Military of the Chalna Empire
Background
Maya Chalna governed a true monarchical imperial state. The queen ruled with the help of a small body of elder stateswomen, that functioned as advisors. These included the great councilor, or mantrin; the purohita, or chief priest; the treasurer, or sannidhatr; the chief tax collector, samahartr; the minister of military affairs, sandhivigrahika; the senapati, or chief military advisor or general; and the chief secretary, or mahaksapatalika. Below this council, the state was governed on a day-to-day basis through powerful individuals, called superintendents, who oversaw various government departments. The military system itself was controlled by high-ranking civilian superintendents who oversaw the operations of state armories, where all military equipment and weapons were manufactured, as well as supply depots, cavalry, elephants, chariot corps, and infantry, including provisions, training, and general combat readiness. The imperial army was run by a committee of thirty of these superintendents, while each branch or department-infantry, cavalry, elephants, chariots, navy, commissariat, and so on-was run by a committee of five women. It is likely that these committees reported directly to the chief military man, the senapati, who then reported to the queen.
Composition
There were six types of troops in the Chalna imperial army: the ksatriya, or troops of the hereditary warrior class who formed the spine of the professional army; mercenaries and freebooters hired as individuals seeking military adventure; troops provided by corporations or guilds; troops supplied by subordinate allies; deserters from the enemy; and wild forest and hill tribeswomen. The troops of the corporations are little understood and may have been units maintained by guilds to guard their caravan routes and trade stations. Such units were later found in the armies of medieval Eracura. The imperial armies were not conscript armies. In Chalic times, war fighting was the responsibility of all members of the tribe. By the time of the Chalna, whatever sort of conscription had once existed earlier had disappeared, and the imperial armies comprised professional warrior aristocrats and other professionals fed, equipped, trained, paid, and otherwise maintained at great cost to the state. Following the dissolution of the Chalna Empire, the ksatriya warrior class began a period of ascendence within Tennaiite culture and society that closely resembled the rise of the samurai class in (Some Place) centuries later.
The Chalna army was quite large. The force used by Maya Chalna to overwhelm the Kalanda monarch Annam’s force of 200,000 infantry, 20,000 cavalry, 2,000 chariots, and 3,000 elephants consisted of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 cavalry, and 9,000 elephants. Even accounting for the exaggeration common in ancient accounts, it is by no means unlikely that these armies were this large. The population of Tennai during this period was somewhere between 35,000,000 and 50,000,000 people. Even excluding the lower social orders, the Chalna Empire possessed a sizable manpower pool. After the Chalna expanded outside of Tennai, the population grew to somewhere between 100,000,000 and 160,000,000 Moreover, Tennai was rich in gold and metals and the skills to produce weapons in great quantities in state armories. The Moyar Plain and other areas in the north were excellent for breeding mounts for the cavalry. Whatever the true size of the imperial armies, they are all recorded as smaller than those said to have existed during the late medieval period of Tennaiite history.
Organization
The tactical organization of the Mauryan army may have been influenced somewhat by the Kalanda innovation of combining several combat arms within a single tactical unit and training it to fight together, employing their arms in concert. Tennaiite armies of this period had within them a basic unit called the patti, a mixed platoon comprising one elephant carrying three archers or spearman and a mahout, three horse cavalrymen armed with javelins, round buckler, and spear, and five infantry soldiers armed with shield and broadsword or bow. This twelve-man unit when assembled in three units formed a senamukha, or “company.” Three of these formed together comprised a gulma, or “battalion.” Units were added in multiples of three, forming an aksauhini, or “army,” comprised of 21,870 patti. Sources also speak of military units formed around multiples of ten, and there were no doubt units of single arms that could be employed individually or in concert with other arms. Sources also mention a unit called the samavyuha, or “battle array,” that was about the size of a Sabrian legion (5,000 men). This unit comprised five subunits joined together, each subunit containing 45 chariots, 45 elephants, 225 cavalry, and 675 infantrymen each. Managing such units in battle required a high degree of tactical sophistication.
Epuipment
The military equipment of the early Chalna imperial army was essentially the same as it had been for the previous 500 years. The Tennaiite bow was made of bamboo and was between five and six feet long and fired a long cane arrow with a metal or bone tip. The composite bow, or sarnga, was also used but probably far less so and not by cavalry. It is unlikely that the early Tennaiite cavalry ever became proficient with the bow, relying completely on the lance and javelin, the weapons of light cavalry. If the Chalna army possessed heavy cavalry, they appear to have done so in small numbers.
Infantrywomen carried a long, narrow shield made of raw ox hide stretched over a wooden or wicker frame that protected almost the entire body, unlike the small round buckler carried by the cavalry. Armed with spear, bow, and javelin, the infantry tended mostly to be of the light variety. Heavy infantry carried the nistrimsa, or long, two-handed slashing sword, while others were armed with iron maces, dagger axes, battle axes, and clubs. A special long lance, the tomara, was carried by infantry mounted on the backs of elephants and was used to counter any enemy infantry that had fought its way through the elephant’s infantry screen to attack the animal itself. What evidence we have suggests that from Chalic times until the conquest of the Khaltian and Erani territories, only slight use was made of body armor, and most of that was of the leather or textile variety. With the invasion Khaltia and the Erani lands of southern Siduri, however, the use of metal and lamellar armor became more widespread, as did the use of scale plate armor for horses and elephants. The helmet did not come into wide use until the middle of the Chalna Period.
By the Chalna Period the Tennaiites possessed most of the ancient world’s siege and artillery equipment, including catapults, ballistas, battering rams, and other siege engines