List III/26, Early Serbian or Croatian

Proposal: The Croatian fleet

Author: Duncan Head

Synopsis: Increase the numbers of Croatian boats.

Despite references to "galleys" in a description of a Croatian fleet,

the current lists Bts are probably correct; but numbers should

increase.

Proposal:

Replace -

Only if Croatian:

Pirate/fishing boats – Irr Bts (O) @ 2AP {Ax(S)} 0-3

With -

Only if Croatian:

Sagenai and kondourai – Irr Bts (O) @ 2AP {any foot} 0-6

Replace Bts (O) with smaller kondourai – Irr Bts (I) @ 1 AP (any foot) 0-2

Justification:

The 10th-century De Administrando Imperii of Constantine VII

Porphyrogenitus says the following about Croatia:

"Baptized Croatia musters as many as 60,000 horse and 100,000 foot,

and up to 80 galleys (sagenas) and up to 100 cutters (kondouras). The

galleys carry 40 men each, the cutters 20 each, and the smaller

cutters 10 each. This great power and multitude of men Croatia

possessed until the time of prince Krasimer. But when he was dead and

his son Miroslav, after ruling four years, was done away with by the

ban Pribounias, and quarrels and numerous dissensions broke out in

the country, the horse and foot and galleys and cutters of the Croat

dominion was diminished. And now it has 30 galleys and ??? cutters,

large and small, and ??? horse and ??? foot."

(s.31, Moravcsik and Jenkins edition p.151)

"Now" is either 948-952 when the De Administrando was written, or

else earlier in the 940s when Constantine wrote an ethnographic

treatise later incorporated into the new work. The numbers in the

last sentence may well apply to both dates, and in any case are lost

except for that of the "galleys". The reign of Kresimir I, which

Constantine regards as the peak of Croatian power, was 900-908.

Is "galleys" a good translation for sagenai, and specifically does it

correspond with the DBM Gal type? I don't know. All I can find is a

suggestion that sagenai in unspecified Byzantine sources may possibly

apply to roundships used for military transport – that is, perhaps

Shp in DBM:

"De son côté, Mme Hélène Ahrweiler parle également des "dromons" qui

étaient accompagnés de navires plus légers, les "galeai". Toujours

d'après le livre de Léon le Philosophe ….. A côté des "dromons"

et "galeai", les sources désignent souvent les bateaux

appelés "sagenai", "saktourai", et "katenai" ; tous trois

appartiennent à la catégorie de bâtiments ronds et lourds ; ce sont

des bateaux de commerce utilisés, en cas d'opérations, pour le

transport."

- from http://www.stratisc.org/pub/pub_LabrousseMROC_3.html

However, Ahrweiler may derive this suggestion from the De

Administrando itself, since Constantine mentions that the pious

Croats never attack anyone, so that "neither the galleys nor the

cutters of the Croats ever go against anyone to make war, unless of

course he has come upon them. But in these vessels go those of the

Croats who wish to engage in commerce, travelling round from city to

city, in Pagania (a small Slavonic principality on the Dalmatian

coast) and the gulf of Dalmatia as far as Venice". So both Croatian

vessel types are used in peacetime commerce as well as in defensive

wars.

On balance I suspect that a 40-man vessel about which we know nothing

except that it was used in the island-strewn Adriatic coast of

Croatia might best be treated as Bts. In which case the sagenai, like

the smaller kondourai, are best treated as Bts (O) after all: the

example of the 30-oared triakonter in the Mycenaean and Dark Age

Greek lists, which is also Bts (O), suggests that they are not large

enough to be Bts (S). I am uncertain whether to downgrade the smaller

kondourai to Bts (I) as this class is primarily, according to the

rules, for skin boats and the like, but in the end have left it as an

option for elements composed solely of the smaller kondourai.

So how many boats? An element of Bts represents 8-20 boats depending

on size. Assuming that about three-quarters of the complement listed

are landing troops, the remainder being sailors who are left with the

boats, an element of 40-man sagenai would represent 8 vessels, an

element of 20-man kondourai 16 or 17 vessels, and an element of the

10-man smaller kondourai would be more like 32 vessels. That might

give us as many as 10 elements of sagenai and 4-5 of kondourai.

But that assumes the list is at normal scale. Is it? Croatia's 60,000

horse are represented by 23 elements of mounted in the list, its

100,000 foot by about 100 elements if we include the ill-armed Ax

(I). This makes a scale difficult to calculate (though it suggests

that perhaps the list should have more horse). But let us assume that

it represents about one element to every 1,000 men of Croatia's

military potential, and hope that if Constantine has exaggerated the

size of the army, as he probably has, he's exaggerated the fleet in

much the same proportion - so that the army fielded represents about

a quarter of the men listed by Constantine as available, and the

boats likewise. The sagenai can carry 3,200 men but probably land

about 2,400, the kondourai carry 1,500 (assuming equal numbers

of "large" and "small" kondourai, which is pure guess) but land about

1,125, so the total would be able to disembark about four elements of

foot altogether – four elements of boats rather than 14!

However, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that it would be more

likely for all Croatia's boats to be gathered together than for all

its able-bodied men; which would both make it easier to exaggerate

the number of men than the number of boats and also mean that,

whatever the real numbers, boats might form a larger proportion of an

actual army in the field than Constantine's figures would suggest. So

we could easily allow a compromise of, say, six or even eight

elements.

There seems no good reason to restrict what kind of foot can be

carried.