Landsknechts

Origins

The Landsknechts were the German mercenary infantry of the Renaissance. In the 1470s the Swiss pike squares had destroyed the armies of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and every ruler wanted infantry like them. From the late 1480s Maximilian I, later Holy Roman Emperor, raised German foot soldiers trained in the Swiss style. The name probably means "servants of the land," to set them apart from the Swiss. Within a generation they were among the most important hired soldiers in Europe. Georg von Frundsberg, their most famous commander, is often called the father of the Landsknechts.

Organization & Training

Landsknechts were raised by contract. A ruler hired a colonel, who recruited regiments of several thousand men, divided into companies called Fähnlein, each with its own banner. The men swore an oath when they were mustered, elected some of their own spokesmen, and marched with their own courts, provosts and large trains of camp followers. They fought for whoever paid: the Habsburg emperors mostly, but also France and others. When pay stopped, mutiny often followed.

The Landsknecht look became a European legend: slashed and puffed clothing in loud colors, huge hats and codpieces. A popular story holds that Maximilian excused them from the laws on dress because their lives were so short and hard.

Weapons & Equipment

Their war was the push of pike. Massive squares armed with the Pike, about five meters long, were screened by men with the Arquebus. Halberdiers with the Halberd guarded the flags and fought in the press. The front ranks were filled by Doppelsöldner, "double-pay men," who wore more armor and earned extra wages for the most dangerous places. Some carried the great Landsknecht Zweihänder, used to hack at enemy pikes and guard the banner. Almost every man also wore a short, broad sword called the katzbalger.

Notable Actions

Against their Swiss originals the meetings were merciless. Swiss and Landsknechts were bitter rivals, and their clashes, pike block grinding against pike block, were known as "bad war" because little quarter was given. At Bicocca in 1522, Swiss pikes attacking an imperial position were shot down by Spanish arquebusiers and then met by Frundsberg's Landsknechts. At Pavia in 1525 Landsknechts fought on both sides. The imperial army's German and Spanish arquebusiers helped destroy the French knights and capture King Francis I, while Frundsberg's men wiped out the "Black Band" of Landsknechts serving France. Two years later, unpaid imperial troops, many of them Lutheran Landsknechts, mutinied and sacked Rome in 1527, one of the darkest episodes in mercenary history.

Legacy

By the later sixteenth century the Spanish tercio and the growth of standing armies absorbed the Landsknechts' world, and firearms took up more of each formation. The term lived on, however, and German-speaking mercenaries fought through the Thirty Years War. Early modern pike-and-shot infantry was built on their pattern, and the Swiss and German rivalry they began helped shape European warfare for a century. They remain among the most recognizable soldiers of the Renaissance Era, thanks to the woodcuts and paintings of artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Urs Graf.

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