Standing army

Short description: Permanent army composed of full-time career soldiers or conscripts

"Standing Army" redirects here. For the 2010 documentary film, see Standing Army (film).

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A standing army is a permanent, often professional, army. It is composed of full-time soldiers who may be either career soldiers or conscripts. It differs from army reserves, who are enrolled for the long term, but activated only during wars or natural disasters, and temporary armies, which are raised from the civilian population only during a war or threat of war, and disbanded once the war or threat is over. Standing armies tend to be better equipped, better trained, and better prepared for emergencies, defensive deterrence, and particularly, wars.[1] The term dates from approximately 1603, although the phenomenon it describes is much older.[2][3]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 1.1 Ancient history
* 1.1.1 Mesopotamia
* 1.1.2 Ancient Persia
* 1.1.3 Ancient Greece
* 1.1.4 Ancient China
* 1.1.5 Ancient India
* 1.1.6 Ancient Rome
* 1.2 Post-classical history
* 1.2.1 Ottoman Empire
* 1.2.2 France
* 1.2.3 Hungary
* 1.2.4 Songhai Empire
* 1.2.5 Majapahit Empire
* 1.2.6 Russia
* 1.2.7 Spain
* 1.2.8 England and Great Britain
* 1.2.9 United States
* 2 See also
* 3 References

## History

### Ancient history

#### Mesopotamia

Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the Akkadian Empire, is believed to have formed the first standing professional army.[4][5] Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (ruled 745–727 BC) created Assyria's first standing army.[6][7] 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 it was the engine of the Assyrian economy, which capitalized on warfare.[8]

#### Ancient Persia

Cyrus the Great formed the first professional army of Persia. The composition of the army varied and evolved.[9] The empire's great armies were, like the empire itself, very diverse. Its standing army was composed of Persians (the bravest people of the empire, according to Herodotus) and Medes. This standing army, which may have been reviewed annually by the king or his representative, is referred to as kāra in the inscriptions.[10] At the heart of this army was its elite guard, the 10,000 Immortals. Herodotus describes that if any of these guardsmen drops out owing to death or disease, a substitute is immediately supplied and the number again filled.[11] 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).[10]

#### Ancient Greece

In ancient Greece, the city-states' (poleis) armies were essentially drafted citizen militias.[12] The exception was in ancient Sparta, which had a standing army that trained year-round (and not only in summertime). Through the 5th century BC, they comprised the only professional soldiers in ancient Greece, aside from mercenaries. However, the Spartan army commonly consisted of helots (serfs), who considerably outnumbered the Spartiates, as well as numerous allies of Sparta.[13]

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.[12]

#### Ancient China

The Western Zhou maintained a standing army, enabling them to control other city-states effectively and spread their influence.[14] 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.[14] The first professional army in China was established by the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE, which ushered in Imperial China.[15] Under the Qin dynasty, wars were fought by trained vocational soldiers instead of relying on temporary soldiers.[16]

#### Ancient India

In Ancient India, warfare was first attested during the Vedic period. However, warfare was primarily waged between various clans and kingdoms solely by the kshatriya class during times of conflict.[16] True standing armies in India developed under the Mahajanapadas, which relied on paid professional soldiers year-round.[17] The most prominent of the Mahajanapadas was the Kingdom of Magadha. It is accepted that the first standing army of India was created in Maghada by the ruler Bimbisara.[18]

#### Ancient Rome

Under the reign of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, a standing professional army of the Roman Empire was gradually instituted, with regularized pay. This professional force of legionaries was expensive to maintain, but supported the authority of the empire, not only as combat troops but also as provincial police forces, engineers, and guards.[19] Legionaries were citizen volunteers entitled to a discharge bounty upon 25 years of honourable service; supplementing the legions were the auxilia, auxiliary forces composed of non-citizens in the provinces who typically earned citizenship as a reward for service.[19]

In Late Antiquity and the early Byzantine period, this system evolved into a more differentiated military structure, in which mobile field armies (comitatenses) were complemented by frontier troops (limitanei) tasked with guarding and policing the imperial borders.[20]

### Post-classical history

#### Ottoman Empire

The first modern standing armies on European soil during the Middle Ages were the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, which were formed in the 14th century under Sultan Murad I.[21][22]

#### 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.[23]

The bulk of the infantry for warfare was still provided by urban or provincial militias, raised from a specific area or city to fight locally and named after 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 collectively 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.[24] 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.[25]

Matthias recognized the importance and key role of early firearms in the infantry, which greatly contributed to his victories.[26] Every fourth soldier in the Black Army had an arquebus, which was an unusual ratio at the time. The high price of medieval gunpowder prevented them from raising it any further.[27] The main troops of the army were the infantry, artillery and light and heavy cavalry. The function of the heavy cavalry was to protect the light armoured infantry and artillery, while the other corps delivered sporadic, surprise assaults on the enemy.

#### Songhai Empire

In West Africa, the Songhai Empire under the Askia Mohammad I (1493–1528) possessed a full-time corps of 40,000 professional warriors. Al-Sa'di, the chronicler who wrote the Tarikh al-Sudan, compared Askia Mohammad I's army to that of his predecessor; "he distinguished between the civilian and the army, unlike Sunni Ali [1464–92] when everyone was a soldier." Askia Mohammad I is said to have possessed cynical attitudes towards kingdoms that lacked professional armies like his, notably in reference to the neighbouring kingdoms in the land of Borgu.[28]

#### Majapahit Empire

A Chinese observer recorded the Majapahit thalassocracy as having 30,000 full-time professional troops, whose soldiers and commanders were paid in gold. This demonstrates the existence of a standing army, an achievement that only a handful of Southeast Asian empires could aspire to.[29]: 185 [30]: 467 In addition to these professional soldiers, Majapahit was strengthened by troops from subordinate countries and regional leaders.[31]: 277 As was common in Southeast Asia, Majapahit also used a levy system, in fact, the majority of the Majapahit troops were a levy.[32]: 111–113

#### Russia

Russia was isolated from Central and Western European warfare for centuries as a result of the 13th-century Mongol conquests.[33] Ivan the Terrible reformed the state apparatus and centralized his power.[33] Meanwhile, external pressure from Poland and Sweden in the west, and the Tatar khanates in the east, led him to reform the army and establish Russia's first permanent standing military force, the streltsy, in the mid-16th century.[33]

#### Spain

The tercios of the Spanish Empire were the first Spanish standing units composed of professional soldiers. Their pike and shot composition assured predominance in the European battlefields from the 16th century to the first half of the 17th century. Although other powers adopted the tercio formation, their armies fell short of the fearsome reputation of the Spanish, whose core of professional soldiers gave them an edge that was hard for other states to match.[34]

#### England and Great Britain

Before the influence of Oliver Cromwell, England had no standing army, relying instead on local militia, noble retinues, and foreign mercenaries. During the English Civil War, Cromwell created the professional New Model Army of 50,000 men, which proved far more effective than the militia. Still, Parliament disbanded it after the Restoration in 1660,[35]. However, Charles II then formed four regiments of guards, which formed the nucleus of the permanent British Army. By 1688 under James II it numbered over 34,000[36] The Bill of Rights 1689 placed control of a standing army under Parliament[37] although William III later enlarged it to 94,000 by 1694. Fearing royal power, Parliament during the Standing Army Controversy reduced the army to 7,000 English-born subjects in 1698.[38]

#### United States

In the Thirteen Colonies of British America, there was a strong distrust of a standing army not under civilian control.[39][40] The U.S. Constitution in (Article 1, Section 8) limits federal appropriations to two years, and reserves financial control to Congress, instead of to the President. The President, however, retains command of the armed forces when they are raised, as commander-in-chief.[1] The Framers' suspicion of a standing army is reflected in the constitutional requirement that the appointment and promotion of high-ranking military officers (like civil officers) be confirmed by the United States Senate.[41] At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Elbridge Gerry argued against a large standing army, comparing it to an erect penis: "An excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure."[42] After the Battle of Bladensburg in 1814, during which American militiamen from Maryland and Virginia were soundly defeated by the British Army, President James Madison commented "I could never have believed so great a difference existed between regular troops and a militia force, if I not witnessed the scenes of this day."[43]

The benefits of a standing army are distributed unevenly, and so throughout the history of the US, support has varied by region. For example, naval expansion was supported by the Northeast to further their interests in commercial shipping during the early 1800s. Coastal Southerners also supported naval spending, but those further inland preferred internal improvements such as canals, railways, and roads. Support for naval expansion became more widespread during the 1840s and 1850s with the rise of Manifest Destiny, with special interest in the South. The frustrating compromises over slavery caused serious talk of expanding the slave-holding area of the country into the Caribbean by the likes of William Walker.[44]: 11–12

Similarly, the Interstate Highway System was built with federal money, partially for national defence, but disproportionately benefited automobile manufacturers, highway contractors, real estate developers, and highway officials.[45]: 133, 145

## 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

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wills, Garry (1999). A Necessary Evil, A History of American Distrust of Government New York, N.Y.; Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-84489-3
2. ↑ "Standing army | Definition of Standing army at Dictionary.com" (in en). ORIGIN OF STANDING ARMY. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/standing-army. "First recorded in 1595–1605"
3. ↑ Knolles, Richard (1603). The generall historie of the Turkes from the first beginning of that nation to the rising of the Othoman familie: with all the notable expeditions of the Christian princes against them. Together with the liues and conquests of the Othoman kings and emperours faithfullie collected out of the- best histories, both auntient and moderne, and digested into one continuat historie vntill this present yeare 1603. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/A04911.0001.001.
4. ↑ "First standing army" (in en-GB). https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-standing-army.
5. ↑ Bang, Peter Fibiger; Scheidel, Walter (2013-01-31) (in en). The Oxford Handbook of the State in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean. OUP USA. ISBN 978-0-19-518831-8. https://books.google.com/books?id=GCj09AmtvvwC&pg=PA115.
6. ↑ Howard, Michael (2002). Transnationalism in Ancient and Medieval Societies: The Role of Cross-Border Trade and Travel. McFarland. p. 36. ISBN 978-0786468034. https://books.google.com/books?id=6QPWXrCCzBIC&pg=PA36. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
7. ↑ Schwartzwald, Jack (2014). The Ancient Near East, Greece and Rome: A Brief History. McFarland. p. 24. ISBN 978-0786478064. https://books.google.com/books?id=qHHzAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA24.
8. ↑ Axelrod, Alan (2019-08-26) (in en). 100 Turning Points in Military History. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-4930-3746-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=efKaDwAAQBAJ&q=first+standing+army+tiglath&pg=PA4.
9. ↑ Pierre, Briant (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 261. ISBN 978-1-57506-031-6.
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Schmitt, Rüdiger. "ACHAEMENID DYNASTY, I/4, pp. 414-426". https://iranicaonline.org/articles/achaemenid-dynasty.
11. ↑ Briant, Pierre (2002). From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 262. ISBN 978-1-57506-031-6.
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 (in en) The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and General Literature. Werner. 1893. https://books.google.com/books?id=F6o4AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA559.
13. ↑ Legault, Roch (1996) (in en). Elite Military Formations in War and Peace. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 33–34. ISBN 978-0-275-94640-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=rohp7lMyCakC&pg=PA33.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Zhao, Dingxin (2015-10-16) (in en). The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History: A New Theory of Chinese History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-935174-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=wPmJCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88.
15. ↑ Sahay, R. K. (2016-05-24) (in en). History of China's Military. Vij Books India Pvt Ltd. ISBN 978-93-86019-90-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=pYkvDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT21.
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Westfahl, Gary (2015-04-21) (in en). A Day in a Working Life: 300 Trades and Professions through History [3 volumes: 300 Trades and Professions through History]. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-61069-403-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=kaL0BwAAQBAJ&pg=PA177.
17. ↑ Roy, Kaushik (2015-06-03) (in en). Warfare in Pre-British India – 1500 BCE to 1740 CE. Routledge. ISBN 9781317586913. https://books.google.com/books?id=oh7ICQAAQBAJ.
18. ↑ Roy, Kaushik (2015-06-03) (in en). Warfare in Pre-British India – 1500BCE to 1740CE. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-58691-3. https://books.google.com/books?id=oh7ICQAAQBAJ&pg=PT44.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Christopher J. Fuhrmann, Policing the Roman Empire: Soldiers, Administration, and Public Order (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 104–05, 239–40.
20. ↑ H. Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe AD 350-425, 1996, 89–117.
21. ↑ Lord Kinross (1977). Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 52. ISBN 0-688-08093-6.
22. ↑ Goodwin, Jason (1998). Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire. New York: H. Holt, 59,179–181. ISBN 0-8050-4081-1.
23. ↑ Trevor N. Dupuy, Harper Encyclopedia of Military History (1993)
24. ↑ Pál, Földi (2015). A Fekete Sereg (The Black Army). Budapest, Hungary: Csengőkert Kiadó. pp. 2–208. ISBN 9786155476839.
25. ↑ Palosfalvi, Tamas – From Nicopolis to Mohács: A History of Ottoman-Hungarian Warfare, 1389–1526, Brill (September 20, 2018), pg.32
26. ↑ Clifford Rogers (2010). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, Volume I. New York, NY, United States: Oxford University Press. pp. 152. ISBN 9780195334036. https://books.google.com/books?id=mzwpq6bLHhMC&pg=RA1-PA306. Retrieved 10 August 2013.
27. ↑ Anthony Tihamer Komjathy (1982). "A thousand years of the Hungarian art of war". Toronto, ON, Canada: Rakoczi Press. pp. 35–36. http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/thou/thou05.htm.
28. ↑ Thornton, John K.. Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800 (Warfare and History) (Kindle Locations 871–872). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.
29. ↑ Miksic, John M. (2013). Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea, 1300-1800. NUS Press. ISBN 9789971695583.
30. ↑ Miksic, John N.; Goh, Geok Yian (2017). Ancient Southeast Asia. London: Routledge.
31. ↑ Munoz, Paul Michel (2006). Early Kingdoms of the Indonesian Archipelago and the Malay Peninsula. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet. ISBN 981-4155-67-5.
32. ↑ Oktorino, Nino (2020). Hikayat Majapahit - Kebangkitan dan Keruntuhan Kerajaan Terbesar di Nusantara. Jakarta: Elex Media Komputindo. ISBN 978-623-00-1741-4.
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 33.2 Møller, Jørgen (19 December 2016) (in en). State Formation, Regime Change, and Economic Development. Taylor & Francis. pp. 239–241. ISBN 978-1-134-82700-8. https://www.google.com/books/edition/State_Formation_Regime_Change_and_Econom/AzIlDwAAQBAJ.
34. ↑ Lynch, John. The Hispanic World in Crisis and Change, 1578–1700 Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992. Page 117.
35. ↑ Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1849). The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. 1 (1st ed.). London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. p. 174. OCLC 1069526323. https://archive.org/details/macaulayhistoryofengland01.
36. ↑ Barnett, Correlli (1970). Britain and her army, 1509–1970: a military, political and social survey. https://archive.org/details/britainherarmy150000barn.
37. ↑ Childs, John (2003). "The Restoration Army 1660-1702". in Chandler, David G.. The Oxford history of the British army. p. 57. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Oxford_History_of_the_British_Army/DJs0WY9Hts4C.
38. ↑ Schwoerer, Lois G. (1974). 'No Standing Armies!' The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-1563-8. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/71702.
39. ↑ Hamner, Christopher. American Resistance to a Standing Army. TeachingHistory.org, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
40. ↑ 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.
41. ↑ Mitchel A. Sollenberger (2015). "President and Congressional Relations: An Evolution of Military Appointments". in Colton C. Campbell & David P. Auerswald. Congress and Civil-Military Relations. Georgetown University Press. pp. 29–31. ISBN 978-1626161801. https://books.google.com/books?id=c2ruBgAAQBAJ.
42. ↑ Isaacson, Walter (2003). Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster. p. 456. ISBN 0-684-80761-0. https://archive.org/details/benjaminfranklin00isaa_0/page/456.
43. ↑ Benn, Carl (2002). The War of 1812. Oxford: Osprey Publishing. p. 20. ISBN 978-1-84176-466-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=aG2ICwAAQBAJ.
44. ↑ Hackemer, Kurt (2001). The U.S. Navy and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex: 1847-1883. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-333-8. https://archive.org/details/usnavyoriginsofm0000hack.
45. ↑ Kelly, Thomas (1977). "Chapter 9: The Concrete Road to MIC; National Defense and Federal Highways". in Cooling, Benjamin. War, Business, and American Society. Kennikat Press. pp. 133-145. ISBN 0-8046-9156-8. https://archive.org/details/warbusinessameri0000unse.

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