>Feudal Kingdom
>Instead of going to war for the king, cities and nobles pay a tax so that the king can maintain an professional army.
Is that viable or am I overlooking a problem?
Feudal Kingdom
Liam Jackson
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Aaron Ramirez
>implying the nobles wanted the King to have a massive personal army
Parker Smith
No, it´s fair.
Nicholas Thomas
It's mainly a logistical issue given the pyramid shape of feudalism and housing/transportation. The bulk of the army is going to be taken from conscripts or soldiers in service to local Lords, which will be in service to Barons and Kings, etc.
You could do a situation where there is a noble merchant class though, which specializes in trading or manufacturing instead of the traditional farming scheme. If they are importing from sea trade or river trade, have a special mine or skill, etc then they can afford to just pay a tax without having to provide as many bodies.
Anthony Gomez
When they realize they can become officers in that massive personal army and get a massive personal payment they found they idea quite interesting.
Elijah Hernandez
This would require the Nobles to accept that they are being severely weakened. This can be done (the Bourbon French did it by essentially bribing the nobles with palaces and parties), but you will have to explain it.
Look at it from a Noble's point of view. When a feudal army is made out of nobles, the king NEEDs you nobles for his military strength. If you and some of your noble buddies are dissatisfied, you can get up and leave, and the King will lose all the men that would have followed him. If the King wants to punish a noble or take away his fief, he will have to make sure the other nobles will be okay with it, or he will have to fight only with the men in his own lands. When it comes to deciding strategy, the king will have to check with the nobles, the people who are providing the soldiers, and the knights and lesser nobility in those armies are loyal to you first and the king second.
Now see what happens if he has his own standing army. He isn't dependent on your decisions anymore, because his soldiers are paid and trained by him. If you disagree with his military decisions, you can't pull out your soldiers, nor does he need to defer to you. The only leverage you have over his army is the tax revenue; and, in a society where pillage was for a long time a totally lucrative industry, revenue is the easiest thing to obtain by force. And the only way you can defend yourself is to pay for your own army. So now you're paying taxes to keep the king's army and also paying for your own personal army, for even less personal influence.
Logan Campbell
>Is that viable or am I overlooking a problem?
Central power requires powerful institutions. For there to be a national army, there needs to be a Nation in the first place, with a capital N.
In this case, you don't quite have a feudal society any more. You can still have kings and titled lords and the nobility, of course, but they will all operate and move within a national institution that is larger than themselves.
Alexander Davis
Nobility does not H A V E a vested interest in not having a private army.
Jack Hall
Then it isn't a FEUDAL kingdom anymore.
Luis Johnson
Noble are the officers corps and can give rank to their son.