Megjegyzések a hun hadsereg létszámához és hadszervezetéhez

Absztrakt

Medieval data found in the available sources are rather unreliable; therefore we cannot draw far-reaching conclusions concerning an army’s actual numbers. The Huns used a decimal military organization system, similar to other steppe nations (like Turkic and Mongol speaking nomads). This system can be observed in the armies’ of different cultural background (for example the Byzantines), where the army consists of companies, regiments and myriads. There is one source about the Huns that is worth highlighting concerning this topic. The late dated Scandinavian Hervar and Heidrik saga (Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks) clearly shows the Hun army to be structured into companies, regiments and myriads. The source commemorates the headcount of individual units, revealing that the companies, regiments and myriads contained more than a hundred, a thousand or ten-thousand warriors. This data is worth highlighting, as according to our current knowledge, other nomadic tümens contained less than ten thousand warriors.