The destruction of the Janissaries in 1826 marked the close of the
history of the old Turkish army; already the re-creation of the
service on the accepted models of western Europe had been commenced.
This was still incomplete when the new force was called upon to meet
the Russians in 1828, and though the army displayed its accustomed
bravery, its defective organization and other causes led to its
defeat. Since then the army has been almost as constantly on active
service as the British; the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877
and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 witnessed the employment of a large
proportion of the sultan's available forces, while innumerable local
revolts in different parts of the empire called for great exertions,
and often for fierce fighting on the part of the troops locally in
garrison and those sent up from the nearest provinces.
UNITED STATES ARMY
99. The regular army of the United States has always been small. From
the first it has been a voluntary force, and until 1898 its chief work
in peace was to furnish numerous small posts on the frontier and amongst
the Indians, and to act as a reserve to the civil power in the great
cities. In war-time the regular army, if, as was usually the case, it
was insufficient in numbers for the task of subduing the enemy, formed
the nucleus of large armies raised "for the war." In 1790 the rank and
file of the army, as fixed by act of Congress, amounted to 1216 men; and
in 1814 an English expedition of only 3500 men was able to seize and
burn Washington, the capital of a country which even then numbered eight
millions of inhabitants. In 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War, the
whole regular force amounted to about 15,300 men. In April of that year
the president called out 75,000 volunteers for three months; and in May
a further call for 42,000 was made. In July a call for 500,000 men was
authorized by Congress, and as even this vast force proved insufficient
it was found necessary to use a system of drafts. In October 1863 a levy
of 300,000 men was ordered, and in February 1864 a further call of
500,000 was made. Finally, in the beginning of 1865 two further levies,
amounting in all to 500,000 men, were ordered, but were only partially
carried out in consequence of the cessation of hostilities. The total
number of men called under arms by the government of the United States,
between April 1861 and April 1865, amounted to 2,759,049, of whom
2,656,053 were actually embodied in the armies. If to these be added the
1,100,000 men embodied by the South during the same time, the total
armed forces reach the enormous amount of nearly four millions, drawn
from a population of only 32 millions--figures before which the
celebrated uprising of the French nation in 1793, or the efforts of
France and Germany in the Franco-German War, sink into insignificance.
These 2,700,000 Federals were organized into volunteer regiments bearing
state designations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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