Tundra Wars
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The Tundra Wars were a series of military campaigns waged from 1690-1712 by the Kingdom of Fhainnlannachaeran against the feudal polities of Reothadt and Lyukquar. While technically separate campaigns, the 1698 invasion of Lyukquar resulted from Lyukqui support for local lords and rebels within Haibne after its annexation in 1691.
| Tundra Wars | |||||
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| Belligerents | |||||
 Fhainnlannachaeran |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||
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| Units involved | |||||
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Royal Army of the Fhainn (Army of the North) Throneswatch House Guard Popular Army of the Great Northern Crusade |
King's Army Grand Army of Lyukquar Archduke's Levies Minor Feudal Armies | ||||
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| significant | significant | ||||
Invasion of Reothadt
The Archduchy of Reothadt was a feudal Fhainnin-Coscivian-Minor Gaelic state along the Kilikas coast founded by political marriages in 1463, and had fought protracted border conflicts with Faneria for several decades prior to the initial invasion on behalf of the marriage of the Vicar of Gleathan to one of the Archduke's daughters. After the death of Archduke ______ in 1690, Vicar ______ pressed a claim to the Archduchy, and received support from Rih Sean Suthar-Màrtainn to invade the area with supporting levies from Connsmonan and Vrael.
The war with Reothadt went extremely well at first, with the Archduke being killed within a year by his son ______, who swore fealty to the Rih in exchange for nominally maintaining his position under the title of Vicar of Haibnelann - the name of the geographic region, whereas Reothadt was the fief of the Archduke. Several local lords, namely ____ of the Duchy of Wyhsar, refused this move and continued to fight on.
Intermediate Period
Most of the resisting Dukes and lords were besieged and crushed with relative ease between invading and local troops, but Wyhsar had the advantages of being a swampy region on Reothadt's border with the neighboring nation of Lyukquar, which supported them with weapons and supplies as they continued to launch raids and foment resistance against Fanerian troops, killing Fanerians wherever they found them and making the absorption of Haibne incomplete. Further complicating things, Rih Sean elected to pass the Edict of Habhainnsk, forcibly unlanding several prominent lords whose loyalty was questionable, spurring large numbers of people to flock to local militias and 'The Wash' and refuse Fanerian rule as their lords were killed or deposed. This state of affairs continued for another seven years until 1698, with Fanerian troops launching several unsuccessful attacks into Wyhsar, earning it the nickname 'The Wash' from Aenglish mercenaries after seasonal flooding drowned several hundred Fhainnin soldiers and scattered thousands more during the disastrous second assault.
Invasion of Lyukquar
The original casus belli of the Lyukquar campaign was the death of a Royal diplomat from highwaymen on the road to the Duchy's capital, Lansgadh, which was blamed on the Grand Duke - but in all likelihood the killing of his entourage was an attack by rebels striking out from the nearby Wash. Rih Sean had been attempting to cause friction between the states for some time, and while the claim of deliberate assassination was a thin pretext at best, he had his own army to rely on along with raising troops from Connsmonan and Haibnelann, the latter of which had been formally annexed in 1691 with the exception of the Duchy of the Wash. For its part, Lyukquar had been supplying The Wash in a bid to prevent Royal attentions against itself. The declaration of war against the Grand Duchy was generally considered unlikely, as unlike Reothadt, its army had (albeit dated) cannon and a small corps of professional soldiery, and the campaigning previously shown by Faneria had been incredibly lackluster and slow considering its manpower and theoretical technological advantage.
Sean Suthar-Màrtainn formally declared war on the 9th of March, 1698, raising personal levies and gathering his standing troops to form a separate army from the Vicarial levies containing the rebellion in Reothadt. In a shocking display of competence, he lead his men through the Deamhainn mountains rather than making the long trek to the west around them, marching onto the northern plains behind the assembled Lyukqui army and sacking the city of Geoghegan before marching on Lansgadh. The Grand Duke fled, meeting up with his army as his capital surrendered and returning to retake it. By then, the Fanerian army had moved west to try and intercept, and the two forces managed to miss each other entirely, with Lansgadh being liberated in August. Rih Sean then changed tact, signing a peace agreement with the Grand Duke in exchange for a halt to the support being given to The Wash.
Rih Sean died of a pneumonic illness in 1700 contracted while on campaign, and had no male heirs, passing his crown to his daughter Sear Mari. Sear, a mere child handling challenges to her legitimacy at the time, was eager to finish the campaigns in the north, but her father's army was still present and cleaning up the largest spots of rebel activity in 1701. The Banrih and her advisors placed the Army of the North under the command of General Connal Mayes and commanded him to invade Lyukquar without pretext, leading to the Battle of Feldsdún in 1702 and the First and Second Battles of Lansgadh in 1702-1703, followed by a victorious eight-month siege of the capital. General Mayes returned to the south victorious, leaving Haibnelann in a state of relative peace and Lyukquar, while shattered, effectively unable to resist conquest by loyal nobles and their private armies, leading to a frenzied minor crusade in which poorer lords grabbed what they could in the north. Lyukquar had no formal surrender, but was simply quashed and disintegrated over the next decade. The Wash formally surrendered in 1711 and the last noteworthy holdouts in Lyukquar were dispersed by late 1712, although true peace would take decades.
Aftermath
Haibnelann and Lyukquar were of secondary importance during the Sutharine Succession Crisis and First Kin War that immediately followed them, and are generally considered to have weakened the Vicariates of Connsmonan and Gleathan significantly, damaging key supporters of the Suthar-Màrtainn family and creating an opportunity for the Barh-Màrtainns to stake a serious claim to the throne. The long war also petered out into a guerilla war, and while the locals were pacified within a generation, continued minor uprisings and rebel activity created a drain on Royal resources and busied those same allies with supporting the new Vicariate in Haibne. Lyukquar remained a fragmented state under martial law well into the 1700s, and remained an economically backwards part of the country until the mid-1850s, after which it was finally elevated to a set of undersized Vicariates under weak leaders. The human cost of the campaign is estimated to be anywhere from 200,00 to half a million lives, as the wars caused food shortages and peasant flight as well as decapitating much of the local leadership. The northern Kilikas coast lagged behind the Vandarch Basin significantly in education, development, and population relative to other parts of Faneria long after the Wars, and became a major recipient of development programs under the Republic.
