The very word ‘soldier’ means ‘paid’, from the Latin solidus, originally a gold coin worth 25 denarii (pence), and the Old French soulde. Although pay has therefore been at the centre of the military ethos since Roman times, soldiers were frequently disappointed. They went unpaid for months, sometimes years, and their discipline and effectiveness suffered proportionately. The armies of the Ottoman Turks were so effective, in part, because they were paid regularly and their morale and discipline were maintained accordingly, in contrast to the levies of western powers. If soldiers were unpaid, they were even more likely to go off in search of plunder. ‘Constant pay’ was a frequent demand of soldiers, on both sides, during the British civil wars.
The introduction of standing armies at the end of the 17th century brought little improvement. An 18th-century British soldier was paid sixpence a day but there were deductions for food, clothing, and in some armies soldiers had to buy their own lead to make bullets. Pay increased exponentially with rank: the commander of a 16th-century Spanish tercio received 40 escudos a day, his major 20, a captain commanding a company 15, a staff captain 12, and a lieutenant 6. Officers also received far greater shares of prize money, and this was particularly attractive to naval officers, who could reap substantial rewards from capturing ships. However, most of the time the higher pay did not compensate for the greater costs of an officer's existence which arose and in many armies a private income was essential. A year's pay for an 18th-century private soldier would hardly pay for the wig worn by his officer. When Churchill became a second lieutenant in the British cavalry in 1895 his pay was £120 a year but a private income of at least double that was necessary to maintain horses and equipment.
As the 18th century wore on armies tended to be more regularly, though generally badly, paid, and to fill their ranks with men who were subject to what a 20th-century British commentator was to call ‘the compulsion of destitution’. As long as there was an adequate supply of the unemployed, the disadvantaged, or the adventurous, pay did not need to be substantial to act as an inducement. And when conscription became the norm in most European states in the 19th century there was no need for such inducement. Many conscript armies maintained two pay scales, one for conscripts and a better one for those who signed on as regulars, and many a conscript retained an abiding memory of his service being marked by shortage of money. ‘My saddest memory of the war’, wrote George Coppard of WW II, ‘is my continual state of poverty.’ Although the immediate cause of the French army's mutiny in 1917 was the failure of the Nivelle offensive, low pay (especially when compared with the wages paid munitions workers) was a constant irritant. In 1917 a correspondent to a trench newspaper asked its readers: ‘Do you know how much I got paid for my first two months at war? 0.25 francs. That's it, five sous … and here is the pay-slip. Battle of Charleroi: 0.05 francs. Battle of Guise: 0.05 francs. The retreat: 0.05 francs. The Marne: 0.10 francs. Total: 0.25 francs.’
Officers who were expected to survive on their pay—as was the case in the French and Prussian armies—often lived out an existence of genteel poverty. Many observers noted that this system worked only as long as the officer enjoyed high social status. Ardant du Picq complained of the French army of the 1860s that ‘today none turn to the army, because it is poorly paid’. In contrast, de Gaulle wrote of the officer during the army's ‘golden age’ after the Franco-Prussian war that ‘though his pay is meagre, everyone treats him with respect’. As the status of the army dropped in the years after the Dreyfus affair, so officer recruitment fell and resignations increased.
The British army, in contrast, has only recognized relatively recently that officers should be able to live on their pay. A 1903 committee pointed out that it was folly to expect to find young men who had both education and private means. It suggested that a line infantry officer needed £160 per annum to supplement his pay, while a Guards officer needed at the very least £400. A cavalry officer needed £600-700, eight times a second lieutenant's annual salary and twice a lieutenant colonel's. On the eve of WW I it was just possible for a British officer, in the right regiment, to live on his pay. It was, however, to take at least another generation for this to become the norm.
Post-1945 the armies of developed states have increasingly found themselves competing in a market place where military status confers dwindling benefits and pay looms increasingly large. As their appetite for the technologically aware and computer-literate grows, so pay and allowances gain in importance. The maintenance of pay-scales which enable them to compete with civilian jobs which, in the nature of things, may impose less serious demands in terms of physical fitness, personal risk, or the disruption to family life become increasingly important. The Russian army finds itself in the worst of all worlds. It has lost the status that it once enjoyed, and finds the cost of maintaining adequate pay-scales prohibitive. The historical precedents, for its own cohesion and its political involvement, are not encouraging.
— Alex Alexandrou/Richard Holmes
