Editing Medieval warfare (section)

===Recruiting===
[[File:Kalandozasok.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Hungarian raids in the 10th century. Before the [[battle of Lechfeld]] in 955 Medieval Europeans were vulnerable from the Nomadic style of war that came from the Hungarians.]]

In the earliest Middle Ages, it was the obligation of every noble to respond to the call to battle with his equipment, archers, and infantry.  This decentralized system was necessary due to the social order of the time but could lead to motley forces with variable training, equipment and abilities. The more resources the noble had access to, the better his troops would typically be.

Typically the feudal armies consisted of a core of highly skilled knights and their household troops, mercenaries hired for the time of the campaign and feudal levies fulfilling their feudal obligations, who usually were little more than rabble. They could, however, be efficient in disadvantageous terrain. Towns and cities could also field militias.

As central governments grew in power, a return to the citizen and mercenary armies of the classical period also began, as central levies of the peasantry began to be the central recruiting tool. It was estimated that the best [[infantrymen]] came from the younger sons of free land-owning [[yeoman|yeomen]], such as the English archers and Swiss pikemen. England was one of the most centralized states in the Late Middle Ages, and the armies that fought the [[Hundred Years' War]] were mostly paid professionals.

In theory, every Englishman had an obligation to serve for forty days. Forty days was not long enough for a campaign, especially one on the continent. Thus the [[scutage]] was introduced, whereby most Englishmen paid to escape their service and this money was used to create a permanent army. However, almost all high medieval armies in Europe were composed of a great deal of paid core troops, and there was a large mercenary market in Europe from at least the early 12th century.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Medieval Warfare|last=Carruthers|first=Bob|publisher=Pen and Sword|year=2013|isbn=9781473846968|pages=10}}</ref>

As the Middle Ages progressed in Italy, Italian cities began to rely mostly on [[mercenaries]] to do their fighting rather than the militias that had dominated the early and high medieval period in this region. These would be groups of career soldiers who would be paid a set rate. Mercenaries tended to be effective soldiers, especially in combination with standing forces, but in Italy, they came to dominate the armies of the city-states. This made them problematic; while at war they were considerably more reliable than a standing army, at peacetime they proved a risk to the state itself like the [[Praetorian Guard]] had once been.

Mercenary-on-mercenary warfare in Italy led to relatively bloodless campaigns which relied as much on manoeuvre as on battles, since the [[condottieri]] recognized it was more efficient to attack the enemy's ability to wage war rather than his battle forces, discovering the concept of [[indirect approach|indirect warfare]] 500 years before Sir Basil [[Liddell Hart]], and attempting to attack the enemy supply lines, his economy and his ability to wage war rather than risking an open battle, and manoeuvre him into a position where risking a battle would have been suicidal. Machiavelli understood this [[indirect approach]] as cowardice.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Medieval Warfare|last=Carruthers|first=Bob|publisher=Pen and Sword|year=2013|isbn=9781473846968|pages=11}}</ref>