Reasons for joining

[Boyar Son]

Why do soldiers of the gunpowder (when guns were being used more often in europe to the end of Nepoleonic style armies) join?

Obviously there is a good chance you'll die once the whole front line of an opposing army opens fire, its loke litteraly a wall of lead.

[Conradus]

In most times there were always men willing to join up when they got a warm meal. I don't think that changed when you got more chance to end up killed before the fight began. Also most navies used to enlist people, whether they wanted it or not. And then there are the idealists,...

[TinCow]

I actually think that casualty rates generally declined with the invention of firearms. While the front ranks would certainly take extremely high casualties during an exchange of volleys, the likelihood of an individual soldier finding himself in that situation tended to decline, thus reducing the overall probability of being wounded or killed. This general decline was most signficantly due to the fact that the ease of use of gunpowder weapons (along with other technological advances) allowed nations to start fielding much larger forces. With exponentially more people fighting, your odds of being unlucky enough to be caught in the front lines at the exact moment of a heavy attack were minimal.

I have no statistics to prove this off the top of my head, but I bet we can dig some up.

[Ironside]

Also about the only way to get rich fast (by looting). The other option was to stumble over a buried treasure (and that happens often...)

[Innocentius]

...propaganda? Enlistment?

[Kagemusha]

secured income. wish to adventure and see other places. To avoid the normal life. Life for most during those times wasnt nice or easy. If you were a peasant,that meant manual labour from sunrise to sundown each and everyday, with not so great diet. For a young man military career was an viable option to make a living,specially if he was a one of the younger children,that the parents couldnt have left anykind of inheritance,since it would have gone to the oldest male child.
From army you would get a place to sleep,food and clothes and also small pension as you retired.All that a normal man would have wanted those days. Ofcourse there was risk to die,but there were plenty of risks for dying those days,even without gepardizing oneself intentionally.

[Derfasciti]

I find myself thinking this again and again and I've gotta say it seems like a good question. Why the heck WOULD someone wanna join up? But as the other members have pointed out, there were some real bonuses. Looting was still not a major moral problem for many soldiers back in those days. You could get some nice money.

A guaranteed meal would surely be an attractive choice and i'm not certain but the chances of dying would've prolly been downplayed.

Also, people back then lived in a much harsher time than we do now. Sure, you could get killed on a battlefield. But did you wanna live out your life as a farmer just struggling to make ends meet or did you want to live a life of adventure with a full belly?

[Boyar Son]

Also about the only way to get rich fast (by looting). The other option was to stumble over a buried treasure (and that happens often...)

Truly the master of useless knoweledge:laugh4: :2thumbsup:

[CountArach]

The Draft was imposed on them in the majority of cases.

War was also extremely glorified, in fact war was glorified until the end of World War 1.

[Peasant Phill]

Napoleon's armies forced men to recruit by some kind of lottery. I'm not really clear on the way this lottery worked though.

I always wondered if movies like 'the last of the Mohicans' had it right about the warfare of that time. The infantry would march forward to meet the enemies infantry while under artillery fire. Then they seemed to take their turn firing at ach other. It seems dumb to let the opponent get a first round off before you fire.
I would expect a platoon (or whatever a such a group was called) to try to gait the soldiers they faced to fire to early and then close the gap quickly and fire while the enemy was reloading.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I've always wondered if there was any specific procedure for selecting who would stand in the front ranks in a gunpowder era unit :creep: Say if it was random after how the unit would position itself, then there would surely have been a lot of movement in the unit to try and get behind some of the others :no: and a lot of disorder. So surely there must have been some procedure for it? And some fairness and taking turns being up front, to assure that not the "front rank soldiers" would desert before every battle... Or extra pay or other rewards for it?

[KARTLOS]

with british soldiers it was a generally a feeling of altruism, they generally wanted to make the world world a better place. Whether it was the frenchy, the zulu or the hun there was alot of wrong uns out there who needed to be put in there place.

[Trax]

Often the soldiers had the feeling of fatalism beaten and preached into them..
"You are not going to die unless it is the Gods will" and "There is a marked bullet for everyone, when your time comes it desn't matter where you are, it's going to hit you"

[macsen rufus]

War was also extremely glorified, in fact war was glorified until the end of World War 1.


:yes: For many volunteers in WWI, it seems as though they may have expected something more like a cricket match. In an age lacking the mass media we take for granted, just how many really understood, before it was too late, the real nature of what they were getting into? Certainly propaganda and nationalistic fervour played their part, as did the prospects of booty, regular meals and "adventure". Also, I'm sure everybody expected they'd be on the winning side.

Besides the blatant jingoistic retruitment drives, there were also rather devious ones. I don't know how it might have operated in other countries, but Britain certainly had press-gangs for the navy, who could (and did) just grab people off the street, or out of the pub. For the army there was the "King's Shilling" - a small fortune at the time, I'm sure, for the average working/non-working man. Normally paid out conventionally upon signing up, it was also used deviously by slipping it into a man's drink unawares - if he then drank that drink he was deemed to have accepted the King's Shilling, and was an enlisted man. Due to this practice, glass-bottomed tankards became popular!

[Randarkmaan]

I would expect a platoon (or whatever a such a group was called) to try to gait the soldiers they faced to fire to early and then close the gap quickly and fire while the enemy was reloading.

Like in the Patriot where the British march against the Americans, get fired on one time by the Americans, get within close range and fire one devastating volley, breaking them. When marching the soldiers just look like their looking out at nothing in particular and trying not to think. That scene is one of the things I like about that movie. Also love the fact that they play "British Grenadiers".

[CBR]

Obviously there is a good chance you'll die once the whole front line of an opposing army opens fire, its loke litteraly a wall of lead.

Although there are examples of units losing most of the first rank in just one salvo, that was pretty rare really. Plus artillery did something like 50% of the killing if not more and cannon balls had enough energy to go through multiple ranks.

And in the end soldiers might have had bigger concern about diseases. For example, the US army in the ACW lost twice as many men to disease than battle.

Another thing to consider is overall battlefield lethality. A losing army could recieve horrible losses in the pursuit and that is something that was pretty rare in later Napoleonic battles. As armies now occupied a much larger area it was easier to get away, as well as more difficult to inflict a total rout on the losing side.

Now all this might not be something a half drunk young man considers when he signs the contract, but at least it shows that gunpowder didnt really make enlisting more suicidal than earlier.


CBR

[Mithradates]

I reckon pay was a fairly large insentive. Bands of recruiters would no doubt roam the country saying how good the pay was and it was fairly decent. What they didnt realise was that they had to pay for most of their own equipment which put them in enough debt to make the actualy salary costs negligible.

[The Stranger]

they thought as throughout ages war was glory... untill tey got out of it... i mean even till nam american soldiers enlisted because it was their "duty" and so many think that when they join the army

[Didz]

Why do soldiers of the gunpowder (when guns were being used more often in europe to the end of Nepoleonic style armies) join?
As far as the 19th Century British Army was concerned the biggest incentive to join was to escape poverty. A substantial portion of the volunteers were from Ireland and even English Regiments could expect between 10% and 35% of their recruits to be Irish. The biggest incentive to enlist was the bounty paid which varied according to the need for recruits. In 1805 the bounty was £12 guinea's by 1812 it had risen to £23 17s 6d, if you signed up for life, which which was a small fortune for a labourer at the time. Most Irish recruits signed up for life.

According to one recruiting Sergeant, weavers and ploughboys were the easiest to enlist though they required different forms of persuasion. Ploughboys were inevitably persuaded by the idea that they could become Sergeants just like you, whilst Weavers were normally persuaded by idea's of excitment and adventure which got them out of their boring mundane shops.

Another major source of recruits was the militia. The militia were not the army and could not be required to serve oversea's. Any man between the age of 18 and 40 could be drafted into the militia unless they were in a reserved occupation, and Army recruiting parties sometimes resorted to extreme measures to persuade these men to transfer to 'the real army'. There were stories of militia battalions being paraded continuously until the required number of volunteers transferred to the army.

The French of course introduced conscription and so men had no choice but to join their army unless they could afford to pay for a substitute. Therefore, the French Army consisted of a much more diverse mixture of men from the lower social orders than did the British. This was reflected in the way the French allocated their recruits to various Corps, with the more intelligent and literate men being earmarked for the Guard or Elite formations.


Obviously there is a good chance you'll die once the whole front line of an opposing army opens fire, its loke litteraly a wall of lead.
Not really....the accuracy of a musket was less then 15% even at close range so even a full battalion volley of 600 men would only achieve about 90 hits. There are stories of such volleys dropping the entire front rank of the enemy, but one needs to remember that a French column was was formed at least six ranks deep and so the front rank only contained about 80 men.

Battle casualties overall were quite high by modern standards but most of these casualties were caused by artillery fire not musketry.


I've always wondered if there was any specific procedure for selecting who would stand in the front ranks in a gunpowder era unit :creep:
There was, certainly in the French Army. Most armies maintained elite companies such as as the British grenadier companies who were expected to lead any attack and were paid more for doing so. The French also had men who volunteered to stand in the front rank of any formation. They were generally referred to as 'the lost children' and they were paid extra money for volunteering. Another factor was that generally speaking men who were to lead such attacks were given extra drink. Certainly, eyewitness accounts suggest that the vast majority of Frenchmen who led the cavalry and infantry attacks at Waterloo were drunk. British regiments also issued extra quantities of both gin and rum prior to battle with those likely to be in the most danger getting the lions share.

[Incongruous]

The Great War (or the napoleonic war if you will) was the costliest war in European history (in terms of population lost). Battles were often massive slaughering fields, where opposing armies would hammer at each other for around a day. Usually within the range of each others muskets. Press gangs were the best tool usually, along the parades through towns telling the young lads how great it would all be. Britain I know used criminals, not sure about other nations.

[Didz]

@Bopa
Press-gangs were only used in Britain by the Royal Navy and then only as a last resort and by unpopular ships and captains who could not attract enough volunteers. The Army only ever took volunteers, although many of these volunteers were acquired under the duress of poverty, drink or misrepresentation. The idea that large numbers of men volunteered to avoid prison is not true according to regimental records, the number of such men in British regiments was actually quite insignificant, and again it seems to have occurred mainly where regiments were unpopular and finding it hard to acquire volunteers from the rest of the population. Regiments desitined for service in tropical climtes found it particularly hard to recruit due to the rumours of desease and so tended to take on more criminals that those destined for war service in Europe.

As far as I know, neither the French nor any other European nation press-ganged men into their army. The French merely issued a another draft if they needed more men, though by the end of the war they were drafting 14 year olds because of the shortage of manpower.

Not sure how Prussian, Austria and Russia dealt with recruiting. I suspect Prussia would have relied upon volunteers as at the time there seemed to be a high level of national pride in Germany and a lot of veteran soldiers to draw upon.

However, some states obviously used other methods. The Dutch-Belgian Army of 1815 consisted of several regiments which were made up of mostly ex-soldiers from Napoleon's Imperial Guard and still wore their French uniforms, whilst at the same time they had several regiments of Germans from the State of Nassau in their army.

Mercers tells us that at least one regiment the Brunswick Corps consisted of nothing but young boys, who were so pertrified by battle that their NCO's were having to thump them to get them to close the gaps in their ranks caused by enemy cannon fire.

Wellington complained to the War Office prior to Waterloo that many of their German allies were fielding regiments full of children and old men just to maximize the bounty they received from the British government for troops supplied and that in many cases these regiments were appearing in Belgium missing most of their officers, who either didn't exist or preferred to remain at home.

[Fisherking]

Oh come on now! What ever term you want to use most of the English Army for hundreds of years was pressed into service. Towns and Cities were given quotas of men to form regiments and they pressed anyone and everyone that was at hand. They were herded together and marched to ports before too many of them could melt away. Usually reliable regiments came from the poorest regions where the army may actually be as good or better than what they left.
Desertion was rife for most of the period.

Officers were recruited usually with the promise of land at the end of the campaign, especially in Ireland.
Later on bounties were paid for enlistment to provide an incentive to join.

Most casualties were from disease sometimes starvation and men often deserted just to feed themselves.
Most of the fighting was in Ireland until the mid 18th century when things began to change a bit and men actually had some hope of returning home after a war…

[Didz]

Oh come on now! What ever term you want to use most of the English Army for hundreds of years was pressed into service.
Nope! thats not how it worked. Even at the start of WW1 most of the men who flocked to the army were volunteers. It was only later in the war that conscription was introduced.

The methods used to obtain the volunteers might have been somewhat dubious, but nevertheless there was never a full scale draft system for the army, only the militia.

[Geoffrey S]

As has been stated accuacy of earlier gunpowder weapons was atrocious. Frontlines weren't obliterated in the first volley, musket fire was a relatively minor killer in such battles compared to artillery and disease, which didn't depend on where one stood in the lines. And after accuracy got too good, later nineteenth century for instance near the end of the Civil War or the Franco-Prussian War, more defensive tactics were developed.

In the end this would lead to the familiar trench warfare of WOI, though obviously in a number of cases the mentality of the higher officers hadn't changed sufficiently; it was precisely this conflict between modern technology and self preservation which caused such dissatisfaction with the handling of WOI and the adoption of more mobile warfare focused on smaller groups.

[Incongruous]

Volunteers in the modern sense were few and far between, the seargents marching through towns showing off nice clean uniforms and talking about nice barracks were very effective. They would also get groups of men drunk and get them to sigh up that way. I know Britain never used conscription, but they weren't nice about it either. I have no idea what battalion records say as I have not been allowed access to them, I only stated that I knew Britain used criminals. Also, wasn't at least a third of the Peninsular army Irish? Or some other high proportion.

A Canton system was set up in the 1720's for the Prussians, a highly effective way of keeping man power up, the most able bodied men would join and train with a regular unit for a year while the rest did garrison duty.

[Didz]

Volunteers in the modern sense were few and far between, the sergeants marching through towns showing off nice clean uniforms and talking about nice barracks were very effective. They would also get groups of men drunk and get them to sigh up that way. I know Britain never used conscription, but they weren't nice about it either. I have no idea what battalion records say as I have not been allowed access to them, I only stated that I knew Britain used criminals. Also, wasn't at least a third of the Peninsular army Irish? Or some other high proportion.
That about sums it up, as I stated earlier.

You are quite correct that many men were recruited under false pretences and often whilst the worst for drink. However, they were still volunteers in the strict sense of the term. Even the exaggerated numbers of men who volunteered to avoid deportation or other criminal punishment were strictly speaking volunteers.

It worth also noting that this deceit was not totally one-sided. The bounty paid to volunteers was a same fortune by modern standards and some men attempted to abuse the system by volunteering to claim the bounty and then deserting and volunteering again repeatedly.

It’s also important to note that once the Ballot Act was changed to allow men from the Militia to transfer to the Army for a £10 guinea bounty quite a large proportion of volunteers came direct from the Militia. In 1809 for example 54,000 men came from the militia out of a total of 112,000 volunteers, almost half.

The numbers of Irish volunteers varied a lot over time and regiment. Scottish regiments had very few Irish volunteers (usually about 5%). Irish regiments were normally close to 100% Irish whilst most English Regiments could boast between 30% and 40%. It’s also worth noting that what went in the regimental records was what the volunteer, volunteered. So, it is possible that many Irishmen claimed to be English and vice-versa for their own personal reasons.

Another point worth remembering when considering both the British Army and the Royal Navy was that volunteers were accepted wherever they could be found. Thus, regiments serving abroad, such as the American colonies, rapidly gained a lot of volunteers from the colonists, and Royal Naval ships frequently contained a significant number of foriegn seamen, including Frenchmen.

A Canton system was set up in the 1720's for the Prussians, a highly effective way of keeping man power up, the most able bodied men would join and train with a regular unit for a year while the rest did garrison duty.
Presumably that system would have been disrupted by Napoleon after the annexation of Prussian territories for the Confederation of the Rhine. Do you know how the system worked after 1813 when the German speaking states regained their independence?

I know for instance that a number of former confederation regiments were fielded in 1815, but have no idea how they recruited fresh troops.

[Boyar Son]

British army were all volenteers?

When did the medieval style of forcing people into the ranks stop?

(plz dont say it went out with the medieval period, explanation or a least a little plz:2thumbsup: ...)

[ajaxfetish]

British army were all volenteers?

When did the medieval style of forcing people into the ranks stop?

(plz dont say it went out with the medieval period, explanation or a least a little plz:2thumbsup: ...)
Um . . . what medieval style of forcing people into the ranks are you referring to. I'm not familiar with the idea. I know of the French arriere-bans and similar ancient recruitment options, but those only applied to vassals, who had already voluntarily obliged themselves to provide military service to their lords. Armies such as the English armies of the Hundred Years War were mostly contractual volunteers or mercenaries. If I'm not mistaken, ministeriales in early feudal Germany were often serfs employed as soldiers, but that would be a limited use in both time and place. Do you have a specific society in mind where forced recruitment was the norm? Sources?

Ajax

[NagatsukaShumi]

Um . . . what medieval style of forcing people into the ranks are you referring to. I'm not familiar with the idea. I know of the French arriere-bans and similar ancient recruitment options, but those only applied to vassals, who had already voluntarily obliged themselves to provide military service to their lords. Armies such as the English armies of the Hundred Years War were mostly contractual volunteers or mercenaries. If I'm not mistaken, ministeriales in early feudal Germany were often serfs employed as soldiers, but that would be a limited use in both time and place. Do you have a specific society in mind where forced recruitment was the norm? Sources?

Ajax

You are correct about the Englih, one of the reasons the Wars of the Roses happened was that nobles had their own standing armies on contract basis'

[Marshal Murat]

I believe that the Prussians had something akin to a 'national militia', where all the citizens and junkers were technically in the army as either foot-soldiers and officers, but could buy replacements. I don't know if the re-organization changed the order of the army or how they recruited, but that is my understanding.


Most of the time, British citizens were drawn into the army through sergeants and officers making a big show about the valor of battle. Most were probably to escape poverty, earn some money, get out of the gallows.

Maybe I've been reading to many Sharpe novels, but thats how I always understood it.

[Didz]

British army were all volenteers?

When did the medieval style of forcing people into the ranks stop?

(plz dont say it went out with the medieval period, explanation or a least a little plz:2thumbsup: ...)
I think others have already answered this question in part, but to be more specific. I would say that the biggest two events which changed the relationship in England between the people who raised the armies and those who were needed to fight in them were:

a) The Black Death (1347)
and
b) The Peasant Revolt (1381)

Although both were linked, in that the later was caused primarily by the attempts of the English nobility to retain (or reinstate) the concepts of feudal servitude that which had been rendered unworkable by the losses suffered during the former.

Prior to these events peasant labour was largely tied to the land owned by a specific noble, who in turn could demand military service from you when required. This could still be considered a form of contractual volunteering, in that the peasant knew the score when he accepted the land, but it did not require persuasion to obtain his service, and he could be punished for not complying.

This system was still in use in Scotland at the time of the 1745 rebellion as part of clan hierarchy and presumably died when the clans were subjugated. Not sure when it ended in Ireland, probably after Cromwell's invasion in the 17th Century.

After the Black Death and the peasant revolt labour in England became far more mobile and based upon wages and benefits rather than land allocations. Therefore, those raising armies found it difficult, if not impossible to insist on military service as a consequence of providing land, and the need to attract volunteers by propaganda and financial incentive became a necessary process.

I would have thought that similar changes occurred right across Europe at this time as most trading countries were affected in the same way.

[Furious Mental]

Those who owed military obligations based on land tenure- knights and sergeants- were not serfs. That system of military obligations- feudalism- was on the way out when the Black Death happened because it was already well known to be unworkable by that stage, and far inferior to using contracts of indenture.

What the Black Death really spelled the end for was manorialism, and the Peasant Revolt was one event in the long process by which it decayed.

[Didz]

@Furious Metal
Well you obviously know more about it than I do, but hopefully we have given K Cossack an answer to his question.

[Boyar Son]

[QUOTE=Furious Mental]Those who owed military obligations based on land tenure- knights and sergeants- were not serfs. QUOTE]

Thank you both for answering, knights owed the obligation, but I think the sergeant were the sign up soldiers, like todays style of wanting a soldier career.

[Furious Mental]

I don't know much about military obligation in countries other than England. But in the context of English history a sergeantry is a military obligation related to land tenure, like a knighthood but with a lesser property interest and consequently less onerous obligations (i.e. sergeants were not as well off and didn't have to serve as fully equipped mounted men-at-arms). Someone who lived solely off fighting wars and had no other source of income (knights and sergeants had land or a financial interest in land like a money fief) was a mercenary. Some people also took time out of their normal occupation to fight in wars voluntarily especially in the later Middle Ages but they are generally referred to as contract soldiers or indentured retainers.

[Didz]

I believe there was a class of Knight which had no land and who lived entirely off of the proceeds of his martial skills. I think they were dubbed Knight-Errant, and frequently served a Landed-Knight as a sort of goffer, or champion in return for bed and board.

[Boyar Son]

I believe there was a class of Knight which had no land and who lived entirely off of the proceeds of his martial skills. I think they were dubbed Knight-Errant, and frequently served a Landed-Knight as a sort of goffer, or champion in return for bed and board.

Complicated eh?

why'd they move to armies that they know would be dominated by heavy cav (nobles, not to mention killing them off) instead of following Romes example.

Jeez poorly trained militia armies are overrated and they shouldve known this, and tried to train their troops to become professionals, like Romans.

the nobles can read, they can read history.....

[Furious Mental]

Money and power in medieval Europe was concentrated in the feudal military class. There was generally no government large and organised enough to maintain an army of professional foot soldiers like Rome's.

[Didz]

And that money and power was essentially dependant upon ownership of land. The more land you owned the more money you could make, the more men you had dependant upon you and so the more power you had. Therefore, the main focus was on the protection and working of your personal estates and on the acquisition of more of the overall pie. Spending money on maintaining a large standing army was a waste of money unless you were actually fighting a war in which case the best source of trained and battle hardened troops was always going to be the professional mercenary companies that sold their services to the highest bidder.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Some good points made above.

The English armies recruited fairly well among the Irish and Scots. Small plots of land, little opportunity, being the 3rd or 4th son and likely to inherit only a kind blessing could all make the army a financially attractive alternative. "Married to Brown Bess" was thought to be better than no money (and hence no hope of marriage, little hope of conjugal experience, no chance to "get ahead" etc.).

Yes, some recruiters took advantage of their potential recruits up to the level of what would, today, be labeled as fraud. Desertion wasn't much of a problem for the real thieves, however, since they simply failed to report the absence and pocketed the pay for that soldier. Some countries, for example the Republic of Venice, had entire regiments that existed only on a pay chart.

Another component was the desire to "see the elephant." A person who stayed in the village could expect to live the entirety of their lives in one 15 mile circle. Most of their days would be filled with hard work. EVERY year could be expected to follow virtually the same pattern as the last with only personal tragedies and natural disasters to "enliven" things. Add in being a teenager and how likely is "staying" to be the popular option?

"Seeing the elephant" also involved a quest to see if you could measure up. That part of the recruiter's appeal is still a primary psychological component of recruiting today.

[TinCow]

Another component was the desire to "see the elephant." A person who stayed in the village could expect to live the entirety of their lives in one 15 mile circle. Most of their days would be filled with hard work. EVERY year could be expected to follow virtually the same pattern as the last with only personal tragedies and natural disasters to "enliven" things. Add in being a teenager and how likely is "staying" to be the popular option?

"Seeing the elephant" also involved a quest to see if you could measure up. That part of the recruiter's appeal is still a primary psychological component of recruiting today.

If I remember correctly, there is a relatively decent portrayal of exactly this thing in Barry Lyndon (Kubrick film, not the book). Offer the local peasant boys a few coins that amount to more money than they'd normally see in a year, tack on some quips about seeing the world, and do it all while looking grand in a full dress uniform. They sign on the dotted line and only discover the less pleasant reality when it's too late.

[Watchman]

As an aside, militias actually work pretty well if they're well-trained and motivated. Just ask the Northern Italian communes or the Scandinavians, who both waged their Medieval wars to a large degree with infantry militias (if only because neither had much of a feudal warrior aristocracy to draw on). Or the urbanized Low Countries or the Swiss Cantons, whose militia armies shattered feudal war-hosts often enough. (That this also created a demand for them as mercenaries, ie. professional soldiers, abroad is besides the point; younger sons of the nobility, who didn't inherit estates, similarly tended to go around in search of a war to earn a living with their skills with.)

Given the general poverty of the common populace, nevermind now random disasters like crop failures, wars, bandits and any number of other calamities (not to forget any personal issues, such as legal difficulties, forcing an individual to leave their homes), joining an army in return of a reasonably regular pay and meals also had its attractions. Indeed in regions where military service was an obligation it was pretty much the norm for a paid substitute to be a perfectly acceptable replacement - after all, the important thing was getting an able-bodied man in the ranks, not his specific identity.

Heck, in the 1745 Scottish uprising (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobite_Rising#The_.27Forty-Five.27) hired substitutes were common enough in the rebel army that the British authorities treated them as a distinct group after the fact (the other two being people pressed to service under duress, typically by clan headmen, and genuine rebels).

And in a war zone people often joined armies in some capacity simply because it tended to be far safer to be in one, where you were surrounded by a lot of basically friendly armed people, than be outside one, at the mercy of the blasted ironclad locust hordes ravaging the countryside.

All in all, most folks volunteered into the ranks simply as a means of making a living. You more likely than not did not live to an old age obviously (which rather contributed to the general rapaciousness of soldiery - they were quite literally living like each day might be their last), but starving to death kinda sucked too. And if you were talented and lucky, you might actually manage to pull off a major social rise through the career - some quite low-born men ended up created nobility that way, and bona fide aristocrats sometimes came out with considerable additions to their personal fortunes and/or estates.

And of course many simply did not have a choice, save for running off into the wilderness to avoid the authorities or finding someone else to go in their stead - many Early Modern states realized right quick drafted conscripts worked well enough in armies based on linear tactics and firepower, and proceeded to create thorough and efficient bureaucracies to be able to tap that manpower pool. Much of the basis of modern "Westphalian" state systems was originally created to meet the resource needs of the Thirty Years' War participants, particularly the poorer ones like Sweden (Brandenburg, later better known as Prussia, would soon after start seriously pushing the envelope in this regard), which had to make the utmost of what little they had if they were to get something done. Others, like Russia, pretty much just handed their feudal landowners manpower quotas - unsurprisingly the lords then sent the crap bottom of their serfs, the men they could easiest afford to lose (the families of the conscripts in fact held funeral rites for them and in most respects regarded them as already dead - few ever came home alive from the twenty-plus year stint in the Early Modern Czarist Russian military).

[Boyar Son]

Watchman your back.

Also, those troops you mentioned, viking fighting wars were practicaly part of their religion. as for Italian states I dont know why exactly why their militias were renowned for their skills.

And swiss militia armies trained to serve in pike formations( which did require training), a tactic not yet fully used in europe for a while, thus other poorly trained militia not knowing how to beat them.

[Watchman]

Religion my foot. It was loot and fame the Vikings were after (the term specifically refers to raiding and piracy after all). Some of the earlier German peoples in Germany proper had apparently had funny laws about men not being regarded as full adults before they had slain an enemy in battle - pugnacious tribal peoples everywhere have often had such ideas AFAIK - but the Viking Age Scandinavians were a bit more sophisticated.

I don't really see what prehistoric tribal warrior societies have to do with the topic at hand though - in those the norm was that every free man doubled as a warrior period, if he was to remain a respected and full-fledged member of the community.


as for Italian states I dont know why exactly why their militias were renowned for their skills.Regular training, good espirit de corps (hailing from the same city, if not quarter, helped) and confidence, simple but well-thought tactics; those go a long way to making an effective battle formation. IIRC most of the time the system ran on the standard militia pattern - citizens were expected to serve in military functions according to their means, or pay for a comparably equipped able-bodied man to go in their stead. Not actually too different from the feudal call-ups (as you were fined if your gear did not pass the muster - royal decrees could go into quite exacting levels of detail regarding the equipement and other requirements of the feudal levies) actually; one main difference was just that the Italian communal troops drilled regularly.


And swiss militia armies trained to serve in pike formations( which did require training), a tactic not yet fully used in europe for a while, thus other poorly trained militia not knowing how to beat them."Poorly trained militia" ? Where ? The Swiss started out gutting the feudal chivalry of Austria and went on to demolish the Burgundian army, one of the finest, best organized and most professional in Europe, beyond recovery. Around that time the uselessness of ill-trained levies was generally recognized, and armies used more-or-less permanently employed mercenaries and well-trained levies and feudal troops - on the whole they were rather organized and professional outfits, not in the least because any that weren't had a tendency to get trod on by their neighbours.

[Boyar Son]

But you do know vikings "militia" were warriors through and through?

Pooly trained militia? why the one most of europe has.

The Swiss started out gutting the feudal chivalry of Austria and went on to demolish the Burgundian army, one of the finest, best organized and most professional in Europe, beyond recovery

well-trained levies and feudal troops - on the whole they were rather organized and professional outfits, not in the least because any that weren't had a tendency to get trod on by their neighbours.

Finest and organized Burgundian armies were known for orginization and "look professional" type soldiers. I'm sure the swiss beat these "tendency to get trod on by their neighbours" troops. Face it they were militia according to your post.

[Watchman]

:inquisitive: ...do you guys actually know anything about this stuff, I wonder ?

The Vikings were using an essentially unchanged descendant of the old Germanic tribal-warfare system. They had a bunch of nobles and chieftains who diverted part of their wealth and income to maintain a cadre of full-time household troops/armed retainers, which formed the hard core for the main body of the freeman levy. It was the right and obligation of every able-bodied man of any means to own a basic set of weapons and be skilled in their use - indeed, anyone who failed to do so probably lost his right to speak up and vote in the communal gatherings and generally suffered a loss of status in the eyes of his peers, nevermind now being obviously quite vulnerable given the amount of small-scale raiding and internal squabbling the society was rife with.

Typically of such military-backbone levies, they also drilled unit tactics (chiefly the shieldwall with its varioous permutations) to improve their battlefield effectiveness and survivability; this apparently in fact persisted long into the Middle Ages, for the simple reason the poor and forested Scandinavian countries could not support great numbers of the rather expensive feudal troops. This forced the armies to rely fairly heavily on the mass of the peasant levy, and thus the authorities did their best to ensure it would be decently trained and equipped. They had to, if they were to have a fighting force worth speaking of.

Side effects of this included the utter absence of serfdom in the region and the relatively high political influence of the peasantry, due to their military importance and the implicit threat their comparatively high battlefield competence added to the prospect of an uprising. Indeed the closest Sweden came to introducing serfdom was in the late 1600s, as a late example of the wave of so-called "neo-feudalization" sweeping over Europe - although in the end the peasants' petition to the King "to not reduce them to thralldom" won.

In most other parts of Europe the aftermath of the collapse of the Carolingian system and the triple threat of mobile infidel raiders (Vikings along the coasts and rivers, Hungarians in Central Europe and Germany, Moors and Arabs in the south) conversely led to the developement of the decentralized "low" feudalism characteristic of much of the Middle Ages, where the local barons were given high degree of autonomy in return of developing and maintaining networks of fortifications for territorial control and defense on one side and squadrons of mobile strike forces (ie. heavy cavalry) to contain and deal with the raiders, and for that matter any other aggressors. This obviously made them minor kings in all but name only, and more often than not their nominal feudal superiors found them utterly intractable if they felt like it - the kings would spend a few centuries trying to re-establish central authority over these autonomous warlords, in some cases never succeeding.

In any case this led to a general decline in the quality of the commoner infantry levy which had formed the hard core of Carolingian armies, in favour of the mobile and hard-hitting but expensive and politically problematic feudal heavy cavalry, which in turn led to the great dominance of the cavalry on the battlefield in much of Europe for the Early and High Middle Ages. On the other hand where the feudal arrangement could not for one reason or another become the forefront system of raising armies the commoner levy tended to remain quite capable out of necessity, to the degree where it became sought after as mercenaries in the more feudalized parts which still needed dependable infantry for various purposes but could not raise it domestically. The feudal chivalry, used to low-quality infantry, also often received some rather rude and bloody surprises when it went against the tougher footsloggers of such regions.

The feudal war-hosts had some rather acute shortcomings in the command-and-control and professionalism departements, painfully well illustrated by the famous French defeats in the Hundred Years' War. This and the general trend towards increasingly capable infantry and the use of professional mercenaries (eg. the condottieri in Italy) was one major reason to the alterations effected to the feudal military system, such as the French Ordonnances which re-established the man-at-arms as one of the decisive battlefield weapons of the age. Long story short these revolved around organizing the feudal and mercenary chivalry and their assorted tactical auxiliaries into relatively permanent, salaried formations which underwent regular drill and practice to forge them into cohesive combat units. Even above and beyond the reformed French royal army the Burgundians under Charles the Bold became masters of this next-generation Medieval warfare; this did not keep the Swiss from obliterating the Burgundian army and slaying the Duke himself at Nancy in 1477 though, but then again their reputation as (some of) the best infantry in Europe was quite well deserved.

[Boyar Son]

Um...thanks.

Question:

were the french in control of burgundy when they made their reforms.

Did you understand what I typed in bold? I meant: you said burgundy was well organized, but it did not matter that they were still "trodded" on for their lack of skill. Just wanted to point that out as I found it difficult to put it into words.

In yur posts, these "militia" were skilled and had to be skilled in warfare, so much so that they can be equal to proffesionals in the art of combat.

[Watchman]

...what you typed in bold there sort of seems like a direct quote of my earlier post you know... I certainly understood that, but I will freely admit I had great difficulties understanding the rest.

Anyway.

There's a difference between professionalism and a professional. Any mercenary was certainly a professional soldier, but that didn't by itself mean a bunch of them would automatically display great professionalism - if you see what I mean.

Well-trained and motivated militias using sound tactics were, in any case, long easily enough the match for even the best full-time soldiery, nevermind now the often somewhat amateurish feudal warrior aristocracy (the often quite fearsome individual combat skill of the latter nonwithstanding).

Burgundy was one of those aforementioned feudal barony thingies (duchy more specifically); the Duke was probably theoretically a vassal of the French king (or the Holy Roman Emperor), but frankly I haven't dwelt too much into the early history of the place. Seems to have been typically complicated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundy). Anyway, it was very much an independent statelet when its army underwent the reforms - and indeed France was one of its major opponents.

[Boyar Son]

Also you said European nations would hire mercanaries in their army. Is it implied that there a great number of mercanary troops?

Like, of an army of 15,000, the general would hire 5,000+ troops. Almost like carthage.

[Watchman]

During the heyday of the condottieri many Italian powers did their wars more or less entirely through mercenaries. And armies of out-of-work mercs were a severe problem for law, order and pretty much everything else in northern France during the lulls of the Hundred Years' War - some of them went to Italy or other places to find work, others just turned to banditry. At worst cases there were veritable armies of such marauders making life miserable for everyone and requiring full-blown military campaigns to get rid of.

As a rule of thumb, everyone who could afford it augmented his other forces with as many mercenaries as he could afford, especially if they had competences the local troops were deficient in. You can't have too many advantages in a war after all. In other locales the kings and generals by and large had to do without, simply because they lacked the solvency to hire outsiders to take part in their wars - although you could also try to make like William the Conqueror and offer the hired warriors estates in the lands to be conquered (which also did wonders to their motivation), if your planned campaign was like that.

In other words, varied like Hell. We're talking about an entire subcontinent of very diverse local conditions here, for a timespan of some five hundred years - hard to say anything too specific about that kind of coverage.

Americans are probably familiar with the somewhat peculiar phenomenom of state mercenaries, regular army soldiery hired out by their ruler - the Hessians of the American Revolution fame were this sort, sent over by the Prince of Hessen due to dynastic ties with the British royalty and good old cash payments. Not a common practice, but that probably wasn't the sole example either.

[AntiochusIII]

K COSSACK: Burgundy was for intents and purposes another state of its own with a very good potential to develop into an early modern "nation" (to use a loose term). That it did not happen was by pure, sad luck :/

The Dukes of Burgundy were technically vassals of both the French King and the Holy Roman Emperor (Feudalism is a complicated thing); but Philip the Good didn't call himself the Grand Duke of the West for no apparent reason. He was the most powerful "Duke" in the whole area almost comparable to any kings and he was building his own power base distinct from his French roots. If one wonders what this man, whose modern fame came mostly from the deposition of Joan of Arc (a minor act he probably didn't care much about anyway), was doing the whole late Hundred Years' War, let's just say he wasn't being a subordinate English ally the whole bloody time. At one point the Burgundians came close to uniting the whole of the Low Countries -- very rich region with a good reservoir of local manpower, as Watchman states -- under their own dynastic holdings. Philip petitioned twice, though not with much expectations, to the Holy Roman Emperor be crowned "King of Lotharingia" (one of the three ancient "states" that followed the fall of the Carolingian Empire, and the first to fall; the other two became France and the Holy Roman Empire respectively) if only to make his de facto freedom from France de jure.

Charles the Bold, his son, went on a rampage when he came to rule. The Swiss, alongside the Holy Roman Empire, France, and everyone who had a reason to fear an expansionist Burgundy, slain him in battle however.

The "Fall" of Burgundy was actually not really a fall as much as that it passed on to the Habsburgs by a fortunate marriage alliance. Charles the Bold's death left his daughter Mary in a very precarious position of controlling a rebellious country (the Low Countries cities weren't very fond of their Dukes -- though ironically they came to be rather fond of Mary after she acceded to their demands; the "poor exploited duchess; she's on our side against the German/French oppressors!" attitude) besieged by France and the Holy Roman Empire. She couldn't survive on her own and needed allies though, so it became a contest of the King and the Emperor to see whose son gets the very impressive dowry of her marriage, though Louis' aggressiveness caused the Habsburgs to win out. :beam:

In fact a rather stretched comparison would be to look at the rise of the later Dutch state and the power it reached. Burgundy had the potential for that so to speak. That the Habsburgs instead concentrated on Spain, a world power that also fell into their hands by an equally fortunate marriage alliance, and Germany, and regarded the formerly Burgundian Low Countries as a big freebie to be exploited isn't the fault of the locals really.

Just how far Burgundy came to being a distinct state from France could be shown by the continuous wars between the two; though liege-vassal squabbles are the norm in Medieval Europe the level of warfare between these two are for all intents and purposes wars between two states.

"Poorly trained militia" didn't make for an army of a state which resisted and even aggressively expanded in the face of two hostile major European powers of the time.

On topic:

K COSSACK, don't underestimate late Medieval European military I say! Although about your last question, it really is varied. For example Muscovy as late as the High Renaissances were employing massed German regiments in their armies, and the armies of the various Italian states are very mercenary by nature; but Spain had pretty much comfortably relied on its own manpower to man its mighty Tercio ranks.

[Boyar Son]

Actually I underestimate militia armies of early europe. Foolish kings, the proof lies at the 100 years war.

[AntiochusIII]

Actually I underestimate militia armies of early europe. Foolish kings, the proof lies at the 100 years war.What do you mean by that?

[Boyar Son]

I mean, militia armies are very foolish to have. In the 100 years war, the English army were more profesional methinks, while the French still had their old militia with knights. France was defeated several times because of this.

[Watchman]

Uh... no. For most of the HYW the French military relied on the feudal levy, primarily the knights and their retainers and tactical auxiliaries with the poor-quality commoners for (questionable) support. That one was very much a case in point of the post-Carolingian decline in the quality of the peasant infantry and the dominance of the feudal cavalryman (and his sub-feoffed auxiliaries).

Conversely the English kings waged their continental wars with basically paid armies hired from their domestic feudal warrior aristocracy and the freeholder yeomanry (who supplied the archers); a much better organized and controllable bunch, and rather more professional on the whole.

Both, of course, added as many mercenaries of diverse competences as they could get.

That's a bit oversimplified take of it (for example the English recruitement arrangement was rather more complicated), but covers the basics. The basic amateurism of the feudal war-host was and its resultant tactical clumsiness were a recurring problem for the French - their most famous defeats were more or less directly the result of just that. In smaller engagements, where competent commanders weren't overruled by social superiors and the feudal squadrons were more in their element (they only became unmanageable when large numbers were massed into one army), they actually did fairly well overall.

[AntiochusIII]

I mean, militia armies are very foolish to have. In the 100 years war, the English army were more profesional methinks, while the French still had their old militia with knights. France was defeated several times because of this.Okay, what?

If the French were as weak as you indicated, and the English as incomparably competent, how is it a Hundred Years' War? It would've been ten years at best and Edward III would be the King from Paris to Toulon.

No, it had many tides and turns and much more than that. We here only hear about the great English victories Sluys, Poitou, and Agincourt. We never hear about the resistance given by Charles V and du Guesclin and the like and the bloody nose they gave the English in their times.

In fact the English yeomanry that made up the "definitive" part of the army could be seen as an expression of an effective militia, whereas France had the advantage of the number of Knights on their side.

The so-called weakness of French infantry, if it existed before, had been essentially countered by Charles VII's Ordinances which reformed the French men-at-arms and laid the foundation of what would later become the most powerful army in Europe.

The Hundred Years' War was not a demonstration of militia losing to whatever the English had, it was a demonstration of knights, heavy armored shock cavalry, losing if not used properly. The limitations of the heavy cavalry -- known since ancient times -- had been ignored by the arrogant French aristocrats. And they paid the price for it.

Moreover there are counter examples aplenty in Medieval Europe and Early Renaissances that demonstrated what good infantry could do in the battlefield -- including militia. The Low Countries for very long resisted the incursions of many an aristocrat and they enjoyed correspondingly much greater freedom than their contemporaries in the serfdom of the French and German countryside. Frederick Barbarossa, one of the most powerful European rulers of his time, had great troubles subduing the Italian city-states of Northern Italy: in fact the Lombard League, an alliance of said cities, which used mainly militia augmented by mercenaries and Papal reinforcements, eventually defeated him in a climactic battle.

Simply put, it really comes down to where your priority is. In Medieval Europe in general the Cavalry dominated because of various factors, and many of them not exactly military; the warrior aristocracy was after all the governing class of most of Europe and disdained the infantry almost by default. In places where there are more cities and/or the aristocracy were not as strong effective militia was often a given as was needed for self-defense.

[Watchman]

Mind you, whenever a town managed to buy itself a Freiburg status from whatever baron it was originally the fief of, the next two things they invariably did were forming a decent militia (if they didn't have one already - towns and such were required to provide troops as a feudal obligation as well, so there usually was that to build on) and build as good walls as they could afford.
Just in the case the baron, or some other baron, or the next town over trying to do something about competition, tried to mess with the arrangement later.

[Boyar Son]

It would've been ten years at best and Edward III would be the King from Paris to Toulon

Why are you arguing with common fact? their own people called it the 100 years war.....c'mon.....

also, knights of france didnt obey their king much during agincourt, and we know what happens next....

it shows no training such as militia are no good. PERIOD.

[Watchman]

"Hundred Years' War" is a rather later term, in the same fashion as the Great War only became the First World War after there had been a Second one. For the contemporaries experiencing it it was just yet another series of dynastic struggles, what now one with some novel elements; it could only be recognized as a distinct watershed period ex post facto.


it shows no training such as militia are no good. PERIOD.While it is certainly true that "to lead untrained people to war is to throw them away", I fail to see where you get this equation "militia = no training" from. First off the knights and other feudal warriors trained quite expensively; the problem was they did so individually and in small units, not as large formations and armies. Second, good militia troops trained regularly (it often being required by law, on the pain of fines at the least) and could duly put up a solid show in battle - and as they were practically invariably formed on communal basis, the men knew each other and trained together becoming a cohesive combat unit.

[Furious Mental]

In the 14th century most of the "English" soldiers were actually French, in particular Gascon. Only major expeditionary armies raised in England actually consisted chiefly of English soldiers raised by contracts of indenture. Most of the fighting was done by companies and retinues hired (if they were hired at all) on an extremely ad hoc basis.

[Boyar Son]

Really? so now europe just hired foreign troops to do their bidding? sheesh some training for ur own guys would be cheaper methinks.

[Watchman]

Uhh... the English crown was mainly hiring its own knights and freeholder peasants for its expeditionary armies for example. And I figure the territorial defense of its continental territories was handled mainly by local feudal troops (European feudalism developed specifically for territorial defense after all) reinforced by mercenaries and/or paid "native" troops.

I don't think all-mercenary armies were very common outside Italy of the condottieri period, although some Great Company type formations did hire out further afield (eg. the almughavars in Byzantine employ - but then again, Moorish rulers sometimes hired Turkish mercs...). The lock-stock-and-barrel Landsknecht armies of the Renaissance are a bit different story, but even they usually had for example cavalry support mainly provided by their paymaster (ie. his own knights etc.).

And, yes, the whole affair is a pretty complicated topic with crazy degree of variation by time and place and the colour of underwear.

[Furious Mental]

Yes in the 14th century the English crown mostly hired soldiers from within its own territory but not from England, from Gascony. English feudal troops had pretty much no role after the Hundred Years' War began. There was a hiatus of several decades in which no feudal host was raised, then in 1385 Richard III raised one and achieved nothing with it, and that was the last occasion. Attempts by Henry V and Henry VI to raised feudal armies in conquered France also proved essentially futile. Contracts of indenture were clearly the most effective means of recruitment. If lots of local soldiers were needed they were simply conscripted by Commissioners of Array.

[Didz]

Really? so now europe just hired foreign troops to do their bidding? sheesh some training for ur own guys would be cheaper methinks.
Not much different to the Federal Army using european immigrants to bulk up its forces during the American Civil War, in return for offers of citisenship. Whole regiments and brigades of Germans, Irish and Frenchmen fighting for a country they hardly knew.

Its pretty common practice throughout history.