WeekInTime Special Edition: Rent-a-Soldier

WeekInTime explores the history of mercenary soldiers in this month's special edition

Hi WeekInTime readers! 

We’re trying something different with this month’s special edition. Typically, we pick an event that happened a certain number of years ago and we write about it. For our special edition this week, we’re instead focusing on a theme—and we’re using an event that took place this week in time as a launch point to write about it.

We’d love to hear what you think about the new format. Is it good? Bad? Confusing? Let us know! 

As is standard for our monthly special editions, this issue is only available to premium WeekInTime subscribers. You can upgrade to premium by clicking the button below. Thank you for supporting our work!

And now back to the history…

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Rent-a-Soldier

It was an all-out brawl. Germans, Spaniards, Swedes, Danes, Poles, Russians, the Swiss, the Dutch, and the French were at each other’s throats, wreaking havoc across Europe. Through a combination of violence, famine, and disease, somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the region’s population was wiped out. It wasn’t World War I or World War II, but it rivaled both in destruction for Central Europe. And while the belligerents didn’t have tanks or planes they did have one thing that, for the most part, was missing from both World Wars: mercenaries.

Derived from the Latin word merces, meaning “wages” or “pay,” a mercenary broadly refers to “an armed civilian paid to do military operations in a foreign conflict zone.” Today, there’s a stigma attached to the term—Even the most ardent of capitalists would likely admit that a free market for soldiers is a frightening thought. Though this wasn’t always the case. Private soldiers played an integral role in warfare for at least four thousand years. 

But the world of mercenaries began to change after the Thirty Years’ War — a war that kicked off this week in time.