. From the South-West Palace,
Nineveh. 7th century BC
Europe Classical era Greek mercenaries in the Persian Empire with
hoplites holding javelins and spears •
Xerxes I, King of Persia, employed Arcadian mercenaries during his invasion of Greece. • In
Anabasis,
Xenophon recounts how
Cyrus the Younger hired a large army of Greek mercenaries (the "
Ten Thousand") in 401 BC to seize the throne of Persia from his brother,
Artaxerxes II. Though Cyrus' army was victorious at the
Battle of Cunaxa, Cyrus himself was killed in battle and the expedition rendered moot. Stranded deep in enemy territory, the Spartan general
Clearchus and most of the other Greek generals were subsequently killed by treachery. Xenophon played an instrumental role in encouraging "The Ten Thousand" Greek army to march north to the
Black Sea in an epic fighting retreat. • The
Sileraioi were a group of ancient mercenaries most likely employed by the tyrant
Dionysius I of Syracuse. • In 378 BC the Persian Empire hired the
Athenian general
Iphicrates with his mercenaries in the
Egyptian campaign. • The
Mania, who was a sub-
satrap, used Greek mercenaries in order to capture other cities in the region. •
Memnon of Rhodes (380–333 BC) was the commander of the Greek mercenaries working for the Persian King
Darius III when
Alexander the Great of
Macedonia invaded Persia in 334 BC and won the
Battle of the Granicus River. Alexander also employed Greek mercenaries during his campaigns. These were men who fought for him directly and not those who fought in city-state units attached to his army.
Greek mercenaries in ancient India Greek mercenaries were a significant part of the military forces in ancient India, particularly under the
Indo-Greek Kingdoms and the
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. These
Hellenistic states, founded by Greek rulers after the conquests of
Alexander the Great, frequently employed mercenaries from the wider Greek world to maintain control over their territories and to engage in warfare with both Indian and Central Asian adversaries. The presence of Greek mercenaries in India is documented in ancient
Tamil literature, such as the
Purananuru, which describes Greek soldiers, referred to as "
Yavanas," (a loan from the Greek for "Ionians") as formidable warriors serving Indian rulers. These texts depict them as "valiant-eyed Yavanas, whose bodies were strong and of terrible aspect." Greek mercenaries were particularly prominent in the armies of the Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kings.
Alfred Charles Auguste Foucher suggested that some of the warrior figures depicted in
Gandhara art may represent Greek mercenaries, further supporting their role in military campaigns. Stephanus of Byzantium recorded the existence of an ancient city called Daedala or Daidala () in India, which he described as Indo-Cretan, likely due to the presence of Cretan mercenaries. This suggests that Greek soldiers not only fought in Indian campaigns but also settled in military colonies, forming part of the Hellenistic governance in the region.
Carthage •
Carthage contracted
Balearic Islands shepherds as
slingers during the
Punic Wars against Rome. The vast majority of the Carthaginian military – except the highest officers, the navy, and the
home guard – were mercenaries. •
Xanthippus of Carthage was a
Spartan mercenary general employed by Carthage. • Greek mercenaries were hired by Carthage to fight against the
Dionysius I of Syracuse. Dionysius made Carthage pay a very high ransom for the Carthaginian prisoners, but he left the Greek mercenaries prisoners free without any ransom. This made the Carthaginians suspicious of their Greek mercenaries and discharged them all from their service. With this trick Dionysius did not have to fight again against the Greek mercenaries of Carthage who were very dangerous enemies.
Byzantine Empire In the late
Roman Empire, it became increasingly difficult for Emperors and generals to raise military units from the citizenry for various reasons: lack of manpower, lack of time available for training, lack of materials, and, inevitably, political considerations. Therefore, beginning in the late 4th century, the empire often contracted whole bands of
barbarians either within the
legions or as autonomous
foederati. The barbarians were
Romanized and surviving veterans were established in areas requiring population. The
Varangian Guard of the
Byzantine Empire is the best known formation made up of barbarian mercenaries (see next section).
Other • Members of independent
Thracian tribes such as the
Bessi and
Dii often joined the ranks of large organized armies as mercenaries. • The
Sons of Mars were Italian mercenaries used by the Greek kings of
Syracuse until after the
Punic Wars. • A figure in oral legend,
Milesius was given the princess
Scota after conducting a successful campaign for
Ancient Egypt. •
Mithridates VI Eupator recruited a large number of
Iranians along with the Galatians into the
Pontic army during the
Mithridatic Wars against Rome, using the
Leucosyri,
Persians and
Scythians. •
Illyrians were hired across the
Balkans and further. They were known for their unreliability.
Medieval warfare smen, an illumination from the 11th century chronicle of
John Skylitzes mercenary in Byzantine service (left) and
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, by
Benozzo Gozzoli.
Condottiero meant "contractor" in its more literal sense but came to be applied to leaders of mercenary groups in
Italy during the
Late Middle Ages and the
Renaissance.
Byzantine emperors followed the Roman practice and contracted foreigners especially for their personal
corps guard called the
Varangian Guard. They were chosen among war-prone peoples, of whom the
Varangians (Norsemen) were preferred. Their mission was to protect the Emperor and Empire and since they did not have links to the Greeks, they were expected to be ready to suppress rebellions. One of the most famous guards was the future king
Harald III of Norway, also known as Harald Hardrada ("Hard-counsel"), who arrived in Constantinople in 1035 and was employed as a Varangian Guard. He participated in eighteen battles and was promoted to , the commander of the Guard, before returning home in 1043. He was killed at the
Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 when his army was defeated by an English army commanded by King
Harold Godwinson. The point at which the Varangians ceased to be in the service of the Roman Empire remains unclear. In England at the time of the
Norman Conquest,
Flemings (natives of
Flanders) formed a substantial mercenary element in the forces of
William the Conqueror with many remaining in England as settlers under the
Normans. Contingents of mercenary Flemish soldiers were to form significant forces in England throughout the time of the Norman and early
Plantagenet dynasties (11th and 12th centuries). A prominent example of these were the Flemings who fought during the English civil wars, known as
the Anarchy or
the Nineteen-Year Winter (AD 1135 to 1154), under the command of
William of Ypres, who was
King Stephen's chief lieutenant from 1139 to 1154 and who was made Earl of Kent by Stephen. In Italy, the was a military chief offering his troops, the , to Italian
city-states. The were extensively used by the Italian city-states in their wars against one another. At times, the seized control of the state, as one ,
Francesco Sforza, made himself the Duke of Milan in 1450. During the ages of the
Taifa kingdoms of the Iberian peninsula, Christian knights like
El Cid could fight for a Muslim ruler against his Christian or Muslim enemies. The
Almogavars originally fought for
the counts of Barcelona and
kings of Aragon, but as the
Catalan Company, they followed
Roger de Flor in the service of the
Byzantine Empire. In 1311, the Catalan Great Company defeated at the
Battle of Halmyros their former employer,
Walter V, Count of Brienne, after he refused to pay them, and took over the
Duchy of Athens. The Great Company ruled much of central and southern Greece until 1388–1390 when a rival mercenary company, the
Navarrese Company were hired to oust them. Catalan and German mercenaries also had prominent role in the Serbian victory over Bulgarians in the
Battle of Velbuzd in 1330.
routiers pillage Grammont in 1362, from
Froissart's Chronicles During the later Middle Ages,
Free Companies (or
Free Lances) were formed, consisting of companies of mercenary troops. Nation-states lacked the funds needed to maintain standing forces, so they tended to hire free companies to serve in their armies during wartime. Such companies typically formed at the ends of periods of conflict, when men-at-arms were no longer needed by their respective governments. The were very destructive and became a significant social problem. After the
Treaty of Brétigny ended the war between England and France in 1360, the French countryside was overrun by Free Companies of while the French Crown lacked the necessary military and economic strength to put an end to their activities. To rid France of the rampaging mercenaries and to overthrow the pro-English King
Pedro the Cruel of Castile, Marshal
Bertrand du Guesclin was directed by King
Charles V of France to take the Free Companies into Castile with the orders to put the pro-French
Enrique de Trastámara on the Castilian throne. Guesclin's mercenaries were organized into the Big Companies and French Companies and played a decisive role in putting Enrique on the Castilian throne in 1369, who styled himself King Enrique II, the first Castilian monarch of the House of Trastámara. The
White Company commanded by Sir
John Hawkwood is the best known English Free Company of the 14th century. Between the 13th and 17th centuries the
Gallowglass fought within the Islands of Britain and also mainland Europe. A Welshman
Owain Lawgoch (Owain of the Red Hand) formed a free company and fought for the French against the English during the
Hundred Years' War, before being assassinated by a Scot named Jon Lamb, under the orders of the English Crown, during the siege of Mortagne in 1378.
15th and 16th centuries , drawing by
Urs Graf, himself a Swiss mercenary who may have fought there by
Daniel Hopfer,
Swiss mercenaries were sought during the late 15th and early 16th centuries as being an effective fighting force, until their somewhat rigid battle formations became vulnerable to
arquebuses and
artillery being developed at the same time. The
Swiss Guard in particular were employed by the
Papal States from 1506 (continuing to serve today as the military of
Vatican City). It was then that the German
landsknechts, colorful mercenaries with a redoubtable reputation, took over the Swiss forces' legacy and became the most formidable force of the late 15th century and throughout the 16th century, being hired by all the powers in Europe and often fighting at opposite sides. Sir
Thomas More in his
Utopia advocated the use of mercenaries in preference to citizens. The barbarian mercenaries employed by the Utopians are thought to be inspired by the Swiss mercenaries. At approximately the same period,
Niccolò Machiavelli argued against the use of mercenary armies in his book of political advice
The Prince. His rationale was that since the sole motivation of mercenaries is their pay, they will not be inclined to take the kind of risks that can turn the tide of a battle, but may cost them their lives. He also noted that a mercenary who failed was obviously no good, but one who succeeded may be even more dangerous. He astutely pointed out that a successful mercenary army no longer needs its employer if it is more militarily powerful than its supposed superior. This explained the frequent, violent betrayals that characterized mercenary/client relations in Italy, because neither side trusted the other. He believed that citizens with a real attachment to their home country will be more motivated to defend it and thus make much better soldiers. and
gallowglass mercenaries. Drawing by
Albrecht Dürer, 1521. The
Stratioti or Stradioti (Italian: Stradioti or Stradiotti; Greek: Στρατιώτες, Stratiotes) were mercenary units from the Balkans recruited mainly by states of Central and Southern Europe from the 15th century until the middle of the 18th century. The Stratioti were recruited in
Albania, Greece,
Dalmatia,
Serbia, and later
Cyprus. Most modern historians have indicated that the Stratioti were mostly Albanians. According to a study by a Greek author, around 80% of the listed names attributed to the Stratioti were of Albanian origin while most of the remaining ones, especially those of officers, were of Greek origin; a small minority were of South Slavic origin. Among their leaders there were also members of some old Byzantine Greek noble families such as the
Palaiologoi and
Comneni. The Stratioti were pioneers of light cavalry tactics during this era. In the early 16th century heavy cavalry in the European armies was principally remodeled after Albanian Stratioti of the Venetian army, Hungarian
hussarss, and German mercenary cavalry units (Schwarzreitern). They employed hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, feigned retreats, and other complex maneuvers. In some ways, these tactics echoed those of the Ottoman sipahis and akinci. They had some notable successes also against French heavy cavalry during the Italian Wars. They were known for cutting off the heads of dead or captured enemies, and according to
Commines they were paid by their leaders one
ducat per head. In Italy, during inter-family conflicts such as the
Wars of Castro, mercenaries were widely used to supplement the much smaller forces loyal to particular families. Often these were further supplemented by troops loyal to particular
duchies which had sided with one or more of the belligerents.
17th and 18th centuries . During the 17th and 18th centuries, extensive use was made of foreign recruits in the now regimented and highly drilled armies of Europe, beginning in a systematized way with the
Thirty Years' War. Historian
Geoffrey Parker notes that 40,000 Scotsmen (about fifteen percent of the adult male population) served as soldiers in Continental Europe from 1618 to 1640. After the signing of the
Treaty of Limerick (1691) the soldiers of the Irish Army who left Ireland for France took part in what is known as the
Flight of the Wild Geese. Subsequently, many made a living from fighting in continental armies, the most famous of whom was
Patrick Sarsfield, who, having fallen mortally wounded at the
Battle of Landen fighting for the French, said "If this was only for Ireland".
Peter Hagendorf was a German mercenary whose rediscovered diary provides a rare, firsthand account of life during the Thirty Years' War. The brutality of the Thirty Years' War, in which several parts of Germany were ransacked by the mercenary troops, and left almost unpopulated, led to the formation of standing armies of professional soldiers, recruited locally or abroad. These armies were active also in peacetime. The formation of these armies in the late 18th century led to professionalization and standardization of clothing (uniforms), equipment, drill, weapons, etc. Since smaller states like the Dutch Republic could afford a large standing army, but could not find enough recruits among its own citizens, recruiting foreigners was common. Prussia had developed a form of conscription, but relied in wartime also on foreign recruits, although the regulations stated that no more than one third of the recruits were to be foreign. Prussian recruiting methods were often aggressive, and resulted more than once in conflicts with neighbouring states. The term mercenary gained its notoriety during this development, since mercenaries were—and now are—often seen as soldiers who fight for no noble cause, but only for money, and who have no loyalty than to the highest bidder, as opposed to the professional soldiers who takes an oath of loyalty and who is seen as the defender of the nation. The mercenary soldiers thus fell out of favour and was replaced by the professional soldier. To augment the army, major European powers like France, Britain, the Dutch Republic and Spain contracted regiments from Switzerland, the Southern Netherlands (modern day Belgium), and several smaller German states. About a third of the infantry regiments of the French Royal Army prior to the
French Revolution were recruited from outside France. The largest single group were the twelve Swiss regiments (including the
Swiss Guard). Other units were German and one
Irish Brigade (the "
Wild Geese") had originally been made up of Irish volunteers. By 1789 difficulties in obtaining genuinely Irish recruits had led to German and other foreigners making up the bulk of the rank and file. The officers however continued to be drawn from long established Franco-Irish families. During the reign of Louis XV there was also a Scottish (), a Swedish (), an Italian (Royal-Italien) and a Walloon (Horion-Liegeois) regiment recruited outside the borders of France. The foreign infantry regiments comprised about 20,000 men in 1733, rising to 48,000 at the time of the
Seven Years' War and being reduced in numbers thereafter. , known as
Redshanks in Ireland, in the service of
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden; 1631 German engraving The Dutch Republic had contracted several Scots, Swiss and German regiments in the early 18th century, and kept three Scots, one Walloon, and six Swiss regiments (including a Guard regiment raised in 1749) throughout the 18th century. The Scots regiments were contracted from Great Britain, but as relations between Britain and the Republic deteriorated, the regiments could no longer recruit in Scotland, leading to the regiments being Scots in name only until they were nationalized in 1784.
Patrick Gordon, a Scottish mercenary fought at various times for Poland and Sweden, constantly changing his loyalty based on who could pay him the best, until he took up Russian service in 1661. In August 1689, during a coup d'état attempt in Moscow against co-tsar
Peter the Great led by the
Sophia Alekseyevna in the name of the other co-tsar, the intellectually disabled
Ivan V, Gordon played the decisive role in defeating the coup and ensuring Peter's triumph. Gordon remained one of Peter's favorite advisers until his death. The Spanish Army also made use of permanently established foreign regiments. These were three
Irish regiments (Irlanda, Hiberni and Ultonia); one Italian (Naples) and five Swiss (Wimpssen, Reding, Betschart, Traxer and Preux). In addition one regiment of the
Royal Guard including Irishmen as
Patten,
McDonnell and
Neiven, was recruited from
Walloons. The last of these foreign regiments was disbanded in 1815, following recruiting difficulties during the
Napoleonic Wars. One complication arising from the use of non-national troops occurred at the
Battle of Bailén in 1808 when the "red Swiss" (so-called from their uniforms) of the invading French Army clashed bloodily with "blue Swiss" in the Spanish service. During the
American Revolutionary War, the British government hired several regiments from German principalities to supplement the Army. They became known to revolutionaries as
Hessians and were portrayed by propagandists as mercenaries. However, they were auxiliaries and do not meet the definition of mercenary.
19th to 21st centuries During the South American wars of independence from Spain, the
British Legions from 1817 onward fought for General
Simón Bolívar. Some of the British Legionaries were liberal idealists who went to South America to fight in a war for freedom, but others were the more classic mercenaries, mostly unemployed veterans of the Napoleonic wars, who fought for money. In South America, especially in
Colombia, the men of the British Legions are remembered as heroes for their crucial role in helping end Spanish rule. During the
First Carlist War, the British government suspended the Foreign Enlistment Act to allow the recruitment of a quasi-official
British Auxiliary Legion under
George de Lacy Evans, which went to Spain to fight for Queen Isabel II against the followers of Don Carlos, the pretender to the Spanish throne. The
Atholl Highlanders, a private Scottish infantry regiment of the
Duke of Atholl, was formed in 1839 purely for ceremonial purposes. It was granted official regimental status by
Queen Victoria in 1845 and is the only remaining legal private army in Europe. Turkey and
Azerbaijan deployed
Syrian mercenaries during the
2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Syrian mercenaries are being deployed by Russia, with expected numbers ranging from hundreds to up to 40,000 fighters ultimately expected to take part. Wagner mercenaries are active in the
Syrian civil war and
sledgehammered a Syrian man to death. On 8 November 2024, US President
Joe Biden allowed American Private Military Contractors to deploy to Ukraine. Per the
United States Department of Defense, these contractors will help Ukraine repair and maintain military equipment.
East Asia Warring States Mercenaries were regularly used by the kingdoms of the
Warring States period of China. Military advisers and generals trained through the works of
Mozi and
Sun Tzu would regularly offer their services to kings and dukes. After the
Qin conquest of the Warring States, the Qin and later
Han Empires would also employ mercenaries – ranging from nomadic horse archers in the Northern steppes or soldiers from the
Yue kingdoms of the South. The 7th-century
Tang dynasty was also prominent for its use of mercenaries, when they hired
Tibetan and
Uyghur soldiers against invasion from the
Göktürks and other steppe civilizations.
15th to 18th centuries The Saika mercenary group of the
Kii Province, Japan, played a significant role during the
Siege of Ishiyama Hongan-ji that took place between August 1570 to August 1580. The Saikashuu were famed for the support of
Ikkō Buddhist sect movements and greatly impeded the advance of
Oda Nobunaga's forces.
Ninja were peasant farmers who learned the art of war to combat the
daimyōs samurai. They were hired out by many as mercenaries to perform capture, infiltration and retrieval, and, most famously, assassinations. Ninja possibly originated around the 14th century, but were not widely known or used till the 15th century and carried on being hired till the mid-18th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish in the
Philippines employed
samurai mercenaries from Japan to help control the archipelago. Aboard the wreck of one Spanish galleon, the
San Diego, that sank in Filipino waters on 14 December 1600 were found numerous
tsubas, the handguards of the
katanas, the distinctive swords used by the samurai.
19th century Between 1850 and 1864, the
Taiping Rebellion raged as the Taiping (Heavenly Peace) Army led by
Hong Xiuquan, the self-proclaimed younger brother of Jesus Christ, engaged in a bloody civil war against the forces loyal to the Qing emperor. As Hong and his followers, who numbered in the millions, were hostile to Western business interests, a group of Western merchants based in Shanghai created a mercenary army known as the
Ever Victorious Army. During the Taiping Rebellion, the Qing came close to losing control of China. It was common for the financially hard-pressed Qing emperors to subcontract out the business of raising armies to fight the Taiping to the loyalist provincial gentry, which formed the origins of the warlords who were to dominate China after the overthrow of the Qing in 1912. The rank and file of the Ever-Victorious Army were Chinese, but the senior officers were Westerners. The first commander was an American adventurer, Colonel
Frederick Townsend Ward. After Ward was killed in action in 1862, command was assumed by another American adventurer,
Henry Andres Burgevine, but the Chinese disliked him on the account of his racism and his alcoholism. Burgevine was replaced with a British Army officer seconded to Chinese service, Colonel Charles "Chinese" Gordon. A highly successful commander, Gordon won thirty-three battles in succession against the Taipings in 1863–1864 as he led the Ever Victorious Army down the Yangtze river valley and played a decisive role in defeating the Taipings. Through technically not a mercenary as Gordon had been assigned by the British government to lead the Ever Victorious Army, the
Times of London in a leader (editorial) in August 1864 declared: "the part of the soldier of fortune is in these days very difficult to play with honour...but if ever the actions of a soldier fighting in foreign service ought to be viewed with indulgence, and even with admiration, this exceptional tribute is due to Colonel Gordon". During the French conquest of Vietnam, their most persistent and stubborn opponents were not the Vietnamese, but rather the Chinese mercenaries of the
Black Flag Army commanded by
Liu Yongfu, who been hired by the Emperor
Tự Đức. In 1873, the Black Flags killed the French commander,
Francis Garnier, attracting much attention in France. When the French conquest of Vietnam was finally completed in 1885, one of the peace terms were the disbandment of the Black Flag Army. Chinese flag rebels also fought in the
Haw wars in Laos and northern Thailand.
Philo McGiffin served as a naval mercenary in the Sino-French War and First Sino-Japanese War.
20th century In the
Warlord Era of China, some British mercenaries like
Morris "Two Gun" Cohen, and
Francis Arthur "One Armed" Sutton found employ in China. Easily the largest group of mercenaries in
China were the Russian emigres who arrived after 1917 and who hired themselves out to various Chinese warlords in the 1920s. Unlike the Anglo-American mercenaries, the Russians had no home to return to nor were any foreign nations willing to accept them as refugees, causing them to have a grim, fatalistic outlook as they were trapped in what they regarded as a strange land that was as far from home as imaginable. One group of Russians wore Tartar hats and the traditional dark greycoats, and fought for Marshal
Zhang Zuolin, the "Old Marshal" who ruled Manchuria. One group of Russian mercenaries led by General
Konstantin Petrovich Nechaev were dressed in the uniform of the Imperial Russian Army and fought for General
Zhang Zongchang, the "Dogmeat General" who ruled Shangdong province. Nechaev and his men were infamous for their ruthlessness, and on one occasion in 1926, rode three armored trains through the Chinese countryside, killing everybody they met. In 1926 Chinese warlord Sun Chuanfang inflicted bloody death tolls upon the White Russian mercenaries under Nechaev's brigade in the 65th division serving Zhang Zongchang, reducing the Russian numbers from 3,000 to only a few hundred by 1927 and the remaining Russian survivors fought in armored trains. During the
Northern Expedition Chinese Nationalist forces captured an armoured train of Russian mercenaries serving Zhang Zongchang and brutalized the Russian prisoners by piercing their noses with rope and marching them in public through the streets in Shandong in 1928, described as "stout rope pierced through their noses". Alcoholic White Russian mercenaries defeated Muslim Uyghurs in melee fighting when Uyghurs tried to take Urumqi on 21 February 1933 in the
Battle of Ürümqi (1933). Wu Aitchen mentioned that 600 Uyghurs were slaughtered in a battle by White Russian mercenaries in the service of the
Xinjiang clique warlord
Jin Shuren. Jin Shuren would take Russian women as hostages to force their husbands to serve as his mercenaries. Hui Muslims fought brutal battles against White Russians and Soviet Red Army Russians at the
Battle of Tutung and
Battle of Dawan Cheng inflicting heavy losses on the Russian forces. Chinese forces killed many White Russian soldiers and Soviet soldiers in 1944-1946 when the White Russians of Ili and Soviet Red Army served in the
Second East Turkestan Republic's military during the
Ili Rebellion. During the early stages of the
Second Sino-Japanese War, a number of foreign pilots served in the Chinese Air Force, most famously in the 14th Squadron, a light bombardment unit often called the International Squadron, which was briefly active in February and March 1938.
India 18th to 19th centuries In the medieval period,
Purbiya mercenaries from
Bihar and
Eastern Uttar Pradesh were a common feature in kingdoms in western and northern India. They were also later recruited by the Marathas and the British. In southern India, there is a caste/community of mercenaries in the state of Karnataka which is called
Bunt. The word "bunt" itself translates to warrior or mercenary, this community later elevated itself as the rulers of the land, several powerful dynasties emerged from this community. The most notable dynasty being the Alupas of Dakshina Kannada, which reigned for 1,300 years. This community still survives and has adopted the surnames shetty, Rai, Alva, chowta etc. In Tamil Nadu, the three crowned empires used the
Kongar pastro-peasantry tribes of the
Kongunad region and the
Kongar peasant tribes of the
Erumainad region as their swordsman mercenaries, cavalry mercenaries, and as chariot soldier mercenaries, as well as personal guards. Kongars worked along with the three empires' warrior tribes such as the Kallar, Maravar, Aghamudaiyar, Parkavar, Valaiya-Mutharaiyar, and Mazhavar tribes. During that time, these Kongar tribes were led only by the chiefs of their own tribe and would not come under the command of the emperor or his military general. Though these Kongar tribes of Kongunad were feudatories to the three crowned empires, Kongunad was divided into 24 subdivisions and was only ruled by Kongars. However, the Kongars (Gangars) of Erumainad established their own empire, the Western Ganga dynasty, and ruled over it for centuries. Kongar tribes still exist in the modern world, where they are referred as Kongu Vellala Gounder (Kongunadu) and Gangadhikar Vokkaliga Gowda (Erumainad). The
Mukkuvar clan of
Malabar Coast and Sri Lankan coast did the role of soldiers in
Kalinga Magha's invasion to
Sri Lanka and in
Nair's battle with the
Dutch in the
Battle of Colachel. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the imperial Mughal power was crumbling and other powers, including the
Sikh Misls and Maratha chiefs, were emerging. At this time, a number of mercenaries, arriving from several countries found employment in India. Some of the mercenaries emerged to become independent rulers. The Sikh Maharaja,
Ranjit Singh, known as the "Lion of the Punjab", employed Euro-American mercenaries such as the Neapolitan
Paolo Avitabile; the Frenchmen
Claude Auguste Court and
Jean-François Allard; and the Americans
Josiah Harlan and
Alexander Gardner. The Sikh army,
Dal Khalsa, was trained by Singh's French mercenaries to fight alone the lines used by the French in the Napoleonic era, and following French practice,
Dal Khalsa had excellent artillery. Singh had a low opinion of his Euro-American mercenaries, once saying "German, French or English, all these European bastards are alike". Until 1858, India was a proprietary colony that belonged to the East India Company, not the British Crown. The East India Company became the world's most influential corporation, having exclusive monopolies on trade with India and China. By the early 19th century, the East India Company in its proprietary colony of India ruled over 90 million Indians and controlled of land under its own flag, issued its own currency and maintained its own civil service and its own army of 200,000 men led by officers trained at its officer school, giving the company an army larger than that possessed by most European states. In the 17th century, the East India Company recruited Indian mercenaries to guard its warehouses and police the cities under its rule. However, these forces were ad hoc and disbanded as quickly as they were recruited. Starting in 1746, the Company recruited Indian mercenaries into its own army. By 1765, the board of directors of the Company had come to accept it was necessary to rule its conquests to maintain a standing army, voting to maintain three presidency armies to be funded by taxes on Indian land. The number of Indians working for the Company's armies outnumbered the Europeans ten to one. When recruiting, the East India Company tended to follow Indian prejudices in believing the pale-skinned men from northern India made for better soldiers than the dark-skinned peoples of southern India, and that high-caste Hindus were superior to the low-caste Hindus. Despite these prejudices, the men of the Madras Army were from south India. The Bengal Army were largely high-cast Hindus from northern India while the Bombay Army prided itself on being a "melting pot". Because the East India Company ultimately by the end of the 18th century came to offer higher pay than the Maharajahs did, and offered the novelty in India of paying a pension to veterans and their families, it came to attract the best of the Indian mercenaries. Initially, the mercenaries serving in the company's armies brought along their own weapons, which was the normal practice in India, but after the 1760s the company began to them arm with the standard British weapons. The East India Company, generally known in both Britain and in India as "the Company", had sufficient lobbying power in London to ensure that several British Army regiments were also stationed to work alongside the Company army, whose troops were mostly "Sepoys" (Indians). The Company never entirely trusted the loyalty of its sepoys. The company had its own officer training school at the
Addiscombe Military Seminary. The company's armies were trained in the Western style and by the end of the 18th century its troops were ranked as the equal of any European army.
Latin America Nicaragua In 1855, during a civil war in Nicaragua between the Conservatives and Liberals, the latter recruited an American adventurer named
William Walker who promised to bring 300 mercenaries to fight for the Liberals. Through Walker only brought 60 mercenaries with him, to be joined by another 100 Americans together with the Belgian mercenary
Charles Frederick Henningsen who were already in Nicaragua, he was able to defeat the Conservatives at the
Battle of La Virgen on 4 September 1855 and by 13 October, Walker had taken
Grenada, the Conservative capital. At the time, Nicaragua was an extremely important transit point between the
Western and
Eastern United States. In the days before the
Panama Canal and the
first transcontinental railroad, ships from the Eastern United States would sail up the
San Juan River to
Lake Nicaragua, where passengers and goods were unloaded at the port of Rivas and then made the short journey via stagecoach to the Pacific coast, to be loaded onto ships that would take them to the west coast of the United States. In the 1980s, one of the Reagan administration's foreign policy was to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government by arming guerrillas known as the Contras. Between 1982 and 1984, Congress passed the three Boland amendments which limited the extent of American aid to the Contra rebels. By the late 1970s, the popularity of magazines such as
Soldier of Fortune, which glorified the mercenary subculture, led to the opening of numerous camps in the United States designed to train men to be mercenaries and also to serve as guerrillas in case of a Soviet conquest of the United States. The vast majority of the men who trained in these camps were white men who saw para-military training as a "reverse the previous twenty years of American history and take back all the symbolic territory that has been lost" as the possibility of becoming mercenaries gave them "the fantastic possibility of escaping their present lives, being reborn as warrior and remaking the world". Owing to the legal problems posed by the Boland amendments, the Reagan administration turned to the self-proclaimed mercenaries to arm and train the Contra guerrillas. In 1984, the CIA created the Civilian Military Assistance (CMA) group to aid the Contras. The CMA were led by a white supremacist from Alabama named Tom Posey, who like all of the other members of the CMA were graduates of the mercenary training camps.
Sam Hall, a self proclaimed mercenary hero and "counter-terrorist" who joined the CMA entered Nicaragua with the aim of performing sabotage operations. In 1986, Hall was captured by the Sandinistas, who held him for four months before releasing him under the grounds that he was not a mercenary, but rather a mercenary imposer.
Celtic mercenaries were greatly employed in the
Greek world (leading to the
sack of Delphi and the Celtic settlement of
Galatia). The Greek rulers of
Ptolemaic Egypt, too, used Celtic mercenaries.
Carthage was unique for relying primarily on mercenaries to fight its wars, particularly
Gaul and
Spanish mercenaries.
19th and 20th centuries in Africa In the 20th century, mercenaries in conflicts on the continent of Africa have in several cases brought about a swift end to bloody civil war by comprehensively defeating the rebel forces. There have been a number of unsavory incidents in the brushfire wars of Africa, some involving recruitment of European and American men "looking for adventure". Many of the adventurers in Africa who have been described as mercenaries were in fact ideologically motivated to support particular governments, and would not fight "for the highest bidder". An example of this was the
British South Africa Police (BSAP), a paramilitary, mounted infantry force formed by the
British South Africa Company of
Cecil Rhodes in 1889–1890 that evolved and continued until 1980. Famous mercenaries in Africa include: •
Frederick Russell Burnham was an American scout for the British South Africa Company who served in both the
First Matabele War (1893–94) and the
Second Matabele War (1896–97). He effectively ended the Second Matabele War by assassinating the Ndebele religious leader, Mlimo, but Burnham is best known in this war for teaching
American Frontier scouting to
Robert Baden-Powell and inspiring him to found the
boy scouts. In the
Second Boer War (1900–1904), Burnham served as Chief of Scouts to the British Army. He was presented the Cross of the
Distinguished Service Order for his heroism and given a commission as Major in the British Army by
King Edward VII personally even though he declined to renounce his American citizenship. Burnham's real-life adventures also heavily influenced
H. Rider Haggard who created the fictional
Allan Quatermain adventurer, a character who later was transformed by
George Lucas into
Indiana Jones. •
Mike Hoare was a British career soldier who served with distinction in the
London Irish Rifles during
World War II. He later emigrated to
South Africa, and was contracted by the
State of Katanga in the early 1960s to form "
4 Commando (Force Katangaise)", a unit of foreign military advisers in the local
gendarmerie. Most of Hoare's recruits were
Belgians or South Africans. After Katanga's integration in 1963, Hoare remained active in Congo affairs. He was solicited by General
Joseph-Desiré Mobutu in 1964 to form
"5 Commando" – a second mercenary force raised to crush the
Simba Rebellion, which included European adventurers of at least twenty nationalities. Hoare later resurfaced in 1981, shortly after
France-Albert René's ascension in the
Seychelles, attempting to carry out a coup d'état on behalf of former president
James Mancham. His troops were intercepted shortly after debarking on
Mahé and only escaped by hijacking an
Air India Boeing, which they flew to
Durban. •
Bob Denard was a former
French intelligence operative, policeman, and dedicated anti-communist who saw action during the
First Indochina War and
Algerian War of Independence. After a brief inroad into civilian life, Denard returned to military service with the Katangese gendarmerie in 1961. Refusing to surrender when secessionist forces collapsed in January 1963, he disappeared into
Angola with a nucleus of other die-hards and sought work training
North Yemen royalists before returning to the Congo at the request of then-Prime Minister
Moise Tshombe. Denard has since carried out five attempted coup d'etats in
Benin and the
Comoros Islands, three of them successful. •
Neall Ellis was a South African aviator who achieved prominence for his extensive action in
Sierra Leone's long-running
civil war. Ellis was raised in
Bulawayo, Rhodesia (
Zimbabwe), but after an unsuccessful career in the
Rhodesian Army, emigrated to join the
South African Air Force. During the
South African Border War, he flew improvised
Aérospatiale Alouette III and
Atlas Oryx gunships over Angola and
Mozambique in support of South African expeditionary forces conducting external raids. He retired a colonel upon the end of
apartheid, piloting
Yugoslav Mil Mi-8s as an operational freelancer. In 1998, Ellis returned to participate in the
Angolan Civil War with private military firm
Executive Outcomes, which eventually dispatched him to Sierra Leone. During the
Battle for Freetown, he was instrumental in fighting off
Revolutionary United Front insurgents from a
Mil Mi-24 Hind and providing air support for British forces executing
Operation Barras. He has founded his own paramilitary company,
Jesa Air West Africa, •
Simon Mann was found guilty in
Zimbabwe of "attempting to buy weapons"
(BBC 27 August) allegedly for a coup in
Equatorial Guinea in 2004 (see below).
Congo Crisis The
Congo Crisis (1960–1965) was a period of turmoil in the First
Republic of the Congo that began with national independence from Belgium and ended with the seizing of power by
Joseph Mobutu. During the crisis, mercenaries were employed by various factions, and also at times helped the United Nations and other peace keepers. In 1960 and 1961,
Mike Hoare worked as a mercenary commanding an English-speaking unit called "
4 Commando" supporting a faction in
Katanga, a province trying to break away from the newly independent
Congo under the leadership of
Moïse Tshombe. Hoare chronicled his exploits in his book the
Road to Kalamata. In 1964, Tshombe (then Prime Minister of Congo) hired Major Hoare to lead a military unit called "
5 Commando" made up of about 300 men, most of whom were from South Africa. The unit's mission was to fight a rebel group called
Simbas, who already had captured almost two-thirds of the country. In
Operation Dragon Rouge, "5 Commando" worked in close cooperation with Belgian
paratroopers,
Cuban exile pilots, and CIA hired mercenaries. The objective of Operation Dragon Rouge was to capture
Stanleyville and save several hundred civilians (mostly Europeans and
missionaries) who were hostages of the
Simba rebels. The operation saved many lives; however, the Operation damaged the reputation of
Moïse Tshombe as it saw the return of white mercenaries to the Congo soon after independence and was a factor in Tshombe's loss of support from president of Congo
Joseph Kasa-Vubu who dismissed him from his position At the same time Bob Denard commanded the French-speaking "
6 Commando",
"Black Jack" Schramme commanded "10 Commando" and
William "Rip" Robertson commanded a company of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. Later, in 1966 and 1967, some former Tshombe mercenaries and Katangese gendarmes staged the
Mercenaries' Mutinies.
Biafra Mercenaries fought for
Biafra in the Fourth Commando Brigade led by
Rolf Steiner during the
Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). Other mercenaries flew aircraft for the Biafrans. In October 1967, for example, a
Royal Air Burundi DC-4M Argonaut, flown by mercenary Heinrich Wartski, also known as Henry Wharton, crash-landed in
Cameroon with military supplies destined for Biafra. It was hoped that employing mercenaries in Nigeria would have similar impact to the Congo, but the mercenaries proved largely ineffective. The British historian Philip Baxter wrote the principle difference was that the Congolese militias commanded by leaders with almost no military experience were no match for the mercenaries, and by contrast the Sandhurst-trained Nigerian Army officers were of an "altogether higher caliber" than Congolese militia leaders. One Biafran officer, Fola Oyewole, wrote about the sacking of Steiner in late 1968: "Steiner's departure from Biafra removed the shine from the white mercenaries, the myth of the white man's superiority in the art of soldering". and delivered food
aid. Count von Rosen was assisted by ex-
RCAF fighter pilot
Lynn Garrison.
Angola In 1975,
John Banks, an Englishman, recruited mercenaries to fight for the
National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) against the
Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (
MPLA) in the
civil war that broke out when Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975. In the United States, David Bufkin, a self-proclaimed mercenary hero started a recruiting campaign in
Soldier of Fortune magazine calling for anti-Communist volunteers, especially Vietnam veterans, to fight in Angola as mercenaries, claiming to be funded to the tune of $80,000 by the Central Intelligence Agency. Bufkin was in fact a former U.S. Army soldier "who has gone AWOL several times, has been tried for rape, and been in and out of jail several times", did not have $80,000, was not supported by the CIA, instead being a con-man who had stolen most of the money paid to him. One of the leaders of the mercenaries was
Costas Georgiou (the self-styled "Colonel Callan"), who was described by the British journalist Patrick Brogan as a psychopathic killer who personally executed fourteen of his fellow mercenaries for cowardice, and who was extremely brutal to black people. Within 48 hours of his arrival in Angola, Georgiou had already led his men in disarming and massacring a group of FNLA fighters (his supposed allies), who he killed just for the "fun" of it all. At his trial, it was established that Georgiou had personally murdered at least 170 Angolans. Many of the mercenaries in Angola were not former professional soldiers as they claimed to have been, but instead merely fantasists who had invented heroic war records for themselves. The fantasist mercenaries did not know how to use their weapons properly, and often injured themselves and others when they attempted to use weaponry that they did not fully understand, leading to some of them being executed by the psychopathic killer Georgiou who did not tolerate failure. On 27 January 1976, a group of 96 British mercenaries arrived in Angola and within a week about dozen had accidentally maimed themselves by trying to use weapons that they falsely claimed to be proficient with. Cuban accounts of the Angolan war speak of the efforts of the mercenaries in a tone of contempt as Cuban veterans contend that the mercenaries were poor soldiers who they had no trouble defeating. Georgiou was shot by firing squad in 1976. Making the Comoros a tempting target for Denard were its small size, consisting of only three islands in the Indian Ocean. Moreover, Soilih had abolished the Comorian Army, replacing the Army with a militia known as the Moissy, made up mostly of teenage boys with only the most rudimentary military training. The Moissy, which was modeled after the
Red Guards in
China, existed mainly to terrorize Soilih's opponents and was commanded by a 15-year-old boy, appointed solely because of his blind devotion to Soilih. Denard served as the commander of the Comorian Presidential Guard and became the largest single landowner in the Comoros, developing the best land by the sea into luxury resorts catering to tourists who wanted to enjoy the tropics.
Seychelles In 1981, "Mad Mike" Hoare was hired by the government of South Africa to lead an invasion of the Seychelles with the aim of deposing the left-wing President
France-Albert René, who had roundly criticized apartheid, and replacing him with a more apartheid-friendly leader. Disguised as a drinking club, Ye Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers, and as rugby players, Hoare led a force of 53 men into the airport at Port Larue on 25 November 1981. Hoare's men failed to make it past the customs at the airport as an alert customs officer noticed one of the "rugby players" had an AK-47 assault rifle hidden in his luggage. What followed was a shoot-out at the airport between Hoare's men and Seychellois customs officers.
Sierra Leone (standing, wings on hat) with some of the Sierra Leone Commando Unit he was training with the Gurkha security guards American
Robert C. MacKenzie was killed in the Malal Hills in February 1995, while commanding Gurkha Security Guards (GSG) in
Sierra Leone. GSG pulled out soon afterwards and was replaced by
Executive Outcomes. Both were employed by the Sierra Leone government as military advisers and to train the government soldiers. It has been alleged that the firms provided soldiers who took an active part in the fighting against the
Revolutionary United Front (RUF). In 2000, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC-TV) international affairs program
Foreign Correspondent broadcast a special report "Sierra Leone: Soldiers of Fortune", focusing on former 32BN and Recce members who operated in Sierra Leone while serving for SANDF. Officers like De Jesus Antonio, TT D Abreu Capt Ndume and Da Costa were the forefront because of their combat and language skills and also the exploits of South African pilot
Neall Ellis and his
MI-24 Hind gunship. The report also investigated the failures of the UN Peacekeeping Force, and the involvement of mercenaries and private military contractors in providing vital support to UN operations and British military Special Operations in Sierra Leone in 1999–2000.
Equatorial Guinea In August 2004 there was a plot, which later became known as the "Wonga Coup", to overthrow the government of
Equatorial Guinea in
Malabo. eight South African
apartheid-era soldiers, organised by Neves Matias (former Recce major and De Jesus Antonio former Captain in 2sai BN) with (the leader of whom is
Nick du Toit) and five local men were held in Black Beach prison on the island. They were accused of being an advanced guard for a coup to place
Severo Moto in power. Six Armenian aircrew, also convicted of involvement in the plot, were released in 2004 after receiving a presidential pardon. CNN reported on 25 August, that: It was planned, allegedly, by Simon Mann, a former
SAS officer. On 27 August 2004 he was found guilty in Zimbabwe of purchasing arms, allegedly for use in the plot (he admitted trying to procure dangerous weapons, but said that they were to guard a diamond mine in DR Congo). It is alleged that there is a paper trail from him which implicates Sir Mark Thatcher,
Lord Archer, and
Ely Calil (a Lebanese-British oil trader). The
BBC reported in an article entitled "Q&A: Equatorial Guinea coup plot": The BBC reported on 10 September 2004 that in Zimbabwe:
Libya Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was alleged to have been using mercenary soldiers during the
2011 Libyan civil war, including
Tuaregs from various nations in Africa. Many of them had been part of his
Islamic Legion created in 1972. Reports say around 800 had been recruited from Niger, Mali, Algeria, Ghana and Burkina Faso. In addition, small numbers of Eastern European mercenaries have also turned up supporting the Gaddafi regime. Most sources have described these troops as professional Serbian veterans of the
Yugoslav conflict, including snipers, pilots and helicopter experts. Certain observers, however, speculate that they may be from Poland or Belarus. The latter has denied the claims outright; the former is investigating them. Although the Serbian government has denied that any of their nationals are currently serving as mercenary soldiers in North Africa, five such men have been captured by anti-Gaddafi rebels in
Tripoli and several others have also allegedly fought during the
Second Battle of Benghazi. a number of unidentified white South African mercenaries were hired to smuggle Gaddafi and his sons to exile in Niger. Their attempts were thwarted by NATO air activity shortly before the death of Libya's ousted strongman. Numerous reports have indicated that the team was still protecting
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi shortly before he was apprehended. Amnesty International has claimed that such allegations against Gaddafi and the Libyan state turned out to either be false or lacking any evidence.
Human Rights Watch has indicated that while many foreign migrants were erroneously accused of fighting with Gaddafi, there were also genuine mercenaries from several nations who participated in the conflict. More recently in 2020 at least several hundred mercenaries from the Russian
Wagner Group have been fighting on the side of the warlord, General
Khalifa Haftar, whom the government of Russia supports. The Wagner Group mercenaries arrived in Libya in late 2019. The Wagner Group have excelled as snipers, and one result of their arrival was a rapid increase in the number of sniper deaths on the opposing side that holds Tripoli. In July 2020
Al Arabiyah reported that Turkey sent Syrian, Tunisian, Egyptian and Sudanese mercenaries into Libya. A November 2020 report by human rights advocacy group
Human Rights Watch claimed that approximately hundreds of
Sudanese men were hired by an Emirati security firm Black Shield Security Services as security guards for shopping centres and hotels in the
UAE, but were subsequently tricked into fighting in the
Libyan Civil War. Reportedly 390 men were recruited from Khartoum, out of which 12 spoke to HRW and told that they were made to live alongside Libyan fighters aligned with UAE-backed General
Khalifa Haftar. The recruits were hired to safeguard the oil facilities controlled by the Haftar forces.
Middle East Egypt By 1807,
Muhammad Ali the Great, the Albanian tobacco merchant turned
de facto independent Ottoman
vali (governor) of Egypt had imported about 400 French mercenaries to train his army. After the end of the Napoleonic wars, Muhammad Ali recruited more mercenaries from all over Europe and the United States to train his army, through French and Italian veterans of the Napoleonic wars were much preferred and formed the largest two groups of mercenaries in Egypt. The most famous of Muhammad Ali's mercenaries was the Frenchman
Joseph-Anthelme Sève who set up the first staff school in Egypt and served as the chief of staff to
Ibrahim Pasha, the son of the
vali and his favorite general. By the 1820s, Muhammad Ali's mercenaries had created a mass conscript army trained to fight in the Western style together with schools for training Egyptian officers and factories for manufacturing Western style weapons as the
vali did not wish to be dependent upon imported arms. A number of Italian mercenaries such as Romolo Gessi, Gaetamo Casati, Andreanni Somani, and Giacomo Messedaglia played prominent roles in the Egyptian campaigns in the Sudan. Ismail also recruited British mercenaries such as Samuel Baker and the Swiss mercenaries such as Werner Munzinger. After 1869, Ismail recruited 48 American mercenaries to command his army. General
Charles Pomeroy Stone, formerly of the United States Army, served as the chief of the Egyptian general staff between 1870 and 1883. Ismail's Americans went to Egypt largely because of the high pay he offered, through several were Confederate veterans who were barred from serving in post-1865 United States Army; the fact that the Americans in Egyptian service had fought on opposing sides in the Civil War was a source of recurring tension as the antagonism between North and South continued in Egypt. The Russian government had approved of the deployment in 2016 of the
Wagner Group mercenaries to fight for the Syrian government. The Wagner Group is reported to have played an important role in helping to turn the tide of the Syrian civil war in favor of the government, which in 2015 appeared to be close to collapse. Turkey used Syrian mercenaries against the
Kurds in Syria.
Yemen civil war Multiple mercenary groups, called
Popular Committees, which consists of Yemeni tribes loyal to different factions, were formed by both the
Hadi government as well as the Houthi
Supreme Political Council in the
Yemeni Civil War.
Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen During Operation Decisive Storm, multiple sources reported that Latin American military contractors from
Academi headed by
Erik Prince were hired by
UAE Armed Forces to assist in the fight against
Houthis. ==Notable mercenaries==