The Great Stirrup Controversy

The great stirrup controversy began as a debate over the origins of "feudalism". In 1887 Heinrich Brunner proposed that feudalism was a side-effect of the development of mounted shock warfare by the Franks. It became the great stirrup controversy when in 1962 Lynn White Jr. proposed that it was the stirrup that produced both feudalism and cavalry. Though the controversy lingers in some quarters, Bernard Bachrach put the idea to rest in 1970 with a successful attack on many of White's (and Brunner's) basic points. At present it seems clear that stirrups did not cause the invention of feudalism, and, in fact, they seem to be a convenience and not a necessity for mounted shock warfare.

Brunner's Theory:

In 1887 Heinrich Brunner published an article entitled "Knights' Service and the Origins of Feudalism." Brunner used the undeniable fact that the early Franks had fought, using the francisca, a long-handled axe, on foot. Indeed, as late as the battle of Poitiers in 732, in which Charles Martel had defeated an invading Moslem army from Spain, the French had fought on foot. But, argued Brunner, by the battle of the Dyle, in 891, they were unaccustomed to fighting on foot and had fought on horseback alone. Thus, he reasoned, at some time between those dates the Frankish army had transformed itself from an infantry force to mounted cavalry.

Further, Brunner concluded, certain events taking place during the reigns of Charles Martel and his son Pippin III indicated a change in social organization in France. For example Charles Martel had confiscated sizable amounts of church lands and distributed them to his leading supporters. And the "Saxon tribute", formerly payable in cattle, was changed by Pippin and made payable in horses instead.

Why were these things done? Brunner explained it this way: Prior to Charles Martel the Franks had raised their armies by calling on all free men to gather at a specified place, bringing their weapons with them. While not all free men came, the fact that a large fraction of the Franks were free men guaranteed a sizable army. But, Brunner said, this was now changed. The Franks had converted themselves into a mounted army.

He argued that the Moslems had fought on horseback at Poitiers. Charles Martel, Brunner felt, in spite of winning the battle, was so impressed by the fighting ability of the Moslem cavalry that he forced the Frankish army to become primarily a cavalry army.

But it was very expensive to support a mounted warrior. Foot soldiers were much cheaper. So the church lands, Brunner decided, had been confiscated so that they could be given to suitable men to provide them the income needed to support themselves as mounted warriors. But these lands, Brunner felt, were not just given away. They were awarded with the condition that the holder of the land had to provide a specified number of mounted warriors when called by the king. Thus, argued Brunner, a new class of landowners was formed and feudalism was born.

White's Idea:

Brunner's ideas survived the first wave of critical examination. But in 1962, in a chapter in his very important work, Medieval Technology and Social Change, Lynn White Jr. successfully challenged Brunner's thesis. White argued that though it was true that feudalism arose out of military necessity, Brunner's details were wrong. It was not, White argued, the battle of Poitiers that convinced the French to fight on horseback; indeed it was even unlikely that the Moslems had used large numbers of cavalry in that battle.

So what had caused the great shift in French military organization? White argued that it was the introduction of the stirrup. White claimed that it was the stirrup that made the use of the lance by cavalry possible. Without stirrups, White claimed, the impact of the lance on an enemy would knock the mounted warrior off the back of the horse. But with stirrups, the rider could brace himself against the blow. White argued that Charles Martel had recognized this and forced his army to change.

Cavalry had existed prior to this. And the lance had long been a major cavalry weapon . Indeed, there were several types of lance. One was really a javelin to be thrown at the enemy. Another was a "sticker"-type of lance, meant to poke holes in an enemy. What did not exist in France was the "couched" lance, carried under the arm by a mounted warrior charging full-speed directly at an enemy. The couched lance made possible shock warfare.

In White's view, the simple stirrup had made mounted shock warfare possible. And Charles Martel had distributed church land to support shock warriors. The new class of chevaliers were the owners of the land granted to them by the King. They were the military elite. And in their creation feudalism was born.

This feudalism, first local to France, was spread throughout Europe by Charles Martel's son Pippin III and by his grandson, Charlemagne. It spread to Italy with the defeat of the Lombards and to Eastern Europe with the defeat of the Saxons and the Avars. In the next hundred years it was adopted by the Byzantines and in 1066 it arrived in England.

Bachrach's Attack:

But was White correct? Soon a number of criticisms of White's thesis appeared. Some were attacks on the idea that technology could have a major influence on social history. Others attacked White's evidence, which was linguistic and archaeological as well as historical. And some attacked his understanding of military history. But White's thesis, somewhat weakened, survived these attacks, His idea was brilliant, direct, and simple. A complex phenomenon such as the rise of the land tenure system and the medieval system of military obligation, both unknown in the classical world, was explained. It seemed too clear an idea to be wrong.

But it was wrong. The first real wounding of White's ideas came from D. A. Bullough in a 1970 article in the English Historical Review. Bullough was able to show that there was little evidence that the Frankish armies of Charles Martel, Pippin, or Charlemagne won their battles because of mounted shock tactics. And, even more to the point, Bullough pointed out that stirrups are not found in 8th century graves, though other materials and weapons pertaining to a warrior's life are found.

But the last blow to White's ideas was given by Bernard S. Bachrach also in 1970, in a long article entitled "Charles Martel, Mounted Shock Combat, the Stirrup, and Feudalism" published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History. Bachrach attacked White's evidence directly. The Saxon tribute in horses, much made of by both White and Brunner, Bachrach showed was very small, perhaps being no more than the number of horses needed for the king's household. And the evidence used by Brunner and accepted by everyone else after, that the Franks had fought on horseback at the battle of the Dyle, was also suspect. Bachrach showed that The phrase Brunner had taken to mean "unused to fighting on foot" could be just as well translated to mean that the Franks were "not used to very slow moving infantry battles." As for the evidence that the Frankish army had become cavalry based at all, Bachrach concluded that "there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that heavily armed horsemen engaging in mounted shock combat were the decisive element of their armies." [DeVries 1992 p 108].

Having done this, Bachrach went further. He showed that there is no mention of stirrups in inventories, literary sources, or military manuals of Charlemagne's reign. Evidently, he concluded, stirrups did not seem that important to the Franks of that time.

But what about the seizure of church lands and their distribution? Bachrach pointed out that this had been overinterpreted. It was a longstanding Frankish custom (predating their arrival in Gaul) of the war leader to hand out gifts to his armed retainers. To do so, the war leader needed wealth to hand out. Bachrach noted, it was not only church lands that were taken, but moveable wealth of ordinary Franks was taken as well.

White never answered these criticisms, nor has anyone else. The great stirrup controversy seems to be over.

Conclusions:

Was this episode just another one of those scholarly fights that has no real result? The evidence is that it was not. White, with his book, essentially invented the modern field of medieval technology. His ideas (there were many more of them than just the stirrup controversy) laid the foundation for the notion that technology has had a very important influence on the development of everyday life in the Middle Ages. Indeed, it is now possible to argue that one cannot understand medieval Europe unless one has a good notion as to its technology.

Another point: the battle over the origins of feudalism has had a rather strange outcome. Rather than settling the issue, the notion of "feudalism" as a single entity widespread in Europe (if not elsewhere as well) has crumbled. Land tenure and military obligation has turned out to be a complex issue varying widely in time and place. So strangely enough, the major casualty in the great stirrup debate has turned out to be feudalism.

I have used the term "feudalism" because that is the word used in the original proposals by Brunner and White. In more recent years it has become, in the words of E. A. R. Brown [E. A. R. Brown, "The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe", American Historical Review 79:1063-1088] a "tyrannical construct". The term "feudalism" means many different things to different people and its use often contributes more confusion than light to a discussion. Here it is used to denote a system of land tenure in which land is given directly to support one or more mounted warriors who are then obligated to serve in the grantor's army. That such a system of land tenure and military obligation was, if it ever existed at all, never widespread, is beside the point. When Brunner and (later) White wrote, the term "feudalism" was assumed to be the system of medieval government and organization. It was the origin of that feudalism that both Brunner and White were trying to explain. [Return to the start of this article.]

In what I have written I am heavily indebted to Kelly DeVries' excellent summary of the great stirrup controversy contained in his book Medieval Military Technology. It is not a simple story. The summary above is almost totally based on his work. I have paraphrased and abridged that which I did not omit. And in so doing I may well have introduced errors. Those are solely my responsibility. The whole story, with full references, is given by DeVries in a chapter entitled "The Stirrup, Mounted Shock Combat, Chivalry, and Feudalism" which I commend to the interested reader.

I have also referred to Lynn White Jr's Medieval Technology and Social Change which is worth examining. The amount of evidence he masses in support of his ideas is impressive. His research into the origins and diffusion of the stirrup is essentially unchallenged, as are a number of other ideas he presented. But, as it turned out, his basic theory was fatally flawed in crucial areas.

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