REGIMENT, a body of troops, whether infantry or cavalry, forming the third subdivision of an army ; the anion of two or more regiments or battalions constituting a brigade, and two or more of the latter making up a grand division or carps darmee. A regiment is com manded by a colonel, a lieutenant-colonel, and a major • and when a regiment is divided into two or more battalions, each these has, at least when complete, its own lieutenant-colonel and major. The word denotes, in general, any government; but it is now applied only to a body of men, indefinite in number, who are subject to military regu lations, and immediately under the control of a colonel. The precise period when bodies of men were so designated for the first time is uncertain, yet no doubt exists that the common application of the term took place in France after the middle of the 16th century.
According to Pere Daniel, first formation of corps of troops corresponding in organisation to the modern regiments occurred in the reign of Henry II. of France ; and that writer states (` Ilistoire de la Milice Francoise; tom. ii., liv. xi) that, very soon after the battle of St. Quintin (1557), in which the Constable de Montmorenci was defeated and nearly all the French infantry was dispersed, that king issued an ordonnance for the institution of seven legions of foot soldiers, each to consist of 6000 men, who were to be raised, or to do duty, in the frontier provinces of the kingdom. Each of these legions, which was commanded by a colonel, was divided into 15 companies, and to each of the latter were appointed a captain, a lieutenant, and an ensign. [Cows:vv.] In this respect the legions differed from those which Francis I. had attempted to raise; for though each of the latter was to have consisted of 6000 men, it was to be commanded by six captains, one of whom only had the title of colonel ; and under each captain there were to be two lieutenants and ten centurions. The legions of Henry II. were never completed to the extent prescribed by the ordonnance, and the number of companies in each was, soon after Its promulgation, reduced to six.
Though these legions bad most of the characteristics of a modern regiment. it appears that they were quite distinct from the bodies of troops which, about the same time, bore this name; and P. Daniel
conceives that the regiments were first formed from the companies, or bands, as they were called, of which, from the time of Francis I., or earlier, to that of Henry II., the infantry of France chiefly consisted: Each of these bands was commanded by a captain, who, according to Brantome, was lustre de camp over his soldiers ; that is, he had no officer above him except the colonel-general of infantry; and the bands were distinguished by the designation of old and new, according to the dates of their formation.
The embodiment of the bands in regiments could not, it is supposed, have been later than 1562, which was in the beginning of the reign of Charles IX.; and Daniel gives in support of this opinion the words of the historians Davila and Daubigne, who, in stating the events of the years 1562 and 1563, mention by name the regiments of Picardy and of Brittany; the former writer, also, in speaking of the renewal of the civil war in 1567, says that the queen sent in haste for the colonels De Brissac and Strozzi with the old regiments. These last are supposed by Daniel to have been the regiments formed of the old bands above mentioned, and to have been so called in contradistinction from others which may have been more recently raised. In proof that regiments then existed independently of the legions, he remarks that, in the registers of the French army for the year 1567, mention is made of an officer who was colonel of the legion of Picardy, and of another who is called colonel of the regiment of Picardy. The regiment of French guards was raised in 1563, by Charles IX., for the defence of his person ; and the legions of Guienne and Dauphine, which had been instituted by Henry II., and disbanded in 1562, were by the same prince restored ,under the name of regiments, the former in 1567 and the latter in 1568. Charles also organised other regiments, and it is probable that during his reign the denomination became general. The word iC77.0, which, according to Sir James Turner (` Pallas Armata,' 1683), was in his time applied by the Spaniards to a regiment, seems to indicate that the numerical strength of the latter was considered as equal to the third part of that of some other body, as a legion.