Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena

 Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena, by William Caferro

“Ultimately, mercenary raids must be regarded in the same manner as the plagues and famines of the era – as disasters that were destined to run their course and exact a certain price. The only real hope that Siena had to avoid the great costs was if, by chance, a company chose not to enter its territory.” (Caferro 1998, 102)

The above quote neatly sums up the authors interpretation of the cities response to the mercenary companies that attacked Siena in the 14th century. There were at least two key components that led to the city succumbing to the mercenary raids, its location and its economy. Firstly the city was positioned along the Via Francigena, in between Florence and the Papal States. If you wanted to get your mercenaries to Rome, you passed through Siena’s hinterland. Secondly the sparsely defended agrarian economy of Siena was an attractive target to the mercenary bands in addition to being located on their way to elsewhere. The companies could restock their livestock and grain at little to no danger to themselves, extort a bribe from the government of Siena, and then be on their way to wherever they had been hired to go to. The book covers the period between 1342 to 1399 which includes times of relative peace during the Hundred Years War in France that prompted those free companies to seek their pay elsewhere.

There’s a great deal of analysis of the books and accounts of Siena from the available records of the time that shows how much the city paid in bribes to the companies to get them to leave, including the frequency of bribes and where the money came from. In brief, the city was in a near constant financial crisis for over 50 years as its livelihood was decimated by the frequent mercenary raids that it could not prevent. The city celebrated a single major victory over a single mercenary company in that time which actually cost the city more in gold in payments to its soldiers and own mercenaries than it would have cost to pay off the raiders. With a shrinking revenue base, the different groups that ruled the city were all forced to extract loans from their citizens to pay off the mercenaries, a cycle that placed the city in the debt of its own citizens. The Tuscan cities attempted to utilized the economic tools of trading leagues for mutual defense but the mistrust and backstabbing between the cities kneecapped the leagues from having a meaningful function.

The author is as fair as he can be with describing the efforts of Siena to resist the mercenary companies. They had almost no control over the companies that regularly invaded their territory and had little choice other than to borrow money from themselves to pay off the companies. Returning to the initial quote, I think the author unintentionally does the people of the city a disservice by categorizing the mercenary companies as a natural disaster. One can compare the effects of natural disasters to the rampage of the companies and see a similar outcome, but the motive force behind the different disasters renders the comparison unjust. The hand that chooses to wield the sword is responsible for the life they take; just because their victim cannot defend themselves doesn’t absolve the moral failing of the attacker. I don’t believe the author intends to make such an argument, but I’m wary of any generalizations that rob the agent of their responsibility for their actions.