He then extended to me the privilege of reading them as a series of consecutive observations. And they were fascinating. The first of them, of course, was probably the most moving of them all, emotionally. But the second amazed me, recalling to my mind instantly a comment, by our friend Alaric, to the effect that God has willed it that no great idea should ever occur to one man alone. When the truly great developments in mankind's progress appear, they always seem to appear simultaneously in many lands, promulgated by many intelligent and visionary people.
Greetings, Father,
Already, having completed the first step, it seems this writing task grows easier. I suppose that is due to the difficulties I had with my first attempt, when the array of subjects to refer to and deal with seemed endless. This letter, by comparison, is much simpler; it has but one major component.
Father, I wish to write to you of horses
—
horses, cavalry and the way in which a single man's perception of the importance of both may alter history. The man in question is, of course, Flavius Stilicho
—
nothing I write to you in future will be untouched by his influence, even should he die tomorrow, which the gods forbid!
I know you are aware of the debacle at Adrianople some years ago, in 376. That was the year I first joined the Eagles. Irrespective, however, of your own personal judgment on that affair, I have to regurgitate it here, since it has a direct bearing upon the entire tenor of this letter.
The officially sanctioned story of that fiasco, as I am sure you will recall, is that the Imperator Valens, co-Emperor at the time with Valentinian,
was careless and silly enough to march a consular army of eight legions
—
40,000 men!
—
through hostile territory without taking even the most elementary precautions. His army then, in extended line of march along a lakeside, was surprised by a migrating tribe of Ostrogoths who, being mounted on horseback for their journeying, seized the moment and the day by charging at Valens's host in an undisciplined but deadly, densely packed mob. Their concerted attack, completely unexpected, rolled Valens's extended legions up like a parchment scroll before they had time even to think of deploying into line of battle.
It was a fluke, we are told, one of those unforeseen and unforeseeable developments that, in war, must simply be accepted and accommodated.
Flavius Stilicho will have none of that. He asserts
—
and none who listen can argue against his thesis or his logic
—
that it is inconceivable that any haphazard attack by an undisciplined rabble, no matter how huge their numbers or how densely packed their mass, could totally demoralize and destroy an entire Roman consular army of 40,000 men, killing all of them, including an Emperor and his entire staff.
That such a thing happened is incontrovertible. How it happened, how it
could
happen, is a matter open to the wildest conjecture. How it is
likely
to have happened, however, is a conjecture that one might analyse quite pragmatically, and Stilicho has succinct ideas and opinions on that topic. From those ideas, and his deliberations concerning them, he has drawn a number of conclusions, and upon those conclusions he has constructed an amazing calendar of future events. Being privy to his thinking, and without any disloyalty or fear of being censured, I have decided to apprise you of Stilicho's thoughts, knowing that they will interest you both generally and specifically, and knowing also that the effort of detailing them for you will assist me personally in assimilating them.
His deliberations and his findings, stated categorically, follow, and I must inform you, regretfully, that the language and the clarity of thought are Stilicho's alone:
i
. Valens and his army, although culpable of dereliction by default, could not collectively have shown the degree of mindless, suicidal ineptitude so clearly alleged in the official version of the incident. Valens had superb generals, legates and distinguished senior officers attached to his staff. Even had Valens been patently insane on the level of a Nero or a Caligula, his commanders would still have retained their military competence and responsibility for the army.
ii
. Rome has conquered the world by the excellence of her legions, the greatest military force history has ever seen. Roman armies
—
Rome's foot-soldiers
—
have been invincible since the days of Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar; the only defeats sustained since then by Roman armies have been at the hands of other Roman armies.
iii
. The catastrophe at Adrianople, therefore, was epoch-making: the greatest defeat of a Roman army by a non-Roman force in more than half a millennium. To categorize it as anything other than an unfortunate and regrettable mischance would be an admission that the barbarian forces threatening the Empire are capable of repeating their performance at Adrianople whenever and wherever they please. Obviously, such an admission is officially beyond consideration. The capacity, therefore, to inflict such damage has been attributed to hazard and ill fortune
—
the fact that the barbarians simply happen to have been on horseback at the time of the incident, an eventuality unprecedented in the annals of Roman warfare.
iv
. Rome has never relied upon cavalry, other than for the provision of mobile screens of skirmishers and mounted archers to protect the legions while they deploy in line of battle. The cavalry function has always remained, more or less, in the hands of Rome's allies in Germany and Africa. To the Roman military mind, in fact, cavalry has always been deemed an inferior military presence, operating without the rigid discipline and training required by massed infantry formations. To this day, since the beginnings of Rome, there has always been something Jess than
Roman
about cavalry and cavalry troops.
Such are the findings of Flavius Stilicho; from them he has developed the following propositions:
v
. That any Roman worthy of the name will discern the four foregoing points for himself, after even the shortest period of analytical thought on the matter, and will accept the verity of the situation and the dominant peril it implies, namely:
vi
. That no Roman worthy of the name who has even the slightest knowledge of military matters can seriously doubt the existence of brilliant, clear-thinking generals, equally capable of analysis and action, in the territories of the barbarians. It follows logically and inevitably, therefore, that the action against Valens's army at Adrianople will be recognized by such men for what it was: an overwhelming victory against a supposedly invulnerable force, won by the simple expedient of falling upon the Roman cohorts with sufficient speed to ensnare them before they could deploy on their own ground and in their own battle lines, and then overwhelming them with a sheer mass of men and horseflesh. Granted that realization, at some time in the future, if not now, Adrianople will be emulated and repeated, and the day of the Roman legion