Setting Tips? Organizing the military of an empire

[MonkeySage]

The empire in question has a feudal peerage system ranging from Grand Dukes that answer directly to the emperor, all the way down to the Lords that protect the realm. Nobles create chivalric titles and train up the militias, as well as ruling the land in subordination to the emperor.

Alongside this, however, is the Imperial Army. The army is the source of the empire's power, and is what made the empire what it is in the past 400 years. The generals of the Imperial Army are the Emperor's 5 personal knights.. Freemen are allowed to join the army as enlisted soldiers, and the highest rank they can get as commoners is "Dragoon", though exceptional commoners are occasionally granted titles of their own.

So my question is: How might the Imperial Army relate to the nobility? What role do Knights play in the army?

I ask this for storytelling purposes.

[MrZJunior]

It sounds like a good career for younger sons (or daughters) who don't stand to inherit. They can acrue wealth and prestige far away from their older siblings without causing problems.

Perhaps the military also acts as a bureaucracy, collecting taxes and maintaining records? If that were the case then people should be posted far from their homelands to help reduce corruption.

[Mechalich]

This system is similar to what certain Chinese Dynasties had in terms of a military - there were large conscript forces loyal to the Emperor and commanded by court military officials stationed in the capital and there were local forces maintained by the various landholding lords who held position throughout the Empire.

This system is inherently unstable, because the Imperial army commanders have an incentive to use their forces to try and turn the emperor into a puppet, while the feudal gentry have a desire to rebel and thumb their noses at an imperial administration, or to try and build a coalition of like minded lords and force the emperor into compliance with their demands. A strong emperor can maintain control of the Imperial forces through cunning appointments and play the local lords against each other by moving them from one position to the next and preventing families from becoming entrenched local powers, and growth may spread prosperity around sufficiently to prevent unrest, but if the sovereign slacks off or appoints corrupt ministers or there is a need for a regency it can all come crashing down in a hurry.

[MonkeySage]

This system is similar to what certain Chinese Dynasties had in terms of a military - there were large conscript forces loyal to the Emperor and commanded by court military officials stationed in the capital and there were local forces maintained by the various landholding lords who held position throughout the Empire.

This system is inherently unstable, because the Imperial army commanders have an incentive to use their forces to try and turn the emperor into a puppet, while the feudal gentry have a desire to rebel and thumb their noses at an imperial administration, or to try and build a coalition of like minded lords and force the emperor into compliance with their demands. A strong emperor can maintain control of the Imperial forces through cunning appointments and play the local lords against each other by moving them from one position to the next and preventing families from becoming entrenched local powers, and growth may spread prosperity around sufficiently to prevent unrest, but if the sovereign slacks off or appoints corrupt ministers or there is a need for a regency it can all come crashing down in a hurry.


You are absolutely right; a reckless emperor could easily be manipulated or overthrown. The imperial throne has lasted for so long only because they've been able to muscle the nobles into submission or gain their loyalty. The title "Grand Duke" is rarely passed outside of the family, usually it's given to a cousin, sibling, or offspring.
Likewise, they've had to choose their personal knights very carefully. Either pick knights that they can manipulate or outsmart, or pick knights who are completely loyal to the emperor. In the case of the last emperor, his death was a direct result of relying too much on the loyalty of his generals. Unfortunately for him, one of those generals was his youngest son. The young man began his military career as a naiive and sheltered prince, and a paladin on top of that. But as he grew older, he grew more cynical. Eventually, he lost faith in the church and in his father. After his father named him heir to the throne(crown succession is a meritocracy and members of the imperial family receive the best education and training available), the prince sent a letter to the headmaster of a foreign magic school, which trains young wizards in the arts of espionage and assassination, enclosed with an offer the headmaster would have been foolish to refuse.

Just a couple months later, the young prince is sitting on his late father's throne. The old Emperor had grown weak, and nobody suspected a thing outside of the prince's inner circle(who later became his personal knights) and his co-conspirators.

[Sam113097]

In Medieval Europe, feudal nations did not typically have a standing army separate from the feudal system. Instead, dukes, knights, and other feudal lords drew soldiers from their lands. Most standing armies were mercenaries. In order for your setting's empire to man a standing army, the emperor and his knights would have to directly control a large part of the of population outside of the feudal system, or have a lot of power over the lords in order to get troops from them.

I like the idea of the younger and landless children of nobles joining the imperial military. That would provide a lot of officers and leadership, but the army still needs common soldiers.

[MonkeySage]

The majority of enlistees(though not all of them) rank Dragoon and below are free commoners, and in some rare cases, honorary imperial citizens.

While trained knights and other members of the nobility often gain automatic rank in the army thanks to their superior training and education.

A knight, for example, is automatically issued the rank of Dragoon or greater the moment they join; they were specifically trained for combat from the earliest age possible.

Oh, if it helps: The five knights that serve directly under the emperor each hold the special office of "Knight-General", a landed title equivalent to a Grand Duke. They each command a strategically located stronghold in the empire, which serves as a military HQ. The title is not hereditary.

[therakishrogue]

How ethnically/culturally homogeneous is your empire? The Byzantine and the Ottoman imperial bureaucracies both maintained professional armies drawn from refugees, religious minorities, or the children of slaves as a counterbalance to dubiously loyal nobles and their local levies; In fact, much of the Saxon warrior aristocracy of England settled in the Crimea after the Norman conquest, and went on to serve as the Byzantine Emperor's personal guard/shock troops for over a century.After all, it's hard for your army to conspire against you with local actors if they don't speak the same language and find each other's customs repugnant. Perhaps something similar could be in effect in your empire, in order to justify the parallel military structures and the competition that would probably grow between them?

[MonkeySage]

While in most cases the empire will subjugate foreign cultures in conquered territory, it has granted honorary citizenship from time to time. In particular, the emperor offered to make the previously mentioned headmaster an Earl for his services to the throne. That headmaster is both a half elf and an ethnic outsider. The mainland empire has granted full citizenship to ethnically similar member people in old territory.

By necessity, it has had to assimilate different cultures. Recently, they allowed a foreign king to keep both his title and his culture in exchange for fealty; the symbolic marriage of their cultures represented by the literal marriage between the king and an princess of the empire. His people were granted full citizenship because the king agreed to the arrangement without undue coercion.

[MrZJunior]

Local Lords would probably be eager to hire veterans from the Imperial army to train and lead their troops.

[unglitteringold]

So, knights, in western medieval Europe, were not part of a standing army. Knights were soldiers awarded land, and in return for the land, they had to come when the king called.

If Knights are nobles who enlist, then they would be the second and third sons who didn't join the clergy. (If I recall correctly): Military was a good dumping ground for non-heirs during the renaissance, enlightenment, and on when colonization was happening. It was a way for non-heirs to earn land-holding-titles by conquering new lands for king and country.

If you're going for a more Eastern medieval, that's a whole other kettle of fish. The relationship with nobles and samurai was very muddied, particularly in Japan, where the nobles were rather put out by the Shogunate during the Kamakura period, then the merchants, who were bosom buds with the put-out nobles, bought back the country during the Edo period. And I'm not particularly familiar with how things worked in China.

Russia is another fascinating source because they had slaves (serfs) until 1723, so whenever the Czar felt like going to war, he could just declare that all nobles send him X number of dudes. But, once more, I'm not an expert.

So... yeah, Drawing form East or West makes a big difference when looking at the relationship of the military, nobles, and knights.

[MonkeySage]

By default, the knights here are still members of the noble class, and are tasked with defending feudal territory. Some knights may choose to join the military during times of war, and gain automatic rank in the military in recognition of their knighthood. Their chivalric title determines just what rank they get in the military.
That said, knights need permission from their liege in order to serve, unless explicitly drafted by the emperor.

As the emperor is the one in charge of the military, he can freely grant higher titles to anyone in the military. Service in the military is one of the foremost ways to gain titles in conquered territory as well.

Something I'm considering: What if the emperor is slowly trying to phase out private militias in favor of the imperial army?

1. The Imperial Army is highly organized.
2. The Imperial Army is in direct command of the emperor and his personal Knights.
3. Ranks within the Imperial Army are not heriditary.

By phasing out private militias, the nobles take on a more administrative role instead of a military role. They enforce imperial laws and have limited legislative power, while the emperor can focus on expanding his territory. Over time, the empire becomes less feudal and more bureaucratic. He's already trying to abolish the serfdom.

[MrZJunior]

How would he go about phasing out the militias? I would expect that to lead to revolt or some other form of disobedience.

Perhaps the Emperor could levy a heavy tax on private armies, or call them all into Imperial service and not return them.

[MonkeySage]

I considered that too.... after I made this post, I thought about it. I didn't edit because I was hoping maybe some ideas on this. He can't just tell the nobles not to form their own militias, his own army may be powerful but not that powerful.

What he can do is enforce his own laws in conquered territories, assigning troops in vulnerable areas. While in general, his people benefit from the empire, there are some who would call it a police state.

I should say that he wants to phase out the militias, and is considering how he might go about it.

[ThePurple]

How would he go about phasing out the militias?

The same way the US basically did: by rendering them irrelevant (yes, I realize that there are still some "militias" in the US, but they don't actually fulfill the role that militias have within the context of military history as supplemental forces to standing armies). One of the consequences of a strong, professional centralized military is that there isn't a pressing need for civilian soldiers, which means those civilians can remain civilians.

For those nobles with actual standing armies, armies are expensive. If the imperial army is powerful enough to quell any internal shenanigans the nobles might cause with their private armies (e.g. the imperial army can basically obliterate any single noble's forces or even small coalition), any noble with a standing army would be spending a massive amount of money on something without any real benefit (because all of the benefits being provided by having an army are already fulfilled by the imperial army) and, over time (probably a generation or two), the standing armies of the nobles would shrink until they've basically disbanded and/or been repurposed into much smaller police forces (which, while similar, are drastically different in application and execution; police apprehend and protect; soldiers kill).

In effect, a powerful central military under the control of the emperor would turn the previously militarily significant nobles into pure administrators.

Creating such a large imperial army would definitely be expensive and would probably require a great deal of subterfuge and manipulation in order to avoid the nobles realizing what the emperor is doing and stopping him (since becoming militarily insignificant reduces their personal power and authority by a great deal, not to mention that the emperor is probably getting his money from the nobles so they'd basically be paying the emperor to render them militarily insignificant).

There are a number of viable ways in which this could be accomplished. The emperor could send spies and loyal servants into the private armies of the nobles with the goal of becoming de facto leaders and basically steal them away like that (turning the nobles' armies into his own). He could engage in backroom deals with external powers in order to secure an allegiance that provides him with a powerful military force that, from the nobles' perspective, appears out of nowhere (probably as an auxiliary force that can be quelled by the emperor's own forces in order to that to prevent said troops from staging a coup). He could also actively foment military conflicts between the nobles in order to deplete their forces such that he can swoop in while they're weakened and solidify his position (he wouldn't even have to do it to all of the nobles; just a large enough number to prevent any possibility of the nobles banding together to present a legitimate danger). Or all three. There are probably a significant number of other methods that would work as well, but those are just the ones that come to my mind.

[Dusk Raven]

Reading this has really made me want to fine-tune the military setup of one of my own fantasy nations, which has a premise vaguely similar to this one. This is, however, not my thread, and I wish I could give more input.

One thing I can ask, and also pose to others seeking to aid the OP - what's the political situation like between individual nobles? If it's very much cutthroat there, it wouldn't be hard for the Emperor to play that up, favor a few who are more trustworthy or desirable, give them incentives for the new system. Even if the nobles collectively have more troops, that advantage could quickly be cut down if enough side with the Emperor.

[MrZJunior]

The Emperor could try to slowly subvert the militia system by instituting laws like a mandatory training regimen or standards on equipment. Maybe he will asign an imperial Knight to oversee that training and lead them in battle. Sort of like what the British did to control the Princely States in India.