thecitizen-soldier.docVIP

The Citizen-Soldier In medieval times it was a matter of law that common folk must purchase at their own expense and keep ready in their homes some basic weapons to serve and protect their king and state. The rulers expected the peasants to have acquired certain skills with their weapons prior to deployment, although they failed to provide any sort of funding for training. The English Assize of Arms (1181), promulgated by Henry II, required that each man keep at his own expense in his home a weapon appropriate to his rank and position. The American use of militia was, in reality, a return to traditional practices of this earlier age. In medieval Europe the law defined a militia as the whole body of freemen between the ages of fifteen and forty years, who were required by law to keep weapons in defense of their nation. In the later Middle Ages the militia was the whole body of citizens, burgesses, free tenants, villeins [serfs] and others from 15 to 60 years of age who were obliged by the law to be armed. Trained Bands (or Trainbands) are found primarily in Elizabethan and Stuart England. The concept and term may be found as early as the reign of Alfred the Great (849-899). For greater security, certain men in or near each settlement or City, who volunteered or were selected otherwise, were given, or agreed to procure, arms in advance of any emergency. These men became the mainstay of Cromwells army during the Puritan Revolution and these units developed from the broader militia. The term is occasionally encountered referring to select militia in the American colonies, especially in New England. Most European nations had abandoned the militia system by the sixteenth century. Americans chided the English for abandoning the militia system which had worked so well here. The militia, alone, had served as a check on the native aborigine in the colonial period of American history. For instances, when General Braddock was defeated near Pittsburgh, then Fort