Maybe I Shd Just Google; but What IS the Historical Record Re- Mercenaries?

[snot]

Like, historically, I don't recall that ever working out all that well for the society that deployed them? But history isn't my forte.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. The British Empire ran the world with them...

If you think about it for a minute, England never had nearly enough people to deploy around the world, and they were loathe to send what people they had into battle when they could avoid it.

"Renting" troops from other countries that needed a few bucks was always an option, and if you'll remember stories about "Hessians" during our revolution, that was a prime example. Those hundreds of small German kingdoms and duchies left over from the Holy Roman Empire always needed cash, and were happy to rent units to England. The Margrave, or whatever he was, of Hesse was one of the biggest doing this, so all the Germans ended up being called Hessians.

It might be noted that after losing the battle of Trenton the Germans were terrified of the treatment they would get, since they were told by the Brits that the colonists were cannibals and would boil their innards for breakfast-- this to make them fight harder. They were moved to tears when the colonists they actually met knew of their involuntary servitude and offered them farmland in Pennsylvania should they desert. Their descendants became known as the Pennsylvania Deutsch, which became corrupted into Pennsylvania Dutch.

(And that's TB's Trivia for the wee hours)

[snot]

2. Any precedents re- the equivalent of Blackwater et al. --

i.e., hiring not locals from the countries occupied, but private mercenaries based in the occupying nation?

[TreasonousBastard]

4. That's the dark underside Soldier of Fortune stuff...

and as far as I know it's been mainly banana republics and small-time dictators hiring goon squads. And there's always those rumored fun CIA ventures that can't use American military personnel because of plausible deniability. And there's private security, sometimes heavily armed, at
plants, oil rigs, etc. when things get dicey.

But, no, I can't think of any modern major military operation that used so much private "security." That's not exactly my area of expertise, though.

[truedelphi]

3. Thanks TB. I spent many wonderful childhood summers in

Pennsylvania Dutch farm land areas, and I no idea of the history behind that region and those people.

[DavidMS]

6. That may be correct, but...

I thought that the Pennsylvania Dutch were a religious sect separate from the mercenaries.

I do know that Vauban ended the practice of hiring civilian contractors to haul cannon because they had a tendency to run off when the battle had turned against the forces employing them and when they were needed most to haul the cannon off the field to prevent their capture.

[aikoaiko]

5. Niccolò Machiavelli advised against foreign mercenaries in The Prince.

Its easy reading.

[Igel]

7. Various Middle Eastern countries used them;

I'm not talking the last couple thousand years, but earlier.

Once you got a large empire, you could recruit soldiers. Even then, you might not want to--those soldiers could be growing food and kids, sometimes better to pay soldiers. Tyre had a reasonable mercenary army; even the Egyptians had more than a few troops with Indo-European names. The one problem, really, was that once you had the mercenaries they tended to stay in your land once the battle was over, and if they were numerous enough they might just take over unless you forcibly assimilated them.

The societies usually worked out just fine, short term, and in the long term they all went away anyway.