A History of Military Ranks

I write a lot of military and military-adjacent fiction and as such do a lot of research in that direction. In doing so, and in reading other writers’ attempts at the same, I see a lot of confusion over military rank. So, I thought I would sketch out the development of military (specifically, army) ranks from a historical perspective so that my fellow writers, and readers, can understand them better. And besides all that, this topic happens to combine my two favourite things: history and bureaucracy.

First off, I’m talking about the rank system of modern western Europe, which has a common military tradition and whose military structures have always been broadly similar. Even more granular than that, I’m focused on the English system, which is almost identical to the French and very similar to the equivalents in Germany, Italy, Iberia, Americas, and so on. I am not talking about ranks outside of the western European military tradition (such as the Arabic or Chinese ranks and military traditions), which had a completely different history and were mostly abandoned in favour of the European system in the 20th century. I’m also talking about a tradition that developed starting in the medieval period. Before that, the Roman Empire had a completely different tradition and system that influenced the later European tradition but is nonetheless detached from it. Also, I’m going to do officer ranks first, and then go back to do NCO ranks.

Commissioned Officers

So, let’s start at the beginning, which in this case is the early and high medieval eras. In this period, western Europe didn’t have standing armies. Instead, the king would call the realm to war and, in doing so, would call up whatever troops he had access to (peasant levies and professional soldiers from the knightly and serjeant classes). He would also notify his vassals to do the same, and then meet up into one army. When they met up, the troops brought by each lord (including the king) would be referred to as their company (ie their companions) and they (or whoever they sent in their place) would be called the captain of their company, captain being derived from the French word for ‘head’. The captain would also appoint someone as his lieutenant, also derived from the French and meaning the person who commands when the captain is indisposed (‘in lieu of’ the captain).

The king would usually command his army personally — kings of this period being warlords to all intents and purposes — but when he couldn’t (on account of being too ill, young, or female), someone else would be appointed to command the army. They were called the captain general, because they were the captain over the whole army (the captain not of a specific company, but just, you know, in general). The king or captain general would also often appoint a lieutenant for the whole army who, similarly, was called the lieutenant general. As time progressed, the position of captain general became shortened more and more often to merely ‘general’. It should also being noted, so I don’t give the wrong idea, that these companies were purely administrative groups and would not usually actually fight together on the battlefield as they were entirely mixed between different types of soldiers (such as spearmen, archers, and cavalry) who would fight separately.

And so, right from the high medieval era, we have the origins of four important officer ranks: lieutenant, captain, lieutenant general, and (captain) general, being the commander and deputy commander of a sub-unit of the army and the army as a whole.

The big change for western European military development came as the late medieval era turned into the early modern era and states began maintaining (semi-)professional (semi-)standing armies. The intermediary step was the use of mercenary companies, who could be professional standing forces but were only able to be that by moving around different states so no single ruler had to pay for them permanently. But anyway, after that we get the move towards more professional permanent armies, especially in the 17th century.

The way these were built and organised was heavily influenced by the earlier medieval system. The king wouldn’t personally raise an entire army, but instead give a commission to someone (usually some important lord) to do that on his behalf. That lord, who would be paid for the trouble, was then responsible for the recruitment, training, equipment, and command of their soldiers. The unit they commanded had a few different names but the one that stuck was ‘regiment’, while they themselves were given the rank ‘colonel’ (meaning ‘leader of a column’, basically — column being another word for regiment early on). And just like captains got lieutenants and captain generals got lieutenant generals, colonels got (you guessed it), lieutenant colonels, to help them command their new unit. The regiment was usually named after its colonel, giving names like ‘The Duke of York’s Regiment of Foot’, though they were also often numbered (and, as time went on, were more commonly known by their number than their colonel’s name, as colonels became less and less autonomous as the army professionalised more and more).

In this new system, companies were a sub-unit within a regiment, now standardised at anywhere from 50-200 soldiers led by a captain, assisted by a lieutnenat, and often also by an officer-in-training (called an ensign, because they would carry the flag, also called an ensign). If the regiment needed to be subdivided (keeping in mind that regiments generally had no definitive size at this point), they would be split into battalions. And, as logistics and managing the soldiers became more important, a new type of officer was introduced to do those tasks. At the company level, the senior sergeant would fulfil that role (as I said, I’ll do NCO ranks properly later). At the regimental level, the role was fulfilled by the sergeant major and, at the army level, by the sergeant major general. (In French, sergeant major generals were instead called ‘chef de camp’ — chief of camp — showing that logistical role.) These were officer, not NCO, ranks, and over time the ‘sergeant’ part was dropped (perhaps because these officers didn’t want an NCO rank to form part of their rank), leaving the ranks ‘major’ and ‘major general’.

So, in this period we develop three tiers of officer: at the company, regimental, and army level, each of which have two or three ranks that are analogous, doing the same roles at different levels. At the company level, lieutenant (2nd in command) and captain (commander). At the regimental level: major (logistics), lieutenant colonel (2nd in command), and colonel (commander). And at the army level: major general (logistics), lieutenant general (2nd in command), and general (commander). This explains why, as is often asked, a lieutenant general outranks a major general even though a major outranks a lieutenant. A major general is to a lieutenant general what a major is to a lieutenant colonel, not just a lieutenant.

After this, there are a few developments. First of all, these roles solidify into a rank structure. They are no longer just appointments, but a hierarchy of rank that comes with, for example, higher pay. So, an army commander was often actually a lieutenant general, rather than a general, just because people were rarely promoted to the rank of full general. Second, as administrative structures got larger and more professional (where commanders would have aides-de-camp and secretaries and so on), there was no longer a need for a specific deputy-commander and specific logistics officer. This meant that certain ranks (in particular majors and major generals) were left without a natural appointment, majors sitting awkwardly between captains (commanding companies) and lieutenant colonels (commanding battalions), while major generals were the same between colonels (commanding regiments) and lieutenant generals (who, as mentioned, were now most commonly commanding whole armies). Finally, armies kept getting larger, requiring more units to be created and more ranks to command them.

First, already in the 17th century, we get the brigade: a group of battalions or regiments. (Regiment being an actual battlefield unit in some armies, and a purely administrative one in others, particularly the British.) And, to command it, the brigadier general (called ‘chef de brigade’ in French and eventually renamed to just brigadier in the 20th century British Army). Then the French Revolution comes around and things explode. After the levee en mass, France had the biggest army Europe had ever seen, of over a million soldiers, and needed to divide them. So, brigades were grouped into divisions. When Britain adopted the division, it finally gave major generals something to command (leaving majors as the awkward rank that to this day no-one quite knows what to do with).

And when Napoleon came to power, he innovated a system whereby his huge armies would split into sub-armies. These could travel along different routes, making the whole army quicker, be detached to act independently, and would fight as tactical units in battle. He called this new unit the corps (literally ‘body’ in French, as in ‘body of soldiers’). Most commonly, these were commanded by marshals in Napoleon’s time but when corps became a standard part of every European army in the 20th century, they became the standard appointment of lieutenant generals.

Later developments include the splitting up of companies into platoons, which made lieutenants into platoon commanders rather than merely company second-in-commands (though the Germans and Russians were doing that from much earlier), and the grouping of armies into, well, army groups, as armies became larger and larger during the world wars. Additionally, many armies at some point came up with superlative ranks to give to senior generals, such as field marshal, generalissimo, general of the infantry/artillery/cavalry/army, and so on. These all have their own origins but are usually largely ceremonial senior ranks given to those the army wishes to honour above just making them a full general. Oh, and the rank below lieutenant, originally ensign, got renamed in most armies to something like second lieutenant or sub-lieutenant.

And that, in effect, gives us our officer rank structure. Second lieutenant, lieutenant, captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, brigadier, major general, lieutenant general, general, and field marshal (to use the British version).

NCOs

Okay, so that’s the commissioned officer ranks. What about the non-commissioned officer ranks? Well, they’re easier as they mostly developed later. But first, a question. Why have such a distinction between NCOs and commissioned officers? The Romans didn’t really do that, so why do we today? The division is based on class divisions, in effect, with NCOs being commoners and commissioned officers being the nobility. Keep that in mind throughout at I sketch out how those ranks developed.

The origin of the NCO in European armies is the serjeants-at-arms. Serjeants were curious facet of the medieval era: people who were given land by their lord in return for fulfilling some service. And, for serjeants-at-arms, that service was military in nature. They formed the semi-professional backbone of medieval armies and would help train and lead the peasant levies that made up the bulk of a medieval company. When armies became more professional, it was recognised that having that role — the senior enlisted soldier who could help train and lead — was highly useful. So serjeants, now spelled sergeants, became a core part of these early modern armies.

As time went on and armies became larger and more complex, a need arose for differentiation of these NCOs so they could have their own internal hierarchy. This is where we get senior sergeants first appointed, called things like colour sergeant (sergeant in charge of the ‘colours’, ie the battle-flag) or staff sergeant. And, when the commissioned officer ranks of sergeant major and sergeant major general became merely major and major general, the term sergeant major was reinstituted, now as the senior NCO rank, often given to the senior sergeant of a unit.

Simultaneously, there was need for a rank below sergeant, to better control the soldiers. And here we first get the appointment of corporal. In armies of the early modern period, a group of soldiers roughly equivalent to a section or squad today might be put under a corporal who would look out for them, manage them, and pool some of their pay to buy better rations. The corporal of this period did not really command in the field, but helped the sergeants ensure no-one in the company was overlooked.

Armies of this period would sometimes pick out soldiers and give them some of the responsibilities of a corporal, making them a sort of corporal in training. Eventually, this was turned into the rank lance corporal, the first NCO rank today.

This gives the modern British NCO ranks of lance corporal, corporal, sergeant, colour/staff sergeant, warrant officer class 2, and warrant officer class 1 (Britain having dropped sergeant major as a rank, replaced with the more general ‘warrant officer’, but retained it as an appointment, eg regimental sergeant major). But NCO ranks are those with the greatest variation between different armies, so don’t take that as gospel.

So, I hope by explaining the history and development behind army ranks (both officer and NCO), you can better understand them as a writer, reader, or both.