Captain-general of Marines (Themiclesia)

Captain-general of Marines 冗人㷉
Dr Margaret Skur (incumbent)
Country	Themiclesia
Service branch	Themiclesian Marines
Rank	Consul 2,000-bushel (civil) Principal (court) Colonel-general (regimental)
NATO rank	OF-6
Formation	1524
Next higher rank	none
Next lower rank	colonel

The Captain-general of Marines (冗人叞, nunk-ning-′uts) is the senior-most professional officer of the Themiclesian Marine Corps and enjoys the courtesy style of Principal of the Audience, rank of 2,000 bushels in the Civil Service, and the colonelcy of one of the Marines' constituent regiments. As part of the chain of command, the Captain-general reports to the Barons of the Navy, and as chairperson of the Marines Management Commission, she reports to the Secretary of State for Defence. The incumbent is Margaret Skur.

Rank

Under the Marines Service Re-organization Act of 1947, the Captain-general must hold the office of colonel in (any) one of the constituent regiments of the marine corps. Technically, ranks such as colonel and captain are regimental offices, which in turn take their seniority after pay grades in the imperial civil service. Thus, while most colonels enjoy the courtesy-rank of 1,000 bushels at the royal court, the captain-general is esteemed 2,000 bushels, because it was viewed as the successor to the former office Lieutenant-General of Marines, abolished in 1803 with the Admiralty Army. There is no surviving record suggesting that a "General of Marines" was ever appointed, probably because the admirals, being of baronial rank, exercised the functions of a general over marines.

History

The medieval predecessors of the marine corps were officers responsible for enlisting, training, arming, and paying men found at friendly cities to supplement the Themiclesian fleet, which often sailed understrengthed to economize on victuals. Admirals of the fleet, in turn, fielded them in battle in conjunction with Themiclesians. In the 10th century, the Exchequer sent its agents to superintend the payment of moneys. Armaments were the responsibility of the Department of Passengers. After 1270, related works were temporarily centralized under the viceroyalty in Meridia and then annexed to the imperial Exchequer Department in 1318, a reform the Marines have come to consider their founding. At the end of the 14th century, this process was done in Themiclesia due to the loss of Meridia to Yi forces.

During the Themiclesian Republic, the Excheuqer's Chief Clerk (內吏長史) superintending the mobilization of marines was especially accorded the 800-bushel pay grade, two grades higher than others of similar rank. In 1524, the position of Captain-general appeared in the historical record, though the part of the manufacturing responsibilities of the Sacramental Treasury appears to have been merged into it. The Captain-general, as justice (㷉, ′uts), possessed the power to hear cases sued against the navy's soldiers and punish their misbehaviour. It is not clear what the relationship between the Chief Clerk and the Captain-general was, and frequently they were the same person. This latter office was not consistently appointed until the following century. The confusion over jurisdictions may reflect the reality that the navy relied upon multiple bodies of soldiers raised across the Themiclesian empire, and there was no unified logistics policy applied to all of them.

In 1701, Emperor Gwīts-men raised or formalized a new army of cavalry and infantry and assigned it permanently to his admirals, bringing structure to the dozens of garrisons and militias that the navy periodically called upon. This army was commanded by one of the admirals, whose position in 1754 was renamed as Lieutenant-General of Marines (又冗將). Though this army is conventionally seen as the direct ancestor of the modern marine corps, it did not include or supersede all of the Admiralty Department's land units. The Captain-general was still appointed, with the assumption that the Lieutenant-General was responsible for operations, while the Captain-general managed salaries, rations, promotions, and ordnance. The Chief Clerk, for most of the 17th century the same person as the Captain-general, became an independent officer again as the Captain-general's deputy in the capital city, though his offices were no longer located in the Exchequer Department by 1760. While the Lieutenant-General was necessarily a naval officer, both the Captain-general and Chief Clerk could be, and often were, civilians, but at this point they had evolved from fiscal to naval officers.

In 1803, the office of Lieutenant-General of Marines fell into abeyance with the dissolution of the Admiralty Army, leaving a few extant regiments and companies under the Captain-general's administration. In the absence of a general, operational activities reverted to the Admiralty Department. In 1805, the Captain-general was commanded to authorize expenditures with the War Secretary before submitting them to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1806, the Captain-general was raised to the pay grade of 2,000-bushels of the imperial civil service and was commanded to stand below baronets and consuls actual in the order of precedence. This promotion is attended by a diminution of its practical importance: the number of regiments under its control dropped from a maximum of 17 regiments in 1788 to the equivalent of 4 full regiments by 1806, admittedly under a national policy of demilitarization pursued by the Lord of Gar-lang (in office 1800 – 1814).

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Captaincy-general was used intermittently as a temporary office for ministers "waiting in the wings" and was typically not occupied by naval or regimental officers. By 1829, the Captain-general was regularly "called to the ministry", i.e. recognized as a ministerial office, though from time to time regimental officers were appointed. Captains-general who did not pass a ministerial by-election could not participate in government deliberations. Captains-general Lord M'reng (in office 1868 – 69), Colonel Myar (1869 – 74), and Lieutenant-Colonel Hrat (1874 – 77) gave rise to the precedent that a by-election was, in all events, necessary for appointment, but not military rank. Under the Conservative administration of the Lord of M'i, the captaincy-general was used interchangeably with the Master-general of the Ordnance as a minister of materials, recruitment, or accounting, the appointee more often being civilian.

In 1886, Vice Admiral Kret was awarded a colonelcy and appointed Captain-general to co-ordinate the naval reform policy announced by Lord Tlang-men that year. Kret's by-election was at once blocked by the Conservatives, who thought that an active naval officer could not be a regimental officer at the same time. To resolve the situation, Kret was dismissed from the colonelcy but retained the captaincy-general in the Tlang-men Ministry. Some officers of the marine corps communicated to ministers to the effect that such an arrangement would be highly unusual, that is effective placing regimental colonels under the purview of a naval officer not of baronial rank, but the government decided that it was not against any known statute to do so.

Kret was replaced by Gwah Qmans-kre (later prime minister 1911 – 1912) after the Baron of N'ar became premier in 1894. Gwah bought a captaincy (Balance-makers') in February 1888 as he was sounded out for the captaincy-general but declined to pay the extra €2,000 for a colonelcy when the opening appeared in May. Instead, he procured an act of parliament (capita 56, Men 30) expanding the Honourable Balance-makers' Company into a regiment and stipulating that the incumbent captain's office shall mutate as colonel. This eventually permitted him to sell his colonelcy in 1895 for double the captaincy originally bought. Certain Conservatives were outraged by Gwah's actions and sought to prosecute him for official malfeasance, but the law courts found his commission's increasing value to be the result of parliamentary legislation and, by definition, lawful.

Army bread, the standard ration given to soldiers after 1886

The Baron of Snins was offered the office of captain-general under the Lord of Krungh, but Snins considered it too junior for himself and refused and instead became the Deputy Whip in the House of Lords. He asked Krungh if he "was so adept with number to count the loaves and tin-plates given to each soldier".

See also

• Themiclesia