RE: Merc Guild

A la Hammer's Slammers from David Drake or the Dorsai from Gordon
Dickson.  In both cases the justification for mercenaries was that they
brought experience and equipment that the hiring government could not
provide on its own.  It seems reasonable that an agricultural world
would not have an extensive military tradition that would provide whole
units on demand, perhaps not even equipment.  One question might be how
specialized is equipment in the future.  In WW2 the Russians were able
to convert tractor works into tank factories, carpenter shops into shops
that made parts for aircraft - would a future tractor factory be able to
make hover tanks? An electronics factory IR gear or ECM suites?  Would a
fertilizer factory be able to produce propellents or ammo?  Or would
these be highly specialized items made at only high tech worlds?  If so,
then it would make mercenaries much more plausible since your average
farmer/factory worker/programmer would not have the time or inclina!
 tion to train in using a weapon that he may or may not use in his
lifetime.

--Binhan

-----Original Message-----
From: K.H.Ranitzsch [mailto:KH.Ranitzsch@t-online.de]
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 1:24 PM
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: Merc Guild

> All governments lie deniability is a must that will never change.

But there are also "legitimate" military operations, and in the high
days of
the mercenaries (from the Condottieri, Swiss and Landsknechts to the
Hessians employed by the British against the American Rebels) most of
the
use of mercenaries was official and acknowledged. The main reason for
their
use was that governments could not afford to maintain such expensive
forces
in peacetime. So they were employed only when a war was up. If peace
broke
out somewhere, they would move to some other war.
The loyalties of such mercenary groups lay with their (temporay)
employer,
not with their nation. While they properly paid, they fought well (at
least
the beter units did). But if their paymaster went bankrupt - "No Money,
No
Swiss".

Could well be a model for the Tuffleyverse, especially for the smaller
powers.

Greetings
Karl Heinz