Visigothic Armies and Frontiers

From the Visigoths’ foothold in Gaul in 418 to the kingdom of Toledo in the sixth and seventh centuries, military service depended on commanders who could gather people, equipment and provisions. The kingdom’s main territory lay in Iberia, the peninsula of modern Spain and Portugal, while Visigothic rulers also held Septimania around Narbonne in southern France. The surviving Visigothic Code, or Liber Iudiciorum, was promulgated under King Recceswinth in 654 and revised by later kings; its military titles preserve rules from more than one reign.

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Recruiting through royal and aristocratic ties

Historian Joseph O’Callaghan describes the Visigothic kings as having no standing army. Their fideles, royal followers pledged to military service, and gardingi, members of the king’s entourage, formed part of a force that also drew on free men summoned to serve and expected to equip themselves. Historian Dionisio Pérez Sánchez notes that private followings attached to powerful landowners could serve in public campaigns. A king therefore needed both a royal command structure and local leaders able to bring their own dependants and equipment.

A dux was a regional commander, while a comes (count) exercised authority in a locality and could command troops. The Code directs a person already in the army to follow the duke, count or patron assigned to him, and forbids provincial and city governors from excusing service for a bribe. Royal orders therefore depended on local officers and the commanders who led the assembled force.

What the laws required

A law issued by King Wamba on 1 November 673 set out duties in two emergencies. If an enemy invaded, people near the attacked frontier or within 100 miles had to defend the kingdom when notified by their commanders or informed by any other route. Someone too ill to march still had to support those who could serve, if able; complete exemption required proof that illness also prevented assistance. A separate clause addressed public revolt or scandal in Spain, Gaul, Galicia or another province. People in nearby places within 100 miles, or those informed by a priest, clerk, duke, count, thiufadus or vicarius, had to defend the king and country. A thiufadus was a military official and a vicarius a deputy. Under this clause, refusers faced exile and royal judgment over their property. Wamba’s law connects local notice to a royal call for defense.

A revision of the Code issued under King Ervig in 681 specified what a campaign participant had to bring. Anyone joining the army, whether a general, count, royal follower, free person or crown dependent, had to bring one tenth of the enslaved people under his control. The owner had to arm them: some with armor, and most with shields, swords, spears, bows and arrows, or slings, then present them to the king or commander. If an owner brought fewer than one tenth, the missing part was transferred to the king. The provision made enslaved people part of a landholder’s military contribution by coercion and made that owner responsible for their equipment and attendance.

Moving food to the army

The Code preserves an older rule for army provisions. Each province or fortified settlement was to have a designated provisions collector, who delivered the supplies gathered in that district to those entitled to receive them. If delivery was delayed, army officers could report the collector or city governor to the king; the official could be charged four times the value of the provisions for every day of delay. The law describes a chain of custody: local collection, a named officer, issue to the army’s recipients and a penalty for withholding supplies. Food was therefore an administrative task as well as a burden on the places through which a campaign passed.

Wamba’s campaign across the Pyrenees

In 673, the count of Nîmes and then Wamba’s own general, Paul, led a revolt in Visigothic Gaul. Julian of Toledo, bishop of Toledo from 680 to 690, recounts the campaign in his Historia Wambae regis (History of King Wamba). He says Wamba was fighting the Basques in Cantabria, in northern Spain, when he heard the news. The king and his court weighed returning to their territories to gather a larger force against marching directly toward the revolt. Julian presents Wamba as choosing the immediate advance, keeping the assembled troops together rather than waiting to summon more men.

After recovering Barcelona and Girona, the army reached the Pyrenees and rested for two days. Julian says Wamba then divided it into three divisions that moved toward the passes and strongholds of Collioure, Ultrère and Llivia; the forces also stormed Clausurae, a fortified position on the route into Septimania. At Nîmes, where Paul had taken position with Gallic and Frankish forces, defenders shot from the walls. Julian describes the attackers answering with arrows and stones, setting fire to the gates and forcing breaches in the wall. The sequence shows why control of fortified towns and passes mattered: they could delay an army moving between Iberia and its Gallic territory.

Frontiers that changed with the kingdom

Visigothic authority changed through settlement, defeat and annexation. In 418 the Roman commander Constantius settled Visigoths in Aquitanica Secunda, in western Gaul between the Garonne and Loire, with nearby cities including Toulouse. After the Frankish victory at Vouillé in 507, Visigothic rulers lost Toulouse and most of their Gallic territory but retained Septimania. Its towns and Pyrenean approaches remained connected to the kingdom in Iberia and exposed to Frankish intervention, as Paul’s Frankish allies at Nîmes illustrate. The Pyrenees separate Septimania in southern France from the Iberian heartland, making the passes between them strategically important.

The kingdom’s other borders shifted too. The Suebi ruled in Gallaecia in the northwest until King Leovigild annexed their kingdom in 585. The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, province of Spania had been established in the south and southeast in the 550s and was taken by the Visigoths in 625. Historian Jamie Wood describes this zone as fluid, with diplomacy and political messaging part of the competition for authority.