Ultimus Romanorum

Interlude: Wild Geese, Landsknechts, and Hessians

War is waged by humans. It's an unavoidable fact. Since the first caveman looked across the river and was jealous of his neighbours' cave, it's been a part of our psyche, of our nature. Ants and apes might play at it but humanity has shown itself to be the true master. It's earned the dubious honour of being capable of more acts of savagery and butchery than anyone else. Civilisation far from elevating us from barbarism just enabled us to commit slaughter on a greater scale.

But there weren't so many colonies spread out across the stars capable of manufacturing much more than basic military equipment. At the risk of breaking the back of their economy, they could always purchase better equipment. But what was the point of investing in such quality and then handing it to half-trained farmboys? Technology alone does not win a battle, one has only to look at examples such as Isandhlwana or Adwa for reference. Giving expensive military toys to frontier militaries who barely knew how to use them ensured they'd be about as effective as Iraqi tanks were against their Coalition adversaries in Desert Storm.

Of course equipment was one thing. Another was the actual soldiers. Sure even the most sparsely populated backwater could muster up a few thousand milita at short notice but specialist troops like tank crews, engineers, artillery, walker pilots, only rich worlds with standing militaries could afford to keep those on retainer.

An alternative was to hire professionals. Contract soldiers who were armed with their own equipment. And of course unlike the regular militaries present across the stars, they were kept busy with an endless array of conflicts to choose from. The regulars had to suffer from all the malaise that a peacetime military can go through.

Naturally this could still break the back of a fledgling colony but it would guarantee at least that they had a future. And the fluctuating and huge market allowed a varied and myriad array of companies to be hired.

Regiments varied, not just according to their specialization. Some might be of a mono-ethnic makeup, others of a more cosmopolitan nature featuring faces from a hundred different worlds. Generally traditions were fiercely kept like the French Foreign Legion, regardless of background, they belonged to the regiment now. The character and customs of a regiment helped further distinguish itself from its rivals. Thus there were now the familiar sights of Thais in kilts, Poles daubed in war paint, Germans in turbans and Kenyans wielding kukris.

A regimental language was always standard. It depended on the majority tongue used amongst the troops, the language used by the officers (always an issue if they were of an aristocratic background) and occasionally the political situation. Some regiments were a mass of polygots, most able to at least swear in three or four other tongues. Others were comparable to Slavic Austro-Hungarian infantry, communicating through a pidgin and sharing a root vocabulary of about eighty words.

Of the men themselves, they came from more different backgrounds than there were planets. The regular house militiaries always provided a steady stream of recruits, career soldiers languishing in a peacetime posting were eager for advancement and action. Others were deserters or criminals fleeing the law.

Refugees were another, every war has its losers. Exiled to another world, they could make willing recruits. Other powers are always quick to make use of political fugitives. Britain's loss was France's gain when the Wild Geese left Ireland. Law and custom of war made mass execution an unwise solution (mercenaries are practical, they know sometimes they'll lose) but releasing hundreds or thousands of trained soldiers back into civilian life wasn't practical either. Often the decision was made to simply ship them off-world, sending them as conscripted personnel to another conflict zone. As swordsmen in Ulster were exported to Europe in the early 16th century, so were nine thousand Korean infantry deported from holding pens on Thule straight into trench warfare on Yucatan in the 27th.

For a colonist scraping a living on the frontier or a miner indentured for half his life to a corporation, the mercenary life was a romantic one, offering an escape from drudgery and a chance to see the stars. Many volunteered, few became rich. There are countless numbers of unmarked graves on planets left as their legacy. Every spaceport in the galaxy was full of individual freebooters, signing on with regiments for a campaign or being pressganged.

Their quality varied as well. Some were self-contained private armies, boasting a full array of support arms and even their own space transport. Others were comprised of a couple of scratch companies of infantry, even having to beg a logistics train off their employers. The majority fell soemwhere between this spectrum.

It's often been said that the line between pirate, bandit, marauder and that of mercenary or PMC is a very fine one. There is also much truth to it. A regiment faced with a void contract would typically mutiny, engaging in a process of destruction and looting comparable to the Spanish Fury in Flanders. The sacking of cities has changed little from 3000 BC to 3000AD. And others found that piracy, particularly in the outlier worlds, could be more profitable than honest soldiering.

And on the flip side of the coin, there were those who stuck to their word, who fought to the last round, behaved with respect and humility, minimised civilian casualties, treated prisoners courteously and occasionally extended their contract pro bono. Sadly these exemplars were few and far between.

To view the contracted forces in the 31st century was to see a microcosm of humanity.