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THE ‘CLASSIC’ MEDIEVAL MERCENARY

TERRITORIAL RULERS WANTED warriors who were young, skilful, ready to obey orders…and numerous. Vassals often failed on all four counts, especially the last one. Therefore, rulers turned to mercenaries.

A mercenary soldier is obviously one who fights for pay. Strictly speaking, to say mercenary soldier is a redundancy. Mercenary comes from mercer, meaning to buy and sell. Sold is the German word for money; solde in French. Both words have their roots in the word for a silver coin, a solidus, which ultimately goes back to the Latin word for salt, which Romans used for paying salaries (‘worth his salt’). Consequently, the word soldier implies an individual who hires out his talents, much like a common workman. We only need the two words together now because the evolution of governmental institutions later transformed irregular hired warriors into a professional class. Warriors who fought because of personal obligations, such as knights, were referred to as one’s men or one’s vassals. Today soldiers are committed to serve a nation no matter whether they are volunteers or in a professional army. A soldier no longer changes employers and rarely goes on strike for higher wages.

Philippe Contamine, in War in the Middle Ages, restricts the term mercenary to warriors who are 1) specialists, 2) stateless, 3) paid. This narrow definition eliminates almost everyone who leaves a record of his existence beyond pillage and plunder.

John Schlight, in Monarchs and Mercenaries, suggests: 1) They work only for pay; they are usually ignored in chronicles and other records, but when mentioned are called mercenaries; few are identified by name. Most are infantry from poorer areas of the country and are recruited by professional warriors who then make the contracts with employers. 2) A mercenary is employed by an acknowledged lord and is protected by the laws of war; if captured he can be ransomed or he can offer to work for the victor. A highwayman or thief, in contrast, usually operates in small bands and can be dishonourably hanged if caught. 3) He is a foreigner.

Kenneth Fowler, in Medieval Mercenaries, his study of the Great Companies of the mid-fourteenth century, is less willing to put mercenaries outside established society. While conceding that some routiers (members of free companies, that is, working for themselves) rose from obscurity, most had ‘chivalrous backgrounds or pretensions’.

This book will use a broader definition: a mercenary hires his military talents out for pay. Often he takes employment with minimum concern for the morals, ethics or cause of the paymaster, but usually there is some political affinity that draws the two together. Mercenaries who survive what might be called their apprenticeship were probably more skilled than most knights and militiamen, but they often had homelands and even more often complained about not being paid.

It is not always easy to tell who is a mercenary soldier. For example, how should we characterise these examples?

1	A vassal who remains in service past the customary term required (often forty days) and is reimbursed for his expenses. Is he fighting for pay?
2	A knight who serves in a household for pay, but does not hold a fief. Is he a bodyguard or a mercenary?
3	A knight who holds a tax fief, i.e., he takes a share of the taxes rather than the income provided by peasants or burghers. He is certainly not what we think of as a typical vassal.
4	A knight who holds a money fief, promising to appear with a certain number of soldiers whenever summoned. His followers will certainly be mercenaries by Contamine’s definition, but is he?
5	A man who is selected (or pressed) for service by a royal commissioner. Is he a draftee or a mercenary? What if he stays on past the time required?
6	Two lords are in a royal army – one is performing feudal service, the other receiving pay. Is their practical relationship with the king or each other affected?

The records regarding mercenaries improve with the passage of time, but records in and of themselves prove little. It is only in the study of campaigns, particularly in looking at the length of service provided by the knights and infantry, that we can determine the importance of hired soldiers. One rule of thumb is: vassals go home for holidays, mercenaries fight on.

LORDS AS MERCENARIES

According to Jean Froissart, when King Edward III (1327–77) decided to go to war in 1329, he asked his brother-in-law, the earl of Hainault, who might be willing to join him. The earl suggested the duke of Brabant, the bishop of Liege, the duke of Geldern, the archbishop of Cologne and some lesser nobles: ‘These are the lords that can, in a short time, furnish greater numbers of men-at-arms than any I know; they are very warlike themselves, and, if they choose can easily make up ten thousand men completely armed and equipped; but you must give them money beforehand, for they are men who love to gain wealth.’

Barbara Tuchman summarised this attitude: ‘Knights pursued war for glory and practiced it for gain.’ Maurice Keen cited the well-travelled Ghillebert de Lannoy as informing his son that there were three honourable ways to acquire the wealth needed for a noble life: service at court, a good marriage and war. Keen noted wryly that thrift ‘is a notable absentee from Lannoy’s list’. And he warned us that, though the sources emphasised the lifestyle of the rich and beautiful, this worked its way down the social scale until it provoked a reaction against the parvenu, the newly wealthy upstart who flaunted his riches without taste or breeding. This snide emphasis on ancient breeding and lineage provoked one lawyer to retort that ‘nobility without riches is like Faith without Works’.

The medieval compromise, Keen said, was to emphasise virtue. While we cannot measure virtue well – that is an internal attribute – we can see the heraldic devices, coats of arms and extravagant gestures. Honour could be earned in the tournament, great honour in a siege, and yet greater honour in battle. Dishonour was the greatest punishment that society could inflict.

Since it was not honourable for a knight or noble to fight for money, subterfuges were necessary to disguise this. Some have accepted these subterfuges at face value, but we might do well to remember Huizinga’s summary in The Waning of the Middle Ages, that, ‘Thus a blasé aristocracy laughs at its own ideal. After having adorned its dream of heroism with all the resources of fantasy, art and wealth, it bethinks itself that life is not so fine, after all – and smiles’.

In short, mercenaries were not commoners only, but powerful nobles as well, and not all were foreigners.

GERMAN MERCENARIES

German feudal customs differed from French and English models. In France birth determined who had the right to become a knight and who did not; in England individuals of sufficient wealth were required by the king to undergo an expensive ceremony of knighthood, whether they wanted to or not, whether they were trained at arms or not. In Germany there was little connection between nobility, knighthood and wealth. One was noble by being born noble, and powerful noble vassals served more powerful noble lords, but at the bottom of the feudal pyramid were ministeriales (Dienstleute).

A ministerial was a man-at-arms and served a lord. But, holding little or no land, he was more an employee than a vassal. Like English and French knights, he often served as judge in the local court, carried out judicial punishments, collected taxes and, in time of war, served with a horse and armour; but, unlike English or French knights, he could be replaced at any time. Whenever he suggested that his services entitled him to be considered noble, his betters reminded him that his ancestors had been commoners or even serfs. That was a blemish that no soap could wash off. The positive side of this was that a sturdy young man could become a ministerial, then, if his lord was pleased, become a knight (a Ritter). Also merchants and artisans – familiar with weapons from protecting themselves and their property while travelling and from service in the city militia – occasionally became knights. There was no impossible barrier to limited upward mobility in Germany. While most ministeriales remained men-at-arms, all had a plausible dream of becoming a knight. Some became mercenaries.

The best of the mercenaries in the Holy Roman Empire came from the kingdom of Bohemia, mostly Czechs, but also German-speaking knights who had settled in the mountains and woodlands. These warriors fought in every conflict north of the Alps and put their earnings into the hundreds of castles that survive today in the Czech Republic.

LOW-BORN MERCENARIES

When commoners became mercenaries, it was usually as foot soldiers. Lacking equipment and training, significant social advancement was difficult, but Jean Froissart, the great chronicler of the early Hundred Years War, showed that it was not impossible:

Poor rogues took advantage of such times, and robbed both towns and castles; so that some of them, becoming rich, constituted themselves captains of bands of thieves; there were among them those worth forty thousand crowns. Their method was to mark out the particular towns or castles, a day or two’s journey from each other; they then collected twenty or thirty robbers, and, traveling through by-roads in the night-time, entered the town or castle they had fixed on about daybreak, and set one of the houses on fire. When the inhabitants perceived it, they thought it had been a body of forces sent to destroy them, and took to their heels as fast as they could. The town of Donzere was treated in this manner; and many other towns and castles were taken, and afterwards ransomed. Among other robbers in Languedoc, one had … [held] the lord of Cobourne … in prison until he ransomed himself for twenty-four thousand crowns paid down. The robber kept possession of the castle and dependencies, which he furnished with provisions, and thence made war upon all the country round about. The king of France, shortly afterwards, was desirous of having him near his person; he purchased the castle for twenty thousand crowns, appointed him his usher-at-arms, and heaped on him many other honors. The name of this robber was Bacon, and he was always mounted on handsome horses of a deep roan color, or on large palfreys, appareled like an earl, and very richly armed; and this state he maintained as long as he lived.

Froissart continued to note that it was not unusual for other bold thieves to become rich and famous:

There was one of the name of Croquart, who was originally but a poor boy, and had been page to the lord d’Ercle in Holland. When this Croquart arrived at manhood, he had his discharge, and went to the wars in Brittany, where he attached himself to a man-at-arms, and behaved very well. It happened, that in some skirmish his master was taken and slain; when, in recompense for his prowess, his companions elected him their leader in the place of his late master; he then made such profit by ransoms, and the taking of towns and castles, that he was said to be worth full forty thousand crowns.

Employers were often in a hurry to raise mercenaries. Take the case of the Spanish merchants who had arrived in Flemish ports in 1349 only to learn that an English fleet was lying in wait for their ships to sail home. The Spaniards had no choice but to reinforce their crews locally.

The battle was hard-fought, but at length the English captured several vessels and disposed of the surviving crews and mercenaries by throwing them overboard. Presumably they searched the corpses and captives carefully first, on the assumption that the men had been paid before the combat began. Froissart, ever the gentleman, does not say. Gentlemen never talk about money. They take it, but they never talk about it.

CLERICS AS MERCENARY COMMANDERS

Some military commanders were clerics. As for example, Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, who was, according to Froissart, ‘young and eager, and wishing to bear arms, never having done so but in Lombardy with his brother’. It was still early in the Great Schism, when he found himself suddenly entrusted by the Roman pope, whom the English supported, with the responsibility of raising an army of crusaders and guiding it to Avignon, to capture the pope supported by the French. According to The Chronicle of Henry Knighton he raised an immense sum of money from the sale of indulgences, and fine ladies competed to lavish him with jewels and silverware. And, while most of his troops were mercenaries, volunteers also flocked to his service. Among them was the young squire in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales:

And he hadde been somtyme in chyvachie

In Flaundres, in Artoys, and Pycardie,

And born hym weel, as of so litel space,

In hope to stonden in his lady grace

In short, the fashionably dressed young man had gone to war to impress his girlfriend, not to save his soul. Nor to serve the king. Bishop Henry Despenser gathered his fine array together in April of 1383. According to Froissart:

There were in the pay of the church, and under the command of this bishop of Norwich, several good knights of England and Gascony… in the whole, about five hundred lances and fifteen hundred other men; but there were multitudes of priests, because it was an affair of the church, and had been set on foot by the pope. The men-at-arms were punctual in laying in their stores, and the king gave them a passage from Dover and Sandwich. Their purveyances were at those places about Easter; and all who were desirous of going on this expedition, which was sort of a croisade, marched thither in small bodies. Before the bishop and the captains embarked … they were summoned to attend the king’s council, where they solemnly swore, in the presence of the king, to fulfill the object of the expedition, and that they would never make war on, or harass any country or men who acknowledged pope Urban, but only those who were under the obedience of Clement.

The bishop disembarked his forces at Calais and awaited the arrival of the English marshal, who failed to appear. Without that reinforcement there was no possibility of marching alone straight through France to Avignon, so he asked his subordinates whether it would be practical to attack France or Flanders. One responded:

‘Sir, you know on what terms we have left England: our expedition has nothing to do with what concerns the wars of kings but is solely pointed against the Clementists. We are the soldiers of pope Urban, who has given us absolution from all faults if we destroy the Clementists. Should we march into Flanders, notwithstanding that country may now appertain to the king of France and the duke of Burgundy, we shall forfeit our engagement; for, I understand, that the earl of Flanders and all the Flemings are as good Urbanists as ourselves; besides, we have not a sufficient army to enter Flanders, for they are prepared and accustomed to war, having had nothing else to do for these last four years. They are a numerous people, and it will be difficult to march through so strong a country. But if you are determined on an expedition, let us march into France, there we shall find our enemies.’

The final recommendation, however, was to attack Flanders, which he promptly did. So easily did the venture shift from being a questionable crusade to a questionable act of English policy. But there was even worse to come, the bishop’s men taking bribes to surrender a key fortress. The Westminster Chronicle denounced the whole affair as infamous and an ‘everlasting humiliation to Englishmen’.

It is no wonder that Chaucer’s squire did not earn his spurs on this expedition. No Englishman came away with honour. As for the French, they got roaring drunk on captured wine.

THE DRUNKEN AND DISSIPATED MERCENARY

Let us not make the mistake of valuing mercenaries too highly. For every army composed of competent fighting men, we see many more resembling the unit raised by Pistol in Henry V, Act III, where a serving boy describes his three masters:

As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-liver’d and red-faced; by the means whereof ’a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof ’a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men; and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest ’a should be thought a coward: but his few bad words are match’d with as few good deeds; for ’a never broke any man’s head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal any thing, and call it purchase.

Shakespeare might well have had an ancestor who literally ‘shook a spear’. More important, he knew the low value of the mercenary armies of his own day and happily drew on them to show that England’s heroes were great partly because they had to achieve victory against both superior odds and the low quality of their own officers and men.

Thus it was that, at the point where the Middle Ages became the Renaissance, then the modern world, Shakespeare presented the mercenary far differently from the medieval chronicler Jean Froissart. The mercenary became a low-born comic figure, ineffective on the battlefield and in the bedroom, ungrammatical, unshaven, untrustworthy even in peacetime and unreliable in war. These varied pictures – the mercenary as hero, the mercenary as entrepreneur, the mercenary as criminal, the mercenary as buffoon – are also worthy of study.