Adventurers en France

An adventurer: a soldier of fortune. Someone who undertakes or shares in commercial adventures or enterprises. A speculator.

"Then he said and imagined, that he had too soon repented of well-doing, and that to kill and to rob even as he had done before, (all things considered), was a good life. On a time he said to his old companions, who had helped him with this device of war: "Sirs, there is no pastime nor sport, nor glory in this world but that of men of war, to use such life as we have done in time past. What a joy it was to us when we rode forth at adventure, and sometime found by the way a rich abbot or prior or merchant, or a route of mules of Montpellier, of Narbonne, of Limoges, of Fougaron, of Beziers, of Toulouse, or of Carcassone, laden with cloth of Brussels, or musterdevillers or peltryware, coming from the fairs or laden with spicery from Bruges, from Damascus, or from Alexandria; whatsoever we met all was ours, or else ransomed at our pleasures; daily we gat new money, and the villeins of Auvergne, and of Limousin, daily provided and brought to our castle wheat, meal, bread ready baken, oats for our horses, and litter, good wines, beeves, and fat muttons, pullets, and wild fowl; we were ever furnished as though we had been kings: when we rode forth all the country trembled for fear, all was ours going or coming."

Froissart (1350).