Into a pattern of military administration which may appear deceptively well organised there stepped a class of soldier, the mercenary, whose presence to people of the late Middle Ages meant destruction and disorder. While they made a deep impression upon French society in this age, it should not be forgotten that mercenaries constituted a phenomenon encountered elsewhere, in Spain, in Germany and, in particular, in the country dominated by merchant states, Italy. In that country they first appeared in the mid-thirteenth century, groups of men who, under the leadership of enterprising leaders, contracted (hence the name condottiere which they were given) with individual city states which lacked their own armies but had the funds necessary to pay them, to guard their territory and maintain a measure of order. From such relatively peaceful origins they came, by the end of the century, to undertake external war for their employers, pitting themselves against other such groups (the Companies or routiers), in which might be found not only Italians and Germans, but Flemings, Spaniards, Frenchmen and, at times, a few Englishmen. By 1300 such men were coming to form an essential part of the Italian military and political scene. For us, their appearance elsewhere in Europe constitutes an early example of the principle of payment for military service which, as we have seen, became an integral element of the formation of royal armies in England and France in these years.
Such mercenaries were specialist fighters, owing no firm allegiance, men who fought for pay and what they could get out of war. They were specialists in that they were full-time soldiers; war was their life. They were specialists, too, in that they favoured one type of war, that of surprise in which the dawn raid was more effective than the siege. Since their success depended upon their mobility, they could not take cumbersome engines with them; instead, they developed military skills sometimes rather different from those employed by more conventional soldiers. Nor were these men, like their predecessors in Italy, always concerned with the niceties of loyalty. John Hawkwood, as leader of the White Company, spent years fighting against the interests of Florence before entering Florentine service: changing sides did not unduly worry him. What attracted men like him was the prospect of pay in return for war service. It was, then, peace or truce which threatened their existence, and it was because of the termination of hostilities between England and France which resulted from the treaty of Brétigny in 1360, followed as this was in 1364 by the ending of the Navarrese challenge to the royal authority in Normandy and the war of Breton succession, that France, Italy and Spain were to be hosts to the Companies in the 1360s. The problem arose again thirty years later, when their energies were channelled off on a crusade which ended in defeat at Nicopolis in 1396, and yet again in 1444–5 when, after the truce of Tours, the ‘Ecorcheurs’ who were, as their name implied, ‘skinning’ France, were led off for a while to Switzerland and the imperial lands. On all three occasions, peace had created unemployment among soldiers who were looking for adventure and pay. No ruler, possibly other than in Italy, had the means or the wish to employ large forces when there was no war.
To no other group of soldiers functioning in this period was leadership a factor of such prime importance. Freelance soldiers that they were, they depended upon their captains for recruitment, organisation, distribution of booty, and pay. The form of ‘unofficial’ war which they fought was more characteristic of brigandage and open robbery, but it would be wrong to assume that those who constituted the Companies were all, of necessity, men of criminal background or low degree. Indeed, the opposite was frequently nearer the truth, for their leaders were often members of the lower nobility, driven to making war in this way by economic factors and, in some cases, by being younger sons with little hope of inheritance. The members themselves are more difficult to assess and describe. But one important factor is clear: the English element was a considerable one. By the mid-fourteenth century, the predominance of those of English origin was, indeed, so marked that the term ‘Inglese’ and ‘Les Anglais’ became virtually generic names for these groups. Yet many came from elsewhere, notably from Brittany and Gascony. As Philippe de Mézières wrote in the late fourteenth century, some may well have come from those members of the lower nobility who did not normally go to war except when summoned by the king, but who, in certain cases, were now being forced to take up arms as a business. Others were men of ‘petit état’ who, out of daring or a wish to commit pillage, took to this way of life. Others still were from the very lowest ranks of the Church who preferred the more exciting life of the camp. One of the most notorious, Arnaud de Cervole, was not known as ‘the Archpriest’ for nothing.
Generally speaking the Companies had a bad name among the populations for their greed, unscrupulous attitude to the law, and apparent contempt for the forces of order. In Italy, it was said, an ‘Inglese italianato è un diavolo incarnato ‘, an Italianate Englishman is the devil in person. Their methods were often far from respecting the chivalric norms of war. Roamers of the countryside, surprise was their chief weapon, great daring being shown in what some regarded as the finest military feats of all, the capture of walled towns and castles which were then ransomed, having perhaps been used in the meanwhile as bases for military activity further afield. Yet, for all that, many of these men, either singly or as members of a larger group, entered royal service and did well in it. In the fourteenth century, for instance, Arnaud de Cervole was in and out of royal employment and was actually appointed royal chamberlain in 1363, while his son had the duke of Burgundy as his godfather. Similarly, Amiel de Baux held office under the French crown, and was serving in the royal army when it entered Aquitaine in 1371. On the English side Hugh Calveley, having at first sold his services in Spain to du Guesclin, changed sides and served the Black Prince there in 1367; later he was to join John of Gaunt, and he even worked for Richard II in France. Sir Robert Knolles, likewise, fought both for himself and for his king. In a similar way the French crown was able to make good use of the experience of such men, the Valois intervention in Castile in the mid-1360s, under the leadership of du Guesclin (who understood their mentality well), being based largely on the services of these mercenaries.
In the fifteenth century, the freelance soldiers had an important part to play in the war. Henry V and his son employed some whose names can be spotted on muster rolls, not infrequently fulfilling a specialist capacity, especially in the artillery trains. François de Surienne certainly showed himself capable of independent activity before throwing in his lot for some years with Henry VI, whom he served before being elected a Knight of the Garter.
But it was in the French army of the first half of the century that the mercenaries were most prominent. In the decade 1420–30, a sizeable proportion of Charles VII’s army was composed of Scots who fought at both Cravant and Verneuil, a strong contingent of Genoese also taking part in this second battle against the English. The king also depended to a considerable degree upon individuals who, like the leaders of the companies of the previous century, served in the royal army: Poton de Xaintrailles was for a period a ‘véritable routier’, pillaging in different parts of France before accepting office under Charles VII; Antoine de Chabannes, a captain of routiers, at one time had command of 1,000 horsemen before finding employment under the crown. These, and others, like Hawkwood in Italy, fought against authority before joining it. Some of them received high command in the mid-fifteenth century, and some introduced their own characteristics to the fighting of war. Etienne de Vignolles, known by the name of La Hire which his Burgundian enemies had given him, brought off a spectacular stroke with the capture of Château-Gaillard, on the river Seine, in 1430, while in the following year Ambroise de Lore and his band travelled across much of Normandy to attack a fair near Caen, before retreating in good order with their prisoners. Such coups gave the perpetrators of these daring acts something of a romantic image in the popular mind. Some assumed, or were given, names other than their own: Jacques d’Espailly was known as Forte-Epice; La Hire had a cannon named after him, as did Guillaume de Flavy; while, in the eighteenth century, La Hire was to become the named knave of hearts on French playing cards. These were the fighting heroes of their day, whose exploits lived long in the popular imagination.