Professional standing armies instead of feudal armies Medival Europe

What if instead of primarily depending on fiefdoms and knights to assemble man in arms and equipment , rulers try to recruit professional standing armies of free man with a certain unified standard equipment, training and clothing ?
 
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Rulers would need an efficient state with tax administration etc. to achieve that. If that were so, the landscape of Europe would Not look like our Middle ages but more like China or Roman Antiquity.
 
You'd basically need a PoD in the Early Middle Ages to have that : it's not like medieval kings simple decided one day "hey, wouldn't be cool to have knights and a military social class based on manioralism".

At least, you'd need to prevent the fusion of benefices and titles that came with the rise of Peppinids, making military offices more directly dependent on kingship.
You'd need as well an earlier monetarisation of medieval society as a whole, in order to fund mercenaries on the long term without having to resort to commendatii, and eventually turning them more and more as permanent corps.

It's probable you'd still have very large "reserve" in the form of *feudal armies/militias (while these could be, not unlike what happened in medieval Britain for bowmen, be undesrood as semi-professional levies) with a more or less limited standing army depending directly from the main rulers.

But even that will take quite a long time : since Late Antiquity, privatisation of organised military was an ongoing trend that I'm not too sure how to stop without keeping the WRE afloat (but your OP seems to imply that the PoD should happen later).

Simply said, not only it would change much of western History, but it would need (in order to happen) several changes on western History before that.
It's certainly doable, but giving this, I don't think anyone can seriously propose one clear PoD or credible series of changes.
 
What if instead of depending on fiefdoms and knights to assemble man in arms and equipment , rulers try to recruit professional standing armies of free man with a certain unified standard equipment, training and clothing ?

edit: Pod can start earlier
 
edit: Pod can start earlier

Then WRE manages to mostly remains functional, with a mix of privatized and standing armies (this mix would most likely remain the norm for quite a long time tough, it's not something you can change out overnight but requires real societal and political evolution).

The survival of the Roman state in the west would probably provokes some change on Romano-Barbarian kingdoms (would it be only ideologically) critically on the military role of Roman militiae and comes that joined up with Romano-Barbarian armies and society IOTL and this could, in time, makes the mix of privatized/professional armies in WRE being the norm in Western Europe.

From there, you can have a convergent devellopment (compared to IOTL) to modern standing armies without too much difficulty.
 
I do have a question though.How come Northern China was relatively better off than the former territory of the WRE following the Uprising of the Five Barbarians?Both regions were completely devasted by barbarian tribes,but the former territory of the WRE seemed to come off much worse than Northern China.The regimes in Northern China seemed to be much more centralised compared to what was experienced in Europe.
 
Would an ERE wank from Basil 2 work? Which would let everyone follow the ERE military system during Basil 2's time.

Or at least when Justinian's empire collapses the Exarch's and Doux takes over using ERE/Roman professional army system beating off every barbarian invasion from the Arabs to the Lombards.
 
Both regions were completely devasted by barbarian tribes
I can't really talk about China, but this not the case for Europe : you had damages and losses, that's clear. But you have no real trace of devastation to speak of (IXth/Xth centuries are generally considered to have been much more traumatic than Vth on this regard).

As an aside, for what matter the Vth, Barbarian peoples were as much "germanic tribes" than your average Latino-American looks like a XIXth Mexican. Centuries of romanisation, trough several ways including Romans joining up with Barbarians in masses, did the job.

The regimes in Northern China seemed to be much more centralised compared to what was experienced in Europe.
Seeing Romano-Barbarians entities as totally decentralized is a partial anachronism : actual feodalisation (as in semi-privatisation of public power) reshuffling the geopolitical map really happened later, in the Late Carolingian period.

Kings were generally depositories of the Roman imperium in their respective kingdoms, and a lot of decentralized features were already present or potential in Late Romania (an often mentioned feature is a division of Frankish kingship in several entities, which is likely coming from Late Romans division of the imperium into different emperors)

I'd say (not knowing that much about Chinese history, again) that Northern China was much closer to the core of Chinese civilisation and infrastructures; that Chinese infrastructures didn't know the same changes than Late Roman ones, if this depiction of Five Barbarians uprising isn't inaccurate as well.
 
What about the drivers for the French Ordonnance companies - could the extent of feudal pillaging / mercenary excesses be reined in a century or so earlier?

Would have to have a strong King to do it (Edward I or III?) but advantages seem to outweigh the antagonism of the Barons for the Monarchy - at least in France's experience.
 
What about the drivers for the French Ordonnance companies - could the extent of feudal pillaging / mercenary excesses be reined in a century or so earlier?
Well, it's more or less began to appear IOTL : Charles V had quasi-standing armies formed partially out of mercenarian but as well traditional armies.

Would have to have a strong King to do it (Edward I or III?) but advantages seem to outweigh the antagonism of the Barons for the Monarchy - at least in France's experience.
The problem isn't having a strong king : it's having a strong king able to pressure enough money out of its roughly unified kingdom.

France was basically Europe's China at the beggining of HYW while England proportionally suffered more from plague and its elites less prone to give their kings too much power on taxation for wars that they didn't see as particularily existential (critically when it could be funded on plunder)

Also, I think you got mixed up : the lasting opposition between royal power from one hand, Parliment and Barons on the other hand was mostly an English issue, preventing Plantagenets to raise sufficient funds; while the proto-nationalism that existed in France at the beggining of HYW allowed kings that had limited effective power at first (as Charles V) to use institutions at its benefit.

If we go for a convergent evolution from IOTL, it's more of a set of circumstances than one factor that's really needed at the point feudality is a societal and political reality.
 
Well, it's more or less began to appear IOTL : Charles V had quasi-standing armies formed partially out of mercenarian but as well traditional armies.


The problem isn't having a strong king : it's having a strong king able to pressure enough money out of its roughly unified kingdom.

France was basically Europe's China at the beggining of HYW while England proportionally suffered more from plague and its elites less prone to give their kings too much power on taxation for wars that they didn't see as particularily existential (critically when it could be funded on plunder)

Also, I think you got mixed up : the lasting opposition between royal power from one hand, Parliment and Barons on the other hand was mostly an English issue, preventing Plantagenets to raise sufficient funds; while the proto-nationalism that existed in France at the beggining of HYW allowed kings that had limited effective power at first (as Charles V) to use institutions at its benefit.

If we go for a convergent evolution from IOTL, it's more of a set of circumstances than one factor that's really needed at the point feudality is a societal and political reality.
I was mixing it up (somewhat deliberately).

The ordonannce companies were quite successful when they appeared and used properly they would likely be effective in enforcing royal power in many countries.

I was wondering if the concept of a force loyal to the King and paid by taxes to keep (or at least contain) the peace might be recognized earlier in countries other than France-Burgundy.

As you point out feudal rights are ingrained in society by this point and it would take something dramatic to overrule them
 
The ordonannce companies were quite successful when they appeared and used properly they would likely be effective in enforcing royal power in many countries.

I was wondering if the concept of a force loyal to the King and paid by taxes to keep (or at least contain) the peace might be recognized earlier in countries other than France-Burgundy.
Not all standing troops were payed by taxes : franc-archers, similar to what existed in England, were raised troops exempted of some taxes, until being replaced by the 1480 ordinance by bandes which were closer to actual nationally raised troops than compagnies.

That said, these ordinances let room for much change.
One shouldn't forget that compagnies and bandes were created during truces, and not during the heat of the conflicts, where mercenarized and traditional troops kept an important part : the same ordinances that created standing compagnies also re-organized feudal levies and systematized them (and these kept an important part of Early Italian Wars, for instance).

Basically, you won't have a much significant quality difference by their own existence (compagnies and bandes were still largely influenced by professional mercenariship) but by their political (in a situation where kingship meant military role) inclusion into armies alongside more traditional features.
Not that only French lords (Burgundy, but also Brittany, Armagnac, etc.) acknowledged it : one could mention Castillan capitanías fof 1495, for exemple.

You really had a qualitative stepstone during the wars of Italy, where the decline of Late feudal armies began at the benefit of standing armies.

As you point out feudal rights are ingrained in society by this point and it would take something dramatic to overrule them
Ah, it's going to get semantic.

Feudal rights didn't ingrained society, because they concerned maybe 5% of the population at best. It did ingrained nobility and political rules of the kingdom, tough.

(Basically, not to confuse feudality and what we call in lack of a better term "feudal society")

Rather than rights, allow me to be more vague.
Medieval concepts were, of course, as well ingrained in society than contemporary concepts are in our own. It's how we can tell they're different societies after all : you can't just provoke something dramatic to "overrule" it, indeed.

It's important to stress that standing armies re-apperance in France (and Europe more generally) wasn't made against Late feudal armies organisation, but alongside them on a common evolution where the royal hegemony was firmly established since the XIIth century.

Rather than some traumaticevent changing all society because reasons (which is quite weak for most of situation, IMO), an ATL that focuses on a convergent devellopment should include a smooth devellopment of standing armies out of medieval society, may have more chances at plausibility.
 
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Artaxerxes

Banned
Whats your time period here? As in dates?


The Condotierri system which evolved in Venice and other parts of the Italian peninsula was an attempt to get a professional military up and working and responsible to civil control, the rise of Artillery corps also helped as they were so knowledge and material intensive.

Evolution in tax keeping, legal systems and centralisation helped larger states then evolve the system further.
 
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