Troop Strength

Edward Gibbon began Chapter 5 of his book with a very interesting summation of how many troops are needed for typical situations. He presumed that these formulas had held true from the days of the Roman Empire, whose decline and fall was his subject, up through the many centuries into his own day, late in the 1770's.

I wonder if these figures still hold any relevance for today?

If they do, the first sentence of his passage supports my feeling that a draft in the U.S. any time in the near future can be easily talked about but not so easily put into action. There are too many people eligible for any kind of a fair draft and not enough uses for such a large number.

It's eerie to read the rest of the passage while keeping in mind the heavily armed and heavily clothed U.S. troops as they ride their humvees back and forth through what in recent times was unfortunately dubbed "Iraq" -- the name is too close to that of another country adjoining it. The Ancient Greeks more happily called the place "Mesopotamia" or "Between the Rivers."

Gibbon wrote:

It has been calculated by the ablest politicians, that no state, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness. ...There is no superiority of natural strength, artificial weapons, or acquired skill, which could enable one man to keep in constant subjection one hundred of his fellow creatures: the tyrant of a single town, or a small district, would soon discover that an hundred armed followers were a weak defence against ten thousand peasants or citizens; but an hundred thousand well disciplined soldiers will command, with despotic sway, ten millions of subjects; and a body of ten or fifteen thousand guards will strike terror into the most numerous populace that ever crowded the streets of an immense capital.