Collections: Pre-Modern Armies for Worldbuilders, Part III: Paying For It

This is the third part (I, IIa, IIb, III) of our honestly-who-knows-how-many part series laying out some general guidelines for how pre-modern armies are recruited, raised, equipped and paid. In the last part, we looked at the various ways pre-modern armies might mobilize their armies, a process that mainly consisted of recruiting and equipping soldiers. If you were wondering what about larger capital items (ships, artillery, fortresses, and so on), we’re going to treat those as part of this section because pre-modern states experience those problems primarily as financial costs, rather than as the products of a military-industrial complex (a thing which they by and large do not have). So now that we have our recruits, we now have a bunch of continuing financial demands: we have to pay them, as well as paying for their food, replacements for anything that gets worn out on campaign, and so on. There are also larger capital costs associated with military activity: ships, fortifications,…