Historians have long claimed that Carolingian free landowners were gradually impoverished by powerful magnates, leading to changes in Frankish military and social structures. Similar complaints existed in the Roman Republic and the East Roman Empire, where moralists and authorities blamed great landowners for economic and legal pressure that forced small farmers to sell land and become tenants. In those cases, militia-based armies shifted over time toward paid professional forces maintained by the government. A comparable process has been proposed for the regnum Francorum, where middling to small landowners formed a numerically dominant part of armies under Merovingian and Carolingian rulers. The proposed outcome was transformation of the military system, though the mechanism and end state are contested by the available evidence.
"For generations, historians have argued that Carolingian free landowners were gradually impoverished by powerful magnates, transforming the military and social structure of the Frankish world. David Bachrach examines the surviving evidence to see if it actually supports this long-standing theory."
"It is well understood that both moralists and governmental authorities, likely for very different reasons, routinely complained during the period of the Roman Republic about the impoverishment of the middling to small-scale farmers, who comprised the great majority of the rank and file of the armies of the state. In a similar vein, both moralists and governmental authorities in the ninth and tenth century East Roman (Byzantine) Empire routinely complained about the impoverishment of the middling to small-scale farmers, who likewise comprised a significant element in the armies of the state."
"Notably, in both of these examples the essentially militia-based armies of the state were transformed, albeit gradually, into military forces that were comprised overwhelmingly of paid professionals, who were maintained directly by the government. Many scholars have argued that a similar process of impoverishment was inflicted on the middling- to small-scale landowners in the regnum Francorum."
"As had been true in the Roman Republic and in the East Roman Empire, these men provided the numerically preponderant element in the armies of the regnum Francorum, under both the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. The consequence of such an impoverishment, according to this theory, was the transformation of the military system of the regnum Francorum and its various successors. However, rather than the establishment of state-funded, professional armies, it has been argued that"
#carolingian-france #landownership #military-transformation #historiography #byzantine-and-roman-parallels
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