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The Sardaukar are a fictional army from Frank Herbert's Dune universe, as depicted in the Dune series of science-fiction novels.
Sardaukar are the soldiers of House Corrino who rules the known universe at the time of Dune. Until Paul Atreides organizes the Fremen on Arrakis, they are the foremost soldiers in the universe and are feared by all. The Sardaukar are the key to House Corrino's hold on the Imperial throne.
Sardaukar are trained from infancy on Salusa Secundus. What the rest of the universe knows as the Emperor's prison planet is actually the training ground for the hardiest soldiers. Like the Fremen on the planet Dune, the intense difficulties of simply surviving on Salusa Secundus leave only the toughest alive, and in conjunction with intense conditioning for loyalty to the Emperor, the Sardaukar are worth ten times their number in Landsraad house levies. The Sardaukar have become far more complacent by the time of Dune however and this contributes to their defeat at the hands of the Fremen.
During Children of Dune, Princess Wensicia, daughter of the deposed Emperor Shaddam IV, initiates a plot for the return to power of her family and the Sardaukar. However, her son Farad'n voluntarily surrendered them to the new Emperor, Leto Atreides II. Leto later disbanded the Sardaukar and replaced them with the Fish Speakers.
Before the time of the novel God Emperor of Dune, one of Leto II's many gholas (clones) of Duncan Idaho led the remnants Sardaukar in an unsuccessful revolt.
The best known historian of the Sardaukar was their Colonel Otto Aramsham. Col. Aramsham and some of the best Sardaukar were sent to infiltrate the smuggler band of Gurney Halleck, and Aramsham himself attempted to kill Paul Atreides shortly after this. Colonel Aramsham was outfought, forced by Paul to surrender, and Paul spared his life.
Aramsham was then sent by Paul to the Padishah Emperor with a message that verified that Paul was the leader of the Fremen in their great rebellion.
Colonel Aramsham had failed to kill Paul; the Sardaukar ethic was biased to suicide rather than surrender; but Aramsham felt that duty required him to get the message to the Emperor. Still, the very same day the Harkonnen army and almost all the Sardaukar on Arrakis were wiped out at the Battle of Arrakeen.
Aramsham, greatly shamed and embittered by his continued survival, was subjected to much criticism by his initial surrender to Paul. He felt that the other surviving Sardaukar thought him a coward.
Otto Aramsham was an intelligent man who was mentally and socially clumsy. As an example, when Paul Atreides forced his surrender and unmasked him as a Sardaukar, Paul held up as proof a knife one of Aramsham's men, or Aramsham himself had carried. It was clearly a Sardaukar issue knife, right down to the artistic decorations on the handle. That Aramsham or his men were carrying such an identifiable knife on a covert mission points to the clear fact that Aramsham was a blunderer. Also when Aramsham's me infiltrated Gurney Halleck's smuggler band Halleck very quickly knew they were not trustworthy, though at first he did not know who they were.
Aramsham later wrote THE SARDAUKAR STRIKE, which many years later influenced the ghola of Duncan Idaho to lead the aforementioned revolt against the God Emperor. THE SARDAUKAR STRIKE was a very good history, but filled with jingoism.
The defeat on Dune, the Sardaukar's later revolt against the God Emperor, and the general decline of the Sardaukar organization all finally caused the abolishment of the Sardaukar corps. They were replaced by the female Fish Speakers, who in time, by and large, had Sardaukar blood in their veins.
Otto Aramsham, some say, eventually committed suicide.
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