Discipline Over Feudal Loyalty

“The feudal knight was so utterly without discipline or reliability that mercenaries gradually crept into favor. But the mercenary was cast in the same mould; he was a man in armor, if not a knight, and was equally bold and useless, though more loyal to his chief. So long as he was paid, he would stay with the colors, which was more than you could count on in the knight. The mercenary became the support of autocratic monarchs; but when, at the end of a war, bands of mercenaries began to move to and fro over the face of the country, seeking a new lord and fresh campaigns, they became of questionable utility and unquestionable danger.”

“When the kingdom of Charles the Great was broken up and the local counts began to acquire a semi-independence, feudalism arose, and horsemen acquired still greater importance. They had their merits. It was they who kept back the vast inroads of that era from north, east and south. Without them Christendom might have been overrun; no wonder the knight in armor won the regard of the whole earth.”