Auxiliaries in the context of "Submachine gun"

The siege of Silistria, or siege of Silistra, was a key engagement in the Crimean War, fought from 11 May to 23 June 1854 between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire in present-day Bulgaria. The Russian army, numbering up to 90,000 men with 266 guns, attempted to capture the Danubian fortress of Silistria as part of a broader strategy to outflank Ottoman defences and pre-empt an expected Allied landing at Varna. The garrison, 12,000 to 18,000 Ottoman troops and Egyptian auxiliaries, was bolstered by British military advisers and successfully withstood a six-week siege.

The operation was shaped by diplomatic and regional tensions. Russia hoped for a general Balkan uprising and misjudged the likelihood of Austrian or Serbian neutrality. Austria, concerned that a Russian advance might provoke unrest among its own Serb population, mobilised 280,000 troops along the Danube and warned Russia against crossing the river. At the same time, Anglo-French troops began arriving in Varna, and a joint Austrian–Ottoman convention granted Austria the right to occupy the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.

The military of ancient Rome was one of the largest pre-modern professional standing armies in history. At its height, protecting over 7,000 kilometers of border and consisting of over 400,000 legionaries and auxiliaries, the army was the most important institution in the Roman world. According to the Roman historian Livy, the military was a key element in the rise of Rome over "above seven hundred years" from a small settlement in Latium to the capital of an empire governing a wide region around the shores of the Mediterranean, or, as the Romans themselves said, mare nostrum, "our sea". Livy asserts:

Titus Flavius Josephus, a contemporary historian, sometime high-ranking officer in the Roman army, and commander of the rebels in the Jewish revolt describes the Roman people as if they were "born readily armed". At the time of the two historians, Roman society had already evolved an effective military and had used it to defend itself against the Etruscans, the Italics, the Greeks, the Gauls, the maritime empire of Carthage, and the Macedonian kingdoms. In each war, it acquired more territory until, when the civil war ended the Roman Republic, nothing was left for the first emperor, Augustus, to do except declare it an empire and defend it.

Pons Aelius (Latin for "Aelian Bridge"), or Newcastle Roman Fort, was an auxiliary castra and small Roman settlement on Hadrian's Wall in the Roman province of Britannia Inferior (northern England), situated on the north bank of the River Tyne close to the centre of present-day Newcastle upon Tyne, and occupied between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD.

The Chetniks in the Balkan Wars, were paramilitary groups issued of the Serbian Chetnik Organization which, after fighting in the Macedonian Struggle, came under the supervision of the Royal Serbian Army as auxiliary force. During the Balkan Wars, the Chetniks detachments were used as a vanguard to soften up the enemy forward of advancing armies, for attacks on communications behind enemy lines, as field gendarmerie and to establish basic administration in occupied areas. They were used in both Balkan Wars.

The South West Africa Territorial Force (SWATF) was an auxiliary arm of the South African Defence Force (SADF) and comprised the armed forces of South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1977 to 1989. It emerged as a product of South Africa's political control of the territory which was granted to the former as a League of Nations mandate following World War I.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF; Arabic: قوات الدعم السريع, romanized: Quwwāt ad-daʿm as-sarīʿ) are a Sudanese paramilitary force formerly operated by the Sudanese government. They originated as auxiliary force militias known as the Janjaweed used by the Sudanese government during the War in Darfur, which the government later restructured as a paramilitary organization in August 2013 under the command of Muhammad Dagalo, the current leader of the RSF, better known as Hemedti. Since 2023, they have been fighting a civil war against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for control of the country, after having taken power along with the SAF in a military coup in 2021. As of 2025, they have established a parallel government with their allies called the Government of Peace and Unity to rule over the territories under their control.

The RSF's motives are widely characterized by academics, journalists, and other local and international observers as Arab supremacist and economic in nature. Their forces have been documented committing war crimes on a vast scale against members of non-Arab ethnicities in Darfur and against Northern Sudanese Arabs (Ja'alin and Shaigiya) in Khartoum state and Gezira State because of their perceived support of the Sudanese Armed Forces. Many of the RSF’s fighters come from Baggara Arab tribes residing in the Darfur region of Sudan, Chad or elsewhere in the “Baggara belt” of the Sahel. Their fighters are largely recruited as mercenaries, with funding coming from the capture of gold mines and patronage by corporate and state actors; the group has also hired out its fighters as mercenaries to fight in conflicts and assist governments outside Sudan. As a result of these activities, the leaders of the RSF have become some of the richest people in the country. The RSF has adopted an anti-Islamist stance in its public relations, and has claimed its new state will be a secular democracy with a bill of rights, but these postures have been met with widespread skepticism by observers given the RSF's behavior on the ground.

Hessians (US: /ˈhɛʃənz/ or UK: /ˈhɛsiənz/) were German soldiers who served as auxiliaries to the British Army in several major wars in the 18th century, most notably in the American Revolutionary War. The term is a synecdoche for all Germans who fought on the British side, since 65% came from the German states of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau. Known for their discipline and martial prowess, around 30,000 to 37,000 Hessians fought in the war, comprising approximately 25% of British land forces.

While regarded both contemporaneously and historiographically as mercenaries, Hessians were legally distinguished as auxiliaries: whereas mercenaries served a foreign government on their own accord, auxiliaries were soldiers hired out to a foreign party by their own government, to which they remained in service. Auxiliaries were a major source of income for many small and relatively poor German states, typically serving in wars in which their governments were otherwise neutral. Like most auxiliaries of this period, Hessians were attached to foreign armies as entire units, fighting under their own flags, commanded by their usual officers, and wearing their existing uniforms.