Also 7 stratocratie. [f. Gr. στρατό-ς army + -κρατία: see -CRACY. Cf. F. stratocratie.] Government by the army; military rule; a polity in which the army is the controlling power.
1652. Observ. Forms of Govt., 8. Their Monarchy was changed into a Stratocratie.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Stratocracy (Gr.) military Government; where a Commonwealth is governed by an Army or by Soldiers.
1659. Gauden, Slight Healers (1660), 61. A game of Government wholly new to England, called Stratocracy.
1758. Monthly Rev., 27. They [the English c. 1650] felt in their turns all the inconveniences of an Oligarchy, a Democracy, and a Stratocracy.
1815. Grattan, Sp., 25 May (1822), III. 374. Sir, the French Government is war; it is a stratocracy.
1832–4. De Quincey, Cæsars, Wks. 1859, X. 102. The government of an imperator was … permanent stratocracy having a moveable head.
1899. Spectator, 7 Oct., 485/2. The greatest danger to the permanent progress of Europe … is the possibility of a period of stratocracy.
So Stratocrat, one who embodies military rule; Stratocratic a., pertaining to stratocracy.
1830. Freeman’s Jrnl., 8 Sept., 2/1. The stratocratic character of the government of that semi-barbarous empire [sc. Russia] evidences the stability of tyranny and oppression, although not of the throne of the present Czar. Ibid. (1831), 30 Aug., 2/3. Her [Prussia’s] Stratocrat has leagued with the Russian Nero against the Poles, and may he reap all the advantages of a connection with the barbarians of the North!
1840. G. Raymond, in New Monthly Mag., LVIII. 463. Having, with a stratocratic ‘privilege,’ forcibly appropriated the person of a young Polish female.
1892. Spectator, 11 June, 809/1. The triumphant stratocrat whom their [the Roman oligarchy’s] system tended to produce.
