The Royal Army

From its headquarters in the Boston Common Barracks, the Army General Staff oversees an establishment strength of around 120,000 regular troops, along with another 40,000 or so in “provisional” regiments – essentially part-time militias paid for and raised by a county, city or rich benefactor. The basic unit is the Regiment, comprising anything from 600 men up to 1,800 but usually organised internally into companies of around 200 and platoons of 50 men. Many of the understrength Regiments are actually just the cadre battalion to which one or two more battalions of 600 men each would be attached in times of major war, to be trained and stiffened in combat by the cadre. A Regiment, no matter what its manpower, is commanded by a Colonel. Units larger than Regiments (Divisions, Armies) are assembled from a mix of Regiments as required by the mission and are not permanent establishments.

In the regimental system, each regiment is responsible for recruiting, training, and administration; each regiment is permanently maintained and therefore the regiment will develop its unique esprit de corps because of its unitary history, traditions, recruitment, and function. Usually, the regiment is responsible for recruiting and administrating all of a soldier’s military career. Disadvantages of the regimental system are hazardous regimental competition, a lack of interchangeability between units of different regiments, and more pronounced “old boy networks” within the military that may hamper efficiency and fairness.

There are five main branches of the army: Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, Engineers and Quartermasters. At present, about 20,000 of the Army’s regular manpower is cavalry, another 12,000 artillery, and about 6,000 each in the Engineers and Quartermasters Corps. The remainder, 76,000 men, are infantry. The cavalry are a mix of Light Dragoons (unarmored, with a carbine musket, pistols and a sabre), Heavy Dragoons (armored and on armored horses but armed as the Light Dragoons) and Lancers (Light Dragoons with a lance instead of a sabre). There is an experimental Heavy Dragoon regiment, the 12th Dragoons or “Black And Whites”, who use magically hybridized “unicorns” as steeds. Infantry regiments are either Light (musketmen or riflemen trained in open-order combat and skirmishing), Heavy (using muskets and trained in close-order drills and massed volley-fire or bayonet charges) or the single elite Ranger Regiment of rifle-bearing stealthy special-forces. Artillery regiments are either Horse Artillery (light guns and carriages designed for rapid movement) Regular Artillery or Siege Artillery (the heaviest guns, used for garrison duty or for sieges of fortified positions). Engineers come in two flavors – the standard Engineer Regiments build things or sometimes blow them up while the Combat Engineers, with a far higher of Arcanists in their organisation, tear things down while under heavy hostile fire. Of the militias, about half are light infantry, the rest light cavalry and light horse infantry (who ride rather than march to battle, but then fight on foot) in about equal numbers.