Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Armour Plates" to "Arundel, Earls of"
11. _Roman Empire._--The essential weaknesses of militia forces and the
942 words | Chapter 19
accidental circumstances of that under consideration led, even in
earlier times, to the adoption of various expedients which for a time
obviated the evils to which allusion has been made. But a change of far
greater importance followed the final exploits of the armies of the old
system. The increasing dominions of the Republic, the spread of wealth
and luxury, the gradual decadence of the old Roman ideas, all tended to
produce an army more suited to the needs of the newer time than the
citizen militia of the 3rd century. Permanent troops were a necessity;
the rich, in their newly acquired dislike of personal effort, ceased to
bear their share in the routine life of the army, and thus the
proletariat began to join the legions with the express intention of
taking to a military career. The actual change from the old _regime_ to
the new was in the main the work of Gaius Marius. The urgent demand for
men at the time of the Teutonic invasions caused the service to be
thrown open to all Roman citizens irrespective of _census_. The new
territories furnished cavalry, better and more numerous than the old
_equites_, and light troops of various kinds to replace the _velites_.
Only the heavy foot remained a purely Italian force, and the spread of
the Roman citizenship gradually abolished the distinction between a
Roman and an allied legion. The higher classes had repeatedly shown
themselves unwilling to serve under plebeians (e.g. Varro and
Flaminius); Marius preferred to have as soldiers men who did not despise
him as an inferior. Under all these influences for good or for evil, the
standing army was developed in the first half of the 1st century B.C.
The tactical changes in the legion indicate its altered character. The
small maniples gave way to heavy "cohorts," ten cohorts forming the
legion; as in the Napoleonic wars, light and handy formations became
denser and more rigid with the progressive decadence in _moral_ of the
rank and file. It is more significant still that in the days of Marius
the annual oath of allegiance taken by the soldier came to be replaced
by a personal vow, taken once and for all, of loyalty to the general.
_Ubi bene, ibi patria_ was an expression of the new spirit of the army,
and Caesar had but to address his men as _quirites_ (civilians) to quell
a mutiny. _Hastati, principes_ and _triarii_ were now merely expressions
in drill and tactics. But perhaps the most important of all these
changes was the growth of regimental spirit and tradition. The legions
were now numbered throughout the army, and the Tenth Legion has remained
a classic instance of a "crack" corps. The _moral_ of the Roman army was
founded no longer on patriotism, but on professional pride and _esprit
de corps_.
With this military system Rome passed through the era of the Civil Wars,
at the end of which Augustus found himself with forty-five legions on
his hands. As soon as possible he carried through a great
reorganization, by which, after ruthlessly rejecting inferior elements,
he obtained a smaller picked force of twenty-five legions, with numerous
auxiliary forces. These were permanently stationed in the frontier
provinces of the Empire, while Italy was garrisoned by the Praetorian
cohorts, and thus was formed a regular long-service army, the strength
of which has been estimated at 300,000 men. But these measures,
temporarily successful, produced in the end an army which not only was
perpetually at variance with the civil populations it was supposed to
protect, but frequently murdered the emperors to whom it had sworn
allegiance when it raised them to the throne. The evil fame of the
Italian cohorts has survived in the phrase "praetorianism" used to imply
a venal military despotism. The citizens gradually ceased to bear arms,
and the practice of self-mutilation became common. The inevitable
_denouement_ was delayed from time to time by the work of an energetic
prince. But the ever-increasing inefficiency and factiousness of the
legions, and the evanescence of all military spirit in the civil
population, made it easy for the barbarians, when once the frontier was
broken through, to overrun the decadent Empire. The end came when the
Gothic heavy horse annihilated the legions of Valens at Adrianople (A.D.
378).
There was now no resource but to take the barbarians into Roman pay.
Under the name of _foederati_, the Gothic mercenary cavalry played the
most conspicuous part in the succeeding wars of the Empire, and began
the reign of the heavy cavalry arm, which lasted for almost a thousand
years. Even so soon as within six years of the death of Valens twenty
thousand Gothic horse decided a great battle in the emperor's favour.
These men, however, became turbulent and factious, and it was not until
the emperor Leo I. had regenerated the native Roman soldier that the
balance was maintained between the national and the hired warrior. The
work of this emperor and of his successors found eventual expression in
the victories of Belisarius and Narses, in which the Romans, in the new
role of horse-archers, so well combined their efforts with those of the
_foederati_ that neither the heavy cavalry of the Goths nor the phalanx
of Frankish infantry proved to be capable of resisting the imperial
forces. At the battle of Casilinum (553) Roman foot-archers and infantry
bore no small part of the work. It was thus in the Eastern Empire that
the Roman military spirit revived, and the Byzantine army, as evolved
from the system of Justinian, became eventually the sole example of a
fully organized service to be found in medieval history.
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