Read The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order for Free Online

perpetuating a tragic cycle that resulted in ceaseless conflict.
    Continuous wars combined with a lack of economic opportunity swelled mercenary ranks, which drew warriors of all stripes from across the continent. Italy was awash in free companies during this tumultuous era. In France, they fought in the Hundred Years War and were known as
routiers
or
écorcheurs
(literally, “skinners of dead bodies”). In Spain, they fought for both Peters in the war between Peter the Cruel of Castile and Peter the Ceremonious of Aragon. Hiring private armies was how war was usually fought.
    This way of warfare gradually changed between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, shifting from a free market for force dominated by mercenaries to a monopoly controlled by states and their national militaries. This transformation coincided with states’ steady consolidation of power during the Middle Agesover political rivals such as the church, the Holy Roman Emperor, city-states, and aristocratic families, all of which used mercenaries to assert their sovereignty over one another. States invested in their own standing armies, loyal only to them, and outlawed mercenaries, eventually driving them out of business and leaving their nonstate adversaries defenseless.
    States’ monopolization of the market for force was gradual. In the hundred years leading up to 1650, warfare became increasingly violent as armies grew larger, weapons increasingly destructive, and consequences more grave. Power struggles such as those between Habsburg Spain and Holland, Habsburg Austria and the Ottomans, or French Huguenots and French Catholics, dragged on for decades, and the demand for force was great. The reliance on mercenaries was ubiquitous, and the overall cost of warfare was little more than the
solde
, or “pay,” due to mercenaries, from which the word
soldier
is derived. Battles were fought mostly between hired units, and as one military historian explains, “by and large, the military forces of every country consisted of mercenaries.” 4
    During the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), for example, the majority of Sweden’s military was mercenary, a significant number given that Sweden was a military superpower at the time and that King Gustavus Adolphus was one of the great innovators of maneuver warfare. At the Battle of Breitenfeld, only 20 percent of Sweden’s army consisted of Swedes, and at the Battle of Lützen, the figure was 18 percent. European armies were an amalgamation of mercenaries, and the concept of patriotism was unconnected to military service. 5
    By the middle of the seventeenth century, the conduct of violence was a capitalist enterprise no different from any other industry. According to historian Michael Howard, “war became the biggest industry in Europe,” as each side bought and brought increasing numbers of troops to the battlefield. 6 Major engagements during this period typically involved fifty thousand soldiers, as evidenced by the battles of White Mountain (1620), Breitenfeld (1631), Lützen (1632), Nördlingen (1634), Wittstock (1636), and Rocroi (1643).
    To meet the rising demand for troops, a new breed of conflict entrepreneur emerged,
military enterprisers
, who outfitted entire regiments and leased them to those in need of martial services. Distinct from mercenaries, military enterprisers raised armies rather than commanding them. These “rental regiments” or contractor armies allowed rulers to wage war on a grand scale without undue administrative or fiscal reform, effectively lowering the barrier to entry in war and encouraging ever-larger battles. Examples of the greatest military enterprisers include Count Ernest Mansfeld, who raised an entire army for the Elector Palatine; Amsterdam businessman Louis de Geer, who sourced for Sweden a complete operative navy; the Genovese marquis of Spinola, who managed the king of Spain’s military affairs in the Netherlands; and Bernard von Weimar, who produced armies for