Consolidated Army

Consolidated Army
并兵, bing-prang
Consolidated Army flag
Founded	time immemorial
Current form	1921
Service branches	Consolidated Army Reserve Army Home Defence Force Territorial Forces Voluntary militias
Headquarters	N Blep Park
Leadership
Secretary of State for Defence	Ntrjang Kr′im (張謙)
President of the Consolidated Board	Rui Gw′rars (雷煥)
Manpower
Military age	20 - 55 18 with parental assent
Conscription	not in effect
Reaching military age annually	(2017 est.)
Active personnel	171,000
Deployed personnel	12,200
Expenditures
Budget	$13.5 billion
Related articles
History	Pre-modern army of Themiclesia

The Consolidated Army (竝兵, bing-prang) is the service within the Themiclesian armed forces primarily responsible for military operations on land and includes departments supporting and administering the forces. The force has over 200,000 active officers and men as of 2023 and another 200,000 reserved. Statutory conscription is declared to be in force between 2021 and 2031 under the Defence Green Paper of 2020 and as authorized by Parliament the same year. The Consolidated Army is currently most focused on land defence against Maverica, which is perceived as the primary threat to Themiclesian security, and also participates in international expeditions, peacekeeping, exercises, other training programmes, and humanitarian tasks.  

The Consolidated Army is named for and under the governance of the Consolidated Board for the Forces (主兵竝省), which is headed politically by the President of the Board (not to be confused with the President of the Board of Trade), in turn accountable to the Secretary of State for Defence (禦部尚書). The senior professional officer is the Senior Secretary to the Consolidated Board (主兵省丞), while the ranking career military officer is the Chief of Staff of the Consolidated Board (主兵省參事).  

The Consolidated Army permits and has instituted measures encouraging female service, and there are no roles that categorically exclude females except medical ones. The force is part of a pan-military effort to suppress sexism and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Themiclesian soldiers are amongst the more well-paid in Septentrion, with professional soldiers receiving a bonus above and over the pay that conscripts receive. Conscripts are encouraged to turn professional by taking a contract and can enjoy improved remuneration effectively immediately, prorated to the day the contract becomes effective even if not yet re-assigned to a professional unit.

Name

The name "Themiclesian Army", as usually applied, is an exonym of the land forces of Themiclesia. Historically, foreign authors typically used the term (and its Sylvanate equivalent exercitus thimiensis) to refer to the Meridian and Columbian Colonial Armies and the Admiralty Army. There is no force actually named "Themiclesian Army", but when used it is understood to mean the Consolidated Army.

The Shinasthana glyph prang (兵, "military") depicts two hands holding an wood-cutting axe. Philologists interpret that this meant peasant levies once dominated military activity, as they would have been armed with work tools, such as wood-cutting axes and hoes, in lieu of weapons. Glyphs representing true weapons, such as the battle-axe (王, 戉), have been used to write concepts such as kingship, which some scholars have considered elucidating of the nature of kingship in archaic society. The term prang can be used to mean armed forces generally, but in contrast to gang "fleet", it defaults to indicate land forces.

The word sprul (師) can sometimes be used to identify an army, but its original meaning was "garrison, mustering point", especially a permanent one where regular activities are carried out. A non-permanent military camp is called a gereps (立). The term "standing army" (庸, lwang) was once applied widely in fiscal legislation, referring to all military personnel directly controlled by the central government, served at least 60 days per year, and not part of the naval fleet. The "standing army" is not a branch of service in the modern sense.

History

Early 19th century

Main article: Pre-modern army of Themiclesia

While the roots of some of the Army's components may be traced to antiquity or even protohistoric times, its modern structure only emerged in the 19th to early 20th centuries. Prior to this time, Themiclesia fielded a long list of separate military units, supported through numerous organizations, to defend its geographically-diverse interests. Other than a shared leadership in the War Secretary, they were institutions managing recruitment, remuneration, ranking, honours, and appointments with varying degrees of independence from the bureaucracy.

In the latter half of the 18th century, Themiclesia suffered consecutive defeats against the Tyrannians (1791), Sieuxerrians (1793), Camians (1795), and Mavericans (1796), yet her forces at the same time consumed as much as five-sixths of a government budget already augmented by rampant taxation. At the end of these wars, a Conservative faction gained power at court and dramatically reduced the size of all the forces, hoping to curb taxation in a nation already burdened by fiscal and political challenges. The wars of the 1700s most seriously ravaged the treasuries of the aristocracy and formed the core of the Conservative hostility towards warfare. This ethic would continue to provide considerable resistance to attempted expansions of the armed forces, even in face of foreign challenge.

However, the government that reduced the size of the armed forces from a peak of 310,000 men one-tenth that size recognized extant threats and attempted to improve the forces' ability to defend the nation's shrunken territories and narrowed interests, at a lower cost. After culling the forces, subsequent reforms awarded primacy to eliminating waste and reference to Casaterran scholarship and experience. The officer academy was founded in 1813 as an autonomous institution studying Casaterran military thought and development, though it evolved into a liberal arts college by the middle of the century. Its students realized the connections between Casaterran philosophy, history, economics, and politics and its military schools of thought. The Academy acquired regional renown for its liberty and scope of research work.

Despite these political and paradigmatic shifts, the dogmata governing the organization of Themiclesian forces remained virtually unchanged under fiscal conservatism and bureaucratic inertia. States such as Sieuxerr and Ostland developed highly-integrated and flexible armies based on a levée en masse, but Themiclesia retained its imperial-era military of units of various geographic or weapon specializations, each in a defensive niche. Some niches were extensions of hostilities from the imperial period: the South Army, for example, was known for its light and mounted infantry and familiarity with Camian tactics when Camia remained deeply hostile, and the Marines specialized in naval combat when four or five navies regularly appeared in the Halu'an Sea. Others niches appeared around new weapons or tactics, usually first argued for in the Army Academy.

In terms of civil-military relations, the War Secretary oversaw a multitude of militia regiments, ethnic-minority volunteer corps, professional units, and civil authorities of various sizes and functions. In modern analyses, the hierarchy was exceptionally flat. The lack of large formations or standing national or regional commanders, combined with executive unaccountability in the wars of the late 1700s, also discouraged the forces from higher-level strategization, defaulting to Parliament, civil service, and government ministers and their advisors. According to historian G. Kro, "early-19th-century military officers, even colonels and lieutenant-generals, were functionaries discharging Parliament's directives, formed by civil servants' recommendations and parliamentarians' diplomatic acumen and military knowledge; the military itself had no strategic initiative in the modern sense. Parliament between 1801 and the mid-1850s must be regarded as both strategist-in-chief and commander-in-chief."

Regiment Act of 1850

Many historians aruge the most influential military reform of the 19th century is the Regiment Act of 1850, proposed and passed under the administration of the Lord of Rjai-lang. This law was legislatively simple, commanding every force (except the navy and units pledged by minority groups) that could appoint its own officers to limit its commissions to graduates of the Army Academy. A great deal of scholarship has been done to explore the effects of this law, whose authors may not have intended some of them. Aside from the obvious benefit of imposing a quality-check on officers-to-be, the other consequences are often considered as follows, bringing the military into total reconciliation with Themiclesian society after the loss of all its imperial holdings.

It is generally held, first, the law implicitly harmonized the upper ranks of at least the six extant units that were originally raised in and for the defence of colonial communities. While most of these had been repatriated, some still lived separately from metropolitan ones, and units associated with these former-colonial communities still tended towards them as recruitment sources. As the colonies lacked true aristocracies, the rank and file had a better chance to become promoted as officers in these units, compared to those based in the metropole. The Regiment Act sealed off this avenue by restricting new commissions to graduates of the Academy, whose fees effectively restricted matriculation to the metropolitan elite.

As a result of this restriction, the upper leadership of all the forces was firmly embedded within the social elite, which some authors find a factor that nurtured unity and suppressed munities. They provide that Themiclesian elites have shown a considerable of cohesion in establishing a democratic form of government and tolerating differing ideas about the future of the country, within a certain limit. This resolve some consider a reaction to the capricious rule of Emperor ′Ei, which injured the interests of the entire aristocracy and inspired them to remain united on a fundamental level, to prevent the return of autocratic rule.

A third effect, also generally held, is that even though the forces were organizationally disunited, their leaders were both socially and intellectually united, and in this the apparent institutional weakness of the forces actually enabled many government policies developed beyond them to be accepted within them. Shared education at the Army Academy both allowed future officers to develop intellectual discourse and fraternity with each other and strengthened their allegiance to the elite lifestyle, income model, and cultural millieu, given their dependence on their households to support their studies and procure opportunities to take commisisons. Furthermore, the singular academy eroded regional preference, for officers in standing regiments, in consequence of the act. "The breathtaking genius of this law," K. Gro wrote, "is that its effects were all implicit, which gave the imperial regiments an illusion of institutional independence."

While most historians assess the Regiment Act positively, there are also observations and reservations that tease out a distinct narrative. This law was passed five years into Rjai-lang's premiership, universally considered enabled by a major franchise reform in 1845 that expanded the electorate tenfold to reach the bourgeoisie and less elites; political ramifications "can hardly be over-estimated." Amidst a Conservative reaction in the late 1840s about bringing "new men" into positions of power, the Regiment Act also functioned as a barrier to social advancement through the military, by limiting commissions to a familiar class of individuals whose tendencies and demands are articulated through political institutions and thus unlikely to manifest as munities or military coups. Thus, while the Act had a progressive function, it also had a "highly reactionary" character, according to K. Gro.

Late 19th century

During the 1850s, the Board of War came to prominence in terms of defence policy. As an committee of senior officers divided into sub-committees, it supplanted the pragmatic functions of the War committees of both houses of Parliament. According to many historians, this body's maturity was key to the transition from the 19th-century army of many independent forces to their eventual consolidation in 1920. While Themiclesian politicians were perenially weary of the influence the Camian military had in their government, that most senior military figures were closely affiliated with elite society lent an air of legitimacy and familiarity to the Board of War. Additionally, its operational principles resembled that of a deliberative assembly, which soothed many fears, according to K. Gro.

The Regiment Act gradually spread an intellectual commitment to create a "consolidated army", first proposed by Liberal MP Kaw Sun in 1859. Despite the idea's popularity within the Army Academy and the forces themselves, it conflicted with the reactionary parts of the Conservative party, under the Baron of Ghwar (prime minister 1859 – 60) and Baron of Naqs-qrum (1864 – 68). Though a consolidated army only materialized 60 years after initial proposal, the Liberal Party had begun to advance it since the 1870s. Military finance was centralized by Lord Tlang-men in 1873 under the new Consolidated Exchequer (并內, bink-nups), though this was under the Finance Secretary. Tlang-men also appointed junior ministers over government and private manufactories, arsenals, and regimental armouries to ensure consistent supply, workmanship, and good upkeep.

The Battle of Liang-la toppled Naqs-qrum's Conservative ministry in 1868 and paved the way to the second permiership of the Chief Baron of Sng'raq (1868 – 1874). His administration focused on improving the armaments in the army, replacing smooth-barrel muskets with rifles for units still fielding the former. Sng′raq, riding on the wave of public shock from Camian embargo and threatened invasion, raised three infantry and two cavalry regiment, as well as enlarging the Capital Defence Force by almost 2,000 men and the South Army by 1,700. Though Sng′raqs contribution to the defences of the realm was limited to increasing the quantity of regular troops, his war secretary, Lord L'wang-men, directed supplies to transit via railway, removing this task from corvée labour. While Conservatives criticized the policy as expensive, it materially reduced commoners' obligations towards the state, which both Conservative-leaning agrarians and Liberal-leaning merchants appreciated.

In 1871, the Sng′raq administration announced a policy to raise 100 companies of volunteers from guilds, universities, clubs, and religious groups. The so-called Hundred Companies never reached full strength even at the end of Liberal government in 1878, with only 59 being ever raised; however, the Liberals argued that many of these men were skilled labourers or even middle-class professionals and represented a "defensive resolve across all classes". The Honourable Company of the Bar, for example, consisted almost wholly of solicitors, law students, and courts officials (barristers were not permitted to participate in the military); the Government lavished this unit with decorations, as it helped against the notion that soldiers were mostly criminals or idlers. To designate their status, professional groups serving at least part-time in the forces were prefixed with "the honourable".

In 1885, the L′wang-men government re-organized and re-invigorated the so-called "Thirty-Six Boards" (卅寮又六) that provided and regulated the professional trades in the army. This reform divested regimental colonels over professional trades and supplies in his regiment, which were sources of corruption and complaint; regimental commanders also became less responsible for administration as a result of this reform. The introduction of professional management across the army, likely inspired by the functions of trade guilds, removed some of the supervisory functions of the Consolidated Exchequer.

Early 20th century

The period between 1891 and 1910 was a period of stagnation for the military in general. The Regiment Act and subsequent reforms fostered a strong alignment of the army to social class: the gentry became officers, the skilled trades participated as professionals, and labourers stood as enlisted men and petty officers. Such an arrangement was preferred by those believing that a military could only be stable and loyal if it structurally mirrored society, or "at an equilibrium as an exponent of social authority" in contemporary language. Under the same thinking, firm, mutual relationships were set up between the forces and civilian organizations, e.g. physicians may do two months' military work every year, returning to ordinary practice at other times. Each of these bonds was "a helping hand by good men to the forces", according to Conservative prime minister the Lord of Snur-lang (綏陽侯; in office 1891 – 94), "for the maintenance of the army's civic character."

As it was not possible to seek promotions on the strength of military activity alone, military rank was attached to social standing. A captain was expected to have standing superior to that of a lieutenant, and a major's to that of a captain. Though social standing is a strong component of military rank, it was not generally possible to substitute expenditure for performance; however, in the late 19th century, performance standards revolved around a didactic rubric and were not challenging to qualified officers. Promotions were granted to officers who made social advancements, from a pool of equally qualified ones. This situation was perceived by both Liberals and Conservatives as a virtue, as it awarded power to those that elites approved, scrutinized, and trusted. Some critics pointed out that the system grossly favoured the rich even amongst the elites, though this did not become a significant problem as money alone could not purchase social standing, which, according to M. G. Graw, was "a mutually-reinforcing mixture of achievements in varied fields".

The Krungh administration and the Rim-′an administration following it reduced the size of the regular army from around 35,000 men and officers to 26,000 men and officers, pressed by the need to reduce taxation in response to falling export volume. The Liberal Lord of Mik provided renewed attention on armaments and raised the upper limit of enlisted men to 37,500 men during peacetime.

Mik's government passed the Services Segregation Act of 1915 (別服令) that restricted the appointment of local councillors and members of the Civil Service as military commanders.  The Examinations Act of 1916 required all prospective military officers to pass a written examination and interview held by the War Office to ensure aptitude in a modernizing force.

There was a dispute between the Admiralty and many officers of the marine corps whether the latter should become part of the Consolidated Army. As alumni of the Army Academy, most of the Marines' officers gravitated towards the idea, but the admirals were vehement against it. In 1916, the admirals presented to Parliament that merger would not provide economies, but internal documents suggest the motive was at least partly sectarian, affecting the naval independence over its facilities and ability to conduct coastal operations. Graw writes, from the social perspective, that the admirals were "envious of the Army Academy's social success" and started to rear Marines officers in the Naval Academy to replace the Army Academy graduates. This planned purge culminated in the Admiral Affair of 1916, where the House of Lords ruled that the Admiralty must follow the Regiment Act, which required all regiments the regular army to immerse officers from the Academy's graduates.

With a new generation of Conservative politicians campaigning for social assistance coming to the fore in the late 10s, overt suspicion of the armed forces became a less powerful argument against military reforms within the party. Capitalizing on this shift and co-opting some Conservative policy aims, the Liberal government secured the support of sufficient MPs and peers to pass the Army Acts, which formally created the Consolidated Army by establishing a permanent command structure and permitting the appointment staff generals in peacetime. The CDF, South Army, Royal Signals Corps, Tank Corps, and most professional cavalry, infantry, and artillery regiments, as well as the trade boards, all became part of the new army. The extant regiments of marines were excluded from it, in preparation for a separate reform, but due to political concessions, war, and limits on the government's time, this would not occur until 1949.

Prairie War

Main article: Themiclesian invasion of Dzhungestan

The Prairie War is the first major conflict after the 1791 – 96 Second Maverican War. In 1926, Dzhungestani cavalry crossed into Themiclesia to occupy copper mines that lay just across the border; after a few months of copper extraction, the army was ordered to repel the Dzhungestani cavalry. The invasion was repulsed but recurred in 1927. Under foreign abettance, the governemnt planned to take the Dzhungestani capital city, in hope of forcing negotiations to prevent future incursions. The army leadership informally regarded this as an opportunity to test the efficacy of the new tanks procured only a few years before, though this was not presented as such to the government, since the War Secretary recently said in parliament that the military will "not fight a war to test a weapon". To lead this expedition, the Eastern Expedition HQ was established in Feb. 1927.

Dzhungestan's defence forces failed to repel the Themiclesian invasion, despite much effort and some appeals to other states. Dzhungestan's capital city, Dörözamyn, fell only two months after the border was crossed. However, the administration fled, with only the Khan's under-aged nephew remaining to reject the treaty Themiclesia proposed. The Themiclesian government was flustered, and management of the desired treaty was returned to the Foreign Office in 1928. Slightly later, the Prime Minister retired, provoking a cabinet reshuffle that pushed the foreign secretary into the premiership. The new PM then ordered the army to pay, out of its own pocket, for some infrastructure improvements in Dörözamyn, hoping, on the one hand, to persuade the absent Khan that Themiclesia had no ambitions in the wealth or land of his state; on the other hand, if the Khan were to persist in exile, the improvements would lend political credit to the nephew, who could be expected to be amicable towards Themiclesia.

Pan-Septentrion War

See also: Pan-Septentrion War

The Consolidated Army was responsible for the vast majority of Themiclesian combat during the Pan-Septentrion War. In the Themiclesian Front, the Consolidated Army co-operated heavily with Hallian forces, which outnumbered Themiclesia troops in Themiclesia in 1936. Their combined strength halted the Menghean advance in mid-1937, when deficiencies in the logistical train hampered the invaders' effectiveness. The proximity of the front to the Themiclesian heartland, on the Meh Sea coast, conversely assisted the defence. Menghe then forced Casaterran prisoners captured in Southern Hemithea to construct what is now known as the Death Railway across Dzhungestan in the two following years, to compensate for their logistical disadvantage; the railway was one of the most extreme examples of mistreatment of prisoners during the entire war and was responsible for thousands of deaths. Despite this, exchanges of prisoners took place regularly between the Mengheans and Themiclesians, and mistreatment is understood to have been otherwise infrequent in this front.

Between 1936 and 1938, the Consolidated Army was heavily reformed to provide better co-ordination and eliminate redundancies. The Consolidated Board acquired more powers in 1937 following amendments to statutes governing it. Experience from the front informed regional training facilities, which now supplanted individuals regiments in that function.

In the middle of 1938, Menghe mustered furbished troops in Themiclesia with the railway over Dzhugnestan complete and restarted its campaign westwards. They were joined by Dayashinese troops in that end, who were trained to fight as "break-through units" that delivered concentrated fire to resolve enemy defences. On the other hand, Dayashina's deployment also taxed the capacity of Menghe's railway, though the relationship between the forces was not thereby impaired. The Mengheans and Dayashinese progressed after major victories in northern Themiclesia and threatened Nukkumaa in 1939, and they verged on Kien-k'ang, the Themiclesian capital, in mid-1940. The capital city's thick defensive walls, dating to the 9th century, provided considerable resistance to Menghean and Dayashinese armoured and artillery units. Nevertheless, Themiclesian forces around the city were forced to retreat beyond the River Kaung in June 1940, leaving the capital city isolated and under siege. The Themiclesian Air Force Regiment offered a strong defence of Tibh airfield, a base of operations for the Themiclesian Air Force.

As the city was under siege and resolved in its resistance and Themiclesian troops manned many fortifications that made crossing challenging, the Menghean and Dayashinese forces diverted troops north to contest ′Jong and Rak. The successful repulsion of Menghean forces at Rak invited the Menghean commander to reinforce his position in the north, not anticipating a sudden improvement in Themiclesian positions in the south, over the winter of 1940/41. Thus, Themiclesians rapidly crossed Kaung and counter-attacked in the spring of 1941. The contest for Kien-k'ang has been consolidated under the Battle of Kien-k'ang by historians. Meanwhile in the north, Hallians mounted a successful and surprising offensive over the Rak suburb of Ru. The Menghean forces, facing a choice between the two parts of the front, elected to face Hallian forces in Rak first, judging that nation's forces to be the superior threat.

Over 1942 and 1943, Menghean forces retreated steadily and exited the Themiclesian border by the end of 1943. The Themiclesian government was persuaded by the local Hallian comamnder, Juhani Sihvo, to continue prosecuting the war against Menghe after their presence in Themiclesia had been removed. The Consolidated Army was re-organized again to fulfil this policy that was not anticipated in the Conscription Act of 1936, which had only authorized the conscription of troops for home defence. Fortunately, a considerable portion of the troops voluntarily joined the East Expedition Army, which had hitherto existed as a division of the Consolidated Army. In 1944, the Themiclesian Parliament created the South Expedition Army to participate in the offensive that was to begin in Maverica. These two forces accounted for nearly 600,000 men, actually exceeding the size of the entire army during the domestic fighting phase. While the move was unpopular in Themiclesia and barely went through the House of Lords, which was particularly critical of deploying to Maverica, the Government warned that Themiclesian's allies would not support a "inconclusive peace".

Themiclesian forces progressed east between 1944 and 45.

Postwar

The principal task of the postwar Consolidated Army was demobilization and restructuring according to the experience in the war. From a peak size of over a half-million men deployed and 882,000 under arms in 1947, the army reduced its strength to 400,000 by the end of 1950 and 300,000 by 1951. The Conservative government of Lem oversaw most of the structural changes to the army after the dissolution of the National Government. The discharge of war-time conscripts was only slowed by Government instructions to keep some men in the ranks until they found a job or a stable domicile. While some voices in Parliament called for caution in view of persistent instability in Menghe, the general election of 1952 introducing a Liberal government slowed the pace of demobilization.

The Conscription Act of 1936 was repealed in 1950 to make way for a more modern conscription system. In the same year, the Regiment Act of 1850 was also amended to recognize the validity of degrees from a list of tertiary schools other than the Army Academy.

1960s

In May 1960, the communist, revolutionary movement established a new government in Maverica, and many of the holdouts against their rule surrendered at the same time. The rapid success of the communists shocked Themiclesian politics and was considered, above other causes, responsible for the Liberal Party's survival in the election of November 1960, in which the Conservatives were favoured. While Themiclesia had already withdrawn from Maverica, the Maverican administration declared it intended to replace the current Themiclesian government with a communist one, by force if necessary. In response, Parliament voted to conscript citizens for home defence. The re-imposition of conscription between 1961 and 1982 was a defining factor in the Themiclesian military.

The conscription worked through a national lottery system for males aged 18 to 25, with university graduates exempted from service if they took a home defence seminar or were members of the faculty. Various other service schemes arose within professional organizations and philanthropic groups. Unlike the 1936 conscription, other forms of exemption (e.g. family members or servant of a peer, member of parliament, senior bureaucrat, local councillor, etc.) were severely restricted. In general, only medical conditions and undue economic hardship were accepted as excuses from military service. After a rudimentary training period, conscripts had the option of joining the Home Defence Force, Reserve Army, or Consolidated Army. The Consolidated Army boasted much better pay than the other options, while the Reserve Army made possible a civilian career with periodic training.

To provide petty officers to direct the activities of the Home Defence Force, the Consolidated Army experienced a net outflow of servicepeople between 1961 and 1963. To compensate, members of the Home Defence Force were encouraged to "go active" by joining either the Reserve or Consolidated armies, but enthusiasm remained low throughout the conscription period; seconded petty officers were given the task of encouraging members of the Home Defence Force to turn professional, but their techniques were often unsubtle and have created conflict.

Manpower

	1950	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010	2020
Consolidated Army	214,200	114,000	152,000	161,000	162,000	132,000	129,000	151,000
Reserve Army	18,000	64,200	74,200	48,000	72,000	43,100	42,000	33,000
Home Defence Force	–	–	382,000	317,000	89,000	220,000	127,000	362,000
Pledged troops (Estoria, Herculea & Chiefs)	23,400	8,400	7,600	5,300	5,700	3,400	2,000	6,200
Voluntary militia & miscellany	112,000	82,000	59,000	61,200	52,000	14,560	112,000	124,000
Total	367,600	268,600	674,800	592,500	307,700	215,060	412,000	676,000

Structure

Administration and operation

The army possesses separate administrative and functional structures. The administrative structure, also called statutory structure, chiefly deals with recruitment, training, appointment, and remuneration; this structure is defined through statutory bodies that, most centrally, are raised and funded by Parliament. All servicepeople are members of a statutory body and therein receives a rank and base salary commensurate with that rank. Officers are commissioned in a specific statutory body and receive a separate command authority separate but commensurate with their commissions. The functional structure facilitates military operations and many peripheral tasks, which may be established by Parliament or through the Defence Secretary or his subordinates enabled by Parliament.

The statutory body predominating combat services is the regiment, with a number of administrative companies, but few regiments operate in se as functional units. Most infantry regiments, for example, are part of an operational division or brigade, which subdivide themselves into smaller battalions. Administrative units in artillery are usually called companies, with multiple companies associated with a division or brigade. There are also servicepeople, primarily in support services, who are part of professional departments or boards, which are not called "regiments" but are functionally similar to them; these servicepeople are, most often, distributed in smaller units like companies and platoons to functional units. Regiments are largely independent bodies that rely on statutes and ordinances to carry out its functions.  Certain servicepeople like physicians, surgeons, solicitors, and barons of crown pleas perform their duties directly through their commissions and do not become part of a functional unit.

Because regiments are no longer operation units in most cases, their sizes and internal structure can be quite skewed from the historic norm. Most infantry regiments possess the full panoply of regimental prerogatives and pomp, but the Capital Defence Force consists of two regiments, which are infantry and armoured respectively; in this case, regimental powers are divided between the CDF's officers and those of its two regiments. The CDF is a supra-regimental administrative department, but in modern practice all of its officers are seconded from those of the two administrative regiments. This situation is more apparent in the professional departments, whose servicepeople may be divided into multiple regiments, but administrative authority resides mostly in the parent department. The Royal Signals Corps may be considered an administrative "regiment" but actually consists of six regiments, all of which share the same training, rank structure, pay scale, and uniforms.

The dual structure evolved in the 20th century, because warfare increased in complexity, which militated in favour of professional management, while most politicians believed that Parliament should reserve some control over the structure, size, and budget of the armed forces within its legal framework. The administrative structure constrains the total number of officers and enlisted persons in service, as well as their qualifications, pay, and ranking, while these units could be divided or assembled as current demands and strategies required.

Leadership

Like the navy and air force, the army is subordinate to the Secretary of State for Defence, who makes defence policy and enacts ordinances authorized by statute. The junior minister with responsibility over the army is the President of the Consolidated Board (often "President" when context makes clear), though ministers and civil servants in the MoD may participate in army administration and supervision under his instruction. The President holds the rank of a Minister of State.

All five heads of the army members are represented on the Ministerial Council, which focuses on inter-service administration. The senior-most officers of each service sit on the Standing Committee on Military Operations, most decisions relating to military operations are made.

The most senior department of the Consolidated Army itself is the Consolidated Board (并臺), which is headed by a President and a Vice President. The Consolidated Board has administrative oversight over the regiments and support departments that statutes place under its authority, and also commanding authority in operations that have been sanctioned by the Secretary of State and assigned to the Army. Most military operations involve one or more formations consisting of units from several regiments and support departments, the latter assembled from servicepeople originating in one or more trades.

Services

The army, in sensu lato, encompasses five operational services or groups of services, defined through the Army Acts. The Consolidated Army (聯兵, rjon-prjang) is the main standing army and conducts the vast majority of military operations assigned to the army. It consists of 13,224 officers and 142,520 warrant officers, petty officers, and enlisted men altogether. The Reserve Army (聯戲, rjon-ng′jarh) functions as a training organization for reservists and has numerous domestic security duties. The current strength of the Reserve Army is around a quarter of the Consolidated Army. The Home Defence Force consists of volunteer officers and men who are provided some military training and assist in administrative and logistical tasks, but they may not be deployed abroad; the HDF, numbering 16,240, had been much larger and consisted of conscript men performing a mandatory 1-year term of service and periodically summoned for training and other tasks. The abolition of conscription in 1987 has resulted in the drastic dimunution of its size from a peak of almost 400,000 men.

The Territorial Forces (方兵, pjang-prjang) are an umbrella term for the units pledged by ethnic and cultural groups, mainly in the north and east, to national defence. These units are considered separate due to restrictions on terms of service imposed by treaties between Themiclesia and these autonomous population groups. In practice, however, they all operate as part of the Consolidated Army. The militias are traditionally under the jurisdiction of the prefectures, though this has, to a large extent, been subsumed by the Ministry of Defence.

Branches

Within the Consolidated Army, there are a number of combat and support branches. The term branch (丑, sn′ru′) refers to a group of units of similar specialization. Within support branches, each branch is not the same as a professional department, which represent members of a single profession or discipline like physicians (Board of Physicians) or judges (Board of Barons of Crown Cases); instead, each support branch consists of deployable units, usually of a mixture of several professions. Thus, the Military Police Department does not only include members of the Board of Solicitors, who perform legal work and produce acceptable documents on the Crown's behalf, but also those of the Correction Service, which maintains military prisons.

Combat	Native name		Insignia	Colour	Function	Founded
Infantry	步	bāh	Wall and gate	Reddish-grey	Infantry and certain special forces	t.i.
Cavalry	羈	kryar	Horse	Silver	Mostly confined to aides-de-camp and batmen	t.i.
Armoured	輕車	kling-tl′a	Chariot	Grey	Tanks	1921
Support	Shinasthana		Insignia	Colour	Function	Founded
Quartermaster	廩	rim′	Books	Black	Keeping supplies	t.i.
Aviation	非	per	Propellers	Sky blue	Air support	1941
Digital	對稽數	tūps-kri-srwāk	Vacuum tubes	Black, neon blue	Hackers, virus	1999
Field Artillery	羨	nhar	Cannon	Light maroon		t.i.
Aerial Artillery	弋	leks	Rockets	Pearl		1935
Medical	醫	′e	Almonds	White	Treating the sick and wounded	t.i.
Field Engineers	工	kwang	Mallets, cogs	Muddy green		t.i.
Veterinary	獸醫	slus-′e	Fruits	White, green	Treating animals	t.i.
Civil Engineers	匠	kangh	Cogs	Gold	Military infrastructure and development	t.i.
Pharmaceutical	藥	ghuk	Herbs	White, grey	Procurement of medicine	t.i.
Convalescence	護	ghwah	Beds	White, blue	Care for recovering individuals	1870
Administration	寮	ru	Pen	Knife and pen	Administration, accounting, inventories	1954
Police	直	drek	Dove	Green, grey	Maintenance of order and investigations	1920
Judicature	廷行	ling-grāng	Balance	Green, blue	Adjudication	1930
Training	教	krūh	Swords	Blue, silver	Training and civil defence	1972
Logistics	轉輸	l′wa-trwan′	Tree	Dark grey, blue	Logistics	1925
Intelligence	間	krīn	Eye	Black	Intelligence-gathering	1932
Signals	都	tā	Elephant	Rainbow	Communications	t.i.

Other facilities

• Army Academy, where Army officers are trained.
• Army Officer Training School, where non-commissioned officers are trained.
• Army Preparatory Centre, where volunteers are introduced to the Army and receive rudimentary training.
• General Army Hospital, the Army's hospital; has a number of branches.
• Army Museum Management Board, manages the Army's numerous museums and has custody over valuable Army artifacts.
• Army Veteran Guidance and Support Board, assists veterans to re-integrate into normal society and help prevent and cure, on a less intense level, PTSD.
• Ombudsman's Office, manages public complaints.

Ranks

Main article: Rank and insignia of the armed forces of Themiclesia

The Consolidated Army, being an operational entity and not a body of servicepeople, does not possess unto itself a rank structure. Ranks are established within bodies of servicepeople, which are mostly but not uniformly administrative regiments for infantry, artillery, and armoured branches, or within professional departments, regiments, battalions, companies, or individuals offices in the case of supporting branches. Generals are exception to this rule; their ranks are valid over all of the Consolidated Army's units, though they take specific commands. When an officer is commissioned, they are commissioned to a given office in a specific regiment, and legislation concerning that regiment establishes the seniority of the office relative to the Civil Service.

Legally speaking, the colonel of the 242th Regiment and the colonel of the 178th Regiment are equal in rank not because they are both colonels, but because the laws establishing each regiment specify that the colonel shall be esteemed at the 1,000-bushel rank. While virtually all colonels are at this rank, a case in point is the colonel of the Middle Guards Regiment, who is explicitly specified to be at the 2,000-bushel rank (one rank higher). The same is true of the Captain-general of Marines, who is a colonel esteemed at 2,000 bushels and whose rank is sometimes translated as "colonel-general" to reflect this distinction. In this view, ranks like colonel and captain are more similar to offices rather than ranks; however, because offices have been granted to mark seniority for centuries, and since most regiments are not functional units, a regimental office today only specifies rank, and the regiment in which an officer is commissioned only signifies professionalization, e.g. an infantry commander should always be commissioned in an infantry regiment, even if his command is not over the men in that regiment.

Ranks of the Consolidated Army are also not the same as ratings granted by one's peers in the process of Civic Election, which defines a person's aptitude to perform public service and is constant until changed, regardless of the office to which they are appointed.

Policies

Gender equality

Main article: Women in the Themiclesian military

Historians have noted that, as far as surviving laws and regulations indicate, nothing explicitly prohibits females from serving in the Army; however, custom has generally prohibited female participation.

After the 1870s, females have been employed in inventories and convascence, but they were not commissioned as officers or part of combat formation. In 1918, females were accorded rank in the Convalescence Service, the Board of Physicians, and the Exchequer and Treasury of the Forces. Female commissioned officers were first appointed in 1934. During the PSW, one unit was formed out of women serving in clerical positions and saw combat in the defence of Drjang-'an in 1939–40, but the name of their unit, "Brigade of Righteous Women", suggests that their enlistment was extraordinary and impermanent. In 1950, the Supreme Court, with 16 justices in banco, issued a per curiam opinion, stating that there was no legal objection to women serving in the Army. The Army's chief attorney argued that such a decision may cause "untimely disturbances" within the ranks and asked for leave to appeal the decision; the Supreme Court refused leave, making the ruling absolute. The Army further appealed to the Chancery to arrest the Supreme Court's decision, on the grounds of "equity towards the security of the nation for the temporary delay in inclusion of females in the Army for the development and provision of more adequate preparatory measures". This case was found without merit in 1952.

Currently, the 1950 decision is upheld by the legal system and requires the Army to permit qualified women to "have the opportunity and choice, as much as the one of the other sex", to serve in any position. This decision does not require the Army to establish units of mixed gender, and, while mixed-gendered units do exist, the Army has regarded them as somewhat experimental and not ideal for implementation across the entire service, citing fiscal burdens of providing adequate, gender-specific facilities, such as separate lavatories and baths. For highly elite units, for which candidates of any one sex are not numerous enough to form a functional group, exceptions exist; this is the case in the 16th Special Operations Unit, Digital Corps, where nine women and eight men work together.

Sexual orientation equality

Historically, the unreformed Army did not have prejudices against any sexual orientation, since this reduced the number of soldiers fit for service. This paradigm is in common with broader Themiclesian culture, which does not discriminate against homosexuality, though open displays of any form of sexuality was deemed indecent.

Equipment

Guns

Name	Origin	Type	Cartridge	Photo	Notes
C89-1	Dayashina	Rifle	5.56 mm		Employed by the Home Defence Service
C79-1	Reberiya	Rifle	5.56 mm		Employed by most units
C79-2	Reberiya	Rifle	7.62 mm		Employed by most units
C79-5	Reberiya	Personal defence weapon	5.56 mm		For tankers and others not requiring a long gun

Order of precedence (2000)

The order of precedence within the Themiclesian forces in effect functions as a list of all statutory bodies that compose of the armed forces except the navy and air force. While regiments have ceased to be functional units of the army, all of its members are recognized as part of a regiment in sensu lato, even though they may be dispersed to functional units. There are also units that are not called regiments but function in that way, as far as the order of precedence is concerned.

1. Privy Council
2. Household Cavalry
3. Skên-ljang Guards (mounted and foot)
4. Middle Guards
5. Capital Defence Force (three regiments)
6. Honourable and Ancient Company of Royal Engineers
7. South Army (12th Division)
8. Coastal Artillery
9. Royal Signals Corps
10. Ladh-ngjon Rangers
11. Exchequer of the Forces
12. Treasurer of the Forces
13. Quartermaster of the Forces
14. Western University Regiment
15. Honourable Regiment of the Themiclesian Bar
16. Imperial College Regiment
17. Regiment of Artists
18. Regiment of the Guild of Accountants
19. Other infantry regiments and regiments of marines, in order of founding date
20. Artillery companies, in order of founding date
21. Armoured regiments, in order of founding date
22. Board of Heralds and Fanfare
23. Board of Aviators
24. Board of Civil Engineers
25. Board of Transport
26. Board of Ordnance
27. Board of Solicitors
28. Board of Physicians
29. Board of Veterinarians
30. Department Astronomy and Metereology
31. Board of Printers
32. Board of Music
33. Convalescence Service
34. Corps of Field Medics and Ambulances
35. Board of Barons of Crown Cases
36. Board of Corrections
37. Basic Training Service
38. Digital Information Service
39. Army Intellgience Service
40. Army Academy
41. Home Defence Force
42. Volunteer militias

Training

Officers

See also: Army Academy (Themiclesia)

Until 1915, there was no strict distinction between civil and military officialdom in the militia system; civil servants may become military officers and vice versa. In the more highly organized Capital Defence Force, South Army, and Royal Signals Corps, officers were appointed on the basis of internal recommendations with some degree of supervision. Cadets would have followed commissioned officers and learned various leadership techniques. While not outright problematic, this system created factions that bode ill for co-operation between these forces that looked progressively normal for Themiclesia, whose military conserved many structural legacies of its former dispersal in Meridia and Columbia.

In 1813, the Army Academy was set up for the gentry to study military knowledge, as many of them proved inferior to expectations in the devastating Maverican Wars of 1791 – 96. The graduates of this academy would, in the view of its creators, resemble a corps of reserve officers who filled the civil service during peacetime and led militamen into battle in war. However, the institution soon transformed into a liberal arts university, resisting restrictions on the grounds of academic freedom and with profitable managment of its endowment. The Conservatives and Liberals passed a law in 1850 restricting new commissions to its graduates. By the late 19th century, the Academy had become the second-most prestigious domestic university, in no small part due to high tuitions that restricted admissions to the gentry, and as the Academy held a monopoly on the degrees that were legally required to take commissions, the officer corps of the forces developed connections with each other as alumni.

While historians are usually affirmative of the Academy's role in shaping the modern army, doubts about this system existed as early as the 1870s, voiced by Lord L'ong-mjen, that some graduates drew an officer's salary to finance further studies in subjects not clearly connected to the forces. Such officers stayed on campus for extended periods of time and virtually never tended to their military duties. Progressive Liberals argued in the 1910s that a "degree from the Academy was no longer a inspiring guarantor of good officership", but the rest of the Party believed the system was functional as long as good petty officers existed. But leading politicians believed that a purely-military education would create dangerous men who had few attachments to society or felt unconstrained by decency and reputation.

The deficiencies of the commissioning system did not fully appear during the early stages of the Prairie War. First, there was a consensus by the Ministry of Administration and Ministry of War to place graduates who studied military knowledge intensively in forward and active regiments, which were responsible for most of the early fighting. Second, the preponderance of Themiclesian resources dwarfed those at Dzhungestani command. However, in 1933, the entry of Menghe impelled the marshalling of many other regiments to the front, which exposed the inefficacy of many officers. Additionally, from 1934, many students refused to graduate, for fear of commission, rendering some regiments short of officers; thus, on domestic territory, Themiclesia fought at a numerical disadvantage.

It was not until 1936 that Themiclesia achieved Burgfriedenspolitik and formed a national unity government that the Academy was, for the first time, forced by statute to expand its admission, alter its curriculum (providing mandatory military courses), and to graduate its students forcibly and quickly. However, the Academy's role in the war was not wholly negative. Due to its broad academic activities, the Consolidated Army was able to find qualified officers immersed in many niches, such as analytics, accounting, and logistics.

After the war, the War Committee of the House of Commons concluded that the Academy needed alterations to prevent future trouble with overly-centralized education. The 1850 law that restricted regimental commissions to graduates of the Academy was repealed, providing the War Ministry with greater latitude in establishing particular criteria for various specializations. Additionally, military instruction offered at other institutions was also given statutory recognition.

While the fear that military education might create dangerous men did not fully abate until the 60s, several factors reduced its relevance. First, the wartime performance of the forces altered the views of many, recanting their mistrust of the military, with as many as one-tenth of Themiclesians have been in it. Second, many Themiclesian servicepersons would have experienced issues caused by excessive or inappropriate oversight. Thirdly, the collapse of the gentry, as a social and political class, ultimately killed the notion that only "gentlemen" were sufficiently invested (i.e. had enough to lose) to be reliable in their loyalty to the nation and the quality of their discharge of office. The Government also assuaged the fear of "dangerous men" by ensuring that military education took place in a civilian and transparent setting, offering cadets civilian careers if they ultimately decided against entering the forces.

Enlisted men

The modern system of basic training was fundamentally shaped by the demands of the periods of mobilization from 1936 to 1949 and again 1961 to 1987. Prior to this time, a soldier enlisting in the Consolidated Army was trained by the regiment in which he was enlisted, and the methods employed in each regiment sharply differed from each other. If enlisting for a skilled position, they were tested or trained by the respective professional authority, such as the Committee of Bakers or the Committee of Electricity. Training was often as much technical knowledge as socialization in the peculiar routines and culture of the unit. Because the Consolidated Army was a fully-professional institution by design since the mid-19th century, the practices of its regiments were not shared with the volunteer militias in the various locales.

In 1936, the Government first summoned the volunteer militia units to discover that, while some were adequately trained in contemporary skills, many others were terribly under-trained. As a remedy, it ordered officers on furlough to report to their home provinces or cities and provide supplementary training to the militiamen and new conscripts. Each province and city thus acquired a centre for the training of conscripts or re-training of militiamen to such a standard that they could stand in place of a professional regiment. This process was fraught with failures and was not fully reliable until 1940. It was further hampered by the non-uniformity of the professional regiments, which provided the training officers sent to the provinces. In 1938, the War Secretary commissioned officers from the front to produce a sanctioned treatise of the skills to be taught to all conscripts.

As time was pressing and petty officers in very short supply, the standard training scheme was designed to produce trained soldiers in as little time and to involve as few officers as possible. To suppress inefficiency, the professional regiments were ordered to accept conscripts into their ranks trained by the standardized method. This decision was met with the protest of many officers and ultimately eroded the distinctiveness of most regiments that previously had particular niches or approaches. The trade departments were also altered when faced with the need to train unskilled conscripts, when previously their tasks were limited to recruiting workers already skilled in their trades. All these changes were responsible for the so-called "khaki regiments" that shared much more with each other than with "black regiments"; these were so named because the mass-issued uniforms of the conscript army was khaki, contrasting with the black frock coats issued by the older regiments.

By 1943, there were one or more training facilities located in each province and city. While many conscript units were demobilized or reserved, a volunteer force against Menghe placed renewed demands for troops equally intense to the initial spell of conscription. This force posed new challenges to the training facilities as motorization became essential in the vast plains of Dzhungestan and Maverica, where the force was to engage the Mengheans. Even after Menghe surrendered at the end of 1945, the training centres continued to produce troops for the occupation, which lasted until 1949. The government's collapsing finances and general demobilization of the army compelled the closure of some of the more remote facilities, part of whose staff were sent to similar institutions elsewhere. By this point, basic training had been standardized virtually nationally, and local governments no longer therein played a significant role.

Culture

Uniforms

Many regiments or regiment-like organizations within the Consolidated Army, especially those predating it, possess distinct uniform traditions, but there is a standard uniform for those that do not. Regimental patches and details like the number of pockets, the materials of the buttons, the shape of the lapels, etc. all assist in creating an appearance that is unique to the regiment. For those regiments that do not have statutory orders of dress, standard dress codes were first introduced in 1875 as part of the Hundred Companies campaign launched by the Earl of Sng′raq that year, though it was up to the serviceperson to furnish his own attire in conformity to that standard up to 1936.

It should be noted that "equipment" like backpacks, pockets, pouches, belts, small tools, and webbing were not part of the dress code and, contrary to it, were issued by the government from time to time according to the expected tactical environment. The equipment standards were issued by the Board of War and later the War Office, while the dress code was issued by the Chancery.

For the most part, the Army observes three orders of dress—dress, undress, and field uniform. Dress and undress uniforms generally vary according to the time of day and are based on civilian attire. For most regiments as well as senior officers of the Consolidated Board, daytime dress consists of a bicorne, frock coat, and striped trousers or skirt; the same in evenings is indistinguisable from white tie. Undress uniform consists of a black lounge suit, with two variants. A "city" pattern, worn for meetings, business, and public appearances, is dark and has muted insignia, and the "field" pattern, in a mustard colour, is worn for ordinary work. Field uniforms are worn for training, physical work, and combat. All field uniforms are currently made in a compromise pattern except for specialist units working in restricted environments. Until 2002, temperate, arid, and snow patterns were sanctioned based on local climate and worn by all units working in them.

Flag

The Consolidated Army's flag consists of a crimson field and a golden shield divided into quadrants, with three orange leaves on top. The top-left quadrant is inhabited by the colours of the Capital Defence Force, and the bottom-right that of the South Army. The top-right and bottom-left quadrants are subquartered, chequered blue and white.

Like many other symbolic objects, such as a putative motto or hymn, the flag of the new army was heavily disputed by military officers in the years leading to its establishment. The CDF and South Army both desired to impose their existing flags as that of the new army, prompting the Board of War to advise the War Secretary to create a compromise flag that represented both forces equally. A Casaterran-style coat-of-arms was adopted because it could be quartered and sub-quartered, as the need might arise in the future. The two unoccupied quadrants were subquartered with blue and white, the nation's colours, to represent the units whose colours were not on the new flag.

Salute

The hand salute likely spread from the Navy to metropolitan Themiclesia, replacing the bow with a hand over the heart as the common gesture of respect between members of a regiment. While its precise origins in the Navy cannot be ascertained, it likely became popular because it did not involving touching and potentially soiling one's clothes visibly. As laundry was difficult, this was particularly important to sailors. As early as the 1820s, the hand salute had become common in many regiments, apparently under the rules requiring enlisted men to show courtesy to their superiors. Courtesy, deduced from contemporary comments on its breach, included acknowledging and yielding the right of way to a superior. However, the hand salute was not used when greeting very superior individuals like royalty or ministers, for which a bowed head and one or two hands over one's chest was normal. It is also unclear whether officers acknowledged a saluting junior.

In a 1845 painting showing the Capital Defence Force greeting the visiting Empress Ring at their headquarters, the officers profoundly bowed their heads while the Marshal-general genuflected for her. The petty officers and enlisted men, watching from a distance, are not shown to be making any gesture or standing in ranks. While the painting seems instructive, commentators have noted that genuflection was often done for visiting royalty and is not necessarily a standard component in greeting them in other contexts. The 1875 painting that shows Emperor Mjen's visit to the Royal Guards depicts officers with heads bowed as he approached them. One was expected to remain bowed when a dignitary was close enough to recognize one and until they either took their place or had left; parliamentary and court officials still render courtesy this way to the Speaker of both houses or judges in their courthouses.

The hand salute remained a very casual gesture in the Themiclesian army in the late 1800s. It is inferred that a salute can be made without coming to a stop. Indeed, it was valued due to its quickness and compactness.

Oaths

The Consolidated Army Act of 1916 imposes the following oath on officers:

I, A.B., gentlemen of province [or city], do hereby declare and affirm that I have been lawfully commissioned under the authority of the Sovereign the Peers and the People of Themiclesia and shall discharge the same according to statutes and lawful commands to me given. Let this affirmation be solemnized.

某氏某，某郡氏則邦，茲用誓方，我令御惠瑝啻于百生辟事，事御惠令眔彝用。誓弋報。

and the following on enlisted men and petty officers:

I, A.B., having lawfully enlisted in regiment by lawful authority do declare and affirm that I shall be obedient to statutes and lawful commands to me given and bear true allegiance to the Sovereign the Peers and the People of Themiclesia. Let this affirmation be solemnized.

某弋彝令徵，服事在某校，茲用誓方，余令眔彝令用，竣臣皇帝于百辟姓。誓弋報。

Motto

A motto was proposed in 1921, as an amendment to the Consolidated Army Act, the law constituting the force, but never received sanction due to prorogation.

Funerals

The idea of returning soldiers home, both alive and dead, was a central theme in the consequence of warfare in antiquity. A wooden chip dating to 432 was found on a body, possibly of a dead soldier being transported home but abandoned for an unknown reason, reads:

O the spirits of the dead, turn thy wrath away

Turn thy wrath away from thy family and thy land

Turn thy wrath away to the enemy that slew thee

Give, o spirit, blessing and plenty to thy family and land

For thou hast returned to thy land and art restored to thy home

For the powers have blessed thy corporeal remains

In the modern era, government policy on providing funerary rites for current and former servicepersons developed from the custom of providing funerals for the poor and dispossessed, because ordinary individuals were expected to plan and provide their own funerals while they were alive. In the past, there was no consistent policy for the funerals of the war dead, other than shipping bodies to next of kin, but professional soldiers dying during peace without provisions were usually buried at the commanding officer's personal expense. This was a situation often criticized in the early 1800s, as professional soldiers were paid a salary and were presumed to be able to arrange for their own funerals; those who were not were therefore assumed to have spent profligately and therefore worthy of moral censure.

In 1716, all regiments were instrusted to report men who were in "dire destitution" to local authorities for a funeral at public expense in the event of unexpected death. The serviceperson would stand before a magisterial court and declare himself devoid of means, that he might be exposed if he otherwise had wealth or the support of a family or friends. There were at least 140 cases where a serviceperson was exposed as having savings, or his intimates could feel sufficient pressure to underwrite his burial. This policy was also analyzed as a measure to discourage taking welfare by the public shaming that inevitably occurred even if the serviceperson was genuinely destitute. The registered destitute were buried at local cemeteries for the poor, with funerary rites provided by volunteer priests of the state cult.

In 1794, there was a special initiative from the wealthy residents of Kien-k'ang and Rak, the two largest inland cities, to bury the soldiers who were found dead and not cared for in the cities. Many had their families scattered by the war or were starving as food prices soared when the Government bought grains en masse to supply the prolonged wars in Solevant, Maverica, and Camia; others succumbed to their injuries in transit homewards. This initiative was supported by the Emperor personally, who contributed 1,000 logs towards the making of coffins, as he thought that the sight of decomposing corpses in the highways would discourage enlistment.

The proportion of soldiers declared destitute swelled from 25% in 1770, to 77% in 1900. While some contemporaries blamed decreasing salaries or morality amongst the troops, many modern historians attributed this to changing demographics in the forces. The primary source of recruits had shifted from the countryside to industrialized cities. While many families possessed family burial grounds in the country, where even a distant relative could expect to be interred without payment, such accommodation was uncommon in cities. The sheer number of destitute soldiers raised questions in government whether a public declaration of destitution remained necessary, but ultimately no action was taken after discussion in 1899.

In 1902, the Baron of Kra argued that it was not the Crown's place to provide for funerals for individuals who did not have a direct relationship with it. Rather, he argued, this was an "obligation of the blood that runs in the serviceperson's veins" incumbent on his relations to bury him, and that they should be registered for this purpose. Kra's arguments were not well-received by the House: the Baronness of Pim asked if Kra also supposed that nunneries, orphanages, and workhouses could refuse to bury their dead on these grounds, to which Kra gave no reply. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister the Baron of Krungh closed by saying that salaried servicepersons must not "leave his personal affairs to the public purse".

In the military reform of 1916, the Board of Interrment was erected to provide funerals for destitute soldiers who died during service. The procedures for a public funeral were changed from a public declaration of poverty to a private statement justifying why an "ordinary funeral" was unaffordable. A serviceperson might claim the need to support living family members, whose needs would outweigh his ability to provide for his funeral, with his salary considered. While there were humanistic overtones in this reform, the motivation was "far from altruism and fraught with moralization" according to the historian A. Gro, who argues that this reform "redirects benefits from those that are poor to those who are justifiably poor according to contemporary morality". While there were not many denials for a public funeral after 1916, there are a number of accounts of officers and soldiers pooling money to provide for a dead comrade's burial.

In 1938, during the Pan-Septentrion War, the requirement for justified poverty was abolished. A serviceperson must still inform his regiment of his desire to receive a public funeral on the grounds of poverty, but this was reduced to a simply letter stating so, with no other requirements. The cities and provinces were funded by Parliament to purchase land and provide for funerary rites for the impoverished. In 1957, Parliament legislated that a basic funeral will be paid for by public coffers as long as the serviceperson has indicated his desire for it, and if a serviceperson has made private plans for burial, a portion of the cost for a public burial would be disbursed to him in the interest of fairness. Commissioned officers received the option for a public burial in 1992.

The Dayashinese general Yutaka Ueda, speaking as a Themiclesian crossbencher peer in 1972, argued that the armed forces ought to participate in public funeral, because other servicepersons known to the deceased would thereby be acquainted to his passing and see that the Government has honoured him appropriately for his sacrifice. At this time, deceased servicepersons were delivered to the designated funeral homes in a place of his choosing and buried at a local, public cemetery. The prime minister the Lord of Srong-sngrjar replied that the expressed will of the deceased would always be the priority of the Government and be accommodated as long as it is reasonable. He further declaimed that the Government would not intrude upon a private loss and attempt to benefit politically from involvement in funerals.

Ueda suggested that some elements of the public funerals for aristocrats and high-ranking bureaucrats who died on public service could be extended to the armed forces; however, this failed to achieve support in either House of Parliament.

See also

• Themiclesia
• Dayashina
• Yugoslovenski