Adrianople AD 378: The Goths Crush Rome's Legions

by Simon MacDowall

Book Overview

Osprey's examination of the Battle of Adrianople (378 AD), fought between Goth rebels, led by Fritigern, and the Roman army, led by Emperor Valens. 'Never, except in the battle of Cannae, had there been so destructive a slaughter recorded in our annals.' Thus the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus recorded the battle of Adrianople, which spelled the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire. Such a crushing Roman defeat by Gothic cavalry proved to...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1841761478
• ISBN13: 9781841761473
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Osprey Publishing (UK)
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 7.3" x 9.8"

Customer Reviews

The Rise of Cavalry and the End of Rome

Overall, this book is pretty well written. The author, Simon MacDowall, does a good job of narrating the events. He describes how local Roman officials caused the Gothic revolt by failing to honor a deal that allowed them to settle within the Empire. He also discusses the jealously and competition that may have existed between the Western and Eastern Roman Emperors. Emperor Valens may have attacked too soon, just to avoid sharing the glory with Emperor Gratian. The reader will find this background data helpful in understanding the idiosyncrasies of this battle. For example, one notable event is that some Roman units fled the field without even engaging the enemy. This book contains the usual assortment of graphics. It has four full color battle scenes. These scenes give the reader a good mental picture of both the engagement and the individual soldiers. It also contains numerous color and black & white photos. The black and white pictures cover mosaics, monuments, coins, and equipment. The color photographs capture the various insignia used by the different units. The maps are clean, easy to read, and uncluttered with useless information. Instead, the author and illustrator placed numbers on the maps. These numbers correspond to short paragraphs underneath which describe the events at that location. The author should be given credit for only listing relevant events. This is not always the case as some authors fill the maps with extraneous data. Mr. MacDowall followed the standard organization for Osprey publications. The battle is well chronicled and easy to follow. The author also describes how the defeat of the Roman cavalry affected the entire battle. Without the cavalry to guard their flanks, the Roman infantry was hit from the side and destroyed. This battle is described as the biggest Roman disaster since Hannibal's victory at Cannae. The author talks briefly about how this engagement heralded in the age of the armored knight. The book concludes with a nice description of the battle's aftermath and the status of the battlefield today. All in all, Mr. MacDowall and Mr. Gerrard did a very good job of describing this battle, its aftermath, and the events that led up to it. Bottom line: the book is fairly easy to read, well organized, and has pretty good graphics.

The Battle of Adrianople

This campaign title follows the movement of Gothic rebels through the Roman Balkans 376-8 before they decisively beat the army of Emperor Flavius Valens near the ancient city of Adrianople on August 9th of 378. It gives good background information on both sides, including detailed info on the organization and troop types of the 4th Century Roman Army. It also examines the background, character, and experiences of the various Roman commanders; among them are Maximus and Lupicinus, whose cruelty first inspired the Goths to revolt, and Sebastianus and the Romano-Sarmatian Victor, the only commanders on the Roman side who showed honorable conduct in the battle. The author goes to great lengths to dispel certain oft-held notions about this battle and why it was a victory for the Goths, who were at the disadvantage strategically and supposedly tactically. He reveals that, as was often the case in the late Roman Army, the stupidity, cowardice, and cruelty of the Roman commanders influenced the sway of the battle more than the allegedly superior cavalry wing of the Goths. Many of the Goths were ex-legionaries and auxiliaries to begin with, and thus in equipment and fighting styles were hardly different from their foes. The text is supported by two bird's eye view maps and four color paintings by Howard Gerrard depicting Roman and Gothic soldiery in the various stages of the campaign.

A Good Summary of Modern Analysis of this Battle

MacDowell has follwed up his Osprey volumes on the Late Roman Infantry and Cavalry with a useful summary of current thinking on this important battle. His background material on the Late Roman Army serves as a useful introduction to the events of Adrianople and he then puts the battle in the context of the entry of the Goths into the Eastern Empire, their rebellion and the campaign in Thrace which led up to their confrontation with Valens. His attempts to pinpoint the site of the battle and the photos of the probable site add greatly to a detailed understanding of how the two forces were positioned and the role played by the terrain.This battle has been the subject of several myths in military history and it is good to see MacDowell reject the outdated idea that the Goths won through the use of huge numbers of heavy cavalry - following Burns' persuasive analysis which shows this was substantially an infantry vs infantry affair. His analysis of the numbers of troops involved is also well supported by recent historical analysis. Careful examination of the *Notitia* , the events leading up to the battle and the units involved makes it clear that Valens is unlikely to have had more than 20,000 or so troops in the field that day. As for the old fashioned Germanicist myth that Fritigern commanded a vast force of 100-200,000 warriors - that nonsense was consigned to the rubbish bin over a century ago. Close reading of the accounts of the Thracian campaign, analysis of the forage and food supply available and Ammianus' account of Fritigern's repeated attempts to negotiate a way out all make it clear that he had little or no numerical superiority and that the two forces were quite closely matched in numbers.What won Fritgern the victory was a combination of luck and good generalship in the face of Valens' overconfidence and incompetence.While images of vast numbers of howling wolfskin-clad savages over-running the outdated legions of a declining Empire may be stirring and romantic, this battle was more like a clash between an elite, professional army against a force of similarly armed, less disciplined but quite desperate rebel refugees. The reason Ammianus declares it to have been the greatest defeat since Cannae lies in the fact that by the end of the day the Emperor was dead, a huge number of his elite officers had also been killed and three quarters of the Eastern Praesental Army - the best troops in the Empire - had been wiped out. It was not simply the numbers of dead which made this a crushing defeat, though they were substantial, but the nature of the troops defeated, the fact that the Goths were not even contained for several more years (they were never fully defeated and remained within the Empire) and the psychological impact of the defeat, particularly in the light of the later effects these Goths were to have under Alaric.Like all books in this brief format, this one has its limitations, but it is a useful addition to Osprey's range a

Not bad for an Osprey Book

If you want to know everything about the battle and want all the details to be 100% accurate, this is not the book to buy... If you want an overview, with a decent terrain analysis, and some decent guesswork about the campaign, this, like most Osprey Campaign books will give you a basic start. There are different theories out there about why the Roman Army got their butts kicked so hard in this battle and the author gives one of the more reasonable ones, in line with the general downsizing of ancient numbers that is so common to modern historians. The photos are nice, but the drawings aren't up to the "Osprey Men at Arms" standard in my opinion. However the whole Campaign series seems to suffer from this problem. This is a battle that needed to be added to the Osprey Campaign Series, and is a good read for the casual historian.