Military Organisation
The development of armies and the position of the non-commissioned officer from antiquity to modern times
- The Roman army
- Tribal levies and feudalism
- Mercenary armies, the Swiss, from knight to cavalry
- The age of standing armies and cabinet wars
- People's armies, citizens in uniform
- The German army from the founding of the Reich to the present day
The Roman army
Many advanced civilisations of antiquity already maintained standing armies. Often these were only the core troops of the entire war levy, such as the ruler's bodyguard. The rest of the armed forces consisted of militias and conscripts.
In contrast, ancient Rome created the largest and most effective standing army of its time, consisting of paid, strictly hierarchically organised professional warriors.
The traditional founding year of Rome is 753 BC. At first still a small city state, over the centuries Rome developed from a kingdom into a republic, and from the republic finally into the rule of the Caesars; until Rome finally broke apart into the Western and the Eastern Roman Empire, and the Western Empire collapsed in the 5th century under internal decadence and the external pressure of the barbarian tribes; while Eastern Rome and its capital Byzantium/Constantinople were conquered by the Turks in 1453.
Between these dates lies the development of Rome's military power from the militia of its early days to the first modern army in history.
The subject of this account is the Roman army at the time of the reign of Augustus (Octavian, 27 BC to AD 14).
After the end of the Roman civil war, Augustus reduced the core of the army to 28 legions. Such a legion comprised 4,800 to 6,000 men including auxiliary troops. It was normally commanded by a legate (general). A legion was divided into 10 cohorts of about 480 men, each commanded by a praefectus cohortis or tribune. A cohort consisted of 3 maniples, which consisted of 2 centuries, each commanded by a centurion. (Century = a unit of a hundred, which however mostly comprised 60 – 80 men) Maniples and centuries were commanded by centurions of various ranks.
Within the legion there were about 150 different ranks and offices, and today's word officer derives from the Latin officium = office.
Within this hierarchy there were already ranks and functions corresponding to those of today's non-commissioned officer.
There was, for example, the highly venerable office of the signifer, the bearer of the maniple's standard, recognisable by an animal skin. Within the centuries there were the optiones = sergeants, who supported the centurions in training the legionaries, in passing on commands and in supervising their execution.
Promotion was often by merit, so that not a few worked their way up from simple legionary to high rank.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, there would be no comparable military power bearing the features of a modern army for many centuries, until the late Middle Ages.
Tribal levies and feudalism
In the transition between late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, tribal levies characterised the military organisation of the Gallic, Hunnic, Germanic and other "barbarian peoples". Their leaders were chieftains and nobles; the availability of warriors depended on reputation, season and harvest time.
With the emergence of the Frankish Empire and the subjugation of pagan peoples such as the Saxons by the Christian emperor Charlemagne, feudalism gradually developed in Europe; it was based on the feudal pyramid. At the top of this pyramid stood the king, anointed by God, that is, by His representative on earth.
Since the king could not rule all his lands in person, these lands were entrusted to the most loyal followers from the king's host for administration in trust. These were dukes, princes, counts and barons, who in turn passed their power on to the lower nobility, the knights.
For many centuries the decisive weapon of the Middle Ages was to be the heavily armoured mounted knight, while most of the foot soldiers served only in support and were good for little else.
A feudal army was therefore not a standing army that could be called up quickly, concentrated in garrisons; but a force scattered across the lands which could normally only be assembled seasonally.
Such an army of knights was anything but a cohesive, drilled and controllable tactical body of troops; rather, it was a loose conglomerate of individual fighters intent on a quick decision in battle, fixated on honourable single combat with their equals.
Mercenary armies, the Swiss, from knight to cavalry
In the course of the Middle Ages, however, the foot troops grew in importance and professionalism. Military and social upheavals increasingly shook the position of knighthood. As the power and wealth of the towns grew, the citizens increasingly did without the protection of the knight and raised militias and mercenary troops for their protection.
In the military sphere, for the first time, the foot troops became the weapon that decided battles. In the Hundred Years' War between France and England, the flower of French knighthood was mown down several times, as at Crécy and Agincourt, by Welsh and English longbowmen.
Europe also took notice of the victory of a force consisting solely of Swiss foot soldiers over an army of 3,000 knights at Morgarten in 1315. For many years the Swiss formed the most famous, seemingly invincible infantry in Europe.
The growing importance of the foot soldiers made it necessary to transform the army of knights into a tactically cohesive body of troops – the cavalry.
By the late Middle Ages the change from the feudal army to the mercenary army was largely complete. The German counterpart to the Swiss confederates were the Landsknechte. The expression Landser (German slang for an ordinary soldier) also derives from this word. Let us take a look at such an army.
A mercenary army was a costly affair and was usually only recruited once it was needed. There were also military entrepreneurs such as Erich von Mansfeld, Albrecht von Wallenstein or the Italian condottieri, who offered complete armies for hire. A mercenary's loyalty was to whoever paid him; national or dynastic concerns played no part.
The tactical and administrative basic unit to which a mercenary belonged was the Fähnlein (company) or regiment, regiment here being understood as the rule of the regimental colonel.
In these formations there was now once again a strong hierarchical structure:
"Of the high commands and offices belonging to the regiment of foot
The colonel, his lieutenant, captains of foot, the Schultheiß (judge), the court clerk, the court usher, the court assessors, the watch master, the master of provisions, the quartermaster, the provost, the Hurnweybel (in charge of the baggage train and camp followers), the jailer, the beadle, the executioner
Offices belonging to each company of soldiers
Captain, his lieutenant, ensign, sergeant, guide, two common sergeants, chaplain, clerk, barber-surgeon, fifer and drummer, file leader, bodyguards and lance-corporals…
Everyone who held an office (officium) was an officer; a distinction was made between superior and subordinate officers (Ober- and Unteroffiziere). From this time on, armies once again had a hierarchical structure of officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted men.
Maintaining a mercenary army in a long war confronted sovereigns and states with great problems. Since the loyalty and discipline of a mercenary army depended on regular pay and provisions, catastrophic conditions set in as soon as these could not be guaranteed.
While in the Middle Ages an army rarely numbered more than 10,000 or 20,000 men, during the Thirty Years' War of 1618 – 1648 armies of 30,000, 40,000 or 50,000 men were not uncommon, usually accompanied by a train of women, children, marauders and other riff-raff 3 or 4 times as large. When such armies moved through the country plundering, burning and scorching, one can imagine that the land was afterwards devastated in the truest sense of the word (in German verheert, literally "laid waste by an army"). In Germany about a third of the population fell victim to this war.
The economic damage caused by this kind of warfare led the nations to take other paths.
The age of standing armies and cabinet wars
As states developed further, it became possible for them to keep armies under arms permanently and not only in times of war. These armies were recruited from the country's own subjects and from mercenaries, who were disciplined by harsh means. The extensive baggage train and most of the non-combatants were removed from the body of troops. This development reached its peak in the 18th century, and the most famous creation of this time was the Prussian army, which Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau created and drilled under the reign of the Soldier King, and which Frederick II used in his wars to establish Prussia's position as a great power. This army became the model for all the armies of Europe, and its best values and traditions live on in the German armed forces to this day.
The expression cabinet war was based on the governments' endeavour to wage war from the conference table while largely sparing and excluding the population and the economy. For many, the uncontrolled fury of the Thirty Years' War, in which the armies had taken on a life of their own and war fed war, served as a warning.
People's armies, citizens in uniform
Two historical events brought about the change from the paid army to the people's army: the American colonies' struggle for independence from the British mother country, in which they were supported by Bourbon France, and the French Revolution of 1789. The latter was the product of rising national debt, the decadence and immobility of the nobility, the poverty of the masses and, ultimately, the inspiration of the French masses by the ideals of the American struggle for freedom.
Provoked by the proclamation of the republic and the beheading of Louis XVI, war broke out between revolutionary France and the old powers of Europe. Since the formerly royal French army was not sufficient to master the threat, the levée en masse, the mass levy, was proclaimed. These newly raised troops were gradually merged with the regular troops by the war minister Lazare Carnot and outnumbered the old armies of Europe. Through the practice of the revolutionary wars they finally also approached the standard of the other armies in quality, and they produced brilliant leaders.
For Napoleon Bonaparte, war, the army and his military and political genius were ultimately the springboard to power. In 1804 he became Emperor of the French. In 1805 he crushed an Austro-Russian coalition, and in 1806 the Prussian state collapsed under his onslaught.
But Prussia's deep fall became the foundation of its renewal.
Patriotic men such as Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Clausewitz in the military sphere, or Baron vom Stein in the civil sphere, worked towards the moment of liberation from the French yoke. Since Prussia was now only allowed an army of 40,000 men, short periods of service were used to create reserves. The soldier was no longer to fight out of fear of punishment, but out of inner conviction as a citizen in uniform, as the natural defender of his state. The privileges of the nobility were largely abolished.
Napoleon's ill-fated Russian campaign of 1812, which ended in the destruction of the Grande Armée, offered the opportunity for an uprising, and in alliance with Russia, Austria, England and Sweden Napoleon was finally defeated by 1815.
Bismarck's chancellorship in the post-Napoleonic era, through his policy of blood and iron, finally led to the founding of the German Empire under Prussian hegemony in 1871.
The German armed forces were combined into a federal army formed on the Prussian model.
This army lasted until 1918.
The non-commissioned officers formed "the backbone of the army". Some of them came from the schools on the Prussian model, which had meanwhile increased in number.
The army covered its main need with men it had trained itself who voluntarily signed on for a longer period of service.
They "capitulated", as it was called, received "hand money" (100 marks on the first extension for 4 years) and a monthly pay supplement. After completing 12 years of service they had earned the right to a certificate for civilian employment plus a bonus of 1,500 marks, which rose to 3,000 marks if they waived the transfer to the lower civil service. Since further advancement was only possible in civilian life, there were no longer any long-serving veterans, only the so-called "Zwölfender" (twelve-year men).
Whoever wore the gold braid – as a sergeant (Feldwebel or, in the cavalry, Wachtmeister) also the sword knot on the long side arm – stood at the first level of respectable importance in the chain of command.
The non-commissioned officers had long ceased to be mere drill masters. Since the closed combat formations had almost dissolved under the impact of rapidly advancing weapons technology, they had to support the officer at company level all the more independently and even be able to replace him in a critical situation, as early as 1866 in the Swiepwald at Königgrätz. This corresponded to the increased importance of the task of educating the enlisted men, too, to act actively on their own.
"The inner cohesion of the troops" rested "on the reliability and dutifulness of the non-commissioned officers". Accordingly, their position was accorded an appropriate rank in the consciousness of the people. The profession of the non-commissioned officer was strengthened in spirit by the conscious cultivation of esprit de corps within the companies. During service this cultivation lay mainly in the hands of the company commander and his officers; outside service it was entrusted to the caring influence of the "Etatmäßiger Feldwebel" (company sergeant major, known as the "Spieß").
In the judgement of both German and foreign military experts, the non-commissioned officer corps of the German army fully proved itself through great soldierly skill in the ordeal of two world wars.
The former French President François Mitterrand, a member of the Résistance in the Second World War who had himself been a German prisoner, said during a state visit to Berlin in 1990: "With the German soldiers who died in such great numbers, what matters to me is neither their uniform nor even the spirit that determined their actions. They had great courage and marched into this firestorm without hesitation. They were people who loved their fatherland. One must be aware of that."
The compliant, culpable or tragic entanglement of members of the Wehrmacht of all ranks in Hitler's criminal war makes it impossible for the Bundeswehr to draw on the Wehrmacht as a predecessor in its tradition.
But the ideal of the citizen in uniform, bound by his oath, his mission and his conscience, remains valid for us.
Quotation on the gravestone of the Prussian officer von der Marwitz:
"Chose disfavour where obedience brought no honour."
Von der Marwitz was a distinguished Prussian officer during the reign of Frederick II. A Saxon minister was a bitter enemy of Frederick. Frederick's sanguine temperament drove him to order Marwitz's battalion to ravage the minister's favourite palace. Although Marwitz was aware of the consequences for his career, he refused the militarily pointless and morally questionable order and was dismissed in disgrace.