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Scutage

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Advocatus Sancti Sepulcri
Nov 24, 2000
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Will it be part of the game. Will barons be able to buy their way out of joining the royal host? If so how will it be determined? Loyalty?

Who wants to take a stab at it? No, not you Greven. You know all the answers.

(Maybe reverse psychology will work.):D
 
I can not see why not! I think it would be a fascinating complication to the game:

"Duke Bob is invading! Raise my standard and get me an army Chatelain!"

2 days later.

"Here is your gold *huff* *huff* *clank*, your Majesty."

"GOLD? I need troops! Duke Bob is practically at my castle!"

"Well, Baron Fritz paid scutage so he could go on a honeymoon, and Baron Samuel is on crusade, and Baron Jimmy has a hangnail..."

:D

O.
 
Scutage was a good thing. First of all, if you were a French or Anglo-Norman noble, you were generally only required to serve for 40 days anyway, which really limits the King to a short ineffectual campaign. Second, a great many of your "troops" were worthless in battle, because only the cavalry was really trained, and maybe the archers if you were English. Last but not least, while say the Earl of Leicestershire would not mind to fight somewhere in England, he wouldnt want to leave his lands and cross the Channel unless he was going to profit from it. So only the English nobles who actually owned land in Normandy were really keen to serve there, and even they wouldnt care to venture further afield to say Gascony or the Toulousaine.

But with scutage, the King can rectify these problems. He can use your money to hire much better "professional" troops, like Welsh archers or maybe some Brabantine pikemen; they will follow him anywhere he wants as long as they get paid; and they wont care how long theyve been in the field because they 1) want the job, and 2) dont have a huge fief to get back to.

So I hope I can raise scutage in CK, because instead of a chaotic feudal host, I'll have an invincible army composed of Brabantine pikemen, Franconian knights, and Flemish crossbows...and this time the Emperor's gonna sweep the field at Legnano...
 
Originally posted by ewright
................

So I hope I can raise scutage in CK, because instead of a chaotic feudal host, I'll have an invincible army composed of Brabantine pikemen, Franconian knights, and Flemish crossbows...and this time the Emperor's gonna sweep the field at Legnano...
Click to expand...

Only if you can find and afford that many mercs. Hopefully they will not be as plentiful as they are in EU II.:)
 
I think I can find them. The Count of Hainaut sent 10,000 Brabantines to join Barbarossa's army in 1184, and thats plenty!
Frederick had already used large numbers of them in 1166 & 1174. Meanwhile Henry II was using them too, and the Duke of Brabant started pimping them out because the Netherlands were overpopulated.

But the mercs of the Middle Ages werent the same phenomenon as in EU2. By then you wanted a "national" type disciplined standing army and mercs were looked on as rowdy scum. But in the Middle Ages, any troops who fought for pay vs. feudal obligations were considered mercs. So before Edward III and the Hundred Years War, the only professional troops you could get were mercs!

Of course, this is me naively assuming CK realistically models stuff like this...
 
Originally posted by ewright
....... So before Edward III and the Hundred Years War, the only professional troops you could get were mercs!

Of course, this is me naively assuming CK realistically models stuff like this...
Click to expand...

One would hope that CK makes a better stab at it than EU II.

Stephen of England had a mercenary troop headed by Willliam of Ypres almost the entire time he was king. So it was growing to become the norm even 200 years before Edward III.:)
 
No, I meant Edward III and his successors approached the problem differently. They didnt just hire mercs; they contracted with English nobles to provide troops for sums of money. So they werent really mercs as they were known before, they were like feudal contingents that served for pay instead of for feudal obligation. Thats what I meant, not that no one was using mercs before Edward III. All the ones I cited before were well before Edward's time.

The point was that in the Middle Ages, if you wanted quality troops free from feudal restraints, you had almost no choice but to hire mercs. They formed the non-feudal core of armies like those of Henry II and Frederick Barbarossa, and they were pike-for-pike better than the mob youd get by calling up your feudal levies because they were trained, experienced, and not bound by feudal law. They werent the same bloodthirsty scum who appeared in EU2 era; they were the "professional" soldiers of their day.

Stephen's Flemish mercs are a great example; they were disciplined, effective, and loyal to Stephen and William d'Ypres, not to a feudal overlord. They did not serve for 40 days a year, in fact they were a "standing army" until Henry II forcibly ejected them in 1154. Stephen kept them because of what I just said; he could not rely on his fickle vassals to supply him with quality troops; in fact they were his wife's salvation after his own capture, because even when his formerly-loyal vassals scattered to the winds, these guys stood firm and pulled off a coup at Winchester which procured their master's release.
 
True, that would makes merc even more important because they care only about money, maybe some of loyoalty, so that way, King doesn't have to depend on his unreliable vassel as much.

Also, they are least likely to turn on u soon as it is profitablefor them to do. I mean vassel not merc. Ewright, good luck, I will even help u for I am very sympatheic to HRE and I plan to play as one too.
 
Originally posted by ewright
..........
Stephen's Flemish mercs are a great example; they were disciplined, effective, and loyal to Stephen and William d'Ypres, ...............
Click to expand...

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.:eek:

I would say the above quoted statement is almost true. William Ypres did flee the field at Lincoln while Stephen was still in the thick of the fighting. Other barons fled also so it was not only the mercs.:)
 
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