One Million Mercernaries

One Million Mercernaries PDF Author: John McCormack
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 0850523125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
The white mercenaries who attracted the world's attention in the Congo during the early 1960s were never more than a few hundred in number. In contrast, no fewer than a million Swiss troops served as mercenaries in the armies of Europe during the preceding 500 years. Swiss mercenaries form a significant strand in the rope of European military history, and this book draws on many French and German-language sources to describe how the Swiss emerged from the isolated valleys of the Alps with a new method of warfare. Their massed columns of pike-carrying infantry were the first foot-soldiers since Roman times who could hold their own against the cavalry. For a brief period at the end of the 15th century the Swiss army appeared unbeatable, and after Swiss independence had been ensured they were hired out as mercenaries throughout Europe. Kings and generals competed to hire these elite combat troops. Nearly half of the million served with the French, their centuries of loyal service culminating with the massacre of the Swiss Guards during the French Revolution. Marlborough, Frederick the Great and Napoleon all hired large numbers of Swiss troops, and three Swiss regiments served in the British Army.

One Million Mercernaries

One Million Mercernaries PDF Author: John McCormack
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 0850523125
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
The white mercenaries who attracted the world's attention in the Congo during the early 1960s were never more than a few hundred in number. In contrast, no fewer than a million Swiss troops served as mercenaries in the armies of Europe during the preceding 500 years. Swiss mercenaries form a significant strand in the rope of European military history, and this book draws on many French and German-language sources to describe how the Swiss emerged from the isolated valleys of the Alps with a new method of warfare. Their massed columns of pike-carrying infantry were the first foot-soldiers since Roman times who could hold their own against the cavalry. For a brief period at the end of the 15th century the Swiss army appeared unbeatable, and after Swiss independence had been ensured they were hired out as mercenaries throughout Europe. Kings and generals competed to hire these elite combat troops. Nearly half of the million served with the French, their centuries of loyal service culminating with the massacre of the Swiss Guards during the French Revolution. Marlborough, Frederick the Great and Napoleon all hired large numbers of Swiss troops, and three Swiss regiments served in the British Army.

Political Mercenaries

Political Mercenaries PDF Author: Lindsay Mark Lewis
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1137279583
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book

Book Description
The notorious political fundraiser offers an insider's perspective of the dirty backroom deals and secret donations from the uber-wealthy in exchange for favors or favor that made political campaigns into money races over the past 20 years.

The Swiss Reformation

The Swiss Reformation PDF Author: Bruce Gordon
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719051180
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 396

Get Book

Book Description
In this comprehensive study of the Swiss Reformation, Gordon examines the event in the context of the history of the Swiss Federation. The Reformation is presented as a narrative of events followed by an examination of various key themes surrounding the event.

Lincoln's Mercenaries

Lincoln's Mercenaries PDF Author: William Marvel
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807169528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
In Lincoln’s Mercenaries, renowned Civil War historian William Marvel considers whether poor northern men bore the highest burden of military service during the American Civil War. Examining data on median family wealth from the 1860 United States Census, Marvel reveals the economic conditions of the earliest volunteers from each northern state during the seven major recruitment and conscription periods of the war. The results consistently support the conclusion that the majority of these soldiers came from the poorer half of their respective states’ population, especially during the first year of fighting. Marvel further suggests that the largely forgotten economic depression of 1860 and 1861 contributed in part to the disproportionate participation in the war of men from chronically impoverished occupations. During this fiscal downturn, thousands lost their jobs, leaving them susceptible to the modest emoluments of military pay and community support for soldiers’ families. From newspaper accounts and individual contemporary testimony, he concludes that these early recruits—whom historians have generally regarded as the most patriotic of Lincoln’s soldiers—were motivated just as much by money as those who enlisted later for exorbitant bounties, and that those generous bounties were made necessary partly because war production and labor shortages improved economic conditions on the home front. A fascinating, comprehensive study, Lincoln’s Mercenaries illustrates how an array of social and economic factors drove poor northern men to rely on military wages to support themselves and their families during the war.

One Million Mercernaries

One Million Mercernaries PDF Author: John McCormack
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473816904
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book

Book Description
An account of the Swiss soldiers of fortune who plied their trade in the foreign regiments of European militaries and even the American Civil War. The white mercenaries who attracted the world’s attention in the Congo during the early 1960s were never more than a few hundred in number. In contrast, no fewer than a million Swiss troops served as mercenaries in the armies of Europe during the preceding 500 years. Swiss mercenaries form a significant strand in the rope of European military history, and this book draws on many French and German-language sources to describe how the Swiss emerged from the isolated valleys of the Alps with a new method of warfare. Their massed columns of pike-carrying infantry were the first foot-soldiers since Roman times who could hold their own against the cavalry. For a brief period at the end of the fifteenth century the Swiss army appeared unbeatable, and after Swiss independence had been ensured they were hired out as mercenaries throughout Europe. Kings and generals competed to hire these elite combat troops. Nearly half of the million served with the French, their centuries of loyal service culminating with the massacre of the Swiss Guards during the French Revolution. Marlborough, Frederick the Great and Napoleon all hired large numbers of Swiss troops, and three Swiss regiments served in the British Army.

Mercenaries

Mercenaries PDF Author: Col. Michael Lee Lanning
Publisher: Presidio Press
ISBN: 0307416046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book

Book Description
SOLDIERS OF $$ Privateers, contract killers, corporate warriors. Contract soldiers go by many names, but they all have one thing in common: They fight for money and plunder rather than liberty, God, or country. Now acclaimed author and war vet Michael Lee Lanning traces the compelling history of these fighting machines–from the “Sea Peoples” who fought for the pharaohs’ greater glory to today’s soldiers for hire from private military companies (PMCs) in Iraq and Afghanistan. What emerges is a fascinating account of the men who fight other people’s wars–the Greeks who built an empire for Alexander the Great, the Nubians who accompanied Hannibal across the Alps, the Irish who became the first to go global in their search for work. Soldiers of fortune have always had the power to change the course of war, and Lanning examines their pivotal roles in individual battles and in the rise and fall of empires. As the employment of contract soldiers spreads in Iraq and America’s War on Terrorism–the U.S. paid $30 billion to PMCs in 2003 alone–Mercenaries offers a valuable inside look at a system that appears embedded in our nation’s future. Includes eight pages of photographs

The Mercenaries

The Mercenaries PDF Author: Ed Greenwood
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
ISBN: 9780786908660
Category : Fantastic fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Get Book

Book Description
A shadowy figure hires a group of unemployed pirates to aid him on a dangerous mission. But the mission has a hidden purpose, and somewhere behind the scenes it connects to the kidnapping of a young bride from Waterdeep.

Blackwater

Blackwater PDF Author: Jeremy Scahill
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847654789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 956

Get Book

Book Description
Meet Blackwater USA, the private army that the US government has quietly hired to operate in international war zones and on American soil. Its contacts run from military and intelligence agencies to the upper echelons of the White House; it has a military base, a fleet of aircraft and 20,000 troops, but since September 2007 the firm has been hit by a series of scandals that, far from damaging the company, have led to an unprecedented period of expansion. This revised and updated edition includes Scahill's continued investigative work into one of the outrages of our time: the privatisation of war.

Mercenaries and War

Mercenaries and War PDF Author: National Defense University Press
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781678665234
Category : Mercenary troops
Languages : en
Pages : 56

Get Book

Book Description
Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multinational corporations than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant, and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them may backfire.

Armor World

Armor World PDF Author: B. V. Larson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781093774672
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book

Book Description
In a twist of fate that rocks the Galactic Empire, James McGill finds himself negotiating the future of a thousand inhabited worlds. An artificial object made of compressed stardust is barreling toward Earth. Is it an invasion ship? A doomsday weapon? Perhaps it's the final response of Squanto, the Warlord of Rigel who McGill has repeatedly humiliated. Or could it be from the Mogwa, sent to avenge McGill's assassination of Earth's Imperial Governor? No one knows the truth of its origins, but the object is huge and unstoppable. Whoever hurled this rock at us isn't answering our calls. Every weapon bounces off, and the people of Earth begin to go mad as they realize their destruction is only hours away.ARMOR WORLD is the eleventh book of the Undying Mercenaries Series. With over three million copies sold, author B. V. Larson is the king of modern military science fiction.