Buccella Private Armies

-PLACEHOLDER-

"I believe I speak for many of the esteemed servants of Ascadia when I say that the peculiar institution of the Vincolati desperately needs to be reigned in. Far too many untaxed professionals roam from domain to domain seeking employ and spreading false witness. Alas, this institution is so deep and integral to the knightly ways that I doubt we will see such remedies in our lifetimes, or the lifetimes of our sons." -Lord-Clerksman of the Corvulian County of Corviccia, Anonymous, From the Reign of Alessandro Tizzone VII

From the ruins of various bloody conflicts arose a displaced peasant population, transient and landless who sought the protection of powerful low nobility. sheltered within their walled manors, which began the practice of adopting Vincolati families, a practice which was enshrined in the ancient foundational laws of Ascadia for unrelated purposes. These Vincolati were untaxed, and owed nothing to the state itself beyond what they provided to their taxed lord. These Vincolati were essentially bonded to their lord, their lord was expected to feed and house them and provide tax on their behalf in exchange for sheltering them as a social good. This led to a system of highly educated and highly trained young boys emerging from these early Vincolati families who had no place working on the often small farms of the manor estates the early Vincolati presided in, resulting in the enterpising youth of these bonded families pursuing mercenary work under the lord of the manor, and seeking profit quelling local revolts and uprisings, as well as pursuing bandits to be prosecuted. These deputized militias were Buccellas, meaning shells, because they formed a cheap and reliable protective net around the manor holds which in prior times had to rely solely on their knighthood and militias from nearby agricultural villages to deal with problems. This new age of Buccella armies gave the low nobility their first taste of organized power, and allowed them to project their autonomy outside of their manors and into poorly governed villages or untamed frontiers, creating networks of small agricultural communes worked by the young soldier-settlers of the Buccella free of tax, allowing these villages to explode in size and wealth rapidly while larger volumes of peasantry were absorbed into the Vincolati system, creating ever larger Buccellas.

The central government, especially under the tutelage of first Tizzonian emperor, Alessandro I, had reigned in the Buccella system as firmly as they could, tying bureaucratic oversight into as many of their organizations as possible, establishing censors to ensure that land-working vincolati were being counted in the tax burden of the manor lord, and ensure that buccella armies were being equipped to the imperial standard, because they were worked into the Imperial Draft. Most Buccella armies are now overseen by a low level Inquisition Censor, who has the sole right to detain and convict and conduct investigations regarding criminals, as well as deputize citizens to do so as well, something Vincolati can't be included in due to their non-civilian status.