This was better in some respects than if the mercenaries had been foreigners.
It must further be noticed that the rise of mercenaries was synchronous with a change in the nature of Italian despotism.
With 15,000 mercenaries, whom he had to train into Roman discipline, he took Carthage, defeated Gelimer the Vandal king, and carried him captive, in 534, to grace the first triumph witnessed in Constantinople.
At the same time John Casimir, brother of the elector palatine, at the invitation of the Calvinist party and with the secret financial aid of Queen Elizabeth, entered the country at the head of a body of German mercenaries from the east.
The constables of these castles had adopted the custom of compelling these landholders to give money and not service, mercenaries being then hired to perform this.
