proceedings, but it also prevents the accruing of any disability or
forfeiture. The British judge advocate’s office has been much
strengthened. It now consists of: (1) The judge advocate general
(one of H.M. judges); (2) a deputy judge advocate general, who is a
trained lawyer; (3) a deputy judge advocate, also a trained lawyer;
(4) a military officer of the rank of colonel who has been called to the
bar; (5) in South Africa (since 1899, and on a five-years’ appointment from 1902) a colonel who has been called to the bar.
In Germany there is no appeal, except for officials attached to the army. In Austria-Hungary the sentence can be lightened by the commanding officer. It can also be returned for trial by a superior court if it appears to him too light. In Spain all judgments have to be confirmed, and if confirmation is refused, it is carried before the supreme court of the navy and army. The condemned has no power of appeal himself, but all cases of death or life sentences go before the supreme court of the navy and army. Russia only requires the confirmation of the commanding officer. In Rumania and Greece all condemned prisoners in time of peace can demand a court of revision, composed of a general and four superior officers. In time of war the court may be composed of three.
Certain forms of punishment, in all countries but the United States, can be given by the superior officer, without judicial intervention, for small purely military offences, where a summary procedure is required. The offender, if he prefers, may be carried before court-martial. The punishment is immediately carried into force, but the Disciplinary Punishments.person punished can complain to higher military authority. In that case, if the complaint is not admitted, the punishment is enhanced. The commonest of these disciplinary punishments are deprivation of liberty, confined to barracks, arrests and prison. Certain special punishments obtain in certain countries—for instance, imprisonment in Turkey may be accompanied by a bread-and-water diet; and officers in Finland and Russia may be deprived of advancement.
In 1908 France took steps to abolish courts-martial in time of peace, all common law offences to be judged by the ordinary courts, and breaches of military discipline such as rebellion, insubordination, desertion and the like by mixed courts composed of civil and military magistrates.
See Clode, Military Forces of the Crown; T. Gram, Fonctionnement de la justice militaire dans les différents États de l’Europe. (Jno. S.)
MILITIA (Fr. milice, Ger. Miliz, from Lat. miles, soldier,
militia, military service), a term used generally for organized
military forces which are not professional in character and not
permanently embodied. All ancient armies, with the exception
of the personal guards of their leaders, were militias or national
levies, remaining under arms for the war or the campaign and
returning to their ordinary occupations at the close of each
military episode. Militias such as those of the Greek city-states
and that of Rome were of course highly trained to the use of
arms; so were the barbarian “nations in arms”; which overcame
the professionalized Roman armies of the Empire; and although
in the Eastern Empire these new fighting elements were absorbed
into a fully organized regular arm, in the West the tribal militia
system gradually developed into feudalism. The noble and
the knight indeed spent the greater part of their lives in the field
and devoted themselves from their youth to the cult of arms,
but the feudal tenantry, who were bound to give forty days
war service and no more, and the burghers who, somewhat later
in the history of civilization, formed the efficient garrisons of
the walled towns were true militias. The English Yeomanry
indeed almost ruled the battlefield.
In the 15th century the introduction of firearms began to weigh down the balance in favour of the professional soldier. Artillery was always the arm of the specialist. The development of infantry, “fire-power,” with the early arquebus and musket, called for the highest skill and steadiness in the individual soldier, and cavalry too adopted the new weapon in the form of long and expensive wheel-lock pistols. In the new military organization there was no place for the unprofessional soldier. The rôle of the unprofessional combatant, generally speaking, was that of an insurgent—harassing small detachments of the enemy, cutting off stragglers, and plundering convoys. Towards the end of the first civil war in England (1645) the country-folk banded themselves together to impose a peace on the two warring armies, but their menace was without effect, and they were easily disarmed by Fairfax and Cromwell, who did not even trouble to hold them as prisoners. The calling out of the arrière ban of Franche-Comté in 1675 displayed its ludicrous inefficiency, and thereafter in France, which set the fashion to Europe in all military matters, the “provincial militia,” which Louvois and Barbezieux raised in place of the discredited arrière ban, was employed partly to find drafts for and partly to augment the regular army.
When a first line army was large enough to absorb the fighting strength of the country there was neither room nor need for a true militia force. This was the case with France under Napoleon’s régime, but things were different elsewhere. In Great Britain the county militia (whose special history is briefly sketched below) was permanently embodied during the greater part of the Napoleonic Wars. Destitute as it was of technical and administrative services, of higher staffs and organization, and even of cavalry, this militia was a regular army in all but name. Combining continuous service with territorial recruiting as it did, it consisted of men of a better stamp than the casually recruited regular forces. In those days, the militia was a county force commanded by the lords-lieutenant and officered by men of influence; it was not administered by the War Office.
In other countries, Napoleon’s invading armies had only to deal with regular or professional troops. Once these were crushed, nothing remained for the beaten side but to, make peace with the conqueror on such terms as could be obtained. Militias existed in name as organizations, for the production of more or less unwilling drafts for the line, but the fundamental militia obligation of defending the fatherland as distinct from defending the state, produced only local and occasional outbursts of guerrilla warfare. In the Crimean War, the 1859 war in Italy, the 1866 war in Germany, and other wars (the Hungarian War of 1848–49 excepted) the forces, other than the regular troops, engaged in first line were guerrilleros, insurgents, Garibaldians, &c., and behind the forces in first line there were draft-supplying agencies, but no true militia. Only the British militia and the Prussian landwehr represented the self-contained army of second line, and of these the former was never put to the test, while the latter, responding feebly to a political call to arms in 1850, was in consequence so entirely reorganized that it formed a mere rear rank to the line troops. This latter system, consecrated by the German successes of 1870, became the universal model for the Continent of Europe, and organized and self-contained militias to-day are only to be found in states maintaining first line armies of “general service” professionals, or in states which maintain no first line troops whatever. In the first class are the auxiliary forces of the British Empire and the United States, in the second the Swiss, Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish forces.
Militia of the United Kingdom
The title of “militia” disappeared from the list of the British forces in 1908, on the conversion of the existing self-contained militia into an army “special reserve” which is restricted to the role of providing drafts for the first line.[1] The “self-contained” second line army of the present day is the Territorial Force (see United Kingdom: Army).
The county organization of England, with which throughout the militia was closely associated, began with the advent of the Saxons. The prototype of the militia was the Fyrd. In this force as reorganized by Alfred liability of service was general on the part of every able-bodied male between the ages of 16 and 60. Although the title of “The Fyrd” survived until long after the Norman Conquest, the force established by King Alfred was known as the general levy, which was bound to appear armed when ordered to aid in suppressing domestic riots as well as in defending the realm against invasion by foreign foes. Service was restricted to the counties, except in case of invasion, when it was extended to the whole kingdom. For centuries these remained with little alteration as the principles governing the national forces of the kingdom, and form in effect with certain developments the basis of the modern militia system. The Norman Conquest was immediately followed by the introduction of the feudal levy in addition to the general levy, the distinction between these forces being that while obligation to serve in the latter rested upon every male within certain limits of
- ↑ Various dominions and colonies of the British Empire have militias, for which see United Kingdom: Army. For the Swiss Militia System, which is in many respects the archetype of modern militias, see Switzerland; and for the organized militia of the United States see United States.
