Mercenaries
The Battle of Ravenna
Battle was joined on 11 April, Easter Sunday – from that very day, it was seen as an epic encounter. The Spanish and papal army took up a position south of Ravenna on the right bank of the river Ronco; the high embankments of the river were broad enough for large numbers of horse or foot to pass along them…
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MERCENARIES IN AFRICA
Mercenaries have earned a dubious name for themselves throughout history; their object, as a rule, has been to obtain maximum pay for minimum risks, with the result that those hiring them rarely get value for money. Mercenaries, usually white and recruited from the former colonial powers, became familiar and generally…
The White Company
Among the many groups of condottieri, the mercenary troops of Italy in the 1300s through the 1500s, one of the best known was the White Company. Its leader, John Hawkwood, was probably the best known of the captains-general of the era. The White Company got its name from the fact…
Mercenaries in the age of the Crusades
Mercenaries sometimes appear as the outcasts of twelfth-century society along with Jews and lepers. The Lateran Council of 1179 excommunicated them and their employers, explicitly associating them with heretics of southern France, an association later echoed by Walter Map and Innocent III. The decree promised to all who fought against…
The Black Army
Knight of the Black Army Under King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary (r. 1458–1490), the Black Army was a highly skilled mercenary force but it became too expensive for the country to support. Federico da Montefeltro was not only one of the most successful mercenaries of the Italian Renaissance but was…
Georg Von Frundsberg
While commanding the Landsknecht mercenaries, Frundsberg fought as a man of honour in the service of his emperor. LANDSKNECHT MERCENARY LEADER BORN 24 September 1473 DIED 20 August 1528 Georg von Frundsberg was a South German knight and Landsknecht leader in the service of the Imperial Habsburg dynasty of the…
Machiavelli on Mercenaries
Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), the Italian Renaissance figure whose name is still cited frequently today by scholars, politicians, and debaters alike, had negative views on mercenaries. The son of a legal official, Machiavelli had a good grasp of Latin and the Italian classics when he entered…