Rise and Fall of Medieval Mercenaries - Middle Ages DOCUMENTARY

TL;DR

Medieval mercenaries rose from fragmented post-Roman states needing hired warriors and declined as centralized nation-states built professional armies.

Key Points

• 1.Medieval mercenaries originated from the collapse of Roman military organization. As Western Rome fell in the 5th century, fragmented states outsourced violence to local nobles and foreign warriors, with early examples appearing in the 7th–8th centuries when southern Italian and Burgundian states hired Saracen and local troops.
• 2.The mercenary Golden Age ran roughly from the 13th to 16th centuries, driven by war economics. The Hundred Years' War and Italian city-state conflicts created massive demand; wealthy banking and guild cities like Florence paid mercenaries upfront to guarantee contracts, enabling figures like English-born John Hawkwood to earn citizenship in Florence.
• 3.Famous companies each had distinct origins and fates. The Navarrese Company was founded in 1366, won the Durres Expedition of 1376, and eventually dissolved as leaders became settled nobles; the Great Company, founded by Werner von Urslingen in the 1340s, collapsed after Fra'Moriale's execution in Rome in 1354 and von Waldau's death in 1363.
• 4.Mercenaries crossed religious and ethnic lines without scruple. Scots served both England and France; North African Saracens fought for Christian powers; Muslim Almoravid rulers hired Christian mercenaries — profit consistently overrode loyalty to faith or kingdom.
• 5.Political and intellectual opposition to mercenaries was widespread but ineffective. Machiavelli condemned them as lacking virtue and loyalty; the Church objected on theological grounds; French nobility contrasted them with chivalric ideals — yet all these powers continued hiring them because economic demand persisted.
• 6.The decline came from centralization and the nation-state concept. By the 15th–16th centuries, larger empires replaced flexible mercenary bands with state-backed forces like France's Compagnie d'ordonnance; by the 19th century, national conscript armies made mercenaries marginal, though the profession survived into the 20th century via figures like Mad Mike Hoare and modern private military companies.