Overview

A Note to Readers This book began as a study of the Free Companies of the Hundred Years' War, but it quickly grew into something broader: an exploration of what happens when warfare becomes a profession and violence becomes a commodity. The mercenary companies who haunt these chapters-Seguin de Badefol's Great Company, Hawkwood's White Company, the English ravagers under Knolles, and the Catalan Company in the East-were not accidents of history. They were products of a world in which kings needed soldiers faster than feudal custom could provide, and where unemployed warriors refused to simply fade back into the peasantry. A few words on how to read what follows. First, this is not a purely military history, and not a purely economic one. It occupies the uncomfortable borderland between the two. I follow armies on campaign, but I also follow coins, contracts, and consequences: who paid whom, how much, for what, and what that meant for those who did not carry swords. Because of that, you'll find battle descriptions alongside discussions of ransoms, tax ordinances, and the price of salt. If you find yourself caring as much about an obscure burgess of Auxerre balancing his books as about the Black Prince at Poitiers, then the book has done its work. Second, the chronicles and documents on which this narrative rests are rich but uneven. Froissart and others loved a good story, especially when it cast knights in a flattering light or mercenaries as villains. Account rolls and tax registers, by contrast, are coolly indifferent to drama. Where possible, I have cross-checked chronicles against financial and legal records. Still, there are places where certainty is impossible, and I have tried to make conjecture visible as conjecture. When a chronicler says ""30,000 men"" and an account roll suggests ""3,000,"" I have chosen the more modest figure, noting the chronicler's flourish. Third, you will notice a recurring concern with morality and perspective. Medieval people argued fiercely about the rightness of hiring soldiers-for-hire. Was a knight who served for wages less honorable than one who served for feudal duty? Was a mercenary captain who kept tight discipline more or less virtuous than an unpaid noble who let his retinue sack a town? There are no simple answers, and I have not tried to impose one. Instead, I have tried to bring forward the voices of the time: popes and preachers, but also captains, peasants, and merchants. You will hear Machiavelli's sharp condemnation of mercenaries, but also a mercenary's own unapologetic quip: ""I live by war, and peace would destroy me.""

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