ABSTRACT
The history of medieval warfare has been described recently as a progression from ‘random raids by warbands’ to ‘organised interstate war’.1 This sort of grand narrative seems mistaken. There was nothing random, or even particularly disorganised, about early medieval campaigning. The impression again comes from the difficulties involved in studying the subject. Although many early medieval works describe the routes which armies took and mention misfortunes that befell armies on the way, very few give detailed accounts of campaigns. Nithard’s eyewitness account of the Fontenoy campaign in his Histories is one exception. Julian of Toledo’s History of King Wamba is another. Written shortly after the conclusion of the campaign, it describes Wamba’s campaign against the usurper Paul in 673. Though the text is coloured by various ideological agendas, its account of that campaign seems plausible.2 Another interesting exception, although very brief, is the Annals of Fontenelle’s account of a Viking raid on Normandy in 841.3 Often we have only the tersest accounts of campaigns: ‘This year King X led an army to Y.’
