Modern mercenaries shun easy definition. Simply describing them as hired soldiers misses the point, for there is an important mercenary streak in most national armies, whose members might resent being termed mercenaries but are motivated, at least in part, by the pay that they receive. The profit motive played a notable part in the English armies of the Hundred Years War, and prize money materially assisted motivation in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic period. Narrowing the definition to include only soldiers who serve a foreign power for pay will not do, for while it might accurately describe, say, the Swiss and German regiments (and the later French Foreign Legion), which played such a distinguished part in the French army, it would be inadequate for the voluntarily exiled Catholics who fought in France's Irish Brigade and little less than insulting to the thousands of volunteers who served in the International Brigades during the Spanish civil war. Moreover, until relatively recently the very notions of ‘national’ and ‘foreign’ were at best ill-defined. The tendency to revile mercenaries as ‘the dogs of war’ is an ancient one. Sir Walter Ralegh wrote 400 years ago that they were ‘Seditious unfaithful disobedient destroyers of all places and countries whither they are drawn as being held by no other bond than their own commodity’. But this, similarly, is an oversimplification, for mercenaries have often shown high standards of discipline and behaved better to prisoners and civilians than other members of the armies of which they formed part.
Anthony Mockler's definition of a mercenary is a useful start: ‘a soldier who fights with money as his main objective’, thus defining him by motive rather than status. The condottieri might seem a clear-cut case, yet some became not only successful rulers but notable patrons of the arts. Mockler goes on to add, ‘the real mark of the mercenary—devotion to war for its own sake’. Given that some mercenaries, like those so reviled by Machiavelli, knew enough about battle to avoid it if at all possible, even this addition still falls short. It is wisest to recognize that while pay lies at the centre of a mercenary's relationship with his employer, other identifying characteristics are also important, though not all may be present in each case. Mercenaries generally serve foreign powers and, in recent years, ‘non-state actors’ like insurgent groups or even commercial companies: the African activities of Sandline International attracted much press comment in the 1990s. In many cases this service may also reflect (as it does with the British army's Gurkhas) long-term bonds of loyalty. Although some mercenaries have shown a disturbing interest in violence for its own sake, others have not and have often been more devoted to the discipline and order of military life than to war itself.
Modern mercenaries often prefer the term ‘soldiers of fortune’, and that is indeed a fair description of many of history's mercenaries: men who embarked upon a military career because there was no realistic alternative. Areas where families were large, the soil poor, and notions of personal honour powerful were fertile nurseries of mercenaries. Wales, with its tough and proud minor gentry, made a substantial contribution to English armies of the Hundred Years War. Scotsmen and Irishmen served in dozens of foreign armies, and their names still stand out in army lists: Gordon and Keith in Russia, and Lacy, O'Donnell, and O'Reilly in Austria. At least two French marshals had Irish backgrounds, Macdonald under the First Empire and MacMahon under the Second. Surnames sometimes weathered with the passing generations to produce strange combinations, like Campbell von Craigmillie in the Prussian service and Lally-Tollendal (a corruption of O'Mally of Tollymally) in the French. Travelling warriors often inflated their status as they went—the Austrian military was especially uncritical in its acceptance of applicants' self-certified genealogy. Even Frederick ‘the Great’, so insistent on noble status as a prerequisite for commissioned rank, employed a Turkish adventurer rejoicing in the name of Major Ludwig von Steinmann, while his Gen Rupert Scipio von Lentulus, who actually came from Switzerland by way of Austria, claimed Roman ancestry.
The export of European military techniques provided literally golden opportunities for soldiers of fortune. The Sikhs, for instance, owed their formidable artillery and well-drilled infantry to foreign experts (see Sikh wars). Some of these men had careers for which chequered is too gentle a term. Alexander Gardner was born in North America, and may have served in the British army before becoming a brigand in central Asia and, at least by his own account, serving the ruler of Afghanistan. He helped train the Sikhs in gunnery and was photographed for his (probably unreliable) memoirs wearing a costume, including a plumed turban, made from Scots tartan.
Many soldiers of fortune were political or religious exiles. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes forced Huguenots to leave France in their thousands, and many of them took service in the armies of the states they fled to. The defeat of the Jacobite cause in the British Isles instituted the same process in reverse, causing the ‘Wild Geese’ to take flight. The Treaty of Limerick, which in 1691 ended the Williamite war in Ireland, allowed safe conduct to Jacobites who wished to serve abroad. The triumph of the Protestant cause deprived Catholics of an important source of gentlemanly employment: unable to serve in the British army, they served with distinction in others. A brigade of Irish exiles thereafter formed a valuable part of the French army. At Fontenoy in 1745 the six Irish regiments—Clare, Dillon, Bulkeley, Roth, Berwick, and Lally—were commanded by Charles O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, Viscount Clare and lieutenant general in the French service, and their counter-attack played an important part in checking the advance of the British infantry.
Soldiers of fortune served in 17th- and 18th-century armies on a comparatively large scale, either as individuals or in foreign-raised units. The latter enabled a cautious monarch to limit the impact of war on his own subjects. Sometimes one state might contract to provide soldiers for another: the British obtained German troops for service in the American independence war by commercial agreements with German princes like the Duke of Brunswick and the Margrave of Hesse-Cassel: in all some 30, 000 were to serve in North America. These processes meant armies which were national in name might be substantially foreign in terms of recruitment. One-sixth of Prussian generals were foreign in the period 1740-63, and during Frederick ‘the Great’'s reign outsiders consistently outnumbered native-born Prussians in his army. Families were sometimes split: at Kolin in 1757 the Prussian Lt Col von Gemmingen found himself fighting his father, an Austrian lieutenant general. However, there was increasing unease about the use of foreigners in national armies, especially when—like the Germans in North America—their services were procured for hard cash.
States also became increasingly reluctant to accept that men born within their borders could legitimately serve in the ranks of hostile armies. As we have seen, in 1691 the British government allowed Jacobite Irishmen free passage to France to serve in a hostile army, and in 1746 it regarded officers and men of the Irish Pickets (detachments from regiments in the Irish Brigade) and the Royal-Ecossais Regiment serving with the Jacobite army as legitimate combatants, treated as POWs rather than criminals when captured. But by the end of the century attitudes had hardened. In the Irish rebellion of 1798 Irish-born officers in the French service were treated as traitors when captured. The Irish leader Wolfe Tone claimed that it was ‘an indignity’ against ‘the honour of the French army’ to put him in chains, and was tried wearing a French colonel's uniform. Recognizing the inevitability of a death sentence, he demanded to be shot like a soldier not hanged as a criminal, and committed suicide after this appeal was denied.
Sometimes mercenaries gained value and reputation from mastery of particular weapons or tactics. In the ancient world, the Persians employed Greek hoplite infantry, and Xenophon's account of the march of the 10, 000 is a classic description of the ebb and flow of mercenary fortunes. The Romans used archers from Crete, slingers from Rhodes, and a variety of auxiliary cavalrymen, to supplement their own heavy infantry. In the Middle Ages mercenaries (see mercenaries, medieval) were widely used: both Genoese crossbowmen and German handgunners were highly regarded. The Swiss became almost ‘a nation of mercenaries’ gaining their reputation through their formidable pikemen who neither gave nor expected quarter. They were so widely used that the phrase ‘point d'argent, point des Suisses’ (no money, no Swiss) remains in the French language. Mercenaries were widely used as guards (French monarchs once had, and the pope retains, a Swiss Guard) because of their lack of involvement in domestic politics and loyalty to their employer. In the second half of the 20th century mercenaries have been employed, notably in Africa, because their training, discipline, and cohesion often gave them the edge over indigenous forces.
Fighting in Africa brought mercenaries to the world's attention. The mercenary leaders Mike Hoare, Jean ‘Black Jack’ Schramme, and Bob Denard all fought in the Congo in the 1960s, and the Irish-born Hoare's Five Commando gained a formidable reputation. Mercenaries were employed in the civil war in Angola. An ex-British soldier, Costas Georgiou (alias Callan) led a mercenary force against the Movimento Popular de Libertaçao de Angola and its Cuban allies, showing a vicious flair for the fighting. Already widely reviled for having ordered the execution of some of his own men, he was captured by government forces. At his trial he took responsibility for the deeds of his men, refused to answer any questions, and faced the firing squad bravely. The Diplock commission, set up to review mercenary enlistment in Britain in the wake of these events, suggested in 1976 that ‘A spirit of adventure, an ex-soldier's difficulty in adjusting to civilian life, unemployment, domestic troubles, ideals, fanaticism, greed—all these may play some part in the individual's motivation.’ This is not a bad definition of the spectrum of mercenary motivation across history—and seems likely to remain so in the future.
Bibliography
- Mockler, Anthony, Mercenaries (London, 1969).
- Tickler, Peter, The Modern Mercenary (London, 1987)
— Richard Holmes
