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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 1523744" data-attributes="member: 6533">Military Organization During the War of the RosesRight, first off I would like to say that this has been a pretty incredible thread in terms of the quality and variety of responses.My take on military matters is pretty much entirely in terms of how it affects political stability so I'm generally less concerned about tactics and individual training as I am about who pays for it and how.As a result, for instance, I would not qualify the Roman legions as a professional army in the sense by which we think of one.  They came close to that, at times, but mostly the whole situation was very very confused.  Thus the emperor.So I'm really excited about this thread.In terms of most of the original questions, everything was pretty well negotiated on an individual basis though there were market, cultural, political, and real guidelines.   Many of which did not apply to the War of the Roses in the way that you might think.  There were too many Knights in England so they were cheap and Longbowmen had done well in Europe so they got essentially the same pay contract with different duties.In terms of the War of the Roses, and remember this is a period when things are and have been coming apart for some time, there are more or less two things at work:Training: School, or rather your whole life, taught you a method for being a soldier, caring for one, hiring one, or avoiding one.  There are plenty of people to be hired of professional quality in England at this time.  Hiring:You are a professional soldier.  You are paid by institutions.  This means you do your job.  You could work for any number of authorities and you are not hired to be a soldier, you are hired and kept alive to perform a specific task.  Say, protect Calais or put down Welsh Rebellions.  You do not, as a general rule, therefore join armies.  This takes time away from your real job.  You do, however, often fight armies and may accompany them for a while as part of your job.You are an entrepeneur.  You are paid by people, governments, which are not institutions at this point, and markets, of various sorts and types.  This means you join an army or retinue.  You hire other people and are in turn hired until you are large enough to profit and survive from either joining or starting a war.The second method is the only method by which armies were formed in the War of the Roses.  War was a very free enterprise sort of a venture with plenty of willing contractors.  The first method was the way the feudal system worked and it had its uses.Because of the use of the second method there was almost no regularity and it was all negotiated and personality really shown through.  There were a good number of honest to goodness heroes, villains, and noble lords and almost no generals and all too few meaningful titles or ranks.There are a lot of VERY good reasons to do things this way, and bad reasons as well.  But this was the way things were done.</blockquote>

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