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 rabbit presses back her ears,
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes
And crouches low; then with wild spring
Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of the snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity, expensive races,—race living at the expense of race.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There was nothing to equal it in the whole history of the Corps Diplomatique.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)