Mercenaries
The Black Market for Force
Sir David Stirling Former SAS officer who in the 1960s led a three-year guerrilla campaign against Egyptian forces in Yemen. Johnson in Yemen: having been proposed for the venture by Col David Stirling, he arrived there on a Canadian passport under the name of Cohen and with a pocketful of sovereigns Worried that Britain was losing its power after the…
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Landsknechts – Mercenaries of Europe
During the Burgundian Wars (1474–1477) in France, Charles the Bold, the expansionist and ambitious Duke of Burgundy, who had already been defeated three times in battle, came to a sorry end. These wars were a struggle between the Dukes of Burgundy and the Kings of France. They showed that cavalry…
Medieval Free Companies I
The free companies of 100 Years War soldiers made redundant by the truce of Bordeaux and the Treaty of Bretigny and later by the truce of Tours. Although many of the companies of the first phase went back into their own nation’s service when the war broke out again, some…
Medieval Free Companies II
Battle of Halmyros, a battle between the lightly armed but battle-hardened Almogavars of the infamous Catalan Company and the French Knights of the Duchy of Athens. By Darren Tan Mercenary bands like Hawkwood’s could be accurately described as “traveling city-states.” Hawkwood, for example, had to hire his own spies, informers,…
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…
Mercenaries in Bohemia, the Rhineland, the Low Countries, 1618–1625 I
The first stirrings of the conflict that would escalate into the bloody Thirty Years War took place in the kingdom of Bohemia, now the Czech Republic but then a part of the Holy Roman Empire, the conglomeration of electorates, duchies, principalities, counties, lordships, free cities and even free villages that…
Mercenaries in Bohemia, the Rhineland, the Low Countries, 1618–1625 II
Scots in Swedish Thirty Years’ War service. John Seton and his musketeers were still in Bohemia. After occupying the town of Prachatice and the country as far east as Neuhaus, they had been forced back by the advancing Imperial armies to Wittingau (now Trebon) and had been there since September.…