The Battle of Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955: the End of the Age of Migrations in the Latin West (review)

The Battle of Lechfeld in 955 stands as one of those decisive encounters of European history which, in the same way as Hastings in 1066 or Poitiers in 732, marks a moment of transition in which one possible future was extinguished and another was confirmed. Yet it is far less well known (at least to an Anglophone audience) than William the Conqueror's victory or Charles Martel's repulsion of the Moors. Charles Bowlus is not the first to claim that the defeat of an army of Magyars by the Saxon king Otto I in the summer of 955 represents a historical watershed. He does, however, seek to explain perceived inadequacies in earlier scholarship. In order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion on the battle's outcome, Bowlus adopts an environmental approach that takes into account several factors previously ignored.

Early chapters explain the nature of the Hungarian invading force and its military techniques, the German defensive response and the military reforms of the early tenth century, and previous clashes between the two peoples. One strength is the inclusion in appendices of English translations of the major narrative sources, especially those by Widukind and Gerhard. One of the gaps that the author seeks to fill is a perceived lack of scholarly discussion on the topic in English. From that point of view the book is very useful both as a discussion of the battle itself and as an English-language summary of a largely German historiographical tradition. Bowlus frequently takes issue with points of detail concerning the battle in the work of earlier German scholars (especially Karl Leyser). While these controversies will be far more narrow in their scope than any but the most fanatical enthusiasts of military history will require, they do give a sense of a long tradition of scholarship that sees Lechfeld as a vital victory of Germanic society and culture over the threat of invaders from the east.

Environmental elements are central to the analysis and provide some of the most interesting points of discussion. How large an army of mounted archers could the Hungarian grasslands sustain? Why did their arrows not work so well in wet weather? How did the geography of Bavaria shape the campaign? Bowlus is especially concerned to offer an explanation for the apparent annihilation of the defeated Hungarian forces, something that seems to defy logic. He concludes that it was heavy rains and severe flooding in the days after the battle that condemned the Magyars. Mounted archers who would normally be able to flee rapidly found their paths blocked when rivers rose and became impassable. This is based on an ingenious reading of several 'scraps of evidence' (p. 133) in the sources but seems plausible.

Yet for all its self-proclaimed innovation in considering environmental factors, in many ways the book retains the feel of a traditional military history. The point of examining the impact of floods or the nutritional capacity of the Carpathian grasslands is better to understand what happened, where it happened and when it happened during and immediately after the battle itself. The author's aim, in other words, is to reconstruct the most likely chain of events. Undoubtedly Bowlus does an admirable job in this respect, but the intense focus on the narrow details of the campaign could profitably have been balanced by more substantial conclusions on the implications of the Hungarian defeat. Only briefly in the introduction (pp. 5-6) and then in the very last paragraph (pp. 172-73) does the author elaborate on his claim that Lechfeld represents 'a universal triumph' (p. 168) that ensured the survival of the Latin West. If the encounter was so decisive then surely its aftermath should be given greater consideration than it is allocated here? As it is, the...