Corisande's Contribution to the Army & Use

It would appear that the author will bring Koryn Gahrai into the inner circle once the Corisande element of the RCA mobilizes for movement. Questions: (1) What size of an additional army will be mobilized - at least 100,000 - 150,000 would be my guess, and (2) how will it be used?

My speculation is that Korin Gahrai and a contingent of that arm will be used in Chisholm to put down the western malcontents when they make their final mistake after the army is reduced for the up coming Summer campaign.

Alternately, they could be sent to the Gulf of Tanshar with the King Haaralds to open up another front against Dohlar and the Border States and threaten the canals which supply the Army of God.

Yep there will need to be some troops freed to deal with the Chisholm Nobles and Corisande seems a good place to get them from.

Alistair wrote:Yep there will need to be some troops freed to deal with the Chisholm Nobles and Corisande seems a good place to get them from.

Maybe not from Corisande, though. All that business about Prince Hector killing their King and all. Might look bad to bring in your former enemies to beat up your own people.

dobriennm wrote:

Alistair wrote:Yep there will need to be some troops freed to deal with the Chisholm Nobles and Corisande seems a good place to get them from.

Maybe not from Corisande, though. All that business about Prince Hector killing their King and all. Might look bad to bring in your former enemies to beat up your own people.

Agreed. Political considerations will still dominate Cayleb and Sharleyan's decisions where Corisande is concerned. They might have a small contingent of Corisandian officers, sent to the Imperial Academy to both bring them up to speed on Charisian tactics and to assess their reliability and loyalty to their new empire, but beyond that they will likely send the trained troops to the front on the mainland. The show down between the Imperial Crown of Charis (and by extension the Crown of Chisholm) and the Chisholmian nobility must be fought by the ICA, and under the command of a Chisholmian officer. And that's what this fight is really about - the last gasp of the aristocracy in a radically changing world that increasingly curtails their real power and reduces them to mere governors rather than actual rulers.

To that end, the ICA will have to rely on the training cadre and all of the troops under their command. And for a long-term resolution, there cannot be "external influences" on the crown's side, especially when there are such influences on the rebels side (the Church in Zion). After all, one of the things Nahrmahn said they should do in the wake of the assassination attempt in Saint Agtha, was to point out the involvements of an outsider (Bishop Milz) and a Chisholmian (Halbrook Hollow) as the leaders of the plot, thus neutralizing any criticism about all the Charisians involved (because other Charisians died to stop them). Also, while the troops might lack experience or training , their commanders are the ones most likely to be experienced and well trained (they'd have to be in order to teach others).

I agree that using Corsandian troops to surpress Chisholmian nobles would not be the best thing to do politically. It would be better to enlarge the size of the training cadre in Chisholm by raising the floor on how low it would be allowed to drop when the fresh trainees are shipped off to the mainland. Perhaps a brigade or two of vets could be recycled back to Chisholm for R&R before the new trainees ship out.

As for the Corisandians, I concur with the numbers cited in the introductory post as a starting number. Corisande has the potential to come up with as many as a half million eventually, given that its population is in the same range as Old Charis and it no longer has a navy.

At a guess, it would probably be more efficient to train them in Corisande at this point and then send them down to join Sharpfield or perhaps over to Silktown and move them over to reinforce Hanth.

Don

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What a bunch ethnocentric thinkers we have. Send in the Corisandians in Imperial Army uniforms led by Corisandians. The Aristos will be doubly insulted but the Chisholmian commoners will have proof that the Empire will protect them from abusive aristocrats. Not just Empress Sharleyan but the ENTIRE Empire. If those troops are led by Chisholmians, the that proves the Empire is simply a loosely allied group of nations held together by the personalities of two extraordinary monarchs.

No. Commoners will recognize their bacon is being saved by other commoners of the Empire. Aristocrats will recognize they have to fear all the other commoners of the Empire not just the lot they s**t on. So bother with national sensitivities. Send in the Army to deal with an aristocratic revolt regradless of its composition.

Another problem with using Corisandian troops to take care of the Empress Sharleyan's little problem with her native aristocrats is the time lag involved in shipping Corisandian troops from Corisande to Chisholm. There is simply not enough time to send for and then receive Corisandian reinforcements in time for them to be useful unless those native Corisandians are already in Chisholm undergoing training as part of the Imperial Charisian Army's training establishment once the end digestive product hits the oscillating rotating device. I admit that Princess Irys already being in Corisande could cut through the time delay for requesting those reinforcements in a manner similar to what Emperor Cayleb did when he sent food to Siddarmark in wake of the Sword of Schueler.

while i agree that at the least the senior officer should b from chisholm, the troops themselves should be from elsewhere.

they will probably be mostly from zebidah (wasn't there a mention last time this was discussed in the books that a lot of people from zebidah were signing up, a mixture of gratitude for a grand duke who was competent and desire to strike back at Zion) with some tarotisans mixed in, though like charis I suspect most of those who join military from Tarot will go Navy.

PeterZ wrote:What a bunch ethnocentric thinkers we have. Send in the Corisandians in Imperial Army uniforms led by Corisandians. The Aristos will be doubly insulted but the Chisholmian commoners will have proof that the Empire will protect them from abusive aristocrats. Not just Empress Sharleyan but the ENTIRE Empire. If those troops are led by Chisholmians, the that proves the Empire is simply a loosely allied group of nations held together by the personalities of two extraordinary monarchs.

No. Commoners will recognize their bacon is being saved by other commoners of the Empire. Aristocrats will recognize they have to fear all the other commoners of the Empire not just the lot they s**t on. So bother with national sensitivities. Send in the Army to deal with an aristocratic revolt regradless of its composition.

Unfortunately, the history between Corisande and Chisholm can't simply be waved away by the creation of the Empire which means that the presence of Corisandian troops in Chisholm could be a sensitive issue. That will fade with time but the Empire is still very new.

I would agree, however, that the presense of Corisandians in an integrated ICA army would not be an issue. My caution is against an exclusively Corisandian force.

I would prefer, to speak in general terms, that the Corisandians be thoroughly integrated into the ICA as opposed to being a separate national group. But at this point I doubt there is time for that if they are to be available for next summer's campaign on the mainland. Better to get them raised, trained and on their way to wherever they would be most useful as soon as possible.

In the event of a Chisholm Aristocratic Uprising, there's the training cadre and all the forces in training in Chisholm to support the Empire.
Then, instead of just forming an army group out of Corisandians to provide additional forces to counter this rebellion, if needed the Empire can draw forces from the Charisian Occupation Force in Corisande - who are/were Imperial Marines. A reduction in the Charisian occupation force would be unlikely to trigger a new Corisandian uprising, all things considered, and even if some Corisandian nutjobs went for an open rebellion, the Corisandian government would actively and aggressively move against it, with or without the Imperial troops that compromise the existing occupation force, and they'd still have Hector, Irys, and Coris, plus Nimue to arrange things as needed.


As for mustering and training a Corisandian contingent of the ICA, while there are a lot of new things, there's also a fair amount of stuff that they shouldn't need a whole lot of outside support to train on - ie, how to make field fortifications, how to march, how to make camp, how to follow orders, etc.
If the Corisandian contingent starts with a lot of the veterans from the Conquest - they'll already know a lot of the fundamentals, which ought to cut down on the training time they'd need.
In other words, drawing recruits from Corisande, if drawn from Corisandians with some degree of military training already, could provide a pool of trainees that are further along earlier than normal.
Even if that potential timesaving winds up being negligible, and the Corisandian recruitment drive requires the full normal training duration, I think it is unlikely that they'd need to be thrown into the field on Howard/Haven before they were fully trained. I think the only circumstance where they might need to cut short training to deploy would be against a Chisholmian Aristocratic uprising. The Harchongese Mighty Host is a problem, yes, but I think it is doubtful that the Harchongese would be able to push sufficiently strong, hard, and fast enough against the generally informed and prepared Charisian/Siddarmarkian forces to or otherwise create a situation where half-trained recruits in Chisholm/Corisande would be the only possible option - I mean, it'd take a while for them to get to and even long to get anywhere in Siddarmark, to the point that I think they'd either not get there at all, or the situation isn't really bad enough to warrant throwing half-trained recruits into battle.
At worst, I think the CoGA-aligned forces somehow manage to crush an Allied Army group so thoroughly that all or nearly all the reserves being held back in Old Province/etc need to be rushed forwards, and then the "half-trained recruits" need to be rushed to Old Province to serve as an emergency reserve while finishing their training. Even then, I think that it'd likely be better to finish their training in Chisholm before being moved forwards, rather than interrupting their training.


No, if there are significant numbers of Corisandians fighting soon in Imperial uniform, it's likely because they're the first big clutch of Corisandians being sent as the Corisandian part of amalgamating national militaries into the Imperial military, and that's likely the Imperial Army and Imperial Navy, but if they're Navy, it's likely not particularly noticeable, whereas if they're Army and Chisholmian Aristocrats get uppity ... that's huge - both what it means for Imperial unity, and also what the Go4(or recently 3, effectively) will be saying when they find out. I mean, sure, there's plenty of room for PR and political issues in Corisandian recruits to the Imperial Army suppressing Chisholmian Aristos, but I suspect that the Corisandians would be busy shouting "In Her Majesty's [Empress Sharleyan] Name" and "For the Empress/Empire", and other things along those lines a whole lot - plus they'd probably at least try to take the Aristos alive, for Stone Mountain (Chisholmian Chief Justice, IIRC) to prosecute, and the Empress to pass sentence on.