On his coronation day Vajiravudh also established a new Military corps called the Wild Tiger Corps (Thai: กองเสือป่า) (RTGS: Kong Suea Pa). The Corps was meant to be an nationwide paramilitary corps, answerable only to the monarch. At first a ceremonial guard, it became a military force of 4,000 within its first year. Filled with commoners, the king would often share mess with them and socialize with them openly. The Corps eventually rivaled the army in strength and the civil service in influence. The King even went so far as appointing some into high ranks in the Army and Nobility.
While the King socialized with members of the Corps, the regular army and aristocrats were deeply dissatisfied. They saw these new appointments as a threat to their hold over power. Despite massive spending on new Palaces and dramatic productions, the kingdom was in truth, deeply in debt and was in imminent threat of financial collapse.
Read more about this topic: Palace Revolt Of 1912
Famous quotes containing the words wild, tiger and/or corps:
“The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The tiger in the tiger-pit
Is not more irritable than I.
The whipping tail is not more still
Than when I smell the enemy
Writhing in the essential blood
Or dangling from the friendly tree.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire. This agglomeration which called itself and still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)