Emperor Heraclius and Byzantine Military Organization in 626-628 A.D.: The Internal Structure of the Field Armies and the Defense of Constantinople
The main aim of this article is to consider two important issues related to the military policy of Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in 626-628 A.D.: (1) the lower internal structural military unit in the Byzantine army during the reign of Heraclius and (2) the composition of the military forces which defended Constantinople during the Avar-Persian assault in 626. Based on a little-studied source, the so-called MUller's fragment, and its comparison with an inscription from Bithynia published in 1995, the author detects which unit s were the internal composite parts of Heraclius' army. Another important source is a homily of a Byzantine Church writer Theod oros Synkellus, who was a presbyter of Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, in Constantinople. Byzantine Emperor Heraclius led a successful military campaign against the Persians, which resulted in a convincing victory of Byzantium. Meanwhile, as the author supposes, modern research regards only the outward side of the problem, i.e., the course and chronology of battles and the territorial movements of Heraclius himself. At the same time, the internal side of the issue, i.e., the organizational structure of Byzantine field armies which struggled with the Persians is still out of consideration. As the author supposes, the text of the tract known under conventional title "MUller's fragment" (or De militari scientia) was composed in the 630s or the 640s: in this respect the author supports P. Rance's point of view, who proposed his own arguments for the time context of the tract. In the author's opinion, the posi tion of other scholars, who date it back to the 6th century, contradicts to the geopolitical context of the Danubian front of the Empire during the 6th c. Having compared the text of MUller's fragment and the evidence of the inscription from Constantinople mentioned ab ove, the author concludes that the basic and even only structural military unit of Byzantine field armies during the reign of Heraclius was the unit called bandon, In the author's opinion, bandon was an internal military unit of a larger detachment in the first half of the 6th c., but later, during Heraclius' reign, bandon turned into an independent and self-sufficient single military unit. The headcount of each bandon varied from 200 to 400 men. Following MUller's fragment, the author supposes that the commander of each bandon was an officer who was called a moirarchos. Finally, in the author's opinion, it was the Opsikion Byzantine field army, which garrisoned in Constantinople in 626-627 when the Empire had decisive struggles against the Persians, that defended the city during a siege held by the Avars.
Keywords
Ираклий,
персы,
армия,
фрагмент Мюллера,
банда,
мерарх,
Константиниаки,
надпись из Пилы,
Heraclius,
Persians,
army,
MUller's fragment,
bandon,
moirarchos,
Constantiniaci,
inscription from PylaiAuthors
| Mekhamadiev Evgeniy А. | Saint Petersburg State University | e.mehamadiev@spbu.ru |
Всего: 1
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