Thine Honor unto Others, and Thy Years unto the Cruel? Toward a Social History of Mercenary Service in Early Modern Germany

Recent scholarship has convincingly laid to rest a venerable stereotype that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century armies were predominantly recruited from rootless and criminal elements in European society. Yet we still know frustratingly little about the social context of mercenary service in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, and are unlikely ever to possess much systematic information on the subject. Be that as it may, early modern German legal and notarial records do allow us to recover detailed stories about the social origins of mercenaries, their motivations for enlistment, and their prospects – if they survived their military service – for reintegration into civilian society. This paper will offer methodological reflections and present archival case studies on the social lives of German mercenaries, with particular emphasis on the ways in which military service projected individuals through a much wider geographic and cultural space than they might otherwise have experienced.