How Mercenaries Collapsed Rome

Every major Empire in history collapsed due to reliance on mercenaries.

Rome once decided to take an easy path to invited 10’000s of foreigners to live and fight for Rome. Emperor Valens believed barbarians will help to build Rome’s future, fill deteriorating Roman army. But in reality, this swarm of Goths became a first nail in Rome’s coffin.

Decades later Goths became the main Rome’s fighting force.

The barbarians feeling their power, used it to negotiate better deals, wages, positions for themselves. While barbarians ravaged Rome’s countryside and political landscape, they profited.

Eventually, barbarians deposed Roman emperor in the West. Barbarians salvaged Rome, by creating their own kingdoms. Thus the sun of Rome set in the West.

Now Western world is trying to commit the same suicide, Western Roman Empire did. So today, we will discuss, how Empires fall because of mercenaries, what brought them to this point and what parallels can we draw from Rome in modern times.

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In the 4th century AD, Goths begged the Romans to take them in as refugees to escape the Huns. Emperor Valens agreed, promising food and land in exchange for service in the Roman army.

Ammianus Marcellinus later wrote with bitter irony:

“such great pains were taken to gratify this nation which was destined to overthrow the empire of Rome, that not one was left behind…”

Goths swarmed in such large numbers that Rome lost control of the situation. 200’000 barbarians crossed the Roman border. Way more than Romans anticipated, because other Gothic tribes decided to cross Danube as well. This wave of migration became a logistical nightmare for the Romans. Empire couldn’t collect and give so much food and land to so many newcomers.

What put more fuel into the fire was corruption. Many Roman high ranking officers used the situation for their own benefit. Ammianus Marcellinus writes that two Roman generals, names Lupicinus and Maximus, began selling dogs to starving Goths.

Every dog, cost one slave. Both generals managed to acquire a lot of slaves of whom were even sons of chieftains.

Unsatisfied and feeling betrayed by the Romans, Goths rebelled. They formed their own army within Rome and killed Emperor Valens near Adrianople in 378 AD, the man let them in, in the first place.

After Adrianople, Theodosius I had to settle victorious Goths under a new treaty. They received land and became foederati within Roman army. From this barbarian contingent, rose a new military general who terrorized Rome for decades. His name was Alaric.

He was one of these new Roman mercenaries. But after few missions he turned his sword against Rome, because he didn’t get the promotion that was reserved for the Romans.

He terrorized Roman countryside hoping to make a lot of money and get a better position within Roman ranks. To solve this problem, the West had to deploy Stilicho, a Vandal general to neutralise Alaric.

By this point Rome became a battleground of ambitious barbarians. Now mercenaries, not Romans controlled armies and held real power.

After a few decades in 410 AD these same "refugees", led by Alaric sacked Rome. The last time the city of Rome was sacked was in 390 BC, almost a millennium ago.

Then after a lot of changing emperors came 476 AD. A barbarian regiment led by Odoacer, who didn’t receive land for their service launched a coup against the last emperor Romulus Augustulus. Odoacer then sent all Imperial regalia to Constantinople, as the West no longer needed an emperor.

Procopius, an Eastern Roman historian describes this event in his History of Wars:

“Now there was a certain man among the Romans named Odoacer, one of the bodyguards of the emperor, and he at that time agreed to carry out their commands, on condition that they should set him upon the throne. And when he had received the supreme power in this way, he did the emperor no further harm, but allowed him to live thenceforth as a private citizen. And by giving the third part of the land to the barbarians… he held the supreme power securely for ten years.”

Mass importation of foreigners and reliance on mercenaries stripped local Roman talent of real power. Barbarians gained the high commands and the loyalty of the army. Constant friction with the Roman system eventually pushed them to seize the entire West for themselves.

It was not the crown or the law that dictated power, but the sword.

Few centuries later another empire fell into the same trap.

Abbasid Caliphate was another powerful empire that controlled land from former Carthage, to Central Asia, including prominent regions like Egypt, Arabian peninsula, Mesopotamia and Persia.

By 9th century the caliphs began relying more and more on Turkic slaves to fight their wars. Caliphs began importing them in thousands until their army consisted of tens of thousands of soldiers. A caliph al-Mu’tasim, even built a new capital to house his newfound army of mercenaries.

After the death of al-Mu’tasim, Turkic mercenaries began acquiring more and more power. And in 861 AD they made their move.

Turks assassinated a caliph and installed their own puppet government.

Eventually a new dynasty came to power, but caliphs never regained their influence and remained only as symbolic figureheads. Real power now rested in whoever controlled the Turkic army.

Because of the civil war, an entire empire fractured.

Many provinces were scavenged by local warlords, who started their own dynasties. These new states pledged only nominal allegiance to the caliph, others didn’t.

Now we see that two large Empires collapsed due to same reason: mercenaries. After looking at Roman example and situation in his 16th century Italy, a prominent statesman, named Niccolo Machiavelli warned the Princes to avoid mercenaries at all costs.

Machiavelli, a legendary author of The Prince and Discourses of Livy, warned the princes and states against using the mercenaries. In The Prince he writes that:

“Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.”

In his other work called Discourse, he repeats the same idea. Machiavelli believed that republics and princes who arm their own citizens remain free and strong, while those who rely on foreigners invite ruin.

Machiavelli praised the early Roman practice of citizen-soldiers and criticizes later reliance on barbarian auxiliaries.

His main warning is that mercenaries have no loyalty. Unlike the citizens, they do not have bounds to the state and are there in for money. Meaning, mercenaries are not that eager to make real sacrifices for a state that just pays them salary, and they are most likely to betray that state, if they sense an opportunity to profit from it.

This later part was proven by Rome and Abbasids.

Both empires collapsed when mercenaries decided to turn on it, for their well being.

This historical precedent is what encouraged Machiavelli to assemble local militia in Florence, and not rely on mercenaries, when he was an official there. And it seemed to work.

But unlike Machiavelli, modern world especially the West, has no interest in history. And both businesses and politicians are setting foot on the same trap that will define the future of the West.

Both Europe and US are now experiencing a large wave of migrants coming to two continents.

Many governments are now importing a lot of migrants to “solve” the demographic crisis in the Western world.

There are many examples like Paddington town in UK, where the town of 350 people is set to receive about 1200 migrants from another continent. A town will be settled with 4x more people than it has inhabitants.

Which is not good.

Because these workers have no connections to local land, they have no respect for culture or streets around them.

Many big cities in Europe like Brussels or London became landfills.

Stockholm is whole new topic. Like in Ancient times, Western Empire got carved by barbarian warlords, so did Stockholm. Local police authorities admit that they do not control situation in many neighbourhoods, as migrant gangs took control of them.

Western reliance on foreign ability to produce made them weak and dependant.

For example German automobile industry began to collapse as it surrendered it’s whole manufacturing to China. New innovations were shutdown, local people are set to lose their jobs.

Just like with Western Roman Empire, we can see that Europe and US are about to lose their dominant stance. All because they stopped relying on themselves.

History’s lesson is clear: when a society outsources its defense, its labor, and ultimately its future to outsiders who share neither its history nor its stakes, it eventually loses the power to decide its own fate. The sword always passes to those who hold it.