The heavily armored Latin knights, wearing the sign of the cross, impetuously charged against the lighter Seljuk army, with screams of “ Deus vult!” (God wills it). The battle took place in a narrow valley against an imposing Seljuk-Turk army. At the Battle of Antioch in 1211, the emperor Theodore Laskaris led an army of 2,000 men, including 800 Latin knights. A portion of the Bayeux Tapestry, which is thought to have been created in the 11th century.ĭuring the 13th century, Byzantine emperors recognized the value of weaponizing Christian westerners against their Islamic opponents in the east and vice versa. Such acts of insubordination would nearly bring the empire to its knees during times of crisis. The same issue plagued Byzantium in the early 14th century when the famed Catalan Company turned against the emperor, raiding the environs of Constantinople and eventually establishing their own independent principality in Athens. These commanders’ service was highly valued due to their role as shock cavalry, but, as Eleni Tounta’s research shows, they were also known to be prone to insubordination. However, the Byzantine emperors of the late 11th century often had trouble reigning in the ambitions of Norman mercenary commanders. In almost every case, foreign mercenaries gave the lords and princes who employed them a much-needed “tactical difference” against an opponent on the battlefield. In many cases, mercenaries sought money and court titles above opportunities to provide lords with loyal service. They could be political agents in their own right.įrom the 11th to the 14th centuries, the Mediterranean was congested with mercenary groups like Normans, Seljuk Turks, Rus, Pechenegs, Cumans, Catalans, and dispossessed Latin/Italian knights who traversed the Mediterranean searching for the highest bidder. ![]() On the other hand, Medieval mercenaries could be more than just extensions of state and royal actors. As the war in Ukraine has dragged on, they have largely been integrated into the Russian army. ![]() While Wagner mercenaries act as capable special forces and intelligence liaisons for Vladimir Putin’s military ambitions, they are now, for the most part, an extension of the Russian armed forces. The history of the Medieval Mediterranean beckons us to draw comparisons between the past with our present moment. It is an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines.” The player is left valorizing the role of national armies, who fight on behalf of their country or for ideology as the lesser evil to that of private armies engaging in a bloody and never-ending cycle of war profiteering. It is no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. The main character, the grizzled veteran, codenamed “Old Snake” laments: “War has changed. Younger readers might remember that PMCs are the villains in the critically acclaimed 2008 video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, set in a dystopian 21st century in which the United States and other great powers wage proxy wars against each other in the Middle-East, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa through the employment of these private armies. Before the “special operation” in Ukraine, Wagner mercenaries were highly valued by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as superior in combat to the Syrian army. ![]() “PMCs” (private military companies) like Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group have been deployed in Syria, Libya, Mali, the Central African Republic, and now in Ukraine, where they are engaged against UKR forces in the eastern province of Donetsk. But in recent years, nation-states have increasingly employed mercenary groups around the globe. ![]() The very phrase denotes a certain antiquated and bygone era. Since the emergence of the nation-state and national armies in the 18th and 19th centuries, the role of mercenaries in state armies has steadily become obsolete. Ottoman Horse Archer (probably similar to Seljuk warriors who fought in the 13th century).
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