Tri Genq
Trjii Gen (郗衡, 1172 — 1220) was a Themiclesian military officer most famed for his involvement in the Battle of Kwan, a key victory for Themiclesia in the interior of western Hemithea. He was subsequently executed for this victory.
Early life
Little is known about Trjii's life before he volunteered to be part of an expedition on behalf of the Navy. Trjii was probably not from a prominent, scholarly family; the identity of his parents are unknown, though his surname suggests his ancestral home was in Sngrian-glang Prefecture.
At the time, Themiclesian maintained several outposts in the interior of western Hemithea, which were garrisoned with soldiers to protect trade routes into various native communities and to the west coast, where Casaterran traders, mainly from Rajamaa, frequently landed. It is likely Trjii was a soldier at one such outposts. His term as a soldier abroad, 12 years long, would have consumed much of his young adulthood. Enlistment age at the time was 20. As a soldier, he would have faced frequent raids by hostile tribes; being a sea away from the home country, these outposts were notoriously challenging to defend, and Trjii would have familiarized himself with the tactics of the locals during his term there.
The first historical record of Trjii was his appointment as Pjas-tjings, or the military governor of an outpost. His duties included taxing merchant parties that travelled along the route he guarded and mustering his men to repulse hostile groups that may sever the road or threaten the outpost itself, which also functioned as a defensive installation and marketplace. This suggests he performed well as a rank-and-file soldier, to be promoted rapidly to an officer's position. Because it is not known what his precise roles were before becoming an officer, it is not known if he had much battlefield experience, though this seems likely.
Battle of Kwan
In 1217, he was appointed as Pjas-tjings of Kwan, an outpost somewhere in the southern part of the subcontinent. Historical records show that his precedessor was ordered to protect an emissary from the Themiclesian court, to deliver a message detailing Themiclesia's desire for peace and trade with them. When Kwan was appointed, he suffered several raids in succession, some of them, according to himself, "must have come from the very tribe that accepted the embassy", though he submitted no proof of this.
In early 1219, Trjii sent regular scouts to the region in which he suspected the implicated tribe to be residing. Reports affirmed that there was indeed a society, several thousand in number, that lived there. In March 1219, Trjii received further reports that the settlement was evidently preparing for a major battle, which he feared was against his outpost. Thus, only eleven days later, he sent a messenger to the outpost in Sngrak-'rjum (to his east) to borrow all available men. With them, he assembled a formation about 1,000 strong and fraudulently announced that he had received an edict from the Council of Correspondence to "destroy the settlement plotting against the court".
On or about March 17th, 1219, he set his men marching southwest to launch an attack on the settlement, which he took by surprise. Before the battle, he made rousing statements before his men, convincing them "on emotional grounds" of the validity of his orders. This is known because the court conducted an investigation afterwards, and it is apparent that certain soldiers were interviewed; of the things that Trjii alleged, the most threatening was perhaps that an alliance to level the outpost was afoot, and they would never see the day of recall. None of his soldiers apparently objected that when a war was to be fought, the court always sent a tribune to invigilate the conduct of war. Trjii further specified to his men that the only way to avoid this fate was to "destroy everything in sight", which would cause the alliance to disintegrate.
Several days later, they reached the settlement they were looking for. It was poorly defended, and his men easily took control of the vicinity. Realizing the dimunutive resistance they faced hardly agreed with what he said, Trjii instead pressed forth with a command to pillage the settlement. This allowed him to distribute the loot to his men, which historians interpret as an attempt to bribe them into silence. After this, Trjii's second-in-command advised him that, seeing the carnage, an actual inasion was likely to occur. Thus, the formation remained for several days, when most of the tribe's warriors had returned. Initially shocked at the destruction, they were ambushed and massacred by Trjii's men. Later historians, including a treatise written in the 1400s, claim that they had been completely unready for such an even precisely because Themiclesia's emissary had assured them of peaceful intentions.
Aftermath
In consequence of battle, Trjin submitted a report to court, claiming he and his men had "decapitated 1,821 enemies". Though initially received with much enthusiasm, it later became evident that Trjii had started a completely unnecessary war with a society Themiclesia had only two years prior offered peace. The counterveiling report was likely done by merchants who found their settlement laid to waste, co-inciding with Trjii's reports. The Minister of the Left was furious at Trjii's victory and developed a strategy to restore Themiclesia's reputation, realizing that the error would soon become widely known amongst native societies. Themiclesia's relations with such societies were extensive: in the 13th c., Themiclesia received missions from more than 92 societies known by name.
The court, in September 1219, issued an edict to an Attendant Tribune to travel to summon Trjii to the capital city. Trjii arrived in December 1219. Meanwhile, his extended family was arrested, transported to the capital city, and imprisoned there. The court invited Trjii on Jan. 2nd, 1220 to the Front Hall, where an edict was read making him the Lord of Tjang-sjins, supposedly giving him the taxation income of 500 households there. The same night, he was arrested, brought to trial at the Council of Correspondence, and sentenced to be executed along with anyone who shared an ancestor with him and his wife within seven generations. The Council deliberated the judgment long before they brought Trjii to trial. The Prime Minister and several others believing that sending Trjii as a prisoner to the grieved tribes' allies was sufficient. However, the Minister of the Left (responsible for diplomacy) declared that "except for the most severe punishment, there is no restitution for the government's lost dignity and reputation amongst foreign polities". By this, over 1,100 individuals related to Trjii by blood or marriage were condemned; as to the law against treason, there was no protection for children or infirm. The official judgment, a foregone conclusion, read:
君矯制，當棄市。君擅興，厲殺人，疑外國，同謀反，當要斬，夷三族。
You have forged an edict, for which you should be decapitated in the marketplace. You have deployed forces without permission, massacred many, and caused doubt amgonst the states. This is the same as treason, for which you should be severed at the waist, and your three clans be eradicated.
When he protested that his actions resulted in a victory that would serve as warning to miscreants, the Minister of the Left replied:
以一日之威武，廢萬代之法度，可乎？
For a single day's martial glory, can the laws of ten-thousand generations be forgone?
He and his "three clans" were executed in Kien-k'ang the following day. The passers-by, recordedly, weaped for his tragic fate. However, at least part of the bureaucracy and rural gentry agreed wholeheartedly with the judgment, considering his actions that day, no matter victory of defeat, to have impugned the trustworthiness of the government and give cause to a potential future coalition to attack Themiclesia, thus endangering the very existence of the country.