On November 30, 1625, a substantial quantity of fabric from a shipment intended for the Mansfeld Regiment’s third-most-honorable company went missing. The regimental legal establishment investigated the theft but covered up one key detail, revealed at the end of this chapter. This incident sheds light on the way this company interacted with a cloth trade that spanned Europe, in addition to the criminal activities of its captain/owner, regimental quartermaster Wolfgang Winckelmann. The investigation revealed that Winckelmann’s flag-bearer Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze also stole some fabric and distributed it to some men in this company. These men can be traced using social network analysis. This chapter argues that the concept of small group cohesion should be supplemented with the broader concept of military social networks.

This chapter examines every muster roll from the Thirty Years War in the Saxon State Archives in Dresden to determine the demographics of the entire Saxon army during the entire war. In contrast to enduring stereotypes of early seventeenth-century soldiers as rootless social outcasts, these soldiers were recruited and often served near their homes. Both infantry and cavalry were far more urban than the average central European population. Soldiers called themselves righteous guys and lived within a dense thicket of social networks that included friendship, similar religion, and place of origin.

For several crucial months after the war that brought the Mansfeld Regiment to Milan ended, its superiors forgot it existed and failed to secure funding for it. In summer 1627, the regiment disintegrated. Although Wolf von Mansfeld wanted the regiment to travel north from Milan to liaise with the forces of Albrecht von Wallenstein, it mutinied on the way through Switzerland and only 600 starving men reached Frankfurt am Main. Because these soldiers proceeded to mistreat civilians in the region, this chapter also analyzes atrocities in a flash-back to October 1625. During that horrific month, the Mansfeld Regiment suffered numerous attacks including an incident in which twenty soldiers were killed and their bodies were never found. They retaliated by sacking two small settlements near Alessandria. This chapter also situates the Mansfeld Regiment within events after it fell apart: The eventual Franco-Spanish War of 1635–1659.