Colonial Army (Themiclesia)
| Themiclesian Port Corps | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 752 |
| Country | Themiclesia |
| Type | Rapid-deployment infantry |
| Role | Immediate response |
| Size | 4828 active 3602 reserve |
| Part of | Themiclesian Ministry of Defence |
| Nickname(s) | Frost |
| Motto(s) | Nusquam tamtum remotum, nihil tantum durum Nowhere too distant, nothing too difficult |
| Colors | lime green |
| March | tbd |
| Mascot(s) | Owl |
| Anniversaries | 16th day of 2nd month (lunisolar) |
| Engagements | See list
|
The Themiclesian Port Corps (阜人) is an infantry branch of the Themiclesian Navy, now part of the Themiclesian Marine Corps. Originally, it was a colonial force specializing in warfare against "less organized enemies"; it now is a rapid-deployment force mainly participating in expeditionary warfare, so equipped as to be capable of operating either alone or in conjunction with allied forces abroad. They are historically distinct from the Marine Corps for their independence from navy fleets and ability to conduct special infantry operations away from shores, which was the nominal jurisdiction of the Marine Corps. Note that the term "Port Corps" was coined by the Tyrannians in the 17th century and bears very little relation to their native name.
Tyrannian name
The Port Corps' name in Shinasthana is 阜人 (pjas-njin), which means "plateau people". This is a reference in the Port Corps' habit of defending a settlement by digging a trench around the settlement and then elevating the area within with the excavated soil. The name "Port Corps" was coined by Tyrannian general John Barrower, who engaged with them at the port of what today is New Erus City. This name is actually contradictory of the Port Corps' original function, which was expressly to guard inland settlements, rather than those close port.
History
Early history
Themiclesia's maritime activity of both a military and civilian character, occasioned the creation of the Port Corps. Having established outposts along the coast and interior of the Organized States during the 7th century, it was necessary to defend them against hostile groups. The Themiclesian Army was not sent to defend these outposts, because it then had an inflexible modus operandi that necessitated specialized sub-components in large numbers. The Port Corps was created to fill this niche, by selecting soldiers who had experienced previous battles with Columbian aboriginals. At the time, the Port Corps was divided into units (called "camps") of around 360 men each, equipped specifically to defend a small settlement and trained to do so with minimal external assistance. These demanding requirements forced the nascent Port Corps to familiarize itself with its surroundings with great haste. For administrative purposes, the camps of the Port Corps were geographically grouped into the Left, Middle, and Right Divisions, though there is no relationship with the division as a modern military formation. Each Division was paired with a circuit of the Navy for periodic refurbishments in men and supplies.
It is estimated that, around the 11th century, there were about 45 camps of the Port Corps distributed in continental Columbia, the southern part of Nukkumaa, Portcullia, and the northern coast of Meridia. Originally, the Port Corps reported to the Secretary of State for Appropriations' office, as part of the minister's portfolio over safeguarding Themiclesia's commercial facilities abroad. In the 13th century, they fell under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Maritime Affairs, who managed the country's fleet. That Minister still reported to the Secretary of State for Appropriations, since the entire naval establishment was founded to protect commerce and suppress pirates as well as other hostile groups. The Port Corps were also responsible for enforcing order within outposts and to assist in the collection of duties. Since each camp existed in isolation, they were not given direct, administrative oversignt as a discrete formation, unlike the Marine Corps.
When Themiclesia's foreign holdings diminished in number, there was a trend for different camps to become agglomerated to protect expanding outposts close to the eastern OS coast. These sites enlarged due to centralization of commercial activity, in turn occasioned by increasing Rajian and later Sylvan settlement. These settlers were far more willing to participate in cross-continental trade than the aboriginal societies that preceded them; thus, fewer outposts needed maintenance and protection to facilitate the same volume of trade. Another factor that curtailed the distribution of the Port Corps was organized warfare waged by Casaterran staes and Menghe, which increased in intensity in the 14th century. With little incentive to maintain as many trading posts and in the face of growing difficulty to defend them, the Port Corps found themselves confined to select, larger towns as mentioned. However, the unfolding of events left them overlapping with the Marines, who protected port cities (which all of the major Themiclesian-controlled settlements were) not only abroad but also in Themiclesia-proper. By 1600, the inland-coastal distinction was obsolescent; as a result, the Port Corps were called home and given the job of protecting the Themiclesian coast and ports. To manage them, a new junior minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Ports, was appointed to oversee their activities. Organizationally, they were separated into seventeen camps corresponding to the seventeen ports along the Themiclesian coast.
18th century & Maverican Campaign
The 17th century had little in store for the Port Corps, but the following one was to stretch them to their limits and develop new roles in them. In 1680, the Gramuchi Empire of Maverica suddenly collapsed under Ostlandic rebellion. Themiclesia had, around 1600, concluded a treaty with the Gramuchi Empire to have condominium over what is today Maverica north of the Arantzean Mountains; however, the Gramuchi Empire exploited the Ostlandic settlers, prompting them to appeal for assistance from Themiclesia. Rather than going against treaty and outright supporting the Ostlandic rebels, Themiclesia committed to not helping the Gramuchi Empire in exchange for sovereignty over the part of Maverica north of Arantzean. Hailed as a diplomatic victory and bloodless conquest, amidst defeat left, right, and centre in Columbia, Themiclesia attempted to and was frustrated by establishing a form of government over the new territories. The locals being a creole society between Ostlandians and Gramuchans, customs prevented Themiclesia from using its normal, civil government over them. In a "remarkable example of parallel thinking", eight of seventeen camps of the Port Corps were sent to take control of the major towns in the area. The Port Corps seemed especially appropriate for this task as it resembled their canonical one of enforcing order in the Columbian wilderness two centuries ago.
Far from being a relaxation of tension as the Ostlandic colonists hoped, the Port Corps were ordered to collect an assortment of taxes and to enforce an alien regimen of laws that deeply disturbed the Ostlandic settlers. Though the Themiclesian court may have intended, eventually, to install civil government in the region, such plans were not announced locally. The precise cause for Themiclesia's reticence in restoring civil rule has been debated; one theory states that, due to the lack of acknowledged gentry (who were entitled to a range of privileges) in the region and the use of military force, tax collection was far simpler and more efficient. Such a view gains credence when considered together with the fact that the Port Corps was controlled, ultimately, by the Secretary of State for Appropriations.
Whatever the plans of the government, the Director of Markets, via the Port Corps he controlled, governed northern Maverica uninterrupted for 70 years. The refusal to translate the Penal Code and Administrative Orders, two fundamental Themiclesian legal codices into Ostlandic, had in the mean time created a class of Ostlandic and Gramuchan individuals literate in Shinasthana to voice local concerns. When petitions fell on deaf ears, local pamphlets began to circulate a combination of true and likely conjured actions by the Port Corps that led to much public outrage. In 1757, this triggered a co-ordinated revolt with Ostlandians and Gramnucans in coalition, whereas the two had previously been in a state of tension. Through a variety of "low and evil devices", as described by Maverican historian R. G. Schlutz, such as holding civilians hostage in a walled city to hold the rebels outside at bay, while re-inforcements arrived, the Port Corps made alarming headway. When the rebels sought to seek the assistance of the Tyrannians, the South Sea Fleet immediately blockaded all port cities on the coastline; the Marine Corps also participated in this campaign by physically taking the port cities to prevent any egress. In 1759, the revolt was suppressed.
Before, however, the Themiclesian government was able to exact any veneance on the rebels, Paulus Gulstork, a Ostlandic-Gramuchan arrived at the capital city to find the war highly unpopular in Themiclesia. Through shrewd negotiations and information on the Prime Minister's opponents of the sanguine reality and the underhanded tactics employed by the Port Corps, the Themiclesian court's own friction came to a head in 1760. The Prime Minister was forced to resign to take responsibility for the "awful atrocity" of the war. When Gulstork further displayed the remains of who he claimed were "innocent children caught in the crossfire or deliberately killed to terrorize the locals", the court decided to execute the entire family of the resigned premier, whose inhumane acts were thought to have attracted divine punishment in the form of the drought. The Secretary of State for Appropriations (who actually directed the entire campaign) resigned and disapperaed from public life. The next prime minister further remitted 25 years of land tax from Maverica and guaranteed local government, by which the Port Corps lost its primary function.
19th century & merger
It is generally agreed that the Port Corps considered their withdrawal from Maverica in 1760 a searing humiliation. There is conflicting scholarship over the cause of this sensation. One theory accounts for their unity and espirit d'corps with their constant contact and opposition towards alien cultures, which was supposed to condition a sense of alertness and enmity towards them. The Port Corps are widely observed by foreigners to be the first Themiclesia military formations to display espirit d'corps in a Casaterran sense, while the rest of the establishment was "led by civil servants and adpoted a techno-bureaucratic attitude towards the business of war".
After 1760, Port Corps numbers were reduced by around half and assigned to largely the same tasks that they performed about a century ago. When the Maverican wars restarted in 1792, old maps of pertinent regions were transferred to the regular army. The Port Corps was successful in keeping peace around Themiclesia's ports. Contemporary Themiclesians seemed not to consider the Port Corps a military formation during this time, but many foreign states did: Columbians were miffed by Themiclesia's "port officials under heavy arms at all times, as though treating every merchant like a potential invader or enemy spy". When the Ministry of Appropriations was split in 1821, the Port Corps were retained by the Ministry of Appropriations as enforcers of customs and order at coastal markets. During the Rajian invasion scare of the 1850s and then the Confederate invasion scare in the 1860s, they were ordered to take up defensive formations in larger units than had been the norm; though the scares subsided rather soon, they were never truly withdrawn from coastal defence duties into the 20th century, while enforcing laws at ports like before.
The OS government formally requested Themiclesia, in 1902, to "demilitarize its ports" in conformation to international norms. Whether this was out of a genuine desire to spread international standards or to force the relaxation of customs, which had been notoriously strict, is not known. Themiclesia's tariffs were not high by the standards of the age, and there was no particularly objectionable list of contraband goods. What rules present, however, were thoroughly enforced, as Tyrannian merchant Gerald Percy remarked in 1871:
They unlid every container and put them on their heads to see if anything were concealed therein; they unstrung every sack, turned their bowels out, and counted once, twice, and thrice their contents. Yet they ensured every man, literate or illiterate, had a copious copy of the list of taxable and proscribed things in five languages—ours, Sieuxerrian, Sylvan, Rajian, and theirs. We even found a copy in an infant's crib. It was a blessed thing the list was brief, for if it were longer we should have all starved aboard.
The immediate target of this request was the Port Corps, who the OS believed were "the most martial of Themiclesia's forces" and did not belong in the "purely civil" enforcement of tariffs. To prevent putting around 6,000 people out of work immediately, the OS Department of State nudged its allies in Themiclesia to merge the Port Corps with the Marine Corps. This generated an unexpectedly great anxiety and objection from the latter. Under inquiry, one of the officers privately wrote to the OS Department of State, revealing the long-standing hostility between the two forces that, to the outside, performed largely the same functions. Captain Song of the 22nd Battalion of the Marines wrote:
...[the Port Corps] are excellent for the collection of taxes and enforcement of law and order in the coastal waters. As a fighting force they are toxic from the defeat in Maverica, perceived to be an artifact of Maverican intrigue at Court, when it was most certainly out of their own indiscretion and evil. From our perspective, they are also responsible for allowing the blame of their actions to bleed over to us, when we had nothing to do with them. At the time the Secretaries of State were otherwise occupied by more important business, but we are left with an impossible ally, whom most of us would abhor to accept into our ranks...
Despite virulent opposition, the OS mission in Themiclesia pushed quite hard at legislators, culminating in the act for the abolition of the director of markets and custom [sic] and its various subordinates, which, like its title suggested, abolished the civilian leader of the Port Corps and transferred extant units to the Marine Corps. The same fate was shared by the latter in 1903, abolishing their connection to civil administration.
Role
The Themiclesian Port Corps acts as an immediate-response force is as follows:
- crisis management operations;
- acting as the initial force deployment as a precursor to deployment of a much larger force;
- peace support operations;
- disaster relief;
- protection of critical infrastructure;
- special operations;
- unconventional warfare.
Ranks
Prior to their merger with the Marines, the Port Corps possessed their own rank structure, which still reflected their use as a colonial force earlier in history.
| Shinasthana | Translation | Typical duty | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original | Transliteration | |||
| 阜正 | pjas-tjings | Fort Principal | General responsibility in fortification | |
| 阜典事 | pjas-tin'-srjes | Master of the Fort | Civil duties | |
| 阜長吏 | pjas-drjang-les | Master of the Fort | Supervision of armoury | |
| 阜人率 | pjas-njin-srjus | Commander of the Fort Troops | Senior commander of troops | |
| 僉領阜人 | k'liam-mljang-pjas-njin | Associate Commander | Deputy of above | |
| 阜人卒帥 | pjas-njin-s'lut-shwrjis | Fort Soldier Captain | Command of a 120-man unit | |
| 阜人隊長 | pjas-njin-tuih-drjang | Fort Squad Leader | Command of the 30-man unit | |
| 阜長卒 | pjas-drjang-s'lut | Able Fort Soldier | Soldier with more than 6 years' experience | |
| 阜卒 | pjas-s'lut | Fort Soldier | Ordinary soldier | |