But perhaps the most significant and powerful of the new officials was the collaterale who began to assume an overall responsibility for the administration of the army. He drew up and signed the contracts, supervised inspections and pay, detected deserters and controlled demobilisation, and oversaw all the support services. He enforced the series

Some of the earliest mercenary companies originated as the bodyguards of civic officials.

Recent research into the Hundred Years War in Britain and France has emphasised that ‘war was the continuous exertion of military pressure, mainly on the civilian population’, but this is not the end of the interrelationship between war and society. Armies were not just the scourge of civilians, they were also the employees of civilians. They had

Exiles and disbanded mercenaries were the two most likely starting points for any company and it was probably a combination of the two.

Mercenaries live on war; when peace is signed they have only three choices: to retire to some base and live off their inflated seasonal earnings, to seek another war, or to create for themselves artificial conditions of war by becoming outlaws.

It has been argued with great cogency that the principal driving force in the growth of organised bureaucracy, of fiscal and credit institutions, and ultimately of centralised political power, was the rising cost of warfare, and nowhere was this more clear than in Italy.

Their concern was not to annihilate their rivals, but to achieve security and predominance within clearly defined spheres of influence. Their population resources were a good deal more limited than their wealth, and so their weapons were small professional mercenary armies, the activities of which were related to the needs and intentions of the

Although a great deal has been written about a sudden transformation in the Italian military scene round about 1300 when professional mercenaries replaced largely native troops, either feudal or communal, as the main components of Italian armies, it is the change from employing mercenaries as individuals to employing them in companies which is

It was part of the early myth of Venice that her policies were not directed by individuals but by some sort of corporate awareness of the eternal needs of the Republic. Niccolò Piccinino is said to have remarked on one occasion that he would like to serve Venice ‘because while princes are mortal, the Republic will never die’.