Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Rulers
- Map 1 Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia
- Map 2 Armenian Themes and Pri ncipalities
- Introduction
- 1 The ‘Grand Strategy’ of the Byzantine Empire
- 2 Byzantine and Arab Strategies and Campaigning Tactics in Cilicia and Anatolia (Eighth–Tenth Centuries)
- 3 The Empire’s Foreign Policy in the East and the Key Role of Armenia (c. 870–965)
- 4 The Byzantine View of their Enemies on the Battlefield: The Arabs
- 5 Methods of Transmission of (Military) Knowledge (I): Reconnaissance, Intelligence
- 6 Methods of Transmission of (Military) Knowledge (II): Espionage
- 7 Tactical Changes in the Byzantine Armies of the Tenth Century: Theory and Practice on the Battlefields of the East
- 8 Tactical Changes in the Byzantine Armies of the Tenth Century: Investigating the Root Causes
- 9 Byzantine–Arab Battles of the Tenth Century: Evidence of Innovation and Adaptation in the Chronicler Sources
- 10 Tactical Innovation and Adaptation in the Byzantine Army of the Tenth Century: The Study of the Battles
- Summaries and Conclusions
- Primary Bibliography
- Secondary Bibliography
- Index
1 - The ‘Grand Strategy’ of the Byzantine Empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Rulers
- Map 1 Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia
- Map 2 Armenian Themes and Pri ncipalities
- Introduction
- 1 The ‘Grand Strategy’ of the Byzantine Empire
- 2 Byzantine and Arab Strategies and Campaigning Tactics in Cilicia and Anatolia (Eighth–Tenth Centuries)
- 3 The Empire’s Foreign Policy in the East and the Key Role of Armenia (c. 870–965)
- 4 The Byzantine View of their Enemies on the Battlefield: The Arabs
- 5 Methods of Transmission of (Military) Knowledge (I): Reconnaissance, Intelligence
- 6 Methods of Transmission of (Military) Knowledge (II): Espionage
- 7 Tactical Changes in the Byzantine Armies of the Tenth Century: Theory and Practice on the Battlefields of the East
- 8 Tactical Changes in the Byzantine Armies of the Tenth Century: Investigating the Root Causes
- 9 Byzantine–Arab Battles of the Tenth Century: Evidence of Innovation and Adaptation in the Chronicler Sources
- 10 Tactical Innovation and Adaptation in the Byzantine Army of the Tenth Century: The Study of the Battles
- Summaries and Conclusions
- Primary Bibliography
- Secondary Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Strategy is how good commanders put their military training into practice, their drilling with stratagems, and putting together ways of defeating [the enemy].
The Meaning of the Terms Strategy, Tactics and Stratagems in the Pre-modern World
According to one of the greatest theorists on warfare of modern times, Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1830), the conduct of war consists of the planning and organisation of fighting in a greater or lesser number of single acts, each complete in itself, identified by the term ‘engagements’. We thus arrive at the distinction between ‘the use of armed forces in the engagement’, identified as tactics, and ‘the use of engagements for the object of war’, defined as strategy. In 1814, the Archduke Charles (1771–1847), the Habsburg commander in the wars against Napoleon, defined strategy as the ‘science of war: it designs the plan, circumscribes and determines the development of military operations; it is the particular science of the military commander’. He defined tactics, however, as ‘the art of war’: ‘It teaches the way in which strategic designs are to be executed; it is the necessary skill of each leader of troops.’ Therefore, strategy ends and tactics begin where opposing forces clash – on the battlefield. Although this distinction between the two meanings of the conduct of war may seem reasonable to a modern expert, as ‘it is now almost universal’, most authors before the French Revolution wrote about neither strategy nor tactics but about military matters in the tradition of the Roman author Flavius Vegetius Renatus (writing c. AD 400), or about the ‘art of war’ like Machiavelli did eleven centuries later.
The term strategy (στρατηγϵία or στρατηγική) had a different meaning in ancient Greece. It derives from the noun strategos (στρατηγός) and meant the office or the skills of a general in command of an army during the war.
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- Byzantine Military Tactics in Syria and Mesopotamia in the Tenth CenturyA Comparative Study, pp. 23 - 51Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018