Mercenaries under Henry VIII, 1544-46
Gilbert John Millar describes how the foreign contingents employed by Henry VIII eventually became the mainstay of his military establishment.
In 1543, when Henry VIII, in alliance with the Habsburg dominions of Spain, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire, resolved to make war on France, he did so with a military establishment that was at best archaic. In organization and armament, the Tudor army had scarcely progressed beyond the era of Agincourt. English field forces were unprofessional, while on the Continent, the foundations of the first permanent armies had already been laid.
On mainland Europe a revolution in the military arts had occurred in the fifteenth century. But it had passed the Tudors by. Armies virtually everywhere outside the British Isles were well furnished with artillery, handguns, pikes and, above all, professional soldiers. Henry VIII, whose retainers under contract and militiamen were amateurs, had fewer than 4,000 regular troops, most of them attached to garrisons along the common border with the Scots.
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