In pre-modern Europe, I've read that soldiers wives and children sometimes traveled with armies. How would they survive? How would these people be treated?

by Vladith

During long sieges, how would the families of besieging armies support themselves?

Was laundry, cooking, stealing, and sex work necessary for these women and children to survive while living with an army? How much overlap was there between soldiers' families and other camp followers?

Were wives and their children often vulnerable to attacks or theft by other soldiers in the army? If an army was defeated, would any children and civilian women be shared?

vonadler

The camp followers - women, children, tradesmen, bandits, prostitutes, craftsmen and many others would often follow the army. And yes, soldiers' wives and children would often be included among these.

These ran mobile drinking and gambling establishments, cooked, did laundry, cared for the wounded, provided mobile brothels, cared for equipment, repaired and mended equipment and clothes, made gunpowder, cared for horses and oxen and many other things.

Peter Hagendorf, a mercenary in the 30 years' war, who initially fought for the catholics but was captured and recruited into the Swedish army wrote a diary - surviving parts stretch from 1625 to 1649. He married a camp follower, and remarried another when his first wife died and had 8 children with them both, 1 of which survived childhood.

Hagendorf describes looting, how he is cared for by his wife and how his comrades-in-arms gives him part of their plunder when he is wounded and unable to loot himself. He also describes how his wife goes out to loot and returns with valuables herselves.

He describes how his wife is reaping grain abandoned by farmers when the looting, pillaging, murdering and raping army passes by (the latter is my description, not his) and when the Imperials sack Magdeburg, he is wounded and she goes into the city to loot. He writes;

[She] found two silver girdles as well, also clothing, which I unloaded for 12 Thalers in Halberstadt, in the evening my comrades came in and each one honored me with a share, one Thaler or a half Thaler.

Hagendorf switched sides at least twice, and was able to bring his wife and children with him both times - so it seems like the camp followers were force-recruited into the new army just as the soldiers were when taken prisoners. However, I have also read about local peasants and victorious soldiers extracting a vicous revenge upon the camp followers after a victory.