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army. The medieval lordship of Ireland was never at peace behind stable borders. Its governors had frequently to summon forces to deal with local challenges, which became more common in the later Middle Ages as the colony stood increasingly on the defensive (see gaelic recovery). From time to time they might also be required to raise troops to participate in the king's wars in France or (particularly in the period 1296–1335) in the Anglo‐Scottish wars: in 1296, for instance, John de Wogan led a paid force of 3,157 men to Edward l's first Scottish campaign.

Since frontier conditions prevailed in much of Ireland, a well of experienced manpower existed in the country. Direct tenants of the crown owed knight service within Ireland in respect of their lands; they were periodically expected to fulfil their obligations either in person or (more often) by paying scutage. In addition, all able‐bodied males aged between 16 and 60 were expected to possess arms and horses in proportion to their wealth, graded according to a schedule definitively set out in the Statute of Winchester (1285), which was extended to Ireland in 1308. Their personal service could be called upon in an emergency, though this general levy too might take the form of taxation, designed to hire substitutes. It is likely that unpaid levies formed an occasional supplement to paid forces.

Exchequer records surviving from the late 13th and 14th centuries show that justiciars mustered paid armies almost every year. Such armies included some ‘men‐at‐arms’ (knights and other heavily armed cavalry), but consisted mostly of hobelars and infantry. Apart from the justiciar's own household (based around 20 men‐at‐arms whom he was obliged to retain from his annual fee of £500), they were made up primarily of contingents led by settler nobles and gentry; but they might also include Gaelic chiefs who took the king's wages and semi‐professional captains of kerns or (mostly in the 15th century) gallowglasses. Many of the elements in royal armies were thus little different from the forces to which they were opposed. Armies rarely stayed in the field for more than a few weeks or contained more than 1,000 men, reflecting the spasmodic, small‐scale character of warfare in Ireland.

Medieval states rarely maintained standing armies. Before the mid‐14th century virtually the only forces in that category in Ireland were the small garrisons kept in certain royal castles. The sense of crisis in the late Middle Ages, however, sometimes led the king to provide governors, especially those coming from England, with retinues of English men‐at‐arms and archers which would be kept in pay for a fixed term of months or years; from 1361 their wages tended to be paid by the English exchequer. In 1361 Lionel of Clarence brought around 800 English troops to Ireland, but such retinues were commonly less than half that size. As well as forming a core for armies raised locally, they might serve in ‘wards’ or garrisons at key points in Leinster and Munster. From the 1420s English help was available only occasionally. Anglo‐Irish governors adopted various expedients in order to keep some standing forces. In 1474 the 7th earl of Kildare inaugurated a brotherhood of 13 lords, who were to supply 40 horse and 120 archers to be maintained from the customs revenues (see brotherhood of st george). But usually such troops were supported through a combination of parliamentary subsidies and the unpopular measure of imposing coyne and livery on the Pale counties. Despite these standing forces, most military activity continued to depend on a governor's ability to raise armies from scratch for particular objectives.

After the Kildare rebellion, the royal army became a permanent force of English troops, although gallowglasses and kerns continued as auxiliaries for some time, and loyal subjects were occasionally called up to ‘hostings’. For the remainder of Henry VIII's reign a minimum garrison of 500 was required and for the rest of the century at least 1,500. Numbers rose to peaks of 3,000 to fight Shane O'Neill, 6,000 during the second Desmond War, and possibly 20,000 in 1601–2. Costs escalated accordingly, putting an increasing burden on English taxpayers. Delayed arrival of treasure meant Dublin officials had to use their own funds or raise short‐term loans to prevent mutinies by unpaid soldiers.

Most recruits were from the west country, Wales, and northern England, levied on a county basis after commissions were sent down by the privy council. Enlistment, theoretically voluntary, became particularly unpopular during the Nine Years War. The county provided ‘coat money’ and the state ‘conduct money’ covering expenses to the ports of departure, usually Chester, Bristol, or Holyhead. Importing victuals from England became a necessary alternative to cess when large numbers of troops were deployed during wartime, but ‘contrary winds’ on the Irish Sea often delayed delivery. Housing conditions were generally poor for men who were themselves often poorly shod and clothed. Training was limited and weapons—increasingly firearms—were sometimes unserviceable. The army was a far more motley crew than that depicted in John Derrick's Image of Ireland.

Diseases such as dysentery, typhus, and Irish ague were rampant, killing up to a third of servicemen. At the height of the Nine Years War there were only six surgeons, even though each company was supposed to have one. Hospitals were eventually established at Derry, Dublin, and Cork. Desertion was rife and captains willingly took Irish replacements on less pay. Cavalrymen, assisted by their horseboys, fared better than infantrymen.

The lord deputy was the commander‐in‐chief, the Irish treasurer doubling as the treasurer‐at‐wars. The marshal headed the army on a day‐to‐day basis. During the Tudor conquest this office became a sinecure for the Bagenals, with other posts showing similar tendencies towards nepotism, corruption, and inefficiency. The captains, in charge of the companies (usually 100 strong), were responsible for paying, feeding, and clothing their men. They commonly cheated the state, the cess‐payers, and their own companies, even though they already had the benefit of ten ‘dead pays’.

Under James I numbers fell to 1,000 foot and 300 horse until the outbreak of war with Spain and France in the late 1620s. In 1640 Wentworth, anticipating conflict between king and parliament in England, created a mostly Catholic Irish army of 8,000 foot and 1,000 horse, which was disbanded after his fall.

The subsequent Confederate War, involving upwards of 60,000 combatants, replicated the problems of the Tudor conquest on a vast scale. With finance short, all parties resorted to demanding contributions on a county basis. Problems of billeting, feeding, and pay made mutinies commonplace. Only Oliver Cromwell's army was well supplied and financed, though it met the familiar problems of disease.

After the Restoration Charles II's government reduced the army to just below 7,000 men, less than half its size in 1655 but still well above pre‐1641 peacetime numbers. As a safeguard against the political and religious radicalism of the force inherited from Cromwell, the new establishment included a Royal Regiment of Footguards, consisting of 1,200 men freshly raised in England. Later, following Blood's plot, there were further dismissals throughout the army, the resulting vacancies being filled by new recruits. Army organization improved with the establishment by 1683 of a regimental structure, and the opening in 1684 of the Royal hospital at Kilmainham to provide for veterans. But government continued to be unwilling or unable to provide adequate funding, and arrears of pay led to a serious mutiny at Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, in May 1666.

Following the accession of James II the character of the Irish army was transformed, first by the introduction of Catholic officers like Justin MacCarthy, then by a series of purges designed to replace Protestants with Catholics at all levels. After the Williamite War the army regained its exclusively Protestant character, but in other respects there were radical changes. Irish Protestants as well as Catholics were now excluded, on the grounds that recruitment might weaken the Protestant interest within the kingdom. Instead the Irish army, though paid for out of Irish revenues and with senior appointments in the gift of the lord lieutenant, was in practice a part of the English regular army, with regiments serving tours of duty in Ireland on a rotating basis. An English act of 1699 fixed the Irish peacetime military establishment at 12,000 men (as compared to 7,000 in England). In practice a section of this force was always deployed outside the kingdom: Ireland, in other words, became the base for a proportion of Britain's strategic reserves, and bore a share of the overall cost of imperial defence. In 1769 the Irish establishment was increased to 15,000, the ‘augmentation’ that provided the occasion for Townshend's confrontation with the undertakers.

The part of the establishment stationed in Ireland was expected to repel invasion and prevent insurrection. It also frequently acted in support of the civil powers in enforcing the law. However, the Irish military establishment quickly became notorious for its incompetence, corruption, and indiscipline, while service abroad, absenteeism, desertion, and the large number of pensioners and invalids included on the establishment ensured that its effective strength probably never exceeded 6,000 men. By mid‐century the army's role was more clearly one of national defence, while also providing a strategic reserve of troops. Further changes were to follow. The enlisting of Irish Protestants began in 1745, while the surreptitious recruiting of Catholics was apparently commonplace by the 1780s. The Catholic Relief Act of 1793 officially permitted Catholics to be enlisted in the ranks and to hold commissions.

The Act of Union amalgamated the Irish and British military establishments. However, assimilation was not complete until 1822 when the Irish barrack boards were finally abolished. Prior to this a number of other difficulties had arisen, not least the status of Irish Catholic officers, who held their commissions under the Irish act of 1793 and had to wait for the Army Indemnity Act (1817) to confirm that these could legally be exercised in Great Britain.

The availability of barracks and cheap land led to the maintenance during the 19th century of an Irish garrison force of around 26,000 troops, about 14 per cent of total army strength. These troops continued to be employed as a strategic reserve for the empire, while being used both for internal security duties and for national defence. Throughout the century soldiers were used in aid of the civil power, though their role was not always a suppressive one. Soldiers were employed both in the Ordnance Survey and in organizing poor relief during the Great Famine. In garrison towns, such as Fermoy, as well as in Dublin, the army became important in economic and social life. However, relations between the army and the resident population were not always cordial, and local conflicts did occur.

An estimated 130,000 Irishmen served during the Napoleonic wars, and throughout the 19th century a sizeable proportion of the British army was Irish. In 1830 the figure exceeded 40 per cent, and although this steadily fell away to 13 per cent in 1899, it was still more than the Irish share of the United Kingdom population (9 per cent). Although the Irish gained a reputation for military fervour, there is little evidence that in fighting terms Irishmen were actually very different from Scottish, Welsh, or English troops. Lack of alternative employment opportunities at home contributed more to the high levels of Irish enlistments than any alleged fighting spirit.

Within the army tensions also arose between Catholic and Protestant soldiers, while in the 1860s attempts were made by Fenian agitators to recruit serving soldiers. These proved to be passing threats, and the army in Ireland continued to be loyal to the crown. There is some evidence that the rising tide of Irish nationalism in the early 20th century depressed recruitment. Yet during the First World War more Irishmen than ever before or since—over 200,000—served in the British army. Most of the British army units initially deployed during the rising of 1916 were composed of Irishmen. Many Irishmen also served in the crown forces during what is somewhat misleadingly called the Anglo‐Irish War, though it was decided in 1919 not to station Irish infantry battalions in Ireland. There is evidence of nationalist feeling in some of the British army's Irish units during these years, and there was an actual mutiny in the 1st Battalion Connaught Rangers in India in June 1920. For the regular army in Ireland the strains of ‘counter‐insurgency warfare’ were considerable, and the commander‐in‐chief in Ireland, General Sir Nevil Macready, reported in the early summer of 1921 that the great bulk of his forces would need to be relieved by the end of the year. There were problems, too, of co‐ordination with the increasingly militarized Royal Irish Constabulary and its explicitly paramilitary Auxiliary Division.

After partition, when six of the eight Irish infantry regiments were disbanded, Irish enlistments fell off sharply, although significant numbers from both north and south joined up during the Second World War. In the years since 1945 Northern Ireland has proved proportionately to be a good recruiting area, and even in the late 1980s up to 20 per cent of Irish recruits for the British army still came from independent Ireland.

After the establishment of Northern Ireland the regular British army garrison in the province quickly fell away to no more than five battalions (including by the 1930s Irish regiments). For much of the province's history, up to the late 1960s, the army played no active part in maintaining the security of the state, which was left to the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Special Constabulary. The only time soldiers wre used for riot control duties between 1922 and 1969 was for eleven days in July 1935 when sectarian violence broke out in Belfast. In the 1950s, however, army barracks provided targets for IRA attacks and arms raids.

Regular soldiers were deployed in Northern Ireland ‘in aid of the civil power’ in August 1969, when the police proved unable to contain rioting in Belfast and Derry. Although the British government viewed this move merely as a temporary measure, for some five years the army effectively took the leading security role in the province. At the end of 1969 there were some 8,000 troops in Northern Ireland. Numbers reached a peak of 21,800 in July 1972 for ‘Operation Motorman’, when the security forces entered nationalist no‐go areas. After this the numbers of regular troops fell back to below 10,000. A political consequence of army deployment was that control of security policy gradually shifted from Belfast to London, culminating in 1972 with ‘direct rule’ from London. In the mid‐1970s, however, a policy of ‘Ulsterization’ was adopted, by which the leading role in security policy passed back to the civilian RUC, albeit with the army continuing in a supporting role, and supplemented by the Ulster Defence Regiment (later subsumed within the Royal Irish Regiment).

In independent Ireland, by contrast, the army had from the start and important though anomalous role in national affairs. Formally constituted and organized for external defence, its main military function has always been an internal security one.

The army was established in January 1922, and was soon involved in civil war against anti‐treaty forces. By 1923 its strength stood at over 50,000 men. Victory, the need for economy, and civilian unease at its disruptive potential saw its rapid reduction. At the time of officers' demobilization crisis or army mutiny in March 1924, it had fewer than 20,000 men. By 1932 it had under 6,000, and virtually no fighting equipment other than rifles. There was also no worthwhile system of reserves. The army was allowed no say in defence policy, which consisted simply of statements that Ireland would abjure military alliances and would stay out of any war unless attacked. It was obliged to maintain large numbers of former British barracks and posts for purely internal security purposes, and government habitually used it both to assist in all manner of civil emergencies, and to act as both judge and jailer of persons charged with crimes against the state. (See Internment; Special Courts.)

In 1934 a ‘volunteer force’ was set up. Intended largely to siphon off potential recruits from the IRA, it proved the mainstay of expansion in 1939/40, when the army found itself in a desperate position as it reorganized into two mobile divisions to defend Irish neutrality. Entirely reliant on Britain for equipment and supplies, it had no worthwhile air or sea defences, and was incapable of land operations above company strength. Its operational capacity gradually grew, while military intelligence performed vital counterespionage and security tasks. After the war the army, cut to under 10,000 men, reverted initially to its dispiriting pre‐war condition, confirmed by Ireland's refusal to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 1958, however, Ireland made its first military contribution to United Nations operations. These became a mainstay of army life: at any one time up to 10 per cent of strength may be serving abroad on peacekeeping, observer, and humanitarian duties. After 1969 the Northern Ireland conflict caused a revitalization. Numbers doubled to about 14,000, and modern infantry equipment and patrol vehicles were provided for border security. Other signs of modernization include the enlistment of women, and the recognition of representative associations for officers and men. External defence policy, however, remains rooted in neutralist rhetoric. Political exigencies make it unlikely that the army will ever be able to close many of the barracks it needlessly occupies, or to eschew the debilitating secondary tasks routinely thrust upon it by government. Despite the commitment and professionalism of its members, the army in independent Ireland remains what it always has been, an under‐equipped infantry force just large enough to meet any likely internal security threat and to perpeuate the public illusion that the state is seriously committed to independent external defence.

See also Foreign Armies, Irish in; Militia; Warfare; Yeomanry.

Bibliography

Bartlett, Thomas, and Jeffery, Keith (eds.), A military History of Ireland (1996)
Falls, Cyril , Elizabeth's Irish Wars (1950)

RFF,/HM,/SC,/NG,/KJ,/EO,/ and Robin Frame

army. The exact origins of the British army are lost to history, although its red parade uniforms have been fancifully traced back to the colour of the tunics of King Arthur's bodyguard. A vestige of late Roman military customs and practice can be seen in the law codes and military organization of the earliest British kingdoms. Long before the Norman Conquest, military obligation seems to have divided into two basic forms which have remained constant until modern times. One was an obligation for common service by all adult males, established in English law as the militia by the Assize of Arms of 1181. The other was a small permanent standing army, usually represented in the medieval period by the warriors of the royal household. To these were added an obligation upon individuals to serve the crown on a temporary basis, and a tradition of employing and paying mercenary troops, who might on occasion be the same people. Although women have always played a major part in warfare, they have been almost entirely excluded from combat roles until very recently.

By early modern times, English armies consisted almost entirely of troops paid in some fashion. However, any form of standing army was considered a potential instrument of royal despotism, and was also beyond the financial resources of the monarchy to maintain. The Yeomen of the Guard, founded by Henry VII in 1485 as a small royal bodyguard, is the earliest unit of the British army that has survived to the present day. Other modern units trace their descent from mercenary forces in the service of various kingdoms during the same period. The granting of money by Parliament to finance armies on a temporary basis became one of the most important issues between crown and Parliament. It reached a crisis in 1639–41 when Parliament refused Charles I money to repel a Scots invasion, and would not trust him with control of an army to suppress the Irish rebellion.

The direct ancestor of the modern British army is usually considered to be the parliamentary New Model Army of 1645. However, its part in enforcing Cromwell's rule in England and in subjugating Scotland and Ireland helped to establish a prejudice against soldiers which lasted well into modern times. The first properly constituted standing army, of tiny proportions, was created in 1661 by Charles II from royalist and parliamentary units of the Civil War, and entitled ‘His Majesty's Guards and Garrisons’. For the next century the army grew at an irregular rate, partly from the need to find garrisons for overseas possessions, and partly for European wars. The existence and function of the army (unlike that of the Royal Navy) was based on royal prerogative rather than statute, an issue which came to a head in the reign of James II and played a part in his overthrow. Thereafter the 1689 Declaration of Rights established that a standing army was illegal without Parliament's approval, granted every year in the Mutiny Act until 1953, when this was replaced by a five-yearly Armed Forces Act. The issue of direct royal control over the army largely died away during the reign of Queen Anne and the Hanoverians. George II became the last British monarch to lead his army personally into battle at Dettingen in 1743.

Particularly after the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707, and the subsequent defeat of Jacobite uprisings a large army at home was not required. Instead, the British needed a minimum force to keep order (particularly before the establishment of police forces in the 19th cent.), garrisons for their overseas possessions, and small forces to contribute to coalitions for European wars. The British army developed in a manner regarded by European standards as both eccentric and old-fashioned, with a central core of units providing the basis for a much larger army that could be expanded and disbanded according to need. The existence of this permanent standing army was first acknowledged by a royal warrant of 1751 setting out the official precedence of units.

Whereas in some countries the army became the focus of political and social reform, in Britain it was always seen as the last bastion of reaction. Particularly after the French Revolution, the army was deliberately kept apart from British society (through the building of barracks), and practices regarded as obsolete in continental warfare, such as officers purchasing their commissions, regiments having considerable autonomy from central authority, and the flogging of soldiers, persisted well into the 19th cent. Parliamentary fears of militarism meant rigid control of the army's budget, a deliberately divided command system, and a toleration of inefficiency in order to keep the army politically weak. Officers were drawn largely from the lesser gentry, with an admixture of the aristocracy, and recruits from the poorest classes.

It was easy to forget that by the end of the 19th cent. Britain was a major continental land power with a large permanent army, because neither the continent nor most of the army was European. Particularly after the loss of the American colonies in the American War of Independence (1775–83), the largest single focus for the British army was India, following the crown's absorption of the East India Company army as the Indian army in 1858. Garrisoning British India (the frontiers of which stretched from modern Iran to Thailand) with both British and Indian troops became the major army role of the late 19th cent. A series of reforms following the Crimean War (1853–6), associated in particular with the abolition of purchase by Edward Cardwell in 1871 and with the creation of the ‘county regiments’ structure ten years later, produced a largely infantry army to serve overseas. Experiences such as the inability of the British to intervene effectively in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1) and the revelation of serious military deficiencies in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) produced more reforms to prepare the army for warfare in Europe, most particularly associated with Richard Haldane. Like many other late Victorian or Edwardian reforms, these actions have continued to determine much of the structure and ethos of the late 20th-cent. army, despite the removal of their original justification.

The British tradition of a small long-service army for use overseas, virtually unique in European historical development, meant that at the start of the First World War (1914–18) Britain was the only belligerent country without conscription, introduced with reluctance in January 1916. The creation of a mass citizen army for the war, at first entirely by voluntary methods, was of great social as well as political significance for Britain, marking the first real contact between the army and British society since the Civil War. Ultimately the British army was the most successful of the war, inflicting a crushing defeat upon Germany, previously regarded as the dominant European land power. Although all belligerents suffered terribly from the effects of mass mechanized warfare, British losses were not markedly worse than those of any other major power. However, with no shared military tradition to draw upon, the social and cultural impact of the war upon Britain was devastating, and persisted to the end of the 20th cent. At the war's end, the mass conscript army structure was abandoned, and the army returned to its role as a long-service garrison for the empire by 1922, with considerable enthusiasm on all sides.

The experience of the First World War enabled Britain to cope rather better with the Second World War (1939–45). For the first time in British history peacetime conscription was introduced in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war. However, the demands of a genuinely global war for naval and air forces, and the growing erosion of distinctions between naval and land warfare, or even between civilian and military occupations, all contrived to keep the British army in the field considerably smaller than in the First World War. Although Britain (the only country save Germany to fight, with its empire, from the start in 1939 to the end) once more emerged victorious, it faced in 1945 a changed military situation. In particular the traditional roles of the British army of garrisoning the empire and fighting in Europe were ceasing to be relevant. After 1945 Britain maintained, again for the first time in its history, peacetime conscription (known as National Service) until 1963, after which, largely for cultural and social reasons, the army reverted once more to an all-volunteer force. Its two major roles were from 1949 membership of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as part of the collective defence of western Europe against the Soviet Union until 1991, and covering the ‘Retreat from Empire’, a succession of wars as Britain dismantled its empire, beginning with the independence and partition of India in 1947. The most significant war for the army in this period was in Northern Ireland (1969–94), Britain's longest war since medieval times.

The army in the last decades of the 20th cent. was faced with the same issues that had confronted it since the 18th. It was once more largely separate from its own society, subject to rigid budgetary control, generally ill-equipped to cope either with changes in the nature of warfare or of Britain's role in the world, socially reactionary, and badly in need of reform. However, it has also remained the most effective military instrument obtainable for the minimum financial, political, and social cost which successive governments have been prepared to pay.

Stephen Badsey

Bibliography

Ascoli, D. , A Companion to the British Army, 1660–1983 (1983);
Carver, M. , The Seven Ages of the British Army (1984);
French, D. , The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000 (1990);
Pimlott, J. , The Guinness History of the British Army (1993);
Strachan, H. , European Armies and the Conduct of War (1983).

army Long before the Norman Conquest, military obligation seems to have divided into two basic forms. One was an obligation for service by all adult males, established in English law as the militia by the Assize of Arms of 1181. The other was a small permanent standing army, usually represented in the medieval period by the warriors of the royal household.

By early modern times, English armies consisted almost entirely of troops paid in some fashion. However, any form of standing army was considered a potential instrument of royal despotism. The Yeomen of the Guard, founded by Henry VII in 1485 as a small royal bodyguard, is the earliest unit of the British army that has survived. The granting of money by Parliament to finance armies on a temporary basis became one of the most important issues between crown and Parliament. It reached a crisis in 1639–41 when Parliament refused Charles I money to repel a Scots invasion, and would not trust him with control of an army to suppress the Irish rebellion.

The direct ancestor of the modern British army is usually considered to be the parliamentary New Model Army of 1645. However, its part in enforcing Cromwell's rule in England and in subjugating Scotland and Ireland helped to establish a prejudice against soldiers which lasted well into modern times. The first properly constituted standing army, of tiny proportions, was created in 1661 by Charles II, and entitled ‘His Majesty's Guards and Garrisons’. The existence and function of the army was based on royal prerogative rather than statute, an issue which came to a head in the reign of James II and played a part in his overthrow. Thereafter the 1689 Declaration of Rights established that a standing army was illegal without Parliament's approval, granted every year in the Mutiny Act until 1953, when this was replaced by a five‐yearly Armed Forces Act.

Particularly after the Act of Union with Scotland of 1707, and the subsequent defeat of Jacobite uprisings, a large army at home was not required. Instead, the British needed a minimum force to keep order, garrisons for their overseas possessions, and small forces to contribute to coalitions for European wars. The British army developed in a manner regarded by European standards as both eccentric and old‐fashioned, with a central core of units providing the basis for a much larger army that could be expanded and disbanded according to need.

Whereas in some countries the army became the focus of political and social reform, in Britain it was always seen as a bastion of reaction. Particularly after the French Revolution, the army was deliberately kept apart from British society (through the building of barracks), and practices regarded as obsolete in continental warfare, such as officers purchasing their commissions, regiments having considerable autonomy from central authority, and the flogging of soldiers, persisted well into the 19th cent. Parliamentary fears of militarism meant rigid control of the army's budget, a deliberately divided command system, and a toleration of inefficiency in order to keep the army politically weak. Officers were drawn largely from the lesser gentry, with an admixture of the aristocracy, and recruits from the poorest classes.

After the loss of the American colonies in 1783, the largest single focus for the British army was India, following the crown's absorption of the East India Company army as the Indian army in 1858. Garrisoning British India with both British and Indian troops became the major army role of the late 19th cent. A series of reforms following the Crimean War (1853–6), associated in particular with the abolition of purchase by Edward Cardwell in 1871 and with the creation of the ‘county regiments’ structure ten years later, produced a largely infantry army to serve overseas. The revelation of serious military deficiencies in the Second Boer War (1899–1902) produced reforms to prepare the army for warfare in Europe, particularly associated with Richard Haldane.

The British tradition of a small long‐service army for use overseas meant that at the start of the First World War (1914–18) Britain was the only belligerent country without conscription, introduced with reluctance in January 1916. The creation of a mass citizen army for the war was of great social as well as political significance for Britain, marking the first real contact between the army and British society since the Civil War. Ultimately the British army was the most successful of the war, inflicting a crushing defeat upon Germany. However, with no shared military tradition to draw upon, the social and cultural impact of the war upon Britain was devastating, and persisted to the end of the 20th cent.

The experience of the First World War enabled Britain to cope rather better with the Second World War (1939–45). For the first time in British history peacetime conscription was introduced in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war. Although Britain once more emerged victorious, it faced in 1945 a changed military situation. In particular the traditional roles of the British army of garrisoning the empire and fighting in Europe were ceasing to be relevant. After 1945 Britain maintained, again for the first time in its history, peacetime conscription (known as National Service) until 1963, after which the army reverted once more to an all‐volunteer force. Its two major roles were from 1949 membership of NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as part of the collective defence of western Europe against the Soviet Union until 1991, and covering the ‘Retreat from Empire’, a succession of wars as Britain dismantled its empire.

army large armed land force, under regular military control, organization, and discipline.

Ancient Armies

Although armies existed in ancient Egypt, China, India, and Assyria, Greece was the first country known for a disciplined military land force. The Greeks made military service obligatory for citizens and training was rigorous. As a result of Greek military successes, leaders of other nations sought the services of Greek mercenaries. In time, a class of professional soldiers developed. They sold their services to other rulers as well as to wealthy Greeks who chose to avoid required military service (see Xenophon ).

Like the Greek armies, the Roman army was originally composed of citizen soldiers. As the Roman Empire expanded, a professional standing army came into being; it became increasingly composed of barbarian mercenaries. The Roman army was divided into legions , each of which included heavy and light infantry, cavalry, and a siege train. The army became a political force that often determined who ruled the empire.

Feudal Armies

In Islam, slave soldiers were often trained from youth to be loyal only to their owners. These slave armies often established dynasties of their own (see Mamluks ; Janissaries ). In medieval Japan and Europe, samurai and knights , respectively, owed military service to a lord. The European system depended on the feudal levy, which required knights and yeomanry to provide a fixed number of days of military service per year to a great lord. Because of this limitation on service and the poorly trained force that it produced, sustained military operations were difficult. Feudal armies were undermined by the development in England of the longbow, but they were destroyed by the introduction of gunpowder . Armed knights became easy victims of hand-carried firearms and castle walls could now be breasted by cannon.

Professionals and Conscripts

National armies, largely composed of mercenaries, reappeared after the introduction of gunpowder. An example is the Italian condottiere, who hired mercenaries to fight for the prince who was able to pay the most. German and Swiss mercenaries served all over Europe in the 15th and 16th cent. Professional soldiers were also a notable feature of the armies of the Ottoman Turks, who threatened to destroy the forces of Western Europe in the 16th cent. Eventually, as a result of the writings of such political theorists as Niccolo Machiavelli , national or standing armies developed—armies of professional soldiers led mostly by officers from the country's aristocracy.

After the Thirty Years War (1618-48), France emerged as the preeminent European military power. Under Louis XIV and his war minister, the marquis de Louvois , that country organized a national standing army that became the pattern for all Europe until the French Revolution. A professional body, set apart from civilian life and ruled under an iron discipline, the standing army reached harsh perfection under Frederick II of Prussia.

In the late 18th cent. the American and French revolutions brought about the return of the nonprofessional, citizen army. The introduction of conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars led to mass armies built around a professional nucleus. Officers could be from any class. Conscription also transformed non-European armies, such as that of Egypt during the early 19th cent.

The Modern Army

With the advent of railroads and, later, highway systems it became possible after the mid-19th cent. to move large concentrations of troops, and the nations of the world were able to benefit from enlarging their manpower bases by conscription. Armies changed technologically as well. Trench warfare resulted from improvements in small arms and prompted the development of various weapons designed to end the stalemates and murderous battles that entrenched forces produced. The growing role of artillery made logistics even more important. From the first, armies had needed soldiers to supply the fighting troops—even when the armies simply lived off the land. No formal distinction orginally was made between service troops and combat troops, but with the creation of the great citizen armies after the French Revolution formal specialization proliferated, and quartermasters, ordnance troops, engineers, and medical specialists were organized into separate units. The development of mechanized warfare in the 20th cent. made armies powerful and highly mobile and yet did not always provide them with the capabilities needed to fight so-called asymmetric opponents, such as they face in guerrilla warfare and terrorism .

The term army is still applied to all the armed land forces of a nation, but it is also used to designate a self-contained unit with its own service and supply personnel. In many armies today the division (usually about 15,000 men and women) is the smallest self-contained unit (having its own service and supply personnel). Two or more divisions generally form a corps; and an army (c.100,000 men or more) is two or more corps. In World War II, army groups were created, including several armies (sometimes from different allied forces). Above the groups is the command of a theater of operations, which in the United States is under the control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

See Defense, United States Department of ; strategy and tactics ; warfare .

Bibliography

See A. Vagts, A History of Militarism (1937); L. L. Gordon, Military Origins (1971); J. Keegan and R. Holmes, Soldiers (1986); R. O'Connell, Of Arms and Men (1989).

army An organized force of people armed for fighting on land. Armies came into existence with the earliest states and underpinned the great empires of antiquity: Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. The essential components of armies in early history were infantry, with some chariots, and cavalry. In ancient Greece the tendency towards greater professionalism reached its climax with the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great. From this time on, the development of siege techniques was an important part of military practice. The generals of Carthage, especially HANNIBAL, hired mercenaries to great effect in their forces, but it was the armies of Rome, gradually evolving into fully professional standing forces, which dominated Europe from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD. Less organized but swiftly moving armies then came to the fore in the DARK AGES, from those of ATTILA the Hun to the Mongols. In Europe in the Middle Ages the limitations of the heavily armoured mounted knight were finally exposed by Swiss infantry armed with pikes or halberds and English infantry armed with longbows. The use of mercenaries (see CONDOTTIERE) again became commonplace.

The major advances of the 15th and 16th centuries were the invention of gunpowder and the development of cannon. Organization, discipline, and further advances in weaponry led to the creation of highly efficient armies, most notably those of FREDERICK II (the Great) of Prussia. In the late 18th century, European armies were mainly of mercenaries recruited (often under pressure) and trained by a professional officer class. The first conscript armies were recruited in France to fight the REVOLUTIONARY and NAPOLEONIC WARS. During the 19th century most European countries adopted a system of conscription of young men to train and serve for about two years. (Britain only enforced conscription in 1916–18 and again between 1939 and 1959.) European armies played an essential role in 19th- and early 20th-century IMPERIALISM, their superior fire-power enabling them to dominate the peoples of Africa and Asia. The AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (1861–65) saw large armies of the Union (the North) and the Confederacy (the South) engaged in a struggle in which railways were crucial for movement of troops, and new infantry weapons, such as the breech-loading rifle and the repeating carbine, were developed. By the time of the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR in 1870–71 heavy artillery was developing, but infantry and cavalry tactics remained little changed until World War I, when motor transport and heavier artillery developed. Even then, armies were slow to adapt to armoured vehicles and the massed infantry attacks of its battles still used rifle, bayonet, and hand-grenade as their basic weapons, now pitched against machine guns. By World War II armies were fully motorized and tanks played a major part in the NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN and at the Eastern Front. This mobility required large backup fuel and maintenance services. Basic infantry tactics still remained essential (even though the rifle was being replaced by the semiautomatic or automatic submachine gun), especially in the jungle warfare of the BURMA CAMPAIGN. They remained so for later campaigns in Korea, Vietnam, and the Falklands. In the COLD WAR balance of power, large armies of NATO and the WARSAW PACT continued to face one another in Europe, armed with both conventional weapons and missiles. Allied victory in the GULF WAR was achieved through massive tank deployment. Since the end of the Cold War the armies of UN member nations have increasingly been combined to form multinational peacekeeping and ‘rapid reaction’ forces.

army Organized group of soldiers trained to fight on land, usually rigidly hierarchical in structure. The first evidence of an army comes from Sumer in the third millennium bc. The use of cavalry was a Hittite development and the Assyrians added archers and developed siege machines. In the Middle Ages, major improvements were made to armour and weapons. The short-term feudal levy by which armies were raised proved inflexible, and this led to the use of mercenaries. Heavy cavalry was replaced by a combination of infantry and archery. The end of the Hundred Years' War saw the inception of royal standing armies and an end to the chaos caused by mercenary armies. Muskets and bayonets replaced the combinations of longbow, pike and infantry, and artillery was much improved. In the French Revolutionary Wars, a citizen army was raised by conscription and contained various specialist groups. Other European armies followed suit and the age of the mass national army began. The machine gun caused deadlock in the World War I trenches, and was broken only by the invention of the tank. World War II saw highly mechanized and mobile armies whose logistics of supply and support demanded an integration of the land, sea and air forces. Since World War II, nuclear weapons have been deployed both tactically and strategically, and again the nature of weaponry has determined an army's structure.

ar·my / ˈärmē/ • n. (pl. -mies) an organized military force equipped for fighting on land. ∎  (the army or the Army) the branch of a nation's armed services that conducts military operations on land. ∎  (an army of or armies of) a large number of people or things, typically formed or organized for a particular purpose: an army of photographers armies of cockroaches. PHRASES: an army marches on its stomachsee stomach.

army A small-scale army, or bodyguard, was established in the early days of the monarchy (1 Sam. 13: 2) and was enlarged by David and Solomon. After the defeat of Israel and Judah by the assyrians and babylonians, Jewish armies were not operative until the Maccabean period (165 BCE). Herod the Great organized an army, and in the NT there is mention of Roman armies (Luke 21: 20).

army n. pl. -ies
1. an organized military force equipped for fighting on land: the two armies were in position.

2. (the army or the Army) the branch of a nation's armed services that conducts military operations on land: enlisted men in the army | army officers.

army †armed expedition XIV; armed force XV. — (O)F. armée :- Rom. armāta, sb. use of pp. fem. of L. armāre ARM; see -Y5.

Army. See Military, The.

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