Fusilier, I think you have the answers right in front of you, if you'll just look at the data without preconceptions.

Once companies were well established entities, the 14th century was known as the time of the great companies, they would typically overwinter at some place they conquered, and then see who wanted to hire them in the Spring.
I think if you look deeper into this you will find that the condotierri companies shrank dramatically (as in 90% or more in most cases) in size during the Winter season, (sometimes before the fall harvest) and most of the warriors filtered away to their homes and to other places. Most contracts for ordinary soldiers were for short terms, one or at the most three seasons. I have information on such contracts from Swiss and south German (Swabian) sources. The process would reverse in the spring as warriors would be re-hired.

Where I would say "soldiers," you say "warriors." To me this is a potentially fundamental disagreement. In my mind warriors are individuals who fight as individuals. Soldiers, band together into units and fight as part of a larger whole. It's not a difference in physical presence, but in mentality. So to me, part of being a good soldier has a lot to do with understanding drills and tactics, and individual prowess with a particular weapon (or weapons) is a secondary consideration. For a warrior it would be reversed -- individual prowess with a weapon is the primary focus.
I chose my words carefully. Soldier implies a true professional working for a State, such as you really didn't see on a large scale in Europe (outside of Byzantium) until after 1648, and arguably not until the French revolution. Both mercenaries and militia are distinct from soldiers, per se, though there was some overlap in well organized States like France or the Venetian Republic. Most militia and part time mercenaries of course did have excellent understanding of drills and tactics, this is in fact one of the main things you and I have been arguing about.

They note that the early condottiere were assumed to be trained, experience men, because they were typically veterans of other wars. (snip) It also stated that they preferred to hire soldiers who at least some training. In the case of crossbowmen, places like Venice and Genova would certainly be good places to recruit, because everybody was required to train with a crossbow.
In the early days of mercenaries throughout Europe, the standard for recruiting was that someone showed up with a weapon and armor. You could not generally carry weapons and armor unless you had the Right to use them, and if you had the Right, you were assumed (not always correctly) to have the necessary skill. In the second part of your statement above, you basically hit upon the point that I've been making all along. Yes they hired crossbowmen from places like Venice and Genoa (and Pisa, and Padua, and Brescia, and Berne and Zurich and Augsburg and Stuttgart and so on) because they were trained in the militia. Militia training was the basis for training most 'soldiers' and mercenaries. It was the same for pikemen, swordsmen and halberdiers.

You have made the assumption that combat experience is the only thing that really made for quality troops - if that was true Somali's would be the best infantry on the planet. But there is clearly also a training component, and we know for a fact that could be extremely effective, or else we would not see stunning victories of relatively inexperienced militias against knights and mercenaries so often, like the Battle of Legnano or Golden spurs or Morgarten or Kutna hora

The interesting question is how were they trained? The truth is, we don't really know that much detail yet, but we have a hint in the existence of special fighting guilds like the ones I mentioned in Flanders and Bologna (whose statutes I posted upthread), and later on, the famous Marxbruder and Federfechter of Germany and Czech, who we know used to certify Dopplesoldner (double-pay) mercenaries for the Landsknecht companies.

I think I've already posted in this thread some images of craftsmen who were also Landsknechts, which was usually the case in fact.


What do you mean by popular narrative? (snip)
What I've been presenting is, to the best of my knowledge, the "current" narrative. As for being based on "very old data" -- well, if by that you mean a careful study of the period sources and archives, then yes! ;-) If you mean that more current research has overturned the narrative -- then I'm more than willing to look at that research.

Pictures of battles don't really constitute a detailed study. I wish I could find a copy of Mallett's and Hale's book on Venice, as that sounds like its a more detailed study of a state which even Mallett claims benefitted from the best trained militia in Italy (supporting its mercenary armies).
One of the really important things that has changed in the last 30 years is that we now know a great deal more about actual armor, weapons, and martial arts today than we did then.

30 years ago even in Academia there was still a great deal of mythology about 200 lbs armor and 10 lbs semi-blunt swords, wielded with crude bashing and hacking (since virtually nobody had any idea of the existence of European Martial Arts). Now thanks to the efforts of guys like Alan Williams on armor, Ewart Oakeshott on swords and Sydney Anglo and various others on Medieval fencing manuals - we have a much more realistic idea of what Medieval and Renaissance combat was actually like.

From some of the comments that you summarized here I think it's quite clear that Mallett was unaware of some of these realities.

There have also been a lot of detailed studies, archival evidence and even archeological field work done on many major Medieval battles since the 1980s which have greatly expanded our general understanding since that time.

As for pictures not giving us a detailed study, with the exception of that one image of urban strife from Bologna, all of the battles I linked images to are very well understood now and I have plenty of source material on them, just let me know if you want more detail or challenge the narrative of any of them and I'll be glad to provide it.

This is interesting for something I just came across last night -- for most of the 14th century, the militia in Italian armies was called up first, and only if the war or campaign bogged down would they turn to hiring mercenary companies. (That's not to say however, that there were no mercenaries involved in the opening stages of campaigns, as small mercenary companies or individually hired mercenaries were still common, just that the bulk of the army remained militia).
Here again, I think the reality is right in front of your nose. Yes they used the militia by preference, because it was better trusted. In a longer campaign, particularly a siege, they would hire more mercenaries for this simple reason: the town could not afford large casualties from their militias, since the militias were the skilled craftsmen and merchants of the town itself, and if they died in large numbers, the town would be mortally wounded. Long sieges were very deadly due to disease, primarily, outbreaks of plague were common and by the turn of the 16th Century a whole host of new foreign diseases (from syphilis to Typhoid fever) added to the danger. So for a rich town it becomes an obvious choice to hire mercenaries instead.


G