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A mercenary, also called a merc, soldier of fortune, or hired gun, is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military.
Aug 17, 2024 · Mercenary, hired professional soldier who fights for any state or nation without regard to political interests or issues. From the earliest days of organized warfare until the development of political standing armies in the mid-17th century, governments frequently supplemented their military forces.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Ten Thousand. As chronicled in the historian Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” the “Ten Thousand” were a motley assortment of Greek warriors contracted by Cyrus the Younger to help oust his brother King Artaxerxes II from the Persian throne.
- The White Company. The White Company was one of the most infamous of the so-called “free companies”—bands of for-profit soldiers who conducted the lion’s share of warfare in 14th-century Italy.
- The Swiss Guard. Swiss Guards wait arrive of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Today, the Swiss Guard is known as striped-uniformed protectors of the Pope in the Vatican, but their history stretches back to bands of mercenaries that flourished during the Renaissance.
- The Flying Tigers. Pilots walking past The Flying Tigers. Officially known as the American Volunteer Group, the famed “Flying Tigers” were a three-squadron force of fighter pilots who fought with the Chinese against the Japanese during World War II.
Mercenaries – warriors hired to take part in armed conflicts, without being a formal part of a government’s forces – have played significant roles throughout much of history.
- It’s the second oldest profession. Much of military history is privatized. The word “mercenary” comes from the Latin merces ("wages" or "pay"); today it connotes vileness, treachery, and murder.
- The merc trade was resurrected by the US. For a few hundred years, states cooperated to outlaw mercenaries and privateers (mercenaries of the sea). This came undone after the Cold War.
- Contracting may be the new American Way of War. Why did the US, with the world’s most powerful military, need contractors? Because the All Volunteer Force could not recruit enough American’s to sustain two “long wars.”
- Most contractors who fight for America aren’t even American. When I was in the industry, I worked alongside people from all over the world: Mexico, Ghana, Australia, Canada and so forth.
Dec 4, 2019 · Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster because for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter.
Summary. Mercenaries do nothing but harm. Machiavelli. Mercenary warriors have generally had a bad name over the centuries, and never more so perhaps than in the last third of the twentieth century. My purpose here is to examine both the name and the evaluation.
