Mercenaries: A Guide to Private Armies and Private Military Companies

Alan Axelrod

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781608712489
• eBook ISBN: 9781483364667
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Mercenaries: A Guide to Private Armies and Private Military Companies provides a comprehensive survey and guide to the mercenary forces, entrepreneurs, and corporations that are a major component of warfare today. Security, military advice, training, logistics support, policing, technological expertise, intelligence, transportation—all are outsourced to a greater or lesser degree in the U.S. military—while countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia and Australia rely on privatization in one form or another.

This comprehensive one-volume work covers the full range of mercenaries active on the international military scene today, including a concise history of mercenaries and private armies on land, sea, and in the air. 

Key Features

• Illuminating sidebars include biographies of major figures, key statistics, historical and current documents, contracts, and legislation on private armies and outsourced military services. 
• Each chapter includes a bibliography of books, journal articles, and web sites.
• A general bibliography concludes the entire work.

Mercenaries is a must-have reference for academic libraries, public libraries, and any social science, governmental, or non-governmental reference collection.

Part I Roots and Precedents

• Introduction 3
• Chapter 1. The Ancient World (15th c. bce–ca. 476) 9
• Chapter 2. The Middle Ages (988–1453) 23
• Chapter 3. Feudal Japan and the Ottoman Empire (15th c.–1826) 35
• Chapter 4. Swiss Export Armies, German Landsknechts, and the Wild Geese of Ireland (1315–1918) 49
• Chapter 5. Colonial Control: Hessians and Gurkhas (1775–1947) 63
• Chapter 6. State-Sanctioned Piracy: Corsairs and Privateers (1049–1865) 73
• Chapter 7. The Filibusters (19th c.) 89

Introduction

As mentioned in the Preface, the term mercenary is used in this book in a morally neutral and historically generic sense that draws on mercenarius, the Latin root of the English word, and that means neither more nor less than “one who does something for pay.” Thus, in this book, a mercenary is a military worker (filling a combatant or some other military role), who

1. is recruited locally or abroad to serve in some military capacity, including but not limited to actual armed conflict;
2. is typically motivated essentially by the desire for private gain but who may be motivated or compelled by service owed to his or her governing sovereign;
3. may or may not be a national of the state that recruits him or her;
4. may or may not—in the case of armed conflict—be a party to the conflict;
5. is not a member of the national armed forces or (in the case of armed conflict) of the armed forces of a party to the conflict; and
6. has not been sent by a third-party state on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

In addition to satisfying these basic, generic criteria, most of the individual mercenaries and members of mercenary military organizations discussed in Part I share a few other, more specific characteristics. Most are what most historians would categorize as “true” mercenaries, individuals who are (and would define themselves as) military professionals (“professional soldiers”), prepared and willing to serve under any master. Their value as professionals inheres less in their personal sentiments than in their demonstrated skills as combatants. That is, those who hire them value their military skills more than any promise of loyalty. Historically speaking, most of the mercenaries in Part I did generally trade on their reputation not for fidelity or idealism but for effectiveness in combat and for achieving results in the service of whichever masters employed them.

Chapter 1, “The Ancient World (15th c. bce–ca. 476),” begins with the First Battle of Megiddo (1469 bce), the earliest military engagement of which there is a reasonably coherent historical record. This “ur-battle” is also widely believed to have been the first documented (however marginally) deployment of a mercenary military formation: paid troops from sources outside Egypt, one of the two parties (the other was the kingdom of Mitanni) involved in the conflict. There is good reason to believe that the mercenaries were drawn from a pool of migrants—today loosely labeled “Sea People”—who were neither subjugated nor assimilated by the Egyptians but were truly employed by them, as soldiers, either for direct pay or in exchange for subsistence.

Ultimately, we can only speculate on the actual presence of mercenaries at Megiddo; however, from the Battle of Kadesh, nearly 200 years later, in 1274 bce, through some seven centuries that followed it, mercenaries clearly played a prominent role in Egyptian history. At Kadesh the mercenaries may well have served as elite troops, quite possibly the charioteers who fought in what was the largest chariot battle of which there is any record. Most historians believe that the proportion of mercenary troops in the Egyptian military steadily increased between the time of Kadesh and the Battle of Pelusium, in 525 bce. It may be assumed that, for approximately seven centuries or more, Egypt satisfied its military requirements largely by means of mercenary forces. It was at Pelusium, however, that the great disadvantage of overreliance on mercenaries became all too apparent, as Greek mercenaries from Caria and Ionia defected en masse from the Egyptian to the Persian side just before combat commenced. Egypt’s consequent defeat at Pelusium was catastrophic, resulting in the kingdom’s annexation by the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire.

The lack of loyalty demonstrated by the Greek mercenaries at Pelusium did not reduce the central importance of Greece in the ancient world as a source of soldiers-for-hire. Indeed, for very long periods, the Greeks virtually monopolized the mercenary marketplace. As noted in Chapter 1, Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Eretria, Chacis, and Syracuse each maintained standing armies and navies made up of male citizens who were required by law to render military service. Some Greek city-states created mercenary forces from their conscript pools and sold their services to foreign powers. Often, the city-state paid each individual conscript bonus money for such service. Even more significantly, in many cases soldiers voluntarily banded together after their state obligation was completed, thereby constituting themselves as private military companies. This may be regarded as the origin of the “classic” mercenary company.

The Greek mercenary traditions also gave rise to the earliest clearly recorded incidence of mercenary values trumping anything resembling ethnic, racial, tribal, or quasi-state affiliation. In 499 bce Greek colonists in Ionia rebelled against the Persian Empire—a conflict in which Greek mercenaries in the employ of Persia fought against Ionian ethnic Greeks. Throughout the fifth century bce and later, Greek mercenary forces were often employed by opposing parties to a conflict, so that one Greek force ended up in combat with another.

The monopoly of the Greek mercenary was sharply eroded during the reign of Philip II (382–336 bce) of Macedon and that of his son, Alexander the Great (356–323 bce). Both believed that soldiers fought more effectively and more dependably when they were motivated by loyalty to king and kingdom than when they fought for pay—or, more accurately, for pay alone; for both Philip II and his son rewarded their loyal state armies lavishly. Even though military service was required, it paid handsomely. The death of Alexander in 323 bce and the chaotic Wars of the Diadochi that followed (323–275 bce) quickly renewed the demand for Greek mercenaries, who were also instrumental in the First (264–241 bce) and Second (218–201 bce) Punic Wars.

The rise of Rome as a global military power after the Second Punic War brought about a transition in Rome’s forces from a citizen militia to a paid professional force. This must have been a close approximation to most of the modern armies with which our own era is familiar. To be sure, the Roman legions were not mercenary forces but formations of Romans who chose the salaried vocation of soldier. Following the division of the Roman Empire into the Western and Eastern empires in 395 ce, neither the West nor the East could find sufficient recruits to man their armies and therefore resorted to mercenaries, who were recruited from among subject tribal groups and the peoples of conquered territories. In the West this practice was taken to the extreme of creating units—the Foederati—composed entirely of mercenary troops commanded by fellow mercenaries independently of direct Roman supervision. Within less than 100 years of instituting this practice, the Western Empire collapsed. The Eastern Empire, in contrast, endured for nearly 1,000 years beyond this. While it continued to rely heavily on mercenaries all through this period, they were always under direct imperial command.

Chapter 2, “The Middle Ages (988–1453),” begins well after the collapse of the Western Empire and traces the development of mercenary forces during a time of almost continual European conflict and in the context of a feudal system that dominated all aspects of government administration, including the military. Insofar as military service was owed to a lord as a condition of tenancy on his land, most troops furnished under the feudal system were not mercenaries. Those lords who did not sublet their holdings to tenants, but instead maintained direct control of their lands, often furnished their king the service of paid knights. Called “household knights,” these men were mercenaries and generally highly skilled. They typically formed a small portion—often the elite or command portion—of medieval military formations. In most kingdoms knights could pay a scutage tax in lieu of the military service they owed their king. The king would, in turn, use these funds to hire mercenary troops from abroad or to pay his own subjects for their service.

The feudal system was essentially a rural form of governance and therefore applied mainly in predominantly rural countries. In regions dominated by towns and cities—especially Flanders and northern Italy—military formations consisted of city militias in addition to substantial numbers of mercenary troops. It was in the medieval urban world that private military companies proliferated, becoming both a major industry and a significant political force. The primary focus of Chapter 2 is the great mercenary companies and their effect—both devastatingly disruptive and critically formative—on the history of the Middle Ages. In many regions mercenary leaders made a transition into the ruling class, and mercenary troops became the core of “national” armies.

Chapter 3 moves from feudal Europe to feudal Japan and to the Ottoman Empire, covering the period from the fifteenth century to about 1826—the year in which the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II replaced the Janissary Corps, the most important Ottoman mercenary formation, with an imperial army.

In Japan, before the Asuka Era of the sixth century through the early eighth, rulers were generally warlords who actively and continually engaged in personally raising and personally leading armies. In the course of the early Heian Period—the late eighth century and early ninth century—warlords came more closely to resemble emperors and, in the process, became increasingly aloof from both civil and direct military leadership. In this leadership vacuum, a professional military class began to arise, ultimately evolving into the class of military nobility known as the samurai. By the end of the tenth century, another military class rose up alongside the samurai. This was the militant portion of the Buddhist clergy.

Neither of these classes of military formation was mercenary. The samurai served a shogun (hereditary military dictator) or a daimyo (territorial lord subordinate to a shogun); the militant Buddhist soldier served a particular temple or group of temples. During the fourteenth century, a third military class also emerged. This was the ninja, a type of combatant not only unique to Japan but the only truly mercenary soldier to fight in that country. The first part of Chapter 3 is devoted to the ninja and runs through the early eighteenth century, when the ninja ceased to be a significant military group.

Chapter 3 concludes with the creation of one of history’s most important and most powerful classes of private army, the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire. Although the Janissaries were technically slaves—their military service a kind of taxation—they came to resemble classic mercenaries in every other important aspect, including their professionalism and their foreign origin. Like the mercenary companies of Europe’s urban Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the Janissaries also evolved into a powerful political force.

As the Janissaries declined early in the nineteenth century, two new mercenary classes arose among the Ottomans: the yamaks (who were originally paid auxiliaries of the Janissaries) and a cadre of soldiers of fortune from Western Europe. Many of this latter category served the Ottoman Empire into the early twentieth century and were instrumental in modernizing the state military, whose leaders (many of them trained in Germany) ultimately overthrew Ottoman rule.

Chapter 4 returns to Europe and spans the fourteenth through early twentieth centuries (1315–1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Part I Roots and Precedents
• Introduction
• 1 The Ancient World 15th c. BCE–ca. 476
• 2 The Middle Ages 988–1453
• 3 Feudal Japan and the Ottoman Empire 15th c.–1826
• 4 Swiss Export Armies, German Landsknechts, and the Wild Geese of Ireland 1315–1918
• 5 Colonial Control Hessians and Gurkhas 1775–1947
• 6 State-Sanctioned Piracy Corsairs and Privateers 1049–1865
• 7 The Filibusters 19th c.
• Part II Soldiers of Fortune
• Introduction
• 8 The Legendary Legion 1831–Present
• 9 Mercenaries of the Air: 1861–Present
• 10 Mercenaries in the Vietnam Wars: 1883–1975
• 11 Mercenary Marketplace: Africa 1960–1990s
• Part III The Modern Privatized Military Industry
• Introduction
• 12 Mercenary, Inc.: Warfare Corporatized
• 13 Executive Outcomes: Operational Provider
• 14 Sandline International: Operational Provider
• 15 Blackwater/Xe/Academi: Operational Provider
• 16 Other Operational Provider Firms
• 17 Engility (Formerly MPRI and L-3 MPRI): Consulting Provider
• 18 Other Consulting Provider Firms
• 19 Halliburton/BRS/KBR: Logistical Provider
• 20 Other Logistical Provider Firms
• 21 AirScan: Intelligence Provider
• 22 Other Intelligence Provider Firms
• 23 ArmorGroup/G4S: Security and Antiterror Provider
• 24 Other Security and Antiterror Provider Firms
• References
• Index
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