CORPS
Corps (; plural corps ; from French corps, from the Latin corpus "body") is a term used for several different kinds of organization. A military innovation by Napoleon, the formation was formally introduced March 1, 1800, when Napoleon ordered General Jean Victor Marie Moreau to divide his command into four corps. The size of a corps varies greatly, but two to five divisions and anywhere from 40,000 to 80,000 are the numbers stated by the US Department of Defense.
Within military terminology a corps may be:
an operational formation, sometimes known as a field corps, which consists of two or more divisions, such as the Corps d'armée, later known as I Corps ("First Corps") of Napoleon I's Grande Armée);
an administrative corps (or mustering) – that is a specialized branch of a military service (such as an artillery corps, an armoured corps, a signal corps, a medical corps, a marine corps, or a corps of military police);
or, in some cases, a distinct service within a national military (such as the United States Marine Corps).
These usages often overlap.
Before it came into force in 1800, the idea of field corps was already in its infancy (for example, Jourdan's Army of Sambre and Meuse in 1795 was divided into 3 corps), but these were not permanent, skillfully organized formations, and the idea could not take a definite form due to the relatively small size of the individual armies. Only Moreau granted the corps legal status in 1800; Napoleon finally developed them in 1805. Napoleon's corps innovations were among the "keys" to his early imperial military victories.
Corps may also be a generic term for a non-military organization, such as the US Peace Corps and European Solidarity Corps.
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