A squad that never existed: how the Slavs fought before Rus'
Procopius wrote that every Slav had two javelins and a shield. This image is often mistaken for a chaotic forest mass. But behind it lies a coherent military system.
Procopius of Caesarea, describing Justinian's wars on the Danube, left a phrase that defined the image of the early Slavs for a millennium and a half: each man had two small javelins, some had shields, "strong but difficult to carry," wooden bows, and short arrows. This gave rise to two common beliefs. The first: the Slavs fought in a mob and conquered by sheer numbers. The second: the retinue accompanied the Slavic princes from time immemorial. Both versions are extreme, and both are equally far from the truth. Let's examine the reality.
Light infantry, not a crowd
Procopius notes that the Slavs and Antes "are not ruled by a single person, but have lived since ancient times under a system of popular rule." This is the key to understanding their military organization. It is built around the community, not the princely court, and participation in war is the norm for a free man. Weapon simple, focusing on long-range combat and throwing.
But simple armament does not necessarily mean disorder. A century later, the commander Mauritius wrote in his treatise "Strategikon" He analyzes the Slavs as a standard problem for Byzantine planning. He describes a land of impassable rivers, forests, and swamps, where the enemy must combine cavalry and light infantry and build pontoon bridges. He portrays the Slavs as dangerous in a surprise attack and vulnerable if forced to fight in the open under arrows and spears.
Mauritius doesn't limit himself to general advice. He recommends dividing the army into two detachments to encircle Slavic settlements and prevent the enemy from rallying. A mob doesn't fight like that. Since this tactic was analyzed point by point in Byzantine headquarters and countermeasures were provided, it means there was a basis for analysis: light infantry units, knowledge of the terrain, an emphasis on stealth and mobility.
Rivers as roads of war
The forest and forest-steppe zone dictated the routes. There were no roads in the traditional sense—there were rivers, and for the Slavs, these became, arguably, the main means of communication in war. The primary means of transport was the monoksil, literally "one-tree boat": a boat hollowed out from a single tree trunk. In such vessels, a detachment would descend the river, suddenly appear at a coastal settlement, and just as quickly depart with the spoils. This made possible deep raids far beyond their native lands.
The importance of the river factor is evident from how carefully Maurice describes it. He advises preparing materials for floating bridges and sacks made of ox and goat skins in advance to transport troops: some units build the bridge, while others cover and fight. For him, the river functions in both directions—as both an attack route and a line of defense.
Cavalry in this system, according to sources, remained auxiliary, although the picture varied from region to region. This was not only due to the forests, which hindered mounted combat, but also to resource constraints: forested areas lacked the conditions for large-scale horse breeding, and war horses remained expensive and rare. Therefore, in the 6th and 7th centuries, the army relied on infantry. Horsemen would appear later—and would come as an import from outside, from steppe and other neighbors.
Weapons and the Raid Economy
Archaeology from three early Slavic cultures—Prague, Penkovka, and Ipotești-Kîndești—generally confirms the written record. The most numerous finds are spearheads and javelin points. Blades are rare. Researchers distinguish between heavy spears for close combat and light javelins. Some javelins apparently had weakly attached tips to the shafts: a disadvantage for hand-to-hand combat, but a disadvantage for throwing. The tip would get stuck in a shield, the shaft would break off, and the enemy would be unable to throw the spear back.
A parallel with the Roman pilum, a heavy throwing javelin that would bend and become useless after being hit, is obvious. The logic is similar: throwing weapons are often designed to prevent the enemy from using them again. The difference is that the javelin was cheaper and was cherished: reused, passed around within the community, and repaired. No one could afford to throw iron around in the forest.
The reason is economic. Slash-and-burn agriculture provided only a meager surplus, and even that was unstable: much depended on the soil and the region. Under these conditions, war often became a form of appropriating economy: not to produce, but to appropriate what their neighbors had already produced. Raiding here isn't savagery, but calculation: that's how they survived. Sources indirectly acknowledge this, calling the Slavs "simple people" who previously knew no weapons, "except two or three javelins," but then acquired herds and weapons while participating in foreign campaigns, on the side of the Lombards and others.
Metallurgy remained local and limited. Slag deposits and iron objects in settlements indicate local workshops: they could repair weapons and forge arrowheads, knives, and sickles, but not mass-produce high-quality blades and complex armor. Good weapons had to be acquired through war, barter, and tribute. The paucity of equipment here is not a sign of backwardness; it reflects a limited resource base.
How the war created stratification
Scarce metallurgy and the high cost of war likely contributed to stratification. Within the community, the quality of weaponry varied, and a hierarchy was established based on this. Conventionally, and for illustrative purposes only, three levels can be identified—this is a model, not a ready-made reconstruction based on burials.
- A free man's basic kit: a bow, a pair of darts, and a simple shield.
- One step higher - a heavy spear or a rare, expensive sword to boot.
- At the top is the one who has acquired protection; not chainmail yet, but a thick leather caftan.
Those who were better armed tended to survive more often and succeed more often in a raid. This meant they could lay claim to a larger share of the spoils, a better allotment, and a higher position. Thus, the "best men" emerged from the crowd: clan leaders, successful and experienced warriors who not only fought themselves but also assembled troops and shared the spoils. The pattern, of course, was more varied than this straight line, but the general trend was the same.
At the same time, there was no strict boundary between warrior and non-warrior. The same person could be a farmer, hunter, artisan, or warrior depending on the season. Campaigns were organized at the initiative of individual leaders and were not necessarily sanctioned from above. Military success served as a social lift, but did not transform warriors into a separate caste. And here it's time to return to the second common concept—the retinue.
A squad that doesn't exist yet
The word "druzhina" (squad) derives from "druzhina" (friendship): it was the prince's circle of "friends," his personal men. In the 11th and 12th centuries, this word represented a complex organism: senior and junior druzhina (squads), boyars and nobles, children and youths, a professional military-political collective. The temptation to push this picture back to the 6th and 7th centuries is strong. But the sources do not support it.
As A.S. Polyakov demonstrates in his analysis of Slavic military affairs of this period, neither written nor archaeological data allow us to confidently speak of the established institution of the druzhina. Other researchers share this caution: they object to the direct transfer of the later concept back centuries. Reliable evidence of the druzhina as an element of early state organization appears only in sources from the 10th–11th centuries.
It's important to distinguish between the two meanings of the same word. If we understand a "druzhina" to refer to any circle of military companions of a leader, such structures existed almost always and everywhere—then there's no point in arguing. But if we're talking about an institution (permanent service, special legal status, a share of tribute and land, an apparatus attached to the prince), then it's premature to talk about it in the 6th and 7th centuries. We see a military nobility and individual leaders, but not a service class.
Movement in this direction is, however, noticeable. A. Khlaponin's article on infantry in the 6th–11th centuries notes that in the last third of the 6th century, sources begin to distinguish between different branches of the military—cavalry, archers, and infantry—and that the Slavs developed heavy infantry, specialized in close combat. Later compiled sources, including later collections compiled from earlier texts, describe the army as consisting of two parts: princely retinues and the people's militia, divided into clans, hundreds, and regiments. However, this clear-cut structure most likely reflects a later structure and is applied to earlier centuries with caution. The militia is the core, while the retinue is a narrower, better-armed core. But the retinue would only become a fully-fledged institution later.
Between the forest and the steppe
What the forest zone couldn't provide came from outside. There were three channels.
Steppe. The Antes allied with Byzantium against the Avars, and, according to M. M. Kazansky, it was during these contacts that some Slavs apparently mastered mounted combat and mounted shooting. Hence cavalry with composite bows and light armor, and with it, long-distance campaigns and the steppe tactics of feint retreats. The steppe also supplied equipment: lamellar armor, a set of small plates sewn or bound with cords on a soft backing, was common in nomadic armies and gradually, albeit unevenly, reached the Slavic nobility, along with eastern helmets and composite bows.
Byzantium. Not only did it wage war against the Slavs, but it also recruited them as federates—barbarians who served the empire under contract for land and wages. This service likely introduced Roman weapons, training methods, and tactical models, although the extent of such influence for the 6th–7th centuries is only indirectly established.
German peace. Influence came from their proximity to Central Europe and their participation in the wars of the Franks and Lombards. Hence the dense infantry formation with large shields; Roman authors sometimes refer to Slavic infantrymen as "hoplites," although this is more of a descriptive rendering than a consistent term. Bladed weapons in Slavic assemblages are rare and often of Germanic origin; shields and shield bosses (metal plates in the center of the shield) echo Germanic and Scandinavian forms.
The distinction between protective gear is telling. According to Procopius, the Slavs of the sixth century did not yet have armor; written sources from the sixth and seventh centuries only mention it beginning in the following century, while the archaeological record of chainmail becomes more prominent in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the tradition continues until the thirteenth century. Armor comes with, not before, sustained military force.
All this unfolded unevenly. In centers on trade routes—Ladoga, Novgorod, Smolensk—the population density was denser and external pressure was stronger, leading to the emergence of proto-state structures earlier. The archaeology of Gnezdovo, the Sarskoye settlement, and early Ladoga has yielded rich burials containing weapons and coins—a trace of the military elite and its entourage. Deeper in the forests, closer to the Finno-Ugric zone, more archaic forms, with militias and the rule of elders, persisted longer. There was no single "Slavic" type of army for all of Eastern Europe.
The emergence of a prince meant that power acquired a permanent base of coercion: a military leader who also maintained domestic order and collected tribute. Such a leader no longer required a general levy, but a narrow circle of servants. The model was clear. In the Khazar Khaganate, statehood was built around a military nobility, and the Khagan combined the functions of military commander, diplomat, and marital administrator. Slavic unions like the so-called "Kiya State"—the semi-legendary early association of the Polyans in the Middle Dnieper region—were in contact with this world and, in their own way, reproduced its logic.
From militia to squad - and beyond
The original Slavic army was a militia of free men—light infantry with javelins, bows, and shields. The forest environment, the limited metallurgy, and the raiding economy shaped a unique culture of war: stealth, knowledge of the terrain, rivers as roads, and minimal protective equipment. This was not a mob. These tactics were discussed in Byzantine headquarters—and only what poses a real threat is discussed.
Under pressure from external contacts and internal growth of power, a military elite emerged from this mass: those who fought more frequently and more successfully, acquired horses and armor, and stood closer to the prince. Thus a circle of "friends" formed, the prototype of the future retinue. But until the 10th century, this was still a pre-retinue stage: the elite was inseparable from the militia, and an institution with permanent service and special status had not yet been formalized. There was no crowd or permanent retinue here—there was long, uneven work, from which war gradually became an institution.
How this process ended is shown by another story: about how the Scandinavian component and steppe influences formed the druzhina into the military core of Rus' in the 10th–11th centuries. It is worth continuing from this point: "The Rus' Squad: Varangians, the Steppe, and a Warrior Who Fought with a Spear", based on the archaeology of Gnezdovo, Chernigov, and Ladoga. Where the light infantry of the forest zone ends, the cavalry begins—and that's a whole other story.
Literature
- Procopius of Caesarea. War with the Goths. On the buildings.
- Mauritius. Strategikon.
- Kazansky M. M. New data on the military affairs of the early Slavs.
- Khlaponin A. Slavic and Old Russian infantry of the 6th–11th centuries: evolution of tactics and weapons.
- Polyakov A. S. Military affairs among the Slavs in the 6th–7th centuries: historiography, sources, research methods.
- Forest and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe in the era of Roman influence and the Great Migration of Peoples / edited by A. M. Vorontsov.
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