the soldiers did not consume directly on the spot. Such a traveling
company was, in effect, a migratory city, for cities, too, lived by ex
tracting resources from the countryside through a combination of
force or threat of force (rents and taxes) on the one hand and more or
less free contractual exchanges (artisan goods for food and raw mate
rials) on the other.
The spectacle of a wealthy countryside ravaged by wandering bands
of plundering armed men was as old as organized warfare itself. What
was new in this situation was the fact that enough money circulated in
the richer Italian towns to make it possible for citizens to tax them
selves and use the proceeds to buy the services of armed strangers.
Then, simply by spending their pay, the hired soldiers put tax monies
back in circulation. Thereby, they intensified the market exchanges
that allowed such towns to commercialize armed violence in the first
place. The emergent system thus tended to become self-sustaining.
The only problem was to invent mutually acceptable contractual forms
and practical means for enforcing contract terms.
From a taxpayer’s point of view, the desirability of substituting the
certainty of taxes for the uncertainty of plunder depended on what
one had to lose and how frequently plundering bands were likely to
appear. In the course of the fourteenth century, enough citizens con
cluded that taxes were preferable to being plundered to make the
commercialization of organized violence feasible in the richer and
better-governed cities of northern Italy. Professionalized fighting men
had precisely parallel motives for preferring a fixed rate of pay to the
risks of living wholly on plunder. Moreover, as military contracts
(Italian condotta, hence condottiere, contractor) developed, rules were
introduced specifying the circumstances under which plundering was
permissible. Thus, in becoming salaried, soldiering did not entirely
lose its speculative economic dimension.
The merging of military enterprise into the market system of
Italy passed through two distinguishable stages. By the 1380s self
constituted “free companies” had disappeared. Instead it became usual
for cities to enter into contracts with captains who promised to hire
and command a body of troops in exchange for agreed payments of
money. In this way, a city could choose just what kind of a force it
wished to have for a particular campaigning season; and by careful
inspection of the force in question, magistrates, representing the tax
payers, could hope to pay for what they got, and no more. Contracts
were drawn up initially for a single campaign and for even shorter
periods of time. Troops were hired for a specific action: an assault on
74 Chapter Three