So are mercenaries supposed to start conflicts to stay in business...

the thing you have to remember is that for the longest time, professional armies and soldiers did not exist. Even among the Greeks, it took a group like the Spartans or Sacred Band to exist as full-time soldiers, which is why they were so good. Most soldiers of the era took up arms as a kind of citizen-soldier. They were often potters or farmers before there was a need for them.

Come post-Rome europe and it's the same thing: soldiering was not a career, it was a part time occupation. That's why mercenaries got big. They existed as standing armies, ready to go on a moments notice, and they existed in large quantities.. If a nation needed an army, they hired mercenaries. Raising an army from the citizens was often not possible.

As another user has posted (), Parrot does a good job with this. As he explains in the first chapter, some 19,000 of the French army were mercenaries. The other 2,000 were all of the citizenry that was able to fight on a moment's notice.

his account of history is often contradicted by other sources, namely those who were actually present at the event. Remember that Machivelli was a political idealist: he hated mercenaries on principle because they made a business of war, when he saw war as a means of the people of a nation fighting a war that would forge the nation in some bloody baptism.

>I'm using war as a business to end war as a business

Why wasn't it possible to raise an army of full time soldiers?

STANDING HERE, I REALIZE

not really. Unless it was really small. That would be called a retinue, and be more of a guard than an army.

Not enough money. Pretty much everyone in the world was living hand to mouth and if you taxed them enough to produce a standing army you'd make them go broke and, since the peasantry is the basis of the economy, you'd go broke as well.

The thing that let Rome conquer the world was that it could support an enormous surplus population thanks to its economic structure and no one else could

Not that guy, but economies didn't generate enough wealth to have workers spend all their time training to fight instead of producing. Moreover, most bodies that would organize standing armies couldn't collect enough revenue to maintain a standing army.
Exceptions, of course, exist.

because it wasn't so easy to get the food, weapons, and transportation made.
Remember, this is before centralized government. A feudal lord only realistically controlled a single city. He relied on the surrounding lords to control the rest of his lands.
To raise an army, his lords must be both able and willing. That's not just a phrase by the way, but fact. Moreover, the army all required money from the King's treasury, and from the treasuries of his lords. This was often more expensive than just hiring mercenaries, who could operate on credit rather than hard cash.

GIVE WAR A CHANCE

>a fucking Thunder Hawk

What the fuck kinda mercs are those.

No. No one is going to pay you if you start a war, they're going to target you.

And you're going to be vastly outnumbered with no logistical support, no reinforcements, and no where to run.

In addition to what said, there's also kind of a big historic debate as to whether or not his work was intended to be serious. There's quite a few things in his books (most specifically The Prince) that are either counter-intuitive or almost deceitful, and the fact that he wrote the book for a man he supposedly did not get along with doesn't help the case.

Just take what he says with a grain of salt, and check up other sources as well before you take it as gospel.

>This was often more expensive than just hiring mercenaries, who could operate on credit rather than hard cash.

Combined with fact that mercenaries also already had the internal structure and discipline necessary to be soldiers without major training, and often had a reliable source of arms and armor that didn't need to be maintained by the king (unless specifically stated, but even then it was often still cheaper to do that than hire new soldiers).

Also, mercs were "cats paws" that a king could wash his hands of if they did some distasteful thing, like, say, rape the daughters of a rival noble during a campaign of subjugation (sure, you want to teach the guy a lesson, but a mans got to have SOME standards!) or other socially distasteful behavior. If it were his own troops, it falls directly in his lap, and is now his problem to deal with.

Another note on Mercenaries. They dropped like flies. At least in the "Renaissance" era, armies would take something like 50% casualties from disease alone. Imagine if a Lord's own men were dying like that. Or worse, the peasants that provided his income.

>50% casualties
over a campaign, including the incapacitated and bedridden, I assume?

Yeah, on a campaign. And remember, the early modern strategy of warfare was to actually avoid pitched battles unless forced to or with an overwhelming advantage. So often the soldiers would just be marching around denying the enemy, while dropping from all sorts of diseases that followed the camp.

They do tho. Y do u dink dey dress provocatively?

There has never been a time without war.

How valuable is a mercenary with far more loyalty than one would expect from someone of such a profession?

A individual mercenary us worthless. 5 thousand loyal ones would be with fortunes

all I need is 20 good men

What if this single loyal fella is a fookin legend?

If there's no war to keep all the sellsword companies busy then they start taking over cities for giggles and a war springs up to kick them out anyway.

Ever heard of security forces or corporate hires?

Unless we are talking more historic mercs then things get complicated.