How did different civilizations/eras round up armies

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OgreBattle
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How did different civilizations/eras round up armies

Post by OgreBattle »

In a lot of fantasy stories the armies just kind of appear to fight in big battles without much thought on where they come from, but getting down the details is good for world building.

So how did different civilizations in different eras raise armies?

Europe
-Greek era
-Roman Era
-Dark Ages
-Mongol Conquest era
-Renaissance
-Beginning of Imperialism, etc.
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Chamomile
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Post by Chamomile »

This is to my understanding, with some doublechecking of Wikipedia, but I'm not positive about much of any of it, so take this with a grain of salt:

In the Greek era, Athens (and most other city states) levied wealthy and middle class citizens who were required to provide their own arms and armor to serve as hoplites or cavalry if they could afford a horse, and as the scale of warfare expanded they also started hiring mercenary peltasts. Peltasts are skirmishers with relatively cheap equipment, so barbarians from up north could actually pay for their gear and then go around fighting wars and expect to start making a profit before being killed.

Macedon also levied their troops, but once levied those soldiers were a permanent, professional army who could only be discharged by order of the king.

Most of our sources on Persia are Greek, so we know a lot about how they fight but how they raised troops is less clear, but from what we do know it looks like there was a corps of fulltime professional soldiers and royal guard who were supplemented by levies from different satrapies of the empire. The professional army at the core let them fight against rebellions rather than just hoping the satrapies never realized they could walk away from the empire whenever they wanted so long as none of the other satrapies agreed to stop them.

Sparta had a warrior caste who was trained from the age of 7 to 21 to be soldiers and upon graduation immediately joined the army until at least age 40. They had a slave caste and to keep its population in check Spartan soldiers would regularly go out and raid their own countryside murdering them. Killing one of the slaves was a part of the military training. Even all this eventually failed and helot revolts were a huge problem as the population disparity between citizens and slaves grew wider, what with all the citizens being soldiers who have dying as part of their job description. So all kinds of crazy evil empire social structures are totally justified and provably workable thanks to Sparta.

The early Roman Republic's army was levied in the Athenian style, with mercenary supplements. Poorer citizens were levied as oarsmen while those who could afford weapons and armor did so. Then the Second Punic War happened and two-thirds of the eligible population was continuously drafted for twenty years. It was not technically a professional army because the legionaries would technically be released from service as soon as the war was over, but the war took so long that it was basically a professional army.

This led to the rise of the late Republic and Imperial army, a professional volunteer army in which citizens joined as legionaries for the sake of steady pay, the promise of land upon discharge, and in many cases training as doctors or engineers. While lots of people had armies which were employed longterm, I'm fairly sure Rome is the first time a government started taking anyone able-bodied and giving them the weapons, armor, and training needed to become a soldier. Legionaries were only used as the heavy infantry core of an army, all other military roles were served by auxiliary levies. Auxiliaries fought in the style of their own people, which means the Roman Empire serves as a great model for an empire which has lots and lots of different troops to fight against for longterm variety across an entire campaign.

The middle ages operated off of the feudal system. Knights owned land and the people who lived on it, and in turn owed fealty to their own lords, who had lords, who had lords. And lords serving the same lord would occasionally go to war with one another unless their lord happened to be strongwilled enough to make them stop, which they usually weren't. Each knightly fiefdom was responsible for raising their own men at arms, who were usually a fairly small cadre of troops, either levied or professional guardsmen, and when a lord wanted to go to battle he called on his vassals, who called on their vassals, who called on their vassals, and everyone balled their forces together into a great big disorganized mess and flung themselves at the other guys as hard as they could.

The Italian Wars of the early Renaissance were a fusion of everything that came before. There were citizen levies who were so useful in pike and shot formations that Niccolo Machiavelli remarked that all citizens should know how to fire a gun. There were wealthy nobles who were called upon by their lords to serve as heavy cavalry among the forces of French invaders. But mostly there were mercenaries. Tons and tons of mercenaries.

By the 18th century, citizen levies were in vogue again, with incoming levy troops being handed a musket, a uniform, drilled for a few months, and then shipped off to war. This remained the state of affairs in European and American warfare (and ultimately worldwide as culture globalized) until the Gulf War in 1991 when all-volunteer professional armies like those used by the Roman Empire made a comeback.
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Post by Ancient History »

Late Antiquity/Early Middle Ages wasn't as nice and neat as all that, because there was a transition and fusion period from Roman or German/Gaelic/Gothic etc. native military practices to what we eventually recognize as the feudal system. The important thing is that without a central bureaucracy and system of support the idea of a standing army basically vanishes from Europe for a considerable period of time. Instead, you see how the upper tier of citizen-soldiers - those wealthy enough to afford horses and their own arms and armor - become the elites around which the new noble classes form (which is oversimplifying things a bit, but is basically sound). With smaller tax bases to support troops, conflicts in Europe get smaller on the whole - but more widespread, and the technology improves fairly significantly as smiths experiment with many different designs for weapons and armor.

So by the Hundred Years' War, you have the famed English longbowmen (citizen levies) being led by nobles (mostly armored and on horseback, if they can afford it) with their men-at-arms and retainers, and early cannon, against the cream of the French knighthood and highly trained-and-drilled Italian crossbow mercenaries with specialized technology (pavises, etc.)

Long story short: it was basically always a mess, throughout history. But that's what makes it fun!
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Post by codeGlaze »

Makes you kind of respect the insane bastards that managed to hold together large balls of crazy to get shit done over long periods of time (war campaigns).

If I remember correctly from documentaries and random historical sources... the Persian empire didn't have too much difficulty with finding troops/recruits/volunteers. Because in exchange for their support, the empire largely left it's subordinate territories alone to do their own thing.
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Post by mlangsdorf »

Also, in the 19th century and to a lesser extent the 20th century, both the Americans and the British kept small, standing, reasonably professional armies for guarding their frontiers and fighting indigenous tribes, but supplemented them with citizen levies in times of major conflict (Crimean, US Civil War, WWI, WWII, etc).

Another pattern that developed in the Industrial era (I think; I can't quickly come up with earlier examples) is the colonial military: an industrialized nation would use its citizens as officers for an armed force made up mostly of colonials. Done well, this led to things like the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan or the famed Gurkhas. Done poorly, and you've got the sad history of mutiny in British India.

Citizen levees can also work on a couple of different models. Places like Modern Greece, Switzerland, or Israel conscript everybody for a couple of years of training and then moves them into the reserves, so that if they have to call up everyone, everyone already has decent training. The US, even when it had conscription, would only conscript during the major wars so there wasn't a large pool of trained reserves. Continued conscription is more expensive, but it does mean much more of the nation is available in emergencies.
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Post by codeGlaze »

Oh there's also the Renaissance mercenary problem where as city-states relied upon foreigners more often (and in greater numbers), the mercenaries started playing both sides of the field.

They would take money to participate in disputes and then either not fight, flee after low casualties or switch sides (?).

Similar problems happened with the end of Rome, you'd think that Italians would have learned better than to repeat the exact same problem a few centuries later.
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Post by OgreBattle »

Han Dynasty (200BCE-200CE)
At the beginning of the Han dynasty, every male commoner aged twenty-three was liable for conscription into the military. The minimum age for the military draft was reduced to twenty after Emperor Zhao's (r. 87–74 BC) reign.[191] Conscripted soldiers underwent one year of training and one year of service as non-professional soldiers. The year of training was served in one of three branches of the armed forces: infantry, cavalry or navy.[192] The year of active service was served either on the frontier, in a king's court or under the Minister of the Guards in the capital. A small professional (paid) standing army was stationed near the capital.[192]

During the Eastern Han, conscription could be avoided if one paid a commutable tax. The Eastern Han court favored the recruitment of a volunteer army.[193] The volunteer army comprised the Southern Army (Nanjun 南軍), while the standing army stationed in and near the capital was the Northern Army (Beijun 北軍).[194] Led by Colonels (Xiaowei 校尉), the Northern Army consisted of five regiments, each composed of several thousand soldiers.[195] When central authority collapsed after 189 AD, wealthy landowners, members of the aristocracy/nobility, and regional military-governors relied upon their retainers to act as their own personal troops (buqu 部曲).[196]

During times of war, the volunteer army was increased, and a much larger militia was raised across the country to supplement the Northern Army. In these circumstances, a General (Jiangjun 將軍) led a division, which was divided into regiments led by Colonels and sometimes Majors (Sima 司馬). Regiments were divided into companies and led by Captains. Platoons were the smallest units of soldiers
From the 5th century onward you see the emergence of the Fu Bing system, which is basically granting land in exchange for military service. This was usually frontier lands somany were militarized settlers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fubing_system
The basis of the Sui and early Tang militaries was the fubing militia system, first employed by the Western Wei, under Yuwen Tai's administration. These militia units also served as reserves, and could be mobilized quickly in times of war.

The system involved a system of militia who were assigned tracts of land. Men between 21 and 60 years of age were eligible. Officers received permanent commissions, but regular troops reported for duty at the province capital on a rotation system that varied upon living distance. Those who lived 500 li from the capital served one month every five months, and those over 2000 li away served for two months every 18 months. When off-duty, they would farm their land, but when a war occurred, they would be re-mobilized. This supplemented the equal-field system, which assigned all households a share of land to farm. These units subsequently became hereditary military families, and ushered forth vast militarized settlements and communities.[1]

The Sui placed these units under local civil administration, and later the Tang incorporated them under metropolitan control, more specifically the Ministry of the Army. The Tang fielded 634 militia units, later called Zhechongfu. Each unit consisted of 800 to 1200 men, and in turn were subdivided into tuan of 300, dui of 50, and huo of 10.[2][3] Many were concentrated in the northern region, especially in Guanzhong, which alone fielded 261 militia units, the rest included 164 in Shanxi, and 74 in Henan and Shandong, all constituting about 80 percent of Fubing conscripts. Fubing required little government expenditure, since militiamen could support themselves by farming.[4]

The Fubing system only had provisions for brief military campaigns and peacetime. Prolonged warfare would prevent the cultivation of agriculture for the economy. Fubing was gradually abandoned in favor of full time army units, known as Jian Er (健儿).
In the 7th century, as the amount of land they could grant was being used up, the Tang dynasty favored a standing army:
By the year 737, Emperor Xuanzong discarded the policy of conscripting soldiers that were replaced every three years, replacing them with long-service soldiers who were more battle-hardened and efficient.[57] It was more economically feasible as well, since training new recruits and sending them out to the frontier every three years drained the treasury.[57] By the late 7th century, the fubing troops began abandoning military service and the homes provided to them in the equal-field system. The supposed standard of 100 mu of land allotted to each family was in fact decreasing in size in places where population expanded and the wealthy bought up most of the land.[58] Hard-pressed peasants and vagrants were then induced into military service with benefits of exemption from both taxation and corvée labor service, as well as provisions for farmland and dwellings for dependents who accompanied soldiers on the frontier.[59] By the year 742 the total number of enlisted troops in the Tang armies had risen to about 500,000 men.
Last edited by OgreBattle on Tue Mar 17, 2015 4:01 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by name_here »

Note that Chamonile describes the nice, neat version of the feudal system, and the reality was kind of like that except exceedingly complex and stupid. Vassals were granted certain amounts of land and were required to provide a certain military force, usually for a limited duration. There wasn't a set feudal contract, but instead individual deals with everyone that were further complicated by the bit where in the earlier parts of the middle ages it was highly likely neither party could actually read and write. Also, the part where everything traced down in a pyramid from the king was more how kings would like things to work than how things actually worked, and it was totally possible to have multiple lords and circular relationships, or for people to own land outright and also have some given as a fief.

It is also worth noting that churches and monasteries could be vassals, with basically the same rules as everyone else and get appointed by secular authorities rather than the papacy, though the Catholic Church worked on changing that and was mostly successful in the 11th-12th centuries.

The Roman Republic army was made up of volunteer citizens, but the funding was kinda fucked. Elected officals, generally proconsuls, were pretty much required to pay them "somehow". They had a fixed base salary, though I forget if that was on the bafflingly short list of government functions the central treasury actually paid for, but most of their pay came in the form of loot or bonuses given by the general, and they were supposed to get land grants on completing their terms of service but there weren't standing provisions for making that happen.
Last edited by name_here on Tue Mar 17, 2015 7:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Avoraciopoctules »

Pastoral nomads like Mongols basically learned war as an extension of their basic hunting practices. Their herds were their wealth and they needed to trade with agrarian states to have a real chance of diversifying their risk. When markets got restricted/closed down, the hunters would get together to raid for what they wanted. Success and profit created an incentive to organize bigger and bigger raids.

Clan leaders had to keep their followers appeased with plunder or otherwise guarantee a stream of the goods that could not be effectively manufactured in steppe/desert lands. The Mongols at least were also very fond of co-opting new weapons and local military forces to supplement their light cavalry core.
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