I'm doing some initial groundwork for a story I want to tell in a game I am writing, and I was wondering how a mercenary company actually operated.
My specific questions would be:
As I write these I realise that different companies could work in different ways depending on the contract. I'm thinking more about the Condottieri around the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries but I might just be biased because the Wikipedia article on the Condottieri has some good information about the business side.
Xenophon's Ten Thousand seem to be a collection of many different mercenary groups. Would it have been normal for rulers to loan out units from their armies in times to get them experience in times of peace? If not, where did these men come from?
Are there any articles or books people can recommend? I'm very much interested in the day to day business side of running a mercenary company. Any period would be of interest!
I had posted this on /r/history a year ago, but didn't get much traction
I'm afraid I can't answer this as in depth as I like but can give you suggestions for further reading.
Mercenaries and their Masters - Michael Mallett is one of them more comprehensive books on this. Osprey publishing - Condottieri and Landsknecht give you an idea of the sort of logistics and organisation on the companies.
The White Company was a much looser organisation than later companies, essentially the captains of the company were much more equal and contracts less formal for this than later companies. It also consisted mostly of veterans who were looking for work.
Did they maintain a constant roster of people? Or did they work more like a temp agency?
A little of both, essentially the city would request X number of people from a Condottieri, he would employ his captains to recruit those men. The cities would in time keep a check on this by employing people to compare the roster with what they actually saw in front of them.
Needless to say both cities and Condottieri (and the troops) were constantly trying to make as much money as possible from each other so fraud happened.
Would they have kept paying their soldiers when they weren't on a contract?
No, no work, no pay for the most part. This is especially true for Florence which was awful at paying its troops, while Venice was a very good employer and would supply its troops with a pension if injured. Contracts would also last for several years
Would they have been paid per battle? Year?
They'd usually have fixed contracts and could be paid by either, they'd often have a High Pay and Low Pay equivalent, so get higher pay in the campaign season than when quartered in town.
How would a potential client contact them? Would the mercenaries advertise?
They send a request to known Condottieri or advertise through contacts. For lower ranks you'd have recruiters or agents working and suggesting they could find work here or there. Some of the lower ranks would have obligations to the Condottieri or the captains he employed to command the troops.
If it was essentially like hiring an army, how did they make ends meet between contracts?
Whatever work they could find, moving between cities, disbanding and reforming. The White Company especially was known to be rather more willing to request funds to leave cities and areas alone. Many of the later Italian condotierri were nobles and had an income but serving as a military arm allowed them to supplement it, it also meant they could come ready supplied with their own force from the areas they ruled.