The old Segumbi empire had, before its destruction, employed a group of warriors called the Kersaati to protect the royal family and the nobles in charge of each of the empire’s seven traditional provinces. They had led the fiercest resistance to the encroachment of outsiders; most of the Kersaati had been wiped out in the Battle of Quri in 1677 by the Portuguese. In a sign of how closely fought the battle had been, the Kersaati had actually made it to the musketeers firing on them and engaged in melee combat; the Portuguese had lost 110 musketeers, while the entire company of Kersaati, over 1000 warriors, was slaughtered.
After the old Segumbi heartland gained its independence from France as la République de Côte d’Ébène, the first president attempted to link the tradition of the new state to the old, forming the Kersaati Guard and stocking it with the country’s most experienced soldiers, many of them veterans of World War II. The Guard were to form not only the official bodyguard for government officials but also the nucleus of the new state’s army. A link both to the past and a prosperous democratic future, much like the constitution that was based in equal parts on the US Constitution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Two years later, in July of 1964, the Kersaati Guard murdered the president, who had suspended the constitution and declared himself in office for life, and seized power for the military.
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