Standing armies

A standing army, unlike a reserve army, is a permanent, often professional, army. It is composed of full-time soldiers (who may be either career soldiers or conscripts) and is not disbanded during times of peace. It differs from army reserves, who are enrolled for the long term, but activated only during wars or natural disasters, and temporary armies, which are raised from the civilian population only during a war or threat of war and disbanded once the war or threat is over. Standing armies tend to be better equipped, better trained, and better prepared for emergencies, defensive deterrence, and particularly, wars. The term dates from approximately 1600, although the phenomenon it describes is much older.

The first possible record of a standing army is the army of Sumer in Mesopotamia, recorded on the Stele of the Vultures between 2600 and 2350 BC.Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria (ruled 745–727 BC) created Assyria's first standing army.

The first known standing armies in Europe were in ancient Greece and Macedon. The male citizen body of ancient Sparta functioned as a standing army, unlike all other city-states (Poleis), whose armies were citizen militias. The existence of an enslaved population of Helots liberated the Spartiates from the need to work for a living, enabling them to focus their time and energy on martial training. Philip II of Macedon instituted the first professional army, with soldiers and cavalrymen paid for their service year-round, rather than a militia of men who mostly farmed the land for subsistence and occasionally mustered for campaigns.

The army of ancient Rome is considered to have been a standing army during much of the Imperial period and during some of the late republican period.

The first modern standing armies in Europe were the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, formed in the fourteenth century. In western Europe the first standing army was established by Charles VII of France in the year 1445. The Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus had a standing army from the 1460s called the Fekete Sereg, which was an unusually big army in its age, accomplishing a series of victories and capturing parts of Austria, Vienna (1485) and parts of Bohemia.

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