This is the story of the evolution of the citizen army throughout Western nations during the nineteenth century and up through World War I. The French Revolution had brought to Europe the concept of military service as a citizen responsibility. Until then, armies and navies had been the province of the upper classes and of mercenaries, with authoritarian governments firmly in place that held little connection to the common person. As more democratic and republican governments developed during the 1800s, military service became not only a citizen's obligation, but for many, an honor. By the...

Once warfare became established in ancient civilizations, it's hard to find any other social institution that developed as quickly. In less than a thousand years, humans brought forth the sword, sling, dagger, mace, bronze and copper weapons, and fortified towns. The next thousand years saw the emergence of iron weapons, the chariot, the standing professional army, military academies, general staffs, military training, permanent arms industries, written texts on tactics, military procurement, logistics systems, conscription, and military pay. By 2,000 B.C.E., war was an important...

The most dangerous arms in the world are those of horse and lance, because there is no means of stopping them, wrote a 15th-century commander, Jean de Bueil. From the fall of the Roman Empire to the end of the 15th century, the men (and a few women in disguise) who reported for military service or who led other men, scouted and skirmished, plundered and burned. If they did not slaughter the peasants they met, they took them prisoner to be sold as slaves or ransomed at heavy cost. It was a brutal time. Rogers illuminates the history of medieval soldiers in wartime and in peacetime,...