Byzantium at War AD 600-1453（战争中的拜占庭：公元600-1453年）（7）
作者：John Haldon约翰·哈尔顿
出版商：Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
自翻：流潋紫琳
Outbreak：Why and how did Byzantium fight wars?
爆发：拜占庭为什么以及如何打仗？
Byzantine generals and rulers were generally fully aware of the relationship between the allocation and redistribution of resources — soldiers, supplies, equipment, livestock and so forth — and the ability of the empire to ward off hostile military action or to strike back at its enemies. Military handbooks and treatises dating from the 6th to the 11th centuries make it apparent that the imbalance in resources between Byzantium and its enemies was recognised. Generals were exhorted not to give battle in unfavourable conditions, because this might lead to waste of life and resources; indeed the dominant motif in these works is that it was the Byzantines who were compelled to manoeuvre, to use delaying tactics, to employ ambushes and other strategems to even the odds stacked against them; but that it was quite clearly a main war aim to win without having to fight a decisive battle. Victory could be achieved through a combination of delaying tactics, intelligent exploitation of enemy weaknesses, the landscape, seasonal factors, and diplomacy. Wars were costly, and for a state whose basic income derived from agricultural production, and which remained relatively stable as well as being vulnerable to both natural and man-made disasters, they were to be avoided if at all possible.
（拜占庭的将军和统治者都充分意识到资源（士兵、补给、装备、牲畜等）的分配和再分配与帝国抵御敌对军事行动或反击敌人的能力之间的关系。从6 世纪到11世纪的军事手册和论文清楚地表明，拜占庭与其敌人之间的资源不平衡已经得到承认。告诫将军不要在不利的情况下战斗，因为这可能会导致生命和资源的浪费；事实上，这些作品的主要主题是拜占庭人被迫采取行动，使用拖延战术，使用伏击和其他策略来平衡对他们不利的可能性；但这很明显是一场主要的战争，目的是在不必打决战的情况下取胜。胜利可以通过拖延战术、巧妙利用敌人弱点、地形、季节因素和外交手段相结合来实现。战争代价高昂，对于一个基本收入来自农业生产、保持相对稳定、易受自然和人为灾害影响的国家来说，应该尽可能避免战争。）
Another, closely related, factor in imperial strategic thinking was manpower: from a Byzantine perspective, they were always outnumbered, and strategy as well as diplomacy needed to take this factor into account in dealing with enemies. One way of evening the balance was to reduce enemy numbers: delay the enemy forces until they could no longer stay in the field, destroying or removing any possible sources of provisions and supplies, for example, misleading them with false information about Byzantine intentions, these are all methods which the military treatises recommend. Avoiding battle, which was a keystone of Byzantine strategy, would also increase the possibility that the enemy host might be struck by illness, run out of water and supplies, and so on.
帝国战略思维中另一个密切相关的因素是人力：从拜占庭的角度来看，他们总是寡不敌众，在与敌人打交道时，战略和外交都需要考虑到这一因素。平衡的一种方法是减少敌人数量：拖延敌军直到他们无法再留在战场，摧毁或移除任何可能的补给和补给来源，例如，用有关拜占庭意图的虚假信息误导他们，这些都是军事手册推荐的方法。避免战斗是拜占庭战略的基石，也会增加敌军生病、缺水和补给等的可能性。
Defence thus had to be the primary concern of Byzantine rulers and generals. Byzantine military dispositions were administered upon a consistent and logistically well-considered basis, and their main purpose was to secure the survival of the empire by deploying the limited resources available to the best effect. They were, necessarily, defensive in orientation, a point noted quite clearly by the mid-10th-century visitor from Italy, the ambassador Liutprand of Cremona, with regard to the precautions taken to secure Constantinople at night, in case of an unexpected enemy attack. The emphasis placed by Byzantine writers and governments on effective and intelligent diplomacy is not just a question of cultural preference informed by a Christian distaste for the shedding of blood: to the contrary, the continued existence of the state depended upon the deployment of a sophisticated diplomatic arsenal. The whole history of Byzantine foreign relations and both the theory and practice of Byzantine diplomacy reflect this. Diplomacy had its military edge, of course: good relations with the various peoples of the steppe were essential to Byzantine interests in the Balkans and Caucasus, because a weapon might thereby be created that could he turned on the enemies of the empire. Such contacts were also an essential source of information, of course, and much effort was expended in gathering information that might be relevant to the empire's defence.
（因此，防御必须是拜占庭统治者和将军们的首要关注点。拜占庭军事部署是在一致且经过深思熟虑的基础上进行管理的，其主要目的是通过部署可用的有限资源以达到最佳效果，从而确保帝国的生存。它们在方向上必然是防御性的，这一点被 10 世纪中叶来自意大利的访问者、克雷莫纳大使柳特普兰德清楚地指出，关于在夜间保护君士坦丁堡采取的预防措施，以防敌人突然袭击。拜占庭作家和政府对有效和明智的外交的重视不仅仅是基督教对流血的厌恶所传达的文化偏好问题：相反，国家的持续存在取决于部署复杂的外交宝库。拜占庭外交的整个历史以及拜占庭外交的理论和实践都反映了这一点。当然，外交有其军事优势：与大草原上的各个民族保持良好关系对于拜占庭在巴尔干和高加索地区的利益至关重要，因为这样可能会制造出一种武器来对付帝国的敌人。当然，这种联系也是重要的信息来源，并且在收集可能与帝国防御相关的信息方面花费了大量精力。）
Going to war was thus rarely the result of a planned choice made by emperors or their advisers, for the empire was perpetually threatened from one quarter or another, and was thus in a constant state of military preparedness. The difference between war and peace in the frontier areas became a matter, not of the state of the empire as a whole in relation to a particular neighbouring power, but rather of the part of the empire in which one found oneself. While recovery of former territories was permanently on the ideological agenda, efforts to implement it reflected an ad hoc reaction to an unforeseen advantage gained through victories in battle and the exploitation of favourable circumstances. In real terms, the potential for the reconquest and restoration of lost territories was severely limited. Strategy was determined by the interplay between resources and political beliefs, tempered by ideological pragmatism: most Byzantine warfare was fought not on the basis of delivering a knock-out blow to the enemy, but on that of attempting to reach or maintain a state of parity or equilibrium, though attrition, raid and counter-raid, and destruction of the enemy's short-term potential. Members of the government and imperial court may have shared common ideals in respect of their relations with the outside world; but the strategic dispositions of the armies of the later Roman and Byzantine empire were not necessarily arranged with these concerns as a priority.
因此，发动战争很少是皇帝或他们的顾问做出有计划选择的结果，因为帝国永远受到来自各个方面的威胁，因此一直处于军事准备状态。边疆地区的战争与和平之间的区别成为一个问题，不是整个帝国相对于特定邻国的状况，而是一个人所处的帝国部分。虽然恢复旧领土一直在意识形态议程上，但实施它的努力反映了对通过战斗胜利和利用有利环境获得的不可预见的优势的临时反应。实际上，重新征服和恢复失去的领土的潜力非常有限。战略由资源和政治信仰之间的相互作用决定，并受到意识形态实用主义的影响：大多数拜占庭战争不是基于对敌人的致命打击，而是基于试图达到或维持均等状态或平衡，虽然消耗，突袭和反突袭，以及敌人的短期潜力的破坏。政府和朝廷成员在与外界的关系方面可能有着共同的理想；但后来罗马帝国和拜占庭帝国军队的战略部署不一定以这些关注为优先事项。
Resources were a key element in strategic thinking, for obvious reasons - armies cannot fight without adequate supplies, equipment, training and shelter. But warfare was not necessarily conducted with a purely material advantage in mind, since ideological superiority played an important role in Byzantine notions of their own identity and role in the order of things; nor was it conducted with any longer-term strategic objective in mind. Any damage to the enemy was a good thing, but some ways of hitting the enemy also carried an ideological value strategically wasteful attacks against symbolically important enemy fortresses or towns were carried out by all medieval rulers at one time or another, since the short-term propaganda value, associated perhaps also with a raising of morale, was often considered as valuable as any real material gains. By the same token, some theatres were ideologically more important than others. Fighting the barbarians in the Balkans and north of the Danube was regarded as much less prestigious and glorious than combating the religious foe, the Muslims in the east: an 11th-century writer remarks: 'There seemed nothing grand (in fighting) the barbarians in the West ..., but were he (the emperor Romanos III) to turn to those living in the east, he thought that he could perform nobly ...'
（资源是战略思维的关键要素，原因显而易见——如果没有足够的补给、装备、训练和住所，军队就无法作战。但是，战争不一定是为了纯粹的物质优势，因为意识形态优势在拜占庭关于他们自己的身份和事物秩序的观念中发挥了重要作用。也没有考虑到任何更长期的战略目标。对敌人造成任何伤害都是好事，但某些打击敌人的方式也带有意识形态价值 对具有象征意义的敌人堡垒或城镇的战略性浪费攻击是所有中世纪统治者一次或另一次进行的，因为短期内 宣传价值，也许还与鼓舞士气有关，通常被认为与任何真正的物质收益一样有价值。出于同样的原因，一些剧院在意识形态上比其他剧院更重要。在巴尔干半岛和多瑙河以北与野蛮人作战，被认为远不如与宗教敌人、东部的穆斯林作战那样有声望和光荣：一位 11 世纪的作家评论道：“（在战斗中）西方……但如果他（罗马诺斯三世皇帝）转向住在东方的人，他认为他可以表现得高贵……”）
There is little evidence that warfare was conducted to gain resources that could then be deployed in a coherent way to further a given strategy, except in the sense that more territory and the wealth that usually accompanied it were desirable in themselves. Warfare was conducted on the basis of inflicting maximum damage to the enemy's economy and material infrastructure - enslavement or killing of populations, destruction of fortifications and urban installations, devastation of the countryside. Equally, measures to protect one's own side had to be taken, and by the middle of the 10th century the Byzantines had developed both aspects of such warfare to a fine art. Both in the war against the Arabs in the cast from the 7th to 10th centuries, and against Slays and Bulgars in the west, Byzantine warfare was conducted effectively on the basis of a struggle of attrition. This is not to suggest that there was never a longer-term strategic aim or ulterior motive at issue - in the case of the accelerated eastward expansion in the 10th century and in the slightly later, but closely related, conquest of Bulgaria under Basil II, it is possible to suggest that this was the case, for example. In the first case, through an aggressive imperialism towards the minor Muslim powers in Syria and Jazira, the extension and consolidation of the empire's territorial strength in the area was clearly an important consideration; in the second case, and partly stimulated by the first development, the creation of a new resource-base for the emperors and Constantinopolitan government, independent of the power and influence of the eastern magnates, was a significant consideration; but it was also in the context of an equally practical decision to eradicate the threat from an independent Bulgaria and reassert imperial dominance throughout the Balkan regions. Both facets of these processes mirror very particular structural tensions within Byzantine state and society, and at the same time they also demonstrate particularly clearly the extent to which the foreign policies and military strategy of a state can reflect power relations within the society as a whole.
（几乎没有证据表明进行战争是为了获得资源，然后可以以连贯的方式部署这些资源以推进特定战略，除非在某种意义上说，更多的领土和通常伴随而来的财富本身是可取的。战争是在对敌人的经济和物质基础设施造成最大破坏的基础上进行的——奴役或杀害人口、摧毁防御工事和城市设施、破坏乡村。同样，必须采取措施保护自己的一方，到 10 世纪中叶，拜占庭人已将此类战争的两个方面发展为一门艺术。无论是在公元 7 世纪到 10 世纪对阿拉伯人的战争，还是在西方对杀戮者和保加利亚人的战争中，拜占庭战争都是在消耗斗争的基础上有效地进行的。这并不是说从来没有长期的战略目标或不可告人的动机——在 10 世纪加速向东扩张以及稍晚但密切相关的巴西尔二世统治下的保加利亚征服的情况下，例如，有可能表明情况就是如此。在第一种情况下，帝国主义通过对叙利亚和贾兹拉的穆斯林小势力的侵略，扩大和巩固帝国在该地区的领土力量显然是一个重要的考虑因素；在第二种情况下，部分受到第一种发展的刺激，为皇帝和君士坦丁堡政府建立一个新的资源基础，独立于东方权贵的权力和影响，是一个重要的考虑因素；但这也是在消除来自独立保加利亚的威胁并在整个巴尔干地区重新确立帝国统治地位的同样实际决定的背景下。这些过程的两个方面都反映了拜占庭国家和社会内部非常特殊的结构性紧张局势，同时它们也特别清楚地表明了一个国家的外交政策和军事战略在多大程度上可以反映整个社会内部的权力关系。）
Warfare for ideological reasons alone was very rare. Clearly, all defensive warfare could be justified on a range of such grounds - the threat to the empire's territory and population, the challenge to Orthodox rule and God's appointed ruler, the emperor at Constantinople, challenges to Roman sovereignty, and so forth. Offensive or aggressive warfare was, in the Christian Roman empire, a little more difficult to justify, but it was readily accomplished. But there is no doubt that the dominant element in Byzantine military thinking throughout the long history of the empire was defensive, and necessarily so in view of its strategic situation. Byzantium survived as long as it did because it was able to defend itself, intelligently exploit natural frontiers or boundaries in the crisis years of the 7th and 8th centuries, and diplomatic and political relationships thereafter. And whatever the specific details of the process of its political-historical withering away after 1204, the gradual demise of the Byzantine empire went hand-in-hand with its declining ability to muster the resources necessary to defend itself. Strategy was, in practical terms, a matter of pragmatic reaction to events in the world around the empire, only loosely informed by the political-ideological imperatives of the Christian Roman empire. In this respect, the political and strategic conditions of existence of the east Roman or Byzantine state rendered a grand strategy in the narrower sense irrelevant - the strategy of the empire was based on maintaining the conditions appropriate to political, cultural and ideological survival.
（仅出于意识形态原因的战争是非常罕见的。显然，所有防御性战争都可以基于一系列这样的理由来辩护——对帝国领土和人口的威胁、对东正教统治和上帝指定的统治者、君士坦丁堡皇帝的挑战，对罗马主权的挑战等等。 在基督教罗马帝国，进攻性或侵略性战争更难以证明其合理性，但它很容易实现。但毫无疑问，在整个帝国漫长的历史中，拜占庭军事思想的主导元素是防御性的，考虑到其战略形势也必然如此。拜占庭之所以能幸存下来，是因为它能够自卫，在 7 世纪和 8 世纪的危机年代巧妙地利用自然边界或边界，以及此后的外交和政治关系。无论 1204 年之后其政治历史消亡过程的具体细节如何，拜占庭帝国的逐渐灭亡与其召集必要资源以保卫自己的能力下降是密切相关的。实际上，战略是对帝国周围世界事件的务实反应，只是对基督教罗马帝国的政治意识形态要求有所了解。在这方面，东罗马或拜占庭国家存在的政治和战略条件使狭义的大战略变得无关紧要——帝国的战略建立在维持适合政治、文化和意识形态生存的条件之上。）
未完待续
