Tartarin wrote:Is it possible that the old standard which demands very specific loyalties from soldiers needs updating? In the past it's been responsible for coverups which shouldn't have been covered up. Maybe a new standard is needed. Progress, etc.
That's an interesting area to investigate. There have quite a wide variety of methods to get private soldiers. The ancient Chinese had "military colonists," basically, peasant families uprooted and placed on the frontier by fiat of the Imperial bureaucracy. They had little opportunity to train, and were usually badly exploited by their leaders. Given the attitude of the Mandarins, i doubt that they were believed to have any thoughts, let alone opinions. In contrast, in the late 1500's, Gustav Vasa, in founding a vigorous but unstable dynasty that brought Sweden both empire and near destruction, established military colonists on his frontier with Denmark (which then controlled the southernmost province in Sweden). He took good care of the soldiers and their families, had and enforced regulations on clothing (the quality and type, no one wore uniforms in those days), weapons, training, as well as the quality of housing the and upkeep of the farms or small shops they ran. The royal government got apprentices for them, and hired farmhands and helpers from among the poorest classes, to assure that soldiers could train, and leave their families to go on campaign without worrying about their livelihood. His illustrious grandson, Gustav II Adolph, known to history as Gustavus Adolphus, made the finest army in the world of this material. Sweden had a unique feudal system in Europe: whereas other nations recognized three "estates"--clergy, commons (read here, middle class, then a small class, and well above peasants) and the aristocracy--Sweden recognized a fourth, the "Bonde," who were the equivalent of serfs, but who were never tied to a parcel of land as were serfs elsewhere in Europe. Gustav Vasa was able to take the throne by an alliance with the Bonde, and certain members of the mercantile portion of the commons who saw their main chance in his rise. Vasa assured the peasants that Lutheranism would be protected, and for generations, the peasants of Sweden looked to the crown as their bulwark, and protection from the greed and venality of the Commons and the Nobility. The clergy also had a stake in it, the Lutherans at any event. I don't know that any private soldier may have voiced his opinion to Gustavus Adolphus while on campaign, but it would not have been that unusual. After G.A. died at Lutzen in 1632, his toddler daughter, Christina succeeded him. She is arguably one of the most intelligent women of which there is an historical record; she was also, like so many in Gustav Vasa's line, mentally unstable, although in her case it was simply unreliability. She decided to convert to Catholicism, and so, announced that she would abdicate, remaining on the throne until a sastisfactory successor was found. Many reliabel observers have reported that old peasant men and women would approach her in the street (simpler times, and the Vasa were "accessible") with tears in their eyes, calling her mother (she was about 32 or 33), and begging her not to abandon her "children."
When Rome began her career of conquest, an army larger than the city legion was needed. The Plebs threatened at one point to abandon the city (something they actually did twice in politcal struggles over other issues), if the Senate did not pay them while they were on campaign. The current of mistrust between Plebs and Patres ran so deep, that in one horrible wrangle, the only way out was the establishment of the office of military tribune (tribune from the same origin as tribe--the tribes weres the voting organizations of the city) in an attempt to protect the interests of the Plebs. In the early history of the Republican Empire, the private soldier would indeed express his opinion, and knew that the military tribunes (almost always chosen from their class--they cried foul when Senators son's were appointed) would back them up, if they had a legitimate complaint. With the rise of the principiate empire, the legions were recruited from outside Latinium, and there was no longer a situation in which the common foot were citizens as well as soldiers. In the glory days of the Principiate Empire, in fact, it was what is now called the "French Heavy Infantry,"--recruited from among the Germano-Celtic peoples of eastern Gaul--who made the army strong.
The tribes which eventually overran Gaul were the Salian and Ripurian Franks. These were actually tribal confederations--the Ubi, Chatti, Cherusci, Suebi, Treveri and others who had been unwilling to bow to the Romans, but were being crushed between the upper stone of Gothic migration out of Sweden, and the nether stone of the Roman frontier on the Rhine. Eventually, the Salian Franks absorbed the Ripurian Franks, by the simple expedient of an assassination, and a strategic marriage to the orphaned daughter. They used what became known as the feudal levy--all free men (Frank comes from a Germanic word of the time meaning a free man) were obliged to show up with a horse and their arms, to a certain specification of quality and type. Later on, the "man at arms" arose from the residue of the Franks who did not actually make nobility of themselves by grabbing land and founding estates. During the middle ages, the "chevalier," the man at arms on a horse, was the star athlete of the day. Competition in tournaments made them famous, and served as a résumé for soliciting employment. These men were an independent breed, and if they didn't like the way things were going with their employer, they definitely would say so, and they might well decide to stand by and watch while a battle took place, even if it meant the defeat of their employer. A famous example of this is the Earl of Norfolk, raised to that dignity by Richard III, in return for military support--and he kept his men standing by and watched Richard go down to defeat, and his death, against Henry Tudor at Bosworth in 1485. The Spaniards, the very name of whose infantry, the Tercios, struck fear into the hearts of peasants and commoners all over Europe, were allowed to sack cities, even allied cities which had not been beseiged, when their masters could not pay them. The "Rape of Antwerp" is the classic example, but by no means the only one.
By the time of the Dutch War of Rebellion, which lasted for more than eighty years, and the Thirty years war, soldiers, whether a mounted knight or a swordsman or pikeman or halberdier on foot, were largely mercenary. The Thirty Years War, the French wars of the Fronde and the English Civil Wars not only exhausted the resources of Western Europe, but put a deep mistrust of peasant armies into the minds of the rulers of those lands. By the time of Louis XIV and the War of the Spanish Succession, private soldiers were recruited for a set period, usually ten or twenty years. After Peter the Great, the Russian army's private soldiers were those unlucky or insufficiently evasive enough to have gotten caught by the conscription officers, and they served for life. General Burgoyne referred to what had once been praised as "stout English yoemen" as "the scum of the earth." Washington often complained to the Continental Congress about the quality of the troops recruited by the state recruiters; in one letter he complained about getting "nothing but drunkards and negroes." As might well be imagined, no one consulted these men on their opinions, and with flogging common for even petty offenses, i'd imagine they tended to keep their mouths shut, and carp to one another while in their cups.
The French Revolution changed all of that. Whereas Louis XIV had astounded all of the continent by keeping an army of hired privates mounting to as much as 100,000 in the field each year, the wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars brought a sea change to the compostion of armies. The Commitee for Public Safety, headed by Robspierre and Hébert, declared
la patrie en danger, the fatherland in danger, in 1792, and the first of the great
levées en masse took place. At the "Battle of the Nations" near Leipsic in 1813, Napoleon, with about 200,000 mostly raw, untrained troops, faced nearly half-a-million Russians, Prussians and Austrians. The
levée en masse of the period of the wars of the Revolution regularized the concept of conscription, and often, a nationalistic pride meant the private soldier served and fought with a will and a devotion not known since the days of primitive militias, many centuries before. Militia per se, has usually proven to be very unreliable, given their propensity to think of something better to do at the critical moment. The difference between recruited professional and militia has shown up time an again: at Bladensburg, in Maryland in 1814, about 7000 Virginia and Maryland militia were backing up fewer than 200 Marines, and about 500-600 sailors from the ridiculous "gunboat navy" of Jefferson, which was mostly at the bottom of the Chesapeake at that point. The militia got a good look at Packenham's veteran's of the Pennisular Campaign (Wellington in Spain), threw down their arms, and ran home as fast as their little legs would carry them. The sailors and Marines stayed around for the dance--one English officer wrote home that the sailors "stood to their guns after all of their officers had been shot down, and we were among them with the bayonet." The Marines fought the Brits to a standstill, and retreated to Washington at sundown, taking all of their dead and wounded with them--which was most of the force by that time. Volunteers in our early history, however, have done quite well--Jackson's men at New Orleans who defeated and badly mauled Packenham's veterans, and killed Packenham, were mostly volunteers form New Orleans, Kentucky and Tennessee--it became such a matter of pride in Tennessee to volunteer for national service, that they still call themselves the "Volunteer State." United States Volunteers, and United States Colored Troops (the USCT were volunteers to a man) were the backbone of Mr. Lincoln's army. In the anonimity of a great mass of men, both cheers and jeers were common. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was frightfully hard on his men, but he was a winner, and soldiers love that. They would cheer him whenever he came around, even soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia who had never served under him. His own men called him Old Jack, and they would often say to one another, while marching in the rain: "Let's make Old Jack get his head wet." They would cheer, knowing he would remove his cap in acknowledgement. By contrast, the USCT troops, who enjoyed a relationship of confidence and respect with their white officers, would make of point of remaining absolutely silent, with no expression on their faces, when an officer whom they knew or suspected of being prejudiced against blacks would pass by--the lack of notice being known by all to be a great insult.
But modern armies are larger still, and since the First World War, the United States has depended upon the National Guard (with the notable exception of the Vietnam War). "Citizen soldiers" do just as well as the volunteers in our past; they are less likely, however, to be as impressed with military protocol. MacArthur's boys in the "Rainbow Division" in the First World War (he was assistant division commander, and had full command of them during the final offensive) had a great respect and affection for him. In the southwest Pacific, in World War II, the G.I.'s were less enchanted; many openly expressed their contempt or hatred, and he was commonly known as "Dugout Doug"--an unjust accusation that he kept his head down while they fought.
The advent of the "all volunteer army" is unique in our history. Throughout the 1950's and -60's, conscription continued, and provided the large forces needed in Europe and the far East. Vietnam changed a lot of things--insubordination was rife and quite open. Soldiers pushed the limits, and on far too many occassions, tried to and sometimes succeeded in murdering officers they did not like or trust. How the dynamics work today is not clear; what is clear is that there are no precedents in our history for the type of army we have, given its volunteer nature coupled with its size.
