A német gyalogság a tizenöt éves háború időszakában

Absztrakt

A significant number of German soldiers served in the Kingdom of Hungary in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Some of them served in strongholds of strategic importance comprising the Hungarian border defence system, which had been developing from the end of the 1520s. Despite their significance, the co-habitation of these soldiers with the urban bourgoisie and the Second Estate began to attract interest in Hungarian historical scholarship only recently. About the others, who arrived with the yeomanry, there is even less information. Who were these German foot soldiers, Landsknechts, serving in Hungary? Which layer of German society did they come from? Why did they choose military service, or more exactly, what did they turn their backs on to take up service instead? Unfortunately, the muster rolls, which are the primary archival sources containing answers to these questions, are scarce: from the period of the Fifteen Years’ War only three such documents survive. In this present essay, I have endeavoured to reconstruct from sources and German-language scholarship the profile of people who undertook service in German infantry regiments for wages agreed on by the parties at musters (military and arms inspection). The examination of a soldier’s expected (but not always received) monthly wages and expenditure reveals that this income of mercenaries, often arriving with their families, was not sufficient to cover their living costs. In spite of the frequent default of payment, the musters show an oversupply of mercenaries during the period of the Fifteen Years’ War. This can be explained by other opportunities of income to complement unpaid military wages. The soldiers may have been involved in fraud or the systematic pillage of nearby population. Furthermore, their spouse and children could also contibute to the family income.