ARMY, a large number of soldiers, consisting of horse and foot, completely armed, and provided with artillery, ammunition, provisions, &c. under the command of one general, having lieutenant-generals, major-generals, brigadiers, and other officers, under him. An army is composed of squadrons and battalions; and is usually divided into three corps, and formed into three lines: the first line is called the van-guard, the second the main-body, and the third the rear-guard or body of reserve. The middle of each line is protected by the foot; the cavalry form the right and left wing of each line; and sometimes they place squadrons of horse in the intervals between the battalions. When the army is drawn up in order of battle, the horse are placed at five feet distance from each other, and the foot at three. In each line the battalions are distant from each other 180 feet, which is nearly equal to the extent of their front; and the same holds of the squadrons, which are about 300 feet distant, the extent of their own front. These intervals are left for the squadrons and battalions of the second line to range themselves against the intervals of the first, that both may more readily march through these spaces to the enemy: the first line is usually 300 feet distant from the second, and the second from the third, that there may be sufficient room to

* See here rally when the squadrons and battalions are broken.

This is to be understood of a land-army only. A naval or sea-army is a number of ships of war, equipped and manned with sailors and mariners, under the command of an admiral, with other inferior officers under him. See Naval Tactics.

Long experience has shewn, that in Europe a prince with a million of subjects cannot keep an army of above 10,000 men, without ruining himself. It was otherwise in the ancient republics: the proportion of soldiers to the rest of the people, which is now as about 1 to 100, might then be as about 1 to 8. The reason seems owing to that equal partition of lands which the ancient founders of commonwealths made among their subjects; so that every man had a considerable property to defend, and means to defend it with: whereas, among us, the lands and riches of a nation being shared among a few, the rest have no way of subsisting but by trades, arts, and the like; and have neither any free property to defend, nor means to enable them to go to war in defence of it, without starving their families. A large part of our people are either artisans or servants, and do only minister to the luxury and effeminacy of the great. While the equality of lands subsisted, Rome, though only a little state, being refused the succours which the Latins were obliged to furnish after the taking of the city in the consulate of Camillus, presently raised ten legions within its own walls; which was more, Livy affirms us, than they were able to do in his time, tho' matters of the greatest part of the world. A full proof, adds the historian, that we are not grown stronger; and that what swells our city is only luxury, and the means and effects of it.