Oste Peregrin

Peregrine Host
Oste Peregrin
Active	March 15 1816 – present
Country	Merovia
Branch	Merovian Army
Type	Assault troops
Role	Land warfare Expeditionary warfare Airborne forces
Size	60,000 men
Nickname(s)	Les Sentinelles
Anniversaries	Peregrine Day (March 15)
Commanders
Commander-in-chief	President Herve X. Bellirose
Chief of Staff	General Clotaire Durand

The Oste Peregrin is a corps-strength formation of the Merovian Defense Forces holding a special political status in the government of the Merovian Republic. The commander of the Oste Peregrin serves as the commander-in-chief of the Merovian military and President of the Republic, wielding significant authority over the nation as head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces. This position is currently occupied by Herve Bellirose. The Oste Peregrin exerts further political influence over the Republic through the Merovian Senate, the upper house of the National Congress, which requires service as a Peregrine as a prerequisite for candidates to seek Senatorial office. Militarily, the Oste Peregrin as fighting formation consists of three divisions blindees of 15,000 men as well as four parachute regiments and the chasseurs regiment each numbering approximately 3,000 men for a total strength of some 60,000 active soldiers. The active service members of the Oste Peregrin together with those retired from service amount to roughly 350,000 Merovian citizens today, roughly 1% of the 33 million citizens of the nation. The Oste Peregrin is unusual among military formations as its manpowered is drawn entirely from foreign volunteers as opposed to conscripts or professional soldiers drawn from within the nation. Merovian citizenship automatically disqualifies a prospective volunteer from becoming a Peregrine soldier. Those who join the Oste Peregrin are often petty criminals, persecuted minorities or deserters from their home nation's military forces, receiving a new identity and corresponding Merovian name upon entering into the force. Upon the conclusion of service in the Oste Peregrin, veterans have the choice of reclaiming their old name and identity and returning home or keeping their new identity and receiving Merovian citizenship upon the conclusion of their service. By the jus sanguinis component of Merovian nationality law, the children of these Peregrine veterans receive Merovian citizenship upon birth and are therefore ineligible to join the Oste Peregrin themselves.

Within the framework of the Merovian Defense Forces, the Oste Peregrin represents the professional army of full-time career soldiers opposed to the Territorial army made up of Merovian citizen-soldiers and conscript manpower. As the more professional and elite component of the Army, the Oste Peregrin focuses on the more intensive combat roles required for combined arms and expeditionary warfare. The main body of the Merovian armored corps and mechanized forces is contained within the three divisions blindees of the Oste Peregrin, augmented by the airborne light infantry of the parachute regiments and the special operations capabilities of the chasseurs. In Merovian military doctrine, the role of the Oste Peregrin is to achieve a breakthrough through proper force concentration, with the ideal goal of carrying out an encirclement of enemy forces in a pocket that the infantry of the Territorial army can be assigned to liquidate. The intention of this doctrine is to bring about a victory through a war of motion and to avoid an attritional conflict which could prove disastrous to the Oste Peregrin due to its limited ability to absorb major casualties. To this end, the Oste Peregrin is equipped with tanks, armored vehicles and other high-end equipment to enhance its firepower and mobility with the aim of securing and maintaining the initiative on both tactical and strategic levels.

History

Modern Foundation

The reformation of the mercenaries of the Route Imperiale into the modern Oste Peregrin is attributed to Caradec Dolina, remembered today under the name Charles Celian. Caradec Dolina was a Companion of mixed Gelonian-Ostrozavan ethnicity who had quickly risen to prominence in among the Routiers in the conflicts of the late Holy Audonian Empire. He achieved a legendary status among his fellow mercenaries through acts of valor in battle undertaken at great personal risk which would ultimately cost Dolina a leg and leave him wheelchair-bound for the remainder of his life. Upon the abdication of Emperor Joseph I in January, 1816, Dolina served as the second in command of the Route Imperiale under the last Grandmaster Francis Severine. Severine had by this time become a political rival to Dolina, whom he saw as a challenge to his authority over the Routiers thanks to Dolina's personal reputation in contrast to the relatively meager standing Severine could call upon. Grandmaster Severine had gained his office through his displays of loyalty to the Emperor, and was himself a devoted royalist who faced the demise of the Holy Audonian Empire by proposing a Merovian successor monarchy and a new claimant to the Audonian Empire in the style of Vannois and Lyncanestria. Together with his supporters, who would come to be known as the Severines, the Grandmaster promulgated the idea that the honor and traditions of the Route Imperiale could only be preserved through the crisis of the Audonian disintegration by supporting a new royal line to serve as faithfully as the old line of Emperors. This conflicted strongly with the position held by a radical minority of the high ranking Routiers including Dolina, who proposed the self-determination of the Routier mercenaries by enshrining themselves as the new de jure authority over their Merovian stronghold. The powerful burghers of Merovia's growing urban centers supported the latter Dolinite faction, while the remaining noble allies of the Route Imperiale put their strength behind the Severine faction.

The supporters of Caradec Dolina began to openly challenge the Grandmaster and the Severine supporters, with the private feud between Dolina and Severine quickly exploding into open hostility between superior and subordinate. Dolina was maligned as dishonorable for putting his lot in with merchants and bankers against the monarchy the Route Imperiale had been sworn to serve, and later a traitor when rumors emerged of a Dolinite coup against the Grandmaster. Such a coup indeed came to pass in March of 1816 when Dolina and his supporters, primarily from the rank and file of the Routiers as well as their burgher allies, moved against the Severines under arms. Although some skirmishes took place, Francis Severine and many of his most prominent allies escaped into exile as soon as the coup began with the remaining Severines laying down their arms in surrender in short order. Upon rising to power, Caradec Dolina disbanded the Route Imperiale and rallied the remaining Routiers who he termed Peregrins ("those from abroad") into the modern Oste Peregin which was formally established on March 15th but would in reality gradually coalesce from the remaining bands of Routiers over the succeeding months. The Oste Peregrin was the dominant force of the new Merovian national movement supported by the burghers and the emerging Merovian intelligentsia, a fact which Dolina would use to transform the foreign occupation by the Routier mercenaries into the guardians of the new Republic, professing to protect both the physical borders and territory of the new nation as well as its ideals and political principles of personal and religious freedom. Dolina established the basis of the Peregrine culture and esprit de corps, professing the idea that the foreign born men of the Oste Peregrin should no longer be citizens or subjects of their home nations but patriots of the Oste Peregrin, their new fatherland. He also began the practice of taking a new name and new identity in becoming a Peregrine soldier, taking the name Charles Celian for himself. Under the name Celian, he would be remembered as the Father of the Legion and went on to serve as the first President of the Merovian Republic from September 1st 1816 until his death on April 30th 1828.