Mercenaries’ honour

“Why throughout history certain individuals were chosen, or most often recruited, to become a soldier, and why they should want to do fight for someone whom most had never met or knew little about is among the most difficult questions facing military historians of any period”. (Kelly DeVries. Medieval Mercenaries: Methodology, Definitions, and Problems.)

My smartest readers may have already guessed that I pay special attention to mercenaries in my history readings. Therefore I couldn’t agree more with the quote above. It’s not an easy question, yes. However, difficult things are often also the most interesting ones.

A post about history posts

A new year has began and random thoughts about history blogs start to boil inside my head. There are many different paths to follow, but which of them are reasonable if we consider restrictions and benefits of blogs?
For example, there can be such types of posts as:
reviews of new or classical books and articles;
remarkable quotations from books and articles;
brief summaries of books and articles;
discussion of some narrow issues;
results of own research based on primary and secondary sources (i.e. normal articles);
own but derivative articles, i.e. based only on secondary works, a mix of summary and review.

I am sure that you, my dear readers, can easily name many other types of history posts. I will also be grateful for thoughts about types of posts that you deem the most interesting.

Personally, I feel that posts about your own articles are the least specific, because posting full text or link to own article is little different from “news” section on a personal web-site. Benefits of blogs come into being if it is an invitation to a discussion, but in that case a link to your own article is little different from a link to an article of some other author. Also, good research takes a lot of time, so such posts are rare.

However, I think that more important issue is that all types of posts fall into one of two categories: you can write for those who know history as good as you, or you can write for a wider audience. Mixing that in a single post often may displease both types of readers. Therefore history posts in general tend to be either for discussion or for education.

But are blogs really suitable for a good discussion? A proper discussion requires sources of one’s opinions while finding sources and rethinking them often takes much time.

So, the more I think about it the more puzzled I become. Honestly, I don’t really know what is the best path to go for a history blog.

A list of my favourite books on Early Modern Wars

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve written to this blog. Empires rose and fell, students graduated, The Trans-Siberian reached the ocean and went back hundred times while my legal roads still kept me far from my spare-time hobbies, history included. But as I see new readers here, I feel obliged to break the silence.

However, before writing something substantial I’d like to pay tribute to great works that inspire me to study Early Modern warfare. I have read enough of this genre to pave a decent square with, but here are the books I cherish most. The order is simply the order in which I remembered them.

1. J. R. Hale. War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620 (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
This is the oldest book in the list but not obsolete. I can’t remember any new theory that was introduced by this book because for me it is mostly a collection of interesting facts. You can start reading from any page but it is very hard to stop. For someone who is acquainted only with books about battles and campaigns Hale would be a revelation because he touched so many other facets of war: logistics, food, civilian troubles, noble ideals, finances, discipline, etc. Today we see that few authors dare to omit such issues of warfare. It is to Hale among some other historians that we owe this widened gaze upon armed conflicts.

Entrepreneurs and Early Modern warfare: an overview

In my subjective opinion military entrepreneurs are one of the most interesting aspects of Early Modern warfare. They certainly constitute a major topic that is impossible to cover in one article. Hence I plan to illuminate some facets of their notorious craft in my future post.

But right now I’d like to give you a starting point by citing a brief (but very accurate in wording) overview of the military entrepreneurship that successfully avoids several old misunderstandings of that phenomenon. For example, it is a common simplistic approach to think that military entrepreneurs flourished only for some decades before and during the Thirty Years’ War and vanished afterwards. In fact they were common enough in Late Middle Ages and even in Eighteenth century, although in somewhat different forms.

The following quote is taken from: Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim. ‘Then was then and now is now’: an overview of change and continuity in late-medieval and early-modern warfare. // European Warfare, 1350–1750. Ed. by Tallett and Trim. Cambridge University Press, 2010.

On false advises: formations and command in early 17th century

Advises to generals of yore have a respected place in many military history books. I could easily name dozen authors who find it irresistibly tempting to suggest certain improvements which were neglected by those who actually fought in the wars instead of spending time in archives and universities. The only problem is that usually such advises would be useless e.g. in Renaissance wars, because these historians tend to miss some minor details which happen to be of paramount importance on the battlefield.

Personally I find it more efficient to assume that everything in Early Modern warfare was applied for a reason unless proved otherwise. Quest for finding such reasons brings into the light far more interesting facts than simple explanation “they were stupid (to use muskets instead of longbows, to charge with lances, to hire mercenaries, etc.)”.

Definition of an early modern mercenary

Speaking about Renaissance wars without mentioning mercenaries is the same as discussing politics without mentioning scoundrels. But who is a mercenary in Early Modern Europe? Lets find out.

“They shot at the skies”: soldiers and firearms of 16th century

Here is a simple secret of distinguishing bad and good books about early modern warfare. Bad books simply tell you that small firearms of the age were so inaccurate that soldiers had to come very close to the enemy in order to hit him. Good books go further and show a difference between accuracy of harquebuses and muskets in tests and in real battles. But still a question is often left unanswered – who is to blame for that inaccuracy? Soldiers or handguns? In other words, did soldiers use their firearms to its full potential? Lets dissect this problem and find the answer.

Republic lost: Venice as a perfect state

Oh, Venice, pure city, perfect state, where art thou? Aye, stones and waters still mark the place of your grandeur, but the Serenissima is long dead, never to return. Have no pity, wayfarer, over collapsing buildings and rising water, they are but epitaphs to the mighty Republic that stood firm for a thousand years…

Could it be otherwise? Could Venice survive in all its glory? The bitter truth is that it could live longer by transforming into a different kind of state – into a true empire for the age when only empires can compete. However, that would be the death of Venice nonetheless, because its old soul would be lost. That’s the power of inevitable fate: sometimes a man or a state faces a challenge that can only be passed by a profound change having little difference from death.

One can spend hours admiring the Venetian architecture and its “wet streets”. One can write books in folio about masterpieces of Venetian artists, sculptors and musicians. This “fiancée to the sea” is still ready to put a traveller under her spell, urging to forget about signs of decay and withering. But the real beauty of Venice could not be frozen inside stones and canvas. This splendour was one of the an ideal state — perfection of a unique clockwork in which thousands of small details were working better than hammers and anvils of more powerful empires. Dogado, Stato da Màr and Domini di Terraferma were a pyramid that stood prouder than burial-vaults of the pharaohs. The Venetian Republic left us a memory of the most stable European state that stood unbowed, unbent, unbroken until the end of the 18th century.

Condottieri and bullets

When handguns had come into vogue, death rate of commanding officers increased tremendously. This corollary is probably the most vivid evidence of firearms superiority over bows and crossbows.

Proud commanders of the time were clad in finest armour of the age. They often emerged from battlefield with only minor wounds, being invincible to arrows, swords and almost anything else except for special anti-armour weapons like maces and spiked warhammers. How good that armour was in stopping bullets is a huge research topic but handguns definitely could pierce it more often than any arrow. Also, in 15th and early 16th century many prominent warlords fell victim to the fact that firearms could kill at the distance dimmed safe in the age of bows and crossbows.

But still there were miracles of surviving even bullet wounds.

Mysteries of battle

Last 50 years of research help us see a much more vivid image of early modern warfare.  The concept of “military revolution” came to life after famous lecture of Michael Roberts in 1955, grew strong in works of Geoffrey Parker and finally was disemboweled by next generation of scholars. Numerous works advanced our knowledge of Renaissance wars far beyond former myths and misconceptions. But these studies also made clear that certain questions can’t be answered at all in conceivable future.