The mercenaries

Definitions

It is important to define what a mercenary is in the fourteenth century. Many foreign lords served the duke during the war of the succession of Brabant or the chevauchée of Jülich. Must they be counted as mercenaries? Certain authors say yes, but I do not agree. I think that it is important to distinguish the man-at-arms who served because of a fief-rente or an indenture from the simple mercenary. Garlan, although he was referring to the ancient world, proposes a simple and excellent definition:

If I compare this with the situation of the foreigners at the orders of the duke, several remarks occur to us. Those combatants who served by virtue of a fief-rente or an indenture did so under the same conditions as the Brabançon combatants. The quittance delivered to William Smit, Jacques Ate, Richard Gille, Adam Cambridge, Thomas Selby, William Salisbury, Hughes Mariot and Gautier Salfinet, English men-at-arms, who had served Joan and Wenceslas during the war of the succession of Brabant is similar, both in its terms and in its form, to the charters delivered to the Brabançons. Their obligations and their conditions of service were in all points the same.

We know that in the Middle Ages the ideas of nation and of nationality were still vague. These terms were not yet territorial. In a celebrated treatise written in 1352, Geoffroy de Charny contrasted those knights fighting at home with those fighting en loyntaines marches. For him, to fight at home was defined not by geography but by ethnicity. The knight thought of the defence of his honour or of his heritage, helping his friends or serving his lord. The ideal knight, according to Geoffroy de Charny, could thus easily find himself on battlefields scattered all over Europe and still be fighting at home. An individual such as Sweder of Abcoude had possessions in Holland, in Brabant and in Hainault.