Mercs/sellswords and sellsails

[astarkchoice]

Done before but thought id raise a thresd in this.

As another thread is discussing how professional or not westeros forces are i thought a thread on the full time professionals of essos etc would be a fun time waster until winds is released.

So ballpark figures 

 

Sellswords: we know the disputed lands are VAST and fought over frequently by the lys ,myr and tyrosh.  The golden company gets frequent work and is 10k strong.

Other sellsword companies we see are barely 2k or 500 menish. Therefore to prevent the golden company being  hired  equalling an instant win (utterly unbalancing the  wars  and power struggle between the cities too) its safe to assume that the other 2 cities can hire 10k too (probably need more as the golden company are top notch fighters) so probably about 15k each at least.

Or for realism given a city could hire the golden company AND a few others its safe to assume the wars are.fought with merch forces 20k each upwards! Between 3 cities thats 60k upwards of merc.muscle for sale broken into dozens of companies of various sizes and skill levels!!! Even in the far east of slavers bay we see 1000s of mercs readily hireable.

Lys we are told is protected by high walls and  hired sellswords,sellswords common in tyrosh and myrish hate fighting for themselves! Pentos we can assume given its sheer size and military handicap probably provides lots of young men to the merc armies!

 

Sellsails: stannis we know had saan with 25 galleys as well as 40 myrish galleys with clearly more forgettable captains! If the ironborn can keep a 100+ fleet paid without being allowed to raid westeros thus going further afield we could assume theres at least that in essos and the slave rich basilisk isles ! 

 

Thoughts?

Edited December 31, 2023 by astarkchoice

[Aldarion]

3 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

Other sellsword companies we see are barely 2k or 500 menish. Therefore to prevent the golden company being  hired  equalling an instant win (utterly unbalancing the  wars  and power struggle between the cities too) its safe to assume that the other 2 cities can hire 10k too (probably need more as the golden company are top notch fighters) so probably about 15k each at least.

Or for realism given a city could hire the golden company AND a few others its safe to assume the wars are.fought with merch forces 20k each upwards! Between 3 cities thats 60k upwards of merc.muscle for sale broken into dozens of companies of various sizes and skill levels!!! Even in the far east of slavers bay we see 1000s of mercs readily hireable.

Sounds about right to me.

[Lord Varys]

The Three Daughters also have a standing army and navy of their own. Fighting there is so common that the free companies make up a good portion of the fighters in the Disputed Lands ... but they don't dominate things there completely. If they did, then the sellswords captains and generals would, by now, have supplanted the elites of those cities and that is obviously not the case.

Bittersteel could sack Qohor, for instance. But the Golden Company could not conquer and hold the city, just as the other free cities are still run by the merchant/magister and noble classes.

Examples like the Tattered Prince, Salladhor Saan, etc. also show that the many of the men running the free companies do have a noble background.

 

[SeanF]

The Golden Company has an outstanding reputation, but Harry Strickland does not.

Conversely, there are probably captains whose companies are much smaller, but who have a much higher reputation.  The Tattered Prince is likely one such.

So, if you realise that one of your enemies has hired the Golden Company, you contact a top captain and hire him.  He then sub-contacts with other captains, on the basis that he will serve as captain-general of the whole army, for the duration of the contract.

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

The Golden Company has an outstanding reputation, but Harry Strickland does not.

Not sure if that is accurate in general. Strickland is not charismatic and is not held in high esteem by Connington because he is overly cautious. But he was chosen to lead the company, so he must be popular enough with the men (or at least the officers and sergeants who elected or chose him to be captain-general).

6 hours ago, SeanF said:

So, if you realise that one of your enemies has hired the Golden Company, you contact a top captain and hire him.  He then sub-contacts with other captains, on the basis that he will serve as captain-general of the whole army, for the duration of the contract.

That would be a way, but I guess people kind of overestimate the importance of the free companies outside the Disputed Lands. Volantis is only mildly concerned by the presence of the Golden Company, so we have to assume that under normal circumstance Volantis and the Three Daughters have enough military power to not being cowed into submission by the Golden Company alone.

In light of their relative strength it is also noteworthy that the Golden Company never took over one of the Free Cities or established a state or 'lordship' of their own. If 10,000 professional sellswords were enough to be a big army in the region then this should have happened. But apparently it is not.

Also, we would assume that not every small campaign or war does involve many companies on either side ... that would be a thing only if you have, say, Myr and Tyrosh together to gang up on Lys, or if you had a larger war where four or even five Free Cities are involved.

[astarkchoice]

On 1/1/2024 at 8:18 PM, SeanF said:

The Golden Company has an outstanding reputation, but Harry Strickland does not.

Conversely, there are probably captains whose companies are much smaller, but who have a much higher reputation.  The Tattered Prince is likely one such.

So, if you realise that one of your enemies has hired the Golden Company, you contact a top captain and hire him.  He then sub-contacts with other captains, on the basis that he will serve as captain-general of the whole army, for the duration of the contract.

This would make sense.

A solid company to lead the others vs golden + allies.

 

[astarkchoice]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:32 AM, Lord Varys said:

The Three Daughters also have a standing army and navy of their own. Fighting there is so common that the free companies make up a good portion of the fighters in the Disputed Lands ... but they don't dominate things there completely. If they did, then the sellswords captains and generals would, by now, have supplanted the elites of those cities and that is obviously not the case.

Bittersteel could sack Qohor, for instance. But the Golden Company could not conquer and hold the city, just as the other free cities are still run by the merchant/magister and noble classes.

Examples like the Tattered Prince, Salladhor Saan, etc. also show that the many of the men running the free companies do have a noble background.

 

I think there would need to be more unity with sellsword captains for that to occur plus i think the issue of statehood and company get intermixed ! For example the ghiscari captain who insisted his men deal with the rising threat of dany to his home cities....there may be a bit of complexity to sellsword loyalty outside of just killers for coin.

[Lord Lannister]

If the sellsword companies were doing the majority of the fighting over there they'd be running the show. At the end of the day a sellsword company typically isn't going to fight to the death for someone else's cause. They'll be vicious and oppurtunisitic when the odds are going their way, otherwise they're typically going to cut their losses and pull back so they can fight, and get paid, another day. 

[Aldarion]

25 minutes ago, Lord Lannister said:

If the sellsword companies were doing the majority of the fighting over there they'd be running the show. At the end of the day a sellsword company typically isn't going to fight to the death for someone else's cause. They'll be vicious and oppurtunisitic when the odds are going their way, otherwise they're typically going to cut their losses and pull back so they can fight, and get paid, another day. 

Mercenaries were doing majority of the fighting in the 15th century Italy, yet they weren't "running the show", I think.

[astarkchoice]

3 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

If the sellsword companies were doing the majority of the fighting over there they'd be running the show. At the end of the day a sellsword company typically isn't going to fight to the death for someone else's cause. They'll be vicious and oppurtunisitic when the odds are going their way, otherwise they're typically going to cut their losses and pull back so they can fight, and get paid, another day. 

No a company that tucks and runs isnt gonna get much repeat buisness.

[Lord Varys]

6 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

I think there would need to be more unity with sellsword captains for that to occur plus i think the issue of statehood and company get intermixed ! For example the ghiscari captain who insisted his men deal with the rising threat of dany to his home cities....there may be a bit of complexity to sellsword loyalty outside of just killers for coin.

That is why I mentioned that the leadership of quite a few free companies are members of Free City elites. They would not only represent certain factions within their city states, but also act upon the behalf of said factions in the various conflicts with other cities.

Some would fight for anyone, but others might have a tendency to stand with their home city in most conflicts or effectively be the part of the outsourced military of that city.

[mormont]

The GC has about 10,000 men but there's no need to assume they all act as one unit all the time. They likely take on multiple smaller contracts and send out smaller sub-units to take those on. They couldn't guarantee the demand for huge contracts.

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, Lord Lannister said:

If the sellsword companies were doing the majority of the fighting over there they'd be running the show. At the end of the day a sellsword company typically isn't going to fight to the death for someone else's cause. They'll be vicious and oppurtunisitic when the odds are going their way, otherwise they're typically going to cut their losses and pull back so they can fight, and get paid, another day. 

Machiavelli gave mercenaries a bad name, believing they’d sell out anyone, if the price was right.

Some did, but that’s a trick you could only pull off once.  Most actually fulfilled their contracts, but of course, they only remained loyal for the duration of the contract, and only for so long as they were paid.

Commonly though, men like Hawkwood would contract not to fight against the soldiers of their own sovereigns.

We’re so used to the idea of professional, or conscript, soldiers fighting for their country, that it’s easy to overlook that most soldiers, in 15th century Italy, and in most of Europe, from 1500 to the French Revolution, were soldiers of fortune, who routinely took service with foreign powers. And the tradition lasted till the end of the Napoleonic Wars (eg Heinrich von Brandt  fought variously for Prussia, France, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, before reverting to Prussia, and putting down a Polish revolt as general).

Even when they fought their own countrymen, they were usually not considered traitors, eg Prince Eugene of Savoy.  That’s unthinkable in our era.

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

That is why I mentioned that the leadership of quite a few free companies are members of Free City elites. They would not only represent certain factions within their city states, but also act upon the behalf of said factions in the various conflicts with other cities.

Some would fight for anyone, but others might have a tendency to stand with their home city in most conflicts or effectively be the part of the outsourced military of that city.

Yes, you’d get noblemen like Federico Montefeltro, or various Dukes of Brunswick, whose lordships are pretty small, but who establish reputations as condottieri;  and condottieri who become major nobility, like the Visconti.

[Ran]

Obligatory plug for Guy Gavriel Kay's brilliant A Brightness Long Ago, which features condottieri based on Montefeltro and Sigismondo Pandalfo Malatesta. 

Edited January 4 by Ran

[Lord Varys]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

The GC has about 10,000 men but there's no need to assume they all act as one unit all the time. They likely take on multiple smaller contracts and send out smaller sub-units to take those on. They couldn't guarantee the demand for huge contracts.

That sounds like an odd idea with the Golden Company as a company with their honor and integrity couldn't possibly risk having a number of smaller contingents of their men ending up on different sides. Imagine 2,000 men of the company enter into a five-year-contract to defend Lys, say, and another sign up with Myr, only for one or both those cities deciding to attack each other. You could not foresee this, but professionalism and honor would then dictate that the Golden Company fight each other ... which would defeat the entire purpose of the company which is to grow strong and powerful enough to return to Westeros one day to conquer the Iron Throne in the name of a Blackfyre pretender.

It seems rather more likely that the constant fighting in the Disputed Lands does involve a lot of fighting men, meaning that 10,000 Golden Company men are not exactly a big deal (again - for the Volantenes the presence of the Golden Company in their lands is no big deal - the triarchs are concerned a bit, but don't feel threatened and they can easily dump them on the Westerosi shore by calling upon non-military traders in their harbor). It is also possible that the Golden Company in itself didn't always have 10,000 men but rather grew in size as its reputation grew over the years.

I'd be surprised if Daeron II actually did exile 10,000 or more lords, knights, and commoners in the wake of the Redgrass Field ... but even if he did and if later Blackfyre Rebellions forced more men into exile (the Third Rebellion could have resulted in some such) it should have taken Bittersteel a long time to actually draw many or all the Westerosi exiles together in his company.

He himself fought with Second Sons for a time - likely before he founded the Golden Company in 212 AC, possibly in reaction to the disaster that was the Second Blackfyre Rebellion -, and other exiles might have stayed with that or some other company. We know Aerion Brightflame fought with the Second Sons, too, during his exile ... if some old Blackfyre loyalists remained with that company they might have decided to attach themselves to a real prince, eventually returning with Aerion to Westeros once he was allowed to come back home.

Also, of course, Bittersteel seems to have been a complicated and not exactly likable man. So we can easily imagine that his style and manner of command didn't make him all that popular with his men, at least at times.

I think we do have the number of two score of free companies being active in the Disputed Lands (and others might be active elsewhere in Essos, between the Bones and the Narrow Sea). That could mean that not only tens of thousands of sellsword were active in those lands, but actually over a hundred thousands. 40 times 2,000 is already 80,000, and we could easily assume that some free companies had three or four or five thousand men, while others might only have one thousand or five hundred.

[SeanF]

4 hours ago, astarkchoice said:

No a company that tucks and runs isnt gonna get much repeat buisness.

There’s also pride, at stake.  Just as a modern regiment has its record of battle honours (which include heroic defeats), so would a free company.  

[Aldarion]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Machiavelli gave mercenaries a bad name, believing they’d sell out anyone, if the price was right.

Some did, but that’s a trick you could only pull off once.  Most actually fulfilled their contracts, but of course, they only remained loyal for the duration of the contract, and only for so long as they were paid.

Commonly though, men like Hawkwood would contract not to fight against the soldiers of their own sovereigns.

We’re so used to the idea of professional, or conscript, soldiers fighting for their country, that it’s easy to overlook that most soldiers, in 15th century Italy, and in most of Europe, from 1500 to the French Revolution, were soldiers of fortune, who routinely took service with foreign powers. And the tradition lasted till the end of the Napoleonic Wars (eg Heinrich von Brandt  fought variously for Prussia, France, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, before reverting to Prussia, and putting down a Polish revolt as general).

Even when they fought their own countrymen, they were usually not considered traitors, eg Prince Eugene of Savoy.  That’s unthinkable in our era.

On the flip side however it was also not unusual for "mercenaries" to be soldiers from the kingdom they are fighting for, only difference being that they are doing it under mercenary contract instead of feudal obligation.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

That sounds like an odd idea with the Golden Company as a company with their honor and integrity couldn't possibly risk having a number of smaller contingents of their men ending up on different sides.

That's not how any of this works.

The GC presumably take on unrelated contracts, probably not long term, and are presumably going to be allowed to withdraw if for some unforeseen reason they wind up facing another GC employer - which is pretty unlikely. As an argument for why they must always act as a single unit and why the notion that they take on multiple contracts is 'odd', it's feather-light, I'm afraid.

You'd have to ask GRRM if fighting in these areas regularly require companies of 10,000 mercenaries - it might - but my point was there's no particular need to assume that it does.

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

That's not how any of this works.

The GC presumably take on unrelated contracts, probably not long term, and are presumably going to be allowed to withdraw if for some unforeseen reason they wind up facing another GC employer - which is pretty unlikely. As an argument for why they must always act as a single unit and why the notion that they take on multiple contracts is 'odd', it's feather-light, I'm afraid.

Nah, the notion that companies which in-universe, so far, have only committed to any known employer with their full strength would routinely do the opposite doesn't fit very well with what we know so far. Keep in mind that we actually do know some of the contracts of the Golden Company and other free companies.

The idea that the contracts the Golden Company takes are 'probably not long term' is also without basis. They would last as long as their employer needed them, and some campaigns or wars they would be hired for would last long and others would be pretty short. As is the assumption that their reputation of professionalism and business model could flourish in an environment of ever shifting alliances and continuous warfare. Especially with the Golden Company who are known to never break a contract. That reputation would be a joke if they had men fighting for a lot of people at the same time and clauses stipulating that under such conditions they could not participating in any fighting.

1 hour ago, mormont said:

You'd have to ask GRRM if fighting in these areas regularly require companies of 10,000 mercenaries - it might - but my point was there's no particular need to assume that it does.

No need to ask, we can deduce that the Golden Company are in demand in the Disputed Lands from the text we have. And what we know about their campaigns involves them fighting together, not in small batches. We also don't hear anything about the Yunkai'i hiring companies in smaller batches - they hire complete companies, period - nor, more importantly, does the idea to split the company come up when the officers debate whether to go Meereen or to Westeros. A big logistic problem they face is that they can't move all 10,000 men to Slaver's Bay at that point. But that wouldn't be a big issue if they routinely sent hundreds or a few thousands up and down the coast of Essos.

If your take was a thing in-universe George would really have to answer the question why Connington didn't send at least some men to Dany after the decision was made to go to Westeros. He wants and expects her to come eventually, wants to keep Aegon free to marry her, but to facilitate this some envoys at Meereen would have been rather nice.

(Of course, once the invasion was decided Aegon would be in need of most of the men in Westeros. But they could have spared a couple of hundred men for that mission.)

Thinking further - it would also be rather convenient for the plot that the Golden Company has just a rare 'full company contract' with Myr which they then break so that the entire company can meet with Connington and Aegon - which they do. If it were common practice to spread out the men then we would expect some of them to be in, well, Qohor or Norvos or Lorath at that time. Hell, it might then even have been expected that some would have been in Slaver's Bay - like the Second Sons and Stormcrows - when Dany shows up there.

3 hours ago, Aldarion said:

On the flip side however it was also not unusual for "mercenaries" to be soldiers from the kingdom they are fighting for, only difference being that they are doing it under mercenary contract instead of feudal obligation.

Yeah, the difference is not that big, as feudal obligations also only last for a time and can't be drawn out indefinitely. Which is why during really long campaigns and constant warfare you inevitably got a professionalization of warfare by way of a mercenary industry.