ton Normal and Agricultural Institute. The United States Government began sending Indian youths there in 1878. General Armstrong was president of the Institute till his death, May 11, 1893.
ARMSTRONG, WILLIAM GEORGE, LORD, an English inventor, born in 1810 at Newcastle. He was articled to a solicitor, and became a partner in the firm. In 1840 he produced a much improved hydraulic engine, and in 1845 the hydraulic crane. In 1842 he brought to perfection an apparatus for producing electricity from steam. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1846; and shortly afterward commenced the Elswick Engine Works, Newcastle, producing hydraulic cranes, engines, accumulators, and bridges, but was soon to be famous for the production of ordnance. During the Crimean War, Armstrong was employed by the War Office to make explosive apparatus for blowing up the ships sunk at Sebastopol. This led him to devise the form of cannon which bears his name. The essential feature of the Armstrong gun, whether rifled or smooth bore, breech-loading or muzzle-loading, is that the barrel is built up of successive coils of wrought-iron, welded round a mandrel into a homogeneous mass of great tenacity, the breech being especially strengthened on similar principles. The actual results obtained by these guns, even of the earlier patterns, were almost incredible. An ordinary 32-pounder weighed 5,700 pounds. Armstrong's 32- pounder weighed 2,600 pounds. The former required 10 pounds of powder as a charge; for the latter 5 pounds sufficed. The former would send a shot or shell 3,000 yards; the range of the latter exceeded 9,000 yards. Armstrong offered to the government all his inventions; and, till 1863, there existed a kind of partnership between the government and the Elswick firm, Armstrong being knighted in 1858, and appointed chief-engineer of rifled ordnance. Already a member of many scientific societies, he was in 1863 President of the British Association. Cambridge and Oxford conferred honorary degrees on Armstrong, who was raised to the peerage as Baron Armstrong in 1887. He died Dec. 27, 1900.
ARMY, the national militia of a country. The organization of an army is of two kinds—tactical and administrative. The former enables the leader of an army to transmit his orders to three or four subordinate commanders, who pass them on, the latter deals with the paying, feeding, clothing, arming and transportation of the military forces.
Ancient Armies.—The earliest regular military organization is attributed to Sesostris, who flourished in Egypt about 16 centuries B. C. This extraordinary conqueror divided Egypt into 36 military provinces, and established a sort of militia or warrior caste. With this army he overran Asia as far as India, and from the Ganges to the Caspian. After him little further progress was made in military art until the Persian empire rose. Its soldiers introduced the mass formation, with cavalry in intervals of squares; but the most important feature of the Persian organization was the establishment of what was practically a standing army, apportioned as garrisons throughout the conquered provinces, and under the control of military governors distinct from the satraps. In Greece it was not a standing army, but a sort of national militia, that gained Marathon, Platæa, and Mycale. The Lacedemonians invented the famous phalanx, a particular mass formation for foot-soldiers; and to this the Athenians added lighter troops to cover the front and harass the enemy in march. The Thebans introduced the column formation, which, being deeper and narrower than the phalanx, was intended to pierce the enemy's line at some point and throw them into confusion. Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, established, in Macedonia, the world's second standing-army. He brought into use the Macedonian pike, a formidable weapon 24 feet in length. About 200 B. C. every Roman from the age of 17 to 46 was liable to be called upon to serve as a soldier. The Roman legion, in its best days, excelled all other troops alike in discipline and in esprit. With a gradual laxity in discipline the decline of the Roman power commenced.
Medieval Armies.—With the decline of the Roman power all that remained of scientific warfare was lost for a time. The Northern invaders made little use of tactics, but relied chiefly on their personal bravery. The conquerors of the Roman Empire at first recognized no superior save the community, of which all conquests were the property. What all had aided to acquire all demanded equally to share. Hence arose a division of the conquered territory, individual chiefs rewarding their own followers with gifts of the land they had helped to conquer. The growth of a feeling that such gifts could be revoked, and that they implied an obligation to future service, marks the beginning of the feudal system, under which national armies disappeared, and each baron had a small
