Standing army
A standing army is a permanent, often professional,
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History
Ancient history
Mesopotamia
Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the Akkadian Empire, is believed to have formed the first standing professional army.[3][4] Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (ruled 745–727 BC) created Assyria's first standing army.[5][6] Tiglath-Pileser III disbanded militias and instead paid professional soldiers for their services. His army was composed largely of Assyrian soldiers but was supplemented with foreign mercenaries and vassal states. The standing army he created was the most sophisticated administrative and economic institution of its time, and was the engine of Assyrian economy which capitalized on warfare.[7]
Ancient Persia
Cyrus the Great formed the first professional army of Persia. The composition of the army varied and developed in the course of time.[8] The empire's great armies were, like the empire itself, very diverse. Its standing army was composed of Persians (the bravest people of empire according to Herodotus) and Medes. This standing army, which may have been reviewed every year by the king or his representative, is called kāra in the inscriptions.[9] At the heart of this army was its elite guard, The 10,000 Immortals. Herodotus describe that if any of these guardsmen drops out owing to death or disease, a substitute is immediately supplied and the number again filled.[10] Thousands of these 10,000 guardsmen composed the royal bodyguards in the palace, their insignia were golden apples or pomegranates at the butts of their spears (accordingly they are named “apple-bearers” by Heraclides Cumaeus).[9]
Ancient Greece
In ancient Greece, the city-states' (poleis) armies were essentially drafted citizen militias.[11] The exception was in ancient Sparta, which had a standing army that trained year-round (and not only in summertime). Through the 5th century, they comprised the only professional soldiers in ancient Greece, aside from hired mercenaries. However, the Spartan army commonly consisted of helots (serfs), who considerably outnumbered the Spartiates, as well as numerous allies of Sparta.[12]
Philip II of Macedon instituted the first true professional Hellenic army, with soldiers and cavalrymen paid for their service year-round, rather than a militia of men who mostly farmed the land for subsistence and occasionally mustered for campaigns.[11]
Ancient China
The Western Zhou maintained a standing army, enabling them to effectively control other city states and spread their influence.[13] Unlike the Western Zhou, the Eastern Zhou initially did not have a standing army. Instead they drafted militias from around 150 city states. While the Eastern Zhao did not initially maintain a standing army, the state of Jin became the first to do so in 678 BCE.[13] The first professional army in China was established by the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE, which ushered Imperial China.[14] Under the Qin dynasty, wars were fought by trained vocational soldiers instead of relying on temporary soldiers.[15]
Ancient India
In
Ancient Rome
Under the reign of
Post-classical history
Ottoman Empire
The first modern standing armies on European soil during the Middle Ages were the
France
The first Christian standing army since the fall of the Western Roman Empire to be paid with regular wages, instead of feudal levies, was established by King Charles VII of France in the 1430s while the Hundred Years' War was still raging. As he realized that France needed professional reliable troops for ongoing and future conflicts, units were raised by issuing "ordonnances" to govern their length of service, composition and payment. These compagnies d'ordonnance formed the core of the French gendarmes that dominated European battlefields in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. They were stationed throughout France and summoned into larger armies when needed. Provisions were also made for franc-archers and foot soldiers raised from the non-noble classes, but those units were disbanded at the end of the Hundred Years' War.[21]
The bulk of the infantry for warfare was still provided by urban or provincial militias, raised from an area or city to fight locally and named for their recruiting grounds. Gradually these units became more permanent, and in the 1480s, Swiss instructors were recruited and some of the 'bandes' (militia) were combined to form temporary 'legions' of up to 9,000 men. The men would be paid and contracted and would receive training.
Henry II further regularised the French army by forming standing infantry regiments to replace the militia structure. The first, the Régiments de Picardie, Piémont, Navarre and Champagne, were called Les Vieux Corps (The Old Corps). It was normal policy to disband regiments after a war was over to save costs. The Vieux Corps and the King's own Household Troops (the Maison militaire du roi de France) were the only survivors.
Hungary
The Black Army, established in 1462 by Hungarian King, Matthias Hunyadi was the first Central/Eastern European standing army.[22] However, while the Black Army was certainly the first standing field army in that part of Europe, Hungary in fact had maintained a permanent army in the form of garrisons of border fortresses since the 1420s.[23]
Matthias recognized the importance and key role of early
Songhai Empire
In West Africa, the
Majapahit Empire
The Majapahit thalassocracy was recorded by a Chinese observer as having 30,000 full-time professional troops, whose soldiers and commanders were paid in gold. This shows the existence of a standing army, an achievement that only a handful of Southeast Asian empires could hope to achieve.[27]: 185 [28]: 467 In addition to these professional soldiers, Majapahit was strengthened by troops from subordinate countries and regional leaders.[29]: 277 As was common in Southeast Asia, Majapahit also used a levy system, in fact, the majority of the Majapahit troops were a levy.[30]: 111–113
Modern history
Spain
The
England and Great Britain
Prior to the influence of
The
Nervous at the power such a large force afforded the king whilst under his personal command, Parliament reduced the cadre to 7,000 in 1697. Scotland and Ireland had theoretically separate military establishments, but they were de facto merged with the English force. The Bill of Rights 1689 officially reserved authority over a standing army to Parliament, not the king.[33][34]
In his influential work The Wealth of Nations (1776), economist Adam Smith comments that standing armies are a sign of modernizing society, as modern warfare requires the increased skill and discipline of regularly trained standing armies.[35]
United States
In the British
See also
- Regular army
- List of militaries by country
- List of countries by number of military and paramilitary personnel
- List of armies by country
References
- ^ ISBN 0-684-84489-3
- ^ "Standing army | Definition of Standing army at Dictionary.com". ORIGIN OF STANDING ARMY. Retrieved 2021-04-20.
First recorded in 1595–1605
- ^ "First standing army". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 2021-01-07.
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- ^ a b Schmitt, Rüdiger. "ACHAEMENID DYNASTY, I/4, pp. 414-426". Encyclopædia Iranica.
- ISBN 978-1-57506-031-6.
- ^ a b The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature. Werner. 1893.
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- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-935174-9.
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- ^ ISBN 978-1-61069-403-2.
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- ISBN 978-1-317-58691-3.
- ^ a b Christopher J. Fuhrmann, Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 104–05, 239–40.
- ISBN 0-688-08093-6.
- ISBN 0-8050-4081-1.
- ^ Trevor N. Dupuy, Harper Encyclopedia of Military History (1993)
- ISBN 9786155476839.
- ^ Palosfalvi, Tamas – From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman-Hungarian Warfare, 1389–1526, Brill (September 20, 2018), pg.32
- ISBN 9780195334036. Retrieved 10 August 2013.
- ^ Anthony Tihamer Komjathy (1982). "A thousand years of the Hungarian art of war". Toronto, ON, Canada: Rakoczi Press. pp. 35–36. Archived from the original on 26 January 2011. Retrieved 11 October 2010.
- ^ Thornton, John K.. Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (Warfare and History) (Kindle Locations 871–872). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
- ISBN 9789971695583.
- ^ Miksic, John N.; Goh, Geok Yian (2017). Ancient Southeast Asia. London: Routledge.
- ISBN 981-4155-67-5.
- ISBN 978-623-00-1741-4.
- ^ Lynch, John. The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1578–1700 Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992. Page 117.
- ^ Lord Macaulay The History of England from the accession of James the Second (C.H. Firth ed. 1913), 1:136–38.
- ^ David G. Chandler, ed., The Oxford history of the British army (2003), pp. 46–57.
- ^ Correlli Barnett, Britain and her army, 1509–1970: a military, political and social survey (1970) pp 90–98, 110–25.
- ^ Smith, Adam. (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations Book 5. Chapter 1. Part 1.[1]
- TeachingHistory.org, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Mediaat George Mason University.
- ^ Dawes, Thomas. An Oration Delivered March 5, 1781, at the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March 1770, pp. 14–15, printed by Thomas and John Fleet, Boston, 1781.
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- ISBN 0-684-80761-0.
- ISBN 978-1-84176-466-5.