Early Ottonian Warfare: The Perspective from Corvey

Traditionally, scholarly works focusing on warfare in tenth-century Germany have depicted Ottonian armies as consisting of small bands of heavily armed, mounted warriors who raided their enemies in the hope of gaining plunder and glory. This model has been based on a selective reading of a small corpus of narrative texts, including Widukind of Corvey’s Res gestae Saxonicae. This image of Ottonian warfare, however, is at odds not only with vast and growing corpus of information about tenth century fortifications that has been developed by archaeologists, but also with the discussions by the authors of contemporary narrative sources, including Widukind. Indeed, a careful reading of the Corvey monk’s work as a whole makes clear that he depicts sieges conducted by large armies as the dominant form of warfare conducted by Henry I (919-936) and Otto I (936-973), the first two kings of the Ottonian dynasty.