page_title: Royal Netherlands Army
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Netherlands Army / History
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange
context_page_description: The Royal Netherlands Army is the land forces element of the military of the Netherlands.
  Though the Royal Netherlands Army was raised on 9 January 1814, its origins date back to 1572, when the Staatse Leger was raised – making the Dutch standing army one of the oldest in the world. It fought in the Napoleonic Wars, World War II, the Indonesian War of Independence, and the Korean War and served with NATO on the Cold War frontiers in West-Germany from the 1950s to the 1990s.
  Since 1990, the army has been sent into the Iraqi War and into the War in Afghanistan, as well as deployed in several United Nations' peacekeeping missions.
  The tasks of the Royal Netherlands Army are laid out in the Constitution of the Netherlands: defend the territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and of its allies, protect and advance the international legal order and to support the government in law enforcement, disaster relief and humanitarian aid, both nationally and internationally. The supreme authority over the armed forces of the Netherlands is exercised by the government; there is thus no constitutional supreme commander. However, army personnel does swear allegiance to the Dutch monarch.
caption: Maurice of Orange as portrayed by Michiel van Mierevelt, between circa 1613 and circa 1620.
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