Secretary Board

The Secretary Board (中記中錄室, trung-keqs-trung-rwak-stit), or more literally Office of Records and Dictations, is the most senior operations department of the Consolidated Army of Themiclesia. It is responsible for converting and communicating the Government's military objectives and instructions, as revealed by the Secretary of State for Defence and junior ministers in the Ministry of Defence or their representatives, to other army commanders down the hierarchy.

History

Before 1800

The term trung-keqs-trung-rwak-stit is a portmanteau of two separate names, the trung-keqs-stit and the trung-rwak-stit. The former is a common name for a group of secretaries around important officials who took dictation and thus relieved the official of the more time-consuming duty of writing down his letters. The trung-rwak-stit was responsible for making copies of documents. The Secretary Board arose around the Secretary of State for Officials (吏曹尚書), who was one of three main secretaries around the Emperor, the other two being the secretaries for envoys and for barons.

Interestingly, management of the country's army was not the main duty of this secretary but instead of other officials, yet it was necessary to obtain royal assent to military decisions, so draft commands were collected by the secretary anyway and presented by him to the emperor. There was thus a distance between the "brainstorming" part of the bureaucracy and the "deciding" part.

Nevertheless, during the 17th century, consecutive rulers sought to manage the country's army more actively and so lodged more instructions and decisions with the secretary of state, who then deposited them with his own secretaries. With the appointment of Lord Prem in 1622, who was an avid tactician and left a private collection of over 1,000 military essays, most of the trung-keqs-stit became occupied with defence-related matters, while a new group of secretaries were appointed for other business.

In 1632, the role of the Secretary of State for Officials was further enlarged when the royal court passed laws to require him to read all documents from generals in the field, which in this era was mostly transmarine (i.e. across the sea, in the Subcontinent); this part of its duty is thought to have come at the expense

1800 - 1900

After the failures of the Second Maverican War, ministers began work on a more coherent system of managing the nation's army as early as 1798. Disarmament under the Baron of Gar between 1796 and 1805 completed, much work re-consolidated under the central government, having previously been within the competences of generals in the field. In 1807, the Secretary of State for Officials was directed by a new statute to read all letters addressed to the Emperor relating to the assignment and movement of troops, whether in defensive or field arrangements, whereas those relating to victualing, mobilization, and logistics were granted to the Secretary of State for Barons. By extension, the existing office of the trung-keqs-stit was enjoined to keep close records of the daily movements and activities of all military units (as revealed by mandatory daily reports), in case the information was needed.

The collation of this information was believed to enable better instruction from a distance, since units in the field may not necessarily know where strategically favourable locations are. The military historian Ascott records that the Baron of Kan, then Secretary for Officials, said that the Secretary Board under his administration had become more knowledgeable about the goings-on of battles than any unit in the field; what follows, to the Baron, was a favourable position for ministers to make decisions on the basis of this information.

The Secretary Board started to work more directly with the Field Marshal's Board (令㷉中記室), it seems, during the administration of the Chief Baron of Ran.

Structure

• 卒史
• 長史

See also

• Themiclesia
• Consolidated Army