Early Germanic warfare
Warfare seems to have been a constant in Germanic society, and archaeology indicates this was the case prior to the arrival of the Romans in the 1st century BC. Wars were frequent between and within the individual Germanic peoples. The early Germanic languages preserve various words for "war", and they did not necessarily clearly differentiate between warfare and other forms of violent interaction. The Romans note that for the Germans, robbery in warfare was not shameful. Consequently the motivations for Germanic warfare both against Rome and against other Germanic peoples was the potential to acquire booty.
Military history
Archaeological records indicate that the arrival of the Corded Ware culture in Northern Europe was accompanied by large-scale migration and warfare. After a period of amalgamation, the Nordic Bronze Age emerged, which appears to have been a time of relative peace.The military situation in the Germanic world was radically changed with the emergence of the Iron Age and the late centuries BC. For close to a thousand years afterward, the Germanic world was characterized by almost continuous warfare and large-scale migration.
Though often defeated by the Romans, the Germanic tribes were remembered in Roman records as fierce combatants, whose main downfall was that they failed to join together into a collective fighting force under a unified command, which allowed the Roman Empire to employ a "divide and rule" strategy against them.
On occasions when the Germanic tribes worked together, the results were impressive. Three Roman legions were ambushed and destroyed by an alliance of Germanic tribes headed by Arminius at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE. As a result, the Roman Empire made no further concerted attempts at conquering Germania beyond the Rhine.
File:10 2023 - Palazzo Altemps, Roma, Lazio, 00186, Italia - Sarcofago Grande Ludovisi - Arte Romana - Photo Paolo Villa FO232047 ombre gimp bis.jpg|right|upright=1.15|thumb|The 3rd-century Great Ludovisi sarcophagus depicts a battle between Goths and Romans.
During the 4th and 5th centuries CE, Visigoths and Vandals militarily organized themselves to sufficiently challenge and sack Rome in 410 AD and again in 455 AD. Then in 476 AD, the last Roman emperor was deposed by the Germanic warrior Odoacer, an event which effectively ended Roman predominance in Western Europe. Germanic tribes eventually overwhelmed and conquered the ancient world. That military transition was additionally spurred by the arrival of the Vikings from Scandinavia in the 8th to 10th centuries, giving rise to modern Europe and medieval warfare.
The later military development of armored knights and fortified castles was a response in part to the relentless plundering and raiding by the Vikings, which meant that the Germanic tribes who had settled mainland Europe and the British Isles had to adapt themselves so as to combat another wave of Germanic aggression.
Armies and retinues
The core of the army is imagined as having been formed by the comitatus of a chief, a term used in ancient sources that has many possible meanings. Tacitus describes it as a group of warriors who follow a leader. Heiko Steuer argues that a comitatus might refer to any group of warriors held together by mutual agreement and desire for booty, and that these were political, rather than ethnic or tribal groups. As retinues grew larger, their names could become associated with entire peoples. Many retinues functioned as auxilia.Germanic armies were probably not large, with numbers such as an army of 100,000 Suevi claimed by Caesar being literary and propagandistic exaggerations. Scholars can extrapolate numbers from 500–600 to 1600 per war band from later sources. Older scholarship sometimes supposed that all the men in a "tribe" formed the army, but this would have been logistically impossible in a premodern society. Steuer, while noting Germanic victories against large Roman forces, estimates the typical war band to have been no larger than 3000 men, while estimating that only as many of 1,800 may have participated in a campaign. In later times, as the population of Germania grew, the armies grew larger. Most warriors were probably unmarried men. Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus indicate that armies included both young men and older, more experienced warriors. By the early Middle Ages, armies were mostly composed of a distinct warrior class that relied on peasants for support.
Tactics and organization
Roman sources stress, perhaps partially as a literary topos, that the Germanic peoples fought without discipline, with Tacitus in particular stating that Germanic war-leaders achieved more by example than by command. Tacitus claims that Germanic armies were not divided into units like Roman ones, while Maurice emphasizes that informal units were formed in the army based on kinship. Steuer, however, notes that many Germani served in the Roman army or as imperial bodyguards and thus would have been familiar with the organization of the Roman military. He argues that Germanic armies may have been organized in a manner not dissimilar to Roman armies.In antiquity, Germanic warriors fought mostly on foot. Germanic infantry fought in tight formations in close combat, in a style that Steuer compares to the Greek phalanx. Tacitus mentions a single formation as used by the Germani, the wedge. Men probably practiced the use of weapons beginning in their youth. When fighting the Roman legions, Germanic warriors seem to have preferred to attack from ambush, which would require organization and training.
In the Roman period, mounted horsemen were usually limited to chiefs and their immediate retinues, who may have dismounted to fight. Some Roman sources such as Ammianus indicate a Germanic distrust of cavalry before the 6th century. However, Tacitus mentions Germani fighting both on foot and on horseback, Caesar is known to have maintained a group of Germanic cavalry, and other sources speak of the excellent horsemanship of groups such as the Alemanni. East Germanic peoples such as the Goths developed cavalry forces armed with lances due to contact with various nomadic peoples, so that the armies of Theodoric the Great were primarily horsemen.
Forms of warfare
The three main types of warfare carried out during the Germanic Iron Age were feuds, raids and total war involving the entire tribe.Feuds
The prevalence of feuds in early Germanic warfare is well attested in the Sagas of Icelanders and other Germanic poems such as Beowulf. Since quarrels between individuals were at the time not regulated by any form of tribal law, feuds became in many cases the only way to obtain remedy for an injury.Raiding
were typically carried out by the early Germanic peoples either for the purpose of acquiring booty or for scouting for areas suitable for colonization.Such raids were typically organized by individual leaders who would invite all who were interested in joining him on his quest.
According to Caesar, a Germanic chieftain would typically announce a raid at the popular assembly and call for volunteers. Such raids did not necessarily involve the entire tribe, but must rather be considered private ventures. According to Tacitus, chieftains would utilize raids as a form of military training.
File:Alboin's entrance into Pavia.jpg|upright=1|thumb|alt=A book illustration with an armed man on a horse in a town, and below the writing "Alboin in Pavia"|A modern rendering of Alboin and the Lombards entrance into Ticinum. In the late 6th century, the entire Lombard people invaded and settled Italy.
The purpose of a raid was not to gain territory, but rather to capture resources and secure prestige. These raids were conducted by irregular troops, often formed along family or village lines, in groups of 10 to about 1,000. Large bodies of troops, while figuring prominently in the history books, were the exception rather than the rule of ancient warfare. Thus a typical Germanic force might consist of 100 men with the sole goal of raiding a nearby Germanic or foreign village. Thus, most warfare was at their Germanic neighbors.
Larger migrations were generally preluded by raids. A significant example of this is the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, which had been preceded for centuries by naval raids on Roman Britain.
Cavalry was rarely used by Germanic raiders.
Total war
Wars involving entire tribes were uncommon in the Germanic world until the Iron Age. One of the earliest Germanic peoples involved in such warfare were the Bastarnae, who are mentioned in classical sources as battling the Illyrians in Southeast Europe in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.When engaged in total war, Germanic armies often consisted of more than 50 percent noncombatants, as displaced people would travel with large groups of soldiers, the elderly, women and children.
Image:Hjalmars avsked av Orvar Odd efter striden på Samsö.jpg|upright=1|thumb|A scene from the Hervarar saga. Örvar-Oddr and Hjalmar bid each other farewell, by Mårten Eskil Winge.
In Getica, the 6th century Gothic historian Jordanes mentions a series of mass-migrations of the Goths from Scandinavia towards the Black Sea, but the accuracy of his writing has been put up to question. Other major tribal migrations taking place in the Migration Period include that of the Vandals, Lombards, Burgundians and Anglo-Saxons. During such migrations the entire tribe would move along with their belongings on ox-drawn wagons, not unlike the American pioneers centuries later. When such folk-armies were forced to fight, a wagon fort would be established, where the women and children were provided shelter. Such large-scale migrations required skilled leadership. Many of the most famous early Germanic kings, such as Alaric I, Theodoric the Great, Genseric and Alboin, are remembered for leading their people on such migrations.
The earliest of Germanic mass migrations are not recounted in classical literature, and clues about such events can only be derived from archaeological discoveries.