On 21 June 2015 at 16:58, Richard Aiken <raikenclw@gmail.com> wrote:

Richard,
> Mercenaries were warfare artists.

<Wrong.> - this is your opinion.

However, I must admit I don't currently have a convincing enough evidence to offer as proof.

I thought of some support for my opinion: the utter failure of the "professional" mercenary companies of Renaissance Italy when attempt to resist invasion of the peninsula by the French Army. Had those mercenary units actually been competent at the craft of warfare, they should have at least been able to achieve a draw.

Richard, I'm indebted to you for requiring me to revisit the history of the Italian wars after over two decades.

Although you write "professional", indeed the condottieri founded the first military schools.

However, it wasn't so much their fault that Charles VIII was successful, who himself led an army formed around mercenary Swiss infantry and led by arguably mercenary cavalry learders.

There was a change in the 'mercenaryship' from the Ancient times, to Renaissance, to early Modern, and beyond (at least in Europe and Ottoman Empire) that seems to point from a tribal 'leasing' of a portion of its population for warfare, to being itinerant warrior sub-culture, to an international professional commodity. This transition in turn became more individual-based, and as far as I'm concerned, skill and expereince based, offering Art of War expertise to leaders rather than just a body of troops to fill a gap in the line.

And this development parallels the change in warfare from a vocation practiced largely by an elite social class (e.g. those who could afford to equip themselves with the required gear) to a profession practiced by the standing force of a nation state. Most of those "individual-based" "international professional commodity" mercenaries were trained by the same entities which trained nation state forces and their employment was - at least in large part - an unofficial extension of the foreign policy of those same nation states. Modern mercenaries are deniable state assets much more often than they are actual independent operators.

And it is here that my debt is really incurred.

There is a Chinese saying that "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names".

What exactly is a 'standing force of a nation state'?

I would say that if 'officers' are paid to train and command troops, they are as mercenary, i.e. 'for hire', as anyone since their pay is a compensation for not participating in some other work for financial gain.

Gens d'armes (gendarmes) were just such officers in the army of Charles VIII, an army some have called "the first modern army."

Indeed, all armies in Europe prior to the French Revolution were 'mercenary' because they were small paid forces. The Royal French Army regiments included in them nationals from virtually every nation in Europe, including Turks and Russians! Even a brief look at the Marchals of France by 1814 illustrate this, including Germans, Scots and Italian descendents. Jomeni was Swiss.

The change came when levee en masse was introduced in France, compensating mass for quality. Other powers had to match this or submit, so we see the rise of the conscripted armies, or in a sense a retrograde step in development of military force to the days before the mercenary. The genius of Napoleon was to achieve victory without the use of professionals! Indeed, he often outmanoeuvered professionals.

Modern mercenaries are any troops that are paid to do nothing else but to perform military work.

By this definition the largest modern mercenary army is that of the United States.

<Mercenaries were - and are - *profit* artists.>
It seems to me you confuse military and taxation accounting professionals :-)
I would be interested to see some historical evidence rather than Traveller rules as evidence.

See above: the professional Renaissance Italian mercenary units I mentioned previously made their parole by *preparing* to fight. When called to battle against one another, opposing units would manuever about the countryside until one side had a clear tactical advantage over the other, at which point the units which had "lost" would promptly surrender. Both sides made money but neither suffered casualties. Then those dastardly French refused to play along.

Well, thats Italians for you :-)

I think its worth remembering that the French only speak an Italic language, but are culturally Gallo-Germanic.

The mentality is quite different.

This just adds to my contemplation of how non-Human cultures think about warfare.

The etymology of 'mercenary' is misleading.

Mercenary = Paid thug.

If you wish to define it differently, then you should have said so. I find myself agreeing with other commenters that you seem to change your definition of terms whenever this proves convenient to your argument.

Don't be so unkind to those who choose to make the military their profession.

I think of some academics as intellectual thugs that make a career by forcing their theories down their students' throats.

On the contrary, where etymology is concerned, I just look it up here

<Actually having to fight [and take the concommitant casualties] in
order receive remuneration represents a degree of *failure* on the

part of their business model.>

My suggestion is that you read the rest of the Dorsai books.

I've read them all. But that was decades ago, so I'm afraid I only recall the general gist. But we've been discussing the real world and Traveller, not the Dorsai. The Dorsai of the early novels *require* a universe in which humanity has biologically fragmented along cultural lines. Once humanity begins mixing once again in the later novels, the Dorsai cease to be mercenaries; they become imperial rulers.

Well, yes.

But I have never played Traveller universe as 'given'.

I much prefer a much larger 'universe' (a la Brin), with many more non-Human races and cultures, and even Human cultures that are drastically different to those in Classic Traveller.

To me Dorsai-like world sub-cultures in any race are fairly plausible.

What I needed was to understand something that I missed before in my study of the Eastern Front which provides the critical point of change in our real world thinking about warfare.

That is that Germany in 1937 essentially 'banked' on its mercenaries, the professional Prussian military sub-culture.

I wonder if Dickson used the Prussians as a model for the Dorsai.

Prussians were certainly the benchmarks for the European warfare when Napoleon, who carried with him the collected works describing the campaigns of Frederick the Great, changed all that.

And why did Prussians become so good at warfare? Because Prussia was dirt-poor until it started beating up on the neighbours.

It started beating up on the neighbours because it's leadership/elite were crusading knights who didn't know anything outside of warfare, and who were essentially committed to warfare for generations, first through the 60 years of the Prussian crusade, and later through the warfare with the Lithuanians, Russains, Poles and Swedes. By the time 'Prussians' reached the 18th century they were thoroughly militarised. Most people with knowledge of European military history known that Frederick II was known as Frederick the Great, but few know that his father, Frederick I was known as the Soldier King. A Hohenzollern had a lot to live up to, and I think this probably went for all 'Prussain' aristocratic males.

Prussia remained dirt-poor through the Napoleonic wars, only fielding a conscript army in the proper sense of the word during the 1813-14 campaigns. By 1860s the Prussians in charge had worked out how to transform the new conscript army into the semblance of the professional force, and how to do so with the integration of new technologies, particularly the trains. THIS gave them the spectacular victory of 1871, which their grandchildren hoped to replicate in 1914. This roughly corresponds to the Kondratieff cycle also.

And when the 1914 failed, the great-grand children tried again in the 1930s because of the Need for Achievement (N-Ach) within the scope of Motivational theories. 'German' obsession with perfectionism anyone?

My next book on the reading list is going to be The politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945 (Gordon Craig, 1955)

But, what does a Soviet officer corps, crippled by purges and massive losses of cadre in the first six months of the war, do to defeat this mercenary-led Wehrmacht force?

After the war a myth was created that the 'Russians' defeated the Wehrmacht through sheer numbers alone, coupled with Hitler's 'interference', but Col. Glantz (ret.) formerly of the US Army Staff College Carlisle would eventually (and continues) to dispel this myth.

The other part of the myth was the 'if Germany had more time to develop its advanced technology...it could have defeated the Allies.'

Greg