Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power

by Victor Davis Hanson

  Chapter Five: Landed Infantry

  Poitiers, October 11, 732

  We have almost no full contemporary account of the battle of Poitiers, since a number of the standard sources for late antiquity and the early Dark Ages end before 732. Gregory of Tours stopped his Historia Francorum in 594. The anonymous Liber Historiae Francorum was completed at 727. Venerable Bede’s history leaves off at 731, a year before the battle.

  Although the Chronicle of Fredegar ends at 642, a continuator left a brief account of the fighting in 732 (J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Four Books of the Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations [London, 1960]), as did the anonymous continuator of the Chronicle of Isidore (T. Mommsen, Isidori Continuatio Hispana, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, vol. 11 [Berlin, 1961]). The absence of good firsthand accounts of the battle have led to widely contrasting appraisals of its conduct and importance. It is common to read in major surveys of the age—before 1950 almost exclusively in German and French—that Poitiers marked the rise of feudalism, the dominance of heavy knights in stirrups, and the salvation of Western civilization, even as more sober accounts deny that horsemen played much, if any role, at Poitiers, that feudalism as it later emerged was years in the future, and that Abd ar-Rahman’s invasion was merely one of a series of small raids that gradually waned in the eighth century, as the Muslim bickering in Spain and Frankish consolidation in Europe inevitably conspired to weaken Islamic expansion from the Pyrenees. Most likely, Poitiers was an understandable victory of spirited infantrymen on the defensive, rather than the result of a monumental technological or military breakthrough, a reflection of increasing Arab weakness in extended operations to the north, rather than in itself the salvation of the Christian West.

  For the battle of Poitiers itself, see the monograph of M. Mercier and A. Seguin, Charles Martel et la bataille de Poitiers (Paris, 1944). Consult especially the work of B. S. Bachrach, “Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism,” in his Armies and Politics in the Early Medieval West (Aldershot, England, 1993). This volume of essays serves as a collection of Bachrach’s most compelling arguments about the relative importance of cavalry, horsemen, and fortifications during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods. See also his Merovingian Military Organization (Minneapolis, Minn., 1972), and “Early Medieval Europe,” in K. Raaflaub and N. Rosenstein, eds., War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (Washington, D.C., 1999).

  On the Franks, the latter Merovingians, and the early Carolingians, there are good surveys in K. Scherman, The Birth of France (New York, 1987); P. Riché, The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe (Philadelphia, 1993); E. James, The Origins of France: From Clovis to the Capetians, 500–1000 (London, 1982); and H. Delbrück, The Barbarian Invasions, vol. 2 of The History of the Art of War (Westport, Conn., 1980).

  For the life of Charles Martel, see R. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987). For two famous narratives of the battle, consult J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 1, From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto (London, 1954), 339–50, and E. Creasy, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo (New York, 1908), 157–69.

  European war making between A.D. 500 and 1000 is outlined in D. Nicolle, Medieval Warfare: Source Book, vol. 2, Christian Europe and Its Neighbors (New York, 1996), which has much comparative material. Perhaps the most accessible and analytical account is J. Beeler, Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730–1200 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1971). General detail about arms and military service—albeit mostly after 1000—is easily accessed in a variety of standard handbooks, especially P. Contamine, War in the Middle Ages (London, 1984), and F. Lot, L’Art militaire et les armées au moyen age en Europe et dans le proche orient, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), which has a list of German and French secondary sources that concern the battle. Cf. random mention also in M. Keen, ed., Medieval Warfare (Oxford, 1999); T. Wise, Medieval Warfare (New York, 1976); and A. V. B. Norman, The Medieval Soldier (New York, 1971). For the later warfare of the Franks and western Europeans, consult J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999), and Victory in the East: A Military History of the First Crusade (Cambridge, 1994).

  Valuable essays on the cultural aspects of medieval warfare are collected in D. Kagay and L. Andrew Villalon, eds., The Circle of War in the Middle Ages: Essays on Medieval Military and Naval History (Suffolk, England, 1999). There are a number of excellent illustrations in T. Newark, The Barbarians: Warriors and Wars of the Dark Ages (London, 1988).

  Provocative ideas about the larger culture and history of Europe during the so-called Dark Ages are found in H. Pirenne, Mohammed and Charlemagne (London, 1939), and R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe: Archaeology and the Pirenne Thesis (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983). For standard surveys of the intellectual cosmos of the Middle Ages in the West, begin with R. Dales, The Intellectual Life of Western Europe in the Middle Ages (Washington, D.C., 1980), and W. C. Bark, Origins of the Medieval World (Stanford, Calif., 1958). For more literary emphasis, see M. Golish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400–1400 (New Haven, Conn., 1997). See also the classic survey and standard view of the Dark Ages by C. Oman, The Dark Ages, 476–918 (London, 1928).

  The early history of Islam and the creation of an expansive Arab military culture are surveyed by P. Crone in Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980), and Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, N.J., 1987); cf. M. A. Shaban, Islamic History, A.D. 600–750 (A.H. 132) (Cambridge, 1971).

  For the long-term significance of Poitiers, see the counterfactual speculations of B. Strauss, “The Dark Ages Made Lighter,” in R. Cowley, ed., What If? (New York, 1998), 71–92.

  Chapter Six: Technology and the Wages of Reason

  Tenochtitlán, June 24, 1520–August 13, 1521

  The conquest of Mexico has taken center stage in the contemporary academic cultural wars, especially concerning the use of evidence that is drawn mostly from either Spanish eyewitnesses or Spanish collections of Aztec oral narratives. Often scholars accept Spanish descriptions of the magnificence of Tenochtitlán and the beauty of its gardens, zoos, and markets, but reject outright the same authors’ more gruesome accounts of cannibalism and systematic human immolation, sacrifice, and torture. European “constructs” and “paradigms” are considered inappropriate contexts in which to understand Aztec culture, even as Mexican art, architecture, and astronomical knowledge are praised in more or less classical aesthetic and scientific terms. Yet, our interests here are not in relative moral judgments, but in military efficacy, not so much the amorality of the conquistadors as the methods of their conquest.

  We should remember also that our present argument for military dynamism based on technological preeminence is not always shared by Spanish accounts of the times, which quite wrongly emphasize the conquistadors’ moral “superiority,” innate intelligence, and Christian virtue.

  There are a number of justifiably renowned narratives of the Spanish conquest. Perhaps unrivaled in its sheer power of description is still W. H. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico (New York, 1843). For modern English readers, H. Thomas, Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York, 1993) is invaluable. See also R. C. Padden, The Hummingbird and the Hawk: Conquest and Sovereignty in the Valley of Mexico, 1503–1541 (Columbus, Ohio, 1967). For some good comparative discussion, see also A. B. Bosworth, Alexander and the East (Oxford, 1996).

  A plethora of contemporary and near contemporary accounts surrounds the conquest. Begin with the masterful narrative of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, trans. A. P. Maudslay, (New York, 1956); the letters of Hernán Cortés, whose reliability has often been questioned (Letters from Mexico, trans. A. Pagden [New York, 1971]); and P. de Fuentes, The Conquistadors: First-Person Accounts of the Conquest of
Mexico (New York, 1963).

  For Aztec narratives and harsh criticism of the Spanish conquest, see Bernardino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain: Florentine Codex, Book 12— The Conquest of Mexico, trans. H. Cline (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1975), and the anthology edited by Miguel Leon-Portilla, The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1992). Cf. also Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Ally of Cortés (El Paso, Tex., 1969).

  Biographies of Cortés are innumerable; the most accessible are S. Madariaga, Hernán Cortés: Conqueror of Mexico (Garden City, N.Y., 1969), and J. M. White, Cortés and the Downfall of the Aztec Empire: A Study in a Conflict of Cultures (New York, 1971). The near contemporary hagiography by Francisco López de Gómara, Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary (Berkeley, Calif., 1964), contains much information not found elsewhere.

  A specialized study of Spanish military practice of the sixteenth century can be found in G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659: The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries’ Wars (Cambridge, 1972), and R. Martínez and T. Barker, eds., Armed Forces in Spain Past and Present (Boulder, Colo., 1988). On the general status of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European warfare, see C. M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion 1400–1700 (New York, 1965); J. Black, European Warfare 1160–1815 (New Haven, Conn., 1994); and F. Tallett, War and Society in Early-Modern Europe, 1495–1715 (London and New York, 1992). For the political and military position of Spain in the sixteenth century and the effect of its empire on its influence in Europe, see J. H. Elliott, Spain and Its World, 1500–1700: Selected Essays (New Haven, Conn., 1989), and R. Kagan and G. Parker, eds., Spain, Europe and the Atlantic World: Essays in Honour of John H. Elliot (Cambridge, 1995).

  Ross Hassig has written a series of seminal books on Aztec warfare that seeks to explain the conquest from a Native American perspective: Mexico and the Spanish Conquest (London and New York, 1994); Aztec Warfare: Political Expansion and Imperial Control (Norman, Okla., 1988); and War and Society in Ancient Mesoamerica (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992). For larger questions of Aztec culture and society, consult P. Carasco, The Tenocha Empire of Ancient Mexico: The Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan (Norman, Okla., 1999), and G. Collier, R. Rosaldo, and J. Wirth, The Inca and Aztec States, 1400–1800: Anthropology and History (New York, 1982).

  The key role of the Spanish brigantines on Lake Texcoco is covered in C. H. Gardiner, Naval Power in the Conquest of Mexico (Austin, Tex., 1956), and his Martín López: Conquistador Citizen of Mexico (Lexington, Ky., 1958).

  For cultural explanations that downplay the role of European tactics and technology in the conquest, see the article by G. Raudzens, “So Why Were the Aztecs Conquered, and What Were the Wider Implications? Testing Military Superiority as a Cause of Europe’s Preindustrial Colonial Conquests,” War in History 2.1 (1995), 87–104. Also see T. Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (New York, 1984); I. Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (Cambridge, 1987); and I. Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge, 1991). And for a critique of all such approaches, see K. Windschuttle, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past (New York, 1997).

  Chapter Seven: The Market—or Capitalism Kills

  Lepanto, October 7, 1571

  For centuries, accounts of Lepanto were cloaked in Christian triumphalism that emphasized the great relief in the West that the Turk was finally checked in his expansion across the Mediterranean. More recent study of the battle has been remarkably free of ideological bias. There still is absent, however, a single up-to-date scholarly monograph in English devoted entirely to the engagement itself. As a consequence, we often forget that aside from Salamis and Cannae, Lepanto may have been the single deadliest one-day slaughter in European history. Surely, in no other conflict have Westerners butchered more prisoners than did the Spanish and Italians in the aftermath of the battle, when most of the thousands of Turkish seamen lost their lives. The battle of Lepanto takes its place alongside the Somme and Cannae as a testament to man’s ability to overcome the constraints of time and space in killing literally thousands of human beings in a few hours.

  For complete accounts of the battle that discuss primary sources in Italian, Spanish, and Turkish, see G. Parker, Spain and the Netherlands, 1559–1659 (Short Hills, N.J., 1979); D. Cantemir, The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire, trans. N. Tinda (London, 1734); A. Wiel, The Navy of Venice (London, 1910); and especially K. M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571), vol. 4, The Sixteenth Century from Julius III to Pius V (Philadelphia, 1984). W. H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, vol. 4 (Philadelphia, 1904), has an engaging narrative of the battle. Other than disagreements over casualty numbers, the actual position of a few ships in the vicinity of the Greek coast, and the long-term strategic consequences of the victory, there is little major scholarly controversy concerning the actual events of the battle.

  For more specialized assessments see A. C. Hess, “The Battle of Lepanto and Its Place in Mediterranean History,” Past and Present 57 (1972), 53–73, and especially M. Lesure, Lépante: La crise de l’empire Ottomane (Paris, 1971). There are also invaluable discussions of the strategy and tactics of Lepanto in the surveys of C. Oman, A History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1937); J. F. C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, vol. 1, From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Lepanto (London, 1954); and R. C. Anderson, Naval Wars in the Levant, 1559–1853 (Princeton, N. J., 1952).

  Lepanto and the primary sources for the battle are also the subjects of chapters in scholarly accounts of sixteenth-century warfare; see, for example, G. Hanlon, The Twilight of a Military Tradition: Italian Aristocrats and European Conflicts, 1560–1800 (New York, 1998); J. F. Guilmartin, Jr., Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1974); and W. L. Rodgers, Naval Warfare Under Oars, 4th to 16th Centuries (Annapolis, Md., 1967). There are good illustrations in R. Gardiner and J. Morrison, eds., The Age of the Galley: Mediterranean Oared Vessels Since Pre-Classical Times (Annapolis, Md., 1995). See also F. C. Lane, Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders of the Renaissance (Westport, Conn., 1975).

  A number of accessible narratives of the battle exists for the general reader, with good contemporary illustrations. See, for example, R. Marx, The Battle of Lepanto, 1571 (Cleveland, Ohio, 1966), and J. Beeching, The Galleys of Lepanto (London, 1982). Valuable information about Lepanto can be found in biographies of Don Juan of Austria, especially the classic by W. Stirling-Maxwell, Don John of Austria (London, 1883), with its collation of contemporary sources; and see, too, the moving narrative of C. Petrie, Don John of Austria (New York, 1967). For the spectacular commemoration of the Christian victory in art and literature, see L. von Pastor, The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages (London, 1923). An anthology, G. Benzoni, ed., Il Mediterraneo nella Seconda Metà del ’500 alla Luce di Lepanto (Florence, 1974), has a perceptive article in English for the general reader on Ottoman sources of the conflict: H. Inalcik, “Lepanto in Ottoman Sources,” 185–92.

  For conditions of the Mediterranean economy and society in the sixteenth century, see D. Vaughan, Europe and the Turk: A Pattern of Alliances (New York, 1976); K. Karpat, ed., The Ottoman State and Its Place in World History (Leiden, 1974); and H. Koenigsberger and G. Mosse, Europe in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1968). On questions of geography and capitalism, see especially the works of F. Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century: The Perspective of the World (New York, 1979), and The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. 1 (New York, 1972). Cf., too, E. L. Jones, The European Miracle: Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia (Cambridge, 1987).

 
; For earlier Western military practice, see J. France, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades, 1000–1300 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1999). More detailed accounts of the Turkish army and navy are found in R. Murphey, Ottoman Warfare, 1500–1700 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1999). On the economy of Venice, see W. H. McNeill, Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081–1797 (Chicago, 1974), and A. Tenenti, Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580–1615 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967).

  Ottoman military, social, and economic life is a vast field, but good introductions to the structure of the empire and its approach to finance and military expenditure are found in the sympathetic studies of H. Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300–1600 (London, 1973); W. E. D. Allen, Problems of Turkish Power in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1963); S. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 1, Empire of the Gazas: The Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 (Cambridge, 1976). More recent general surveys are A. Wheatcroft, The Ottomans (New York, 1993), and J. McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923 (London, 1997).

  The relationship between Islam and capitalism is a minefield of controversy, as Western critics on occasion emphasize the inherent restrictions on the market found under Muslim rule, even as Muslim scholars themselves often argue that there is nothing incompatible with free markets in the Islamic faith. For a review of the problems, see H. Islamoglu-Inan, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy (Cambridge, 1987); M. Choudhury, Contributions to Islamic Economic Theory (London, 1986); and M. Abdul-Rauf, A Muslim’s Reflections on Democratic Capitalism (Washington, D.C., 1984). David Landes has written two excellent appraisals on the role of capitalism in East-West relations: The Rise of Capitalism (New York, 1966), and The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 1969).