Military recruitment can be done through swearing in, conscription, volunteering, or hiring mercenaries. Feudalism and conscription were used in the Middle Ages, while mercenaries are a ready-made army. Some countries, like Costa Rica and Liechtenstein, have no military at all.
Military recruitment is the means by which a person or a nation raises an army for the purpose of warfare. Such armies can be formed to defend the person or nation or to attack others. There are several methods used for military recruitment, including swearing in, conscription, volunteering, and hiring mercenaries. Not all nations have a standing military, and many, including Costa Rica since 1949 and Liechtenstein since 1868, have no military at all.
The old Anglo-Saxon and English armies of the early Middle Ages used a system of oaths to form an army. In times of war, as when Harold II of England marched north to face the Vikings at Stanford Bridge and then south to face the Normans at Hastings in 1066, the king invoked oaths from local communities. Such oaths were balanced so that enough able-bodied men were left behind to continue cultivating the land.
Feudalism, as introduced by the Normans in England, and common in Europe during the Middle Ages, built on the oath system. Rules were set by monarchs as to how they and the nobility could initiate military recruitment. The King of England, for example, would have to call a parliament to get permission to raise a tax. He would then use the tax to buy an army. Most peasant soldiers had little or no choice in the matter.
Conscription is another form of forced military recruitment. The nation draws up a list of able-bodied men of the right age and forces them to join the army. There were a variety of punishments for deserting service and evading conscription. France used conscription during the Napoleonic wars, but still lost to a volunteer British army one-tenth its size. America first used a national conscription system in the Civil War and finally discontinued it in 1973; however, it can be reactivated at any time if needed.
Mercenaries are a completely different type of military recruitment. The other types of recruitment take ordinary citizens or subjects and train them for warfare. When a person or nation uses mercenaries, they buy a ready-made army that is fully equipped and trained for the job. These are euphemistically called Private Military Companies (PMCs) in America.
There are several examples of mercenaries used in world history. The Romans employed barbarian tribes as auxiliaries or foederati throughout the Roman Empire. Xenophon was a mercenary when his army of Greek hoplites was paid to help depose a Persian emperor by the emperor’s brother. In 2011, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya employed foreign mercenaries to put down a civilian rebellion.
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