The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine EmpireIn this book, the distinguished writer Edward N. Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. Yet it was the western empire that dissolved during the fifth century. |
From inside the book
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... defend the empire for century after century against an unending sequence of enemies that seems to resonate especially in our own times. This book is devoted to one dimension of Byzantine history: the application of method and ingenuity ...
... Defended by Germanic field commanders, then dominated by Germanic warlords, increasingly penetrated by mostly Germanic migrants with or without imperial consent, then fragmented by outright invasions, the western half of the empire ...
... defend the Danube frontier against successive invaders from the great Eurasian steppe—Huns, Avars, Onogur-Bulghars, Magyars, Pechenegs, and finally Cumans—all of them mounted archers inherently more dangerous than the Germanic enemies ...
... defend their ancestral seat against Attila's host.”4 Even in distant Iceland, Attila was remembered in the Old Norse poem “Lay of Hloth and Angantýr,” in which Attila appears as Humli, king of the Huns and grandfather of Hloth. It is ...
... defend and easily cut off by the enemy. These examples are drawn from linear ground combat in the manner of the First World War because they are the simplest to visualize, but the operational level of strategy is present in all forms of ...
Contents
1 | |
The Myth and the Methods
| 95 |
III The Byzantine Art of War
| 235 |
Grand Strategy and the Byzantine Operational Code
| 409 |
Was Strategy Feasible in Byzantine Times? | 421 |
Emperors from Constantine I to Constantine XI
| 423 |
Glossary
| 427 |
Notes
| 433 |
Works Cited
| 473 |
Index of Names
| 491 |
General Index
| 495 |