[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

I've been reading about the swiss in some Ian Heath's books and a detail that caught enough attention was that the Swiss pikemen often came from the poorest classes of the Alps. Apparently, people with more financial conditions would choose to be halberdiers. The argument that would base it would do with the fact that a common pikeman just needed the pike and some training to be able to fight in the formations, while wealthier halberdiers needed more training and spent more money on equipment (halberds would be more expensive and most of theirs would had an mail hauberk, between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries).

Of course among the pikemen they had veteran officers and the avant-garde with more armor and maybe even longswords. But if new formed pikemen used to be poorly armed and have a more basic training, a newbie whom eventually became an veteran could aspire to the front lines? Or was it more common that they became halberdiers? Pikemen and Halberdiers receive the same amount of payment?

[Andrew Gill]

I don't think they were all exceptionally poor. Consider that the Swiss pikemen were started as a citizen militia force to defend the Swiss Cantons, and continued to have this function even when they were contracted out to foreign powers as mercenaries. Apparently they could be called back to fight against invaders at disturbingly short notice. Now if you're recruiting a defensive militia, you want the best soldiers you can get, not the dregs of society. A pike block of strapping young shepherds and apprentices is much more formidable than a corresponding one full of malnourished, half-crippled beggars and serfs. Compare with the English archers of the Hundred years war (who also sometimes hired out as mercenaries later on): the recruiters would find the best people that they could for the army to fight the French.

For what its worth, I think that the German city-states (and the swiss even more so) were more egalitarian societies than we tend to think: Machiavelli certainly thought so, and commented on this and their related effectiveness at military defense in "The Prince". I think things like fencing guilds were also open to the middle classes - craftsmen and other non-nobles of reasonable means. The Swiss commoners apparently often rebelled when they felt that their government was overstepping the mark. While a society like that will probably still have poverty (all do), the poorest of the poor would probably not be as numerous or relatively as badly off as in more autocratic and stratified societies (otherwise their society would have disintegrated into civil war - the people had the arms and the military training to make things very unpleasant).

Then, regarding choice of equipment, I know that in the German Landsknecht groups, the officers were often armed with halberds or other polearms. It may well have been similar in the Swiss pike formations, though I'm not certain of this. But the Doppelsoldners were mostly pike-armed, and they were heavily armoured and received double-pay. Also, remember that the polearms fulfill a different tactical role in the pike formation: they could be deployed on the flanks of the formation, or could be inside the formation, ready to jump in and try to stop local enemy breakthroughs with their shorter handier weapons. Versatile weapons for more highly skilled soldiers.

Others can correct me if I've speculated too wildly (or I'm just plain wrong)

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Daniel Staberg]

In which of his books does Ian Heath write this? I had a look at the Swiss sections of his Armies of the middle ages vol. 1 but could not find it at first glance. It also does not match the actual pricing of the weapons (1 to 1.5 guilders for a pike compared to 40-45 kreuzer for a common halberd (1 guilder=60 kreuzer)) nor the fact that the demands on pikemen to be armoured were more sever as they formed the outer layer of the swiss gewalthaufen and the pikemen in the front ranks in particular had to bear the brunt of the fighting.

There was a lot more to the Swiss military system than it being an ”urban militia”, in effect that the Swiss had universal military service for all men between 16 and 60 and used as system of conscription by selection to raise the ”Auszug” which made up the armies that catapulted the the Swiss to fame by way of the victories in the Burgundian (1474-1477) and Swabian (1499) wars.

The Auszug also made up the bulk of the forces that the Swiss Confedrates used in the campaigns of the Italian wars of the early 16th Century. The so called ”freie knechte” (”free soldiers”) who volunteered to serve without official pay or supplies also added to the Swiss numbers but were held in low regard compared to the official Auszug due to their poor equipment and comparative lack of dicscipline and cohesion.

Swiss mercenaries were not a separate group but drew their recruits from the same pool of trained manpower as the Swiss confedrates used to raise their armies. Indeed the official mercenary contingents that were contracted out by the Swiss Confedracy as a whole or by individual cantons were raised by the same officials that oversaw the conscription of the Auszug. The main diffrence was that the recruits volunteered to serve rather than being conscripted. Men frequently alternated between civilian work and stints in mercenary service or conscription. A well documented example is the famous artist Urs Graf who was a goldsmith by occupation yet served as a mercenary in 1510 and 1521 and took part in the official Swiss armies of 1513&1515 (either as a part of the auszug or as a freiknecht).

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Daniel Staberg]

The double-pay system and the doppelsölder are probably one of the more missunderstod parts of the Landsknecht system and it varied quite a bit over time.

The first and most important thing to keep in mind is that double pay was determined by the contract (aka capitulation or bestallung) not by a particular piece of equipment.

If we look at the (in)famous ”Black Guard” (”Schwarze Garde”aka magna guardia/ /Grosser Garde/Sächsiche Garde) created by Maximilian in 1488 only paid double-pay to the men holding offices i.e the ensign, drummers, fouriers, the webels and so on. The fighting men all got the standard pay of 4 guilders regardless of wether they carried pike, halberd or arquebus. Nor did the possesion of armour allow for greater pay. (Source: Walter Lammers ”Die Schlacht bei Hemmingstedt ”, Lammers used the Garde's muster rolls which includes details for all of the fähnleins.)

The French used a highly standardised contract for the Landsknechts in their service at least from the late 1520's onward. Regardless of wether a fählein was to be 400 or 500 strong it was to have 50 doppelsöldner and 50 arquebusiers. The arquebusiers were not paid double-pay but enjoyed a slight increase compared to the ordinary landsknechts, 6 livre tournois an 15 sols compared to 6 livre tournois for the pikemen and halberdiers. (David Potter, ”Renaissance France at War” and Ferdinand Lot ”Recherches sur les effectifs des armées françaises. Des guerres d'Italie aux guerres de religion, 1494-1562”)

The 1569 & 1570 regulations for the Holy Roman Empire aslo provide interesting if not 100% complete information of the pay of the later Landsknechts. For the 200 men with firearms we get a complete list of the pay, one hundred were to be paid 5 guilders, fifty were paid 6 guilders, forty had a pay of 7 or 8 guilders and the final ten got a pay of 10 guilders as they were armed with the heavy ”doppel-haken”.
The men armed with pike and polearms are a bit more complicated, there were 100 armoured pikemen, it was noted that of these men 50 were to be paid a sold of more than 8 guilders as they were to have complete armour for the arms (either plate or mail) with the implication being that the other 5 were doppelsöldner paid a standard 4 guilders. There were also 50 men who were to have twohanded swords (schlachtschwerter) or other good polearms such as halberds. These men were to be chosen from the oldest and most experienced men who were to have good armour and their task was to ”cover” i.e protect the flag. No pay is mentioned for the but it is likely that these men too got the double pay. The last 50 landsknechts were to be unarmoured pikemen paid the standard 4 guilders.

(Source: Eugen von Frauenholz, ”Das Heerwesen in der Zeit des freien Söldnertums. T. 2, Das Heerwesen des Reiches in der Landsknechtszeit” which has the complete text of the 1570 regulations. A slightly modernised form can be found in Wilhelm, Edlen von Janko ”Lazarus Freiherr von Schwendi, oberster Feldhauptmann und Rath Kaiser Maximilian's II ”. Additional information taken from Johann Heilmann's ”Kriegsgeschichte von Bayern, Franken, Pfalz und Schwaben 1506–1651 ”.)

The Bavarian archives have a number of documents which show the pay issued to Landsknechts in Bavarian service. In 1525 two fählein were enlisted with a total of 61 doppelsöldner and 652 ordinary landsknechts. In 1529 the four fähnleins sent to fight against the Ottoman invasion had a total of 124 doppelsöldner and 1008 ordinary landsknechts.
Another example is the Bavarian kreisregiment led by Marquard, Freiherr zu Königsegg in 1595, it was made up of 5 fähnlein, each of 400 men, 200 doppelsöldner, 100 arquebusiers and 100 musketeers. Of the doppelsöldner 12 had twohanded swords, 9 halberds and the rest pikes. The actual pay had now become quite the complicated affair as men were paid anything from 5 to 24 guilders, The Doppelsöldner were the only ones paid 11 guilders or more (up to 24) though a larg part of them were paid 8 to 10. The musketeers had to make do with 8 to 10 guilders while the poor arquebusiers only got 5 or 6 guilders.
(Source: Johann Heilmann's ”Kriegsgeschichte von Bayern, Franken, Pfalz und Schwaben 1506–1651 ”)

As can be seen by all of these examples there was a great variety as far as the number of doppelsöldner present, indeed among the early Landsknechts they didn't exist at all except as a way of counting pay for the officers, nco's and staff. There was also no absolute connection between their weaponry and their status as doppelsöldner.

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Daniel Staberg]

The Schwarze Garde was not an army as such, rather it was one of the first, perhaps even the first Landsknechts regiments though it predated the more formal organisation troduced by the Reichstag of Worms in 1507.

The Schwarze Garde had it's origin in the Landsknechts brought by Albrech of Saxony to Flanders in 1488 as part of the army that freed Maximilian from his imprisonment in Bruges. After Maximilian was freed Albrecht used the Garde to subdue the various rebels in the Netherlands and it is the connection to Albrecht which gave the Garde one of it's names (Sächsiche Garde/”Saxon Guard”). During the campaigns in the Netherlands it absorbed other mercenary units which had been in Maximilan's service inlcuding the remnants of the 2000 strong ”Magna Guardia” that Maximilian had employed in 1486. Hence the name ”Grosser Garde” which was also used when refering to the Garde. Rather than disbanding when the contract with Maximilian and Albrecht of Saxony ended the Garde soldiered on now led by Nithardt Fux and Thomas Schlentz in the pay of other rulers, notably Edzard of Ostfriesland and King Johann of Denmark. The later used the Garde to reclaim the Swedish throne lost by his father in 1471. Returning to mainland Europe in 1498 it saw further campaigns in the Netherlands and northern Germany before once more entering the service of King Johann of Denmark for his planned campaign to subdue Ditmarschen. However this proved fatal for the Garde as it was defeated and in part destroyed in the battle of Hemmingstedt 1500.

In it's final campaign the Garde fielded a total of 16 companies with a recorded strenght of 3983 men so it was similar in size to other known large Landsknecht regiments though the companies were weak compared to later companies of 400-500 men. (As a comparison Frundsberg had a regiment of 18 companies, Marx Sittich von Embs one with 11 and Schertlin von Burtenbach raised a regiment of 15 companies.)

[Pieter B.]

[Daniel Staberg]

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Mario M.]

[Pedro Paulo Gaião]

[Jaroslav Kravcak]

Well my own notion is mostly the same as already presented before: feudal army was the force to be reckoned with and they would hardly be efficiently opposed by untrained, malnourished and deficiently equipped force.

Speaking about Swiss, or Flemmish as sucesfull middle ages infantry forces, my general picture was allways of an infantry forces very well armed and armoured, formed preferably of more able men and in case of offensive campaigns and mercenaries from the best individual these areas could offer.

I would draw a paralel to Rome, as I dont really see much difference in especially republican roman forces - cca 5th century BC untill the institution of profesional army in 1st century BC. Certainly noone would label victory against romans at these times to them being mere town militia, so Id say same goes for these forces. Especially with the Swiss gaining at least the same efficiency honed to perfecion as far as infantry armed predominantly with cold steel weapons can go, even though not being outright the same in any manner and certainly not in their eventual achievement - but that should go on behalf of the quality of their opposition, rather than their quality per se. So it is propable both republican roman and swiss armies were drawn from city militias of citizens with minimal equipment, training and overall fitness requirements to form and efficient force.

Or in another words, I dont really think oftetimes favoured notion, especially among some gamers about how poor beggars, or outright cavemen were able to beat the flower of chivalry just by going out and beating them to pulp effortlessly stands much credibility. In all examples Ive seen, these militias would be well supplied, armed and armoured and generally were able to maneuver their enemies into the position advantageous for them in cases of their greatest victories.
Oftentimes, their victories werent all that great and the fact, that they often stood up to defeat quite well and havent been broken just testifies to their effectiveness and proficiency.

I also see quite common to asociate the term Doppelsoldner with two handed sword - Im not really that much into precise semantics, but in rough estimation doppel- means double and -sold means payment so it indeed simply describes double-pay-men. So certainly no double handed sword in it and as far as my guess goes they could use anything from harquebus to pike, they received more pay for performing special duties, dangerous tasks, being better armoured, or combination of these, most likely being expected to form frontal ranks, or enfant-perdus in battles, spearheads in sieges etc.