Historical Perspective

Historical Perspective

The use of private forces in war has a long history that when looked at in perspective shows our current trend of citizen armies to be the exception rather than the norm. There are many examples of the use of mercenaries from ancient history, beginning around about the time of the battle of Kadesh in 1294 B.C where the Pharaoh Ramses II hired an army of mercenary Numidians to help him defeat the Hittites (Taulbee, 1998, p. 145). Other notable uses of mercenaries in ancient history included the use of Cretan’s Slingers, Syracusan Hoplites and Thessalian cavalry that were employed by the Greek’s and the Greeks were similarly hired to fight in other’s wars, such as the Persian civil war (Griffith, 1968, p. 4). The next five hundred years continued this tradition of hiring foreign fighters who were specialists in various areas of warfare. The Macedonians fought for various Greek states around 430 BC, The Punic Wars required a heavy use of mercenaries and even the Roman Empire recruited mercenaries when it served their cause despite being renowned for their citizen army (Delbruck, 1975, p. 250; Singer, 2008, p. 20; Yocherer, 2000, p. 1).  

The tradition of using mercenaries continued into the Middle Ages where feudal lords found that the hiring of forces could fill gaps in their own areas of military deficiency, which is a similar reason given for the hiring of PMFs today (Singer, 2008, p. 22). The use of mercenaries was also favoured in the Middle Ages because the nobility feared arming their own citizens and was also favoured because the nobility sought to minimise the costs that would have been incurred if the whole of society had needed to be mobilised in support of a war (Contamine, 1984, p. 158; Singer, 2008, p. 22). Italy was a wealthy major power at this point in time with wealth held in tradable goods and a citizenry that was considered too valuable to be wasted in warfare, which meant that it was a prime place for the mercenaries of the day to explore (Mockler, 1969, p. 65). Italy was particularly notable in this period because cities such as Venice developed systems to contract out their forces while maintaining careful control over them, which included ways to integrate their successful leaders into the aristocracy (Singer, 2008, p. 23). The Middle Ages was also a period of great instability, plagued by intermittent fighting that led to political circumstances that were very suitable to the private soldier. These mercenaries, or as they were described then, ‘free lances’ were often employed periodically as conflicts required their services. This uncertainty led to the soldiers creating ‘companies’ (from the French con pane which was the bread that soldiers received) which aimed at providing some security for the soldiers in terms of a group to which they could belong. Companies such as the Great Company had nearly 10,000 men in their employment and ran a racketeering operation across, what we now know as Italy, for sixteen years, between 1338 and 1354 (Singer, 2008, p. 25). The mercenaries posed a serious threat to the status quo at the time:

“Feudal ideals of the nobility of birth, land as the basis of authority, the church as an unassailable structure, and loyalty and personal honour as the only motives for fighting were undermined by the fact that the dominant military actors of the period were private companies of freelance soldiers.” (Singer, 2008, p. 24).

            The end of the Thirty Years War and the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 signalled the beginning of the end for mercenaries. Armies of foreigners began to be replaced by citizen armies in a move that corresponded with the decline of personal empire and the rise of the state. Other changes such as the French Revolution and the ideas of Enlightenment such as natural law went hand in hand with people’s desire for sovereignty and a system of government based on meritocracy. The development of the social contract was also a key element in driving the shift towards the citizen army. This is because it implied a different type of connection between citizens and their state. As Deborah Avant explains, “If sovereignty rested in the people, the defence of sovereignty was an obligation held by all” (Avant, 2000, p. 44). Previously the arming of citizens had been difficult because subjects were less willing to bear arms to defend a king than they would be as citizens willing to defend their country (Paret, 1992, p. 43). It is not surprising then that the French led the way in establishing a citizen army. This citizen army was tested against the Prussians in the battles of Auerstadt and Jena in 1806 and came out victorious. The Prussians credited this defeat to the French use of citizens rather than private mercenaries and began to re-examine their own army. There are two main advantages to a citizen army: first, there is the motivational aspect of people fighting for their country and second, there should be a numerical advantage in drawing from your own population, however, as has been discussed, there have been some large mercenary armies. It is doubtful though how much either of these two factors played a part in the battles of Auerstadt and Jena. This is because the Prussian commander, the Duke of Brunswick had been deemed incompetent and the time leading up to the battle was wasted debating Brunswick’s tactics of a cautious defence (Avant, 2000, p. 47). Furthermore, King Frederick William III had refused to use spies which denied the Prussians valuable intelligence on French movements. Despite these other possible reasons for the French victories the Prussians chose to focus on the fact that the French were using an army drawn from civilians and chose to pursue a citizen army themselves.

The use of the citizen army reached its zenith with the two World Wars of the twentieth century. The leading nations were able to amass vast military industries based around armies built from their citizens, fighting for their nation. The current trend away from purely citizen armies and back to a dependency on mercenaries to supplement the regular armies represents a three hundred and sixty degrees change in the perception and use of mercenaries on the battlefield. It also probably reflects the difficulty western nations now have in motivating sufficient citizens to participate in wars and hence, raise large enough numbers of citizens for their military needs. It is quite likely that mirroring the rise of the nation state, the twentieth century may be seen as the high point of the citizen army and that it has now gone into decline, while demand for the services of private military companies is booming.