Скачать или смотреть Our ancestors are not forgotten.

The Landsknechts were the storm-born soldiers of the German Renaissance; fierce, flamboyant, and utterly unrestrained. They emerged in the late 15th century as the proud answer of the Holy Roman Empire to the Swiss pikemen, yet soon became something far more than a mercenary corps. They were a nation unto themselves: wandering warriors of fortune, dressed in torn silks and feathers, living by the sword and for the sword.

Drawn from the peasantry and lower townsfolk, the Landsknechts were men who refused to bow to the rigid order of princes and guilds. They fought for pay, yes, but their true currency was freedom. Beneath their bright slashed garments and raucous songs burned a spirit of rebellion, a conviction that no man of valor should live as a servant. They marched across Europe under their own banners, swearing oaths not to kings but to their comrades, the Gemein, their brotherhood of equals.

On the battlefield, they were a terror. In dense pike squares, the Gewalthaufen, they stood shoulder to shoulder, their halberds and pikes forming a living wall of steel. Their courage bordered on madness. Against cavalry or cannon, they advanced with shouts of defiance, the drummers beating time as if mocking death itself. And when battle turned to chaos, the double-paid Doppelsöldner, armed with two-handed swords, waded into the fray like men possessed, cutting down horse and rider alike.

Yet outside battle, they were no less formidable. Their camps were cities of noise and color, filled with gambling, music, and fierce independence. They elected their leaders, judged their own disputes, and carried their own laws. To the courts of Europe, they were dangerous, not just for their blades, but for their defiant spirit, their belief that loyalty could be earned only through honor, not command.