Sayyid Ahmad I has ruled for twenty years. He is a fairly insignificant and incompetent ruler and has managed to stay on the throne for two decades mostly because no one really acknowledge his power. He has no heir. The Khanate is in a sorry state with a poor economy, practically no central government and an inefficient administration. The Khan has an army of 2000 that controls no more than the capital city of Sarai. The rest of the country are ruled by local tribal leaders who pays limited taxes but are effectively independant
One morning in May, Khan Sayyid Ahmad I realises he has lost his way. He has admitted too much power into the hands of his advisors and viziers and he has let himself be distracted by the pleasures of life. With a new sense of purpose he decides to take an active lead of the Khanate again and full of vigor he throws himself over the day-to-day business of government.
The Khan dreams of unifying the separate Khanates again under Golden Hordes rule. However, with an army of 2000 unexperienced man, that is a foolish dream. One day though even a fool’s dream can come true if he prepares well. Every aspect and area of the Khanate will have to prosper and fall into the right place for the mosaic to form the image of a conquering Khan.
Here follows the assessments, opinions and decisions of the Khan regarding some of those aspects and areas of the Khanate.
We are surrounded by our rival hordes Crimea, Kazan and Nogai. Anyone of them could be enemy as well as ally. At the south border lies Shirvan, a more peaceful shahdom, and Georgia, an orthodoxian enemy. Behind the immediate neighbours lies to the east the Uzbeks, also a rival horde. To the north and west lies Muscowy and Lithuania, former subjects, and now powerful enemies. To the south lies the mighty Ottoman empire, a possible ally, as well as our historical ally the Mamluks. We would like to ally with anyone of our horde neighbours, a decision we will wait to make until the diplomatic landscape presents itself more clearly.
Our prime strategic target is Alania in Georgia, a gold mining province which also border our capital. Other than that there are several volga tartar provinces which would be easy to incorporate, one of them of course Samara, another gold mining province. We are ready to claim just about any province in the region.
It’s in a sorry state. We need a larger army, but most of all a better army and also more capable generals.
Our military organisation can barely facilitate one and a half tumen (10 000). We can readily raise one more mingghan (1000) per province, but then we will have to wait almost a year while the units are being formed and also until our manpower reservs fill up again. Our goal is to raise two mingghans per province and thus have a total of 10 mingghans, consisting of 6 cavalry and 4 infantery.
We are specialised in Cavalry, but one need infantery to lay siege on provinces. Our infantery is made up of Yaya infantery units, and they are the most suitable and balanced type of infantery available to us. Our cavalry however is made up of Timariot units and we would like to instead deploy Deli Guides, which are more ferocious and can inflict more damage to the enemy’s morale. We will almost always keep full maintenance of the army. Only when we have raised a huge army and foresee no wars or revolts at all we might reduce the maintenance.
To gain better trained soldiers and an improved army organisation there are four ways forward.
The first way is to gain more knowledge of army affairs and this is done by allocating state resources towards military science and development. With more knowledge we could field better units. However, we have limited resources and these are at the moment needed to improve the knowledge of governing, a most pressing issue which we will discuss futher below. This is a way forward that will continue to be overlooked for a long time. We will have to make do with what we have.
The second way is to improve the army organisation by changing the way our society works and focus more on the needs of the army. To change the society in such way is no small feat and it can cause disorder and protests. Before we take such measures we would like to have a more capable army ready as well as a more stable situation overall. However, as with the science, we have to make priorities, because such changes are so fundamental you can only hope to perform them once per decade. At this moment, the army will have to wait, because the first priority is to tighten the grip of the administration and place more power in the hands of the Khan’s central government. This way forward will also be overlooked for a couple of decades. In due time, however, we will make the necessary adjustments to meet the needs of the army. Another type of change that might be considered in the future is to increase the offensive qualities of the army at the cost of the defensive qualities.
The third way forward is to promote a new national idea, for example, that Golden Horde’s army are so well drilled in battle that nothing can break our morale or organisation. To promote such an idea is one part hard work, to drill the soldiers, and one part creating a fearsome reputation that the we believe in ourselves as much as the enemy do. This is something we will do as soon as our government can muster it, and it will take further knowledge of governmental affairs. In the future there are other military ideas one could promote, for example, the idea of engineer corps or battlefield commissions.
The fourth way to improve the army is to hire a good advisor. To find the right man is down to luck, but we will on the lookout for a Commandant, Army Organiser, Grand Captain or Army Reformer in that order. However, a overriding priority in recruting advisors is to find one or more good Statesmen.
We have no generals available, so Sayyid Ahmad I will take charge of the army, as it befits a Khan. A bit unexpectedly, our Khan proves to be a fearless and ferocious military leader. Perhaps the dream of endless conquest was not a dream, but a foreseeing. To educate capable generals we must basically fight wars and let the prospects learn their trade. We can also make a national decision to fund an Army Academy. However, this takes a Khan with better military organisational skill than our beloved Sayyid Ahmad I. A way to greatly improve the possibilites for a successor to be able fund an Academy is to hire a Army Organiser or Army Reformer as advisor.
Actions: We change our cavalry units to Deli Guides instead of Timariots. We order our provinces to raise four new cavalry mingghans. We convert our Khan to General.
Modernization
"With a powerful army, but without a powerful state, all that is won will be lost." - Sayyid Ahmad I
The true challange for the Golden Horde is to build a powerful state. A state where the power lies in stable institutions, and no longer in the hands of shortlived warlords. A state where the death of a leader won’t lead to in-fighting and disintegration. To achieve this we must learn new ways of governing and we must give up our nomadic life and settle down for good. This was unthinkable for our great grandfather Genghis Khan, but the challanges we face have changed and a true mongol ethos is to always prevail. Golden Horde actually have built great cities for the last two hundred years. During the reign of the great Uzbeg Khan our grand capital Sarai was the largest city in the world with 600,000 inhabitans. Since then, however, Sarai has been sacked, plundered and fallen into obscurity with only 4000 inhabitants. The most important city now is Astrakhan, which is the trading center of the region and has 14000 inhabitants.
To gain more knowledge of governmental affairs the resources of the state will be allocated towards governmental science and development. In order to support this development we will also seek to hire Statesmen as our advisors.
There are several traditions and ways of life that come with being nomads. First, we have a Provincial Outlook, which simply means that we view the steppes as our homes and have little interest in what lies beyond. This means some new knowledge will have to travel a long way before we learn about it, but that is the way it is, and it will remain so for as long as we live on the steppes. Another fact of life for us are our Entranched Past, which means that we want to live our lives the same way our great forefathers did and we want to carry on the proud traditions or our glorious past. We will therefore dismiss some of the new knowledge that come our way, and we will better off without it.
The last and the most defining way of our life are of course that we are Horse Nomads. Even though some of us have become used to living in cities, the major part of our people still are nomads. We need to encourage them to settle down and learn the advantages of a sedentary lifestyle. This is a continous process and it will take a long time before we all have settled down. The local tribes in Bogutjar, Burtasia and Astrakhan will take arms to defend their independance, but if we want to govern this country everyone will have to obey the Khan. When our army is strong again we will ride out to the local tribes and subjugate them once for all. When the tribes are in our control we will encourage them to settle down. We already control our capital province Sarai so here we immediately can start to encourage a sedentary lifestyle.
Action: Province decision to encourage a sedentary lifestyle in Sarai.
Our administration is inefficient. That is, our administrative need outweighs our capabilities. In other words, our administration can’t handle even four simple nomadic provinces. This is a serious problem, as every new province we conquer would add even more needs and it wouldn’t take long until our administration was overwhelmed. The reason for our shortcomings is of course that as a horde we have no experience of a well-run administration or of any sort of bureaucracy. Historically, the civil administration was run as a part of the military administration. Things have improved, though, in the last century, as learned man of the faith have assisted us. It is not enough, however, we need a different sort of administration, a centralized administration. And if we are going to expand our territory we certainly need a much more capable administration.
To achieve this we must, first of all, learn new ways of governing, an area we’re already decided to prioritise. Secondly, to increase the capabilites of the administration we must tighten the grip of the country and place more power in the hands of the Khan’s central government. This means to change the law of the country and wrench the power out of the hands of local leaders, which very well might cause civil war. So, before we take such drastic measures we would like to improve the Khanates overall stability and have our army ready. In the future, we could increase the capabilites of the administratoin even more by promoting the national idea of bureaucracy. This will have to wait, though, until we actually have conquered any new provinces.
Economy and Knowledge
Our Khanates income is almost entierly made up of national taxes from the provinces and tariffs and tolls from the center of trade in Astrakhan. We generate almost no income at all from production or from our own merchants. Regarding our trade, we will direct our merchants to trade exclusively through Astrakhan, at least for the time being. The reason is that we are not very competetive at trading and the resources it would take to establish us long-term at any foreign CoT are desperately needed elsewhere.
Our income can be allocated towards gaining knowledge, increasing stability or minting coins to the treasury. We will spend the major part of our income to get more knowledge of governing, and we will do that for a long, long time. This means we will not allocate any resources at all towards gaining other forms of knowledge (army, naval, trade, production). The exceptions are that we will invest in our overall stability when that is needed and we will also mint coins when the treasury runs low.
When minting coins the inflation in our country increases, making everyting more expansive, but that doesn’t bother us much since we hardly will spend any ducats anyway. Ideally, we would like to keep 200-300 ducats in our treasury, and since we at the moment only have 49 ducats, our first action will be to mint more coins until we have at least 100 ducats. After that, we will invest in our stability until it’s fully stable again, and then, finally, we will allocate the resources towards learning more of governing. At all times, we would like to have a yearly surplus of about 10 ducats
Actions: Allocate all resources to minting coins. Astrakhan will be the only CoT where we will send merchants.
The right advisors are crucial to our success. We will let it be known that we seek to recruit talented advisors, and hopefully in a couple of weeks someone will visit our court. We are only interested in Statesman advisors, and we would like to fill all of our three positions with Statesmen, even mediocre ones if that is what’s available. If no Statesman advisors shows up we will have to promote advisors from within our own ranks, using our culture tradition, and that will surely leave us with three mediocre advisors, but it’s better than nothing. What could make us change our mind and make room for another kind of advisor are if a talented Commandant, Army Organiser, Grand Captain or Army Reformer would want to work for us.
Domestic policies
How our society functions in different areas can be defined by certain policies that includes how centralized the government are, how much freedom and power different groups have, how our trade works and the setup and specialization of our army. These policies can’t be easily changed since every change affects all parts of our society and risks to upend peoples lives. However, there are certain parts of our society that will have to change and we will perform these changes at times when we have peace and order in our country. As mentioned before, the first change we will do is to centralize the government, and we will do that when our overall stability have increased. These initatives to centralize will be our priority for decades to come. Only when our government works so well that no further centralization are desirable, will we start to focus on the needs of our army.
Golden Horde live by the ideas that all men are a soldiers and that our army shall be grand. Also, even though we are devoted to Islam, we welcome all different religions into our horde. These are the ideal our people live by and as we grow to learn even more we might be able to develop some of our other characteristics into national ideals. The first idea we will promote are how well drilled our army is. After that, either a military idea like engineer corps or battlefield commissions or the idea of a bureaucracy.
Religious, cultural and national decisions
There are a multitude of issues a Khan have to decide about. For example, the religious domain of our Khanate need some governing from time to time. At the moment, it’s the question whether to welcome Jews into the country or not. As we don’t mind their religious practices and we value their contributions we more than welcome them. However, it can be a controversial issue so we will wait until our country are a bit more stable. Another religious question is about the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Our religious leaders are quite insistent that the Khan should travel, and he most certainly will, just not right now, later, perhaps next year. At the moment, there are no cultural or national decisions to make.
Provinces
In our provinces we can, besides raising troops, also build improvements and make province decisions. At the moment we can build the following improvements in our provinces when we have the necessary ducats: Level 2 fort, Provincial Accountant, Chartered Markets. We have level 1 forts in all our provinces and that will suffice for the moment. This is improvements we will be looking to build in the future though, as we expect lots of warfare. Provincial Accountants and Chartered Markets are not really worth the investment as we won’t be especially rich and most of our resources will go towards gaining more governmental knowledge.
At the moment, it is just one province decision we will take and that is to Encourage Sedentary Lifestyle in Sarai. In a year or two, when our army are ready we will pay a visit to each province and extand over control to them. After that, we will encourage sedentary lifestyles in these provinces also.
A summary of our first actions:
1. Convert our Khan to General.
2. Change our cavalry units to Deli Guides instead of Timariots.
3. Order our provinces to raise four new cavalry mingghans.
4. Allocate all resources to minting coins.
5. Astrakhan will be the only CoT where we will send merchants.
6. Province decision to encourage a sedentary lifestyle in Sarai.
After that, let’s see what tomorrow brings...
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