protection when they traveled to fairs or on other business ventures. As nation states did not exist and as principalities rarely possessed the power to patrol even their own domain adequately, brigandry was rife and the roads were dangerous. This, however, could not be considered as military service.
[LATE MIDDLE AGES AND MODERN TIMES
The role of Jews in military matters was limited even when the nature of warfare changed through the use of firearms. This ended the feudal era’s dominance of knights as a soldier equipped with relatively cheap weaponry could overcome the heavily armed mounted knight. In the new armies, commissions continued to go to the nobility who frequently recruited and equipped their own forces. Common soldiers and ancillary forces were recruited from the lower nobility and the poorer classes for whom it represented upward mobility, a way out of the grinding poverty, as well as a source of adventure. In some instances cash bounties were also involved. As many wars were religious or ethnic, military forces were composed of co-religionists or of the same ethnic group. Mercenary units played an important role in all wars. We may remember that the British hired Hessian units to fight the American revolutionaries. Such units were justifiably feared as they often raped, looted, and pillaged.” An occasional Jew served in similar European units, because of special skills in metallurgy, other technical matters or the knowledge of foreign languages. All this preceded the creation of nation states with their hunger for manpower for their much larger armies.
TowARD EMANCIPATION
An early sign of a new dawn was provided in New Amsterdam where two Jews tried to enrole in the militia as they were unwilling to pay a tax imposed on Jews for an unwanted exemption. Asser Levy forced the issue upon Governor Stuyvesant, who turned to the East India Company in Holland for a resolution, and so in 1655 he was accepted.’