How common are historical instances of mercenary armies reversing and attacking their employing country?
score:30
It's very historical and not at all unusual.
Mercenaries only fought when paid - and paid on time! If payment was late or absent, they stopped fighting your enemies. At best, that is. Because from that moment they started to focus on how to get paid. Being in the business of violent enforcement and premeditated murder (we call that 'war'), they had ways to convince their paymaster rethink his sloppy payment policy.
In Dutch there still is a proverb: "Geen geld, geen Zwitsers" or in English: "No money, no Swiss". The Swiss were well known as excellent and courageous mercenaries, as long as they were paid on time. The moment payment was late, they went on strike.
It did happen mercenary bands changed sides, but that was bad for business. Their reputation was very important, such a band would find future employment difficult.
Marching in a threatening way to the capitol, or wherever their employer happend to be, was (and is) a way to get what they want. It did happen, for example Antwerp was unlucky enough to be pillaged twice in first the Spanish and later the French Furies. The French Fury failed. Those troops were not mercenaries, but regular troops. If regular army units pillaged a city over payment issues, you can be sure mercenary units wouldn't be any different.
Mercenaries are as old or nearly as old as the 'oldest profession in the world'. My answer focuses on Swiss and contemporary mercenaries, but the first mercenaries probably used their payment for services from aforementioned oldest professionals.
Cretan archers and Balearic slingers were famous and for hire. Even older were Nubians, employed in the Old Kingdom in Egypt.
Carthage had a navy crewed by Carthaginians, and a (mostly) mercenary army. After the first Punic war they tried to forgo payment, which didn't sit well with the mercenaries.
The famous march of the ten thousand was a mercenary army trying to get home after their contract became redundant.
- Geen Geld, geen Zwitsers (Dutch)
More post
- 📝 Did St Thomas really come to India?
- 📝 Did people have better nutrition before agriculture?
- 📝 Were the Assyrians and the Akkadians different people or the same people under a different name?
- 📝 Could Japan buy natural resources from European colonies before WW2?
- 📝 Why have officers in the U.S. Army tended to "top out" at the level of Major?
- 📝 Are there records of animal "blood lust"?
- 📝 Why didn't the Ottoman Empire remain neutral in WW1?
- 📝 In WWII, what was behind the very early decision to accept nothing but unconditional surrender in 1941-42?
- 📝 Who were the earliest Californian university students?
- 📝 Was there a British Royal tradition associated with the name Elizabeth?
- 📝 What was the purpose of creating the Weimar Republic?
- 📝 Vedas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas and the Science
- 📝 Why was Madagascar settled by far-flung Austronesian seafarers?
- 📝 Are there examples of well known medieval battles with very little archaeological evidence?
- 📝 How did the ruling class in the Muslim world react to the discovery and colonization of the Americas?
- 📝 What's the best way to convert sailing-era burden to modern displacement?
- 📝 Did De Gaulle really say "I am France" (Je suis la France)?
- 📝 How far were women able to advance in the Gestapo?
- 📝 Which country can be viewed as the perfect example of "Capitalism"?
- 📝 What was the wage of the soldiers serving in the CEF compared to the soldiers serving in the British army?
- 📝 Why were penal colony members from Australia moved to San Francisco in 1840's?
- 📝 Why did Charles the Bold have long fingernails?
- 📝 How were expelled ministers "witnessed" during the Great Ejection of 1662?
- 📝 Apart from Veer Savarkar and S.A. Dange, were there any Indian revolutionaries who filed mercy petitions to the British?
- 📝 Is it true that Germans in World War 2 did not suffer punishment for refusing genocidal orders?
- 📝 Was Fascism capitalist or communist or as many say, was it a "third type" of ideology?
- 📝 How often were Soviet records faked?
- 📝 Which event is this memorial referring to when it says WW1 ended in 1919?
- 📝 How did ancient people treat acne?
- 📝 Did Roman troops suffer from PTSD?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 How common are historical instances of mercenary armies reversing and attacking their employing country?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of settlers who were largely uncontacted and undisturbed after settling?
- 📝 How are Julian and Gregorian dates usually represented in historical works?
- 📝 How historical are early Chinese (Shang dynasty and earlier) dynastic records?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of property rights not being respected/acknowledged between U.S. states, territories, and the federal government?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of the capital of a colonising country being temporarily or permanently shifted to one of its colonies?
- 📝 How common was marriage between nobles and peasants in the Middle Ages?
- 📝 How common are major cities not built by abundant water?
- 📝 How were the British and French armies invited into Belgium in 1914?
- 📝 How common was banditry in 16th & 17th century Great Britain and Ireland?
- 📝 How did the ancient Chinese coordinate armies of tens and hundreds of thousands?
- 📝 What are the historical reasons for religious and political negative attitudes towards h*m*sexuality?
- 📝 How many pens were used by MacArthur to end the final chapter of World War II and where are they now?
- 📝 How common was drug abuse and related deaths in the USA during the conservative 1950s?
- 📝 How useful are mythological king lists and geneologies for historians?
- 📝 How high was the morale of non-Soviet Warsaw Pact states' armies and governments in the '80s?
- 📝 How is fact checking and referencing done in historical studies?
- 📝 How are historical nutrition data gathered?
- 📝 How are Kurds and Chaldeans related?
- 📝 Were new forms of communication and media usually condemned similar to how television/video games are now?
- 📝 How can we be sure that a certain historical claim is true and accurate?
- 📝 What is "discovery" in the historical sense? How do historians today view and describe "discoveries"?
- 📝 Have there been known instances in history when a queen consort slept with someone other than her husband, and no one got hurt? How was that possible?
- 📝 How are historical epidemiological studies done?
- 📝 How historically accurate are the subplots about poison gas and false flag assassinations in Babylon Berlin?
- 📝 How common was training with swords and other weapons at Newton's time in England?
- 📝 How does it arise that there are two Colorado rivers, and how does one distinguish between them?
- 📝 Are there documented shifts in how history, time, and accuracy were regarded in society?
- 📝 What kinds of documents were forged in the middle ages and how common was forgery?
- 📝 How common are the following activities historically?
