to make sure that the money streams to his company passed through his hands, if only because he often advanced the irregularly paid monthly wages on a daily basis in the form of "loans" to his men. This was a necessity, because the wages were often in arrears. They were supposed to be paid with a periodicity of 42 days (the so-called heremaand), but often payment was deferred and the captain had to advance the money, thereby extending credit to his paymasters. At first this financial risk made the possession of capital an informal prerequisite for becoming a captain, but later the provision of capital was taken over by so-called solliciteurs-militair ("military solicitors"), private persons who contracted with captains to regularly advance the money due to the company, in exchange for a fixed fee and interest. Through this expedient the men received some pay regularly, which appreciably reduced the frequency of mutinies, certainly in comparison with the Army of Flanders. Because the manpower potential of the Republic's territory was so limited, the States-General had to look beyond Dutch borders for a large part of the recruits. Fortunately, in those days foreign authorities did often not object to recruitment efforts within their territories (at least before the beginning of the Thirty Years' War when recruitment possibilities in Germany became more limited). The Republic therefore was able to obtain large numbers of recruits from Scotland, England, the Holy Roman Empire, France, and later also the Protestant Swiss Cantons (with whom special treaties were made for this purpose). Other than the Army of Flanders the Dutch States Army kept these foreign contingents separate in their own regiments. This had the advantage that in case of threatened mutiny one contingent could be checked by the others. The army leadership also often exploited the rivalry between these "Nations" to extract extra efforts, for instance by organizing "races" between contingents of sappers of different nationality for the first trench to reach the ditch of a besieged fortress, as happened during the Siege of Breda (1637). The downside of this policy was that sometimes epic brawls erupted between the contingents This recruitment policy implied that usually half of the States Army consisted of foreign troops, and in times of expansion of the army even more. The army had a Scotch brigade during its entire existence. The English regiments were paid off after they refused to swear allegiance