Hi
Were the Varangians a model later imitated by the French, as in the Garde Écossaise? If not, which medieval powers imitated the Varangian model?
I look forward to your feedback.
For those who like me had never encountered the word “Varangians” before, it appears to refer to several things: “vikings”; “the name given to the vikings who created a kingdom whose capital was Kiev” and “a group of viking mercenaries working for Byzantium”. I expect** davidmich** refers to the last one, but if that’s so he’ll need to explain what does he find peculiar about this particular group of foreign soldiers; such have existed since the dawn of recorded history and probably before.
I was referring to the Rus/Vikings as mercenaries during the Byzantine empire.
Why would later foreign mercenary outfits be modelled on the Varangians in particular? Is there some reason for thinking the Varangians to have instituted a particularly influential model of foreign mercenarism?
Given that Viking culture did have an enormous influence on Europe in so many ways, I thought perhaps that these model mercenaries/palace guards in the East would have been imitated in West.
The concept of an elite unit of foreigners protecting the sovereign has popped up a few times throughout history. Besides the two cases mentioned by the OP, the most famous is probably the Papal Swiss Guard. I’d even say the Ottoman Janissary Corps applies - after all, they consisted almost entirely of non-Turkish slaves.
It was apparently a fairly effective model.
Yeah but the Varangians weren’t the first model of that. In order to know whether whatever davidmich finds peculiar about them was copied by others, we need to know what is it he finds so peculiar.
There wasn’t a lot of Western copying of Byzantine culture, so why would this be any different? The Garde, especially, has origins in the medieval Auld Alliance and troops sent from one king to an ally. They weren’t really mercenaries as such.
Before the 19th Century, hiring foreign mercenaries was perfectly normal. If you were a fashionable monarch, and wanted to keep up with the neighbors, your army had to include a regiment of Swiss pikemen, and a regiment of Hungarian cavalry. (If you could not afford real Hungarians, you would hire Germans, and dress them in Hungarian-style uniforms. These became the hussar regiments that were nearly universal in old Europe.)
A big portion of any monarch’s army were foreign regiments. And a big portion of the officers were the younger sons of foreign aristocrats.
The difference is the Scottish were an important ally with close relations to the French, which is quite different to the Varangians, who were from the distant barbarian wastelands (from the Byzantine point of view).
So the Ghurkas were probably closer to the model of the Varangians.
The Varangians and the Normans were both Viking peoples, or Norsemen, but I’m also not sure what direct connection there might be.
Also, the Byzantines may have considered the Varangians barbarians, but they were far from “distant.” There was considerable trade with the Norsemen, mainly in slaves. Norsemen carved graffiti in the Hagia Sophia, and headstones in Scandinavia commemorate men who served the Byzantines.
Poor old Praetorian Guard they never get any respect.
I’ll expand upon the theme here: there are several reasons a despot would find foreign mercenaries desirable.
[ul]
[li]They are directly dependent on the ruler for pay and subsistence, tending to ensure loyalty[/li][li]They often do not speak the local language, hampering their ability to conspire[/li][li]They are frequently resented by the locals, hampering their ability to conspire[/li][li]They have no powerbase nearby, no crops to worry about, no territory to defend except the ruler’s[/li][li]Unlike the nobles, they have no possible claim to the throne lurking in their family histories[/li][li]Their lack of attachment to the locals, and the frequent existence of festering resentments, usually means they can be relied on to suppress rebellions without sympathy for the locals[/li][/ul]
Although hard coin was difficult for rulers to come by in medieval systems, a body of foreign mercenaries bound to the ruler was useful for protection from foreign AND domestic threats, so effectively doing double duty. It also typically carried an element of prestige.
A stretch IMHO. Janissaries were conscripted from citizens after all, not outside populations( the Mamluks of Egypt on the other hand were actually imported, but that’s a different model entirely ). They certainly weren’t foreign mercenaries - indeed the hand-picked elite of those impressed children were brought up to functionally became the ruling administrative class. And the original idea of only recruiting non-Muslim boys and then converting them was already breaking down by the 16th century. Poor Muslim families were smuggling their kids into the conscription pools to give them a shot at a better life, while conversely some Christian families were converting to Islam to avoid the devshirme.
Isn’t the common theme between the Varangian Guard and Garde Ecossaise that they’re foreign mercenaries acting as bodyguards to the sovereign?
If so, then both swiped the idea from the Romans and Julius Caesar’s germanic bodyguards and the later Germanic Cohort.
The whole idea is that locals would get involved in BS and possibly betray you in order to make a buck, while your foreign bodyguards are pretty much dependent on you for their status and livelihood and therefore are more likely to be trustworthy.
After looking over Wiki on the Garde Ecossaise–
it does appear to differ from the Varangian Guard and the Germanic Cohort in that the flow of soldiers went both ways and was due to political ties between the kings of Scotland and the kings of (part of what is now) France. No doubt some of the same factors applied to the GE as to other foreign troops, but wasn’t one of the main complaints about mercenaries in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance that they were last to the fight, first out, and likely to switch sides? It seems the GE, though paid, weren’t mercenaries in quite the same way as the “free companies.”
Praetorians don’t get respect, they TAKE it!
And the guys who ruled Tenochtitlán before the Aztecs developed the same idea independently. It didn’t work so well for them but hey, that’s a different problem.