Routiers
[2] Exactly what distinguishes these mercenaries from simple paid soldiers is disputed by scholars but common elements include fighting for profit (as opposed to other reasons such as fealty or faith), a "foreignness" of coming from a different geographical area to that in which they were fighting, and that as members of a rutta, a company of soldiers hired for specific campaigns, routiers moved from contract to contract.Mercenary bands were mainly seen in France, Aquitaine and Occitania but also Normandy, England and the lands of the Holy Roman Emperor.In England, not only was their brutality condemned, but the rise of mercenary leaders of lowly origins to high office caused friction within the nobility.[5] Mercenary bands also fell from favour in France in the early 13th century, the end of the Albigensian Crusade and the beginning of a long period of domestic peace removing the context in which the routiers flourished.The Hundred Years' War was fought between two royal families over control of the French throne: the Plantagenets from England, and the House of Valois from France.That state, coupled with the fact that they were surrounded by hostile inhabitants, caused a lot of animosity between the peasants and soldiers, which in a few instances led to skirmishes and made the task of governing the Duchy harder.Despite a truce between 1346 and 1350, the garrison laid waste to over fifty parishes, ten monasteries, and destroyed towns and castles throughout southern Poitou.A route operating around Beaune in September 1364 were numbered as 120 "good lances", 100 other combatants "not including pillagers", suggesting these last were not considered as militarily significant.