Quote:
Originally Posted by Rasty
Still, my argument of it being just a while after a big war ended stands.
Also, the kingdom is supposed to build a new army from scratch, which means many jobs and which might, in turn, bring many mercenaries and "mercenaries" there.
Also, big mercenary bands were nothing uncommon in middle age (well known white company is recorded to be composed of 3.5k cavalry and 2k infantry). Current ones are smaller mostly because current wars are fought with much smaller numbers, and most of the current ones are pretty new and thus still growing. |
No, if anything, i'd say the mercenary in our era is actually more thrived compare to the medieval time, in medieval, lack of communications and information mean that the jobs that can be accessed to them is actually limited, people call themselves mercenaries is many, but the one who truly keep at it and can call it profession are very rare, most of those last longer is from a big company, which again, raise their upkeep, and there is so much a region could provide to sustain a numbers of them. And you have to count that many of the times, the mercenary actually aren't all veteran, they do solicit villagers and farmer into joining them for just 1 battles to use as infantry. So the actual numbers is a lot more smaller than what people think they are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wuhugm
Disbandment/reduction of Mercenary Bands is common
At peace times, they voluntarily disband the group or operating in smaller teams
Not few turned to banditry
Mercenary Bands can hire villagers like normal army to bolster their ranks but at peace time they stay small to reduce army upkeep
Famous ones like White Company knows the shit they are getting into so they won't join this kind of suicide mission
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Many mercenaries are originated from bandit. But once they split into smaller one and revert to banditry, the next time they gathered are mostly, if not always short on numbers. Again, this greatly reduced the numbers of mercenaries available
White company case is rather special, 14th century italy structure practically made peoples turn mercenaries, since their own cities literally fight each others, just travel to new city can easily earn new war, and because of the fight scale, the city can't bolster the troops fast enough and large enough, which made the cities a lot more tolerant towards mercenary and allow them to keep base. They are also in no lack of jobs as well