25. Chapter XXV: Of Discipline In Democratic Armies
It is a very general opinion, especially in aristocratic
countries, that the great social equality which prevails in
democracies ultimately renders the private soldier independent of
the officer, and thus destroys the bond of discipline. This is a
mistake, for there are two kinds of discipline, which it is
important not to confound. When the officer is noble and the
soldier a serf -one rich, the other poor -the former educated
and strong, the latter ignorant and weak -the strictest bond of
obedience may easily be established between the two men. The
soldier is broken in to military discipline, as it were, before
he enters the army; or rather, military discipline is nothing but
an enhancement of social servitude. In aristocratic armies the
soldier will soon become insensible to everything but the orders
of his superior officers; he acts without reflection, triumphs
without enthusiasm, and dies without complaint: in this state he
is no longer a man, but he is still a most formidable animal
trained for war.
A democratic people must despair of ever obtaining from
soldiers that blind, minute, submissive, and invariable obedience
which an aristocratic people may impose on them without
difficulty. The state of society does not prepare them for it,
and the nation might be in danger of losing its natural
advantages if it sought artificially to acquire advantages of
this particular kind. Amongst democratic communities, military
discipline ought not to attempt to annihilate the free spring of
the faculties; all that can be done by discipline is to direct
it; the obedience thus inculcated is less exact, but it is more
eager and more intelligent. It has its root in the will of him
who obeys: it rests not only on his instinct, but on his reason;
and consequently it will often spontaneously become more strict
as danger requires it. The discipline of an aristocratic army is
apt to be relaxed in war, because that discipline is founded upon
habits, and war disturbs those habits. The discipline of a
democratic army on the contrary is strengthened in sight of the
enemy, because every soldier then clearly perceives that he must
be silent and obedient in order to conquer.
The nations which have performed the greatest warlike
achievements knew no other discipline than that which I speak of.
Amongst the ancients none were admitted into the armies but
freemen and citizens, who differed but little from one another,
and were accustomed to treat each other as equals. In this
respect it may be said that the armies of antiquity were
democratic, although they came out of the bosom of aristocracy;
the consequence was that in those armies a sort of fraternal
familiarity prevailed between the officers and the men.
Plutarch's lives of great commanders furnish convincing instances
of the fact: the soldiers were in the constant habit of freely
addressing their general, and the general listened to and
answered whatever the soldiers had to say: they were kept in
order by language and by example, far more than by constraint or
punishment; the general was as much their companion as their
chief. I know not whether the soldiers of Greece and Rome ever
carried the minutiae of military discipline to the same degree of
perfection as the Russians have done; but this did not prevent
Alexander from conquering Asia -and Rome, the world.