Military of the Chalna Empire

Background

Maya Chalna governed a true monarchical imperial state. The queen ruled with the help of a small body of elder stateswomen, that functioned as advisors. These included the great councilor, or mantrin; the purohita, or chief priest; the treasurer, or sannidhatr; the chief tax collector, samahartr; the minister of military affairs, sandhivigrahika; the senapati, or chief military advisor or general; and the chief secretary, or mahaksapatalika. Below this council, the state was governed on a day-to-day basis through powerful individuals, called superintendents, who oversaw various government departments. The military system itself was controlled by high-ranking civilian superintendents who oversaw the operations of state armories, where all military equipment and weapons were manufactured, as well as supply depots, cavalry, elephants, chariot corps, and infantry, including provisions, training, and general combat readiness. The imperial army was run by a committee of thirty of these superintendents, while each branch or department-infantry, cavalry, elephants, chariots, navy, commissariat, and so on-was run by a committee of five men. It is likely that these committees reported directly to the chief military man, the senapati, who then reported to the queen.

Composition

There were six types of troops in the Chalna imperial army: the ksatriya, or troops of the hereditary warrior class who formed the spine of the professional army; mercenaries and freebooters hired as individuals seeking military adventure; troops provided by corporations or guilds; troops supplied by subordinate allies; deserters from the enemy; and wild forest and hill tribeswomen. The troops of the corporations are little understood and may have been units maintained by guilds to guard their caravan routes and trade stations. Such units were later found in the armies of medieval Eracura. The imperial armies were not conscript armies. In Chalic times, war fighting was the responsibility of all members of the tribe. By the time of the Chalna, whatever sort of conscription had once existed earlier had disappeared, and the imperial armies comprised professional warrior aristocrats and other professionals fed, equipped, trained, paid, and otherwise maintained at great cost to the state.

The Chalna army was quite large. The force used by May Chalna to overwhelm the Kalanda monarch Annam’s force of 200,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry, 2,000 chariots, and 3,000 elephants consisted of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 elephants. Even accounting for the exaggeration common in ancient accounts, it is by no means unlikely that these armies were this large. The population of Tennai during this period was somewhere between 35,000,000 and 50,000,000 people. Even excluding the lower social orders, the Chalna Empire possessed a sizable manpower pool. After the Chalna expanded outside of Tennai, the population grew to somewhere between 100,000,000 and 160,000,000 Moreover, Tennai was rich in gold and metals and the skills to produce weapons in great quantities in state armories. The Moyar Plain and other areas in the north were excellent for breeding mounts for the cavalry. Whatever the true size of the imperial armies, they are all recorded as smaller than those said to have existed during the late medieval period of Tennaiite history.