Category: This entry was posted in Medieval, Mercenaries by MSW. Bookmark the permalink.

The Swiss (on the left) assault the Landsknecht mercenaries in the French lines at the Battle of Marignano “As for trying to intimidate the enemy, blocks of thousands of oncoming merciless Swiss, advancing swiftly accompanied by what a contemporary called “the deep wails and moans of the Uri Bull and Unterwalden Cow*” or landsknechts chanting […]

The oft-quoted remark of Richard Fitz Neal in his preface to the Dialogus de Scaccario about the supreme importance of money in war has been shown by J. O. Prestwich to have been as much a commonplace in 1179 when he wrote it as it seems today. ‘Money appears necessary not only in time of […]

The free companies of 100 Years War soldiers made redundant by the truce of Bordeaux and the Treaty of Bretigny and later by the truce of Tours. Although many of the companies of the first phase went back into their own nation’s service when the war broke out again, some that had moved to Italy […]

Battle of Halmyros, a battle between the lightly armed but battle-hardened Almogavars of the infamous Catalan Company and the French Knights of the Duchy of Athens.  By Darren Tan Mercenary bands like Hawkwood’s could be accurately described as “traveling city-states.” Hawkwood, for example, had to hire his own spies, informers, treasurers, chancellors to draw up […]