Army

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).

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army

Large, organized force armed and trained for war, especially on land. The term may be applied to a large unit organized for independent action or to a nation's or ruler's overall military organization for land warfare. The character and organization of armies have varied through history. At various times armies have been built around infantry soldiers or mounted warriors (e.g., cavalry) or men in machines, and have been made up of professionals or amateurs, of mercenaries fighting for pay or for plunder, or of patriots fighting for a cause. See also air force, conscription, guerrilla, military unit, militia, U.S. Army.

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army [′är·mē]

(ordnance)

The land military forces of a nation.

A unit of the U.S. Army made up of two or more army corps.

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Army 

(1) Land troops (land forces) on a level with a naval fleet.

(2) Totality of armed forces of a state.

(3) Large operational unit designated for the conducting of operations.

In the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries the term “army” meant troops united under a single command in one theater of operations, hence the names Rhine Army, Danube Army, and so on.

The growth in numbers of national armed forces, the difficulty of controlling troops located along a broad front and operating in different directions, and the appearance of new factors which influenced the conduct of battles (the railroad, and in the 20th century first automobile and then air transport) made it necessary to create individual armies within a single theater of operations. Instead of one army carrying out a strategic task throughout the whole theater, a number of armies appeared, each under the command of one person (the commander of the army), and each representing a large operational unit of troops intended to carry out the individual operational tasks in the theater. The army had a headquarters staff and the necessary logistic agencies; it was usually designated by an ordinal number. Such individual armies in a single military theater appeared in Russia before the Patriotic War of 1812, when all the forces were divided into three armies. In 1812, Napoleon, too, began to organize individual armies (groups); previously he had made all the corps directly subordinate to himself. Later, individual armies appeared in Prussia (1866), Japan, (1904–05), and other states. During World War I, Russia had 13 armies (1916), Germany had 15 (1918), and France had ten (1918). During the Civil War (1918–1920) a new type of army unit—the mounted army—appeared in the Soviet Armed Forces.

Initially, armies did not have a permanent organization; their composition was determined by the tasks they carried out, the characteristics of the military theater, the strength of the enemy, the existing possibilities for security of troop control, and other conditions. Beginning with the 19th century, armies generally consisted of three to six or more corps, and corps consisted of two to four divisions. In the Civil War the Soviet Army had no corps; it was made up directly of divisions. In addition to corps (divisions), armies included various auxiliary units. The numerical composition of armies was not constant: thus, the Russian First Army numbered 127,000 men in 1812, and the Second Army 40,000 men; the Prussian First Army numbered 140,000 men in 1866, the Second Army, 115,000 men; in 1916 the Russian Eighth Army included 225,000 men, the Ninth Army, 165,000 men. In the Great Patriotic War (1941–45), German fascist armies included 120,000–250,000 men; Soviet armies numbered 60,000–100,000 men.

Before the appearance of automobiles, automatic weapons, airplanes, and tanks, the foundation of the army was infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The shock force of the army was based on bayonets, its maneuverability on the mobility of the infantry (25–30 km in a 24-hour period). Armies of World War I and Soviet armies of the Civil War were of a transitional type. They were distinguished from previous armies primarily by the increased saturation of war matériel—that is, automatic weapons, mortars, and guns—and the appearance of an air force, armored-vehicle troops, chemical troops, antiaircraft defense troops, motor transport units, road units, and other units. The cavalry did not lose its importance. However, these armies were nonetheless unmounted armies with an inherently low level of maneuverability. The infantry and artillery constituted the basic shock force. Tanks, planes, and motorized transport were not widely employed; they had not been perfected technically and thus could not fundamentally alter combat capabilities.

By the start of World War II (1939–45) the engine and the combat vehicle had become prominent in the armies of developed states. Tank armies (in the USSR and Germany), airborne armies, and air armies appeared in World War II along with combined arms armies. The combat strength of combined arms armies had become more varied than that of the period of World War I. In addition to infantry (rifle) units, they began to include tank and mechanized (motorized) units. On the Soviet-German front the composition of combined arms armies fluctuated from three to five army corps (ten to 16 infantry divisions) and from two to eight tank and motorized divisions. Soviet combined arms armies had from three to five infantry corps (nine to 14 divisions) and one or two tank (mechanized) corps. The German tank army consisted of two or three tank corps. The Soviet tank army usually consisted of three corps (one or two mechanized and one or two tank corps). Combined arms and tank armies had a great number of different means of reinforcement. The American and British forces had no tank armies.

After World War II, the army as a large operational unit of troops developed further as a result of the combat experience that was acquired, the rearmament of troops with the new combat technology, the mechanization and motorization of troops, and the appearance of rocket troops in the 1960’s.

REFERENCES

Engels, F. Izbr. voennye proizvedeniia. Moscow, 1958.
Lenin, V. I. “Voisko i revoliutsiia.” Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 12.
Lenin, V. I. “Armiia i narod.” Ibid, vol. 13.
Frunze, M. V. Sobr. soch., vols. 1–3. Moscow-Leningrad, 1926–29.
Frunze, M. V. Izbr. proizv. Moscow, 1965.
Triandafillov, V. Kharakter operatsii sovremennykh armii, 4th ed. Moscow, 1937.
50 let Vooruzhennykh Sil SSSR (1918–1968). Moscow, 1968.

I. S. LIAPUNOV