Mercenary

“ The numerous mercenary forces of Germans, Lombards, and Savoyards, who had been brought into the country by one or other of the factions which had so long torn the very vitals of France, helped themselves now without control, and ravaged the miserable country at will. The troops which were actually in the pay of the Government perpetrated the same outrages on the helpless people, and numerous swarms of the very scum of all these, brigands of the vilest and most lawless character, ranged through the land, committing every species of villany and horror under the name of "Begeaux." ”

“ The great argument which has in all ages been used against mercenary troops, is the suspicion which may justly be entertained of their fidelity. Mercenaries, it is observed, fight only for pay, without any affection for the master whom they serve, without any zeal for the cause which they espouse, and without any prospect of advantage from success, more than empty praises, or the plunder of the field, and, therefore, have no motives to incite them against danger, nor any hopes to support them in fatigues; that they can lose nothing by flight, but plunder, nor by treachery, but honour ”

“ With the subjection of the cities to tyrants the habit became general of employing mercenary troops. Afraid of trusting to the militia of the citizens, these petty lords employed bands of hirelings, who, under the name of “companies of adventure,” sold their swords and services to anyone who would pay them. ”

“ In the meantime I have a little time in which to amuse myself, and I shall turn up in about three weeks at Merle Park. I wish chiefly to beg that you will not dissuade me from what I see clearly to be a duty. I know exactly your line of argument. Following a girl for her money is, you will say, mercenary. So, as far as I can see, is every transaction in the world by which men live. The judges, the bishops, the poets, the Royal academicians, and the Prime Ministers, are all mercenary;—as is also the man who breaks stones for 2s. ”

“ But the regular mercenary who had the luck to retire in comfortable circumstances, on savings of pay and loot, is portrayed to us as more inclined to luxury and wantonness in some great city than to the simple monotony of rustic life. ”

“ It must not be understood, however, that mercenary considerations have any connection with the charm which allures them thither. These excellent people—as in my own case, for example—are governed by motives of the purest and most exalted patriotism. ”

“ From regular bands of mercenaries came standing armies and that oppressive military system of modern Europe which has weighed so heavily upon the laboring classes and retarded the moral, the intellectual, and the industrial development of society. All the great wars of modern Europe, till the wars of the French Revolution, had been carried on in a large measure by mercenary troops, among which the Germans were perhaps the foremost for aptitude to arms, power of endurance, cruelty, rapacity, and, as long as they were regularly paid, for fidelity to their banner. ”

“ The body is abandoned to a set of mercenary people, who begin by dragging it from a warm bed to place it on some cold straw. Soon after devotion, or the desire of gain, draws together the undertakers, who first cover the head and face with a kind of cap, in the shape of a bag. ”

“ If a chieftain or a man (common soldier) , who has been ordered to go upon the king's highway for war does not go, but hires a mercenary, if he withholds the compensation, then shall this officer or man be put to death, and he who represented him shall take possession of his house. ”

“ That brave deeds were often done and noble conduct sometimes displayed in it must not blind us to its other and darker features. It was a warfare in which not even women and children were safe from the sword or lance of the knight or soldier; nor sacred [Pg 65] buildings exempt from their rage. It was a warfare in which the occasional mercy shown had a mercenary taint; in which the defeated were only spared for their ransom; and in which prisoners were constantly liable to torture, mutilation, and fetters. ”

“ But the fact is, that not the anti-Christian character of the offence so much as its greater frequency, and the consequent extension of a civil mischief was the ruling consideration with the lawgiver. Among other causes for this greater prevalence of duels, was the composition of armies, more often brought together upon mercenary principles from a large variety of different nations, whose peculiar usages, points of traditional honour, and even the oddness of their several languages to the ear, formed a perpetual occasion of insult and quarrel. ”

“ Lastly, looking at the army system as it is in our modern world, one favourable change is to be noticed. The employment of foreign mercenary troops, which almost through the whole stretch of historical record has been a national evil alike in war and peace, is at last dying out. ”

“ In so far as the king was permitted or able to raise armies, they were small mercenary forces formed, on a basis of unemployed professionals, from pressed men and criminals, and they were disbanded as soon as the brief occasion for their services had passed. ”

“ This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the worst. For as, taking the body natural for symbol of the body politic, the governing and forming powers may be likened to the brain, and the labouring to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and communication of things in changed utilities, is symbolized by the heart; and, if that hardens, all is lost. And this is the ultimate lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us, ”

“ The determining cause of the catastrophe was never quite clear to the community—whether a lover's quarrel with disproportionate consequences, by reason of the marplot activities of a mercenary relative of the lady's, advocating the interests of a sudden opportunity of greater wealth and station ”

“ This frequently gives rise to mercenary dealings between the assassin and the relatives, for the latter hold his life in their hands. If the murderer is rich, he will often have to give up all his property ”

“ Self interest is so ingenious as to deceive both itself and others, by verbal patriotism and false comparisons. The order produced by hereditary magistrates, is compared with the confusion produced by fraudulent laws; superstition is compared with atheism; a well armed and appointed mercenary army, with an unarmed and unorganized militia ”

“ General in command of the forces—foreign mercenaries and louts from the country—he has Jan for able captain. The mercenaries and the louts know nothing yet of what will happen to-morrow—when once the dawn has broken—but they are well prepared; like beasts of the desert they can scent blood in the air; look at them polishing up their swords and cleaning their cullivers! they know that to-morrow they will fight, even though to-night they have had no orders save to see that one prisoner tied with ropes to a beam and fainting with exposure and loss of blood does not contrive to escape. ”

“ The lieutenant accompanied his superior officer as far as the door of his dwelling, and on the way spoke in tones of real concern of the fact that the cleavage between the private soldier and his superiors was so great.
“After all,” he remarked, “many of these poor devils are every bit as well educated as we,—some of them even better,—and as long as this is supposed to be a ‘nation in arms,’ and not, as in the eighteenth century, an army of [59] mercenaries, no such strict difference, socially, ought to be made. ”

“ In one moment the faces of your friends—of your brothers, who bewailed your hurt, who tended you with such gentleness, will disappear, to be succeeded by the revolting, horrible, and triumphant faces of the mercenaries. At the best they will be brutal; at the worst, they, infringing every right of war and of people, will steep their base bayonets in your precious blood! ”

“ Do you think that mercenaries like these, who live by the sword, will be careful of human life? They are sent that the works may be opened by force of arms—and that means slaughter. Why, the most innocent demonstration that any two or three of you may make, one irresponsible outcry by some one in a crowd, may be the signal for a rifle volley. Once the first shot is fired, who may forecast the bloodshed and murder that will follow? And when by force of arms you are crushed, out comes Uriah from the hospital, marches boldly into the works with his gang, and claims his reward. ”

“ On the other hand, the mercenaries, whose merit we may judge of by the price at which they sold themselves, proud of their own meanness, and despising the laws that protected them, as well as their fellows whose bread they ate, imagined themselves more honoured in being Cæsar's satellites than in being defenders of Rome. As they were given over to blind obedience, their swords were always at the throats of their fellow-citizens, and they were prepared for general butchery at the first sign. ”

“ Able seamen sentenced for horse-stealing or rioting, town dwellers raided out of night-houses, impostors who simulated fits or played the maimed soldier, fishermen in the illicit brandy and tobacco line, gentlemen of the road, makers of "flash" notes and false coin, stealers of sheep, assaulters of women, pickpockets and murderers in one unmitigated throng went the way of the fleet and there sank their vices, their roguery, their crimes and their identity in the number of a mess. ”

“ The foreign mercenaries, composed for the most part of the sweepings of the great cities, behaved with a brutality and cruelty almost without example, and which was acknowledged by all the historians of the time, Protestant as well as Catholic. ”

“ These mercenaries were inspired by no spirit of patriotism or party; they fought for pay and booty; they changed sides at the beck of their captain, who was influenced by the highest offer. They fought to-day side by side with men whom the next they might attack as enemies: they fought, therefore, in a placid spirit of friendly {Pg 260} enmity; often not a single soldier fell upon the field of battle. ”

“ Nor is the privilege of the prisoner of war extended to single armed prowlers, by whatever names they may be called, or to persons of the enemy’s territory, who steal within the lines of the hostile army, for the purpose of robbing, killing, destroying bridges, roads, or canals, or of robbing or destroying the mail, or of cutting the telegraph wires. ”

“ The disbanded mercenaries enlisted indifferently on either side, corrupting the ordinary feudal tenantry with the evil habits of the French wars, and pillaged the countryside, with accompaniments of murder and violence, wherever they went. ”

“ Behaving with the unbridled insolence of victorious mercenaries in a conquered country, they made free with whatever they wanted without ceremony, seizing every serviceable horse for the transport of their baggage, even those at the ploughs in the midst of the tillage, extorting money and beating and wounding whoever resisted, without distinction. ”

“ This band of mercenaries, recruited from the scum of the military services of nearly all nations, had received its distinctive appellation almost from the very first, neither Spaniard, Frenchman, nor Austrian being willing to own it. As in all such motley congregations, the excellence of the discipline was greatly dependent upon circumstances. ”

“ Robbery and plunder became common, and that not only on the track of armies or the route of smaller bodies of soldiers, for bands of mere marauders, taking up the cry of the faction that happened in any neighbourhood to have the ascendancy, plundered houses, robbed travellers, and were guilty of all sorts of violence. ”

“ There are many mercenaries in the land who are not in the service of anyone, or who do not long remain in the service of those who hire them, or their masters do not control them as they should, but they go riding about the country seeking to take advantage of people and to rob. ”

“ The people instantly armed themselves and the numbers armed soon increased to upwards of 40,000 men, and were daily augmenting. This most formidable body was not composed of mercenaries, who had little or no interest in the issue, but of the nobility, gentry, merchants, citizens, and respectable yeomanry, men able and willing to devote their time and part of their property to the defence of the whole and the protection and security of their country. ”

“ The eight hundred horsemen turned in dismay, and plunged through the ranks of the men-at-arms, and the mercenaries fell back in terror and confusion, striking each other down and trampling the wounded underfoot in their frantic efforts to escape. ”

“ An enormous pair of Mustachios and Whiskers were frequently seen to protrude from the delicate countenances of some of our Bond Street Beaux.
21 For the purpose of getting Liquor, the invincible British Soldier will commit every species of depredation: he will rob a House, plunder a Church, steal from his Comrade, and strip his own Officer in the midst of death and slaughter. ”

“ The fine picture which our artist has given us for this number of our Magazine, is a spirited representation of a scene in the lives of those men of violence and murder who, setting at defiance both human and divine laws, wrest from the unarmed or overpowered traveler, amid the mountainous districts of Europe, the means of subsistence they are too idle to obtain through honest industry. To their secret retreat the band of robbers have been traced by armed soldiers, whose approach they are anxiously watching. ”

“ As long as they could hire mercenaries to fight for them, they had little appetite for the irksome training, and they grudged the loss of valuable time, which military service would have entailed on themselves. ”