were far more maneuverable and more coordinated. They served as the main assault arm of Ottoman armies in field battles, while the Janissaries and other more reliable infantry anchored the centre, disposable volunteers (usually known as basshibazouks or thereabouts; some fought for faith, others for the hope of loot... the usual unpaid flotsam and jetsam armies accumulated) and low-end levies often found themselves serving as an ablative screen to absorb enemy assault, and irregular light cavalry - mercenaries from the steppes, tributary troops from subject nomad tribes inside the Sultanate, border fighters nigh identical to the Hungarian Hussars etc. - served as scouts, harassers, screeners and pillagers. And whatever odds and ends the Ottomans might've had present as allies, mercenaries or whatever of course did what they were thought to be best at.

The spahis seem to have been a relatively flexible force in that they apaprently often fought as infantry in sieges. Ottoman war galleys also carried fighting contignents that consisted of a mix of Janissaries, some levy troops (the Ottomans only had to start using slaves in their galleys rather late on, and the dragooned levies manning the oars before that could at least be counted to try and fight when necessary), and a naval variation of the spahis recruited from coastal regions.

Turks were more than just Ottomans. They used pretty much traditional steppe tactics (not "Mongol" tactics, the Mongols used the same stuff the Iranians and Turks did before them). Later Turks like the Ottomans went more settled in their warfare, with infantry, etc.

There's Turkish peoples in far western China. Go fig. They sure did get around in just one and half millenia (well, they started out on the steppes near China, but you know what I mean).

Anyway, the nomadic Turks naturally tended to rely on tried-and-true nomad warfare techniques for obvious reasons, as of course did the Ottomans early on while they were still getting established in Anatolia. After they started growin bigger they of course had to get more organized, and figure out ways to integrate existing settled structures to their system in an effective manner. In practice this meant that they eventually had to start subcontracting the light-cavalry nomad side of things to allies and subjects since the state military had by necessity started running on a whole different program.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

There's Turkish peoples in far western China. Go fig. They sure did get around in just one and half millenia (well, they started out on the steppes near China, but you know what I mean).

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Eastern Turkestan is the region where the first Turk people (Uighurs) gradually abandoned the nomadic life and settled in the 9th century CE. The first ever people named "Turk" (Gök Törük) started from the skirts of Altai Muntains three centuries before that, not really far away from there (modern day Mongolia). So, it doesn't demonstrate how far they reached; it was already the starting position.

However, there are Turkish speaking communities, albeit very small in number, in the Balkan countries (former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania) and some remarkable population in Moldavia (the Gagauz) to mark the western reach; the Chuvash in Siberia, whose language is classified as a Turkic one, to point the northern border; a small population in Yemen, surprisingly retaining some of the language to go south; and marginally, although they are not speaking any kind of Turkish, a villagefolk in one of the westernmost islands now part of Indonesia, who are descendants of the mix of a small Ottoman naval expedition crew and the local population, which is documented by the 15th century Ottoman graveyard with scripted tombstones.

If we include the modern age emigrées, then there's nowhere left to hide from them us. ~:eek:
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there are two books that spring to mind.


warren treadgold byzantium and it,s army 284-1081.


the late byzantine army, arms and society 1204-1453 by mark . c. bartusis.


http://www.abebooks.com/

http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/...y+284-1081&x=0


http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/...ntine+army&x=0

and heres both books for sale here.[plus millions of others].

without doubt IMHO the best site for ANY military book.

I have a couple of questions in regards to the late Byzantine military.

• Which troops formed the Byzantine imperial guard from 1204/1261 onwards? I have read vardariots, but there could be others (the institution having become less steady after the dissolution of the Varangian Guard).
• How did the by now feudalized pronoia system work militarily? Did it provide money for mercenaries or did it provide troops itself?

This in light of a story set in the Late Byzantine period I am writing currently. ;)

AFAIK the pronoia system was functionally feudalism - people were granted land in return of providing troops. This was really a step backwards as far as organization went, since when you think about it the landholder kept most or all of the leftover resources to himself and hence out of the hands of the central governement...

But then again the Byzantines were really grasping at straws most of the time after the what was it, Fourth Crusade that up and set up its own little empire in Constantinopole. They really do get brownie points for sheer tenacity in being able to hold out as far as the late 1400s given their increasingly desperate situation.

Incidentally, I'd recommend you check out if you can find anything useful in the De Re Militari site; they have a lot of very interesting and detailed stuff, although in my experience not necessarily what one might specifically be looking for. Alas, they seem to be doing some sort of reorganisation at the moment as their database seems somewhat messy.

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Originally Posted by The Wizard

I have a couple of questions in regards to the late Byzantine military.

• Which troops formed the Byzantine imperial guard from 1204/1261 onwards? I have read vardariots, but there could be others (the institution having become less steady after the dissolution of the Varangian Guard).
• How did the by now feudalized pronoia system work militarily? Did it provide money for mercenaries or did it provide troops itself?

This in light of a story set in the Late Byzantine period I am writing currently. ;)

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Vardariots formed the Imperial Guard. Though it's very unclear about this.

Pronoia was the feudal system. They weren't mercenaries. They were proper soldiers, which were provided with land in exchange for military duty. But it was too late, they had too little land to provide a good pronoia system, to defend the Empire.

Yes; but I have also read that the pronoiai holders, in exchange for not having to show up for a military campaign, gave a certain amount of money to the central authorities, for them to hire mercenaries (hence the great reliance on mercenaries later on).

The pronoia institution was first used probably by Alexios Komnenos (1081-1118),and became extended by Manuel (1143-1181).
It was a form of feudal system.The emperor was giving land,and the farmers farms and so on t o someone that had to provide military services for the state.

The system failed form the begining:Niketas Honiates states that there was no testing for who was asking a pronia,people were trying to decive the state take the land and not even trained,foreigners took pronia too("small semi-barbarian who never have fought command tough Roman men").

During Michael's VIII reign the pronia became inharitable ,from the father to the son.Then even the church and many monasteries were given pronia land and in this era someone could pay money to the state instead of servicing in the army-of course this money wasnt certain that always used for military purposes by the state.

So,inspite of the good intentions,pronia failed.

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Janissaries - elite infantry, heavy armour, sword and halberd like weapon

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The janissaries were actually not predominately heavy infantry, most of them were elite archers or musketeers, and they did not wear heavy armour if they wore armour at all, at the time of the battle of constantinople the ottomans had started to extensively use firearms so many of the janissaries may have been armed with those. However during sieges there were special heavily armoured siege assault units made up of volunteers from the azaps(I think they could be called semi-professional infantry levies) and the janissaries these were often armed and armoured more like the janissaries you mentioned.

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True. Janissaries, until 1453, were merely the bodyguards of the Sultan, family members and high bureaucrats. They were used as a last resort assault troop after the walls were breached, since the regular combatant force had nearly been depleted.
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