The various reasons that drew men to military service in the Calais garrison have been explored in the previous chapter. But to what degree was the garrison a community, bound together by chivalric ties of military brotherhood, with an institutional identity that transcended the various retinues of which it was comprised? To what extent was it a ‘professional’ force, composed of men who exclusively or mainly followed the profession of arms, and was this professionalism incompatible with the chivalric ethos? To talk of a ‘professional’ army in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries may appear to be anachronistic. Nevertheless, there was a distinct group of men, from various social backgrounds, who made their living through war and military service. These men comprised a ‘professional’ military force. For the late medieval aristocracy war was, of course, part of their raison d'être; they were defined as much by their service in war as by the political power that they derived from their ownership of land. Indeed, the two were inextricably linked. However, there was also a class of men who shared the martial and chivalric ideals of the aristocracy, but who were not notable landowners. Instead their claims to gentility and political importance rested almost exclusively on their military service and the prowess they had displayed in war. Further down the social scale there were men who made their living from war, becoming skilled in its arts, and who travelled from campaign to campaign and from retinue to retinue in return for wages.