En 241 BCE, Carthage faced a perilous situation. Exhausted after twenty-three years of war against Rome, she is unable to pay the twenty thousand mercenaries she has recruited. The Roman Republic takes advantage of this and manages to extract Sicily from the North African city-state, threatening to resume the conflict with its legions of Roman citizens. European history is replete with examples of mercenaries turning against their employers, of victories won by citizen soldiers over armies of professionals, yet sometimes more numerous and better equipped. While the fall of the Roman Empire can be attributed to many factors, the use of federati – mercenaries from the Germanic kingdoms –, instead of legions of citizen soldiers, played…
Consult our file: The world that is coming
