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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Galloglaich" data-source="post: 4662694" data-attributes="member: 77019">This was how the Swiss were in real life, they never surrendered and wouldn't change sides, but they refused to fight other Swiss and the second you ran out of money, they turned around and marched home. The French had a saying "Pas de Argent, Pas de Suisse!" (no silver / no swiss) Which brings up another interesting fact about many Mercenary groups, quite a few of them were not in fact dependant on a strong leadership, since they actually elected their leaders and / or were run by coalitions of representatives from the various factions. This was actually in fact how the Swiss also operated typically, the various different guilds, towns or cantons would discuss what to do in a given situation, and didn't always agree. This could be a weakness (sometimes units would go off on their own tangents as once happened with the Saurbanner) But it also seemed to grant them an astonishing flexibility in combat which they used to good effect, contrary to the cliche of 'rule by committee'. The Swiss were known for being unpredictable and always acting decisively, without hesitation, and arriving when least expected, such as when they defeated Charles the Bold at the battles of Grandson, Morat, and Nancy. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grandson" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Grandson</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Murten" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Murten</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nancy" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nancy</a>  Other famous mercenary groups such as the Landsknechts were consciously organized in mimicry of the Swiss, and were given their own internal courts systems, freedom from Sumptuary laws (which is why they always dressed so garishly, to flaunt it) and etc. Another much earlier example of thiis, perhaps the archetypal one, is the Anabasis by Xenophon. Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries had been hired by a Persian prince to fight for the throne. They won their battle, but their patron was killed, and they found themselves deep inside a hostile country and had to march all the way out, through Armenia and Kurdistan, and finally to the Black sea, encountering dozens of hostile (and a few friendly) tribes along the way. This giant mercenary army was called a 'marching republic', they were tough enough to win every battle they fought on the way out. The Anabasis was the inspiration incidentally for the famous film "The Warriors" and is a great idea for a Campaign.... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_%28Xenophon" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon</a>) G.</blockquote>

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