The Business of War in Europe, 1000–1600^73harassed businessman. Efficiency and personal inclination thus tended
to coincide. As a result the town militia that in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries defended Italian cities against all comers began to
give way to hired bands of professional fighting men.
This change was not simply a matter of convenience for the rich: the
poor, too, found military duty increasingly burdensome. Campaigns
became lengthier and well-nigh perennial. Having reduced their sur
rounding countrysides to subjection during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, adjacent cities began to enter upon border quarrels and
trade wars against one another. A civic militia could not permanently
garrison border strongpoints located as much as fifty miles from the
city itself, since militiamen could not afford to stay away from home
for indefinite periods of time.
Conversely, as professional bodies of troops came into being, their
superior skill made militia men unlikely to prevail in battle, especially
when success depended on the difficult coordination of infantry and
cavalry movements. A further factor debilitating Italian civic militias
was the growing alienation between upper and lower classes within the
cities themselves, which made it difficult for rich and poor to cooper
ate wholeheartedly, whether in military or civil affairs. By about 1350,
therefore, Italian civic militias had become archaic holdovers from a
simpler past, seldom called into action and of dubious military value.
Instead, organized violence came to be exercised mainly by profes
sional troops, commanded by captains who negotiated contracts with
appropriate city officials for specified services and time periods.^7
Initially, the decay of primary group solidarity within the leading
cities of Italy and of the town militias which were its military expres
sion invited chaos. Armed adventurers, often originating from north
of the Alps, coalesced under informally elected leaders and proceeded
to live by blackmailing local authorities, or, when suitably large pay
ments were not forthcoming, by plundering the countryside. Such
“free companies" of soldiers became more formidable as the four
teenth century advanced. In 1354, the largest of these bands, num
bering as many as 10,000 armed men, accompanied by about twice as
many camp followers, wended its way across the most fertile parts of
central Italy, making a living by sale and resale of whatever plunder
- On the shift from town militia to professional soldiery see Michael E. Mallett,
Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London, 1974), pp. 1–51;
D. P. Waley, “The Army of the Florentine Republic from the 12th to the 14th Cen
turies,” in Nicholai Rubenstein, ed., Florentine Studies (London, 1968), pp. 70–108;
Charles C. Bayley, War and Society in Renaissance Florence: The “De Militia” of Leonardo
Bruni (Toronto, 1961).