• ComradeSalad
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    9 months ago

    Weren’t the foreign troops some of the most loyal, fierce, experienced, and determined fighters?

      • ComradeSalad
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        9 months ago

        But did it really matter they were foreign? For the entire history of the empire the Praetorians threatened to kill the emperor if they didn’t get bonuses.

        The first people that Caesar paid after his campaigns were his soldiers.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          9 months ago

          I think it matters from the perspective of the regime. The people in US are conditioned to believe in the greatness of US, and their superiority over other cultures. The whole American exceptionalism business basically. As a result, people in the army feel loyalty to the existing power structures and the state. On the other hand, once you start moving to what is effectively a mercenary army sourced from countries the empire has been ravaging, they don’t have the same level of commitment to the imperial project.

    • Drstrange2love
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      9 months ago

      It depends on the period you are talking about, Rome as an entity existed for approximately 2 thousand years, in various situations foreign soldiers vary between opportunistic and extremely loyal, such as the Gauls serving Caesar in his campaigns and in the civil war and the Varangian guard in the Byzantine Empire.And there were the Entruscans and Germans who, at the first opportunity, usually betrayed their Roman allies. At the end of the western Rome empire, foreign soldiers were one of the factors in its downfall.