The Utopians and the Zapolets

The Utopians and the Zapolets are linked by a mercenary relationship that lets the Utopians wage war while limiting the danger to their own people. The Zapolets offer military service for pay, and the Utopians pay them more generously than any other employer. This arrangement belongs to a wider strategy that condemns war as brutal yet treats foreign soldiers as expendable instruments of security.

The Terms of Employment

The Utopians keep gold and silver for wartime use, when they are willing to spend what would otherwise be of little practical value at home. They also possess substantial wealth abroad because many neighboring nations owe them money. With these resources they hire soldiers from many places, but chiefly from the Zapolets, who live five hundred miles east of Utopia. The Utopians pay more than any other employer, and employ the Zapolets against any people whatsoever.

The arrangement is not based on a lasting alliance or a fixed term of service. The Zapolets will not commit to serving for a specified period: they may leave one employer the next day for a better offer from an enemy, then return if their former employer raises the pay. Their service is therefore governed by the immediate bargain rather than by allegiance to a ruler, country, or cause.

The Zapolets as Mercenaries

The account describes the Zapolets as a people hardened by life in woods and rocks, and accustomed to heat, cold, and labor. They pay little attention to agriculture, houses, or clothing; cattle, hunting, and raiding occupy their lives, while warfare is presented as their principal skill. Large numbers readily offer themselves to whoever will hire them, often for low wages. Yet they serve their employers courageously and faithfully for as long as the terms suit them.

Their willingness to switch sides makes the mercenary market starkly visible. Zapolets hired by opposing rulers may fight against people with whom they are related or have previously lived in friendship. Even a difference of one penny a day can persuade them to change allegiance. The narration presents money as powerful enough to displace both kinship and former companionship, while also noting that the pay they prize is soon spent on what the account calls a poor and miserable form of luxury.

Why the Utopians Hire Them

The Utopians say they seek the best people for useful work at home and the worst for the destruction of war. They offer the Zapolets immense rewards to undertake dangerous service, but expect that most will not return to claim them. For those who survive, the Utopians keep their promises scrupulously. Their exceptional payment thus combines inducement with a calculated willingness to let the hired soldiers absorb losses that the Utopians would rather not suffer themselves.

This policy fits the Utopians’ broader preference for indirect methods. They detest war and claim to fight only in defense of themselves or their friends, or to help an oppressed people resist tyranny. When they assist an ally offensively, they first require that the grounds for war be established and that demands for reparation have been rejected. In their military planning, they try to obtain by force what might have prevented the war if granted earlier; they also seek to deter future injury. When possible, they prefer victory through strategy without bloodshed, and they avoid exchanging one of their own citizens for an enemy ruler.

Restraint and Contradiction

The Utopians defend hiring the Zapolets as a service to humanity: they consider the mercenaries vicious, and regard their deaths as a benefit to the wider world. They also reason that using a few guilty or willing participants can prevent the larger slaughter of soldiers compelled to fight by their ruler’s passions. In this account, restraint does not mean refusing violent means; it means directing the greatest danger away from Utopian citizens and toward people whom the Utopians judge expendable.

That contrast complicates the Utopians’ opposition to war. Their declared preference is to avoid bloodshed, and they take particular pride in victories won through intelligence and conduct rather than force. Yet they fund paid soldiers, encourage them to face extreme hazards, and accept that most will die without collecting the promised reward. Even their relatively strict conduct after military success—observing truces, avoiding devastation, protecting surrendered towns, and taking no share of plunder—does not erase the human cost built into their recruitment policy. The relationship with the Zapolets makes visible the distance between the Utopians’ ideal of disciplined, limited warfare and the expendability on which their strategy partly depends.