[2] Walter Map in his De nugis curialium written about 1180 described the origins of the Brabançons thus: A new and particularly noxious sect of heretics arose.
The fighters of these rotten were protected from head to foot by a leather jerkin, and were armed with steel, staves and iron.
[4] Groups of Brabançons are mentioned for the first time in a letter of 1166 from the abbot of Cluny, Stephen, to the king of France, Louis VII.
[3] They may have been unemployed mercenaries left over after the end in 1160 of the twenty-year war over Grimbergen between Count Godfrey III of Louvain and Walter II Berthout.
[3] It was apparently these Brabançons who passed through Burgundy on their way to join the imperial army, so alarming the abbot of Cluny with their lack of discipline.
The number in Frederick's army is variously given as 500 (Chronica regia Coloniensis), 800 (Otto of Sankt Blasien) or 1,500 (Vincent of Prague).
[6] On their march home, they so devastated the county of Champagne and the archdiocese of Reims that Frederick I and Louis VII signed an agreement banning the use of Brabançons and coterelli[b] in the area bounded by the Alps, the Rhine and the Paris Basin.
[3] This agreement was designed to keep the mercenaries out of France while leaving Frederick free to use them in Germany east of the Rhine or in Italy.
[7] Because he trusted them more than the other troops, according to Howden, Henry sent the Brabançons to relieve Louis VII's siege of Verneuil (fr) and occupy Brittany.
Godfrey of Breuil recorded the foreigners as Brabançons, Hannuyers, Asperes, Pailler, Navar, Turlannales, Roma, Cotarel, Catalans, Aragones.
[6] The Third Lateran Council of 1179 forbade Christians the use Brabantiones, Aragonenses, Navarii, Bascoli, Coterelli and Triaverdini, referring to these same bands of mercenaries.
[3][6] They stood accused of disrespecting churches, killing women, children, the elderly, and waging war for the sake of loot.