The article concerning the question how the people in the earlier middle Ages did perceive the patterns and the operating modes of Roman warfare is especially based upon narrative sources for just in Merovingian times a fixed ensemble of chronicles was defined to show the Roman past to the contemporaries. The Carolingian clerks, however, favoured the use of sources belonging to military history as mirrors of princes. Looking for some patterns of Roman warfare one can find in early medieval reports not only different descriptions of Roman and Barbarian commanders as war heroes or efficient war lords, but also really contrasting patterns referring to the attitudes shown by the simple Roman soldiers and their counterparts, the Barbarian fighters. The medieval chroniclers furthermore took over the concurrence between Biblical and Roman judgements belonging to the justification of war but there were some specific modifications. The Christian rulers, for example, from now on fought apostates and heretics and not Barbarian intruders who had constituted the essential adversary to the Roman Emperors. Not only in ancient poems but also in medieval chronicles the single combat was accepted as instrument of legal warfare. The providing of hostages probably resulted, on one hand, of the Romans' dealing with prisoners of war and, on the other hand, of the irregular taking of hostages by the Barbarians in the Imperial age. At the ending of the forth century the ecclesiastical asylum was obviously arisen of the Roman sacral law but it also seemed to be an answer to the frequent attacks foreign soldiers carried out to several people and different church goods. Indeed, the deditio stayed an accepted standard for the handing over of towns, tribes and individuals till nowadays. The triumph, however, was a special custom the Occidental nations took over from Byzantium. Concerning strategy the chroniclers informed their public that someone following his Roman forerunners had to pay attention to geographic and logistic facts planning and carrying out a campaign, that the army if it were put into action, could be divided into several columns and commanded by different officers but it ought to be subordinated to one common destination. There could be an exchange from one commander to the other or not although the commandant stayed the same, and after his own decision he was personally able to fight in battle, too. Belonging to tactics the writers in the earlier middle Ages remembered that the soldiers should be locally recruited and regularly drilled, stratagems ought to be done, the camp has to be pitched every day, the enemy should be spied out by well trained observers, the siege supported by special machines, the battle line previously stipulated, the shock attack carried out by someone lying in ambush and the dummy flight suddenly brought into action. There were, however, longer-term changes belonging to the armament until the arrival of the well armoured cavalry in the Carolingian age.
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