Talk:Anglo-Saxon military organization

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Confused and imprecise article

I have a number of problems with the article as it stands.

Firstly, "strategy and tactics" are not part of "military organisation" and should have a separate entry. Secondly, the article perpetuates the myth that the Anglo-Saxons were a backward people compared to those of the Continent. In fact Anglo-Saxon England was a more sophisticated society than any other in Europe, with the exception of Byzantium and the Muslims of Spain. One illustation of this is in the monetary economy, Anglo-Saxon England had a standardised denomination, the silver penny, which was minted and recalled to be reminted at regular intervals, only Byzantium had a more closely regularised monetary system. This sophistication also extended to the miltary sphere, with their huscarles and butsecarles (marines) the Late Anglo-Saxon kings had a core of fully professional soldiery completely unknown to contemporary rulers in the rest of Western Europe.Urselius (talk) 11:39, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism

This article has been tagged since September of '08 and it is still garbage, did we decide the potential information this article could hold is not worth a damn? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.187.185.146 (talk) 14:47, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Method of fighting and army composition

1. Is this section supposed to relate only to the pre-settlement period?

  If so, it should be shown as a sub-section.
  If not, then logically it should be moved after the post-settlement section.

2. Horse use In the pre-settlement period, the 'anglo-saxons' raided the british isles. So, unless they brought horses with them, they could only have acquired horses from the 'romano-british'. I have never seen a reference to horses being shipped across the north sea by the 'anglo-saxons' and I doubt that the small warboats used would have had the room. The small number of horses that a raiding force might manage to capture would be best utilised for scouting. [It doesn't seem logical to me to put your best armed men on these horses - scouts are to scout, not fight, and the less encumbered the horse, the faster it is; meanwhile your best equipped fighting men remain with the main body, which does the fighting.]

Post settlement, horses would have been more readily available. Earls and Thegns would likely have used them instead of walking and as time passed it is likely that their household troops were mounted - I believe Harold Godwinson's huscarls were all mounted, thereby facilitating their speedy redeployment from Stamford Bridge towards Hastings. As to the combat use of horses, the jury is still out. I wonder if mounted warfare was not considered as honourable as fighting in the shieldwall and therefore ignored in the accounts of many battles - certainly in classical greece, many of the wealthy merchants and nobles who could afford horses preferred fighting as hoplites.

3. Horse size/training I do not see the relevance of this sentence.

The article implies that the small size of the horse basically meant they couldn't have been much use in a battle.

Apparently the horses would only have been 13-14 hands and thus the size of modern-day ponies, whereas modern thoroughbreds are around 16 hands. But, the horses used by the romans, celts, iberians and numidians would have been no more than 14 hands; and they were certainly used with great effect and without the benefit of stirrups! From studies of horse armour, even 13th Century chargers were no more than 15 hands.

The noise of clashing weapons and warcries would have disturbed any untrained horse. All war horses underwent training to acclimatise them to the sound of battle. Similar training is used today for police horses.

And in what sense could horses have been a logistical nightmare?

General

This article was a tad repetitious! Having said that post-settlement equipment was effectively the same as pre-settlement, why then mention the equipment when it was stated in the pre-settlement section? As for the battle of sherston in 1016, I halved the number of words without effecting the meaning.

PS saying greeks and spartans is rather silly, spartans were greeks!Glevum (talk) 00:30, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Possible merger or change to redirect

There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history#Anglo-Saxon Army about possible changes to this article, such as changing it to a redirect to Anglo-Saxon warfare or merging the two articles. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:25, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Title

I'd like to register my wish for the person who keeps moving the article to actually stop and discuss. The name "Anglo-Saxon Army" is patently incorrect, as there was no formal organization named such. Using a capital for "Army" implies that it's a formal name for an organization. This is not the case in this period. Move warring to impose a preferred name is wrong. Discuss on the talk page rather than edit warring. Also - the tag should stay as there are in fact, no footnotes in the article. Ealdgyth - Talk 11:41, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Military organization in the pre-settlement period (400-600)

This whole section is unreferenced and dubious. The heading 'pre-settlement' is wrong and suggests that the editor has very little knowledge of the period - settlement started soon after 400. Luxtaythe2nd has changed Gedriht to Gedryht on the ground that this is the usual spelling, but in what sources? A search of Google Scholar at [1] suggests that the usual spelling was Gedriht and its use in an Anglo-Saxon military context was confined to Beowulf. According to the leading expert on Anglo-Saxon warfare Richard Abels at [2]] duguth were veterans had landed estates while geoguth were youths who did not. This crucial property qualification is not covered, but there are a lot of other details not based on reliable sources. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:34, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

There is an analysis of Gedriht/ Gedryht in "Reading Old English Texts" by O Keefe.[3] Wilfridselsey (talk) 22:29, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. This shows that the word was used by a number of poets as a word for 'troop', but it does not support the description in the article.

Yes quite the reverse in fact! Wilfridselsey (talk) 10:58, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to change the article to a redirect

There have been comments going back to 2010 pointing out that this article is so bad that it is worthless and I see that in 2016 I suggested changing it to a redirect to Anglo-Saxon warfare. I will carry out this change if no one objects within a week. Dudley Miles (talk) 12:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Merge makes more sense. It's not like Anglo-Saxon warfare is a paragon of an article and it doesn't describe organization at all. GraemeLeggett (talk) 14:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

It is true that AS Warfare does not cover organization but there is no point merging from this article as it has no reliable referenced information, so far as I can see. What do you consider reliable enough to be retained and would you be happy to undertake the merger? Dudley Miles (talk) 14:55, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps this article should be redirected to Fyrd as that does overlap a lot of what "military organization" covers , the Anglo-Saxon Warfare page is more about weapons and tactics? Wilfridselsey (talk)

Good idea. Dudley Miles (talk) 15:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

The article has works referenced but lacks specific citations so is difficult to verify but doesn't make the text unreliable per se.GraemeLeggett (talk) 17:44, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Some statements are clearly wrong. e.g. 1. "made it necessary for a solid military to be constantly in place". This is nonsense. Armies were mainly composed of farmers called up ad hoc by the local ealdorman. The men of Devon would fight a Viking landing on the Devon coast etc. This is fundamental but it is not explained in the article. 2. "the pre-settlement period (400-600)". Settlement started long before 600. 3. Alfred's great innovation was to divide people in each area into thirds, which were each liable to serve a third of the time, allowing him to have troops he could call up at all times. The weakness of the system was that men would leave to attend to their farms at the end of their service even if they were in the middle of fighting Vikings. Again fundamental but not covered. These are basic errors, but even with text that might be correct there is no reference so no way of checking what to retain. The article reads like a low quality blog. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:17, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

The use of Gedryht meaning troop is wrong in this context. I think that it has been confused with gesiðas (or gesith) meaning companion (or personal retainer). Originally, according to H. M. Chadwick, the king would expect his personal retainers known as eorls to arm themselves and support the fyrd. Around the middle of the 7th century gesith was used instead of eorl and gesith was eventually largely replaced by the term thegn. Housecarl didn't arrive until Cnut's time and it referred to a group of mercenaries who served as bodyguard to the king. Thegns (gesith) were noblemen not Housecarls. The article has so many errors it would be easier just to wp:nuke it and start again. Redirect to Fyrd and spend some time improving that article would be better use of time. Wilfridselsey (talk) 22:04, 24 December 2021 (UTC)