ARMY (from Fr. armee, Lat. armata), a considerable body of men armed and organized for the purpose of warfare on land (Ger. Armee), or the whole armed force at the disposal of a state or person for the same purpose (Ger. Heer =host) . The application of the term is sometimes restricted to the permanent, active or regular forces of a state. The history of the develop ment of the army systems of the world is dealt with in this article in sections I to 37, being followed by sections 38 to 51 on the characteristics of present-day armies. For the history and the existing condition of the principal armies of the world see under the country heading.
I. Early Armies.—It is only with the evolution of the specially military function in a tribe or nation, expressed by the separation of a warrior-class, that the history of armies (as now understood) begins. Numerous savage tribes of the present day possess military organizations based on this system, but it first appears in the history of civilization amongst the Egyptians. By the earliest laws of Egypt, provision was made for the support of the warriors. The exploits of her armies under the legendary Sesostris cannot be regarded as historical, but it appears certain that the country possessed an army, capable of waging war in a regular fashion, and divided thus early into separate arms, these being chariots, infantry and archers. The systems of the Assyr ians and Babylonians present no particular features of interest, save that horsemen, as distinct from charioteers, appear on the scene. The first historical instance of a military organization resembling those of modern times is that of the Persian empire.
Persia.—Drawn from a hardy and nomadic race, the armies of Persia at first consisted mainly of cavalry, and owed much of their success to the consequent ease and rapidity of their move ments. The warlike Persians constantly extended their power by fresh conquests, and for some time remained a distinctly con quering and military race, attaining their highest power under Cyrus and Cambyses. Cyrus seems to have been the founder of a comprehensive military organization, of which we gather de tails from Xenophon and other writers. To each province was allotted a certain number of soldiers as standing army. These troops, formed originally of native Persians only, were called the king's troops. They comprised two classes, the one devoted ex clusively to garrisoning towns and castles, the other distributed throughout the country. To each province was appointed a mili tary commander, responsible for the number and efficiency of the troops in his district, while the civil governor was answerable for their subsistence and pay. This organization seems to have fully answered its original purpose, that of holding a vast em pire acquired by conquest and promptly repelling inroads or putting down insurrections. But when a great foreign war was contemplated, the standing army was augmented by a levy throughout the empire. The extent of the empire made such a levy slow to assemble, and the heterogeneous and unorganized mass of men of all nations so brought together was a source of weakness rather than strength. Indeed, the vast hosts over which the Greeks gained their victories comprised but a small propor tion of the true Persians. The cavalry alone seems to have re tained its national character, and with it something of its high reputation, even to the days of Alexander.
The Homeric armies were tribal levies of foot, armed with spear, sword, bow, etc., and commanded by the chiefs in their war-chariots. In historic times all this is changed. Greece becomes a congeries of city-states, each with its own citizen militia. Federal armies and permanent troops are rare, the former owing to the centrifugal tendency of Greek politics, the latter because the "tyrannies," which must have relied very largely on standing armies to maintain themselves, had ultimately given way to democratic institutions. But the citizen-militia of Athens or Sparta resembled rather a modern "nation in arms" than an aux iliary force. Service was compulsory in almost all states, and as the young men began their career as soldiers with a continuous training of two or three years, Hellenic armies, like those of modern Europe, consisted of men who had undergone a thorough initial training and were subsequently called up as required. Cav alry, as always in the broken country of the Peloponnesus, was not of great importance, and it is only when the theatre of Greek history is extended to the plains of Thessaly that the mounted men become numerous. In the 4th century the mainstay of Greek armies was the hoplite (oirXtrns), the heavy-armed infantryman who fought in the corps de bataille; the light troops were men who could not provide the full equipment of the hoplite, rather than soldiers trained for certain special duties such as skirmishing. The fighting formation was that of the phalanx, a solid corps of hoplites armed with long spears.
So much is common to the various states. In Sparta the idea of the nation in arms was more thoroughly car ried out than in any other state in the history of civilization. In other states the individual citizen often lived the life of a soldier, here the nation lived the life of a regiment. Private homes re sembled the "married quarters" of a modern army; the un married men lived entirely in barracks. Military exercises were only interrupted by actual service in the field, and the whole life of a man of military age was devoted to them. Under these cir cumstances the Spartans maintained a practically unchallenged supremacy over the armies of other Greek states; sometimes their superiority was so great that, like the Spanish regulars in the early part of the Dutch War of Independence, they destroyed their enemies with insignificant loss to themselves.
The military system of the 4th century was not called upon to provide armies for continuous service on distant expeditions. When, after the earlier campaigns of the Peloponnesian War, the necessity for such expeditions arose, the system was often strained almost to breaking point (e.g., in the case of the Athenian expedition to Syracuse), and ultimately the states of Greece were driven to choose between unprofitable expenditure of the lives of citizens and recruiting from other sources. Mercenaries serving as light troops, and particularly as peltasts (a new form of disciplined "light in fantry") soon appeared. The corps de bataille remained for long the old phalanx of citizen hoplites. But the heavy losses of many years told severely on the resources of every state, and ultimately non-national recruits—adventurers and soldiers of fortune, broken men who had lost their possessions in the wars, political refugees, runaway slaves, etc.—found their way even into the ranks of the hoplites, and Athens at one great crisis (4o7) enlisted slaves, with the promise of citizenship as their reward. The Arcadians, like the Scots and the Swiss in modern history, furnished the most numerous contingent to the new professional armies. A truly national army was indeed to appear once more in the history of the Peloponnesus, but in the meantime the professional soldier held the field. The old bond of strict citizenship once broken, the career of the soldier of fortune was open to the adventurous Greek. Taenarum and Corinth became regular entrepots for mer cenaries. The younger Cyrus raised his army for the invasion of Persia precisely as the emperors Maximilian and Charles V. raised regiments of Landsknechte—by the issue of recruiting commis sions to captains of reputation. This army became the famous Ten Thousand. It was a marching city-state, its members not desperate adventurers, but men with the calm self-respect of Greek civilization. On the fall of its generals it chose the best officers of the army to command, and obeyed implicitly. Cheiri sophus the Spartan and Xenophon the Athenian, whom they chose, were not plausible demagogues ; they were line officers, who, suddenly promoted to the chief command under circum stances of almost overwhelming difficulty, proved capable of achieving the impossible. The merit of choosing such leaders is not the least title to fame of the Ten Thousand mercenary Greek hoplites. About the same time Iphicrates with a body of mer cenary peltasts destroyed a corps of Spartan hoplites (391 B.c.).
Not many years after this, Spartan oppres sion roused the Theban revolt, and the Theban revolt became the Theban hegemony. The army which achieved this under the lead ership of Epaminondas, one of the great captains of history, had already given proofs of its valour against Xenophon and the Cyr eian veterans. Still earlier it had won the great victory of Delium (424 B.c.). It was organized, as were the professional armies, on the accepted model of the old armies, viz., the phalangite order, but the addition of peltasts now made a Theban army, unlike the Spartans, capable of operating in broken country as well as in the plain. The new tactics of the phalanx, introduced by Epami nondas, embodied, for the first time in the history of war, the modern principle of concentration to obtain a local superiority of force, and suggested to Frederick the Great the famous "oblique order of battle." Further, the cavalry was more numerous and better led than that of Peloponnesian states. The professional armies had well understood the management of cavalry; Xeno phon's handbook of the subject is not without value in the loth century. In Greek armies the dearth of horses and the consequent numerical weakness of the cavalry prevented the bold use of the arm on the battlefield. (See CAVALRY.) But Thebes had always to deal with nations which possessed numerous horsemen. Jason of Pherae, for instance, put into the field against Thebes many thousands of Thessalian horse ; and thus at the battle of Tegyra in 375 the Theban cavalry under Pelopidas, aided by the corps d'elite of infantry called the Sacred Band, carried all before them. At Leuctra Epaminondas won a glorious victory by the use of his "oblique order" tactics; the same methods achieved the second great victory of Mantineia (362 B.c.) at which Epaminondas fell. Pelopidas had already been slain in a battle against the Thessa lians, and there was no leader to carry on their work. But the new Greek system was yet to gain its greatest triumphs under Alex ander the Great.
The reforms of Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, may most justly be compared to those of Frederick William I. in Prussia. Philip had lived at Thebes as a hostage, and had known Iphicrates, Epaminondas and Pelopidas. He grafted the Theban system of tactics on to the Macedonian sys tem of organization. (See MACEDONIAN ARMY.) That the latter —a complete territorial system—was efficient was shown by the fact that Philip's blow was always struck before his enemies were ready to meet it. That the new Greek tactics, properly used, were superior to the old was once more demonstrated at Chaeronea (33S B.c.), where the Macedonian infantry militia fought in pha lanx, and the cavalry, led by the young Alexander, delivered the last crushing blow. On his accession, like Frederick the Great, Alexander inherited a well-trained and numerous army, and was not slow to use it. The invasion of Asia was carried out by an army of the Greek pattern, formed both of Hellenes and of non Hellenes on an exceedingly strong Macedonian nucleus. Alex ander's own guard was composed of picked horse and foot. The infantry of the line comprised Macedonian and Greek hoplites, the Macedonians being subdivided into heavy and medium troops. These fought in a grand phalanx, which was subdivided into units corresponding to the modern divisions, brigades and regiments, the fighting formation being normally a line of battalion masses. The arm of the infantry was the 18f t. pike (sarissa) . The peltasts, Macedonian and Greek, were numerous and well trained, and there was the usual mass of irregular light troops, bowmen, sling ers, etc. The cavalry included the Guard ( i ynµa), a body of heavy cavalry composed of chosen Macedonians, the line cavalry of Macedonia ('raepoc) and Thessaly, the numerous small contingents of the Greek states, mercenary corps and light lancers for outpost work. The final blow and the gathering of the fruits of victory were now for the first time the work of the mounted arm. The solid phalanx was almost unbreakable in the earlier stages of the battle, but after a long infantry fight the horsemen had their chance. In former wars they were too few and too poorly mounted to avail themselves of it, and decisive victories were in conse quence rarely achieved in battles of Greek versus Greek. Under Epaminondas, and still more under Philip and Alexander, the cav alry was strong enough for its new work. Battles were now ended by the shock action of mounted men, and in Alexander's time it was noted as a novelty that the cavalry carried out the pursuit of a beaten army. There were further, in Alexander's army, artillery men with a battering train, engineers and departmental troops, and also a medical service, an improvement attributed to Jason of Pherae. The victories of this army, in close order and in open, over every kind of enemy and on every sort of terrain, produced the Hellenistic world, and in that achievement the history of Greek armies closes, for of ter the return of the greater part of the Europeans to their homes the armies of Alexander and his successors, became gradually orientalized.
The decisive step was taken in 323, when a picked contingent of Persians, armed mainly with missile weapons, was drafted into the phalanx, in which henceforward they formed the middle ranks of each file of 16 men. But, like the third rank of Prussian in fantry up to 1888, they normally fought as skirmishers in ad vance, falling into their place behind the pikes of the Macedonian file-leaders only if required for the decisive assault. The new method, of course, depended for success on the steadiness of the thin three-deep line of Macedonians thus left as the line of battle. Alexander's veterans were indeed to be trusted, but as time went on, and little by little the war-trained Greeks left the service, it became less and less safe to array the Hellenistic army in this shallow and articulated order of battle. The purely formal organi zation of the phalanx 16 deep became thus the actual tactical formation, and around this solid mass of 16,384 men gathered the heterogeneous levies of a typical oriental army. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, retained far more of the tradition of Alexander's system than his contemporaries farther east, yet his phalanx, compara tively light and mobile as it was, achieved victories over the Roman legion only at the cost of self-destruction. Even elephants quickly became a necessary adjunct to Hellenistic armies.
The military systems of the Jews present few features of unusual interest. The expedient of calling out succes sive contingents from the different tribes, in order to ensure continuity in military operations, should, however, be noticed. David and Solomon possessed numerous permanent troops which served as guards and garrisons ; in principle this organization was identical with that of the Persians, and that of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Particular interest attaches to the Carthagin ian military forces of the 3rd century B.C. Rarely has any army achieved such renown in the short space of 62 years (264-202 B.c.). Carthage produced a series of great generals, culminating in Hannibal, who is marked out, even by the little that is known of him, as the peer of Napoleon. But Napoleon was supported by a national army, Hannibal and his predecessors were con demned to work with armies of mercenaries. For the first time in the world's history war is a matter with which the civil popu lation has no concern. The merchants of Carthage fought only in the last extremity ; the wars in which their markets were ex tended were conducted by non-national forces and directed by the few Carthaginian citizens who possessed military aptitudes. The civil authorities displayed towards their instruments a spirit of hatred for which it is difficult to find a parallel. Unsuccessful leaders were crucified, the mercenary soldiers were cheated of their pay, and broke out into a mutiny which shook the empire of Carthage to its foundations. But the magnetism of a leader's personality infused a corporate military spirit into these hetero geneous Punic armies, and history has never witnessed so com plete an illustration of the power of pure and unaided esprit de corps as in the case of Hannibal's army in Italy, which, composed as it was of Spaniards, Africans, Gauls, Numidians, Italians and soldiers of fortune of every country, was yet welded by him into thorough efficiency. The army of Italy was as great in its last fight at Zama as the army of Spain at Rocroi ; its victories of the Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae were so appalling that, 200 years later, its leader was still, to a Roman, the "dire" Hannibal.
In their formal organizations the Carthaginian armies resem bled the new Greek model, and indeed they were created in the first instance by Xanthippus, a Spartan soldier in the service of Carthage, who was called upon to raise and train an army when the Romans were actually at the gates of Carthage, and justified his methods in the brilliant victory of Tunis (255 B.e.). For the solid Macedonian phalanx of 16,000 spears Xanthippus substituted a line of heavy battalions equal in its aggregate power of resistance to the older form, and far more flexible. The . triumphs of the cavalry arm in Hannibal's battles excelled those of Alexander's horsemen. Hannibal chose his fighting ground whenever possible with a view to using their full power, first to defeat the hostile cavalry, then to ride down the shaken infantry masses, and finally to pursue au fond. At Cannae, the greatest disaster ever suffered by the Romans, the decisive blow and the slaughter were the work of Hannibal's line cavalry, the relentless pursuit that of his light horse. But a professional long-service army has always the great est difficulty in making good its losses, and in the present case it was wholly unable to do so. Even Hannibal failed at last before the sustained efforts of the citizen army of Rome.
9. Roman Army Under the Republic.—The earliest organ ization of the Roman army is attributed to Romulus, who formed it on the tribal principle, each of the three tribes contributing its contingent of horse and foot. But it was to Servius Tullius that Rome owed, traditionally, the complete classification of her cit izen-soldiers. For the details of the Roman military system, see ROMAN ARMY. During the earlier period of Roman history the army was drawn entirely from the first classes of the population, who served without pay and provided their own arms and armour. The wealthiest men (equites) furnished the cavalry, the remain der the infantry, while the poorer classes either fought as light troops or escaped altogether the privilege and burden of military service. Each "legion" of 3,00o heavy foot was at first formed in a solid phalanx. The introduction of the elastic and handy three line formation with intervals (similar in many respects to Alex ander's) was brought about by the Gallic wars, and is attributed to M. Furius Camillus, who also, during the siege of Veii, intro duced the practice of paying the soldiers, and thus removed the chief obstacle to the employment of the poorer classes. The new order of battle was fully developed in the Pyrrhic Wars, and the typical army of the Republic may be taken as dating from the latter part of the 3rd century B.C. The legionary was still pos sessed of a property qualification, but it had become relatively small. An annual levy was made at Rome to provide for the cam paign of the year. Discipline was severe, and the rewards appealed as much to the soldier's honour as to his desire of gain. A legion now consisted of three lines (Hastati, Principes, Triarii), each line composed of men of similar age and experience, and was further subdivided into 3o "maniples," each of two "centuries." The normal establishment of 30o cavalry, 3,00o heavy and 1,200 light infantry was still maintained, though in practice these figures were often exceeded. In place of the old light-armed and some what inferior rorarii, the new velites performed light infantry duties (211 B.e.), at the same time retaining their place in the maniples, of which they formed the last ranks (compare the Mace donian phalanx as reorganized in 323,§ 7, p. 397) . The 30o cavalry of the legion were trained for shock action. But both the offensive and defensive strength of the Roman army lay in the heavy legionary infantry—except for one brief period at the end of the second Punic War when Scipio Africanus, appreciating the de cisive value of cavalry exemplified in Hannibal's battles, set out to forge a similar instrument, and at Zama triumphantly turned Hannibal's master-weapon against him. The lesson, like other of Scipio's innovations, was, however, lost sight of in succeeding generations. The 3o maniples of each legion stood in three lines of battle, but the most notable point of their formation was that each maniple stood by itself on its own small manoeuvre-area, free to take ground to front or flank. To the Roman legion was added a legion of allies, somewhat differently organized and pos sessing more cavalry, and the whole force was called a "double legion" or briefly a "legion." A consul's army consisted nominally of two double legions, but in the Punic Wars military exigencies rather than custom dictated the numbers of the army, and the two consuls at Cannae (216 B.c.) commanded two double con sular armies, or eight double legions.
10. Characteristics of the Roman Army.—Such in outline was the Roman military organization at the time when it was put to the severe test of the Second Punic War. Its elements were good, its military skill superior to that of any other army of an cient history, while its organization was on the whole far better than any that had gone before. The handy formation of maniples at open order was unique in the ancient world, and it did not reappear in history up to the advent of Gustavus Adolphus. In this formation, in which everything was entrusted to the skill of subordinates and the individual courage of the rank and file, the Romans met and withstood with success every type of impact, from the ponderous shock of the Macedonian phalanx and the dangerous rush of Celtic savages to the charge of elephants. Yet there would have been danger in thus articulating the legion had it been composed of any but the most trustworthy soldiers. To swiftness and precision of manoeuvre they added a dogged ob stinacy over which nothing but overwhelming disaster prevailed. It is, therefore, not unnatural to ask wherein the system which produced these soldiers failed, as it did within a century after the battle of Zama. The greatest defect was the want of a single military command. The civil magistrates of Rome were ex officio leaders of her armies, and though no Roman officer lacked military training, the views of a consul or praetor were almost invariably influenced by the programme of his political party. When, as sometimes happened, the men under their command sided in the political differences of their leaders, all real control came to an end. The soldiers of the republic hardly ever forgot that they were citizens with voting powers; they served as a rule only dur ing a campaign; and, while there could be little question as to their patriotism and stubbornness, they lacked almost entirely that esprit de corps which is found only amongst the members of a body having a permanent corporate existence. Thus they had the vices as well as the virtues of a nation in arms, and they fell still further short of the ideal because of the dubious and pre carious tenure of their generals' commands. The great officers were usually sent home at the end of a campaign, to be replaced by their elected successors, and they showed all the hesitation and fear of responsibility usually found in a temporary corn mander. Above all, when two armies, each under its own consul or praetor, acted together, the command was either divided or exercised on alternate days. Under a prolonged trial, such as the Punic Wars, this system was modified, yet even so the strength of its grip is well illustrated in the interference with, and at tempted supersession of, Scipio during his African campaign which ended in the overthrow of Carthage.
The essential weaknesses of militia forces and the accidental circumstances of that under considera tion led, even in earlier times, to the adoption of various expedi ents which for a time obviated the evils to which allusion has been made. But a change of far greater importance followed the final exploits of the armies of the old system. The increasing dominions of the Republic, the spread of wealth and luxury, the gradual decadence of the old Roman ideas, all tended to produce an army more suited to the needs of the newer time than the citizen militia of the 3rd century. Permanent troops were a neces sity ; the rich, in their newly acquired dislike of personal effort, ceased to bear their share in the routine life of the army, and thus the proletariat began to join the legions with the express inten tion of taking to a military career. The actual change from the old regime to the new was in the main the work of Gaius Marius. The urgent demand for men at the time of the Teutonic invasions caused the service to be thrown open to all Roman citizens irre spective of census. The new territories furnished cavalry, better and more numerous than the old equites, and light troops of vari ous kinds to replace the velites. Only the heavy foot remained a purely Italian force, and the spread of the Roman citizenship gradually abolished the distinction between a Roman and an allied legion. The higher classes had repeatedly shown themselves un willing to serve under plebeians (e.g., Varro and Flaminius) ; Marius preferred to have as soldiers men who did not despise him as an inferior. Under all these influences for good or for evil, the standing army was developed in the first half of the i st century B.C. The tactical changes in the legion indicate its altered char acter. The small maniples gave way to heavy "cohorts," ten cohorts forming the legion; as in the Napoleonic wars, light and handy formations became denser and more rigid with the pro gressive decadence in moral of the rank and file. It is more significant still that in the days of Marius the annual oath of allegiance taken by the soldier came to be replaced by a personal vow, taken once and for all, of loyalty to the general. Ubi bene, ibi patria was an expression of the new spirit of the army, and Caesar had but to address his men as quirites (civilians) to quell a mutiny. Hastati, principes and triarii were now merely expres sions in drill and tactics. But perhaps the most important of all these changes was the growth of regimental spirit and tradition. The legions had come to be numbered throughout the army, and the Tenth Legion has remained a classic instance of a "crack" corps. The moral of the Roman army was founded no longer on patriotism, but on professional pride and esprit de corps.
With this military system Rome passed through the era of the Civil Wars, at the end of which Augustus found himself with 45 legions on his hands. As soon as possible he carried through a great reorganization, by which, after ruthlessly rejecting inferior elements, he obtained a smaller picked force of 25 legions, with numerous auxiliary forces. These were permanently stationed in the frontier provinces of the empire, while Italy was garrisoned by the Praetorian cohorts, and thus was formed a regular long service army, the strength of which has been estimated at 300,000 men. But these measures, temporarily successful, produced in the end an army which not only was perpetually at variance with the civil populations it was supposed to protect, but frequently mur dered the emperors to whom it had sworn allegiance when it raised them to the throne. The evil fame of the Italian cohorts has survived in the phrase "praetorianism" used to imply a venal military despotism. The citizens gradually ceased to bear arms, and the practice of self-mutilation became common. The inevita ble denouement was delayed from time to time by the work of an energetic prince. But the ever-increasing inefficiency and fac tiousness of the legions, and the evanescence of all military spirit in the civil population, made it easy for the barbarians, when once the frontier was broken through, to overrun the decadent empire. The end came when the Gothic heavy horse annihilated the legions of Valens at Adrianople (A.D. 378).
There was now no resource but to take the barbarians into Roman pay. Under the name of foederati, the Gothic mercenary cavalry played the most conspicuous part in the succeeding wars of the empire, and began the reign of the heavy cavalry arm, which lasted for almost i,000 years. Even so soon as within six years of the death of Valens 20,000 Gothic horse decided a great battle in the emperor's favour. These men, however, became turbulent and factious, and it was not till Emperor Leo I. had regenerated the native Roman soldier that the balance was maintained between the national and the hired warrior. The work of this emperor and of his successors found eventual expression in the victories of Belisarius and Narses, in which the Romans, in the new role of horse-archers, so well combined their efforts with those of the foederati that neither the heavy cavalry of the Goths nor the phalanx of Frankish infantry proved to be capable of resisting the imperial forces. At the battle of Casilinum (5 53) Roman foot archers and infantry bore no small part of the work. It was thus in the Eastern Empire that the Roman military spirit revived, and the Byzantine army, as evolved from the system of Justinian, be came eventually the sole example of a fully organized service to be found in mediaeval history.
I 2. The "Dark Ages."—In western Europe all traces of Roman military institutions quickly died out, and the conquerors of the new kingdoms developed fresh systems from the simple tribal levy. The men of the plains were horsemen, those of marsh and moor were foot, and the four greater peoples retained these orig inal characteristics long after the conquest had been completed. In organization the Lombards and Franks, Visigoths and English scarcely differed. The whole military population formed the mass of the army, the chiefs and their personal retainers the elite. The Lombards and the Visigoths were naturally cavalry; the Franks and the English were, equally naturally, infantry, and the armies of the Merovingian kings differed but little from the English fyrd with which Offa and Penda fought their battles. But in these na tions the use of horses and armour, at first confined to kings and great chiefs, gradually spread downwards to the ever-growing classes of thegns, comites, etc. Finally, under Charlemagne were developed the general lines of the military organization which eventually became feudalism. For his distant wars he required an efficient and mobile army. Hence successive "capitularies" were issued dealing with matters of recruiting, organization, discipline and field service work. Very noticeable are his system of forts (burgi) with garrisons, his military train of artillery and supplies, and the reappearance of the ancient principle that three or four men should equip and maintain one of themselves as a warrior. These and other measures taken by him tended to produce a strong veteran army, very different in efficiency from the tumultu ary levy, to which recourse was had only in the last resort. While war (as a whole) was not yet an art, fighting (from the indi vidual's point of view) had certainly become a special function; after Charlemagne's time the typical feudal army, composed of well equipped cavalry and ill-armed peasantry serving on foot, rapidly developed. Enemies such as Danes and Magyars could only be dealt with by mounted men who could ride round them, compel them to fight, and annihilate them by the shock of the charge; consequently the practice of leaving the infantry in rear, and even at home, grew up almost as a part of the feudal system of warfare. England, however, sought a different remedy, and thus diverged from the Continental methods. This remedy was the creation of a fleet, and, the later Danish wars being there carried out, not by bands of mounted raiders, but by large armies of mili tary settlers, infantry retained its premier position in England up to the day of Hastings. Even the thegns, who there, as abroad, were the mainstay of the army, were heavy-armed infantry. The only contribution made by Canute to the military organization of England was the retention of a picked force of hus caries (house hold troops) when the rest of the army with which he had con quered his realm was sent back to Scandinavia. At Hastings, the forces of Harold consisted wholly of infantry. The English array was composed of the king and his personal friends, the hus caries, and the contingents of the fyrd under the local thegns; though better armed, they were organized after the manner of their fore fathers. On that field there perished the best infantry in Europe, and henceforward for three centuries there was no serious rival to challenge the predominance of the heavy cavalry in the war fare of the middle ages.
(see ROMAN EMPIRE, LATER).-While the west of Europe was evolving feudalism, the Byzantine em pire was acquiring an army and military system scarcely sur passed by any of those of antiquity and not often equalled up to the most modern times. The foederati disappeared after the time of Justinian, and by A.D. 600 the army had become at once professional and national. For generations, regiments had had a corporate existence. Now brigades and divisions also appeared in war, and, somewhat later, in peace likewise. With the dis appearance of the barbarians the army became one homogeneous service, minutely systematized, and generally resembling an army in the modern sense of the word. The militia of the frontier dis tricts performed efficiently the service of surveillance, and the field forces of disciplined regulars were moved and employed in accordance with well reasoned principles of war; their mainte nance was provided for by a scutage, levied, in lieu of service, on the central provinces of the empire. Later, a complete territorial system of recruiting and command was introduced. Each "theme" (military district) had its own regular garrison, and furnished a field division of some 5,000 picked troopers for a campaign in any theatre of war. Provision having been made in peace for a depot system, all weakly men and horses could be left behind, and local duties handed over to second line troops; thus the field forces were practically always on a war footing. Besides the "themes" under their generals, there were certain districts on the frontiers, called "clissuras," placed under chosen officers, and specially organized for emergency service. The corps of officers in the Byzantine army was recruited from the highest classes, and there were many families (e.g., that from which came the cele brated Nicephorus Phocas) in which soldiering was the tradi tional career. The rank and file were either military settlers or men of the yeoman class, and in either case had a personal inter est in the safety of the theme which prevented friction between soldiers and civilians. The principal arm was, of course, cavalry, and infantry was employed only in special duties. Engineer, train and medical services were maintained in each theme. Of the ensemble of the Byzantine army it has been said that "the art of war as it was understood at Constantinople . . . was the only system of real merit existing. No western nation could have afforded such a training to its officers till the 16th or . . . 17th century." The vitality of such an army remained intact long after the rest of the empire had begun to decay, and though the old army practically ceased to exist after the great disaster of Manzikert (1071), the barbarians and other mercenaries who formed the new service were organized, drilled and trained to the same pitch of military efficiency. Indeed the greatest tactical triumph of the Byzantine system (Calavryta, 1079) was won by an army already largely composed of foreigners. But mercenaries in the end developed praetorianism, as usual, and at last they actually mutinied, in the presence of the enemy, for higher pay (Constantinople, 1204) .
From the military point of view the change under feudalism was very remarkable. For the first time in the history of western Europe there appears, in however rough a form, a systematized obligation to serve in arms, regulated on a territorial basis. That army organization in the modern sense— organization for tactics and command—did not develop in any de gree commensurate with the development of military administra tion, was due to the peculiar characteristics of the feudal system, and the virtues and weaknesses of mediaeval armies were its natural outcome. Personal bravery, the primary virtue of the soldier, could not be wanting in the members of a military class the metier of which was war and manly exercises. Pride of caste, ambition and knightly emulation, all helped to raise to a high standard the individual efficiency of the feudal cavalier. But the gravest faults of the system, considered as an army organiza tion, were directly due to this personal element. Indiscipline, im patience of superior control and dangerous knight-errantry, to gether with the absence of any chain of command, prevented the feudal cavalry from achieving results at all proportionate to the effort expended and the potentialities of a force with so many soldierly qualities. If such defects were habitually found in the best elements of the army—the feudal tenants and sub-tenants who formed the heavy cavalry arm—little could be expected of the despised and ill-armed foot-soldiery of the levy. The swift raids of the Danes and others had created a precedent which in French and German wars was almost invariably followed. The feudal levy rarely appeared at all on the battlefield, and when it was thus employed it was ridden down by the hostile knights, and even by those of its own party, without offering more than the feeblest resistance. Above all, one disadvantage, common to all classes of feudal soldiers, made an army so composed quite untrustworthy. The service which a king was able to exact from his feudatories was so slight (varying from one month to three in the year) that no military operation which was at all likely to be prolonged could be undertaken with any hope of success.
It was natural, therefore, that a sovereign who contemplated a great war should employ mer cenaries. These were usually foreigners, as practically all na tional forces served on feudal terms. While the greater lords rode with him on all his expeditions, the bulk of his army con sisted of professional soldiers, paid by the levy of scutage im posed upon the feudal tenantry. There had always been soldiers of fortune. William's host at Hastings contained many such men ; later, the Flemings who invaded England in the days of Henry I. sang to each other— "Hop, hop, Willeken, hop ! England is mine and thine," and from all the evidence it is clear that in earlier days the hired soldiers were adventurers seeking lands and homes. But these men usually proved to be most undesirable subjects, and sov ereigns soon began to pay a money wage for the services of mercenaries properly so called. Such were the troops which fig ured in English history under Stephen. Such troops, moreover, formed the main part of the armies of the early Plantagenets. They were, as a matter of course, armed and armoured like the knights, with whom they formed the men-at-arms (gendarmes) of the army. Indeed, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the typical army of France or the empire contained a relatively small per centage of "knights," evidence of which fact may be found even in so fanciful a romance as Aucassin and Nicolette. It must he noted, however, that not all the mercenaries were heavy cavalry; the Brabancon pikeman and the Italian crossbowman (the value of whose weapon was universally recognized) often formed part of a feudal army.
These mercenary foot sol diers came a rule from districts in which the infantry arm had
maintained its ancient predominance in unbroken continuity. The cities of Flanders and Brabant, and those of the Lombard plain, had escaped feudal interference with their methods of fighting, and their burgher militia had developed into solid bodies of heavy-armed pikemen. These were very different from those of the feudal levy, and individual knightly bravery usually failed to make the slightest impression on a band of infantry held to gether by the stringent corporate feeling of a trade guild. The more adventurous of the young men, like those of the Greek cities, took service abroad and fought with credit in their cus tomary manner. The reign of the "Brabancon" as a mercenary was indeed short, but he continued, in his own country, to fight in the old way, and his successor in the profession of arms, the Genoese crossbowman, was always highly valued. In England, moreover, the infantry of the old fyrd was not suffered to decay into a rabble of half-armed countrymen, and in France a burgher infantry was established by Louis VI. under the name of the milice des communes, with the idea of creating a counterpoise to the power of the feudatories. Feudalism, therefore, as a military system, was short-lived. Its limitations had always necessitated the employment of mercenaries, and in several places a solid in fantry was coming into existence, which was drawn from the sturdy, and self-respecting middle classes, and in a few generations was to prove itself a worthy opponent not only to the knight, but to the professional man-at-arms.
It is an undoubted fact that the long wars of the Crusades produced, directly, but slight improvement in the feudal armies of Europe. In the East large bodies of men were successfully kept under arms for a considerable period, but the application of crusading methods to European war was alto gether impracticable. In the first place, much of the permanent force of these armies was contributed by the military orders, which had no place in European political activities. Secondly, en thusiasm mitigated much of the evil of individualism. In the third place, there was no custom to limit the period of service, since the Crusaders had undertaken a definite task and would merely have stultified their own purpose in leaving the work only half done. There were, therefore, sharp contrasts between cru sading and European armies. In the latter, systematization was confined to details of recruiting; in the armies of the Cross, men were from time to time obtained by the accident of religious fer vour, while at the same time continuous service produced a relatively high system of tactical organization. The statement that the Crusaders had a direct influence on the revival of in fantry is hardly susceptible of convincing demonstration, but it is at any rate beyond question that the social and economic re sults of the Crusades materially contributed to the downfall of the feudal knight, and in consequence to a rise in the relative importance of the middle classes. Moreover, when "simple" and "gentle" both took the Cross there could be no question of treat ing Crusaders as if they were the mere feudal levy. But the little direct influence of the whole of these wars upon military progress in Europe is shown clearly enough by the fact that at the very close of the Crusades a great battle was lost through knight-errantry of the true feudal type (Mansurah) .
(129o-149o).—Besides the infantry already mentioned, that of Scotland and That of the German cities fought with credit on many fields. Their arm was the pike, and they were always formed in solid masses (called in Scotland, scliiltrons). The basis of the mediaeval commune being the suppression of the individual in the social unit, it was natural that the burgher infantry should fight "in serried ranks and in better order" than a line of individual knights, who, moreover, were almost powerless before walled cities. But these forces lacked offensive power, and it was left for the English archers, whose importance dates from the latter years of the 13th cen tury, to show afresh, at Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, the value of missile action. When properly supported by other arms, they proved themselves capable of meeting both the man-at-arms and the pikeman. The greatest importance attaches to the evo lution of this idea of mutual support and combination. Once it was realized, war became once more an art, and armies became specially organized bodies of troops of different arms. It cannot be admitted, indeed, as has been claimed, that the 14th century had a scientific system of tactics, or that the campaign of Poitiers was arranged by the French "general staff." Nevertheless, during this century armies were steadily coming to consist of expert sol diers, to the exclusion of national levies and casual mercenaries. It is true that, by his system of "indents,'.' Edward III. of England raised national armies of a professional type, but the English soldier thus enrolled, when discharged by his own sovereign, naturally sought similar employment elsewhere. This system pro duced, moreover, a class of unemployed soldiers, and these, with others who became adventurers from choice or necessity, and even with foreign troops, formed the armies which fought in the Wars of the Roses—armies which differed but slightly from others of the time. The natural result of these wars was to im plant a hatred of soldiery in the heart of a nation which had formerly produced the best fighting men in Europe, a hatred which left a deep imprint on the constitutional and social life of the people. In France, where Joan of Arc passed like a meteor across the military firmament, the idea of a national regular army took a practical form in the middle o'f the 15th century. Still, the forces thus brought into existence were not numerous, and the soldier of fortune was yet to attain the zenith of his career.
The immediate result of this confused period of destruction and reconstruction was the condottiere, who becomes important about 130o. In Italy, where the condot tieri chiefly flourished, they were in demand owing to the want of feudal cavalry. and the inability of burgher infantry to under take wars of aggression. The "free companies" (who served in great numbers in France and Spain as well as in Italy) were "military societies very much like trade guilds," which (so to speak) were hawked from place to place by their managing direc tors, and hired temporarily by princes who needed their services. Unlike the older hirelings, they were permanently organized, and thus, with their experience and discipline, became the best troops in existence. But the carrying on of war "in the spirit of a handi craft" led to bloodless battles, indecisive campaigns, and other unsatisfactory results, and the reign of the condottieri proper was over by 1400, subsequent free companies being raised on a more strictly national basis. With all their defects, however, they were the pioneers of modern organization. In the inextricable tangle of old and new methods which constitutes the military system of the 15th century, it is possible to discern three marked tendencies. One is the result of a purely military conception of the now special art of war, and its exposition as an art by men who devote their whole career to it. The second is the idea of a national army, resulting from many social, economical and politi cal causes. The third is the tendency towards a more minute or ganization and subdivision within the army. Whereas the indi vidual feudatories had disliked the close supervision of a minor commander, and their army had in consequence remained always a loosely knit unit, the men who made war into an art belonged to small bands or corps, and naturally began their organization from the lower units. Herein, therefore, was the germ of the regimental system of the present day.
The best description of a typical European army at the opening of the new period of development is that of the French army in Italy in 1494, written by Paolo Giovio. He notes with surprise that the various corps of infantry and cavalry are distinct, the usual practice of the time being to combine one lancer, one archer, one groom, etc., into a small unit furnished and commanded by the lancer. There were Swiss and German infantry, armed with pike and halberd, with a few "shot," who marched in good order to music. There were the heavy men-at arms (gendarmes), accompanied as of old by mounted archers, who, however, now fought independently. There were, further, Gascon clingers and crossbowmen, who had probably ac quired, from contact with Spain, some of the lightness and dash of their neighbours. The artillery train was composed of 14o heavy pieces and a great number of lighter guns; these were then and for many generations thereafter a special arm outside the military establishment. (See ARTILLERY.) In all this the only relic of the days of Crecy is the administrative combination of the men-at-arms and the horse archers, and even this is no longer practised in action. The most important element in the army is the heavy infantry of Swiss and Germans. The Swiss had for a century past gradually developed into the most formidable troops of the day. The wars of 2i,ka (q.v.) in Bohemia (1420) mate rially assisted in the downfall of the heavy cavalry; and the vic tories of the Swiss, beginning with Sempach (1386), had by 148o proved that their solid battalions, armed with the long pike and the halberd, were practically invulnerable to all but missile and shock action combined. By fortune of war they never met the English, who had shown the way to deal with the sclailtron as early as Falkirk. It was natural that a series of victories such as Grandson, Morat and Nancy should place them in the forefront of the military nations of Europe. The whole people devoted itself thereupon to professional soldiering, particularly in the French service, and though their monopoly of mercenary employ ment lasted a short time only, they continued to furnish regi ments to the armies of France, Spain and the Pope up to the most modern times. But their efficiency was thoroughly sapped by the growth of a mutinous and insubordinate spirit, the mem ory of which has survived in the proverb Point d'argent, point de Suisse, and inspired Machiavelli with the hatred of mercenaries which marks every page of his work on the art of war. One of their devices for extorting money was to appear at the muster with many more soldiers than had been contracted for by their employers, who were forced to submit to this form of blackmail. At last the French, tired of these caprices, inflicted on the Swiss the crushing defeat of Marignano (q.v.), and their tactical system received its death-blow from the Spaniards at Pavia (1525).
The modern army owes far more of its organization and administrative methods to the Lands knechts ("men of the country," as distinct from foreigners) than to the Swiss. As the latter were traditionally the friends of France, so these Swabians were the mainstay of the Imperial armies, though both were mercenaries. The Emperor Maximilian exerted himself to improve the new force, which soon became the model for military Europe. A corps of Landsknechts was usually raised by a system resembling that of "indents," commissions being issued by the sovereign to leaders of repute to enlist men. A "colour" (Fahnlein) numbered usually about 400 men, a corps consisted of a varying number of colours, some corps having 12,000 men. From these troops, with their intense pride, esprit de corps and comradeship, there has come down to modern times much of present-day etiquette, interior economy and "regimental customs"—in other words, nearly all that is comprised in the "regimental" system. Amongst the most notable features of their system were the functions of the provost, who combined the modern offices of provost-marshal, transport and supply officer, and canteen manager; the disciplinary code, which admitted the right of the rank and file to judge offences touching the honour of the regiment ; and the women, who, lawfully or unlawfully attached to the soldiers, marched with the regiment and had a definite place in its corporate life. The conception of the regi ment as the home of the soldier was thus realized in fact.
The tendencies towards professional soldiering and towards subdivision had now pronounced them selves. At the same time, while national armies, as dreamed of by Machiavelli, were not yet in existence, two at least of the powers were beginning to work towards an ideal. This ideal was an army which was entirely at the disposal of its own sovereign, trained to the due professional standard, and organized in the best way found by experience to be applicable to military needs. On these bases was formed the old Spanish army which, from Pavia (1525) to Rocroi (1643), was held by common consent to be the finest service in existence. Almost immediately after emerg ing from the period of internal development, Spain found her self obliged to maintain an army for the Italian wars. In the first instance this was raised from amongst veterans of the war of Granada, who enlisted for an indefinite time. Probably the oldest line regiments in Europe are those descended from the famous tercios, whose formation marks the beginning of military establishments, just as the Landsknechts were the founders of military manners and customs. The great captains who led the new army soon assimilated the best points of the Swiss system, and it was the Spanish army which evolved the typical combi nation of pike and musket which flourished up to 170o. Outside the domain of tactics, it must be credited with an important con tribution to the science of army organization, in the depot system, whereby the tercios in the field were continually "fed" and kept up to strength. The social position of the soldier was that of a gentleman, and the young nobles (who soon came to prefer the tercios to the cavalry service) thought it no shame, when their commands were reduced, to "take a pike" in another regiment. The provost and his gallows were as much in evidence in a Spanish camp as in one of Landsknechts, but the comradeship and esprit de corps of a tercio were the admiration of all contemporary soldiers. With all its good qualities, however, this army was not truly national ; men soon came from all the various nations ruled by the Habsburgs, and the soldier of fortune found employment in a tercio as readily as elsewhere. But it was a great gain that corps, as such, were fully recognized as belonging to the Govern ment, however shifting the personnel might be. Permanence of regimental existence had now been attained, though the universal acceptance and thorough application of the principle were still far distant. During the 16th century the French regular army (originating in the cosnpagnies d'ordonnance of
which was always in existence, even when the Swiss and gendarmes were the best part of the field forces, underwent a considerable develop ment, producing amongst other things the military terminology of the present day. But the wars of religion effectually checked all progress in the latter part of the century, and the European reputation of the French army dates only from the latter part of the Thirty Years' War.
The battle of St. Quentin (15S 7) is usually taken as the date from which the last type of a purely mercenary arm (as distinct from corps) comes into prominence. "Brabancon" or "Swiss" implied pikemen without further quali fication, the new term "Reiter" similarly implied mercenary cavalry fighting with the pistol. Heavy cavalry could disperse arquebusiers and musketeers, but it was helpless against solid masses of pikemen ; the Reiters solved the difficulty by the use of the pistol. They were well armoured and had little to fear from musket-balls. Arrayed in deep squadrons, therefore, they rode up to the pikes with impunity, and fired methodically dans le tas, each rank when it had discharged its pistols filing to the rear to reload. These Reiters were organized in squadrons of variable strength, and recruited in the same manner as were the Lands knechts. They were much inferior, however, to the latter in their discipline and general conduct, for cavalry had many more indi vidual opportunities of plunder than the foot, and the rapacity and selfishness of the Reiters were consequently in marked contrast to the good order and mutual helpfulness in the field and in quarters which characterized the regimental system of the Lands knechts.
The most interesting feature of the Dutch system, which was gradually evolved by the patriots in the long War of Independence, was its minute attention to detail. In the first years of the war, William the Silent had to depend, for field operations, on mutinous and inefficient mercenaries and on raw countrymen who had nothing but devotion to oppose to the dis cipline and skill of the best regular army in the world. Such troops were, from the point of view of soldiers like Alva, mere canaille, and the ludicrous ease with which their armies were destroyed (as at Jemmingen and Mookerheyde), at the cost of the lives of perhaps a dozen Spanish veterans, went far to justify this view. But, fortunately for the Dutch, their fortified towns were ex ceedingly numerous, and the individual bravery of citizen-militia, who were fighting for the lives of every soul within their walls, baffled time after time all the efforts of Alva's men. In the open, Spanish officers took incredible liberties with the enemy; once, at any rate, they marched for hours together along submerged embankments with hostile vessels firing into them from either side. Behind walls the Dutch were practically a match for the most furious valour of the assailants.
The insurgents' first important victory in the open field, that of Rymenant, near Malines (1577), was won by the skill of "Bras de Fer," de la Noue, a veteran French general, and the stubborn ness of the English contingent of the Dutch army—for England, from 1572 onwards, sent out an ever-increasing number of volun teers. This battle was soon followed by the great defeat of Gembloux (1578), and William the Silent was not destined to see the rise of the Dutch army. Maurice of Nassau was the real organizer of victory. In the wreck of all feudal and burgher mili tary institutions, he turned to the old models of Xenophon, Poly bius, Aelian and the rest. Drill, as rigid and as complicated as that of the Macedonian phalanx, came into vogue, the infantry was organized more strictly into companies and regiments, the cavalry into troops or cornets. The Reiter tactics of the pistol were followed by the latter, the former consisted of pikes, halberds and "shot." This form was generally followed in central Europe, as usual, without the spirit, but in Holland it was the greater trustworthiness of the rank and file that allowed of more flexible formations, and here we no longer see the foot of an army drawn up, as at Jemmingen, in one solid and immovable "square." In their own country and with the system best suited thereto, the Dutch, who moreover acquired greater skill and steadiness day by day, maintained their ground against all the efforts of a Parma and a Spinola. Indeed, it is the best tribute to the vitality of the Spanish system that the inevitable debacle was so long delayed. The campaigns of Spinola in Germany demonstrated that the "Dutch" system, as a system for general use, was at any rate no better than the system over which it had locally asserted its superiority, and the spirit, and not the form, of Maurice's prac tice achieved the ultimate victory of the Netherlanders. In the Thirty Years' War the unsuccessful armies of Mansfeld and many others were modelled on the Dutch system—the forces of Spinola, of Tilly and of Wallenstein, on the Spanish. In other words, these systems as such meant little; the discipline and spirit behind them everything. Yet the contribution made by the Dutch system to the armies of to-day was not small ; to Maurice and his comrades we owe, first the introduction of careful and ac curate drill, and secondly the beginnings of an acknowledged science of war, the groundwork of both being the theory and practice of antiquity. The present method of "forming fours" in the British infantry is ultimately derived from Aelian, just as the first beats of the drums in a march represent the regimental calls of the Landsknechts, and the depots and the drafts for the service battalions date from the Italian wars of Spain.
Hitherto all armies had been raised or reduced according to the military and political situation of the moment. Spain had indeed maintained a relatively high effective in peace, but elsewhere a few personal guards, small garrisons, and sometimes a small regular army to serve as a nucleus, constituted the only permanent forces kept under arms by sovereigns, though, in this era of perpetual wars, armies were almost always on a war footing. The expense of maintenance at that time practically forbade any other system than this, called in German W erbe-system, a term for which in English there is no nearer equivalent than "enlistment" or "levy" system. The ex ceptional conditions of the Dutch army, indeed, secured for its regiments a long life; yet when danger was finally over, a large portion of the army was at once reduced. The history of the British army from about 1740 to 182o is a most striking, if be lated, example of the Werbe-system in practice. But the Thirty Years' War naturally produced an unusual continuity of service in corps raised about 1620-30, and 5o years later the principle of the standing army was universally accepted. It is thus that the senior regiments of the Prussian and Austrian armies date from about 163o. At this time an event took place which was destined to have a profound influence on the military art. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden landed in Germany with an army better organized, trained and equipped than any which had preceded it. This army, by its great victory of Breitenfeld (1631), inaugurated the era of "modern" warfare, and it is to the system of Gustavus that the student must turn for the initial point of the progressive development which has produced the armies of to-day. Spanish and Dutch methods at once became as obsolete as those of the Landsknechts.
The Swedish army was raised by a carefully regulated system of conscription, which was "preached in every pulpit in Sweden." There were indeed enlisted regiments of the usual type, and it would seem that Gustavus obtained the best even of the soldiers of fortune. But the national regiments were raised on the Indelta system. Each officer and man, under this scheme, received a land grant within the territorial district of his corps, and each of these districts supplied recruits in num bers proportionate to its population. This curious mixture of feudal and modern methods produced the best elements of an army which, aided by the tactical and technical improvements introduced by Gustavus, proved itself incomparably superior to its rivals. Of course the long and bloody campaigns of 163o-34 led to the admission of great numbers of mercenaries even into the Swedish corps; and German, Scottish and other regiments figured largely, not only in the armies of Duke Bernhard and his successors, but in the army of Gustavus' own lifetime. As early as 1632 one brigade of the army was distinguished by the title "Swedish," as alone containing no foreigners. Yet the framework was much the
it had been in 1630. The battle organization of two lines and two wings, which was typical of the later "linear" tactics, began to supplant the system of the tercios. How cum brous the latter had become by 5630 may be judged from any battle-plan of the period, and notably from that of Liitzen. Gus tavus' cavalry fought four or three deep only, and depended as little as possible on the pistol. The work of riding down the pikes was indeed rendered easier by the improved tactical handiness of the musketeers, but it was fiery leading which alone compelled vic tory, for there were relatively few Swedish horse and many squadrons of Germans and others, who in themselves were far less likely to charge boldly than the "Pappenheimers" and other crack corps of the enemy. The infantry was of the highest class, and only on that condition could loose and supple lines be trusted to oppose the solid tercios of Tilly and Wallenstein. Cumbrous indeed these were, but by long practice they had acquired no small manoeuvring power, of which Breitenfeld affords a striking ex ample. The Swedes, however, completely surpassed them. The progress thus made may be gauged from the fact that under Gustavus the largest closed body of infantry was less than 300 strong. Briefly, the genius of a great commander, the ardour of a born cavalry leader, better arms and better organization, carried the Swedes to the end of their career of victory, but how personal was the vis viva which inspired the army was quickly noticeable after the death of Gustavus. Even a Bernhard could, in the end, evoke no more heroism from a Swedish army than from any other, and the real Swedish troops fought their last battle at Nordlingen (1634). After this, little distinguished the "Swedish" forces from the general mass of the armies of the time, save their system, to which, and to its influence on the training of such leaders as Baner, Torstensson and Wrangel, all their later victories were due. So much of Gustavus' work survived even the carnage of Nord lingen, and his system always obtained better results, even with the heterogeneous troops of this later period, than any other.
(see GREAT REBELLION) .-The armies on either side which, about the same time, were fighting out the constitutional quarrel in England were essentially differ ent from all those of the Continent, though their formal organi zation was similar to that of the Swedes. The military expression of a national conscience had appeared rarely indeed in the Thirty Years' War, which was a means of livelihood for, rather than an assertion of principle by, those who engaged in it. In England, on the other hand, there were no mercenaries, and the whole char acter of the operations was settled by the burning desire of a true "nation in arms" to decide at once, by the arbitrament of battle, the vital points at issue. A German critic (Fritz Hoenig) has indicated Worcester as the prototype of Sedan; at any rate, battles of this kind invariably resulted in failure when entrusted to a "standing" army of the 18th century. But the national armies disappeared at the end of the struggle ; after the Restoration, English political aims became, so far as military activity was con cerned, similar in scope and execution to those of the Continent; and the example of Cromwell and the "New Model," which might have revolutionized military Europe, passed away without having any marked influence on the armies of other nations.
Nine years after Nordlingen, the old Spanish army fought its last and most honourable battle at Rocroi. Its conquerors were the new French troops, whose victory created as great a sensation as Pavia and Crecy had done. In fusing a new military spirit into the formal organization of Gus tavus' system, the French army was now to "set the fashion" for a century. France had been the first Power to revive regular forces, and the famous "Picardie" regiment disputed for pre cedence even with the old tercios. The country had emerged from the confusion of the past century with the foreign and domestic strength of a practically absolute central power. The Fronde con tinued the military history of the army from the end of the Thirty Years' War; and when the period of consolidation was finally closed, all was prepared for the introduction of a "standing army," practically always at war strength, and entirely at the disposal of the sovereign. The reorganization of the military establishments by Louvois may be taken as the formal date at which standing armies came into prominence. (See historical sketch of the French army under FRANCE.) Other Powers rapidly followed the lead of France, for the defects of enlisted troops had become very clear, and the possession of an army always ready for war was an obvious advantage in dynastic politics. The French proprietary system of regiments, and the general scheme of army administration which replaced it, may be taken as typical of the armies of other great Powers in the time of Louis XIV.
29. Character of the Standing Armies.—A peculiar char acter was from the first imparted to the new organizations by the results of the Thirty Years' War. A well-founded horror of mili tary barbarity had the effect of separating the soldier from the civilian by an impassable gulf. The drain of 3o years on the popu lation, resources and finances of almost every country in middle Europe, everywhere limited the size of the new armies; and the decision in 1648 of all questions save those of dynastic interest dictated the nature of their employment. The best soldiers of the time pronounced in favour of small field armies, for in the then state of communications and agriculture large forces proved in practice too cumbrous for good work. In every country, there fore, the army took the form of a professional body, nearly though not quite independent of extra recruits for war, set apart entirely from all contact with civil life, rigidly restricted as to conduct in peace and war, and employed mostly in the "maintenance" of their superiors' private quarrels. Iron discipline produced splen did tenacity in action and wholesale desertion at all times. In the Seven Years' War, for instance, the Austrians stated that one fifth of their total loss was due to desertion, and Thackeray's Barry Lyndon gives no untrue picture of the life of a soldier under the old regime. Further, since men were costly, rigid economy of their lives in action, and minute care for their feeding and shelter on the march, occupied the attention of their generals. Armies necessarily moved slowly and remained concentrated to facilitate supply and to check desertion, and thus, when a com mander had every unit of his troops within a short ride of his headquarters, there was little need for intermediate general offi cers, and still less for a highly trained staff.
3o. Organization in the 18th Century.—All armies were now almost equal in fighting value, and war tended to be reduced to a set of rules (not principles), since superiority was only to be gained by methods, not by men. Soldiers such as Marlborough, who were superior to these jejune prescriptions, met indeed with uniform success. But the methods of the i8th century failed to receive full illustration, save by the accident of a great captain's direction, even amidst the circumstances for which they were de signed. It is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that they failed, when forced by a new phase of development to cope with events completely beyond their element. The inner organization was not markedly altered. Artillery was still outside the normal organiza tion of the line of battle, though in the period 166o-174o much was done in all countries to improve the material, and above all to turn the personnel into disciplined soldiers. Cavalry was or ganized in regiments and squadrons, and armed with sabre and pistol. Infantry had by 1703 begun to assume its three-deep line formation and the typical weapons of the arm—musket and bay onet. Regiments and battalions were the units of combat as well as of organization. In the fight the company was entirely merged in the higher unit, but as an administrative body it still remained. As for the higher organization, an army consisted simply of a greater or less number of battalions and squadrons, without, as a rule, intermediate commands and groupings. The army was arrayed as a whole in two lines of battle, with the infantry in the centre and the cavalry on the flanks, and an advanced guard; the so-called reserve consisting merely of troops not assigned to the regular commands. It was divided, for command in action, into right and left wings, both of cavalry and infantry, of each line. This was the famous "linear" organization, which in theory produced the maximum effort in the minimum time, but in prac tice, handled by officers whose chief care was to avoid the ex penditure of effort, achieved only negative results. To see its defects one need only suppose a battalion of the first line hard pressed by the enemy. A battalion of the second line was directly behind it, but there was no authority, less than that of the wing commander, which could order it up to support the first. All the conditions of the time were opposed to tactical subdivision, as the term is now understood. But far beyond any faults of or ganization and recruiting, the inherent vice of these armies was, as Machiavelli had pointed out two centuries previously, and as Prussia was to learn to her cost in 1806, that once they were thor oughly defeated, the only thing left to be done was to make peace at once, since there was no other armed force capable of retrieving a failure.
The military career of Frederick the Great is very different from those of his predecessors. With an army organized on the customary system, and trained and equipped, better indeed, but still on the same lines as those of his rivals, the king of Prussia achieved results out of all pro portion to those imagined by contemporary soldiers. It is to his campaigns, therefore, that the student must refer for the real, if usually latent, possibilities of the army of the i8th century. The prime secret of his success lay in the fact that he was his own master, and responsible to no superior for the uses to which he put his men. This position had never, since the introduction of standing armies, been attained by anyone, even Eugene and Leo pold of Dessau being subject to the common restriction ; and with this extraordinary advantage over his opponents, Frederick had further the firmness and ruthless energy of a great com mander. Prussia, moreover, was more strictly organized than other countries, and there was relatively little of that opposition of local authorities to the movement of troops which was conspicu ous in Austria. The military successes of Prussia, therefore, up to 1757, were not primarily due to the system and the formal tac tics, but were the logical outcome of greater energy in the leading, and less friction in the administration, of her armies. But the conditions were totally different in 1758-62, when the full force of the alliance against Prussia developed itself in four theatres of war. Frederick was driven back to the old methods of making war, and his men were no longer the soldiers of Leuthen and Hohenfriedberg. If discipline was severe before, it was merci less then ; the king obtained men by force and fraud from every part of Germany, and had both to repress and to train them in the face of the enemy. That under such conditions, and with such men, the weaker party finally emerged triumphant was indeed a startling phenomenon. Yet its result for soldiers was not the production of the national army, though the dynastic forces had once more shown themselves incapable of compassing decisive victories : nor yet the removal of the barrier between army and people, for the operations of Frederick's recruiting agents made a lasting impression, and further, large numbers of men who had thought to make a profession of arms were turned adrift at the end of the war. On the contrary, all that the great and pro longed tour de force of these years produced was a tendency, quite in the spirit of the age, to make a formal system out of the art of war. Better working and better methods were less sought after than systematization of the special practices of the most successful commanders. Thus Frederick's methods, since 1758 essentially the same as those of others, were taken as the basis of the science now for the first time called "strategy," the fact that his opponents had also practised it without success being strangely ignored. Along with this came a mania for imitation. Prussian drill, uni forms and hair-powder were slavishly copied by every State, and for the next 20 years, and especially when the war-trained officers and men had left active service, the purest pedantry reigned in all the armies of Europe, including that of Prussia. One of the ablest of Frederick's subordinates wrote a book in which he urged that the cadence of the infantry step should be increased by one pace per minute. The only exceptions to the universal prevalence of this spirit were in the Austrian army, which was saved from atrophy by its Turkish wars, and in a few British and French troops who served in the American War of Independence. The British regiments were sent to die of fever in the West Indies; when the storm of the French Revolution broke over Europe, the Austrian army was the only stable element of resistance.
Very different were the armies of the Revolution. The French volunteers of 1792 were a force by which the routine generals of the enemy, working with instru ments and by rules designed for other conditions, were completely puzzled, and France gained a short respite. The year 1793 wit nessed the most remarkable event that is recorded in the history of armies. Raw enthusiasm was replaced, after the disasters and defections which marked the beginning of the campaign, by a systematic and unsparing conscription, and the masses of men thus enrolled, inspired by ardent patriotism and directed by the ferocious energy of the Committee of Public Safety, met the disciplined formalists with an opposition before which the at tack completely collapsed. It was less marvellous in fact than in appearance that this should be so. Not to mention the influence of pedantry and senility on the course of the operations, it may be admitted that Frederick and his army at their best would have been unable to accomplish the downfall of the now thoroughly roused French. Tactically, the fire of the regulars' line caused the Revolutionary levies to melt away by thousands, but men were ready to fill the gaps. No complicated supply system bound the French to magazines and fortresses, for Europe could once more feed an army without convoys, and roads were now good and numerous. No fear of desertion kept them concentrated under canvas, for each man was personally Concerned with the issue. If the allies tried to oppose them on an equal front, they were weak at all points, and the old organization had no provision for the working of a scattered army. While ten victorious cam paigns had not carried Marlborough nearer to Paris than some marches beyond the Sambre, two campaigns now carried a French army to within a few miles of Vienna. It was obvious that, before such forces and such mobility, the old system was doomed, and with each successive failure the old armies became more dis couraged. Napoleon's victories finally closed this chapter of mili tary development, and by 1808 the only army left to represent it was the British. Even to this the Peninsular War opened a line of progress, which, if different in many essentials from Conti nental practice, was in any case much more than a copy of an obsolete model.
In 1793, at a moment when the dan ger to France was so great as to produce the rigorous emergency methods of the Reign of Terror, the combined enemies of the Republic had less than 300,00o men in the field between Basle and Dunkirk. On the other hand, the call of the "country in dan ger" produced more than four times this number of men for the the French armies within a few months. Louis XIV., even when all France had been awakened to warlike enthusiasm by a similar threat (1709), had not been able to put in the field more than one fifth of this force. The methods of the great war minister Carnot were enforced by the ruthless committee, and when men's lives were safer before the bayonets of the allies than before the civil tribunals at home, there was no difficulty in enlisting the whole military spirit of France. There is therefore not much to be said as to the earliest application of the conscription, at least as re gards its formal working, since any system possessing elasticity would equally have served the purpose. In the meanwhile, the older plans of organization had proved inadequate for dealing with such imposing masses of men. Even with disciplined soldiers they had long been known as applicable only to small armies, and the deficiencies of the French, with their consequences in tactics and strategy, soon produced the first illustrations of modern methods. Unable to meet the allies in the plain, they fought in broken ground and on the widest possible front. This of course produced decentralization and subdivision; the army was therefore consti tuted in a number of divisions, each of two or more brigades with cavalry and artillery sufficient for its own needs. It was even more important that each divisional general, with his own staff, should be a real commander, and not merely the supervisor of a section of the line of battle, for he was almost in the position that a commander-in-chief had formerly held. The need of gen erals was easily supplied when there was so wide a field of selec tion. For the allies the mere adoption of new forms was without result, since it was contrary both to tradition and to existing or ganization. The attempts which were made in this direction did not tend to mitigate the evils of inferior numbers and moral. The French soon followed up the divisional system with the further or ganization of groups of divisions under specially selected general officers; this again quickly developed into the modern army corps.
Revolutionary government, however, gave way in a few years to more ordinary institutions, and the spirit of French politics had become that of aggrandizement in the name of liberty. The ruthless application of the new principle of masses had been terribly costly, and the disasters of 1799 reawak ened in the mass of the people the old dislike of war and service. Even before this it had been found necessary to frame a new act, the famous law proposed by Gen. Jourdan (1798). With this the conscription for general service began. The legal term of five years was so far exceeded that the service came to be looked upon as a career, or servitude, for life; it was therefore both unavoid able and profitable to admit substitutes. Even in 1806 one quar ter of Napoleon's conscripts failed to come up for duty. The Grande Armee thus from its inception contained elements of doubt ful value, and only the tradition of victory and the 50% of veter ans still serving aided the genius of Napoleon to win the brilliant victories of 1805 and 1806. But these veterans were gradually eliminated by bloodshed and service exposure, and when, after the peace of Tilsit, "French" armies began to be recruited from all sorts of nations, decay had set in. As early as 1806 the em peror had had to "anticipate" the conscription, that is, call up the conscripts before their time, and by 1810 the percentage of ab sentees in France had grown to about 8o, the remainder being largely those who lacked courage to oppose the authorities. Finally, the armies of Napoleon became masses of men of all nations fight ing even more unwillingly than the armies of the old regime. Little success attended the emperor's attempt to convert a "nation in arms" into a great dynastic army. Considered as such, it had even fewer elements of solidity than the standing armies of the i8th century, for it lacked the discipline which had made the regiments of Frederick invincible. After 1812 it was attacked by huge armies of patriots which possessed advantages of organization and skil ful direction that the levee en masse of 1793 had lacked. Only the genius and magnificent tenacity of Napoleon staved off for a time the inevitable debacle.
In 1805–o6, when the older spirit of the Revolution was already represented by one-half only of French soldiers, the actual steadiness and manoeuvring power of the Grande Armee had attained its highest level. The army at this time was organized into brigades, divisions and corps, the last-named unit being as a rule a marshal's command, and always complete as a small army with all the necessary arms and services. Several such corps (usually of unequal strength) formed the army. The greatest weakness of the organization, which was in other respects most pliant and adaptable, was the want of good staff officers. The emperor had so far cowed his marshals that few of them could take the slightest individual responsibility, and the combatant staff-officers remained, as they had been in the i8th century, either confidential clerks or merely gallopers. No one but a Napoleon could have managed huge armies upon these terms; in fact the marshals, from Berthier downwards, generally failed when in independent commands. Of the three arms, in fantry and cavalry regiments were organized in much the same way as in Frederick's day, though tactical methods were very dif ferent and discipline far inferior. The greatest advance had taken place in the artillery service. Field and horse batteries, as organ ized and disciplined units, had come into general use during the Revolutionary wars, and the division, corps and army commanders had always batteries assigned to their several commands as a per manent and integral part of the fighting troops. Napoleon him self, and his brilliant artillery officers Senarmont and Drouot, brought the arm to such a pitch of efficiency that it enabled him to win splendid victories almost by its own action. As a typical organization we may take the 3rd corps of Marshal Davout in 1806. This was formed of the following troops : Cavalry brigade—Gen. Vialannes—three regiments, i,538 men. Corps artillery, 12 guns.
ist Division—Gen. Morand—five infantry regiments in three brigades, 12 guns, 50,820 men.
2nd Division—Gen. Friant—five regiments in three brigades, 8 guns, 8,758 men.
3rd Division—Gen. Gudin—four regiments in three brigades, 12 guns,
men.
comparison of this ordre de bataille with that of a 1914 army corps will show that the general idea of corps organization underwent but slight modification between the days of Napoleon and the World War. Yet the spirit of 18o6 and that of a century later were essentially different, and the story of the development of this difference through the i9th century is vital to an under standing of the military nature of the World War.
The Prussian defeat at Jena was followed by a national surrender so abject as to prove con clusively the eternal truth : that a divorce of armies from national interests is fatal to national well-being. But the oppression of the victors soon began to produce a spirit of ardent patriotism which, carefully directed by a small band of able soldiers, led in the end to a national uprising of a steadier and more lasting kind than that of the French Revolution. Prussia was compelled, by the rigorous treaty of peace, to keep only a small force under arms, and cir cumstances thus drove her into the path of military development which she subsequently followed. The stipulation of the treaty was evaded by the Krumper system, by which men were passed through the ranks as hastily as possible and dismissed to the re serve, their places being taken by recruits. The regimental estab lishments were therefore mere cadres, and the personnel, recruited by universal service with few exemptions, ever-changing. This system depended on the willingness of the reserves to come up when called upon, and the arrogance of the French was quite sufficient to ensure this. The denouement of the Napoleonic wars came too swiftly for the full development of the armed strength of Prussia on these lines; and at the outbreak of the Wars of Liberation a newly formed Landwehr and numerous volunteer corps took the field with no more training than the French had had in 1793. Still, the principles of universal service (allgemeine W ehrp flicht) and of the army reserve were, for the first time in modern history, systematically put into action, and military de velopment during the 19th century concerned itself more with the consolidation of the Krumper system than with the creation of another. The debut of the new Prussian army was most unsuc cessful, for Napoleon had now attained the highest point of soldierly skill, and managed to inflict heavy defeats on the allies. But the Prussians were not discouraged; like the French in
they took to broken ground, and managed to win combats against all leaders opposed to them except Napoleon himself. The Russian army formed a solid background for the Prussians, and in the end Austria joined the coalition. Reconstituted on modern lines, the Austrian army in 1813, except in the higher leading, was probably the best organized on the Continent. After three desperate cam paigns the Napoleonic regime came to an end, and men felt that there would be no such struggle again in their lifetime. Military Europe settled down into grooves along which it ran till 1866. France, exhausted of its manhood, sought a field for military ac tivities in colonial wars waged by long-service troops. The con scription was still in force, but the citizens served most unwillingly, and substitution produced a professional army, which as usual became a dynastic tool. Austria, always menaced with foreign war and internal disorder, maintained the best army in Europe. The British army, though employed far differently, retained sub stantially the Peninsular system.
The events of 1815-59 showed that such long-service armies were incom parably the best form of military machine for the purpose of giv ing expression to a hostile "view" (not "feeling"). Austrian armies triumphed in Italy, French armies in Spain, Belgium, Algeria, Italy and Russia, British in innumerable and exacting colonial wars. Only the Prussian forces retained the characteristics of the levies of 1813, and the enthusiasm which had carried these through Leip zig and the other great battles was hardly to be expected of their sons, ranged on the side of despotism in the troubled times of 1848-50. But the principle was not permitted to die out. The Bronnzell-Olmutz incident of 185o (see SEVEN WEEKS' WAR) showed that the organization of 1813 was defective, and this was altered in spite of the fiercest opposition of all classes. Soon afterwards, and before the new Prussian army proved itself on a great battlefield, the American Civil War, a fiercer struggle than any of those which followed it in Europe, illustrated the capabili ties and the weaknesses of voluntary-service troops. Here the hos tile "view" was replaced by a hostile "feeling," and the battles of the disciplined enthusiasts on either side were of a very different kind from those of contemporary Europe. Thus the great struggle in North America passed without affecting seriously the war ideas and preparations of Europe. The weakness of the staff work with which both sides were credited helped further to confirm the belief of the Prussians in their system, and in this instance they were justified by the immense superiority of their own general staff to that of any army in existence. It was in this particular that a corps of 187o differed so essentially from a corps of Na poleon's time. The formal organization had not been altered save as the varying relative importance of the separate arms had dic tated. The almost intangible spirit which animates the members of a general staff causes them not merely to "think"—that was always in the quartermaster-general's department—but to "think alike," so that a few simple orders called "directives" sufficed to set armies in motion with a definite purpose before them, whereas formerly elaborate and detailed plans of battle had to be devised and distributed in order to achieve the object in view. A com parison of the number of orders and letters written by a marshal and by his chief of staff in Napoleon's time with similar docu ments in 187o indicates clearly the changed position of the staff. In the Grande Armee and in the French army of 187o the officers of the general staff were often absent entirely from the scene of action. In Prussia the new staff system produced a far different result—indeed, the staff, rather than the Prussian military sys tem, was the actual victor of 187o. Still, the system would prob ably have conquered in the end in any case, and other nations, con vinced by events that their departure from the ideal of 1813, however convenient formerly, was no longer justified, promptly copied Prussia as exactly, and, as a matter of fact, as slavishly, as they had done after the Seven Years' War. (C. F. A.) 38. General Tendencies.—The Franco-German War of 187o-71 marks a very definite stage in the evolution of armies. The striking successes of the short-service German army over a professional long-service army, reputed the finest in Europe at the time, ushered in a new era of development, which was to last for nearly 43 years, that is right down to the outbreak of the World War. As a result of the 187o campaign the armies of Europe at once set out to re-model themselves on the pattern which Prussia had created. The period of reform may be put down as from about 1873 to 189o. For the following 25 years—a time of tense struggle during peace for superiority in the next war—the general pattern of the machine was unchanged, though its power and effi ciency were progressively improved. Germany set the pace and other nations had perforce to follow. The elements of the system under which the principal armies of the world Japan too fol lowed the German model—were developed in this period, its mer its and its disadvantages, require some examination.
The first principle was the substitution of universal liability to personal service in place of the methods of conscription formerly practised, which selected by lot a proportion of the manhood of the nation and permitted those on whom the lot had fallen to hire substitutes. The practical result of the old system was to produce an army composed partly of professional soldiers, each of whom was paid by several successive conscripts to discharge their obligations, and partly of conscripts who had no particular taste for soldier ing but who were too poor to procure substitutes. Thus only a comparatively small part of the nation was trained to war and the well-to-do class usually escaped service altogether. Under the Prussian system now adopted by all the principal armies no sub stitution whatever was allowed. Only rejection by a medical board could relieve a man from his obligation to service between certain ages. When the numbers of the physically fit in the an nual contingent reaching military age exceeded those required to fill the complement of the active army, certain classes were chosen for immediate transfer to the reserves without a period of train ing in the standing army or navy. Such choice was normally made on the grounds of family circumstances : i.e., relief was given to those on whom—as the sole supporters of a family, for example— the burden of active military service in peacetime would press most hardly. There was one other remission : attainment of a cer tain standard of education conferred the privilege of a shortened period of active service followed by transfer to the reserve as an officer or non-commissioned officer. The system was, in theory, at least, an entirely democratic one, based on the equal personal service in the military forces of every citizen, irrespective of his rank or wealth. It was certainly an advance on the former system, which allowed service by deputy.
The second principle was that the period of active service in the standing army should be as short as was consistent with effi cient training, so that the maximum numbers could be instructed and passed to the reserve with the minimum of cost, and also that the able-bodied strength of the nation should be withdrawn from industry for as brief a time as possible. This period of ac tive service varied in the different armies and at different times, and often also according to the arm of the service. The average period in the principal Continental armies at the outbreak of the World War may be taken as three years. Thus in France it was three years for all arms, in Germany and Austria-Hungary three years for cavalry and horse artillery and two years for other arms, in Russia three years for infantry and artillery and four years for other arms. This period, which was one of hard and intensive training, was followed by a period of from five to seven years in the first class of the reserve, the role of which was to bring the standing army up to war strength on mobilization. From this category men passed for a further five years or so to the second class of the reserve, used in war either to form second-line units or to replace casualties in the field army. The reserves were kept up to date by occasional short periods of training. The remainder of the obligation to military service was usually discharged in an auxiliary force—Landsturm in Germany, Territorial Army in France, Opolclzenie in Russia—intended mainly for home defence or for duties in the area behind the front-line armies. As a gen eral average it may be taken that a man's liability to service lasted from the age of 20 to the age of 45, of which term three years were spent in the active army, six years in the first reserve, six years in the second reserve, and the remainder in some form of auxiliary or home-defence force. Thus the standing army and its first reserve, which together constituted the first line or field army in war, comprised the able-bodied manhood of the nation between the ages of 20 and 3o. Behind this stood a second line of the older men from 3o to 45. The above figures are a generali zation and do not correspond exactly with the organization or terms of service of any one nation.
The third principle lay in the elaboration of the arrangements for rapid mobilization in the event of war. As explained above, the essence of the system lay in a comparatively small short service standing army with large reserves of trained men. The ad vantage to be gained by the army which could most quickly and smoothly expand from a peace footing to a war footing was obvious, and was sought by every means that the staff could devise. The gain of even a f ew.hours was of the utmost value, the gain of a day might be decisive. To such a pitch of nicety were the calculations eventually brought that a nation could hardly afford to delay even a single hour, once a rival had issued orders to mobilize. This was clearly seen in the crisis of July 1914. The order to mobilize became in fact equivalent to an opening of hos tilities. A corollary to this need for rapid mobilization was the "territorialization" of the armed forces. Time would be saved if the reserves required to complete a formation to war strength normally resided in the same area in which the formation was sta tioned in peace. Hence arose a system by which each army corps had a district allotted to it where it was permanently stationed and recruited and where it mobilized for war. The army corps district was usually subdivided into divisional areas, which again were parcelled out into brigade and regimental areas. This system had obviously many advantages. It was economical of time on mobilization and economical of money in peace, since it involved the minimum of expense in travelling; also it caused the least dis location to those called up for service, who usually discharged their obligation in their own district, close to home. There were certain exceptions to this territorial principle, due often to the presence in a nation of an alien population not yet wholly ab sorbed in the nation nor fully trusted. Thus in Germany the prin ciple was not extended to Alsace-Lorraine, and in Russia, where the system of recruiting was only partially territorial, Jews, Poles and other non-Russians were distributed throughout the army.
The efficient working of the system required a corps of officers who made the army their career for life. The need to train suc cessive contingents of recruits to the complicated business of modern war in a short term imposed on the officers a high stand ard of professional capacity and an unremitting industry—the latter a quality hardly associated hitherto with the profession of arms in peace. They were compensated for small pay and long hours of work by an exaggerated social status, especially in Ger many, where the cult of military power most flourished. To assist the officers in the instruction of the rank and file was a body of long-service non-commissioned officers, selected from those of the annual contingent who showed an aptitude for military life and volunteered to remain in the active army after their obligatory period of service had expired. They were attracted by increased pay and privileges and by the promise of subsequent civil employ ment in a Government post. Lastly, the armies produced under this modern system called for a highly educated (in the military sense) staff. The organization in peace, and the movement and supply in the field, of such masses of men became a complex and highly technical business, and made greater demands on the staff than ever before. In all armies the staff system was overhauled, and great improvements were made in the training of staff officers.
The above is a brief outline of the chief features of the method of raising armies which is often referred to as "The Nation in Arms." So far as the rank and file were concerned, it aimed at quantity rather than quality : the "veteran" professional soldier practically vanished from the drill-grounds, the barrack-rooms and the battle fields of Europe. On the other hand, those taken for service included the best of the nation's manhood; and in their three years' intensive training they had forced into them as much military knowledge as the old-type professional soldier absorbed in his many years with the colours. There was naturally bound to be in armies raised under the compulsory system a certain unre liable element, which would fail under the stresses of war. But in a brave and patriotic nation like the Germans, who invented the system, such element was small and could be coerced by a rigid discipline. The moral advantage which the volunteer is supposed to hold over the pressed man has little application to armies like these, which embody the whole manhood of a nation. Financially, the system enabled far larger numbers to be kept under arms and trained to war than would have been possible under any voluntary system. The pay of the soldier was practically a negligible item, and there was not the necessity to study his comfort in the same way as in a voluntary army, which had to attract its recruits.
Thus the system was on the whole efficient, economical and just. The ethical arguments against compulsory service—e.g., that it promotes wars and a warlike spirit or that it hampers industrial progress—are dealt with elsewhere. (See CONSCRIPTION.) From the purely military point of view, however, there were certain de fects and difficulties in the Prussian system. The chief of these was the effect on the officers of the hard work and almost unvary ing routine which the training of such large masses imposed. The great majority of regimental officers passed their whole military life in the same garrison town, instructing at high pressure suc cessive batches of recruits in the details of military service. Such officers had inevitably a narrow mental outlook and tended to lose initiative and the ability to improvise, two qualities which the conditions of active service—the march, the bivouac and the battlefield—continually demand. Aus Kleine Garnison, a book which brought its author, an officer of the German army, court martial and imprisonment a few years before the war, gives a picture drawn from life of the monotony and evils of life in a small garrison town. Kuprin's Poyedinok (The Duel) gives an even darker impression of a similar garrison in Russia.
The reserve officer, of whom large numbers were, required on mobilization to complete the field army and to form second-line units, presented a different problem. The chief source from which they were drawn was the "one-year volunteer"; i.e., those who, in consideration of having reached a certain educational standard, served for one year only in the ranks and then became officers of the reserve, in which capacity they were called up for short periods of training. This class naturally comprised some of the best of the nation. But their military training was inadequate to make them really efficient officers, while their superior intelligence and education often led them to dislike military life and to de spise the professional officer. In Russia, for instance, the intel ligenzia class, from which a large proportion of the reserve officers were drawn, was frankly anti-militaristic and served with reluc tance. A certain number of commissions in the reserve of officers were given to men who had served long terms as non-commis sioned officers in the standing army. This class—the retired ser geant-major—did not usually produce a good type of officer, but was useful for work in depots and in garrison units. The problem of finding sufficient officers to expand these huge national armies in war is obviously one of their principal difficulties, and is inher ent in any system which makes numerical strength its main ob jective. Good non-commissioned officers were also difficult to secure in sufficient numbers, and the low-class tyrannical non commissioned officer who abused his power constituted one of the most objectionable features of compulsory armies. The difficulty of finding non-commissioned officers was increased when the na tion had colonial possessions to be defended. Such oversea posses sions had to be garrisoned by forces raised on a professional and voluntary basis, short-service armies of the type described being quite unfitted for garrison work abroad. These colonial forces absorbed many men who took up soldiering as a profession and who would otherwise have been available as non-commissioned officers in the home army. In Russia the difficulties of filling the establishment of non-commissioned officers was especially acute owing to the low standard of education of the nation.
To sum up, the difference between the armies thus evolved in Europe at the end of the 19th century and those which they re placed can perhaps best be expressed by the terms "machine made" and "hand-made." The change was more or less contem porary with the substitution in the industrial world of the ma chine-made for the hand-made article. Like the machine-made article in commerce, the machine-made soldier had the advantages of cheapness and rapidity of production, but lacked some of the finish and polish of the hand-made article. For a powerful in dictment of the objectionable features of the system in Germany, the student may consult a novel published in Germany not long before the war—Jena oder Sedan. He may also read the story of the "Zabern incident" in 1913.
41. Armies up to the World War.—The chief feature of the quarter of a century from 1890 to 1914, was the contest between the principal European armies for predominance in numbers. Thus Germany, which in 1874 had a peace establishment not much over 400,00o, had by 1914 one of 850,00o: whereas in 187o she had put into the field 15 army corps, by 1914 she had ready 25 active corps and nearly as many reserve corps. She had available for war over 4,000,000 trained men. France struggled desperately to hold the pace set by Germany; with her smaller population she was in the position of a runner who has to exert every nerve to keep at the shoulder of his rival whom he sees running easily within himself. She trained every available man, with very few exemptions, while Germany could still afford to exempt from active service nearly half of the annual contingent passed med ically fit. France's law of military service of 1913 was practically the last spurt of which she was capable ; it increased the period of active service from two years to three and the total liability to service from 25 years to 28. Thus in order to maintain something like equality both in peace and in war strength with Germany, her population was called on to serve one year longer in the active army and two years longer in the reserve—three more years mili tary service in all. Austria-Hungary's effort was approximately similar to Germany's; her peace establishment was close on 500,000 and her war strength 2,000,00o. Russia with her almost inexhaustible resources in men trained a smaller proportion of her population than the other great nations, yet had a peace strength of nearly 1,500,00o and about 6,000,000 trained men ulti mately available for war. The smaller armies of Europe were all cast in the same mould, and all trained to arms the greater part of the able-bodied manhood of their nations.
Of all the states which maintained standing armies of any size or power, only Great Britain and the United States maintained the principle of voluntary enlistment. It was the temperament of these peoples that insisted on avoiding compulsion for military service, but it was the fact that sea power, not military power, was their first line of defence that made this insistence possible without immediate disaster. For Great Britain, moreover, the principal military problem was, at least up to the beginning of the 20th century, that of maintaining large garrisons of regular troops in her overseas possessions. For this a voluntary long-service army was a better and more comfortable instrument than an army raised on the Continental system. The main trouble about a voluntary army is its expense, since the enlistment of recruits depends on high pay and attractive conditions of service. Thus the strength of the military forces tends to be governed by finan cial considerations rather than by the demands of strategy. Again, the hours of duty, the rules of discipline and the circumstances of the soldiers' life have all to be determined with an eye to the supply of recruits. Hence a voluntary soldier cannot be worked so hard and takes longer to learn his trade. A long period of colour-service means small reserves, so that a voluntary army has comparatively little capacity of rapid expansion for war. The British army up to 187o had had practically no reserves, a sol dier's whole term of service—usually about 12 years, often ex tended to 21was with the colours. Under the Cardwell reforms, which began in 187o, steps were taken to build up a reserve, and the normal term of service was eventually fixed at seven years with the colours and five in the reserve. The British second-line force was not, like the second line of Continental armies, com posed of older men who had served in the first line, but of patri otic citizens who voluntarily undertook short periods of training annually, to fit themselves for home defence. This second line was reorganized into the Territorial Force under Mr. Haldane's administration in 1908. (See GREAT BRITAIN.) In the last ten years or so before the outbreak of the World War a considerable body of military opinion—of which Field-Marshal Lord Roberts was the protagonist—urged on the British nation the abandon ment of the voluntary principle and the adoption of universal service to meet the increasing menace of German militarism in Europe. But the difficulties of combining within the national budget a voluntary army for service abroad with a compulsory force for home service were great, and none of the schemes pro duced ever had a chance of acceptance by the nation at large, which has a deep-rooted dislike and mistrust of military service.
The two principal wars of the period under review may be said to have had a local rather than a general influence on the develop ment of armies. The experience of the Boer War (1899-1902) was invaluable to the British army, and led up to the reforms which enabled it to put into the field in 1914 an army equal in equipment and organization, and superior in training, to any in Europe. It also brought Dominion forces into the field in support of the mother country for the first time, and thus inaugurated the preparations which made possible the military effort of the Dominions 15 years later. The Russo-Japanese War in Manchuria (1904-05) similarly resulted in great efforts in Russia to bring the army up to date. But neither campaign was held by Conti nental experts to justify any serious modification in organization or theory. The operations in Manchuria were considered a tri umph for German methods, on which the Japanese army had formed itself. The warning given by the protracted nature of the battles, and by the sluggishness of the operations generally, passed unheeded.
Developments in Armament and Equipment.—Mean while weapons and warlike material were being rapidly improved by the discoveries of science. The invention of smokeless powder changed the whole appearance of the battlefield ; the small-bore magazine rifle more than doubled the volume and accuracy of infantry fire; the mitrailleuse of 1870 developed into the modern machine gun, the deadly power of which was recognized only by a few before the World War; and the artillery increased in range, calibre and rapidity of fire. The effects of the petrol (gas olene) engine were only beginning to be suspected when the World War broke out; armies still moved on their feet and were served mainly by horsed transport ; the air arm was in its infancy. The principal nations watched each other so jealously that it was diffi cult for any of them to obtain any decided advantage in armament over its rivals. But armies tended to cultivate proficiency in one particular weapon according to the national traditions and temper ament. Thus the French were justly proud of the technical supe riority of their quick-firing artillery; the Germans had soonest realized the potentialities of the machine gun; the British rifle fire was in volume and accuracy far above that of Continental nations; while the Russians still wistfully quoted the maxim of Suvorov : "The bullet is a fool; the bayonet only is wise." Such were the armies which the spirit of Prussia—ruthless, efficient but unimaginative—had imposed on Europe when the World War at last blazed out in a kind of passionate protest against a system that made peace almost as hard a military struggle as war. The standard of strength of these armies was primarily a man-power standard ; the aim of each was to place in the field the largest possible host of armed men in the shortest time, and to overwhelm the adversary forthwith by sheer weight of numbers. In such a conception of war minute preparation in peace was held to count for more than generalship in the field, since little manoeuvre was possible once the great masses had been launched to cover every road leading to their objective. The midnight oil of the administrator, who by the scrupulous improve ment of mobilization arrangements or by the skilful manipulation of time-tables of railway movement could snatch half -a-day's ad vantage of time, might do more to win victory than any lightning flash of genius in the battle. It was a theory of brute force against which the French military mind revolted. But the question their strategists put to themselves : "What would Napoleon have done?" had found no very definite answer when 1914 came.
