The Anatomy of a Little War: A Diplomatic and Military History of the Gundoυald Affair, 568–586 by Bernard S. Bachrach

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 135 design or testing business. Instead, both labs have reinvented them­ selves to maintain their funding and staffing levels, more successfully than other defense-based laboratories and agencies. This is a book with great ambitions: it is both a historical anthro­ pology of the American nuclear weapons complex and an “empiri­ cal postmodernist case study of international relations” (p. 10). Clearly, it cannot do all these things in one 235-page volume. How­ ever, it provides the reader with a powerful and articulate analysis of a nuclear weapons laboratory at the end of the cold war. Gusterson writes about his experiences and findings with a lucidity not of­ ten found in postmodern writings. At the end ofthe book, Gusterson presents responses to his manu­ script from a variety of interview subjects. These “reviews” give the reader different perspectives on the work and are valuable when they include personal testimony about the subject of the book. Unfortu­ nately, some reviews lack any introspection or engagement with the book and might profitably have been omitted. Russell Olwell Dr. Olwell teaches at the University of Michigan’s Residential College and at Emerson Middle School in Ann Arbor. The Anatomy of a Little War: A Diplomatic and Military History of the Gundovald Affair, 568-586. By Bernard S. Bachrach. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995. Pp. xxiv+283; maps, figures, appendi­ ces, notes, bibliography, index. $49.85 (cloth). In the late 6th century, a Frankish prince named Gundovald re­ turned from a lengthy exile in Byzantium and, aided by his former hosts, sought to establish a kingdom of his own in southwestern Gaul. Such ambitions were not uncommon among the fractious princelings of the Merovingian period, all of whom normally ex­ pected to inherit at least a portion of their father’s domain. Gundo­ vald had once been considered a legitimate son of King Clothar I, which would have given him inheritance rights. But after he was dis­ owned and declared no royal heir, he was exiled to Byzantium. His return following Clothar’s death represented an attempt to reclaim by force a patrimony he thought had been unjustly snatched away from him by his half-siblings. Gundovald’s half-brother, Guntram, the somewhat insecure ruler of Burgundy, saw the whole affair in a very different light—as a Byzantine plot to regain a toehold in Frankish Gaul. On these terms a “little war” broke out that came to its climax in 586 with the siege of an old Roman fortress city, Convenae, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Gregory of Tours, the indefatigably moralistic chronicler of the House of Meroveus, gives the “little 136 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE war” unusually full treatment, treating it as yet another example of the folly of his age. In the hands of a sensitive interpreter, Bernard S. Bachrach, Gregory’s narrative serves as a firm foundation on which to reconstruct the history of the Gundovald Affair. Bachrach is a familiar figure to readers of Technology and Culture. His well-ar­ gued case for revising common views of early medieval warfare has appeared in these pages in several incisive articles going back to 1969. What makes The Anatomy ofa Little War useful reading for histori­ ans oftechnology is Bachrach’s treatment of the material and techni­ cal details of a 6th-century military operation. In a held where gener­ alization is more common than concrete fact, it is refreshing to have precise and well-grounded information on such matters as army size, food requirements, rates of movement over mountainous terrain, walls and fortifications, and siege equipment. As usual in Bachrach’s work, the results contradict received opinion at almost every turn. Merovingian armies were not particularly small: Gundovald’s forces seem to have numbered between eight thousand and ten thousand effectives, while those of his enemies were perhaps twice as large, meaning that the “little war” saw between twenty-four thousand and thirty thousand men mobilized for combat, and perhaps as many more serving in ancillary roles (pp. 161-67). The besieged insur­ gents at Convenae seem to have numbered about four or five thou­ sand, and they managed to hold out for...