All quite true, but it doesn't stop it from being practiced even today, often because 'those' people aren't 'yours' the way you see your own tribe, even if they've been living there for centuries or even longer.
L
*quote*phillies wrote:It is a sad excuse for a country that views its army primarily as an occupying garrison for itself. Also, the approach is likely to encounter challenges, notably that if you launch pacification campaigns against yourself your tax base tends to go down the drain.
*quote="lyonheart"*Hi PeterZ,
Given the standing IHA was so small before the jihad [473K], and even with the nobility's matching it, the total force was less than 1/200 of the population, so Desnar's standing army might be smaller than we've been projecting, the same ratio as Harchong implying under 722,000 active troops for Desnar, which seems low for controlling roughly 6 million square miles of territory and 148 million people, let alone conduct any offensive operations.
So the regular IDA might total something much nearer 500,000 than I'd previously thought likely, and now is quite short handed despite CoGA subsidies.
Perhaps one reason Siddarmark was so feared by the CoGA was because its 1.2 million man standing army was so much bigger than its neighbors, mainly because infantry is so much cheaper than cavalry, before the 1.8 million militia was added to the equation.
The vicarate knew what it or the empires would do if it had such a powerful army, but not having much experience with republics in general, it didn't know Machiavelli's dictum that 'republics rarely start wars, but they often finish them', and realised it was much safer to have just left it alone.
Supporting the Desnari schooner commerce destroyers seems to be mainly Clyntahn's idea, and despite the construction costs, an effective one, at least at the moment.
I don't think Merlin considers Desnar learning how to build obsolete ships faster as that worthwhile an improvement in new or useful technology, while leaving the rest of the IDN alone in Geyra and Desnar seemed odd in HFaF, but RFC has his reasons, we know not yet why.
LPeterZ wrote:Well, Don, the Desnari don't have to out build Charis. The simply have to build faster than Charis can destroy those cities and facilities. It is that process which will teach them how to improve their techniques. I doubt the Desnari will succeed enough to actually out pace the ICN's ability to destroy what they build. The process will provide incentives to improve their processes. Lord knows the backward, inbred, aristocratic bigots need all the incentives to improve they can get.