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The barbarian confederates, discontented and unwilling to give their allegiance to this Greek, rebelled and under Orestes their general marched upon Ravenna. Julius Nepos fled by ship to Dalmatia and Orestes in Ravenna proclaimed his young son Romulus Augustulus emperor. But those barbarian mercenaries were not to be so easily satisfied.
It was urged that it was their duty forthwith to use their influence in favor of the demand made by the government upon the city. "May I grow mute as a fish!" answered de la Grange, stoutly, "may the tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, before I persuade my people to accept a garrison of cruel mercenaries, by whom their rights of conscience are to be trampled upon!"
Are thy army consisting of four kinds of forces, viz., the regular troops, the allies, the mercenaries, and the irregulars, each furnished with the eight ingredients, viz., cars, elephants, horses, offices, infantry, camp-followers, spies possessing a thorough knowledge of the country, and ensigns led out against thy enemies after having been well trained by superior officers?
Clothed with the authority of an officer of the law, Lord Selkirk hurried northward; and a personage of his importance could not venture into the wilderness without a strong body-guard. At least, that was the excuse given for the retinue of two or three hundred mercenaries decked out in all the regimentals of war, whom Lord Selkirk brought with him to the north.
In the days of the Lombard League, of Campaldino and Montaperti, the citizens could fight, hand to hand, round their carroccio or banner, without much discipline being required; but when it came to fortifying towns against cannon, to drilling bodies of heavily armed cavalry, acting by the mere dexterity of their movements; when war became a science and an art, then the citizen had necessarily to be left out, and adventurers and poor nobles had to form armies of mercenaries, making warfare their sole profession.
Thus they remained isolated, in close league with their kinsmen and comrades in crime, the Mamertines, that is, the Campanian mercenaries of Agathocles, who had by similar means gained possession of Messana on the opposite side of the straits; and they pillaged and laid waste for their own behoof the adjacent Greek towns, such as Croton, where they put to death the Roman garrison, and Caulonia, which they destroyed.
Hostilities broke out in the year 350 B.C., and Demosthenes put forward all his eloquence to excite his countrymen to vigorous war. Athens, partially aroused, sent a body of mercenaries to the assistance of Olynthus, one of the most flourishing of the cities of Chalcidia, southeast of Macedonia.
Lord Selkirk was on his way north with munitions of war and an army of mercenaries formerly of the De Meurons' regiment, numbering two hundred, some said three or four hundred men; but this was an exaggeration. For what was he coming to Red River in this warlike fashion? His purpose would probably show itself.
It was therefore determined to enlist what were called "Waartgelders;" soldiers, inhabitants of the place, who held themselves ready to serve in time of need in consideration of a certain wage; mercenaries in short. This resolution was followed as a matter of course by a solemn protest from Amsterdam and the five cities who acted with her.
It is especially necessary for our men, unaccustomed to the profession of arms, and entering at once untried upon this great war, to take a just and high view of their new calling: to look at it with the eyes, not of mercenaries, but of men called into their country's service; to regard it as a life which is not less, but more difficult than any other to be discharged with honor.
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