KJandrew wrote...
Mercenaries were used hugely. The Lombardi's in southern Italy had Norman Mercenaries as their standing armies. They were seen the same as professional soldiers just not as trustworthy as greedy ones would break their contracts for a better offer. As a mercenary you worked for your money and food by obeying your lord. Wheras Smugglers were criminals who were disobeying their leige's laws. There was no punishment for being a mercenary, it was perfectly legal. But for being a smuggler you could lose your hand or your head in harsher places.
Also the Thirty Years War wasn't in medieval period and Machieveli was just at the end of the middle ages
Mercenaries weren't just untrustworthy because they might jump ship for a better offer; it was also very hard to get them to actually risk their lives when push came to shove. If money is their only motivation, how can they ever be expected to risk death? But I actually agree with what you've said, for the most part, and I was probably exaggerating a little to make a point. Still, I think what I was trying to get at is still roughly accurate. Here it is:
From the perspective of those in power, mercenaries were legitimate but potentially dangerous and often distasteful. I think most of what you say above is true, but I would like to reemphasize that the wages of mercenaries, particularly during war, were often paid in pillage not salary. This is of course not so different from knights in the dark ages, but the gap widens as knights become increasingly aristocratic. Smugglers, on the other hand, were illegitimate -- but only because they deprived those rulers of tax revenue (rulers who often behaved in very authoritarian and warmongering ways). In this, they share a great deal with the peasantry in general, who were constantly deceiving their lords about their harvests and such, if only on the margins, in order to increase the chances they could feed their entire families and the like.
From the perspective of commoners, on the other hand, mercenaries often showed up mostly to rape and pillage, whereas smugglers were socially embedded in communities and often brought useful goods with them. Since taxes at that point were not used in the service of the public good, with the partial exception of security (though the lord in question was often security threat #1, which is why comparisons have been drawn between feudal rule and the protection rackets of mafia groups), the thought of blaming people for dodging those taxes wouldn't resonate with most of the public. In periods of exceptionally competent and generous rule, this dynamic might be disrupted, but I think it was probably true more often than it was false.
I think Aveline would probably balance those two perspectives, not take the side of commoners alone, for what that's worth. But I think that what she says about the purpose of the city guard indicates that she feels that protecting regular folk is its noblest purpose. Her perspective, if it were transported directly into medieval Europe, would probably be somewhat anachronistic, but she doesn't live there. The breakdown of how taxes are collected and spent in Kirkwall is pretty unclear, but the city is obviously in need of greater public security, and it doesn't seem like the city's nobility are a big part of the problem. So, she would support taxation to pay the salaries of more guardsmen and have a certain distaste for smuggling. If that's the only way Fereldan refugees can make a buck, though? I think she'd understand, and I think she'd be relieved they're not engaging in banditry. So, I maintain that she would be more nervous about mercenaries than smugglers.
It's true that the we shouldn't read the disgust with mercenaries that was born of the 30 years war back into the earlier period. But I also think that disgust didn't just erupt because of the behavior of mercenaries in that particular war; I think it had been brewing for quite some time. Machiavelli is admittedly also a somewhat later thinker, but I think we should think of as a contemporary of some developments within the Dragon Age universe. So, I think it makes sense to view all of this as part of a process, which
culminates in the experience of the 30 years war, that was set into motion by the untrustworthiness and brutality of mercenaries that had been going on for centuries. Machiavelli's observations are about the past as well, after all, not just contemporary events.
More importantly, I think that it's equally true that we shouldn't read our contemporary comfort with the salience of law and criminality back into history either. The legitimacy of taxation in the first place was not easy to establish or maintain, and it seems pretty clear that non-aristocratic people mostly saw skirting taxation where possible (as in smuggling) as pretty legitimate. And I think our assumptions about smugglers as violent, dangerous people are also born in part of (much) more recent experiences. They probably needed violence to enforce contracts amongst themselves at times, and maybe to avoid being caught, but the preferred strategy is clearly one of hiding and running -- and maintaining the good will of local communities is a crucial part of that strategy.
Once again, the historical record of the real world isn't
that relevant. In Kirkwall, taxes are probably being used to provide public security (which is desperately needed), and corrupt guardsmen are punished when they are caught. And apparently lyrium smugglers are really dangerous, violent people (though I still don't fully understand why). So, I'm not trying to paint all power as evil or all resistance as noble. I don't believe that about the real world or Thedas. But being a mercenary always involves killing for profit, and being a smuggler doesn't. That should hold in either setting, and I think Aveline would understand it too.
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