THE ART OF WAR IN THE MIDDLE AGES 34
The Rise of the Mercenary
4.5. The Rise of the Mercenary
The attempt to introduce some degree of efficiency into a feudal force drove monarchs to various expedients. Frederick Barbarossa strove to enforce discipline by a strict code of ‘Camp Laws;’ an undertaking in which he won no great success, if we may judge of their observance by certain recorded incidents. In 1158, for example, Egbert von Buten, a young Austrian noble, left his post and started off with a thousand men to endeavour to seize one of the gates of Milan, a presumptuous violation of orders in which he lost his life. This was only in accordance with the spirit of the times, and by no means exceptional. If the stern and imposing personality of the great emperor could not win obedience, the task was hopeless for weaker rulers. Most monarchs were driven into the use of another description of troops, inferior in morale to the feudal force, but more amenable to discipline.
The mercenary comes to the fore in the second half of the twelfth century. A stranger to all the nobler incentives to valour, an enemy to his God and his neighbour, the most deservedly hated man in Europe, he was yet the instrument which kings, even those of the better sort, were obliged to seek out and cherish. When wars ceased to be mere frontier raids, and were carried on for long periods at a great distance from the homes of most of the baronage, it became impossible to rely on the services of the feudal levy. But how to provide the large sums necessary for the payment of mercenaries was not always obvious.
Notable among the expedients employed was that of Henry II of England, who substituted for the personal service of each knight the system of scutage. By this the majority of the tenants of the crown compounded for their personal service by paying two marks for each knight’s fee. Thus the king was enabled to pass the seas at the head of a force of mercenaries who were, for most military purposes, infinitely preferable to the feudal array. However objectionable the hired foreigner might be, on the score of his greed and ferocity, he could, at least, be trusted to stand by his colours as long as he was regularly paid. Every ruler found him a necessity in time of war, but to the unconstitutional and oppressive ruler his existence was especially profitable: it was solely by the lavish use of mercenaries that the warlike nobility could be held in check.
Despotism could only begin when the monarch became able to surround himself with a strong force of men whose desires and feelings were alien to those of the nation. The tyrant in modern Europe, as in ancient Greece, found his natural support in foreign hired soldiery. King John, when he drew to himself his ‘Routiers,’ ‘Brabançons,’ and ‘Satellites,’ was unconsciously imitating Pisistratus and Polycrates.
The military efficiency of the mercenary of the thirteenth century was, however, only a development of that of the ordinary feudal cavalier. Like the latter, he was a heavily-armed horseman; his rise did not bring with it any radical change in the methods of war. Though he was a more practised warrior, he still worked on the old system, or want of system, which characterised the cavalry tactics of the time.
The final stage in the history of mercenary troops was reached when the bands which had served through a long war instead of dispersing at its conclusion, held together, and moved across the continent in search of a state which might be willing to buy their services. But the age of the Great Company and the Italian Condottieri lies rather in the fourteenth than the thirteenth century, and its discussion must be deferred to another chapter.
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