| Title: | Military discipline |
| Original Title: | Discipline militaire |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 4 (1754), pp. 1030–1031 |
| Author: | Guillaume Le Blond (biography) |
| Translator: | Kevin Bender [University of Michigan] |
| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.967 |
| Citation (MLA): | Le Blond, Guillaume. "Military discipline." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Kevin Bender. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2008. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.967>. Trans. of "Discipline militaire," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 4. Paris, 1754. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Le Blond, Guillaume. "Military discipline." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Kevin Bender. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.967 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Discipline militaire," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 4:1030–1031 (Paris, 1754). |
Military discipline is the government or the manner of leading and directing troops. Well-disciplined troops are troops that have proper rules and observe them precisely. Thus military discipline consists of the rules and the ordinances in military service, mostly in the garrison or in the installation of troops in combat; it is also understood as the execution of these same bylaws.
Without discipline , an army is formed of nothing more than an assemblage of volunteers, incapable of uniting for a collaborative defense, eager only for plundering and chaos. It is discipline which unites them together under the orders of the officers, to which they owe a blind obedience for everything related to the service.
“It is not so much the multitude of soldiers that makes an army formidable as the ability to make them adaptable and firm, and to make of so many different members a single, living body of the same spirit. Such were the small armies of the Greeks, who had battled millions of Persians.” Institutions Militaires. [1]
Indeed, it is to military discipline that the Greeks owe their victories over the Persians and that the Romans owe their conquests. Troops who are to be well-disciplined must be drilled without break, as the best discipline is lost in rest. As skillful and bold as a general may be in undertaking major actions, if, says M. de Folard, he fails to discipline his troops these important qualities will be useless to him, and they will plunge him into the greatest misfortunes.
“The thing is all the more serious in that the safety of the state and their glory, like their reputation, depend strictly on it. And what must principally commit them to maintain the troops in observation of military laws, and to arm themselves with an unyielding exactitude to prevent its weakening; is that only a very short amount of time is needed, as Homer said, to throw the soldiers into forgetting and contempt for these laws. What is most annoying is that one could only reestablish them by the terror of punishment; which is very annoying and very difficult.” Commentaire sur Polybe. [2]
Military discipline concerns the officer no less than the soldier. All must equally obey those who have a superior rank, and to whom they are subordinate for the service. Everyone knows how rigorous the Romans were in this respect. Manlius Torquatus had his son killed for leaving the ranks and for having fought, against his interdiction, an enemy who had challenged him. An example of severity which could not fail to make the soldier more precise and more submissive to the orders of the consul, but which nonetheless displays the sort of harshness and ferocity of the ancient Romans, traces of which one often finds in their history. See Military punishments .
1. This seems to be a reference to De Re Militari by the Latin writer Flavius Vegetius Renatus (known as Vegetius). A French translation by Jean-François-Marie, chevalier de Bongars was published in Paris in 1743. A somewhat later edition of this translation (1772) is available online at: http://books.google.com/books?id=LQcqAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false".
2. Jean-Charles de Folard, Nouvelles decouvertes sur la guerre, dans une dissertation sur Polybe, où l’on donne une idée plus étenduë du commentaire entrepris sur cet auteur, & deux dissertations importantes détachées du corps de l’ouvrage. Paris, 1724.