Infantry versus Cavalry: The Byzantine Response
Byzantine cavalry in Madrid Skylitzes
Introduction: The Byzantines encountered many different nations on the battlefield during their long history. The surveys of foreign peoples in the military manuals amply illustrate the Byzantines’ readiness not only to analyze the tactics and characteristics of their enemies, but also even to learn from them when necessary. Their recognition of the need to study and to adapt themselves to the unfamiliar methods of warfare practised by their enemies pays witness to the intellectual and practical character of the Byzantine approach to war.
The recorded observation of enemy skills and tactics was a feature which the Byzantines added to the long tradition of military science inherited from classical Antiquity. The study of war was energetically renewed in tenth-century Byzantium, as the number of important manuscripts and texts dating from this period clearly demonstrates. This renewal of military science was largely in response to the increasing danger from the Arabs, whom the Byzantines had come to consider their most formidable enemies. It is always a difficult problem to determine what relation there was between traditional theory and contemporary practice in the Byzantine military texts — to what extent did the tenth-century strategists combine theory with practice to create formations and tactics which would be effective against the Arabs?