The Lisowczycy are not a mercenary unit, so they do not belong in this thread at all
That would really depend on definition of mercenary would it not?
You yourself wrote:
To actually address Apocal's questions we must first define our terms. What is it that we even mean by 'mercenary'? Pressing this modern concept anachronistically onto the past leaves us enormously dissatisfied with the inadequacy of the template.
So f.ex. by polish historians this, like you wrote:
unpaid squadron of volunteers
is usually treated as mercenaries. Quote from wiki explains why.
wiki said:
A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or a party to the conflict and is "motivated to take part in the hostilities by the desire for private gain."
So not necessarily paid in money. I mean you could argue that they were paid in future loot. And as this loot often came from villages of employer, they bore part of the cost.
And this little thing that they were actually sometimes paid for rendering their services.
This is the business of cavalry. The devil came on horseback. The only reported ill deed of the Lisowczycy that stands out is killing anyone unfortunate to cross their path. Very well. But I ask, who reported this? It was certainly not the dead, they can not treat with the living. There are the enemies of the Lisowczycy, but hot and lurid accusations of this type are the one arrow that casts nothing to cast at one's enemy from the dawn of history to our own time. That leaves only the Lisowczycy themselves as witnesses.
The Lisowczycy become privileged amongst their contemporaries, and by extension, in historiography as particularly cruel and terrible regardless of actual fact by dint of their own exaggeration. It is advantageous to them to have a terrible name. We in the 21st Century are particularly credulous in believing for the propaganda circulated for their own self-aggrandizement. We assign it a false "face value" because we are unaware of how armies ravaged the countryside around them as a matter of course, with the cavalry as the harbingers of destruction. A modern historian might write that an army "foraged". The context is lost to us.
I`am actually under no illusion as to the role of light cavalry in and outside the battlefield. It just seems to me that they were
somewhat worse than others. Like I wrote before,
in comparison to other Commonwealth troops, including other light cavalry/mercenary/irregular units they kinda look like sort of dicks
. You know just
a little bit more cruelty and plundering then their contemporaries. You wrote before:
I think it says a lot that people think any of the examples from pre-industrial eras thus far were unreliable or particularly badly behaved.
It`s not that they were
significantly worse, because frankly it`s simply hard to do that, and if we go by this measure we can as well abandon this thread. But that there was something extra, something while not overwhelming it was noticeable. And one of the reason for this extra capability might be their mobility. I`am not some sort of expert but 150 km a day sounds impressive. They did that by eschewing use of supply wagons and plundering everything their needed (and with lack of these supply train, they ofc needed more plunder).
Now to killing of witnesses... well I admit you have me here, I surrender
.
I saw this tidbit few times, on somewhat reliable sites, but while writing my post stumbled upon historian questioning this, and intended to
prefacing this part of my post with words "supposedly" but frankly either forgotten or got lazy or both
. Moved my ass and changed it now.
As to who could have told the story of them killing witnesses? First: it`s hard to kill all witnesses. Second: you see f.ex. burnt inn, some locals disappeared (in more numbers than usual, that is), and you have some military units operating nearby, it`s not hard to connect the dots. If, like you said it happened at all. Beside that I think it`s not something that was part of their propaganda. Their chaplain wrote book about them, and he just collected their deeds, atrocities etc. But apparently not this. Very telling is that stories of slaughtering cities etc. are told by this priest with some... humour even, generally treated lightly. After all those were heretic cities. Lovely times, don`t you think guys?
Just to make it clear
@100thlurker I am not using this as proof of their above average vileness.
And like I wrote above I am aware what "foraging" really meant, who did that etc. But just how many of those units
routinely plundered their homeland. Because Lisowczycy managed to do "pillage than burn" to several villages, churches, even town on occasion? I know that things like that happened, but they were pretty infamous for this, again, even amognst other Commonwealth troops (don`t ask
). Adding to that relativly short time when they operated before being disbanded, and you get pretty bad picture.
