I finished Medieval Mercenaries yesterday. The book wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be but I'm glad I read it. The book is focused on the time between the first and second phases of the Hundred Years War, the time between the signing of the Treaty of Brétigny and the "resumption" of hostilities in 1369 and follows the movements of the mercenary companies that were supposed to disarm following the Treaty. During the roughly 9 years of “peace” these companies were a problem for everyone, from the nobles that wanted to hire them to the peasants whose lives they ruined. This book covers the movements of the companies in modern day France and Spain; the author intended a second volume to review the companies in Italy from 1369-94 but sadly they have passed away. Medieval Mercenaries was first published in February, 2001.
One of the recurring themes throughout the book is the damage that the companies inflict wherever they go. There is no place they went that they didn’t pillage, burn, rape, or murder. They were like locusts, descending upon a population, taking what they want, and leaving nothing of value in return. When they took castles and towns by force, the local governments had to pay them ransom if they couldn’t evict them by force. These taxes for these ransoms were collected from the same people that the companies had rampaged through; peasants suffered when the companies came and they suffered when they left. Leaders would triage their countryside, bringing needed supplies and people into fortified places when the companies were operating in the area because often times the government did not have the force of arms to adequately deal with them. Instead of relying solely on a standing army, these mercenary companies were used as the armies of the states, and instead of disbanding at the conclusion of peace to be penniless and without a job, they continued fighting for whoever would pay them and in lieu of employment travel from region to region, capturing and ransoming cities and towns.
When state leaders would make plans to hire the companies they included stipulations in their contracts to try and prevent the companies from pillaging in their lands but these empty promises. The companies knew they had the power. As long as the state lacked it’s own military, the companies were a necessary evil for the governments who employed them. The companies could be considered weapons of war that no one had control over. They were used because there was no adequate alternative to them and they consequences of their use were felt mainly by the lower classes. In some ways one might compare them to a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapon of today, not in the sense that there are no alternatives, but that that is no “safe” way to employ them. There are environmental consequences inherent to the manufacture and use of NBC weapons and the depredations of the companies could be viewed as analogous to an environmental impact of those weapons.
The state leaders had no love for these mercenaries. The book lists accounts of many company captains captured and executed instead of ransomed. The popes at various times excommunicated the companies or promised them absolution in order to persuade them. If the nobles didn’t pay the companies after they had completed their campaign the companies would simply take what they wanted from the region. At one point some of the companies who had been hired to invade a region to put someone on the throne there were later hired by another noble to go and remove him.
One thing I’ve thought of often while reading this book is the St Crispin’s Day Speech from Shakespeare's Henry V. Though that battle of Agincourt doesn’t happen until 1415, a few decades after the events of this book, I don’t believe the principle agents involved in the war have changed their tactics. Armies and companies still took whatever they wanted from the people and land they passed through, destroying the lives of the people who would be later told to be pay coin to pay for the war. The men celebrated in the St Crispin’s Day Speech are no heroes and deserve no such honors. On the whole they were armed brigands who fought to make themselves rich at the expense, both economically and physically, of the poor.
The next book I’m reading is Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena, a book published in 1998 about the companies in Italy in the 14th century.
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