Etd

ABSTRACT
HODNET, ANDREW ARTHUR. The Othering of the Landsknechte. (Under the direction of Dr.
Verena Kasper-Marienberg).
This thesis offers a socio-cultural analysis of early modern German media to explore the
public perception of the Landsknechte, mercenaries that were both valued and feared for their
viciousness, and their indifference displayed towards the political motivations of their clients.
Despite their ubiquity on European battlefields, and their role in repulsing the 1529 Ottoman
invasion of Austria, by 1530 the Landsknechte and their families were perceived as thoroughly
dishonorable by central Reformation society and were legally excluded from most urban centers.
This study engages with a critical assessment of contemporary songs, religious
pamphlets, broadsheets, political treatises, autobiographic sources, and belletristic
representations of the Landsknechte to explore the paradoxical relationship that they maintained
with the state actors that relied on their employment. Through engaging with the cultural genres
present in these depictions, the othering of the Landsknechte stems from their origin as the
militaristic arm of Emperor Maximilian I’s attempted centralization of the Holy Roman Empire,
continuing with the economic challenge the mercenary lifestyle posed to traditional social
structures, and ending with their inextricable association between with the increasingly
destructive and intrusive military-fiscal state.

© Copyright 2018 by Andrew Arthur Hodnet
All Rights Reserved

The Othering of the Landsknechte
by
Andrew Arthur Hodnet
A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of

North Carolina State University
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
History
Raleigh, North Carolina

2018
APPROVED BY:
_______________________________ _______________________________
Dr. Verena Kasper-Marienberg Dr. Brent Sirota
Committee Chair
_______________________________
Dr. Thomas Robisheaux
DEDICATION
Dedicated to Elisabeth ‘Buffy’ Williams and Betboo, whose compassion and support has
made my journey possible.
ii
BIOGRAPHY
The author was born in La Jolla, California in 1986 and graduated from La Costa Canon
High School in 2004. After beginning a molecular biology major at the University of California;
Santa Cruz, he changed his major to European History, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts
degree in 2011.
After graduating, he took time away from academic pursuits to assist with the family
business after his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. After her passing in 2012, the author
worked to support his family until he accepted a private sponsorship to move to Durham, North
Carolina in 2015. In August 2016, he joined the graduate program in history at North Carolina
State University.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... v

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1
Chapter 1: The Democratization of Violence ............................................................................ 5
Landsknechte Organization....................................................................................................... 11
Chapter 2: The Reformation Public ......................................................................................... 19
Forsaking the City ..................................................................................................................... 26
Gendered Notions and the Landsknecht ................................................................................... 39
Chapter 3: Vilification ............................................................................................................... 64
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 92
References ................................................................................................................................... 98
iv
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1.1 Knight & Landsknecht, Paul Dolstein, c.1505 ........................................................... 8
Figure 1.2 Detail of Maximilian I’s Prayer Book, Plate 43, Albrecht Durer, 1495 ..................... 9
Figure 1.3 Soldier and Wife, Daniel Hopfer, c.1530 ................................................................. 16
Figure 1.4 Plate 16 of the Schwytzer Chronica, Johannes Stumpf, 1554 .................................. 16
Figure 2.1 Plate 26 of Der Weißkunig, Hans Burgkmair, 1519 ................................................. 23
Figure 2.3 Augsburg Burghermeister and Wife, Unknown Artist, 1544 ................................... 28
Figure 2.4 Brothel Scene, The Brunswick Monogrammist , c.1545 ......................................... 32
Figure 2.5 Cobbler, Niklas Stör, c,1530 .................................................................................... 34
Figure 2.6 Tailor, Niklas Stör, c,1530 ....................................................................................... 35
Figure 2.7 Detail from Large Peasant Holiday, Sebald Becham, c.1530 ................................. 40
Figure 2.10 Page 10 of The Book of Clothes, Matthäus Schwarz, 1560 ...................................... 47
Figure 2.11 Page 43 of The Book of Clothes, Matthäus Schwarz, 1560 ...................................... 48
Figure 2.12 Landsknecht, Urs Graf, 1523 .................................................................................... 49
Figure 2.13 Landsknecht, Urs Graf, 1519 .................................................................................... 50
Figure 2.14 The Cobbler Hans and his Girl Ursula, Erhard Schön, 1568 ................................... 52
Figure 2.15 Die Lebens alter des Mannes, Jörg Breu the Younger, 1540 ................................... 56
Figure 2.16 Age of the Woman at the Age of Ten and Twenty Years, Tobias Stimmer, 1565 ..... 57
Figure 2.17 Soldier Embracing a Young Woman, Daniel Hopfer, c. 1530 ................................. 58
Figure 2.18 Young Woman and Death as a Soldier, Niklaus Manuel, 1517 ............................... 59
v
Figure 2.19 Plate 35 of Von der Arztney bayder Glück, Heinrich Steiner, 1532 ......................... 60
Figure 2.20 Plate 83 of Von der Arztney bayder Glück, Heinrich Steiner, 1532 ......................... 61
Figure 2.21 Detail of Infantry Battle Scene, Hans Holbein the Younger, c,1530 ....................... 65
Figure 2.22 Plate 217 of Von der Arztney bayder Glück, Heinrich Steiner, 1532 ....................... 68
Figure 2.23 Plate 31 of Der Totentanz, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1538 .................................. 70
Figure 2.24 ‘X’ of Holbein alphabet, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540 ..................................... 72
Figure 2.25 Plate 58 from Von der Arztney bayder Glück, Heinrich Steiner, 1532 .................... 75
Figure 2.26 Plate 67 from Von der Arztney bayder Glück, Heinrich Steiner, 1532 .................... 76
Figure 2.27 Detail from The Triumph of Death, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c.1562 ..................... 77
Figure 2.28 Plate 174 of Der Weißkunig, Hans Burgkmair, 1519 ............................................... 80
Figure 2.29 Plate 89 of Von der Arztney bayder Glück, Heinrich Steiner, 1532......................... 82
Figure 2.30 Detail from The Massacre of the Innocents, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c.1565 ....... 84
Figure 2.31 Crucifixion, Daniel Hopfer, c.1520 .......................................................................... 85
Figure 2.32 Removal of Bolt from Der Feldbuch der Wundarzney, Hans von Gersdoff, 1517 .. 89
Figure 2.33 Serratura from Der Feldbuch der Wundarzney, Hans von Gersdoff, 1517 ............. 90
Figure 3.1 The Dead Landsknecht, Albrecht Artdorfer, c.1530 ................................................ 95
vi
Introduction
In 1516, English statesman Thomas More published his reflection on Renaissance
Humanism, De optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia (lit. “On the Best State of the
Republic on the New Island of Utopia”) where, historian Quentin Skinner asserts, More adopted
a Ciceronian pragmatist approach answering the question of “True nobility” within society 1.
When it came to matters of defense, More enunciated that his Utopians “…detest war as a very
brutal thing, and which, to the reproach of human nature, is practiced by men than by any sort of
beasts2,” preferring instead to concentrate on matters of crafting, religion, and trade. Being
masters of commerce, the Utopians have ample gold and silver with which to pay others to wage
war on their behalf, principally members of a race of people who live far outside of the bounds
of Utopian society, the “rude, wild, and fierce” Zapolets. Hailing from the wilderness five
hundred miles East of the Island of Utopia, the Zapolets have forsaken agriculture, housing, and
industry, and “know none of the arts of life, save those that lead to the taking it away [sic],”
choosing instead to engage in mercenary service punctuated with heartless avarice; “There are
few wars in which they make not a considerable part of the armies of both sides: so it often falls
out that they who are related, and were hired in the same country, and so have lived long and
familiarly together, forgetting both their relations and former friendship, kill one another upon no
other consideration than that of being hired to it for a little money by princes of different
interests3.”
1
Skinner, Quentin. "Sir Thomas More's Utopia and the Language of Renaissance Humanism." Edited by Anthony
Pagden. In The Languages of Political Theory in Early-modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2012. Pp. 134-138
2
Moore, Thomas. The Utopia of Sir Thomas Moore. Edited by Ralph Robinson and H. B. Cotterill. London:
MacMillan, 1937. Pp. 57
3
Ibid, Pp. 59-60
1
Every aspect of More’s Zapolets, including the location of their homeland, their ubiquity
on European battlefields, their nomadic lifestyle that eschews immobile property, and their
willingness to disregard social and familial loyalties for monetary gain, mark them as transparent
stand-ins of the Landsknechte, organized mercenaries of Germanic origin that were employed by
every army in Western Europe by 1516 4. The Utopians reliance on the Zapolets for the
projection of martial power combined with Zapolets’ exclusion from Utopian society also
mirrored the actions of the growing fiscal military state, though this observation would have
hardly been perceived as novel in the sixteenth century. Machiavelli’s 1521 political treatise,
Arte della Guerra, warned rulers to keep mercenaries employed and on the march, lest they take
root and “Strip [the Prince] of his kingdom5,” while Holy Roman Emperor Charles V would state
in 1530 that the “inhuman tyranny” imposed by the “blasphemous and cruel” Landsknechte were
a greater threat to the stability of his empire than the Turks6.
This thesis will explore the paradox of necessity and exclusion that defined the
experience of the Landsknechte in Renaissance society; as the principal arm of a state bolstered
with democratized violence, the mercenary was, through the machinations of customary and
legal reform, marginalized to a state of Otherness. This approach will concentrate specifically on
Landsknechte in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, avoiding the reasons for the
generalized opprobrium displayed to mercenaries through history7, which will grant a more
nuanced view of marginalized micro-societies set against a backdrop of the centralization of the
4
Hale, J. R. War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press,1998.
Pp. 62-63
5
Machiavelli, Niccolò. The Art of War: A Revised Edition of the Ellis Farneworth Translation. Translated by Neal
Wood. New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1990. Pp. 20
6
Harrington, Joel F. The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth
Century. New York: Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. Pp. 8-9
7
Mockler, Anthony. The Mercenaries. Sugarland, TX: Free Companion Press, 1981.
2
Early Modern state. Likewise, the term “Othering” will be utilized when discussing the evolution
of the Landsknechte’s place in Early Modernity, rather than “Disenfranchisement” or
“Marginalization,” for several key reasons. For one, the character of Early Modern Society defies
easy categorization between ‘Central’ and ‘Marginal’ social groups, as contemporary accounts
speak towards greater degrees of intersectionality between different partitions of the social order
during the milieu of daily life8. For example, the Landsknechte at different times permeated
central society through their use in the enforcement of Holy Roman Imperial decrees and the
physical protection of important political figures, while at other times restricted from settling
within urban jurisdictions or travelling through city walls- an examination of this effect through
the lens of linear disenfranchisement or marginalization would ultimately prove hollow and
reductive. The term ‘Othering’ as it is used in this thesis branches from Armand Arriaza’s
“Society of Orders,” where Early Modern European society is perceived to be underpinned by a
crisis between the declining noble estate and the rise of the bourgeoise class which was mediated
by the edification of social orders9. The gradual removal of populations from the framework of
Early Modern orders through “Othering,” allows a more accurate representation of the
Landsknechte’s position, as even when they were vaunted as the defenders of Christendom
during the Invasions of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529, contemporary sources still regarded
them as an order separate from the rest of society.
8
Kallenberg, Vera. Intersektionalität & Kritik: Intersektionalitätsforschung in Deutschland, Frankreich Und Den USA.
Wiesbaden: VS Verlag Für Sozialwissenschaften, 2010. Pp. 14-16
9
Arriaza, Armand. "Mousnier and Barber: The Theoretical Underpinning of the "Society of Orders" in Early Modern
Europe." Past & Present, no. 89 (1980): 39-57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/650657.
3
To that end, this approach will concentrate on a socio-cultural perspective of primary
sources, including published literature10, private memoirs11, commissioned artwork12, printed
illustrations13, and published songs intended for public consumption14. The first section will
outline a basic understanding of the discourse of warfare from the mid-fifteenth-century to the
middle of the sixteenth century, to describe the increasing participation of the European populace
in the conduct of war. Then, a brief outline describing the historical development and
significance of the Landsknechte will be explored, with careful attention being paid to sources of
Othering generated by the conduct of the mercenaries themselves. An exploration into the
burgeoning world of Press media and the Reformation Public will follow, along with an
examination of how the rapid exchange of ideas contributed to the Landsknecht’s
marginalization. Urban culture and gendered notions will be touched on next, finalized with an
in-depth study of cultural symbols as expressions of social anxiety. This discourse will make a
conscious effort to avoid straying too far into militaria or the politics of the Holy Roman Empire
under Maximilian I, and focus as much as possible on a purely socio-cultural historical approach,
though some clarification on either subject may be necessary.
10
The published collections of Niccolò Machiavelli, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, and Thomas
More.
11
Posthumously published memoirs by contemporary figures, such as Robert III de la Marck, le Chevaier Bayard,
Peter Dornach, Götz von Berlichingen, Sebastian Vogelsberger, Matthäus Schwarz, King Charles IX of France, Holy
Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
12
Works painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Hans Holbein the Younger, the Brunswick Monogramist, and Albrecht
Artdorfer.
13
Works by Albrecht Durer, Haniel Hopfer, Johannes Stumpf, Hans Burgkmair, Niklas Stör, Sebald Becham, Urs
Graf, Erhard Schön, Jörg Breu the Younger, Tobias Stimmer, Heinrich Steiner, and Hans von Gersdoff.
14
The published songbooks of Hans Sachs, Hans Witzstadt, and Jörg Graff.
4
Chapter 1: The Democratization of Violence
The formation of the Landsknechte as a distinct socio-economic community lay in the
historical discourse by which the conduct of warfare left the sole domain of the second estate and
would become a principle motivation behind the centralization of state bureaucracy observed
during the Early Modern Era15. Historian Bert Hall traced this process back to the 1302 Battle of
the Golden Spurs, where a combination of earthwork defenses and Flemish infantry armed with
Goedendag pole arms defeated a charge of French shock cavalry, stunning contemporary
expectations16. Through the course of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), armies of the
French and English monarchies employed greater numbers of infantry forces for tasks that were
considered ‘beneath’ the fighting nobility, including recontouring, poliorecetics, and logistic
support- tasks that became more important as the war stagnated between major battles17.
It was during the latter stages of the Hundred Years’ War that groups of pikemen
descending from the foothills of the Alps appear in the rosters of English and Italian Free
Companies, achieving notoriety for utilizing disciplined ranks of pikes and halberds to actively
engage cavalry on the battlefield, without the need for defensive earthworks 18. A contemporary
French observer of the nascent Swiss pike square, marveled at the combination of mobility and
the discipline under fire that the pike square exhibited, opining that the age of static stone castles
was to fall way to “the walking citadel of the battlefield19.” A Swiss pike, weighing over thirty
15
Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 4
16
Hall, Bert S. Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe: Gunpowder, Technology, and Tactics. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2006. Pp. 34-35
17
Rogers, Clifford J. "Military Revolutions of the Hundred Years War." Edited by Clifford J. Rogers. In The Military
Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe, 55-94. Boulder: Westview
Press, 1995. pp. 55–94.
18
Turnbull, Stephen. The Art of Renaissance Warfare: From the Fall of Constantinople to the Thirty Years War.
London: Frontline Books, 2018. Pp. 44
19
Oman, Charles. A History of the Art of War in the Middle Ages. Mechanicsburg, PA: Greenhill Books/Stackpole
5
pounds and extending to over sixteen feet long, was a weapon that demanded discipline from the
entire square to use effectively, as its size and limited striking motion made it a poor weapon in
single combat, especially against cavalry20. When properly coordinated however, a square could
flaunt a veritable forest of steel barbs, turn to meet a flanking foe within seconds, and advance
quickly enough to overtake artillery batteries between salvos 21.
The victory of the Swiss Reisläufer over the artillery trains of Charles the Bold during
The Burgundian Wars in 1477 demonstrated the impact that drilled and motivated infantry could
possess, even against numerically and technologically superior foes. After fending off a French
invasion of Burgundy at the 1479 Battle of Guinegate with the assistance of 11,000 Reisläufer,
Archduke Maximilian I of the Hapsburg Dynasty sought to replicate the Swiss method of
democratized violence with his own German subjects22. After purchasing the aid of Reisläufer
captains to train several thousand Swabian recruits in the manner of the pike square, Maximilian
I placed Tyrolian knights at the heads of his newly-raised infantry regiments, and encouraged
them to instill, as Fritz Redlich defined it, “a spirit of knighthood, transmitted to the new infantry
whose battle morale thus reached a level unknown to the rabble of the foot soldiery of the
Middle Ages23.”
The first written record of the word “Landsknecht” appears in a court document laid
before the Swiss Diet in 1486 by the Helvetian general Konrad Gäscuff, wherein he complains
bitterly about his service in training his native Swiss Reisläufer, stating that, “…he would rather
Books, 1998. Pp. 41-62

20
Delbrück, Hans. History of the Art of War, IV. The Dawn of Modern Warfare. Lincoln, Neb.: University of
Nebraska Press, 1990. Pp. 11
21
Hall, Pp. 32-33
22
Delbrück Pp. 4-7
23
Redlich, Fritz. The German Military Enterpriser and His Work Force: A Study in European Economic and Social
History. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1964. Pp. 17
6
arm and train the Swabian or other Landsknecht, because one of them is worth two of us24.” The
precise translation of the term Landsknecht and which spelling is most accurate to the period, is a
topic of heated debate among Renaissance historians; Martin Nell and Günther Franz insist that
the “Land” prefix specifically refers to the German countryside (as opposed to the Swiss
mountains), which produces the most common translation, “Servant of the German Land.”
However, Hans Delbrück and Larry Silver disagree with the proto-nationalist nomenclature of
the term, “Land”, pointing out that early Landsknecht companies were inclusive of many Swiss
soldiers25. Charles Oman, referencing the difficulties that Maximilian I encountered with other
members of the Holy Roman nobility, posited that the archduke himself chose the name,
“perhaps to disguise the fact that he was raising a permanent standing army, for whose
appearance the Diet of the Empire had no particular enthusiasm26.” Curiously, Paul Dolnstein, a
Landsknecht who left a written memoir of his campaign in Frisia and Flanders through the late
fifteenth century, never uses the word “Landsknecht” himself, instead opting for Knecht,
Deutscher, or Mann instead27.
24
Oman, Sixteenth Century, Pp. 75-76
25
Skjelver, Danielle Mead. There I, Paul Dolnstein, Saw Action: The Sketchbook of a Warrior Artisan in the
German Renaissance. Edited by Hans Peter. Broedel. Ann Arbor, MI: ProQuest, 2012. Pp. 20-21
26
Oman, Sixteenth Century, Pp. 74
27
Skjelver, Pp. 19
7
Figure 1.1: Knight & Landsknecht
Paul Dolnstein, Pen on Leather, c. 1505
Figure 1.1, the final page of Paul Dolnstein’s journal, depicts what he wished for on the battlefield; to combat a
knight, his social superior, as his martial equal. The knight’s stooped posture and disarmed sword suggests that the
Landsknecht has emerged victoriously from the fight.
8
Figure 1.2: Detail of Maximilian I’s Prayer Book, Plate 43
Albrecht Durer, Pen on Paper, 1495
Figure 1.2 is a detail from the margins of a prayer book Maximilian I commissioned from Albrecht Durer depicting
a Landsknecht and a knight locked in combat. Maximilian I commanded on horseback, but often fought on foot
alongside his Landsknechte, though this image is more likely an allegorical representation of Maximilian I’s conflict
with elements of the Imperial nobility who resisted his efforts towards centralization.
The formation of the first Landsknechte companies, and their success in early
battlefield engagements signaled the full democratization of warfare in Europe, as commoners
of any background could now participate in battle to a degree reserved for the noble estate
only a generation earlier, and to a scale never seen before. The difference that democratization
made in the conduct of warfare was distinct enough for Italian contemporaries to label the new
method of fighting, “[Guerra] Alla moderna” (“Modern Warfare”)2829, and for the motif of
Landsknechte overcoming armored knights to enjoy popularity in late fifteenth-century popular
28
Sandberg, Brian. War and Conflict in the Early Modern World: 1500-1700. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. Pp.
24
29
Brian Sandberg, Malcom Vale, and Charles Oman all utilize the phrase “Alla Moderna,” meaning “by modern
means” in Italian, as used by contemporary writer Nicollò Machiavelli, with the “Guerra” (lit. “Warfare”) being
inferred. As utilized by Sandberg, Vale, and Oman, the term “Moderna” was used to differentiate methods of
warfare between the Medieval and Renaissance period, and not as a term reflective of 19th and 20th century
philosophical attitudes.
9
culture (see Figures 1.130 and 1.231). French Knight Pierre Terrail de Bayard, who was forced to
share the battlefield with Landsknechte mercenaries in 1505, would acerbically question, “Does
the emperor think it fitting to put so much noblesse in risk and peril by the side of conscripts,
who are cobblers, blacksmiths, bakers, and laborers, and who do not hold their honor in like
esteem as gentlemen32?” Even Louis XI, whose forces had been defeated at Guinegate in 1471,
issued the following pronouncement when addressing his war council the following year; “War
has become very different. In those days, when you had eight or ten thousand men, you
reckoned that a very large army; today is quite another matter. One has never seen a more
numerous army than that of the lord of Burgundy, both in artillery and in munitions of all sorts;
yours is also the finest which has ever been mustered in the kingdom. As for me, I am not
accustomed to see so many troops together. How do you prevent disorder and confusion
among the mass33?”
How then, did the Landsknechte organize this new engine of democratized guerra alla
moderna?
30
Dolnstein, Paul, ed. Skjelver, Pp. 167
31
Dürer, Albrecht. Dürers Drawings for the Prayer-book of Emperor Maximilian I: 53 Plates. Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, 2014. Pp. 43
32
Terrail, Pierre. The History of the Chevalier Bayard. Edited by Joseph Sterling. London: Printed for George
Robinson, 1781. Pp. 173
33
Vale, Malcolm. War and Chivalry: Warfare and Aristocratic Culture in England, France and Burgundy at the
End of the Middle Ages. Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 1981. Pp. 148-149
10
Landsknechte Organization
The roots of the bureaucratic structure of the Landsknechte company lies in the challenge
faced by Maximilian I when attempting to organize his Swiss Reisläufer before the Battle of
Guinegate. The Burgundian military system that the archduke was used to, the bandes
d’ordonnance, was itself a bare iteration of the French companies d’ordonnance system, and
separated the army into bandes made up of 600 horsemen (cavalry and mounted archers) and 300
footmen (arquebusiers, arbalesters, and pikes)34. Though Maximilian I credited himself with the
creation of the Fähnlein/Haufen system, Larry Silver contends that the new system, which
separated cavalry and infantry bureaucracies and solidified the chain of command, was directly
imported from the government of the Helvetian Confederacy35.
Regardless, by 1490 the character of the Landsknechte military culture and organization
had stratified itself around the fetishization of Maximilian I, who had not only proclaimed
himself as the “Father of the Landsknechte” but would also commonly refer to the mercenaries
under his direct employment as his “Children36.” In his 1517 autobiography, Der Weißkunig (lit.
“The White King”), Maximilian I not only praised his Landsknechte as the guardians of Imperial
Hegemony in Central Europe, but also stressed that a personal connection edified in the sharing
of cultural symbols between mercenary and Emperor was necessary to prevent rebellion.
Chapter 47 of Der Weißkunig frames this argument through the conversation between
Maximilian I and an ambitious stable-groom: “Thus must a mighty lord know all kinds of horses
and have them properly bridled. Once one of his grooms spoke to the king, telling him that he
34
Nimwegen, Olaf Van. "The Transformation of Army Organization in Early-modern Western Europe, C. 1500-
1789." Edited by Frank Tallett and D. J. B. Trim. In European Warfare, 1350-1750. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013. pp. 163
35
Silver, Larry. "Shining Armor; Emperor Maximilian, Chivalry, and War." In Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles: Art
and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, edited by Pia F. Cuneo. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Pp. 79
36
Ibid, Pp. 73
11
would surpass his own riding master. The king answered him by saying; ‘There is an old
proverb, a nail holds the horseshoe, a horseshoe holds a horse, a horse holds a man, a man holds
a castle, a castle holds a city, a city holds a country, a country holds a kingdom, and I say to you:
behold me and my might, and you will not say that a Knecht should be over his lord. For
whatever lord lived in only trusting his Knechte and in the power of his horse, he will be
deceived and conquered by his enemies. Whichever lord, however, understands a thing for
himself, need not abandon himself to another37.”
The association with Maximilian I was also embraced by the Landsknechte themselves,
particularly evident in the motifs displayed in symbols of company identity such as badges,
clothing styles, and banners. After his marriage to Mary of Burgundy in 1477, Maximilian I
adopted the traditional symbols of the Burgundian nobility, namely red staves arranged in a St.
Andrew’s Cross flanked by sparking shards of flint, in his own familial heraldry and the banners
displayed by his Landsknechte38. The Lucerne Chronicle, an illuminated manuscript illustrated
by Diebold Schilling the Younger, depicted Maximilian I’s Landsknechte during the 1499
Swabian War as wearing Burgundian Crosses as badges roughly sewn onto clothing 39, while Der
Weißkunig depicts entire mercenary companies displaying the heraldic trappings of Maximilian.
The Landsknechte being depicted as Maximilian’s “children” would persist for years after the
Emperor’s death in 1519; For instance, Landsknecht songwriter Hans Witzstat, writing in 1530,
penned the lyric, “God grant mercy to the almighty honest Emperor Maximilian, with whom
came up an order, travelling through the lands, with pipes and drums. Landsknechte they are
37
Maximilian, and Hans Burgkmair. Weißkunig. Edited by Marx Treitzsaurwein. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956.
Pp. 237
38
Benecke, Pp. 14
39
Ganz, Paul. "The Lucerne Chronicle of Diebold Schilling." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 63, no. 366
(1933): 127-28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/865463.
12
called40.” Whether this association served as a genuine affection towards the patronage of
Maximilian I, or simply as a cultural trope that granted legitimacy and cultural identity to the
Landsknechte company that transcended the geographic loyalties of individual mercenaries
remains unclear, as many Landsknechte would rebel against Maximilian I during the disastrous
Venetian campaign of 1499, while still adhering to the military structure that the emperor
“invented41.”
The Fähnlein (“Little Banner”) system started when an official letter of appointment
from the Haufen (lit. “Heap”, but in this instance, “Company” is more appropriate) was granted
to a recruiter or freelance entrepreneur, who was then tasked with securing the promises of a
certain number of men to appear, in full uniform and equipment, to a muster location on a certain
date. A surviving example of one of these appointment letters, granted to Friedrich von
Reiffenberg in 1530 for the recruitment of 8,000 Landsknechte for Henry VIII, stresses the
importance of each recruit’s fitness and obedience; “They shall first diligently see that every
Standard be furnished with four hundred of good persons sound and able, and to muster out of
them those that be crooked, lame, or faulty, and to see that their furniture of harness, weapons,
etc. be according to their covenants, and the whole ensign be well appointed and in good
order… nor let pass any that is reported to be a strifemaker, wrangler, or quarreler42.”
Once the initiate and his equipment passed inspection, he was interviewed by the Obrist
(“Colonel”) of the Haufen, and placed into a Fähnlein, a division led by a Hauptmann
(“Captain”) numbering 400 men total, which in turn was made up of squads of individuals
numbering six to ten men called a Rott. Each Fähnlein was equipped with a team of drummers,
40
Rüther, Pp. 193-194
41
Brady, pp. 122-123
42
Millar, Gilbert John. "The Landsknecht: His Recruitment and Organization, With Some Reference to the Reign of
Henry VIII." Military Affairs 35, no. 3 (1971): 95. doi:10.2307/1983992. Pp. 97
13
fiefers, and trumpeters, whose training allowed them to quickly set a marching cadence or
communicate with other groups of Landsknechte over long distances and above the cacophony of
gunfire and artillery43. With training, complex maneuvers involving dozens of different weapon
types and thousands of men could be coordinated across smoke-obscured battlefields with
relative ease, as was demonstrated at a military demonstration outside of Milan in 1495. As
written by Lombardi physician Alessandro Benedetti; “All eyes fixed on the German phalanx,
which formed a quadrangle of 6,000 men… Following the German custom, such troops have so
many drums that it nearly breaks one’s eardrums to hear them. Armored only with half-plate,
they march in close formation, the foremost with long, pointed pikes, those behind with lances
raised upright, followed by halberds and two-handed swords. At the appropriate sign from their
standard-bearers, the whole troop moves right, left, or backwards, as though it were on a raft. On
its flanks are gunners and crossbowmen. Parading before Duchess Beatrice, this troop
instantaneously converted itself into a wedge, then it divided into two wings, which moved, one
fast, and one slowly, so that one part revolved around the other, and the seemed to form a single
body44.”
The final step of the muster involved a ceremony titled “Der Musterung Umzug,” (lit.
“The Muster Parade”), where all the recruits summoned to the muster were brought before the
commanding officers of the Haufen, who read aloud the Artikelbrief (lit. “Letter of Articles”),
which delineated in explicit detail the rights and responsibilities owed to every Landsknecht
within the Haufen, regardless of rank or experience45. The oldest surviving Artikelbrief, upheld
by a Haufen in the Netherlands in 1546, contains numerous articles relating to wages (Article I),
43
Richards, John, and G. A. Embleton. Landsknecht Soldier: 1485-1560. Oxford: Osprey, 2002. Pp. 5-6
44
Brady, Thomas A. German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009. Pp. 108-109
45
Richard, Pp. 5
14
the right of Emperor Charles V to appoint new commanding officers to the Company without
consulting the soldiers (Article II, enacted shortly after the 1527 Sack of Rome), lawful assembly
procedures for soldiers to air grievances (Article X), and a penal offenses against the murder of
civilians, the rape of women, and the desecration of altars (Article XXXVI)46. Finally, the new
Landsknechte and their families commit to upholding the Artikelbrief by swearing with the
Schwurhand (a gesture with religious undertones, made by extending the index and middle finger
on the right hand upwards) and passing under an arch made of pikes and halberds, signaling an
unambiguous departure from a civilian life into a military one 47.
Once a muster was complete, all Landsknechte, as well as their present family members,
camp followers, and draft animals would organize into the Tross (lit. “Baggage Train”), which
would serve as a mobile home, commercial center, and fortress if necessary. The exact size of
these moving communities, especially the population of women and children (See Figure 1.3 48),
can be extremely difficult to ascertain, as camp audits detailing the number of non-combatants in
a military campaign were rarely, if ever, recorded; as Maurizio Arfaioli noted in his examination
of sixteenth-century Florentine mercenaries, the “ [Camp followers’] presence is more easily
inferred than proven49.” For instance, during his initial invasion of Italy in 1494, Charles VIII of
France estimated that he would have to feed approximately 50,000 mouths every day to maintain
an army of 20,000 combatants50.
46
Nimwegen, Pp. 165
47
Hale, War and Society, Pp. 150-151
48
Lynn, 219
49
Arfaioli, Maurizio. The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy during the Italian Wars (1526-1528).
Pisa: Edizioni Plus - Pisa University Press, 2005. Pp. 68
50
Lynn, John A. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2008. Pp. 12
15
Figure 1.3: Soldier and his Wife
Daniel Hopfer, Etched Plate on Paper, c. 1530
Note that while the Landsknecht’s wife is laden with a knapsack filled with household cooking items, she is also
carrying a full purse, suggesting that women in the Tross held financial responsibilities in addition to domestic ones.
The walking stick and pomegranate is indicative of a restless, but reasonably comfortable life.
Figure 1.4: Plate 16 of the Schwytzer Chronica

Johannes Stumpf, Woodcut on Paper, 1554
The plunder of enemy resources after a successful battle remained a strong economic incentive for many men and
women to join Landsknechte companies, though plundering ‘friendly’ territory often occurred in cases of extreme
hardship or client delinquency. Note the active participation of women and children in this depiction of plunder.
16
The Landsknecht army employed by Henry II of France (1519-1559) possessed an
estimated population of 90,000 to 100,000 people when the Tross was considered, giving it a
higher population than sixteenth-century Milan, and only slightly less populated than London 51.
Even beyond the mobility demanded of a mercenary company to adequately project force on
behalf of a client, a large Tross required movement simply to avoid starvation, as local fodder
and provisions would be quickly stripped bare by so many mouths. Landsknechtshaufen
mitigated this strain on logistics by employing officers singularly charged with resource
acquisition, including Quartiermeister (lit. “Quartermasters”), who would ride ahead of the Tross
and arrange with town councils to sell provisions at fair prices, and Brandmeister (lit. “Fire
masters”), who specialized in threatening villages and homesteads with arson to obtain
supplies52. Plunder (See Figure 1.453), both as a method to acquire resources and bolster war
funds, remained a strong incentive for company enlistment throughout the sixteenth century, and
into the Thirty Years’ War, even as the buying power of mercenary wages drastically plummeted
after the 1570’s54. The Tross also gained notoriety in the public consciousness by its permissive
attitude towards gambling as a method of resource allocation, as it allowed Landsknechte who
were too sick or wounded to participate in an attack the chance to obtain a share of the plunder,
and to strengthen the interpersonal bonds within the Fähnlein5556. As such, the daily life of the
Landsknecht and his family would prove to be a fascinating genre to the consumers of the
51
Hale, War and Society, Pp. 159
52
Evans, Richard J. The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History. London: Routledge,
2014. Pp. 74
53
Lynn, Pp. 148
54
Swart, Erik. "From “ Landsknecht ” to “Soldier”: The Low German Foot Soldiers of the Low Countries in the
Second Half of the Sixteenth Century." International Review of Social History 51, no. 01 (2006): 75.
doi:10.1017/s0020859005002336.
55
Schwartz, David G. Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling. Las Vegas, NV: Winchester Books, 2013. Pp. 93
56
Hale, John Rigby. Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance. New Haven (Conn.): Yale University, 1991. Pp. 24-
26
17
Reformation public culture, as it presented a tangible vision of life capable of thriving outside of
the walls of cities, and the bounds of Christian morality57.
The human costs of the democratized guerra alla moderna demanded a military
bureaucracy firmly invested in Othering its participants from civilian society, as exemplified by
the Fähnlein, Haufen, and Tross establishments. However, while affixing the cause of Othering
squarely on the Haufen’s active attempts at removing the Landsknecht from society, it does not
adequately explain why the Landsknecht continued to remain Othered after the drums of war had
fallen silent. After all, many organizations in Early Modern Europe possessed similar ceremonies
to Der Musterung Umzug, such as induction rituals observed in academic fraternities or
journeyman groups58, without experiencing the pervasive removal from society that
Landsknechte experienced. The next two chapters will investigate several social and political
elements emerging during the Renaissance, how they pertained to the perception of the
Landsknecht mercenary and his family, and how they assisted in their marginalization.
57
Ibid, Pp. 4-7
58
Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York:
BasicBooks, 2009. Pp. 75-107
18
Chapter 2- The Reformation Public
Writing in 1676, English poet Andrew Marvell wrote a history of the Protestant
Reformation that took special care to divorce its causes from divine providence, choosing instead
to focus on what he considered to be the driving force behind the Reformation: the printing
press. When the replication of knowledge relied upon the patient hand of a clerical illuminator,
controversial ideas could be easily stifled before gaining popular traction. However, Marvell
asserted that the advent of the printed book not only led to the flood of information endemic to
the Reformation, but to stronger efforts to stem that information; “The issue of the brain was no
more stifl’d then [sic] the issue of the womb… that a Book should be to stand before a Jury ere it
be borne unto the World, was never heard before59.” To the poet, this dualism between
dissemination and censorship not only explained the Reformation’s spread, but its violent
turmoil as well, drawing upon the physical similarity between the printing press and the
mechanical bullet mold to enunciate his point; “O Printing! How hast thou disturbed the Peace of
Mankind! That Lead, when molded into bullets, is not so mortal as when founded into Letters!60”
While the relationship between the printing press and religious upheaval wasn’t as
bluntly direct as Marvell depicted it, the history of the press in Europe is inextricably linked with
the Reformation, as well as the spread of ideas during the Renaissance in general. While the
earliest woodblock prints produced in Europe date to a 1395 set of Bolognese playing cards,
higher quality printed medium did not become affordable until the 1444 invention of the
Gutenberg Press in the Imperial city of Strasbourg61. By the end of the Fifteenth Century, further
59
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions
to the Sense of an Ending. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pp.58
60
Ibid. pp. 60-61
61
Brady, Thomas A. German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2009. Pp. 24
19
improvements to the Gutenberg Press, combined with more efficient paper mill production, and
an increasingly wealthy pool of investors across Europe,62 led to literature prices accessible to a
consumer base outside of the privileged classes; “…a good estimate of cost would be one or two
pennies (Pfennig) per sheet, which would make for a cost of, say, eight pennies for average
pamphlets of four sheets yielding up to thirty-two printed pages. This is about a third of a day’s
wage for a journeyman artisan, equal to the price of a hen, or a kilogram of beef, or a pound of
wax, or the cost of a wooden pitchfork- not insignificant, but certainly within reach of the
‘common man,’ the pamphlet’s intended target63.”
According to Lucien Febvre, by 1500, “There was scarcely a town in Germany, Italy,
France, or the Low Countries that did not have a printing press,” the combined production of
which reached 20 million combined prints by the beginning of the Reformation, and 200 million
prints by the end of the Sixteenth Century64. The language employed by most of these early
printed works, as well as the origin of the printing press, led to printed material to referred to as
“The German Art,” quickly becoming a foci of German identity and pride65. A 1469 Addendum
to Cicero’s Letters included the passage, “From Italy once each German brought a book/ A
German now will give more than they took,” while German humanist Sebastian Brandt waxed,
“Through the genius and skill of the German people, there is now a great abundance of books…
Not only do the Germans excel in strength of character and arms, they hold the scepter of the
world as well!66”
62
Febvre, Lucien, and Henri-Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800. London:
Verso, 2010. Pp. 36-39
63
Edwards, Mark U. Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. Pp. 16
64
Febvre, Pp. 180-186
65
Brady, Pp. 26
66
Eisenstein, Pp. 31
20
This veritable wealth of information freely available to the public eye created an easy
avenue through which public sentiments and newsworthy information could be shared across
vast geographical expanses, creating a “Worldly Culture” in formerly insular communities 67. The
milieu of public consciousness, expressed as a cycle vacillating between rumors, letters, songs,
pamphlets, sermons, and pronouncements, and observable in every rung of the social ladder,
propelled the writers and artists of these tracts as important scions of popular culture, with
contemporary sources referring to them as “The Fourth Estate68.” However, the precise
receptiveness of the common populace towards this new “Worldly Culture” is shrouded in
uncertainty, as even the most conflagrative lines of text would be rendered impotent if its reader
was illiterate. The few primary accounts reflecting the literacy rates of early Sixteenth Century
Europe are too anecdotal to be accurately representative, forcing experts to extrapolate upon
literature sales, tax receipts, and legal records to flesh out a rural literacy rate between 5-15% and
an urban literacy rate between 30-60%6970.
Perceptive to this disparity, and eager to reach a larger market, publishing houses
commonly paired lines of text with illustrations designed to evoke interest in illiterate consumers
by playing upon cultural symbols and tropes. Illustrated prints were pervasive enough that as
early as 1465, the manufacture of biblical playing cards, illustrated broadsheets, and pamphlets
far exceeded the production of bound books, causing Johann Gutenberg to proclaim that his final
invention, a mechanism to replicate biblical illumination with pressed egg tempera (that was
67
Stone, Lawrence. "Literacy And Education In England 1640-19001." Past and Present 42, no. 1 (1969): 69-139.
doi:10.1093/past/42.1.69. Pp. 69-75
68
Matheson, Peter. The Rhetoric of the Reformation. London: T & T Clark International, 2004. Pp. 27-48
69
Stone, Pp. 70
70
Eire, Carlos M. N. Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450-1650. New Haven: Yale University Press,
2016. Pp. 9-12
21
never completed), would outperform the success of his earlier press71. Illustrated sheets
themselves were often highly venerated by those who owned them, particularly if they carried a
religious connotation; Printed representations of saints were believed to hasten recovery and
stem gangrene if bandages were made from them72, holy symbols on playing card helped allay
the sinful nature of gambling73, and block prints made of carved wood or etched metal used to
press images were akin to holy relics, due to their efficacy in spreading religious virtue 74.
Shortly after the creation of his first Landsknecht companies, Maximilian I opened a
school devoted to the training of sophisticated engraving techniques and created a municipal
postage system based off moveable typeset that stretched from Strasbourg to Vienna 75. Though
the Archduke poured enough money in these projects to earn harsh rebuke from his father76, he
felt so personally invested in the future of print media that he would credit himself with
inventing both wax stylus engraving, and the municipal postage service in Der Weißkunig
(Figures 2.1 & 2.2)77.
71
Childress, Diana. Johannes Gutenberg and the Printing Press. Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2008.
Pp. 10-16
72
Hind, Arthur Mayger. An Introduction to a History of Woodcut: With a Detailed Survey of Work Done in the 15th
Century. New York: Dover, 1963. Pp. 10
73
Ibid, Pp. 14
74
Hind, Pp. 5-10
75
Benecke, Gerhard. Maximilian I (1459-1519): An Analytical Biography. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
Pp. 156
76
Ibid Pp. 157
77
Maximilian, and Hans Burgkmair. Weisskunig. Edited by Marx Treitzsaurwein. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956.
22
Figure 2.1: Plate 26 of Der Weißkunig
Art by Hans Burgkmair, Etched steel plate, 1517-1519
In this plate, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I is depicted inventing a new method of engraving steel plates for
the purpose of print reproduction.
23
Art by Hans Burgkmair, Etched steel plate, 1517-1519
In this image, Maximilian I is “inventing” a municipal post system reliant on printed form heads. While evidence
exists for these inventions existing before Maximilian I’s lifetime, the amount of effort and capital he invested into
these ventures were unprecedented for a European monarch. Note the presence of a Landsknecht on the right side of
plate 27.
Unsurprisingly, given the ubiquity of mercenaries on European battlefields, and the
prevalence of a Weltkultur (lit.“World Culture”) view enriched by a deeply illustrative print
media, Landsknechte would become a common fixture of Renaissance era art and culture by
1500, replete with common physical characteristics and symbolic motifs78; Historian Matthias
78
Andersson, Christiane, and Charles Talbot. From a Mighty Fortress: Prints, Drawings, and Books in the Age of
Luther 1483-1546. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1983. Pp. 68
24
Rögg identified over 4,000 Reformation-era prints that depicted Landsknechte that have survived
to modernity79. The next section will engage with depictions of Landsknechte in the European
popular media utilizing the approach pioneered by Andrew Pettegree80 by drawing attention
away from the individual subject at hand, and instead exploring how each piece speaks towards a
larger movement that reinforces the cultural Othering of the Landsknechte. To that end, the term
“genre” will be applied with a structuralist conception that describes thematic elements without
delving into exclusive classification, as described by Barbara Lewalski 81. Emulating this process
will allow for a study of nonfictive genre divorced from reductive antiquarianism, and free to
dissect the metamorphosis of European society in the Sixteenth Century in a similar manner
employed by Renaissance historians, such as Philip Sidney and Stephen Gosson 82.
79
Rögg, Matthias. Landsknechte Und Reisläufer: Bilder Vom Soldaten: Ein Stand in Der Kunst Des 16. Jahrhunderts.
Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002. Pp. 3
80
Pettegree, Andrew. "The Reformation as a Media Event." Archiv Für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for
Reformation History 108, no. 1 (2017). doi:10.14315/arg-2017-0115. Pp 1-4
81
Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer. Renaissance Genres: Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. 2-8
82
Ann, Imbrie E. "Defining Nonfiction Genres." Edited by Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. In Renaissance Genres:
Essays on Theory, History, and Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. 54-
69
25
Forsaking the City
The precise origin of German urban culture, characterized by a staunch independence that
would frustrate attempts at civil unification from the Middle Ages to Bismarck’s day, remains a
point of contention among historians to the present day. Colonization models popular in the
nineteenth and early twentieth-century83 have faced harsh scrutiny from modern historians such
as Peter Wilson, who argues that urbanization occurred only after pan-European migrants were
promised town charters offering greater degrees of freedom in exchange for land development;
“The new laws included better property rights, lower inheritance dues, and reduced feudal
obligations. Migrants faced considerable hardship, as expressed by the thirteenth-century
German proverb “Tod-Not-Brot”: The first generation found death, the second experienced want,
but the third finally got bread.84” Hailing from disparate regions of Europe, each group of
migrants transplanted their own systems of custom and law into the many towns of Central
Europe, giving birth to communities for whom a rigid social system based on urban production
was not only an edifice of civil liberty, but of survival itself85.
By 1481, the year Maximilian I first started recruiting mercenaries drawn from German
territories, almost every urbanized center in the Holy Roman Empire existed in a state of rigid
83
The Colonization model of German Urbanism, known as the Drang nach Osten; “Drive to the East” model
purports that Frankish urbanites occupied “Virgin Land” in the Rhineland.
84
Wilson, Peter H. Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2016. Pp. 96
85
Ibid, Pp. 94-97
26
social hierarchy stratified by degrees of honor dictated by occupation, gender, wealth, and
piety86. Occupations considered to be honorable, such as goldsmiths, bakers, and tailors enjoyed
high status and power within their city councils, while dishonorable professions, such as leather-
workers, blacksmiths, and potters, had to settle for middling positions in local society.
Tanners, gravediggers, executioners, butchers, and dog-catchers, trades that were
associated with ignoble bloodshed and the grim pallor of death, were considered to be especially
dishonorable (‘unehrlich’), and were legally prohibited from habituating inner-city districts,
visiting common facilities, and openly fraternizing with ‘honorable’ trades87. These social layers
were deeply entrenched within the character of urban living, with communal and social bonds
(Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft) being reinforced through complex systems of symbols, rituals,
primary group relationships, and sumptuary laws (particularly regarding clothing and weapons
see Figure 2.3)88.
Social mobility in urban centers was nominally regulated by the local Burghermeister
councils, who frequently met to adjudicate matters of social advancement (in the case of a
journeyman presenting a masterpiece, for example), the settlement of besmirched honor (the
disputed cause or outcome of a sanctioned duel), or the social demotion of a guild member
(performing a dishonorable act unbefitting of his social station)89. Since even casual association
with a fellow citizen of a lower rank carried the risk of social opprobrium from the council,
corruptive properties were attached to unehrlich trades, instilling a deeply rooted fear of social
86
Harrington Pp.15-17
87
Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus And The Devil. London: Routledge, 1994. Pp. 108-110
88
Rublack, Pp. 132
89
Eibach, Joachim. "Burghers or Town Council: Who Was Responsible for Urban Stability in Early Modern
German Towns?" Urban History 34, no. 01 (2007): 14-26. doi:10.1017/s0963926807004300. Pp. 17-20
27
pollution among the middle and upper echelons of society. For example, marriages across
different social levels not only required the explicit permission of the Burgher council, and the
betrotheds’ parents, but always involved the social “pollution” of the station of the spouse-
unsurprisingly, these marriages were rarely completed90.
Figure 2.3: Augsburg Burghermeister and Wife, from the Herwart Family’s Book of Honor
Unknown artist, Ink on Parchment, 1544
16th Century fashion among urban elites traditionally stressed loosely-worn embroidered clothing of exceptional
quality to demonstrate wealth and social standing without flaunting the “sinful” human form. Black and dark ochre
clothing was favored in formal wear, symbolizing intractability and regional pride, as dark colors could never be re-
dyed and did not rely on foreign trade for production. The Burghermeister wears a signet ring and a Fechtwaffen
sword as conspicuous symbols of social rank.
The increased wages and greater social mobility incited by the fourteenth-century Black
Death crisis remained in effect far into the reigns of Holy Roman Emperors Sigismund and
Frederick III, in part due to the inefficacy of Imperial wage controls over the semi-autonomous
German cities91. This insured the relative stability of the Burghermeister council system, as
90
Stuart, Kathy. Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006. Pp. 24-27
91
Cohn, Samuel. "After the Black Death: Labour Legislation and Attitudes towards Labour in Late-medieval
Western Europe." The Economic History Review 60, no. 3 (2007): 457-85. doi:10.1111/j.1468-
0289.2006.00368.x.
28
threats of social relegation were balanced with comfortable living wages and the opportunity for
family units to advance by apprenticing their children in growing higher-ranked guilds.
However, by 1481 rising populations across Europe combined with the consolidation of bullion
in nascent banking families (The Medici in Florence and the Fuggers in Augsburg, in particular)
resulted in the stagnation of wages, the arresting of social mobility, and the decrease in buying
power for the urbanized artisan92.
Drawing on the records of the Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv, Fritz Redlich
demonstrated that, in 1525, a low-skilled day laborer in the Imperial city of Linz earned 1.66
Florins a month93 while a journeyman mason earned 2.50 Florins in the same period94. By
contrast, a Landsknecht mercenary initially started service at a pay rate of 4.00 Florins after
150095- specialized soldiers such as Dolmetscher (Interpreters), Köche (Cooks), and Pfeiffer
(Fiefers) were paid 8.00 Florins a month, Schreiber (Adjutants) 24.00 Florins a month, and
Feldärzte (Field Doctors) 40.00 Florins a month96. These pay rates, initiated by Maximilian I,
and enshrined in the Landsknecht company’s Artikelsbriefe, hypothetically never fluctuated for
92
Häberlein, Mark. The Fuggers of Augsburg: Pursuing Wealth and Honor in Renaissance Germany.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012. Pp. 31-45
93
Given a 25-day work month
94
Calculated by the amount of pure gold present in an Italian Florin (~3.5 grams) and the current exchange rate for
gold (~140 USD), that leaves a rough equivalent monthly wage of $232 for the laborer, and $350 for the
journeyman. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florin
95
Redlich, Pp. 127-128
96
Miller, Douglas, John Richards, and Gerry Embleton. Landsknechte 1485-1560. St Augustin: Siegler, 2004.
Pp. 6
29
the duration of the mercenary’s employment, adding considerable appeal for an artisan frustrated
with rising inflation or increased operating costs 97.
To off-set the cost of recruitment, neophyte Landsknechte were required to purchase their
clothing, “Trosszeug” (camping tools), and equipment upon passing the initial inspection by the
Obrist, before receiving their first month’s pay98. The precise cost of introductory equipment
could vary wildly due to local market forces, the quality of the items purchased, and the
professional aspirations of the Landsknecht himself; an aspiring Koch would have to purchase
much different equipment than a Schwarzer Ritter, for instance. A correspondence written by
Duke Albrecht of Saxony to Maximilian I in 1495 requesting funds to clothe his Landsknechte,
equated two sets of military clothing to 10 Florins, which Maximilian I agreed was fair 99.
Another sixteenth-century source related by Graz historian Hans von Zwiedineck-Südenhorst
places the price of a halberd at 45 Kreuzers100, a sword varying between 1.5 to 4.0 Florins, an
Ashwood pike at 36 Kreuzers, handguns between 2 and 7 Florins, and a suit of field plate armor
at 12 Florins101. An urbanized artisan dissatisfied with his pay and strict social atmosphere would
97
Millar, Military Affairs, Pp. 96-97
98
Miller, Pp. 4-5
99
Redlich, Pp. 129
100
1 Florin = 60 Kreuzers
101
Ibid, Pp. 130-131
30
be able to sell the tools of his trade to pay for his new equipment, a factor that enterprising
recruiters and unscrupulous quartermasters were quick to seize upon102.
By 1490, printed broadsheets known as “Bilderbogen” had been commonly employed by
government and religious officials to disseminate information in a public space in a more cost-
effective manner than bound books or pamphlets. Comprising of a single large sheet that would
be tacked onto walls or signposts (See Figure 2.4), multiple images often flowed together to form
a narrative, and were accompanied by printed text intended to be read aloud to the benefit of the
viewing audience103. While military Bilderbogen often did pictorialize acts of romantic chivalry
to better legitimize a ruling patron, such as the broadsheet publication of Ludovico Ariosto’s
1513 work, Orlando Furioso, thousands of broadsheet prints intended for public display were
populated by Landsknechte and their lives outside of the walls of the city104. Accomplished
military enterprisers, such as Guillaume von der Mark, his nephew Robert II, and the knight
Franz von Sickingen frequently plied the inns and taverns along the Meuse Valley and the
Ardennes in the early years of the Reformation, spending considerable sums to publish and hang
broadsheets lionizing the lifestyle of the mercenary, with Sickingen successfully recruiting
102
Martines, Lauro. Furies: War in Europe, 1450-1700. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2014. Pp. 52
103
Ruff, Julius R. Violence in Early Modern Europe:. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Pp. 14-17
104
Sandberg, Brian. War and Conflict in the Early Modern World: 1500-1700. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.
Pp. 41-42
31
12,000 Landsknechte in one year alone105. In 1529, Printmaker Hans Guldenmunde printed,
under compulsory Imperial contract106, two series of Bilderbogen encouraging Landsknechte
recruitment as the forces of Suleiman I marched closer to Vienna107.
Figure 2.4: Brothel Scene

The Brunswick Monogrammist, Painting, c. 1525-1545
Painted by an anonymous Netherlandish painter, Brothel Scene plays into the ‘Tavern’ genre popular with sixteenth-
century painters, which depicted peasant or outsiders in their home setting, far away from the homes of the wealthy
commissioners. Note the Bilderbogen tacked up on the central wall panel displaying various Landsknechte and a
“Little Ursula” scene. Danielle Skjelver asserts that the mason marks and scrawling on the wall represents a written
form of Rotwelsch, a thieves’ argot popular with itinerant traders, artisans, and mercenaries 108.
105
Redlich, Pp. 35
106
Guldenmunde’s print house was drafted after he published several works mocking Hans Sachs in 1527.
107
Hale, Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance, Pp. 62
108
Skjelver, .Pp. 41-44
32
Niklas Stör, a print master of Nuremberg who studied in the workshop of Hans
Burgkmair, produced hundreds of images of Landsknechte, of which dozens of plates survive to
the present day. One print titled “The Cobbler” (see Figure 2.5 109) is accompanied by a block of
text, which translates as;
“May Shoemaking go to the Devil;
I’ve had to suffer too long
Before making a week’s wage.
However, things are different over there.
I want to take up something else
And go wandering in a doublet and trousers
To see if I can’t earn some money in the war.
I’ll leave this place like all the other good fellows.”
Another print titled “The Tailor” (see Figure 2.6110) has the following text included, translated;
“Stay, good fellow, I want to go with you.
What has happened to you is my fate too;
I must sit long hours for little pay
With which I can hardly survive.
Therefore I must take up something else
109
Moxey, Keith P. F. Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. 90
110
Ibid. Pp. 90
33
And start sewing with a hop pole111
In the open field to the sound of pipes and drums
And see if I can’t earn a little money there.
These depictions of Landsknechte, through their body language and positioning, display a
sense of candidness bordering on the vulnerable, as they expose their backs and emotional
apprehensions to the viewer. Humor is also employed to further elucidate the humanity of the
subjects casting away the society they were born into; The tailor musing that he would,
Figure 2.5: The Cobbler

Niklas Stör, Woodblock Print on Paper, c. 1530
It is worth noting that these artisans already possess the requisite clothing and weaponry, implying that they have
already sold their tools, signifying a permanent break from their guild. Note the distinctive St. Andrew’s Cross cut
into the hip of the Cobbler.
111
In this context, “Hop pole” was a slang term for a pike.
34
Figure 2.6: The Tailor
Niklas Stör, Woodblock Print on Paper, c. 1530
“Start sewing with a hop pole,” to the command of drummers and fifers further normalizes the
act of rebellion against urban society by forsaking it entirely.
Once free from the social stratification of the city, and sorted into a Fähnlein within the
Landsknecht company, former artisans and students could apply their skills in the field to obtain
better paying positions112. For instance, Martin Schwarz, a journeyman cobbler, joined one of the
first Landsknecht companies in 1481 to escape the destitution of Augsburg. Within a few years,
he was leading his own company of 2,000 Landsknechte through several successful campaigns
112
Nimwegen, Pp. 161
35
against the Flemish Rebellion before being killed by Henry VII’s forces at the Battle of Stoke
Field in 1487113. King Francis I of France’s primary point of contact when recruiting
Landsknechte for his own military in 1515 was Hauptman Sebastian Vogelsberger, who was a
baker before taking up the sword114. Poet Georg Niege decided to join a Landsknecht company
after completing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Marburg, condemning the terrible
economic conditions of the city as his primary motivation for leaving; “When poverty oppressed
me too much and became too bad, I tarnished and was tired of living in this fraternity
furthermore115.” Profiting from the skill he learned at the University, Niege became a scribe for
colonel Corn Pennink in 1547, and eventually was promoted to the rank of Hauptmann.
Unsurprisingly, the mobility demanded of Landsknecht companies bitterly conflicted
with the cultural ethos of both rural and urban communities who considered a life anchored to a
singular geographic area with immobile property intrinsically tied to familial honor and duty.
Erasmus of Rotterdam gives voice to this conflict in his 1523 work, The Soldier and Carthusian,
describing a conversation between a Carthusian monk and a Landsknecht freshly returned from a
long campaign in Italy. Upon being asked if he regrets staying behind, the Carthusian replies;
“Spaciousness doesn’t matter so long as the comforts of life aren’t lacking. Many men seldom or
never leave the city in which they are born. Were they forbidden to step out of it, they’d be most
unhappy and obsessed by an extraordinary longing to quit the city. This is the common mood,
which I myself do not share116.” After explaining how he remained tranquil within the confines
113
Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. 57
114
115
Rüther, Stefanie. "Dangerous Travellers; Identity, Profession, and Gender Among the German Landsknechts
(1450-1570)." Edited by Marianne ODoherty. In Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the
Atlantic to the Black Sea. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Pp. 195
116
Erasmus, Desiderius. The Colloquies of Erasmus. Translated by Craig R. Thompson. Chicago: University of
36
of the city, the Carthusian fires back at the Landsknecht who seeks a doctor for his ‘Spanish
Pox’117; “I’ve explained my choice. Now I ask you in turn to explain yours and to tell me when
all good doctors disappeared. You left a young wife and children at home and off you went to the
army, hired for a trifling wage to cut men’s throats, and that at risk of your own life. For you
were dealing with armed men, not toadstools or poppies!118”
Hans Sachs, a master singer and prolific Lutheran writer seated in Nuremberg, also wrote
many tracts condemning young men who joined Landsknecht companies, equating the
willingness to abandon urban life with a moral failing on the part of the mercenary 119. In his
1532 poem, Argument between a Housemaid and a Young Man, Sachs uses a dialogue between
two young citizens to deride Landsknecht dress and custom, while his Comparison between a
Mercenary and a Crab states that both subjects are clad in pitted armor, are detritus-eating lowly
vermin, and lose limbs to combat so often, that they have learned to replace them at will 120121.
For Sebastian Franck, a humanist professor at the University of Ingolstadt, mobility was the
primary sin of the Landsknecht, as it represented the penultimate betrayal of the communal
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft ethos critical to urban society; “[The Landsknechte] flee from
their old, poor and sick parents, leave their good wives and uneducated lovely children, their
sweet home country and also their duty to work122.”
Chicago Press, 1965. Pp. 129

117
i.e. Syphilis
118
Ibid. Pp. 131
119
Moxey, Pp. 88
120
In the Landsknecht’s case, it is with “an iron replacement,” probably referencing Götz von Berlichingen, a rogue
knight and Landsknecht leader known for replacing his right hand with an iron prosthetic after it was lost in battle
in 1504.
121
Sachs, Hans. Hans Sachs. Edited by J. Nover, Verlagsanstalt Und Druckerei A.-G. (Vormals J.F. Richter), 1895.
Pp.208-14, 242-50
122
Rüther, Pp. 2070
37
The conspicuous association between recruitment Bilderbogen and the Landsknecht
representations in popular culture cemented the mercenary’s ambiguous image as the
paradigmatic example of the betrayal of Gemeinschaft, and the failure of urban councils to
provide economic opportunities for its younger generations. However, considering recent
historical review challenging the traditional notion of a primarily stagnant Early Modern
population123, the vilification of physical mobility alone fails to account for the Othering of the
Landsknecht. Existent memoirs of contemporary mercenaries can contest that stereotypical
assertion as well. Urs Graf, a Reisläufer who fought with and against Landsknechte through the
turn of the sixteenth century, maintained a wife and a moderately successful goldsmithing
business in Zurich, which he was able to freely return to when not on campaign 124. Likewise,
Paul Dolnstein, a Landsknecht and master bridge-builder, was able to maintain a good standing
in his guild during his service, completing the restoration of Torgau bridge for Prince Frederick
of Saxony in 1499125. Accounts such as these demonstrate a semblance of metamorphosis
between the domination of “part-time” mercenary service to “full-time” Landsknechte who held
no sentimental attachment for the lands from which they hailed from126.
While mobility did play a part in social and legal Othering of the Landsknechte, other
thematic factors must come into account that better supplement the reasoning behind the
marginalization of people intrinsic to the survival of the burgeoning fiscal-military state.
123
Wiesner, Merry E. Early Modern Europe, 1450 - 1789. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013. Pp. 17-19
124
Graff, Urs. Urs Graf. Edited by Emil Major and Erwin Gradmann. London: Home & Van Thal, 1947. Pp. 7-14
125
Skjelver, Pp. 10-13
126
Oman, War in the Sixteenth Century, Pp. 78-80
38
Gendered Notions of the Landsknecht
Based on the abundance of “cultural fragments” available, including court transcripts,
written anecdotes, folklore, and artistic representations, historical research of the last twenty
years shows that the German Renaissance was accentuated by a crisis in gendered power
relations, even if the precise nature and effect of that crisis continues to be hotly debated by
Renaissance historians127. By the reign of Frederick III, martial ethos and masculine identity had
been intertwined in the social and legal custom to a degree that shocked contemporary writers
hailing from other regions of Europe. A Roman cardinal writing in 1437 remarked, “All
Germany is a gang of bandits and, among the nobles, the more grasping the more glorious,”
while an anonymous priest writing in 1438 noted that the marriage between power and masculine
violence even extended to the ecclesiarchy, bemoaning that bishops, “make war and cause unrest
in the world; they behave like secular lords, which is, of course, what they are 128.” Burghers in
particular were expected to act with this martial ethos in mind as, prior to the domination of city
councils during the reign of Charles V, they were the first line of defense against any crisis that
would threaten the safety of the town129. Public rituals, sumptuary laws, sanctioned duels, civil
processions, and festivals (see figure 2.7130) edified the notion that the protections offered were
an extension of masculine violence, a phenomenon observable through all strati of urban and
rural communities.
127
Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, Pp. 39-42
128
Brady, Pp. 96
129
Eibach, Pp. 14-15
130
Moxey, Pp. 36
39
Figure 2.7: Detail from Large Peasant Holiday
Sebald Becham, Print on Paper, c. 1530
Different activities of a large festival are presented here in one image, though in reality, these events would occur
over the course of a day. In addition to music, dancing, and horseback racing, other events serve to lionize masculine
violence and engrain it into the social fabric of the community. A wrestling match, walking on the edges of
Langenmeßer (a weapon characterized with the burgher), and climbing a pole to plant a guild flag near a caged
cockerel all carry masculine undertones obvious to a contemporary observer. A brawl involving brandished
Langenmeßer and a severed hand suggests that the interstice between masculinity and violence often became
physical at these festivals. Note the presence of a Landsknecht at the gambling table on the lower-left corner131.
In addition to the ready embrace of violent force in service to the community, masculine
virtue was also dependent on other factors in a person’s life, such as the stratum of his
profession, participation in local governance, and the quality and quantity of his possessions. The
Hausvater (“House Father”), the paradigmatic ideal of masculine and civil virtue in Reformation
normative ideology was expected to act and dress within his station, strictly govern his
household in accordance with Christian values, and maintain a respectable holding of both
operating capital, tools, and raw workable materials. Insults against any of these qualities, such
131
Ibid, Pp. 35-38
40
as an accusation of threatening a household’s possessions by gambling or falling into debt, were
considered an attack on masculine identity as well as moral character, and usually demanded
swift remediation through litigious action132. Through this relationship, the “paradox” of the
burgher identity, tersely balanced between gracious civility and masculine violence, could be
settled and utilized, not just in the protection of the city-state, but in the philosophical
reconciliation of where an individual stood within his community133.
However, a martial ethic that was inexorably linked to the long-term prosperity of a
stationary community was incongruous to the style of warfare emergent during the Renaissance.
The survival of the Holy Roman Imperial state under Maximilian I depended on the ability to
project sustained military force to a dizzying variety of geographic destinations, requiring
professional mercenary companies to march or sail hundreds of miles a year 134. With the
ownership of landed property becoming increasingly impossible for most Landsknechte,
expressions of masculine pride and communal identity were sought elsewhere. Many songs
penned by Landsknechte that survive to the present day lionize the act of mobility itself as an
expression of freedom and martial virtue. The song ‘Ein new Lied wie die Landsknecht leben
müssen’ (‘A New Song on How Landsknechts Have to Live’), written by Hans Witzstat in 1530,
invokes men to join his company, comparing the mobility of Landsknechte to the crusades of
chivalrous orders like the Knights Hospitaller or the Templars135. Another Landsknecht song
writer, Jörg Graff, famous for losing his eyes in a brawl with his fellow mercenaries, also drew
the correlation between the Landsknechte and earlier knightly orders in his song, ‘Ein schön Lied
132
Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, Pp.108-109
133
Tlusty, B. Ann. The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany Civic Duty and the Right of Arms. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Pp. 267
134
Parrott, Pp. 57
135
Rüther, Pp. 194
41
von der Kriegsleut Orden’ (‘A beautiful song from the Warrior Order’), including the verse, “He
must tramp around the land, until he hears of hostilities between Lords. Then, there is no country
so far that he will not hasten there in honor until he finds his calling136.”
The increasing removal of landed proprietorship from the culture of the itinerant
mercenary also imputed the growth of the violent aspect of an itinerant masculine identity to the
extent that, by 1500, masculinity and war as cultural norms were indistinguishable in European
culture137. It is difficult to state with certainty whether European popular culture was influenced
by a Landsknecht fashion born from plunder (The “invention” of slashed clothing was
anecdotally ascribed to Reisläufer stripping the clothes off of Burgundian nobles after the 1476
Battle of Grandson138), or if mercenaries adopted existent fashion trends as a demonstration of
the riches won in battle139. Maximilian I fully embraced the conflation between masculine
identity and bellicosity, believing so fervently that martial prowess was a greater signatory of
legitimized rule than noble trappings or titles that he would often wear the armor of a
Doppelsöldner, and fight on foot with his Landsknechte in major battles (See figure 2.8 and 2.9).
One example of this attitude being put into practice was described in Der Weißkunig, where
Maximilian I, after personally leading his men to victory at the Battle of Therouanne, sits with a
captured French nobleman, who does not recognize the young Archduke due to his plate armor.
After Maximilian I removes his helmet, “…the noble prisoner saw his face and thought: This is
not the young [Maximilian I], for they would not have let him go into battle, but rather for a
136
Ibid, Pp. 198
137
Hale, Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance. Pp. 50-55
138
Laver, James. The Concise History of Costume and Fashion. New York: Scribner, 1979. Pp. 78
139
Payne, Blanche, Geitel Winakor, Jane Farrell-Beck, and Elizabeth Curtis. The History of Costume from Ancient
Mesopotamia through the Twentieth Century. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. Pp. 241
42
captain, who leads such an army, he is too young; on account of the reverence, such as one only
shows to a king, he thought that is must be someone special…140” The nobleman is then sent
back to the distant King of France to report that the battle had been lost, and to enunciate to the
reader the superiority of the Maximilian I’ leadership141. Even if the account of the battle falls
prey to personal embellishment, it demonstrates that, to Maximilian I, direct participation in the
conduct of war was a far greater elucidation of legitimacy and masculine power than any
monarchical title.
Where Maximilian I and his Landsknechte travelled, so too did their fashions leave
impressions upon the popular culture of Europe, as flowing, loosely -belted garments that hid
140
Weißkunig, 1956, Pp. 352
141
Silver, Pp.79
43
Hans Burgkmair, Etched steel plate, 1517-1519
While European leaders still presided over major battles in person during the Renaissance, most chose to lead on
horseback away from the actual combat to minimize danger to themselves. By contrast, Maximilian I not only made
a habit of personally engaging with enemy forces, but did so on foot alongside his Landsknechte, causing several
injuries during his career. Plate 71 depicts Maximilian I personally treating with his men, including a Landsknecht
Hauptmann in the center, and Hungarian auxiliaries to the left..
44
Hans Burgkmair, Etched steel plate, 1517-1519
Plate 76 enunciates the flow of the battle, rather than singular actors, with Maximilian I’s actions, leading his
infantry on foot, and exchanging blows with the Swiss, being described in the accompanied text of the
autobiography. In this image, the Imperial Landsknechte are identifiable by the St. Andrew’s Cross and sparking
flint motif adorning on their clothing and banners, while the retreating Swiss Reisläufer are depicted wearing the
white Theban Cross. This visual identity would perpetuate in the works of other artists in the early sixteenth century
as a method of readily differentiating German and Swiss mercenaries.
the natural shape of the wearer fell way to clothing that crisply outlined the curves of the human
body, whilst artificially embossing masculine traits with puffed shoulders and bulging codpieces.
Landsknecht inspired fashions took root in teenagers and young adults eager to prove their
masculinity, including the growing of beards, the cropping of hair, and the wearing of
45
Katzbalgers142, much to the chagrin of older generations (see figures 2.10 and 2.11). Erasmus
derided Landsknecht fashion in The Soldier and the Carthusian, stating, “How many colors are
you painted with? No bird changes his feathers as much as that. And then how slashed
everything is, how unusual or outlandish! Add to that your haircut, half-shaven beard, and the
tangled bush on your upper lip, sticking out on each side like a cat’s whiskers143!” Lutheran
writer Andreas Musculus lambasted those who wore Landsknecht clothing for its roguish appeal,
stating that, “Clothes do not damn you/ That is true/ neither do they sanctify you/ that is also true
so that remains true as well/ as the proverb says/ the feathers show you what bird it is… So if
your slashed hose does not damn you/ so your own heart still does/ which you have revealed
through such clothing/ your clothes show what sense/ thoughts and spirit you must have 144.”
Other voices critiqued the material costs associated with such clothing, stating that the
dependence on Italian weavers and dye-makers was asserting a subversive influence, not just on
localized industry, but on the cultural identity of the German city itself. German humanist
Conrad Celtis, while under the patronage of Maximilian I, wrote in 1492, “But from the south we
are oppressed by a sort of distinguished slaver, and under the impulse of greed, that old and
accursed aid to the acquirement of comfort and luxury, new commercial ventures are constantly
established, by which our country is drained of its wonderful natural wealth while we pay to
others what we need for ourselves145.” Still others claimed that Landsknecht clothing were
“Hellish flames” that not only expressed vanity and hubris, but also “encouraged servitude to the
142
Derived from the Swiss ‘Baselard’, the Katzbalger (lit. “Cat-gutter”) was the characteristic weapon of the
Landsknecht by the 16th Century, identifiable by a broad edge, flared pommel, and figure-8 hand guard.
143
Erasmus, Colloquies, Pp. 128
144
Rublack, Pp. 110
145
Ibid, Pp. 131
46
world, the flesh, and the Devil146.” Lastly, as stated by Lyndal Roper, the pronouncement of
masculine sexuality that Landsknecht fashion removed the temptation of
Figure 2.10: Page 10 of The Book of Clothes

Matthäus Schwarz, Ink on Paper, Completed c. 1560
Matthäus Schwarz, an accountant for the influential Fugger family, compiled an annotated book describing his
fashion choices as he grew up in Augsburg from 1496 to 1560. Written on Page 10, when Schwarz was 13 years old,
is “In Summer of 1510, my father clothed me in this manner.” The loose mantle and drab colors reflect the ideal
manner of dress of traditional burghers imposed on a boy unable to buy his own clothes.
146
Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994. Pp. 210-213
47
Figure 2.11: Page 43 of The Book of Clothes
Matthäus Schwarz, Ink on Paper, Completed c. 1560
At age 14, Schwarz begins to dress himself in Landsknecht fashion, and would continue to do so throughout his life.
Page 43, when Schwarz is “23 and 1/3 years old,” stands out due to the scrawl added below the caption stating, “My
waist had a width of one ell (~45 inches).” Whereas a wide girth had been a sign of fashionable prosperity in
previous generations, it is a reason for discontent for Schwarz, as it impedes his martial aptitude, and thus, his
perceived masculinity147.
flesh from the sole dominion of femininity; “Their precocious virility was disturbing because it
was an excess of masculinity so extreme as to escape sexual categories altogether 148.”
147
Schwarz, Matthäus, and Veit Konrad Schwarz. The First Book of Fashion: The Books of Clothes of Matthäus
and Veit Konrad Schwarz of Augsburg. Edited by Ulinka Rublack, Maria Hayward, and Jenny Tiramani.
London: Bloomsbury Academic, an Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc, 2015. Pp. 64, 94
148
Roper, Oedipus and the Devil, Pp. 118
48
Figure 2.12: Satirical depiction of a Landsknecht
Urs Graf, Etched Plate on Paper, 1523 and 1519
Living as a Goldsmith and Printmaker in Zurich, Urs Graf also fought as a Reisläufer, and thus possessed an
especially vitriolic attitude towards Landsknechte. Figure 2.12 lampoons the proclivity of Landsknechte to wear
ostrich plumes as symbols of masculine triumph, as well as the “bird-like” style of slashed clothing.
49
Figure 2.13: Satirical depiction of a Landsknecht
Urs Graf, Etched Plate on Paper, 1523 and 1519
Figure 2.13 is thrusting a comically large codpiece through the quillon of his Katzbalger as he marches. The writing
on the blade of his Zweihander translates as “My money is gambled away,” while an empty purse with a missing
bottom dangles behind the subject. Both subjects display a vainglorious sexuality that parodies both the style of the
Landsknecht and the violence which defined their livelihoods.
Landsknechte themselves became sexual objects in minds of the Reformation Public,
which often employed symbolism to widely express sexual escapades too graphic for general
consumption (See Figures 2.12and 2.13149). One example of this verbose symbolism is
represented in the song “Der Landsknecht und die Wirtin” (“The Landsknecht and the
Landlady”), which, on the surface, is about a mercenary attempting to lodge in an Inn owned by
149
Major, Pp. 14
50
a married landlady after she has bolted the front door shut. However, the symbolism employed in
the verses, “I don’t know what he promised her/ So that she opened the lock-bar” strongly infers
that the lock-bar represents the landlady’s chastity, which the Landsknecht eventually defeats
through his charisma and sexual appeal150. Siennese playwright Pietro Aretino used the image of
the Landsknecht in his 1532 sexual farce, Ragionamento, where he depicts one attempting to
break into a nunnery dressed as a priest, while Agnolo Firenzuola utilized contemporary military
imagery in a sexual context in his 1533 comedy Il Marescalo151.
Other writers portrayed the virility of the Landsknecht not as a source of comedy, but as
a disturbing element of feminine seduction; Anglican reformer Thomas Becon chided a company
of Landsknechte under Tudor contract by proclaiming, “What whoredom is there committed
among them! What maid escapeth unflowered? What wife departeth unpolluted152?” An
unknown French commentator wrote in 1543, “All women mainly love men of action and turn
above all to those of war. Did not Venus herself turn from Phoebus, the most beautiful of the
gods, to Mars153?” In German print, the theme of the virile Landsknecht seducing a virtuous
woman into a life of mercenary perdition manifested in the stock character “Little Ursula,” as
termed by Renaissance historian John Lynn154. In 1568, engraver Erhard Schön
150
Rüther, Pp. 202
151
Simons, Patricia. The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe a Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2013. Pp. 107
152
Hale, War and Society in Renaissance Europe, Pp. 123
153
Ibid. Pp. 124
154
Lynn, John A. Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. 15-
17
51
Figure 2.14: The Cobbler Hans and his Girl Ursula
Erhard Schön, Woodcut on Paper, 1568
Here, the cobbler has not only already exchanged his tools for Landsknecht equipment, but given the halberd and
fluted plate armor, is determined to become a Doppelsöldner, an especially dangerous position in the Haufen. The
armored codpiece, position of the Katzbalger, and orientation of the halberd also serve a symbolism for over-stated
masculinity. Ursula is shown wearing clothing suited for long-distance walking, including a hiked dress, sun hat,
closed bonnet, and a leather back satchel.
illustrated a young couple conversing in a manner mocking the earlier recruitment Bilderbogen
(See Figure 2.14155). The poem included with the image translates as;
Little Ursula;
My Hans I want to run with thee
155
Lynn, Pp. 17
52
To the Bright Band in Friuli.
Perhaps so much may be my winning
Much more than ever I could whilst spinning.
With yarn and twine I’ll spin no more
To become thereafter a Cobbler’s whore.
Cobbler Hans;
In good health, pretty little Ursula
Shall we go hence to Friuli.
The making of shoes I will abandon.
When in many wars I have won
Great wealth and manifold honors,
Who then knows whom fortune favors?
Printed over thirty years after Niklas Stör’s Bilderbogen series, and nine years after the
end of the Italian Wars, Hans and Ursula’s grandiose dreams about achieving titles and riches on
the battlefield possesses a tragic quality would arouse pity in a contemporary observer. Whereas
the masculinity on display in Stör’s work was indicative of righteous strength seeking its proper
outlet on the battlefield, the masculine quality Hans exudes serves only as the progenitor of
misery and destitution for both Hans and Ursula156.
156
Moxey, Pp. 90-91
53
The use of the term “whore” (Huren), as Little Ursula describes herself, must also be
approached with a degree of historical context pertaining to the vital role that women held in the
Tross beyond their capacity as domestic and sexual partners. As John Lynn notes, the majority of
skilled labor, including financial management, resource acquisition, equipment repair, and first
aid, fell upon the responsibility of the women of the Tross157. Specialized officers within
Landsknecht companies called Hurenweibel (lit. “whore sergeant”), who were charged with
ensuring that labor accords between mercenary and sutler were amicable, and that petty
disagreements were mediated before erupting into violence158, speaks towards the notion that
feminine labor was considered an absolute necessity to the conduct of Renaissance warfare.
Lynn asserts that the derogatory connotation behind the term “Huren” by contemporary writers
stems from the abandonment of normalized social expectations placed on young men and
women, noting that many references to male Landsknechte as “Huren” also exist159.
The middle sixteenth-century also witnessed the sexualized image of the Landsknecht
being utilized when problematizing sexuality across confessional lines. Martin Luther’s
relationship with Katharina von Bora during the Reformation challenged traditional attitudes
towards sex and marriage, blurred the distinction between public and private spheres of life, and
called into dispute the intrinsic value of self-denial and celibacy160. Radical movements
branching off Luther’s Reformation opined that the laws regarding marriage and sexuality could
be completely rewritten to allow for more libertine sexual pursuits within the bounds of
marriage, such as the Anabaptist Movement’s embrace of polygamous marriage161.
157
Lynn, Pp. 14-16
158
Richards, Pp. 27
159
Lynn, Pp. 18-19
160
Eire, Pp. 715
161
Arthur, Anthony. The Tailor King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. New York, NY:
54
However, after the Anabaptist Rebellion of Münster was crushed in 1535, mainstream reformers
embraced, as Lyndal Roper stated, “…the universalization of household workshop values which
both ensured the orthodox movement’s popular support and steered it away from its
revolutionary potential162.” The desire to enshrine a version of sexual morality anchored to the
traditional pater familias model drove many Protestant cities such as Augsburg to establish
courts of moral decency, such as the Discipline Lords and Marriage Judges, and to publish
Bilderbogen extolling the benefits of monogamous domesticity163.
One example, etched by Augsburg engraver Jörg Breu the Younger, depicts the “The life
age of Man” as an arch bridged between a rocking cradle and a closed tomb, and bound by the
image of God’s judgement holding dominion over the world (See Figure 2.15). Significantly, the
personifications of the subject’s youthful years are clad in Landsknecht clothing, and exhibit a
changing relationship towards the specter of death that hovers over the arch of life; The ten-year-
old subject sits placidly while actively ignoring Death, while the twenty-year-old subject is
shown in the midst of leaping to his feet, clutching the shaft of his banner, and defiantly staring
Death in the face. By contrast, the thirty-year-old subject is shown collapsing in despair and
horror, having been humbled by the arrows of mortality, while the forty-year-old subject, having
discovered the immortal property of holy scripture, and the gift of eternal life it offers, decides to
devote the rest of his life to civility and domesticity.
Dunne, 2000. Pp. 92-94

162
163
Roper, Lyndal. The Holy Household: Women and Morals, in Reformation Augsburg. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
2001. Pp. 74-82
55
Figure 2.15: Die Lebens alter des Mannes (“The Life Age of the Man”)
Jörg Breu the Younger, Etched Plate on Paper, 1540
The steps comprising this arch pictorialize ten-year intervals within the man’s life, starting at infancy. Note the
Landsknecht clothing and weaponry at ages 10 through 30.
Forces within the Counter-Reformation also sought to reform sexual practices among
their congregations in the middle of the sixteenth-century, stressing the value of celibacy as a
spiritual and physical status most pleasing to Godly providence, and as a quality necessary for
the priesthood, who were charged with the rite of transubstantiation, and the custody of divine
relics164. When the Council of Trent reconvened under the auspice of Pope Pius IV in 1562, the
twenty-fourth session of the doctrinal acts was enacted, which not only championed the
excellence of celibacy, but also forbade concubinage, brothels, and dueling within Catholic
cities165. The feminine resistance of temptation was also stressed as a virtue, which impelled the
164
165
Hall, Marcia B., Tracy Elizabeth Cooper, and Costanza Barbieri. The Sensuous in the Counter-Reformation
Church. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. 31
56
publication of pamphlets celebrating piety throughout a woman’s life, wherein the Landsknecht
offering debauched temptation remained a common trope (see Figure 2.16).
Figure 2.16: The Age of the Woman at the Age of Ten and Twenty Years
Tobias Stimmer, Woodblock on Paper, c. 1565
In this image, part of a set pictorializing the expectation of feminine virtue at different stages in life, the twenty-
year-old subject rejects the advances of a Landsknecht, identifiable by the St. Andrew’s cross slashed into his thigh,
and the arquebus bandolier hanging off of his hip. The theme of this “Age Genre” piece prioritizes the self-discipline
of the female subject, in contrast to Breu’s male subject, who finds redemption after a violent youth.
57
Figure 2.17: Soldier Embracing a Young Woman
Daniel Hopfer, Etching, c.1530
In Hopfer’s work, a young woman wearing a Landsknecht’s helm pulls a his hands from her breasts while an apple,
the biblical symbol of temptation, dangles overhead. In the background, another couple is consummating their love
while a stray dog also succumbs to temptation by eating their food. The occluded eyes, brambled hair, and syphilis-
pocked face of the Landsknecht further enunciates the value of restraining female sexuality to the viewer.
58
Figure 2.18: Young Woman and Death as a Soldier
Niklaus Manuel, Drawing, 1517
Manuel’s piece, a drawing intended for replication, favors a blunter approach by depicting a more visceral sexual act
between lovers, one of whom displays the trappings of a Landsknecht, whose entrails dangle loosely along with his
slashed Plunderhosen.
The fate of women who had fallen prey to the sexual wiles of a handsome Landsknecht
was also a frequently depicted trope in the Reformation Public, which utilized combinations of
subtle imagery (See Figure 2.17) and brazenly repulsive depictions of necrophilia (See Figure
2.18) to instill a justifiable fear of temptation166.
166
Hale, Artists and Warfare, Pp. 38-39
59
The youthful folly and brash temptation that the Landsknecht’s overflowing masculinity
entailed was also extended to politically-charged works of literature being popularly consumed
by the Reformation Public. One particularly well-received work of political commentary that
employed this trope was a sixteenth-century interpretation of Petrarch’s De remediis, titled, Von
der Artzney bayder Glück, which was reprinted in nine separate editions between its initial
publication in 1532 and 1620167.
Figure 2.19: Plate 35 of Von der Arztney bayder Glück

Heinrich Steiner, Woodcut on Paper, 1517-1532
Plate 35 depicts two Landsknechte in the foreground engaged in a vicious duel with Zweihanders while two more
wrestle in the background. The wagon and open field indicates that this scene is taking place in the wilderness of the
Tross. Charles V and his two sons, Maximilian II and Ferdinand I, raise their hands in alarm, but are powerless to
halt the melee.
167
Rublack, Pp. 28-29
60
Plate 83 depicts two Landsknechte greeting their mothers upon their return from war, who react in revulsion to their
armed flamboyance168. Both images represent an allegorical criticism of a system of purchased coercion unfettered
by royal mandate or social constraint.
While on its surface, Von der Artzney, appeared to be a translation of Petrarch’s
fourteenth-century musings from Latin to vernacular German, political commentary was added
into the metaphors by humanists Sebastian Brandt and Georg Spalatin, the latter of whom was
the personal secretary of Duke Frederick the Wise, one of Maximilian I’s staunchest opponents
in the Reichsreform movement169. Work on Von der Arztney originally began in 1517 as a
directed political critique of Maximilian I’s governance, but due to the death of Maximilian I in
1519, the bankruptcy of the original publisher, and the addition of over 200 additional pages of
168
Rögg, Pp. 138
169
Benecke, Pp. 99
61
illustrated commentary, the final work was not published until 1532170. The Landsknechte
depicted in the work display the trappings of hyper-masculine violence typical for the period, but
also serve as an allegory to the system of purchased coercion that Maximilian I “created” and
failed to control171 (See Figures 2.19 and 2.20).
However, propaganda lionizing the strength and virtue of the Landsknechte also has a
presence within the Reformation Public, particularly in times when an existential threat to a
specific territory presented itself. In 1532, when is seemed that a secondary Ottoman invasion of
Austria was an inevitability, an anonymous pamphlet titled, A Christian Expedition against the
Turks was published. In this tract, a Landsknecht company personally led by God and captained
by Charles V, proclaims that the only way to avert Turkish domination was for all members of
the company to act under the strict guidelines of Christian morality, a prospect that angers
several mercenaries who protest that they “joined a company, not a cloister172.” Eventually being
convinced of their righteous cause, the rebellious Landsknechte enshrine their temporal
obedience out of a desire for spiritual betterment instead of monetary gain.
Even in tracts and passages praising Landsknechte for their strength and bravery, the
process of Othering is still enacted, as the mercenary must receive divine intervention to tame his
wild nature and experience combat for no other reward than spiritual enlightenment-
reintegration into settled society is never the outcome of even the most ‘Just’ war 173. A gendered
exploration of the Landsknechte as a paragon of violent masculinity stripped of any expectation
of civil virtue reveals a fascinating correlation between the role of sexuality in Early Modern
170
Rublack, Pp. 29
171
Nimwegen, Pp. 165
172
Moxey, 97-98
173
Moxey, Pp. 100
62
Germany and the philosophy of the Reformation Body Politic. As stated by English humanist
Thomas Starkey in 1535, “Like as in every man there is a body and also a soul, in whose
flourishing and prosperous state both together standeth [sic] the weal and felicity of man, so
likewise there is in every commonalty, city and country, as it were, a politic body, and another
thing also, resembling the soul of the man, in whose flourishing both together resteth [sic] also
the true common weal174.” Just as religious leaders of Europe regarded youthful sexuality as a
necessary evil that allowed the propagation of Christendom, so too was the ready availability of
hardened Landsknecht mercenaries perceived to be ruefully necessary for the defense of the
state. Since neither unrestrained sexuality or mercenary violence could be tolerated within the
bounds of central society, cultural forces relegated them to the margins of civilization- never
existing too far out of reach, but firmly held in a state of Otherness.
174
Harvey, A. D. Body Politic: Political Metaphor and Political Violence. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars
Pub., 2007. Pp.25
63
Chapter 3- Vilification
After the successes of the guerra alla moderna modus on the battlefields of Grandson,
Nancy, and Guinegate, the armed forces of European states began to grow in population,
complexity, and cost at a staggering rate, a phenomenon J.R. Hale coined as “The Military
Reformation175.” For example, in 1490 Maximilian I was barely able to raise just over 24,000
Landsknechte for his entire army, while in 1532, Charles V had easily raised over 100,000
soldiers176 to defend against the Turkish invasion177. Higher numbers of men on the battlefield,
combined with more effective weapon systems, higher rates of disease, and the increased
importance of tactical logistics meant that battles during the Renaissance were more decisive,
and inflicted higher numbers of casualties than battles during the Middle Ages. This divide
between Medieval and Early Modern was especially punctuated in conflicts where only one
faction had adopted guerra alla moderna; In 1492, Maximilian used his Landsknechte with
terrifying effect to crush an army of rebellious Frisians ten times larger than his own, causing the
chronicler Worp von Thabor to ruefully declare that, “[The Frisians] went as a flock of sheep
without a shepherd… That is why they were defeated, because victory depends more on the art
of fighting, than on strength or bravery178.”
The nature of pike and shot tactics also made unit cohesion and morale axioms of
battlefield survival, impelling mercenary armies to purposefully cultivate more vicious
affectations, both to attract prospective clients, and to harangue their foes (See Figure 2.21)179.
175
Hale, War and Society, Pp. 46-48
176
Excluding the number of camp-followers, which was often greater than the numbers of combatants.
177
Ibid. 62
178
Nimwegen, pp. 163
179
Hale, Artists and Warfare, Pp. 170
64
Figure 2.21: Detail of Infantry Battle Scene
Hans Holbein the Younger, Etched Plate on Paper, c.1530
The moment when opposing pike hedges closed in on one another was dubbed a “Bad War” by contemporary
observers. With pikes either sundered, or rendered useless by the proximity of the enemy, halberds, Zweihanders,
and short swords would be employed to terrible effect.
The granting of mercy towards defeated enemies also became increasingly rare in the sixteenth
century, as deliberate massacres not only enhanced a company’s fearsome reputation, but also
removed a competing company as a rival on the growing mercenary market 180. Nuremberg
humanist Willibald Pirckheimer, who was chosen by his city council to lead a company of
Landsknechte against the Reisläufer in the 1499 Swabian War, described the aftermath of a
particularly disastrous battle; “Nobody was spared in memory of the pain earlier inflicted: noble
and non-noble were slaughtered like cattle without any difference being made. Many boarded
ships and killed those who trusted themselves to the waves and stretched out their hand and
180
Kortüm, Hans-Henning. Transcultural Wars from the Middle Ages to the 21st Century. Berlin: Akademie, 2006.
Pp. 66
65
begged for mercy with tears; others shot down with their guns those who had climbed trees, like
birds; still others set fire to houses where there were enemies so that on all sides, screaming,
howling, begging and death groans were heard and the escape killed more than even the
battle181.”
The viciousness with which this new form of mercenary warfare was waged, and the
willingness to violently engage with an enemy quickly became deeply intertwined with the
culture of the Landsknechte, become a beacon of masculine pride and cultural identity. A
Landsknecht marching ballad popular after the 1525 Battle of Pavia states; “In blood we had to
go, in blood we had to go, up to, up to, up to the tops of our shoes. Merciful God, look at the
misery182!” Niklaus Manuel, an artist and mercenary active in the Swabian War, illustrated the
savagery that this culture possessed when he recorded a battle cry supposedly common to
Landsknechte; “We’ll move against your enemy ‘till the very women and little children cry
Murder! That is what we long for and joy in183!” Robert III de la Marck, a minor French noble
who led Landsknecht companies in the Hapsburg-Valois wars, opined that the men who best
exemplified the character of a “Good” Landsknecht were the ones eager to engage with “Bad
War184.”
To contemporary observers, the scope of warfare had also widened in the sixteenth
century to include waging war on the landscape itself, either through the construction of
defensive earthworks, or to actively deny foraging resources to an antagonistic army. The
aftermath of a protracted battle would transform the countryside into a stark mockery of its
181
Kortüm, Pp. 67
182
Arfaioli, Pp. 7
183
184
Harari, Yuval N. Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History, and Identity, 1450-1600. Woodbridge, Suffolk,
UK: Boydell Press, 2004. Pp. 77-78
66
former state, stripped bare to the blanched soil, and littered with the broken detritus of war.
Blaise de Monluc, a Valois nobleman who led a Landsknecht company to victory against the
forces of Charles V in the Italian Wars, described the condition of the barren French landscape
after a grueling campaign; “You would have seen men and horses all amass in a heap among
each other, both the one and the other, [and] the dying lying among the dead, made such a
horrible and pitiful spectacle, that it was miserable to the persistent and obstinate enemies; and
anyone who has seen the desolation, could not reckon it to be lesser than that described by
Josephus [Flavius] in the destruction of Jerusalem, and Thucydides in the Peloponnesian
Wars185.” Unsurprisingly, disease and famine would be rife in areas where major battles were
fought, with surrounding rural communities often taking generations to fully recover from a
battle’s devastation186.
185
Sherer, Idan. Warriors for a Living: The Experience of the Spanish Infantry in the Italian Wars, 1494-1559.
Leiden: Brill, 2017. Pp. 64
186
Gutmann, Myron P. War and Rural Life in the Early Modern Low Countries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2016. Pp. 70
67
This series of plate criticizes the Holy Roman Empire’s dependence on Landsknechte, and the monetary costs they
entail. In this plate, a mounted Landsknecht, possibly a Hauptmann, cruelly slays an unarmed traveler, while a lion
prepares to devour a bound peasant nearby. The juxtaposition serves as a fairly unambiguous message: Both beast
and mercenary prey on the weak in the wilderness, and to foster either one invites disaster to the state.
The media culture of the Reformation Public brought a interpretation of the carnage of
the battlefield to urban centers hundreds of miles away from the site of hostilities, often charged
with religious or political undertones attached (See Figure 2.22). Narratives of particularly
devastating battles would often involve religious or supernatural elements such as birthing of
horrific creatures, such as the “The Monster of Ravenna,” a creature born shortly after the
bloody, and well-publicized Battle of Ravenna in 1512187. In the eyes of the Reformation Public,
battles of the guerra alla moderna had become preternatural events, where the bounds between
187
Niccoli, Ottavia, and Lydia G. Cochrane. Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990. Pp. 35-36
68
mundane and miraculous had become perforated, staining those who had directly participated in
the ignominy of perfidious bloodshed188. This dishonorable association between the
Landsknechte and death in Early Modern Europe would take on several forms observable in print
media and artistic representations with religious or political themes.
One particularly fascinating example of this phenomenon exists in a print series by
German printmaker Hans Holbein the Younger who printed an iteration of the common
Totentanz (lit “Dance of Death”) genre of popular art. Emerging in the aftermath of the 1348
Black Death, the Totentanz depicted the concept of death, usually personified as a withered
corpse with a skeletal face, interacting and dancing with various members of society in ghastly
imitation of life. Present in European culture in the forms of frescos, songs, and sculpture, the
theme enunciated in the Dance of Death was a somber reminder that death applied to everyone in
society regardless of rank, wealth, or prestige. Holbein’s 1538 woodcut version, which sold well
enough to warrant fourteen editions through the next three centuries, carries a similar theme,
with Death interacting with his victims in an aggressive, unopposed manner189. However, Plate
31, depicts a Landsknecht actively locked in combat with a shield-wielding Death atop of a pile
of dead mercenaries, while another Death figure leads a column of Landsknechte with a drum in
the background (see Figure 2.23).
188
Daston, Lorraine. "Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe." Edited by Peter G.
Platt. In Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture, 76-104. Newark: Univ. of Delaware
Press, 1999. pp. 76–104.
189
Oosterwijk, Sophie, and Stefanie A. Knöll. Mixed Metaphors: The Danse Macabre in Medieval and Early
Modern Europe. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2011. Pp. 28
69
Figure 2.23: Plate 31 of Der Totentanz
Hans Holbein the Younger, Woodcut on Paper, 1538
The plate armor and Zweihander wielded by the Landsknecht indicates that he is a Doppelsöldner, the elite shock
troops of a company whom, as their name implies, are paid twice as much as a standard soldier in exchange for
taking on more dangerous work in the company.
As the central theme of Holbein’s Totentanz is that submission to Christ is the only way
to avoid Death, the Landsknecht is designed to appear to the contemporary viewer as being
hubristic in his fight against death, for even if he wins his duel, he remains as a Death’s puppet to
be summoned by its drumbeat190. An anonymous artist described another interaction between
Death and a hubristic Landsknecht in a 1504 print, which included the following dialogue in
poetic verse;
Death;
However bold and strong and tall you may be
190
Oosterwijk and Knöll, Pp. 367-377
70
And however many men have suffered your violence,
You must nevertheless give in to me.
I have long denounced your pride.
Your halberd no longer has the power to cut.
Your feathers and dagger must fall,
Since I intend throwing them into the grave
Your fashionable beard and great deeds
Will not help you now;
All your battles have come to an end.
Quickly, away from here and be smart about it.
Landsknecht;
Oh, grim death, what are you doing here?
I did not believe you existed any more
Until I saw your gruesome face.
I had eliminated all fear.
Many trials I have withstood.
On Italian and German soil;
However, my brave weapons are no use to me now.
I shall call upon my heavenly lord
And throw away my dagger and halberd
71
To wait upon the grace of God and Mary. 191
Though the subject of this poem acquiesces without engaging in direct combat, the tone
of Death’s admonishment derides the Landsknecht for his dress and weaponry, both being
attempts to flaunt life and perseverance in a setting where a solemn respect for the dead would be
more appropriate. Even within the egalitarianist message of the Totentanz, the Landsknecht still
exists as an aberrant Other that flippantly attempts to contravene that natural order, and by
extension, the salvific will of God.
Figure 2.24: ‘X’ of Holbein Alphabet

Hans Holbein, Woodcut on Paper, 1540
Death has come for the souls of these two gamblers, but a demonic creature has appeared to protect the life of the
Landsknecht on the right. As Death attempts to snuff out the mercenary’s life, symbolized by a candle, the demon
continues to re-light it with his breath.
The apostatic nature that artists attributed to the Landsknecht was often depicted more
bluntly in other sources, as observed in Hans Holbein’s Alphabet series (see Figure 2.24), where
the Landsknecht casually gambles while Death and the Devil clash over his soul. Through this
191
Moxey, Pp. 83-87
72
lens, the association between the Landsknechte, devils, and gambling became a common trope in
the art and literature of the Reformation Public, as all three were perceived, to some capacity, as
aberrations of the natural ordination of God. To the increasingly moralistic societies of the
Reformation, the link between the Landsknecht, who paraded through corpse-strewn battlefields
wearing “Hellish” colors, was obvious. Lutheran preacher Andreas Musculus wrote in 1563 that
the colorful clothing of the Landsknecht was proof positive that the Devil had abandoned the
desert and was now tempting mortals into sin within the comfort of the city walls 192. Erasmus of
Rotterdam also linked the Devil with the Landsknecht’s brazen fashion in this 1522 metaphorical
exchange between the artisan Hanno, and his friend Thrasymachus, who had abandoned his trade
a few years previously to join a Landsknecht company;
Thrasymachus;
I saw and did more wickedness there [in service] than ever before in my whole life.
Hanno;
Has a soldier’s life any attraction at all?
Thrasymachus;
Nothing’s more wicked or more ruinous.
Hanno;
Then what possesses those men- some hired for pay, others for nothing- who run off to war
dressed as if they were going to a party?
Thrasymachus;
I can only suppose they’re driven by devils and have given themselves over wholly to an evil
spirit and to misery in such a way as to go to Hell before their time.193
192
Rublack, Pp. 110
193
Erasmus, Colloquies, Pp. 13
73
The infernal character given to the Landsknechte also served as a barb with which critics
of the Holy Roman Imperial government could attack fiscal policies or political maneuvering
without risking Lèse-majesté by directly impugning the character of the Emperor. In an example
taken from Plate 58 Steiner’s Von der Arztney bayder Glück (See Figure 2.25) the devil appears
before a befuddled Charles V while in the process of inspecting the royal treasury and urges him
to continue the spending rates that his grandfather, Maximilian I, was infamous for. After
Charles V is enticed into spending the money, Plate 82 depicts a company of Landsknechte
billeted in a town receiving their pay, only to be shown assaulting local women on the very next
page (See Figure 2.20). Another panel from Von der Arztney bayder Glück depicts the Devil
gambling with a Landsknecht, using the same coins he was tempting Charles V with earlier (See
Figure 2.26).
74
Figure 2.25: Plate 58 from Von der Arztney bayder Glück
Heinrich Steiner, Etched Plate on Paper, 1517-1532
On Plate 58, the Devil tempts the newly-elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to spend lavishly, like his
grandfather and predecessor, Maximilian I.
Figure 2.26: Plate 67 from Von der Arztney bayder Glück

On Plate 67, a tavern full of Landsknechte are shown relishing in sin. The Landsknecht on the left spitting on a
crucifix and the armed brawl are apparently so common in this sordid environment that it does not interrupt the card
game in the background, or the dice game with the Devil in the foreground.
In Von der Arztney, the association between the Landsknechte and the devil is symbolic
of the looming presence of the burgeoning military-fiscal state, which Steiner blames on
Maximilian I, absolving Charles V in the process. The Landsknechte themselves are
characterized as being irrevocably tainted by the promise of mercenary gold or possessing an evil
that found release through the greater sins of the military-fiscal state.
A slightly more forgiving correlation between Landsknechte and Death is observed in
Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1562 masterpiece, The Triumph of Death (See Figure 2.25).
75
Figure 2.27: Detail from The Triumph of Death
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Oil on Panel, c.1562
The Landsknecht on the left raises his Zweihander against the figure of Death, possibly in homage to Hans
Holbein’s work, only to be gripped and slain by his own purse strings. The Landsknecht on the ground wielding a
broken pike shaft and drawn Katzbalger is characteristic of the frenzied desperation of a “Bad War,” and would
indicate to a contemporary observer that this was a valiant, but forlorn fight.
On the lower-left corner of the piece, two young men vainly attempt to fend off a literal
army of Death- the slashed clothing, distinctive weapons, and overturned Backgammon table are
all indications that Bruegel intended his audience to recognize them as Landsknechte. In this
instance, the relation of the Landsknechte to the military-fiscal state exists in inverse to the image
presented in Von der Arztney; instead of the Landsknecht acting in concert with the Devil to
defraud the king for their benefit, here the devil is entirely absent, while an armored apparition of
Death works in the lower-right corner to steal from a barely-living king, while the Landsknecht
merely fights to survive194. During this painting’s completion, Charles V had already firmly
begun the process of proletarianizing the Landsknechte, having ordered the execution of
194
Thon, Peter. "Bruegels The Triumph of Death Reconsidered." Renaissance Quarterly 21, no. 3 (1968): 289-99.
doi:10.2307/2859416.
76
mercenary leader Sebastian Vogelsberger only a few years before195. J.R. Hale asserts that
Bruegel, known for his talent at inserting broad sociological trends into his artwork, had divested
from earlier depictions of Death as instruments of God, and instead chose to depict it as the
burgeoning presence of the military-fiscal state into people’s lives196. In that regard, Bruegel
does not include the Landsknechte to normalize them, but rather to demonstrate that they too are
falling victim to the growing state, despite their Otherness from society.
In addition to appearing in the Reformation Public as tainted by Death, spurning the
natural process of Death, and standing as Death’s victim, Landsknechte also make conspicuous
appearances as torturers and executioners, both in fictive and realistic capacities. Executioners,
despite being acknowledged as a vital facet of Early Modern society, occupied an extremely
dishonorable social station that would be passed down familial lineages into perpetuity 197. The
comparison between mercenary and executioner would appear obvious, as both professionally
dispensed state-sponsored lethal violence, and often against the will of local leaders. Erasmus of
Rotterdam famously pushed back against this comparison, hoisting the executioner as more the
more honorable between the two, stating in 1515, “We recoil in horror from an executioner,
because he cuts the throats of condemned criminals, although he is paid by order of law to do it;
but men who have left their parents, wives, and children to rush off to war uncompelled, not for
honest wages but asking to be hired for some infamous butchery198.”
195
Swart, Erik. "From “ Landsknecht ” to “Soldier”: The Low German Foot Soldiers of the Low Countries in the
Second Half of the Sixteenth Century." International Review of Social History 51, no. 01 (2006): 75.
doi:10.1017/s0020859005002336.
196
197
Harrington, Pp. 19-23
198
Erasmus, Desiderius. Erasmus against War. Translated by J. W. Mackail. Boston: Merrymount Press, 1907.
Pp. 16
77
However, inspection of written and artistic materials reveals deeper connections between
Landsknechte specifically, and ritualized dispensation of corporal punishment and execution.
The first link originates from the legal system of the Tross, of which two forms of criminal
justice existed for the Landsknecht, as described by the Haufen’s Artikelbrief; the
Veltweyfelgericht (lit. “Military Sherriff Court”) court, and the Speißgericht (lit. “Court of
Spears”). The former comprised of a public trial which adjudicated matters of criminal law, and
presided over by officers appointed to the position, including a regimental provost serving as the
prosecution and a Voerder (roughly, “Legal advocate”) who would serve as the accused’s
defense199. The latter, which comprised of a plaintiff and defendant arguing their cases in front of
an assembly of the Fähnlein200, who would then vote on the matter, settled matters of honor.
The time required for a comprehensive trial was a luxury that the Tross could seldom spare,
rendering the judgement cast by either court as final, with no right to appeal. Since monetary
fines or punitive mutilation (the standard sentences of minor crimes in settled towns201) inhibited
the fighting ability of the Haufen, punishment was almost invariably death- either by beheading
by Zweihander for criminal cases, or by running a gauntlet of spears for egregious honor cases
(hence the name of the court202).
199
Nimwegen, Pp. 166
200
Approximately 100 men
201
Harrington, Pp. 64-65
202
Nimwegen, Pp. 167
78
Hans Burgkmair, Etched Plate on Paper, 1517-1519
A depiction of criminal justice being meted out to Landsknechte who broke the accords in the Artikelbrief and was
sentenced to beheading via Zweihander. Executioners in Landsknecht companies, called Sharfrichter (“Sharp
Judge”), were usually chosen from the ranks of Doppelsöldner, due to their skill with the weapon. Though
considerably bloodier than hanging, execution by a skilled swordsman was considered relatively humane and
honorable, prolonging it as a common form of execution in Germany until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Maximilian I, while on campaign with his Landsknechte, was particularly entranced by
the speed and dignity with which his mercenary executioners dispensed justice, seeing it as the
ultimate extension of executive power, and having the act depicted in all three of his biographies
(see Figure 2.28). Witnessing a legal system first hand, that could transgress feudal boundaries
and dispense justice without deference to social rank would become one of the major impetuses
behind Maximilian I’s attempts to enact a unified legal code across the Holy Roman Empire
(Reichskammergericht), a policy that would be opposed by urban communities who chose to live
79
by their own legal codes (Gerichtsordnung) 203. Maximilian I’s resolve to reform the German
legal code often required him to personally interdict in matters of local law and economic
custom. One relatively early example of this process in action occurred in Innsbruck in 1490,
when Maximilian I circumvented the town charter to allow the local executioner to charge a
stipend for his services; “For each execution he shall receive ten pounds Bernese and a rope and
gloves without fail. We order all prelates, commanders, courts, lords, knights, esquires, bailiffs,
district judges, judges, customs officers and local officials to give the executioner his fees
without delay204.”
Inevitably, as these actions by Maximilian I were considered wholly opprobrious by local
councils wishing to pursue their own legal codes, the image of the brightly-colored Landsknecht
executioner surrounded by headless bodies, quickly became a symbol of Imperial tyranny, and
would appear in numerous works of literature and propaganda (See 2.28). Thus were
Landsknechte perceived as ‘lower’ than executioners by local urban leaders, not just by their
association with death, but also through association with an increasingly powerful centralizing
element within the state that sought to forcibly strip them of their prerogative power and social
identity205.
203
Merback, Mitchell B. The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval
and Renaissance Europe (Picturing History). London: Reaktion Books, 2001. Pp. 130
204
Benecke, Pp. 147-148
205
Eibach, Pp. 20-22
80
In this image depicting the betrothal of Maximillian I’s son, Philip the Handsome, to Joanna of Castile, the emperor
is too absorbed by a nearby execution among his Landsknechte bodyguards to observe the ceremony, much to the
sorrow of the arranged couple. To the right of the image is a depiction of Cain slaying Abel, highlighting the moral
inequity of Maximillian I’s Reichskammergericht legal reforms, as perceived by the councilors of Augsburg.
Even the act of execution, removed from the discourse of political centralization, was
deliberately designed as a ritualized ceremony of Othering, steeped in symbolism, and involving
the active participation of hundred of members of society. As related by historian Joel
Harrington, the pronouncement of a capital offense at the end of a trial was dramatically
concluded by the expulsion of the condemned from the geographic bounds of the community,
and conveyance to the Richtstätte, an ordained scaffold deliberately placed outside of the walls
of the city206. After the execution had been performed, the condemned was either buried in
unhallowed ground, or gibbeted above ground as an unambiguous warning to potential law-
breakers nearing the town walls. As German towns grew in size and number during the
206
Harrington, Pp. 80
81
Renaissance, the Richstätte would become a ubiquitous fixture of inter-urban travel and
pilgrimage. To the artists of the Reformation Public, to whom religious artwork was a consistent
source of patronage and income, the Richstätte, and its display of broken, exposed bodies would
provide an easy reference point for depicting the torture of saints, and the crucifixion of
Christ207. Historian Mitchell Merback asserts that by the 1520’s, the biblical Golgotha and the
German Richstätte would become so directly linked with one another, that Reformation artists
would purposefully illustrate the Passion to appear to take place outside of Free Imperial Cities;
“Practically every theatrical detail conveys this. Buildings and forest are unmistakably
Germanic; the ‘Roman’ soldiers who adjust and secure the Cross upright appear in the
contemporary dress of the German mercenaries, or Landsknechte. Apart from the Three Marys
and the St. John figure praying with upraised hands, there are no characters in the plain biblical
garb typical of northern Passion imagery208.”
Landsknechte would also appear in other biblical motifs, especially if there was need of
infanticidal soldiers (See Figure 2.29209) or murderers of saints, but depictions of Calvary are
where they most consistently appear (See Figure 2.30) 210.
207
Merback, Pp. 257-258
208
Ibid, 261-262
209
Rabb, Theodore K. The Artist and the Warrior Military History through the Eyes of the Masters. New Haven
(Conn.): Yale University Press, 2011. Pp. 89
210
82
Figure 2.30: Detail from The Massacre of the Innocents
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Oil on Panel
German Landsknechte are depicted working with Spanish Tercio mercenaries in enacting King Herod’s order.
Bruegel likely intended this piece to serve as a commentary on Hapsburg aggression in the Low Countries at the
beginning of the Eighty Years’ War, hence the snowy terrain.
83
Figure 2.31: Crucifixion
c. 1565 and Daniel Hopfer, Etching, c. 1520
Hopfer’s illustration of Calvary depicts an unflattering Landsknecht prodding at Christ’s body with a boar spear,
while a soldier dressed in Hungarian fashion wields the Spear of Longinus.
In describing both Golgotha and the Richstätte, the concept of ‘shame’ serves as a central
element and is heavily referenced in both early Modern executions, and the Biblical Passion.
According to thirteenth-century arch-bishop Jacobus de Voragine, “The pains of the Passion
were fivefold. The first pain consisted in the shame of the Passion. For he bore it in a shameful
place, Calvary being reserved for the punishment of criminals 211.” By illustrating their “shameful
211
Merback, Pp. 41
84
places” with the contemporary equivalent of Roman legionaries, artists of the Reformation
Public married the image of the Landsknecht with spiritual ignominy, justifying their exclusion
from society as outsiders of both the Reformation city, and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Through their myriad associations with Shame, Death, and the Devil, the Landsknechte
as the edifice of guerra alla moderna, had become marginalized to a degree that their physical
bodies had transgressed into a state of profane Otherness. Given the ferocity and the sheer
number of people involved in sixteenth-century battles, the removal of the sacred element of
mercenary bodies by Renaissance rulers would be necessary for the conduct of warfare. Robert
III de la Marck’s memoir of the 1513 Battle of Novara against the Swiss Reisläufer not only
reveals how fury with which Renaissance warfare was conducted, but also how casualties were
internalized as a transaction between one’s own forces and the enemy’s; “And there died many a
good Landsknechte, for of three or four hundred men who were in the first rank, only the
Adventurer and his brother, and a gentlemen [sic] called Fontaine and Fuillalme de Lympel and
two halberdiers who were the Adventurer’s guardsmen were saved, and all the captains were left
there [on the field of battle], except two. And you should be told that all the flower of the Swiss
was left there [on the field of battle], and more Swiss [died] than Landsknechts212.”
The beginning of the Italian Wars in 1494, which saw the first major conflict between
states employing guerra alla moderna, also marked the transition from battles being narrated as
exercises of chivalric pride, Christian reconquest, or episodic dynastic vengeance, and instead as
numerical transactions between political or military entities. The accounts of war related in the
Reformation Public discarded narratives of individual acts of heroism in favor of portraying
battle as a numerical abstraction of distance, resources, and casualties. By the ascension of Holy
212
Harari, Pp. 78
85
Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519, cenotaphs erected to commemorate major battles were
inscribed with the number of dead and wounded, as the destruction of war had firmly passed
from being described qualitatively to being calculated quantitatively as another expenditure of
state213. Ambroise Paré, a surgeon working for an Imperial Landsknecht company during the
1552 Siege of Metz, remarked on the callousness that rulers steeped in transactional warfare
engaged with when he sent a letter to Charles V describing the high numbers of casualties within
the siege camp. After being informed that none of the dead were of noble birth, but were entirely
composed of “Poor soldiers,” the emperor, “said he it makes no matter if they die, comparing
them to caterpillars and grasshoppers which eat the buds of the earth- Food for worms- Was life
now held cheaper214?”
Wages paid to mercenaries acted as assuagement, decoupling the luaded valor of
common men, and the necessary sacrifices that guerra alla moderna often required, both for
commanding officers and the soldiers themselves. Monetary remuneration also served as a major
tactical advantage for mercenary armies, as they incentivized battle-hardened veterans to re-
enlist with companies that offered better wages. When describing the difficulties French military
officers encountered when recruiting mercenaries, Charles Oman described the correlation
between this early form of Capitalism, and efficacy in battle; “…[French] captains only looked
out for men with stout shoulders, not for men with stout hearts, and would enlist any big men
that they could lay hands upon, without regard for their morale, whereas among the Swiss and
even among the Landsknechts the very best material served with the pike, and the
213
Gagné, John. "Counting the Dead: Traditions of Enumeration and the Italian Wars." Renaissance Quarterly 67,
no. 3 (2014): 791-840. doi:10.1086/678775.
214
86
‘Doppelsöldner,’ or soldiers with extra pay, who fought in the front ranks, were formidable
veterans215.”
Memoirs written by early Landsknecht commanders, who were drawn from the ranks of
minor nobility steeped in chivalric martial attitudes, would often mistake cause and effect when
attempting to goad their mercenaries into acts of extraordinary bravery. French knight Blaise de
Monluc, while serving as the head of a Landsknecht company during the 1558 storming of
Thionville, described an episode where an enemy squadron had retreated into a breach in the
outer walls. Grabbing the nearest mercenary, Monluc commanded, “’Jump inside soldier, and I
will give you twenty escus!’ He told me that he would not do it, for if he jumps inside, he is a
dead man. And he resisted me with all his force… Then all of us together threw the soldier in,
head first, and made him brave against his will. When I saw he was not shot at, we threw in two
more harquebusiers, partly of their own will, partly by force 216.” The transactional effect that
money had upon the bravery of his commoner mercenaries was perceived by Monluc to be so
linear, that he was flabbergasted and reduced to force when twenty escus did not immediately
turn a passing soldier into a suicidal fanatic.
215
Oman, Sixteenth Century, Pp. 45
216
Harari, Pp. 95
87
Figure 2.32: Removal of a Bolt from Der Feldbuch der Wundarzney
Hans von Gersdoff and Hans Wechtlin, Woodcut on Paper, 1517
The patient in this piece is shown having a crossbow bolt being dislodged from his sternum- The proximity of the
bladed projectile to the heart makes this procedure particularly difficult. The absence of anesthetic has necessitated
the aid of a soldier to manually hold down the patient. The battle raging in the background serves as a warning
against putrefaction in an interesting inversion of the Body Politic; the body is symbolized as a state under assault by
a foreign army.
88
Figure 2.33: Serratura (“Amputation”) from Der Feldbuch der Wundarzney
Hans von Gersdoff and Hans Wechtlin, Woodcut on Paper, 1517
This patient is shown having his left leg amputated after a gangrenous foot injury, while a man wielding a padded
fist stands ready to knock the patient into unconsciousness should he start to wake. Despite the extreme danger
involved with any form of pre-germ theory surgery, literary sources and the abundance of Early Modern prosthetics
suggest that many patients lived for years after amputation.
The casual disregard shown towards the bodies of Landsknechte can also be keenly
reflected in a widely circulated medical textbook authored by Hans von Gersdorff in 1517 titled,
“Feldbuch der Wundarzney” (lit. “Field Book of Surgery”). Gersdorff, a field medic employed
by a German mercenary company, worked with engraver Hans Wechtlin within the Tross to
illustrate the dissected bodies of fallen Landsknechte over the course of five years. The
89
illustrations (See Figures 2.31 and 2.32), which depict common battlefield injuries, organ
systems, procedures for amputation, and the design of bone setting and trepanning machines,
were received well enough to warrant multiple printed editions, and could found as reference
material in European colleges for centuries afterwards217.
In a philosophical parallel to the use of criminal bodies in eighteenth and nineteenth-
century medical dissections, the desecration of mercenary bodies for medical research was not
considered a moral factor due to the Otherness that their bodies and souls inherited through their
participation in guerra alla moderna. As pointed out by historian Charles Tilly, the supremacy of
mercenary warfare (“Purchased Coercion”) made the conduct of state defense deadlier, more
expensive, and, through the introduction of new financial institutions, deeply intrusive to the
lives of average citizens218. The actions of the Reformation Public also made the experience of
war more intimate and immediate than ever before, leaving people steeped in traditional social
roles, like urban burghers, to conceptualize the changing world around them in cultural handles
tangible to them. The creeping decline of artisan economies, increased availability of New World
bullion, and the proliferation of more dangerous weapon systems, while certainly factors
contributing to rise of mercenary warfare, took place over centuries and would have been barely
perceptible to those living in Renaissance communities. Instead, writers and artists of the
Reformation Public attempted to find reason for their sons and daughters abandoning their
homes for the untamed carnage of the battlefield by contextualizing in the concepts most
accessible to them; Death, Shame, and the Devil.
217
Choulant, Ludwig, and Mortimer Frank. History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration. New York: Hafner
Publ., 1962. Pp. 62-66
218
Tilly, Charles. Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990-1992. Cambridge (Mass.): Blackwell, 2015.
Pp. 78
90
Conclusion
In 1557, Charles V passed a new iteration of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, which
placed further restrictions on the ability for Landsknechte to appoint officers within their Haufen,
and prohibited their passage through towns unbidden219. In the same year, Hans Sachs published
a book containing some of his most renowned songs, titled “Ausgewählte Poetische Werke.”
Song number forty-four, titled, “Saint Peter with the Landsknechte” describes St. Peter’s
insistence on allowing a gang of dead Landsknechte into the gates of heaven, despite the
warnings of his angels. Upon entering heaven, the riotous Landsknechte start carousing and
fighting with the angels, prompting St. Peter to ask God for an answer:
“The Lord said, "To every angel,
He should take a drum at once
And step in front of Heaven’s Gate '
And make a noise out there. "
That's what Peter did.
As soon as the angel beat the noise,
The Landsknechte ran without delay
Speed out of the Gates of Heaven,
Believing, they could answer the noise.
Saint Peter closed the heavenly gate,
Lock 'the Landsknecht' from the place.
219
Swart, Pp. 75-82
91
Not one has been in there since then,
Because Peter does hum with them.
But take this poem here as warning,
As without Angels, Hans Sachs speaks here.”
Later in the same book, on chapter forty-eight, Sachs would record another song, titled,
“The Devil with the Landsknecht,” where the devil, sensing a great sin being committed in a
billeted townhouse, hides behind the stove and waits for the owners to return. As four
Landsknechte return to the house after a successful pillage, one of the mercenaries lights the
stove, and notices the Devil;
“And now the Landsknecht carried a hum
as he carried the pillage to the stove.
The Landsknecht said to the host:
“Hey, behind the stove, I’ll advise
that we eat the poor devil hiding behind!
The horned devil did then speak,
“Landsknechte are a wicked people on this Earth!
How could I not make them turn?
They hate me, so take care
And refuse the Landsknecht eternal!”
Both songs, composed by an artist with intimate familiarity with Landsknechte, utilizes
humor to satirize a theme that would have been obvious to contemporary listeners by the end of
92
Charles V’s reign; the Otherness of the Landsknecht, which was so deeply engrained in
Renaissance culture that even the rulers of the afterlife damned them to eternal marginalization.
At its foundations, the cultural Othering of the Landsknecht was the result of an
overenthusiastic embrace of the nascent humanist ideals inherent with the German Renaissance,
without regard to traditional attitudes or morality. The Haufen allowed for a prototypical
representative democracy that was earnestly invested in the well-being of its constituents,
allowing for de facto legal representation through the Voerder system, and a suspension of
geographically-based custom and law. However, when those egalitarian ideals were backed by
military force against the interests of centralizing states, the Landsknechte were branded as
chaotic beasts loyal only to their own desires, prompting the abolishment of the Voerder system
in 1556220. Freedom to acquire riches and social gratification according to one’s natural talents
and effort, as was envisioned by the provisions of the Artikelbrief, seemed to represent the total
encapsulation of the Novus hominae ideal of the Renaissance. When that ideal drew too many
men and women away from their traditional stations in urban centers, suddenly, the
Landsknechte became depicted as lascivious predators of youth and innocence.
However, more than any other factor towards the Othering of the Landsknechte was its
utter convenience to the centralizing Hapsburg state. After all, as Machiavelli points out, one of
the key strengths of mercenaries in general is their ability to incur grievous numbers of casualties
without harming the productive capacity of your countrymen. By correlating the presence of
Maximilian’s centralized state with the Landsknecht, the populace’s frustrations with Imperial
governance could be directed towards a demographic that could be characterized as avaricious,
rapacious, murderous, diseased, and soulless, instead of the heads of state. Rulers after
220
Swart, Pp. 82
93
Maximilian I, who had purchased their own companies of Landsknechts, would engage with
similar scapegoat tactics when their own actions caused some great calamity; the Danish King
Christian II would blame his Landsknechts for the Stockholm Bloodbath in 1520, Georg
Turchess von Waldburg blamed his Landsknechts for the massacre at Frankenhausen in 1525,
and Charles V would state that the Sack of Rome in 1527 was more the result of the
Landsknechts’ inherent bloodlust, rather than his failure to pay or feed them.
Figure 3.1: The Dead Landsknecht

Albrecht Altdorfer, Ink and Charcoal Drawing, c.1530
94
Perhaps the sincerest pictorialized symbol of the Landsknecht’s Othering within the
context of the Reformation state comes from Albrecht Altdorfer’s The Dead Landsknecht (See
Figure 3.1221). In it, a Landsknecht, clad in slashed clothing and Plunderhosen, lays dead and
forgotten within the wilds of the forest, with the trees each symbolizing the competing estates
structures of European states. The piece focuses on the corpse, lying prostate and exposed within
the beast’s natural habitat- a series of arches to the right lead into a vaunted tomb, to which
neither tree limb, nor Landsknecht have access to. Akin to the shedding of broken tree limbs, the
death and Othering of the Landsknecht is presented as a tragic, yet natural outcome of the
growing power of State222.
Indeed, as European states became larger and more centralized in the latter half of the
sixteenth century, less tolerance was displayed towards the Landsknechte’s adherence to the
Artiklebrief and the relative autonomy that mercenary companies were allowed to operate under.
Gradual efforts towards proletarianization, spanning the reigns of two Holy Roman Emperors,
and four decades, had been fostered by the relative peace in Europe achieved after the Peace of
Augsburg in 1555 and the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566, which diminished the
Landsknechte’s ability to leverage physical protection for political autonomy By the ascension of
Holy Roman Emperor Rudoplf II in 1576, signatories of Landsknecht cultural identity originally
fostered by Maximilian I, such as distinctive ceremonies, clothing, and weaponry, had faded into
obscurity, with the final contemporary use of the word “Landsknecht” dating to 1581223.
By the intensification of the Eighty Years’ War in the late 1580’s, mercenaries had
ceased being referred to by colorful idioms reflective of personal agency, such as Tercio,
221
222
Ibid. Pp. 5-6
223
Swart, Pp. 82
95
Reisläufer, or Landsknecht, and instead were broadly composed of a multi-national morass of
soldiers with little bargaining power with the state, known collectively as Soldäten , or “those
who sold themselves224.” By the seventeenth century, and the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War
in 1618, the ability of the Landsknechte to leverage their mastery of purchased coercion had
passed into romanticized admiration by the common soldier. Contemporary writer Johann
Grimmelshausen noted in 1688 that the Soldäten of the Thirty Years’ War pined for the days
when a mercenary could achieve a modicum of honor serving in battle, and that by 1630, the
“…only paradise afforded to a mercenary is to chance upon a fat farmer” with soldiers existing
so far into the margins of society that the only life available to a retiring soldier is as a beggar or
vagabond225.
224
Ibid, Pp. 86-92
225
Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoph Von. Simplicissimus. Edited by Mike Mitchell. Sawtry: Dedalus, 2012.
Pp. 53
96
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ABSTRACT

This study engages with a critical assessment of contemporary songs, religious

pamphlets, broadsheets, political treatises, autobiographic sources, and belletristic

destructive and intrusive military-fiscal state.

All Rights Reserved

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of

Raleigh, North Carolina

made my journey possible.

LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... v

Figure 1.1 Knight & Landsknecht, Paul Dolstein, c.1505 ........................................................... 8

Figure 1.3 Soldier and Wife, Daniel Hopfer, c.1530 ................................................................. 16

Figure 2.1 Plate 26 of Der Weißkunig, Hans Burgkmair, 1519 ................................................. 23

Figure 2.2 Plate 27 of Der Weißkunig, Hans Burgkmair, 1519 ................................................. 24

Figure 2.4 Brothel Scene, The Brunswick Monogrammist , c.1545 ......................................... 32

Figure 2.5 Cobbler, Niklas Stör, c,1530 .................................................................................... 34

Figure 2.6 Tailor, Niklas Stör, c,1530 ....................................................................................... 35

Figure 2.8 Plate 71 of Der Weißkunig, Hans Burgkmair, 1519 ................................................. 44

Figure 2.9 Plate 76 of Der Weißkunig, Hans Burgkmair, 1519 ................................................. 45

Figure 2.12 Landsknecht, Urs Graf, 1523 .................................................................................... 49

Figure 2.13 Landsknecht, Urs Graf, 1519 .................................................................................... 50

Figure 2.31 Crucifixion, Daniel Hopfer, c.1520 .......................................................................... 85

Figure 3.1 The Dead Landsknecht, Albrecht Artdorfer, c.1530 ................................................ 95

In 1516, English statesman Thomas More published his reflection on Renaissance

a greater threat to the stability of his empire than the Turks6.

of the Landsknechte’s place in Early Modernity, rather than “Disenfranchisement” or

“Society of Orders,” where Early Modern European society is perceived to be underpinned by a

them as an order separate from the rest of society.

sources, including published literature10, private memoirs11, commissioned artwork12, printed

examination of how the rapid exchange of ideas contributed to the Landsknecht’s

though some clarification on either subject may be necessary.

The formation of the Landsknechte as a distinct socio-economic community lay in the

quickly enough to overtake artillery batteries between salvos 21.

Books, 1998. Pp. 41-62

Deutscher, or Mann instead27.

battlefield engagements signaled the full democratization of warfare in Europe, as commoners

Landsknechte overcoming armored knights to enjoy popularity in late fifteenth-century popular

among the mass33?”

imported from the government of the Helvetian Confederacy35.

himself, need not abandon himself to another37.”

displayed by his Landsknechte38. The Lucerne Chronicle, an illuminated manuscript illustrated

Landsknechte company that transcended the geographic loyalties of individual mercenaries

relative ease, as was demonstrated at a military demonstration outside of Milan in 1495. As

unambiguous departure from a civilian life into a military one 47.

of sixteenth-century Florentine mercenaries, the “ [Camp followers’] presence is more easily

an army of 20,000 combatants50.

Figure 1.4: Plate 16 of the Schwytzer Chronica

and provisions would be quickly stripped bare by so many mouths. Landsknechtshaufen

attitude towards gambling as a method of resource allocation, as it allowed Landsknechte who

the walls of cities, and the bounds of Christian morality57.

to Der Musterung Umzug, such as induction rituals observed in academic fraternities or

‘common man,’ the pamphlet’s intended target63.”

an urban literacy rate between 30-60%6970.

(Figures 2.1 & 2.2)77.

Unsurprisingly, given the ubiquity of mercenaries on European battlefields, and the

prevalence of a Weltkultur (lit.“World Culture”) view enriched by a deeply illustrative print

obligations. Migrants faced considerable hardship, as expressed by the thirteenth-century

was not only an edifice of civil liberty, but of survival itself85.

Tanners, gravediggers, executioners, butchers, and dog-catchers, trades that were

see Figure 2.3)88.