Haha, yeah, I was figuring I was going to bring up that exact point about firearms and state armies-that what made them viable again was firearms which took an extremely short amount of time comparatively to become proficient with. What made mercenaries so valuable before was that the amount of skill (and thus training) necessary to use arms previously was just so much rarer and more time-consuming to obtain that nations couldn't hold such large numbers on their own-they had to be hired. With the advent of firearms, though, this reason for hiring mercenaries en masse evaporated, which soon lead to the decline of mercenaries not too long after that of knights.

As for the nationalistic loyalties-yes. This is a reason why Machievelli's 'The Prince' garners much more respect now than it did within its own day as it dealt with the situations and politics of a region extremely divided by smaller local loyalties and how to deal with it-it applies perhaps more to modern America than it did to Renaissance/Early Modern Italy.

Anyways, I'm off to read the IC post and edit my cs.