Adrianople AD 378: The Goths crush Rome's legions (Campaign) [Paperback]

Simon MacDowall (Author), Howard Gerrard (Illustrator)

Book Description

Series: Campaign | Publication Date: April 25, 2001

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 the Empire, as well as to the Goths themselves, that the migratory barbarians were a force to be reckoned with. This book tells the story of the misguided Roman plans and the surprise attack of Gothic cavalry, and puts forward the most recent theories as to the true location of the battlefield.

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From the Publisher

Highly visual guides to history's greatest conflicts, detailing the command strategies, tactics, and experiences of the opposing forces throughout each campaign, and concluding with a guide to the battlefields today.

About the Author

SIMON MACDOWALL is a former army officer with a deep interest in military history, especially the period around the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. After 22 years in the Canadian army he worked for several years on NATO International Staff and is now a Senior Civil Servant in the British Government. His combination of practical military background with his knowledge and understanding of the later Roman give him a unique perspective on the military aspects of the fascinating era. After living in Canada, Germany and Belgium, and seeing service in Central America, Bosnia and Kosovo, Simon now lives in Oxford England.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Osprey Publishing (April 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841761478
• ISBN-13: 978-1841761473
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 0.3 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #233,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > History > Asia > Turkey

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Good Summary, but Limited by Sources, May 16, 2001

By 

R. A Forczyk (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Adrianople AD 378: The Goths crush Rome's legions (Campaign) (Paperback)

It is not easy to write about Ancient military history because the quantity and quality of primary sources is often lacking. In the case of Adrianople 378, the author relies heavily upon the second-hand account of Ammianus Marcellinus, a Roman officer who lived at the time of the battle. Unfortunately, Ammianus' account is sometimes vague and there are few other sources to shed further light on this climactic battle that broke the power of Rome's legions. Key facts, such as the exact location of the battle and the numbers involved on both sides, remain matters for contention.

Simon Macdowall, a retired British army officer, uses his recent military experience in the Balkans as a tool to help strip away some of the ambiguity from the Battle of Adrianople. Based upon good terrain analysis, he makes a convincing case for locating the battlefield eight miles north of Adrianople. However the author is not satisfied with the standard estimates of 40-60,000 Romans fighting 100,000 or more Goths. Using the Notitia Dignitatum, a 4th Century Roman text on the Roman military, Macdowall extrapolates a possible Roman and Goth order of battle that is far smaller than standard accounts. In the author's opinion, the Romans had only about 15,000 troops and the Goths had perhaps 20,000 men. This is not very plausible. As even Ammianus' noted, the Roman defeat at Adrianople was the worst defeat since Cannae in 216 BC. It is hard to see how the loss of only 10,000 troops as argued by Macdowall could be a catastrophe that threatened the stability of the empire. The standard accounts, which estimate Roman losses of 20-40,000 dead, are far more in line with the magnitude of this disaster.

In the aftermath, the author asks, "how was it that the best organized, equipped and disciplined army in the world could have been so thoroughly defeated by what amounted to an ad hoc force of refugees and deserters?" Macdowall's response to his own question is twofold. First, the overstretched empire could not muster sufficient quality troops to deal with multiple threats in a timely manner. Second, Roman arrogance (common in situations where professional soldiers confront irregulars) caused them to underestimate their enemies and they offered battle without adequate reconnaissance. Emperor Valens, the Roman commander, accepted battle in a very sloppy, ill-planned manner and the result was disaster. In short order, the Roman cavalry was routed off the battlefield and the unsupported infantry was massacred.

Organizationally, this volume begins with a 6-page introduction, followed by an excellent 17-page section on the opposing armies and 6 more pages on opposing leaders and plans. Osprey seems to have rectified some of the shortcomings in these vital introductory sections from previous volumes. Unfortunately, the actual battle narrative is only 3 pages in length, which seems overly short. Granted the amount of detailed information is sparse, but the author could have done more than just quote chunks of Ammianus' description of the battle. For example, since the Roman infantry was caught while deploying from column to line formation, a diagram and discussion of this key moment might have been useful. Although there is a 7-page section on the aftermath and consequences, it says little about the 1/3rd of the Roman army that survived the battle. The artwork in this volume is of mixed quality; two of the four battle scenes are rather shabby and do not relate to the battle. A plate depicting the initial cavalry clash would have been more appropriate than a "non-combat" scene of migrating Goths. The 2-D maps are very good in supporting the text, but there are only two of the 3-D "Bird's Eye View" maps instead of the normal three. As for the illustrations, most are rather repetitive (e.g. too many illustrations of Roman shield designs) or not germane to the Battle of Adrianople. In future, Osprey should use more relevant illustrations from its "Men-At-Arms" and "Warrior" scenes to round-out volumes (as it used to do earlier in the Campaign series), instead of over-using photos of random antiquarian bric-a-brac.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Summary of Modern Analysis of this Battle, November 24, 2001

By 

Tim O'Neill "Bibliophilius" (Sydney, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Adrianople AD 378: The Goths crush Rome's legions (Campaign) (Paperback)

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 and goes some way towards making up-to-date analysis of this battle easily available to the popular reader.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad for an Osprey Book, October 28, 2001

By 

Caius Fabius "caiusfabius" (Oklahoma United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Adrianople AD 378: The Goths crush Rome's legions (Campaign) (Paperback)

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.