Armed Forces
Since the unification of 1914, Rainbowisland has maintained the three usual branches of armed forces.
In 1914, the seaforce (= navy; seaforce is the
preferred term for the navies of Rainbowisland, Montana and Belgium) was the most
important branch of the new unified Rainbowisland armed forces. It had access to the most
modern equipment and designs available at the time.
Beginning in the 16th century, seaforces have grown in importance in Rainbowislands.
Mostly due to most internal conflicts comming to an end. All of the realms started
building up their fleets, except for Gaalirealm, which was in ruines and politically
unstable at the time. Montana reached an agreement with Crawrealm to use the ports of Craw
and Westgate for their ships. Kastelia reached asimilar agreement with Kastelland,
Puipilland, Southrealm and Forria and the Eastsea.
Towards the end of the 17th century, Montana started useing "naval
infantry" (= marines) on their ships. This was soon copied by the other realms.
Kastelia decided to disband their seaforce. In stead, they provided marines for their
former partners in return for a naval support when needed and a share of the prize money.
At the end of the 18th century, the realms of Rainbowisland joined the UK in it's
blocade of Napoleonic France. Together, they managed to keep just about all French ships
in their ports for over 20 years. Lessons learned in the war in Spain led the 3 landlocked
realms to start rebuilding their armies. Although Kastelia kept providing marines for
their allies and Montana kept maintaining their fleet (although reduced in strenght).
The first great solo action of Rainbowisland came in 1830 with the Belgian war for
independance. While the combined armies of Rainbowisland were rather unimpressive compared
to the Dutch army, the combined seaforces completely blew the Dutch navy out of the water.
Within 1 month of the start of the war, all Dutch ports were blocaded (and most of them
raided at least once), along with all the ports in Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles.
Also a large fleet was moveing towards Indonesia to blocade the last remaining free Dutch
ports. In early June 1831, Netherland gave up it's claims on Belgium when a joint
Montana-Southrealm-Kastelland-Kastelia marine detachment established a stable beachhead in
Friesland (northern most province of the Netherlands).
Army
The Rainbowisland army (the term
"landforce" has come into disuse in English, it is still used in the other 4
Rainbowisland languages) was small when it was first unified. But in the interbellum, it
quickly grew into a force, proportionate to the size and industry of the country.
Although often small in size, most realms of Rainbowisland have retained a standing
army since Roman times.