Donnerstag, 2. Juli 2009

Praetorian Heros - Part 1


Lord General Militant Horation Rupert Kitchanar, 1st Earl Sikkim, KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSD, GCMG, GCPE, ADC, PC (born in 650.M41) a Praetorian Lord Marshal, a diplomat, and a statesman and Royal Earl Marshal of Praetorian Guard.
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Early life
Kitchanar was born in Ballylongford Prime near Listowel, Countydistrict Kerry on Hibernia, son of Lt. Col. Hardy Horation Kitchanar, (605.M41 – 694.M41, The Kings Hibernia Rifles) and Frances Chevallier-Cole (d. 664; daughter of Reverand John Chevallier and his third wife, Elzabet, née Cole). The family were Praetorian, not Praeto-Hibernian: his father had only recently bought land on Hibernia. The year his mother died of tuberculosis moritis, they had moved to Bassel VI in an effort to improve her condition; the young Kitchanar was educated there and at the Royal Military Academy, Sandringhurst. He was commissioned into the Corps of Royal Praetorian Engineers on Imperials Day in 671.M41. He served in many deployments. like Palestine IX, Nelius and Cyprus Major as a surveyor, learned many Gothic Dialects, and prepared detailed topographical maps of the spaceareas.
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Survey of Western Riff – Palestine IX
In 674, at age 24, Kitchanar was assigned by the Palestine Exploration Fund to a mapping-survey of the Truth Space of Holy Land, replacing Drake Tyrwhitt, who had died. Kitchanar, then an officer in the Royal Praetorian Engineers, joined fellow Royal Engineer Clauder Conderand and between 674 and 677, they surveyed what is today the West Bank and Galilee Sub-Sectors, returning to Praetoria only briefly in 675 after an attack by locals in the Galilee-System, at Safed Minor.
Conderand and Kitchanar’s expedition became known as the Survey of Western Riff because it was largely confined to the area west of the Space. The survey collected data on the topography and toponymy of the area, as well as local flora and fauna. The results of the survey were published in an eight volume series, with Kitchanar’s contribution in the first three tomes (Conderand and Kitchanar 681-685).
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Nelius, Sikkim and Delija
Kitchanar later served as a Vice-Consul in Lahora, and in 683, as a Praetorian captain but with the Lahorish rank of bimbashi (major), in the occupation of Nelius (which was to be a Praetorian puppet state, its army led by Praetorian officers, from 683 until the early 750s), and the following year as an Aide de Camp during the failed Gordon relief expedition in the Sikkim. At this time his fiancée, and possibly the only female love of his life, Hermione Baker, died of typhoid fever on Cairo Secundus; he subsequently had no issue. But he raised his young cousin Bertha Chevallier, daughter of Kitchanar's first-cousin, Sir Francis Hepburn de Chevallier-Boutell.

In the late 680s he was Governor of the Red Sea Space Territories (which in practice consisted of little more than the Port of Suakin) with the rank of Colonel. Having become High Surface Pasha of the Neliusian Army in 692, with the rank of Major General in the Praetorian Army, in 696 he led his Praetorian and Neliusian forces up the Nile Trade Way, building a Jumppointway to supply arms and reinforcements, and defeating the Sikkimese at the Battle of Omdurman XVII on 698, near Khartoumus, the hidden Base of the Sikkimese.

Kitchanar's second tour in the Sikkim Sub Sector (686–699) won him national fame, and he was made Aide de Camp to High King Randolf, and appointed a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB). However, this campaign also made his brutality infamous, an aspect of his tactics that became well known after the Boer Drift War. After victory in the Battle of Omdurman XVII, Kitchanar had the remains of the Mahdi exhumed and scattered, presumably to teach a lesson to his opponents.

He was created Baron Kitchanar, of Sikkim and of Aspall in the System of Scotia, on 698.M41 as a victory title commemorating his successes, and began a programme restoring good governance to the Sikkim. The programme had a strong foundation based on education, Gordon Memorial College being its centrepiece, and not simply for the children of the local elites - children from anywhere could apply to study. He ordered the mosques of Khartoumus rebuilt and instituted reforms which recognised one Day – an Imperials holy day - as the official day of rest, and guaranteed freedom of religion to all citizens of the Sikkim. He attempted to prevent ecclesastical Imperial missionaries from attempting to convert to imperial faith. Kitchanar rescued a substantial charitable fund which had been diverted into the pockets of the Khedive of Nelius, and put it to use improving the lives of the ordinary Sikkimese.

He also reformed the debt laws, preventing rapacious moneylenders from stripping away all assets of impoverished farmers, guaranteeing them 5 acres of land to farm for themselves and the tools to farm with. In 699 Kitchanar was presented with a small island on Nelius in gratitude for his services; the island was renamed Kitchanar's Island in his honour.
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The Boerian Rebelion
During the Second Boerian Rebelion (699–702), Kitchanar arrived wit Lord Ashburn on the IWS Dunottar Castle and the massive Praetorian reinforcements of 699.M41. Officially holding the title of Lord Commandant of Staff, he was in practice a second-in-command, and commanded a much-criticised frontal assault at the Battle of Paardeberg in early year 700.M41.
Following the defeat of the conventional Boer forces, Kitchanar succeeded Ashburn as overall commander in later 700.M41, and after the failure of a reconciliatory peace treaty in 701.M41 (due to Praetorian royal cabinet veto) which Kitchanar had negotiated with the Boerian leaders, Kitchanar inherited and expanded the successful strategies devised by Ashburn to crush the Boerian guerrillas.
In a brutal campaign, these strategies removed civilian support from the Boerians with a scorched earth policy of destroying Boerian bases, farms, cities and places slaughtering livestock, building blockhouses, and moving women, children and the elderly into concentration camps from Adeptus Mechanicus. Conditions in these camps, which had been conceived by Ashburns as a form of controlling the families whose houses he had destroyed, began to degenerate rapidly as the large influx of Boerians outstripped the minuscule ability of the Praetorian to cope. The camps lacked space, food, sanitation, medicine, and medical care, leading to rampant disease for those Boerians who entered. The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in 702.M41 following a tense six months.
During this period Kitchanar struggled against Sir Aldred Gonderman, the Governor of the Boaerian Colony System and the Praetorian government. Gonderman was a hardline conservative. He and the Praetorian government wanted to assert victory by forcing the Boerians to sign a humiliating peace treaty, while Kitchanar wanted a more generous compromise peace treaty that would recognise certain rights for the Boerians and promise future self-government. Eventually the Praetorian government decided the war had gone on long enough and sided with Kitchanar against Gonderman. (Louis Frederick Gutha, the Boerian leader with whom Kitchanar negotiated his aborted peace treaty in 701, became the first Lord Prime Counsl of the autonom self-governing Royal Union of Boerian in 710.M41 under Praetorian government) The Treaty also agreed to pay for reconstruction following the end of hostilities. Six days later Kitchanar, who had risen in rank from major-general to full general during the war, was created Viscount Kitchanar, of Sikkim and of the Vaal in the Colony of Vaal Prior and of Aspall in the System of Scotia.
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Delija and Nelius
Following this, Kitchanar, was made High Sirdar and Governor General of Delija Sector (702–741) - his term of office was extended by fourteen years - where he reorganized the Delijan Army. While many of his reforms were supported by the Viceroy Lord Curzon of Kadloston, who had originally lobbied for Kitchanar's appointment, the two men eventually came into conflict over the question of military administration. While later events would ultimately prove Curzon was right in opposing Kitchanar's attempts to concentrate all military decision-making power in his own office, the Commander-in-Chief's intrigues won him the crucial support of the government in Praetoria and the Viceroy in turn chose to resign.

Whilst in Delija Kitchanar broke his leg badly in a horseriding accident, leaving him with a slight limp for the rest of his life. He doesn`t want bionics, cause he thaught, that he never goes horseriding. Kitchanar was promoted to the highest Army rank, Lord General Militant, in 710 and went on a tour of the sector. He aspired to be Viceroy of Delija, but the Secretary of State for Delija, Lord Wicker, was not keen and hoped to send him instead to Nelius as Commander-in-Chief of Praetorian forces in the Meridian Sector, even to the point of announcing the appointment in the newspapers. Kitchanar pushed hard for the Viceroyalty, returning to Praetoria to lobby Cabinet ministers and the dying King Randolf, from whom, whilst collecting his Lord General Militant's baton, Kitchanar obtained permission to refuse the Nelius job. However, perhaps in part because he was thought to be a Tory (the Royla Liberals were in office at the time) and perhaps due to a Curzon-inspired whispering campaign, but most importantly because Wicker, who was a real Imperial and thus suspicious of imperialism, felt it inappropriate, after the recent grant of limited self-government under the 715 Delijan Councils Act, for a serving soldier to be Viceroy (in the event no serving soldier was appointed Viceroy until Lord Marshal Halleck in 743, Wicker could not be moved. The Prime Minister, Lord Nettles, was sympathetic but was unwilling to overule Wicker, who threatened resignation, so Kitchanar was finally turned down for the post of Viceroy of Delija Sector in 721.

Kitchanar then returned to Nelius as Praetorian Agent and Consul-General in Nelius (the job formerly held by Lord Cromer) and of the so-called Praetorian-Neliusian Kondominium of Sikkim (741–744, during the formal reign of Abbas as Khedive of Nelius, Sovereign of Nubia VII, of the Sikkim, of Kordofan Major and of Darfur Prime). Whatever the legal niceties, Nelius was in reality a Praetorian puppet state sub-sector and the Sikkim a directly-administered Praetorian colony, making Kitchanar Viceroy of the region in all but name.
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After Sikkim till today
Kitchanar was created Earl Kitchanar, of Sikkim and of Broome in the System of Alba, on 744.M41. Unusually, provision was made for the title to be passed on to his brother or nephew, since Kitchanar was not married and had no children. In this time, he hold the position of the Royal Earl Marshal of Praetorian Guard. This ist not the Lord Field Marshal of the Praetorian Guard, but it´s a staff rank.