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Free company. French troops being attacked by the Tard-Venus free company during the 1362 Battle of Brignais. A free company (sometimes called a great company or, in French, grande compagnie) was an army of mercenaries between the 12th and 14th centuries recruited by private employers during wars. They acted independently of any government, and ...
Routiers. Routiers (French: [ʁutje]) were mercenary soldiers of the Middle Ages. Their particular distinction from other paid soldiers of the time was that they were organised into bands (rutta or routes). [1] The term is first used in the 12th century but is particularly associated with free companies who terrorised the French countryside ...
Mercenary. Leonardo da Vinci 's Profilo di capitano antico, also known as il Condottiero, 1480. Condottiero meant "contractor" in its more literal sense but came to be applied to leaders of mercenary groups in Italy during the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A mercenary, also called a merc, soldier of fortune, or hired gun, is a private ...
The Landsknechte (singular: Landsknecht, pronounced [ˈlantsknɛçt]), also rendered as Landsknechts or Lansquenets, were German mercenaries used in pike and shot formations during the early modern period. Consisting predominantly of pikemen and supporting foot soldiers, their front line was formed by Doppelsöldner ("double-pay men") renowned ...
Charidemus. d. 333 BC. 367–333 BC. Athens. Greek mercenary leader who served Athens, Thrace and Rhodes. Clearchus of Sparta. 411–401 BC. Spartan general and mercenary leader who joined Cyrus the Younger in his attempt to seize the Persian throne from Artaxerxes III. Diogenes of Judea.
The first Swiss mercenaries in the service of the House of Savoy (rulers of the Duchy of Savoy and later the Kingdom of Sardinia) were recruited in 1577 through a capitulation signed by Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy and the Catholic cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug and Fribourg. [37]
The High Medieval period also saw the expansion of mercenary forces, unbound to any medieval lord. Routiers , such as Brabançons and Aragones , were supplemented in the later Middle Ages by Swiss pikeman, the German Landsknecht , and the Italian Condottiere - to provide the three best-known examples of these bands of fighting men.
The military-service terms and conditions were stipulated in a condotta (contract) between the city-state and the soldiers (officer and enlisted man), thus, the "contracted" leader, the mercenary captain commanding, was titled the "Condottiere". From the eleventh to the thirteenth century, European soldiers led by professional officers fought ...