SOLDIER is a term applied to every man employed in the military service of a prince or state, but it was at first given to such persons only as were express y en gaged for pay, to follow some chief in his warlike expeditions. Caesar mentions a band of 600 men called " soldurii," who bound themselves to attend their leader in action and to live or die with him (De Bello Gallico, iii. 22), but it does not appear that they served for pay. By some the word has been thought to come from "solidus," the name of a coin under the Roman empire, which may have been oeived as the payment for the service.
In the article Agar, a sketch is given of the origin of standing armies in Europe and in England. The present article treats of the condition of the English sob dier in modern times. Little change seems to have taken place in the pay of the English soldiers between the times of Edward III. and Mary. During the reign of this queen the daily pay of a captain of heavy cavalry was 10s., and of a cavalry soldier Is. 6d. The pay of a captain of light cavalry was 6s., and of a soldier Is. The pay of a captain of foot was O., of a lieutenant 2s., of an ensign Is., and of a foot soldier 8d.; a halber dier and a hackbutter, on horseback, had each Is. daily. In the times of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles I., the pay of the officers was a little raised, but that of a private foot-soldier was still 8d. per day : during the civil wars the pay of the latter was 9d., but in the reign of William III. it was again reduced to 8d. At that time the pay of a private trooper was 2s. 6d., and that of a private dragoon was Is. 6d., including in both cases the allowance for the horse. The pay of the private soldier in later times has by no means been raised in the inverse ratio of the value of money.
While armour was in general use, the common soldiers of England were distin guished only by scarfs or by badges, on which were impressed the arms of their several leaders; but in the reign of Henry VIII. something like a uniform was worn, and it appears that the colour of the men's upper garments was then generally white the soldiers in the king's particular ser vice only, had on their coats a representa tion of the cross of St. George. However, on an army being raised in 1544, the sol diers were ordered to wear coats of blue cloth bordered with red. White cloaks marked with red crosses continued to be the uniform of the troops during the reign of Queen Mary ; but in the time of Elizabeth the infantry soldiers wore a cassock and long trowsers, both of which were of Kentish grey : the cavalry were furnished with red cloaks reaching down to the knee and without sleeves. Grey
coats, with breeches of the same colour, oontinned to be the uniform as late as the end of the reign of William III., but soon after that time red became the general colour for the coats of the British infantry soldiers.
The low condition of the first soldiers in France has been mentioned in the ar ticle INFANTRY : with respect to those of England in the times of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., we have a more favourable account ; for Sir John Smithe, in the pre face to his tract on ' Military (1591), observes that the order and disci pline in the armies during the reigns of those kings were so good, that the men, on being discharged, were never seen to become rogues or to go begging under pretence that they had been soldiers, as, he observes, they now most commonly do. In the preface to his ' Discourses on the Forms and Effects of Weapons' (1590) he complains that, in his time, the com manders of troops serving abroad, instead of publishing regulations for the conduct of the men, gave a few laws artfully tend ing to deter the soldiers from demanding their pay, but iu no way prohibiting them from plundering the people of the coun try : he adds that they esteemed those soldiers to be the best who, by robbery, could live longest without pay. He com plains also that while the commanders were gallant in appearance, and had their purses full of gold, the soldiers were with out armour, ragged, and barefooted ; and that when money was to be received, they used to send the men on desperate enterprises, in order that they might ob tain the pay of those who were killed. He adds, that in the summer before the Earl of Leicester went over (to Holland) the commanders devised a manner of pay ing the soldiers which had never before been heard of; instead of money, the men were paid in provand, under pretence that they knew not how to make purchases ; by which means, the food supplied being of an inferior kind, great part of the sol diers' pay was put in their own pockets. It appears that Queen Elizabeth, on being informed of these abuses, caused the prac tice of paying in provand to be abolished. But subsequently, even in the time of George I., the pay both of officers and private soldiers was frequently postponed for years, and was sometimes entirely withheld. Such injustice no longer exists in the British army : the pay of the sol dier is assured to him by the nation ; and a well-appointed commissariat provides, as far as possible, for his wants white in the field.