Life in Military Camps: Necessities, Luxuries & Companionship | Soldiers' Lives

A soldiers’ life in the pike and shot age was rough, but some parts of it were more hospitable than others. After recruitment a new soldier had a long and hard march ahead of him before reaching the field of battle. Many men did not even make it to the end of the march, let alone the end of battle. But there was a proverbial carrot on a stick that kept them going: camp life with its many opportunities and even luxuries. Camp life changed throughout the early modern period both locally and over time, but in this video, we paint a picture of how camp life could have looked like in the first half of the 16th century. We mainly make reference to the Landsknechts, German mercenaries, and the Spanish army. Without any further ado, this is how modern historiography portrays a soldier’s life in an early modern field camp.
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Bibliography:
Baumann, Reinhard, Landsknechte, Ihre Geschichte und Kultur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Dreissigjährigen Krieg, München 1994.
Fiedler, Siegfried, Kriegswesen und Kriegführung im Zeitalter der Landsknechte (Heerwesen der Neuzeit, Abt. 1, Bd. 2) Koblenz 1985.
Fiedler, Siegfried, Landsknechte. Waffe und Waffengebrauch (Heerwesen der Neuzeit, Abt. 1, Bd. 1) Koblenz 1984.
Showalter, D., Astore, W. J., Soldier’s Lives through History. The Early Modern World, 2007.