REO: SA Training

## **Building 14th century troops for 22nd century warfare**

There was no shortage of early Special Operations concepts, starting from Roman Praetorians and on. The Sergeants-at-Arms, however, were formed by visionaries that had access to concepts from beyond 22nd Century earth – and the ability to indoctrinate, train and condition soldiers near-instantly (via SNS/Arcane means).

The methods were expanded to make certain the newly minted SA practiced their skills, and the training regimen could teach without the "enhanced" means, but the first round of special operations soldiers-spies was forged via exceptional means.

The SA weren't simply operating against the French or the Scots or whatever traditional rivalries were at the time, they were operating against capital-F *Foreign Agents*. These were people who had access to training and resources unimaginable on late 14th century earth, not the least of which was SNS/Psionics for at least two of four *Foreign*factions.

This was also the template for training for those who had proven themselves as allies to the Aquitaine or English crown, or for the Order of Merlin...

### **Guerrilla warfare of their own.**

They'd had ample experience with non-battlefield raids, especially given one of the most effective chevauchée campaigns had been waged by Edwards III & IV. While the SA studied the techniques, the force in the chevauchées was usually fairly significant and the strategy behind the tactic was draw the enemy army out for a stand-up battle when that was more advantageous than just laying siege to wherever the enemy was located. In the case of the Sergeants-at-arms, they studied the chevauchées for their weak points, their tells and giveaways. They expected chevauchées from Scotland – and they wanted to be able to surgically track them down.

They'd studied the guerrilla warfare methods of Robert the Bruce and Fabian strategies of Bertrand du Guesclin. Both were relatively recent examples of successful forms of irregular warfare in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or "irregulars") using military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, petty warfare, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to dominate a larger and less-mobile traditional army, or strike a vulnerable target, and withdraw almost immediately.

They'd gone deeper, even, getting a hold of the stories of Fabian strategy from Roman antiquity and analyzing the lessons. They'd hired a Chinese translator to bring The Art of War to English, just as they found an Indian to bring them the tactics of the Maratha king Shivaji and his "Shiva sutra" or ganimi kava (guerrilla tactics) – which leveraged strategic factors like geography, speed, surprise and focused pinpoint attacks to defeat his larger and more powerful enemies.

### **Cross-training in arts not common to soldiers.**

#### They were trained to be hunters.

* It was multi-purpose, though the primary objective was teaching stealthy movement. Where hunters didn't want to alert the prey, the soldiers didn't want to get shot.
* They learned tracking so as both to be able to track humans and avoid leaving signs they'd ever been there.
* Finally, they wanted to be able to be self-sufficient and able to survive long periods away from civilization, where raiding food stores in the countryside would be a dead giveaway to their presence.

#### They were trained as overland navigators.

* This assisted with the scout role, able to more accurately judge their reconnaissance, able to get from one spot to another and back again without alerting the enemy they were even there.
* To a degree, this put them in the role of "spy" in the day.

#### They were trained as linguists and actors.

* They wanted to be able to blend in. This allowed them to get maximally close for either scouting or pre-raid placement. This included being able to speak as the enemy spoke and look as they looked.

#### They were trained as thieves and magicians.

* This was actually easier to do than it sounds: all they had to do capture a bad cutpurse, then squeeze him to learn who the good ones were. Once they knew, they arrested their family to draw them out – then hired them once they turned themselves in.
* The skill set was invaluable, from urban surveillance and counter-surveillance to covert breaking and entry to pick pockets and cut purse skills. Again, this allowed them to get close to their targets, to steal key elements (sometimes actual keys) and otherwise operate unseen in an otherwise busy environment.
* Once they had the sub rosa skills, they hired the best magician they could – who was another master of the misdirect. This helped expand the misdirect skills from sleight-of-hand to larger scale operations to a philosophical approach.

#### Finally, they trained in a trade skill – anything but soldiering.

* This was for deep undercover operations. Where it would take days, weeks, months or maybe years to get in place – and they had to have a cover. This ran the gamut from cooper to miller to baker to blacksmith (and in a few cases, more agrarian skills). The most common cover is merchant.

### **Special operations truly maturing and evolving here.**

The Vanguard never lost the Honor Guard capacity: personal protection and police, but would be used more as spies and special forces. They would be soldiers first, each of whom had proven an ability to think creatively, to learn and demonstrated extraordinary fortitude and endurance.

Beyond their royal security role, the sergeants had expanded from their typical roles of men-at-arms foot soldiers to being expert riders (and very capable cavalry in the battlefield retinue of the king) and reasonable longbow archers and crossbow marksmen. In their way, they were out-knighting the knights.

They'd incorporated as much as they could, using others' ideas as a springboard to expand the limits of their imagination. They did, for example, hear of and purchase the first English translation of Chinese strategist Jiang Ziya's "Six Secret Teachings", where the strategist describes recruiting talented and highly-motivated men for serving in specialized elite units with such functions as commanding heights and making rapid long-distance advances

The result helped the Sergeants to fill other military niche roles.

#### Scouts

Reconnaissance missions, infiltration (hence the hunting), and surveillance. This included camouflage, a rare thing for a soldier of the day. The camouflage was both passive and active, from simply not having anything shiny and keeping tones subdued, to creating ghilly suits for deep reconnaissance.

#### Commandos

This was a shock-troop capacity, essentially the role knights usually played on the battlefield. Unlike the knights, though, who more often relied on momentum in plate armor, the RCA could be hyper-aggressive, utilizing speed, surprise and violence of action.

#### Demolitions

The SA were on the cutting edge of using black powder not just for cannons, but packaging it, fuzing it, and creating bombs. By the end of the year, they'd been consulting with architects to best determine how to achieve their desired effect for the least bang possible, such as collapsing a house or destroying a bridge.

### **Martial arts**

In the most personal hand-to-hand sense, had extensive development.

There was no shortage of martial arts in high medieval England. Wrestling/grappling was popular among all social strata, while the upper crust had jousting and the Tournament. The last one in England had been in 1342, though they were both expensive, risky and turned into very expensive theater. Further, with the rise of cannons and gunpowder, they featured combat that was increasingly rare on the battlefield.

The reality, though, was that there was still plenty of fighting away from battlefields. Further, there was plenty of call for non-lethal, as well as lethal, close quarters combat – especially if they were moving in to disable with attempt to capture (whether for questioning or ransom). There were rebellions all the time and those rebellions usually happened in cities, where the very nature of the environment demanded a different kind of awareness and approach. This was the impetus behind the development of English martial arts.

There was plenty of collected documentation on world fighting techniques. This included illustrated guides from China (a veritable library of all sorts of body-to-body strikes, combat styles, sport styles armed and unarmed), Korea (more fighting, including rhythm and throws), India (another library of every style, armed and unarmed, combat and sport), Persia (grappling and exercise), Turkey (grappling), Greece (grappling and boxing, including some sophisticated training methods), a few analyses of viking methods (noting the impact of their ferocity), and a variety of treatises on the Roman legions.

These were inspirational, as far as the imagination went, but this was *enhanced knowledge*. The world methods were learned for what he might be up against, but the SA scrapped everything and started from scratch. Built from the ground up in a scientific style, basing the approach on human physiology and what was essentially the beginning of kinesiology.

## **Espionage was elevated to a science…**

From Calais and the trade with Flanders to the north, to the stability of Brittany to the west (bluffing behind insufficient defense), to the lack of strong central leadership in Aquitaine to the south, there was a great deal of threat to English interests.

Events involving espionageare well documented throughout history. The ancient writings of Chinese and Indian military strategists such as Sun-Tzu and Chanakya contain information on deception and subversion. Chanakya's student Chandragupta Maurya, founder of the Maurya Empire in India, made use of assassinations, spies and secret agents, which are described in Chanakya's Arthasastra. The ancient Egyptians had a thoroughly developed system for the acquisition of intelligence, and the Hebrews used spies as well, as in the story of Rahab. Spies were also prevalent in the Greek and Roman empires. During the 13th and 14th centuries, the Mongols relied heavily on espionage in their conquests in Asia and Europe. Feudal Japan often used ninja to gather intelligence.

The SA was built with a sophisticated capacity for *Tradecraft*. Much of this was the application of psychology to espionage, include recruiting human sources, agent handling, false flag recruitment, honeypots, blackmail, and eavesdropping.

This also included technical and academic analysis, including estimations of army strength based on food consumed, army capacity based on tax base, etcetera. This turn towards academic quantification evolved into qualification as well. For all the information coming in, not all of it was accurate. This led to the rise of the Admiralty code, a grading the reliability and credibility of the sources and information.

Finally, given the SA weren't simply sneaking around the French or the Scots, but sneaking around possible *Foreign*agents,

### **Foreign Collection**

The Sergeants-at-Arms were tasked with secret fact-finding missions, launching out of Flanders, Calais, Breton and Bordeaux. The aims were not just the application and expansion of their tradecraft, but an assessment of their methodology. In filing After-Action-Reports, they had to incorporate forms of cryptographythat hadn't even been dreamed of on earth.

The Sergeants were there for direct observation, but the opportunities to hire agents – *spies*– was too great to ignore. They included a wide range of people, from simple farmers at key locations to local municipal officials to disgruntled French soldiers to roving members in the bands of Free Companies.

The French Area of Operation was ostensibly the highest visibility – and the SA had to be careful. Getting killed by being run over by a horse was *still getting killed*. The French soldiers wouldn't hesitate to defend their homeland, and English SA were cognizant of the risks.

The SA, however, was looking at battlefields far larger and more complex than the meadows cleared for pitched battles...