The French army harassed by members of a free company.
A free company (sometimes called a great company or, in French, grande compagnie) was an army of mercenaries between the 12th and 14th centuries recruited by private employers during wars. They acted independently of any government, and were thus "free". They regularly made a living by plunder when they were not employed; in France they were called routiers and écorcheurs and operated outside the highly structured law of arms.[1] The term "free company" is most often applied to those companies of soldiers which formed after the Peace of Brétigny during the Hundred Years' War and were active mainly in France, but it has been applied to other companies, such as the Catalan Company and companies that operated elsewhere, such as in Italy[2] and the Holy Roman Empire.
The free companies, or companies of adventure, have been cited as a factor as strong as plague or famine in the reduction of Siena from a glorious rival of Florence to a second-rate power during the later 14th century; Siena spent 291,379 florins between 1342 and 1399 buying off the free companies.[3] The White Company of John Hawkwood was active in Italy in the latter half of the 14th century.[4]
Early history
Mercenary groups first appeared in the 12th century, when they participated in the Anarchy (a conflict of succession between King Stephen and Empress Matilda between 1137 and 1153).
In the 1180s, similar groups were integrated into the armies of the King of France under Philip II of France. These troops of seasoned mercenaries were organized and mobile, a valuable advantage during the battles of the time, and were important elements of the armies of Henry II of England and his son, Richard I. King John used them at the beginning of his reign, when he was richer and more powerful than the King of France. However, in 1204, he did not pay the mercenaries. Philip II of France used them to overcome the Plantagenets.
During the Hundred Years War between England and France there were intermittent hostilities punctuated by periods of truce, when soldiers would be laid off en masse. In the absence of civilian skills and opportunities many, especially the foreign soldiers, formed armed bands known as bandes de routiers or écorcheurs and made a living by pillaging the countryside of southern France until hostilities resumed. Similar events occurred in Spain and Germany. By the time of the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), which brought about a several years suspension of the Hundred Years War, the bands had grown in size to the point where they had evolved an internal structure and adopted romantic names. The Tards-venus (late-comers), led by Seguin de Badefol, ravaged Burgundy and Languedoc and even defeated the forces of the Kingdom of France at the Battle of Brignais in 1362.
The Catalan Company, formed in Spain in the early 1300s, fought in the Byzantine Empire before ending up in what is now Greece and the Navarrese Company, also formed in Spain, followed them there.
By 1356, free companies, men at arms, and brigands had spread throughout the country from the Seine to the Loire engaging in unlawful activities. They had especially infested the roads from Paris to Orléans, Chartres, Vendôme, and Montargis.
Brigands
Brigands were recruited from all nations, but mainly from troops dismissed from the army of Edward III of England after the peace treaty of Brétigny. On October 24, 1360, after the Treaty of Calais ratified the ceasefire of 8 May, Edward III had ordered the evacuation of English troops from fortresses in many parts of France.
Eventually the King of France sent his constable to escort these bands to Spain in order to rid France of them. There they could assist Henry of Trastamara in his ongoing feud with his half-brother Peter of Castile. However, after placing Henry of Trastamara on the throne of Castile, the companies returned to France. One company plundered Vire in 1368[5] and another, conducted by John Cresswell and Folquin Lallemant, seized Château-Gontier.
The White Company (Compagnia Bianca) was also formed after the Treaty of Brétigny and was under the command of John Hawkwood.
The Bretons and the English in Dauphiné were companies which operated from 1374 to 1411, and accompanied the Counts of Armagnac, Turenne, and Duguesclin during their conflicts in Provence and Italy, which brought about the Great Schism between the popes of Avignon and Rome. One of their achievements was taking the Château de Soyons in 1381, from which they were later dislodged by Bouville, governor of Dauphine and Marshal Olivier V de Clisson. Their leaders were Guilhem Camisard, Amaury de Sévérac (the Bastard of Bertusan) and John Broquiers.
The Écorcheurs were demobilized mercenaries who desolated France in the 15th century after the Treaty of Arras in 1435.
Italy
The structure of 12th-century Italy, where a patchwork of rich city states were in a state of perpetual dispute with their neighbours, provided an ideal base for the later and larger mercenary groups with their complements of cavalry, infantry and archers and complex internal structure. Predominantly made up of Italian and German troops, they included the Great Company formed by the German knight Werner von Urslingen (1342), the Compagnia di San Giorgio formed by the Italian nobleman Lodrisio Visconti in 1339, the White Company formed by Albert Sterz (1360) and the Compagnia della Stella of Anichino di Bongardo (Hannekin Baumgarten) (1364).
The companies made a good living by extortion (Siena paid the companies 37 times not to attack them) or by contracting to fight on behalf of one city state against another. They came to be known, in particular their leaders, as condottieri, from the Italian word for contractor. On several occasions the companies were contracted by different states to fight each other.
By the mid-1400s, the power of the free companies had come to an end with the rise in centralised state power and military force.[6]
Condottieri were Italian captains in command of mercenary companies during the Middle Ages and of multinational armies during the early modern period. They notably served popes and other European monarchs during the Italian Wars of the Renaissance and the European Wars of Religion. Notable condottieri include Prospero Colonna, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, Cesare Borgia, the Marquis of Pescara, Andrea Doria, and the Duke of Parma.
Sir John Hawkwood was an English soldier who served as a mercenary leader or condottiero in Italy. As his name was difficult to pronounce for non-English-speaking contemporaries, there are many variations of it in the historical record. He often referred to himself as Haukevvod and in Italy he was known as Giovanni Acuto, literally meaning "John Sharp" in reference to his "cleverness or cunning". His name was Latinised as Johannes Acutus. Other recorded forms are Aucgunctur, Haughd, Hauvod, Hankelvode, Augudh, Auchevud, Haukwode and Haucod. His exploits made him a man shrouded in myth in both England and Italy. Much of his enduring fame results from the surviving large and prominent fresco portrait of him in the Duomo, Florence, made in 1436 by Paolo Uccello, seen every year by 4½ million tourists.
The lance fournie was a medieval equivalent to the modern army squad that would have accompanied and supported a man-at-arms in battle. These units formed companies under a captain either as mercenary bands or in the retinue of wealthy nobles and royalty. Each lance was supposed to include a mixture of troop types that would have guaranteed a desirable balance between the various components of the company at large; however, it is often difficult to determine the exact composition of the lance in any given company as the available sources are few and often centuries apart.
The écorcheurs were armed bands who desolated France in the reign of Charles VII, stripping their victims of everything, often to their very clothes.
The Battle of Brignais was fought on the 6th of April 1362, between forces of the Kingdom of France under Count Jacques de Bourbon, from whom the later royal Bourbons descend, and the Tard-Venus Free Companies, led by mercenary captains including Petit Meschin and Seguin de Badefol.
Alberico da Barbiano was the first of the Italian condottieri. His master in military matters was the English mercenary John Hawkwood, known in Italy as Giovanni Acuto. Alberico's compagnia fought under the banner of Saint George, as the compagnia San Giorgio.
The White Company was a 14th-century English mercenary Company of Adventure, led from its arrival in Italy in 1361 to 1363 by the German Albert Sterz and later by the Englishman John Hawkwood. Although the White Company is the name by which it is popularly known, it was initially called the Great Company of English and Germans and would later often be referred to as the English Company.
Arnaud de Cervole, also de Cervolles, de Cervolle, Arnaut de Cervole or Arnold of Cervoles, known as l'Archiprêtre, was a French mercenary soldier and Brigand of the Hundred Years War in the 14th century.
The Great Company was a group of mercenaries, chiefly of German origin but operating in the Italian peninsula, who flourished in the mid-14th century. At its height, the company numbered approximately 10,000-12,000 men, chiefly armored cavalry. The Great Company's power set the pattern for later condottieri who came to dominate Renaissance Italian warfare.
Routiers were mercenary soldiers of the Middle Ages. Their particular distinction from other paid soldiers of the time was that they were organised into bands. The term is first used in the 12th century but is particularly associated with free companies who terrorised the French countryside during the Hundred Years' War.
Brignais is a commune of the Rhône department in eastern France.
The Funerary Monumentto SirJohn Hawkwood is a fresco by Paolo Uccello, commemorating English condottiero John Hawkwood, commissioned in 1436 for Florence Cathedral. The fresco is an important example of art commemorating a soldier-for-hire who fought in the Italian peninsula and is a seminal work in the development of perspective.
The Compagnia di San Giorgio was the name of several companies of mercenaries in Italy during the 14th century.
Tard-Venus were medieval groups of routiers that ravaged Europe in the later years of the reign of King John II of France.
Seguin de Badefol was a Medieval leader of a large bandit army or Routier With 2000 troops he was the head of the largest group of Tard-Venus.
Perin de Sasine, known by his alias Le Petit Meschin, was a French soldier, mercenary and brigand of the Hundred Years War in the 14th century.
Albert Sterz was a German noble who was a leader of mercenary Free companies, primarily operating in Italy.
Bour de Breteuil was a Mercenary captain of the Hundred Years War.
Bour Camus, or Camus Bour Lesparre, also known as Camus the Bastard was a mercenary captain during the Hundred Years War. He was of Navarrese or Gascon origin.
Bertucat d'Albret was a medieval mercenary leader of a bandit army in the Hundred Years' War.
References
↑ M.H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (University of Toronto Press) 1965.
↑ The free companies headed by condottieri are discussed as a social rather than biographical phenomenon in Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy 1974.
↑ William Caferro, Mercenary Companies and the Decline of Siena (Johns Hopkins University Press) 1998.
↑ Caferro, William (2006). John Hawkwood: an English Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century Italy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN0-8018-8323-7.
↑ Yves Buffetaut, «La prise de Vire par les grandes compagnies», Itinéraires de Normandie, no 15, septembre 2009, p. 60-64.
Contamine, Philippe (1984) War in the Middle Ages, part I, sect. 4 "Free Companies, Gunpowder and Permanent Armies" The relevant section in the definitive book on medieval warfare.
Mallett, Michael (1974), Mercenaries and their Masters. Warfare in Renaissance Italy
Severus, Alexander (1941), "The Fetish of Military Rank", Military Affairs, 5, pp.171–176.
Showalter, Dennis E. (1993), Caste, Skill, and Training: The Evolution of Cohesion in European Armies from the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century, Journal of Military History, 57(3), pp.407–430.
Rowe, B. J. H. (1932). John Duke of Bedford and the Norman 'Brigands'.The English Historical Review, 47(188), pp.583–600.
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