The standing army he created was the most sophisticated administrative and economic institution of its time, and was the engine of Assyrian economy which capitalized on warfare.
[10] Thousands of these 10,000 guardsmen composed the royal bodyguards in the palace, their insignia were golden apples or pomegranates at the butts of their spears (accordingly they are named “apple-bearers” by Heraclides Cumaeus).
[12] Philip II of Macedon instituted the first true professional Hellenic army, with soldiers and cavalrymen paid for their service year-round, rather than a militia of men who mostly farmed the land for subsistence and occasionally mustered for campaigns.
[11] The Western Zhou maintained a standing army, enabling them to effectively control other city states and spread their influence.
[15] True standing armies in India developed under the Mahajanapadas, which relied on paid professional soldiers year round.
[18] The first modern standing armies on European soil during the Middle Ages were the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, which were formed in the 14th century under Sultan Murad I.
[19][20] The first Christian standing army since the fall of the Western Roman Empire to be paid with regular wages, instead of feudal levies, was established by King Charles VII of France in the 1430s while the Hundred Years' War was still raging.
As he realized that France needed professional reliable troops for ongoing and future conflicts, units were raised by issuing "ordonnances" to govern their length of service, composition and payment.
Provisions were also made for franc-archers and foot soldiers raised from the non-noble classes, but those units were disbanded at the end of the Hundred Years' War.
[21] The bulk of the infantry for warfare was still provided by urban or provincial militias, raised from an area or city to fight locally and named for their recruiting grounds.
Henry II further regularised the French army by forming standing infantry regiments to replace the militia structure.
The function of the heavy cavalry was to protect the light armoured infantry and artillery, while the other corps delivered sporadic, surprise assaults on the enemy.
[31] Meanwhile, external pressure from Poland and Sweden in the west, and the Tatar khanates in the east, led him to reform the army and establish Russia's first permanent standing military force, the streltsy, in the mid-16th century.
Although other powers adopted the tercio formation, their armies fell short of the fearsome reputation of the Spanish, whose core of professional soldiers gave them an edge that was hard for other states to match.
[32] Prior to the influence of Oliver Cromwell, England lacked a standing army, instead relying on militia organized by local officials, private forces mobilized by the nobility and hired mercenaries from Europe.
The army was disbanded by Parliament following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, and the Cromwellian model was initially considered a failure due to various logistical and political problems with the force.
This weakened the incentive for local officials to draw up their own fighting forces, and King Charles II subsequently assembled four regiments of infantry and cavalry, calling them his guards, at a cost of £122,000 paid out of his regular budget.
The Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 provided James II with a pretext to increase the size of the force to 20,000 men, and there were 37,000 in 1688, when England played a role in the closing stage of the Franco-Dutch War.