In his famed 16th-century tract The Prince, the Florentine diplomat and author Niccolò Machiavelli warned that mercenaries are “dangerous,” for they are “disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful and valiant before friends” while being “cowardly before enemies.” Soldiers of fortune, Machiavelli claimed, “have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men.”
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