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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 5723505" data-attributes="member: 49017">I do hope that Wikipedia isn't your main source for historical information. And I'm certainly going to claim that most medieval soldiers weren't poorly trained conscripts. Most were professionals, paid and maintained at the expense of a great noble. This was preferred to a feudal levy that would serve for it's designated period (forty days, in Normandy, for example) and then start drifting off home. The English recruited by Commission of Array, the French by Ban d'Ordonnance, and in Italy mostly by Condotta. Exceptions to that general rule can be found, usually in the form of civic militias which have their own training regimes that, if not leaving them equal to professional soldiers, would make them something more than barely trained conscripts.Medieval armies often have thousands of 'knights' in them. Arguably of course some of those would have been senior squires and other professional men-at-arms, rather than proper knights, but the training would hardly be different. I could come up with other examples. The Ten Thousand, the Sacred Band of Thebes, Alexander's Companions, the Varangian Guard, the Bucellarii, the White Company, the Catalan Grand Company, the stradioti, the Bande Nere... I think you're being very generous to the Iraqi army there. Try comparing full-time professionals from the middle ages with full-time professionals from the present day, and medieval 'conscripts' with modern conscripts.</blockquote>

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