求翻译：This changed as the eighteenth century drew to a close. The century had been a banner one for mercenarism. Twenty-five to sixty percent of the four major standing armies were composed of foreigners.32 While nearly every state had contingents hailing originally from nearly every other, Germans and Swiss were particularly popular mercenaries. The Swiss, lauded for their outstanding pikemen, were employed as soldiers and officers in the Prussian, French, British, Austrian, and Dutch armies throughout the eighteenth century, but were curiously the only country never to employ mercenaries themselves.33 With the French Revolution, however, came the advent of the nation-in-arms, a vast conscript army of heretofore unimaginable size and potency, supported by the total commitment of the state and citizenry. The usual explanation of the decline of mercenarism describes this as its death-knell, after which the mercenary army was simply not competitive, although alternative explanations abound.34 Throughout the Cold War, white guns for hire proliferated in Africa, participating in the continent’s often cruel and horrifying wars and frequently receiving tremendous media attention.35 Generally arousing African ire and international criticism (due in part to their frequent complicity in illicit activities),36 their highly visible involvement failed to significantly alter the outcome on the ground more often than not. Their limited impact had much to do with their traditional mercenary character: white mercenaries in Africa were almost always contracted as individuals, working in small groups on an informal basis.37是什么意思？

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