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.

Organization

The tactical organization of the Mauryan army may have been influenced somewhat by the Kalanda innovation of combining several combat arms within a single tactical unit and training it to fight together, employing their arms in concert. Tennaiite armies of this period had within them a basic unit called the patti, a mixed platoon comprising one elephant carrying three archers or spearman and a mahout, three horse cavalrymen armed with javelins, round buckler, and spear, and five infantry soldiers armed with shield and broadsword or bow. This twelve-man unit when assembled in three units formed a senamukha, or “company.” Three of these formed together comprised a gulma, or “battalion.” Units were added in multiples of three, forming an aksauhini, or “army,” comprised of 21,870 patti. Sources also speak of military units formed around multiples of ten, and there were no doubt units of single arms that could be employed individually or in concert with other arms. Sources also mention a unit called the samavyuha, or “battle array,” that was about the size of a Roman legion (5,000 men). This unit comprised five subunits joined together, each subunit containing 45 chariots, 45 elephants, 225 cavalry, and 675 infantrymen each. Managing such units in battle required a high degree of tactical sophistication.