Landsknechts

The Landsknechts were the German mercenary infantry of the Renaissance — raised from the 1480s by Maximilian I in imitation of the Swiss pike squares that had humiliated Burgundian chivalry, and within a generation the dominant hired soldiery of Europe. Companies formed under contracted colonels, elected some of their own officers, marched with their own courts and camp followers, and fought for whoever paid: emperors mostly, but the flag followed the florin.

Their war was the push of pike: massive squares of five-meter pikes, screened by arquebusiers, with halberdiers and the great two-handed zweihänder swords of the double-pay men (doppelsöldner) breaking into enemy formations at the shock point. Against their Swiss originals the meetings were merciless — the 'bad war' of pike block grinding pike block, no quarter inside the press.

The Landsknecht look became European legend: slashed and puffed clothing in riotous colors, a swagger the sumptuary laws formally excused because life was short. The record runs through Pavia in 1525 — where their arquebusiers helped destroy French chivalry — and the Sack of Rome in 1527, mercenary history's darkest advertisement. By the later sixteenth century the tercio and standing armies absorbed their world, but early modern infantry was built on their pattern.

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