It's not that I think free infantry are a bad idea. It's that I find them to be a very suspect idea.
When looking at history it's important to give respect to where it's due. To do otherwise is to both discredit the very value of history and to cast it falsely.
The reason why I suspect discourse on the ultimate value of free infantry is that all too often people are only willing to give respect to the home team.
Such, for lack of a better term, chauvinism is particularly apparent when discussing the middle ages and the early modern period, my two favorites, and holds near total dominion over much of popular classical learning.
The problem is that it renders the discourse mute over both the disadvantages of the priveleged themes and the advantages of their alternatives.
Take, for instance, this recent debate over Alexander the Great's armies. Now it's all well and good to praise them for any number of reasons and to hold forth Alexander as, initially, a shining example of Greekness in the face of Persian barbarism...
...but to claim that his soldier's thought of themselves as freemen taking vengeance on Persian tyranny is to ignore the desperate struggle of the Greek states to free themselves first from Alexander and Phillip's rule.
A rule they had feared as the greater threat long before in Thucydides's descriptions of the great events of Thrace as dwarfing the Pellopennessian war.
And a resistance that had been immortalized in the speeches of Demosthenes. Speeches that were, for centuries nigh on millenia, hailed as the greatest speeches in praise of liberty and freedom ever made, if not the greatest speeches ever made.
And I question how these things could possibly be ignored but for the need of the idea of infantry formations to be associated with victory, freedom, and a view of history that allows for no alternatives.
Similarly, to state the Turks fought against nothing but Balkan peasants as a means of discrediting them is a statement of at best igonorance and at worst blatant racism.
The overwhelming power and skill of the Turkish empire is testified to by the fact that much of our modern history developed as Europe desperately attempted to react to the threat the Turks represented.
The greatest Christian city of the world fell to them and the cities of Vienna and the peninsula of Italy survived only because they were saved by forces that had spent decades, if not centuries, training themselves to fight the Turks.
The fact that the Turkish Empire is not remembered in all our minds as greater than that of Rome's is not a testimony to the Turks' incompetence as it is the astounding excellence of their Spanish and Polish adversaries.
So please, let us not denigrate the striving and bloodshed of our ancestors as a whole in order to better praise a few of their descendants.
You made some good points (the mongols were amazing outside the sea of japan, and the jungles of vietnam) with which I heartily agree but I knew when I read the phrases "discourse" and "privileged themes" (phrases that sound impressive but have no concrete meaning) that we'd be heading into PC territory. Much like investing, economics etc the proof is generally in the statistics. If Ireland and Chile (recently) and the Anglo-Dutch-American world (over the long run) account for far better economic performance than most of the rest of the world, then it would be wise to study success and not failure (say the Islamic world) if you want to learn economics. By the same token, if you want to learn about (successful) medieval armies, then study the people who WON battles like the Normans and the English rather than the French, study the Mongols rather than the Indians, etc.
The only 'privilege' that offends the academic and interests most people is the practical one of what works -- which is actually what this thread is about. "Tell me about Medieval armies" is the topic - can perhaps be most rapidly accomplished by describing the general context (which we did at first in this thread) and then describing effective vs. ineffective medieval armies in general terms (which is admittedly a very broad area but accurate generalizations can be made).
The other typically PC line of reasoning is to invest your opponent's arguments (mine I guess) with a line of reasoning that he didnt make. "For example, hold forth Alexander as, initially, a shining example of Greekness in the face of Persian barbarism......but to claim that his soldier's thought of themselves as freemen taking vengeance on Persian tyranny is to ignore the desperate struggle of the Greek states to free themselves first from Alexander and Phillip's rule."
I didnt hold Alexander out as a "shining" example of Greekness (though factually he certainly TRIED to)! I just said he was effective and he MARKETED his war as greek vengeance against the persians for prior invasions. With free soldiers you must persuade, if you are darius you simply command. As for the second part of this line of argument, of course many/most of the Greeks were desperate to stay out of Phillip and Alexander's grasp or simply scared after he crushed Thebes. Again, that is the nature of a relatively free society. There is no "claim" of anything, virtually all greek writing of that period contrasted themselves as free man against persian despots, slaves, and mercenaries -- to argue otherwise is simply wrong.
I could make similar points about most of your other arguments (efficacy/accuracy).
"So please, let us not denigrate the striving and bloodshed of our ancestors as a whole in order to better praise a few of their descendants." This is a perfect example of ahistorical PC wackiness. Im not denigrating anything. Im simply saying that X was a better army than Y or that free infantry is a very difficult core to an army to overcome. These are subjective arguments based upon a massive amount of empirical evidence. As far as the "better praise a few", that is truly weird PC jargon. I have no idea who/why you think Im praising anything rather than expounding upon what is an effective medieval army and the obvious societal links that correlate with such -- which is a rather obvious direction to take the thread after we discuss the basics of medieval times (ad hoc armies, limited manpower, limited financial resources.
