Mercenaries
Saxon England: the first English mercenaries
Breton Light Cavalry The Saxons had conquered England from the Romano-British in the fifth and sixth centuries, effectively eliminating them as a factor in language, religion and government, leaving behind only the semi-mythical stories of King Arthur to commemorate the long and bitter struggle. The Saxons in their turn fell victim to the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries,…
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CUBAN TROOPS IN AFRICA, 1960-91 Part II
BEGINNING OF THE END By the late 1980s, the world balance of power was changing. The Soviet Union was disintegrating, and along with it, Cuba’s capacity to continue its commitment to the MPLA. Throughout the 1980s, the MPLA grew weaker as the UNITA grew stronger, in large measure due to…
The State and the Mercenary
Life in the European Middle Ages was chaotic. If you were a peasant, you likely had several masters who demanded your allegiance: the local feudal lord, the king, the neighboring Franciscan monastery, the Holy Roman Emperor, the pope, to name a few. Worse, they often feuded, simultaneously claiming rights to…
PRIVATE ARMIES
Condottieri; Niccolò da Tolentino Leads the Florentine Troops circa 1438-40 DynCorp On April 27, 1522, two armies faced each other at dawn across a soggy field ready for battle at a manor park of Bicocca, a small town six kilometers north of Milan. On one side stood the combined forces…
Normans – Byzantine Mercenaries
The Normans arrived in the Byzantine world not as enemies, but as valued mercenaries esteemed for their martial prowess. The settlement of Scandinavian raiders created the duchy of Normandy, when the region was ceded to their war leader Rollo (d. ca. 931) by the Carolingian king Charles the Simple (898–922).…
Mercenaries – During the Middle Ages
The “Saubannerzug”, an irregular military formation carrying a wild boar and a club on its banner, aproaching the City of Bern in 1477 A.D. Professional soldiers (or sailors) who fought for pay or plunder, not for any national or religious cause or because they were conscripts. Mercenaries have been found…
Swiss Mercenaries in the 15th and early 16th centuries
The Swiss (on the left) assault the Landsknecht mercenaries in the French lines at the Battle of Marignano “As for trying to intimidate the enemy, blocks of thousands of oncoming merciless Swiss, advancing swiftly accompanied by what a contemporary called “the deep wails and moans of the Uri Bull and…