The early seventeenth century was a period of economic crisis throughout Eurasia. Finance was developed enough for heads of state to raise and equip massive armies, but not developed enough to pay these armies regularly. Within the context of the Mansfeld Regiment’s financial problems, this chapter describes mutiny, desertion, female labor, and the challenges of finding small change during a financial crisis. The Mansfeld Regiment’s operations depended on a network of military finance in central Europe and northern Italy which was broadly ramifying but imperfect and disorganized. The loan that was supposed to support this regiment was delayed; by the time the money arrived, the regiment’s superiors may simply have forgotten about them. The Mansfeld Regiment collapsed two years later.

Class and social structure within early seventeenth-century Saxon units, including the Mansfeld Regiment, seems to have been different from later armies in several important respects. Although commoners were less well-represented in more honorable or prestigious roles, the army could be a source of social mobility. Some men served in the Saxon army for multiple years, and some families for multiple decades. Soldiers probably picked up military experience through long immersion in the military way of life rather than formal drilling. Within this context, social distance between ranks seems to have been less pronounced in early seventeenth-century armies than in later armies or contemporary civilian life. The close social and physical proximity between officers and men led to fights.

While the Mansfeld Regiment traveled through southern Germany in August 1625, flag-bearer Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze accidentally shot and killed his friend Hans Heinrich Tauerling during a drinking bout. Two days later, one of the regiment’s cavalry companies started a fire in the small town of Remmingen near Ulm. Thick descriptions of these events reveal daily life in the Mansfeld Regiment, as well as attitudes toward masculinity, murder, guilt, drunkenness, and violent death.

Three thick descriptions offer detailed accounts of the ongoing squabbles among the Mansfeld Regiment’s third-in-command/regimental quartermaster Wolfgang Winckelman and two officers in his company: flag-bearer Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze and lieutenant Felix Steter. These men’s actions demonstrate the importance of individual agency in addition to structural accounts of history, as well as the history of alcohol and drunkenness, dueling, and masculinity.