MERCENARIES (Lat, tticrectierrins, hireling, from no recs. wages. from in crCre. to gain, de serve ; connected with CI:, pripPrtliai. viciregnuji, to sh:uv, divide). soldier,, 11,11:111y eigners I II the country for which they tight. They existed from the earliest times. In the early tarok republics there was no standing army or mcrecnary force. but the citizens there selves formed at national militia. In Persia, how ever, there were large numbers of Creek merce naries, and they appear to played the same part which in later centuries the Swiss did in Western Europe. This first Grecian State which used mercenaries in large numbers was Athens, and other Creek States soon followed this example, so that by the end of the Pelopon nesian War there were a large number of men In Greece whose profession was war, and who fought regardless of the cause. In Rome merce nary troops were long used merely as auxiliaries, but iliont the fourth century after Christ the army began•to assume the characteristics of a mercenary force, being composed largely of Ger mans, who finally overthrew the Western Em pire. In the Byzantine Empire nearly all the troops were mercenaries.
Hut the golden age of mercenaries was in Western Europe during the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. In the early Aliffille Ages armies were recruited by a feudal levy, lint when wars came to be waged on a larger scale in the eleventh century, the forty days per year which the vassal had to serve proved in sufficient, and instead the King or feudal lord nreferred to commute the service of the vassal for a money payment and hire soldiers instead. In England, it is true, mercenaries were rare, though they did form one of the grievances against John and llenry III. The reason for , their scarcity in England was that there war fare consisted to a great extent in border raids, for which the feudal levy or local militia was ample. On the Continent circumstances were dif ferent, and kings with a wide and scattered C111 pine, like Ilenry 11. of England, who pos sessed a large part of France, wero compelled to employ mercenaries of all kinds. At first it
was common to buy their services by a gift of land, but by the twelfth century 'loamy became more comnam. and Norman knights, Genoese hOWIllell. and Flemish pikethen were frequently hired for pay. A fuller development was reached in the thirteenth century by the appearance of the cm/dottier(' system, in whieh sonic noted chief eollected an army of free companions, and sold Ids force as a whole. The first of these was Roger de Igor, who waged war suceessfully against the Byzantine Emperor Andronieus 11. (See ('ATALAN GRAND COMPANY,)It was to this type that the various noted Italian adven turers belonged. The character of Italian eh' lizIgion was of a kind to give impetus to the rise of a mercenary force, for the inhabitants of the ninny commercial city States were nnwarlike and at the same time engaged in numerous petty quarrels. Frequently, however, the mereenaries turned their arms against the city which had hired them, or aided in imposing a tyrant upon the eity,who then rewarded the Clapp:my from the spoils. Thus arose in the rule of the Vis conti. in Verona that of the Scala, in Ferrara that of the Este, in Rimini that of the Malatesta. At the end of the fourteenth century the Italian mereena ry met a Ilangeronc rival in the Swiss pikeman. Switzerland wits too small and poor to support all of its hardy sons, and they were sold in large numbers. usually by the canton itself, to some warlike prince. After the battle of Melegnano in 1515. they formed a valuable eon tingent in the French armies until the French Revolution. All parties in the Thirty Years' War used mereenaries to the exclusion of nearly all other troops, and to this fact is partly due I the terrible devastation which was caused. In the American Revolution Great Britain used meremaries to fight against the eolonists, it being common for some of the smaller prinees to sell their subjects in this fashion. The use of /11e1Tellaries on the Continent ended with the French Revolution, their place being taken by national stn soling armies. see BRA BAN coss ;