Chapter 360: Chrysanthemum War II (1)
The Empire organized an army of 30,000 as an expeditionary force.
Rather than say that they were organized, it would probably be more accurate to say that they were hired. I wasn’t going to send even a single member of the Demon Lord Army out in this war. I intended to go to war while using nothing but mercenaries.
Mercenaries strangely give off the impression that they are lower quality than national soldiers, but the truth is the exact opposite. A majority of the people in this era are farmers. As the saying goes that only ‘those with experience know’, mercenaries that live off of fighting are naturally better than farmers that farm all year.
However……mercenaries are expensive.
Extremely expensive.
It’s different by country, but a normal mercenary soldier receives a salary of 500 gold a year. Not 50 gold. 500. This is important, so I said it twice.
Let’s assume you were to hire a mercenary unit of a thousand strong consisting solely of regular foot soldiers……that would mean a whopping 500,000 gold coins per year! 10,000 soldiers would result in five million gold being drained out. At this point, you’d be waging war with money and not soldiers.
Adding to this, cavalrymen are much more expensive than foot soldiers.
To put it simply, they are usually twice the price.