Got a Real World Weapons or Armour Question? Mk XI

[fusilier]

There are lots of potential reasons to use mercenaries - you may not want to risk your own citizens, you may simply not be able to afford the economic cost of having a large portion of your work force gone for an extended period, you may not have one or more specialty troops (cavalry, siege engineers, etc), or you may simply need more troops than you have.

Oh yes. There are plenty of reasons. One of them is that the militia may not be able to stay in the field for too long (before it starts to hurt the livelihoods of the militia members, and potentially the economy of the state).

But there was something that changed in Italy starting around the 13th century, and maturing by the 15th. Venice, which maintained and trained its militia to much higher standard, still found it necessary to employ mercenaries -- and these were year round mercenaries, not just the ones hired for a particular campaign.

On the flip side, permanent professional armies have almost always been better than militia. It's the difference between making a living at something and doing it part time.

I don't know the era well enough to have a strong opinion on which may have been better - but even if they were equal they might still have hired mercenaries.

The first part is really what Mallett's work drives at. The Condottiere system in Italy was one where temporary mercenary service evolved into permanent professional armies. The evolution wasn't that straight-forward, and there would obviously be intermediate stages. But the Condottiere gradually became more and more like professional permanent soldiers. Mallett considers their development over the period to be a key in understanding how professional armies developed.

As for the second part. Yes. Sometimes just to bolster the number of forces, or to make it easier to maintain a long campaign. But, by the fifteenth century, the mercenaries (in Italy) were making up the bulk of the forces, and they were the lead -- militia might be raised to bolster a mercenary army, rather than the other way around.