Mercenaries
THE REALITY OF MEDIEVAL WARFARE
The conduct of warfare for soldiers’ profit meant that plundering was common practice. In the wake of the Black Death (from 1348) and the huge expense of King John’s ransom (after 1356), the French peasantry suffered horribly. They rose in revolt (the Jacquerie) in 1358 but, after the 1360 treaty, unpaid mercenary bands ravaged uncontrollably for almost a decade. The…
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Military Organisation of the Swabian League
The headquarters of the League was based in Ulm. Here supreme command was exercised through a war council. which prescribed the various contingents of troops to be levied from each member. Thus with every new applicant the League’s military capability would theoretically increase. Contemporary documents give a snapshot of the…
German Peasant War (1525)
Georg, the Truchsess (governor) of Waldburg, was the field commander of the Swabian League army entrusted with the task of putting down the peasant revolts, by fair means or foul. Nicknamed ‘Bauernjörg’ (loosely, ‘scourge of the peasants’), he was ruthless in exacting revenge, particularly after the battles of Leipheim and…
Mike Hoare
During the Congo Crisis Mike Hoare organised and led two separate mercenary groups: * 1960–1961. Major Mike Hoare’s first mercenary action was in Katanga, a province trying to break away from the newly independent Congo. The unit was called “4 Commando”. During this time he married Phyllis Simms, an airline…
Heart of Darkness
Coup leader and French mercenary Bob Denard (right), leading his Comorian counterpart Combo. In the early 1960s the former Belgian Congo came apart at the seams. UN-backed Congolese troops battled the forces of the breakaway region of Katanga, which in turn was supported by hundreds of foreign mercenaries. Among the…
INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES
Members of an International Brigade in formation during the Spanish civil war. On 17 and 18 July 1936 Spanish generals, soon to be under the command of General Francisco Franco (1892– 1975), staged a coup against the Republican government, which had become strongly left wing after the Popular Front’s legitimate…
Ministerialis
Ministerialis (plural ministeriales); a post-classical Latin word, used in English, meaning originally servitor, agent, in a broad range of senses. In Germany, in the High Middle Ages, the word and its German translations, Ministeriale(n) and Dienstmann, came to describe those unfree knights who made up a large majority of German…