New Burgundie Secession War
The New Burgundie Secession War, commonly known in Burgundie as the Great Rebellion, was a civil war fought between 1936 and 1939 by the forces of the self-declared Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire of Neu Burgund, and other secessionist factions, against its colonial overlord, Burgundie. The war lasted almost 4 years, ending with the signing of the Neu Burgundian Instrument of Surrender. The result was the full annexation of the Cronan territories previously controlled by the Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire in Burgundie, cessation of some lands to Paulastra, TBD, TBD, and TBD, as well as the dissolution of the Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire.
| New Burgundie Secession War | |||||||
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The Burgundian Char 2C Tearlag chasing a New Burgundian Seperstist tachanka in Equitorial Burgundie. | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
Separatists
Supported by
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Loyalists
Supported by
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Secessionist leadersOtto Heilder
Joseph Grebbel Josep-Marc d'Artengille |
Loyalist leadersSean Roisin
23x15px Joan-Renauld Remarc Jözik Nezdor I Vargas Stöldrar | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 400,000
80,000 25,000 Foreign volunteers 104,000 |
800,000
23x15px 1,270,000 127,000 Foreign volunteers 25,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Military dead:estimated 355,000
Total dead: estimated 355,000 |
Military dead:estimated 830,000
Civilian dead: estimated 670,000 Total dead: estimated 1,500,000 | ||||||
Protesting and revolting had been plaguing the empire since Emperor Franz IV had been dethrowned following the Burgundian royal government's perception of the failures of the Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire to defend Burgundian citizens during the War of Faskano Strait. The royal government imposed stiff tariffs on the Burgundian Grand Crona Trading Company and revoked their monopoly on Cronan goods. Violence ensued as the Burgundian Grand Crona Trading Company passed the expenses directly to the citizens and the value of goods, particularly building materials, skyrocketed. The Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Imperial government sought a scapegoat. The Krizovatkan population, a native Cronan people, had long been a thron in the Imperial government's side. After years of housing shortages and violently suppressed civil action, the Imperial government engaged in what would become known as the Krizovatkan Genocide in December of 1932. Anti-Burgundian sentiment was high and academic separatists, under the guidance of Franz IV quickly formed a government of their own with help from turncoat members of the Burgundian military. The Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire soon assumed these seperatists under their umbrella in a move to capitalize on the goodwill of the citizens and to attempt to bring the Burgundian royal government to the negotiating table. Without consulting the Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Imperial government an official declaration of war from the separatists was sent to Vilauristre in early 1936, marking the official beginning of the war. The Burgundian Grand Crona Trading Company attempted desperately to walk back the declaration, but with Burgundie heavily immersed in the Levantine Civil War, it was afraid of losing its colonies and engaged the Neu Burgundians with full force.
The beginning of the war saw a very dynamic front, as both sides played a game of back-and-forth. By 1937, however, this back-and-forth had subsided into a stalemate, with neither side being able to gain an upper hand against the enemy lines. Between late 1937 and early 1938, the victory of crucial naval battles secured the Sea of Orixtal to royal forces. Constant barrages from artillery and aircraft, as well as costly assaults, prompted the Burgundian commanders to organize and engage in a series of beach landings along the separatist flank, relieving the stalemate, and opening the corridor for a march into the core of the northern stronghold of the separatists. With the path opened, and the line broken, the remaining separatist forces were routed to the mountain city of Langlee, eventually being completely destroyed by a bombardment campaign by the Army Air Element.
After peace was signed, the Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Emperor, Franz IV, was captured, along with many members of his cabinet and government, tried in Vilauristre, and executed on April 16, 1939, exactly six years after the war had started. The Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire was officially dissolved and its royal charter revoked on February 4th, 1938. A cadet branch of the ruling Burgundian royal family, the House of Marius, thenceforth known as the House of Marius-Drovana was installed as the princes of the newly created Flordeterra. Soldiers who fought for Burgundie and loyalists were granted massive concessions, forever shifting the power away from the Germanic Protestant residents to a smaller class of Catholic Bergendii veterans and elites. The Army of Burgundie also shifted many of its Foreign Legion units' bases to Flordeterra and created the Flordeterran Division out of the remaining parts of the Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Imperial Army. While provinces had been brought under the direct control of Vilauristre, Flordeterra remains labeled as foreign in many aspects by the Levantine Burgundians.
Contents
- 1 Background
- 1.1 Krizovatkan Genocide
- 2 Kronatan Secession
- 2.1 Preparation
- 2.2 Declaration of War
- 3 Course of the War
- 3.1 Early Stages
- 3.2 Operation Breathless
- 4 Aftermath
- 5 Timeline
Background
The Burgundian Grand Crona Trade Empire's turmoil in New Burgundie began with its defeat in the War of Faskano Strait, and the surrender of the imperial military in 1916. The resulting debt due to war reparations, and the destruction of vital infrastructure in northeastern Krizovatka, placed pressure on the imperial government to reform the crumbling economic policy. The response from the Emperor, however, was to silence reform groups and censor anti-government movements, causing wide-scale distrust toward the imperial government. With an uneasy population and a crashing economy, the empire was faced with ever-increasing destabilization, especially within the Krizovatkan populations.
In 1929, the Imperial Minister of the Populus, Heins Karler, was charged with finding a solution for the unrest building in the empire. He determined that the only way to salvage the Empire and reunify its people was to bring forth a common enemy. However, the faulting power and growing distrust within the government meant that risking a war with another nation would spell certain defeat for the Imperial Military. By 1931, Karler had devised and proposed an alternative instead, calling it a, "two birds with one stone," situation. The particularly unrestful Krizovatkan people would be branded, in its entirety, enemies of the state, and responsible for the defeat in the Kiro-New Burgundian War. Minister of Propaganda, Adolf Scheltzer, was charged with undertaking a massive campaign to, "show the soulless darkness that lies underneath every Krizovatkan's façade. Proving once and for all the existence of the evil inside them that vies to destroy our great Empire."
The campaign saw great success in many areas of the Empire, especially around the core provinces of Grand Drovana and Hohenseen. Within weeks, thousands of Krizovatkan homes, businesses, and churches were ransacked, vandalized, and even burned. The public humiliation of Krizovatkans became routine, especially within the Imperial capital of Drovan. The state began sponsoring official Traitor Disgrace Days, which involved the beatings, and even the killings, of tens of thousands of Krizovatkans. However, in some areas of the empire, especially the areas surrounding the Drovan River, skepticism and disgust with the Imperial actions against Krizovatkans was growing. Protesting, protection of Krizovatkans, and even some rioting against the government escalated.
In face of ever-increasing destabilization in the Drovan area, Heins Karler decided that the only surefire way to end the rioting was to remove the Krizovatkan catalyst. On November 29th, 1932, Emperor Franz IV was shown the plan coordinated by Karler. While much of the official plan was lost as the government burned all that it could in the final days of the war, what is certain is that the end result would be the "complete elimination of Krizovatkan people, culture, and religion from the nation and the world." By the next morning, the Emperor had approved the plan, and its preparations were set in motion.
Krizovatkan Genocide
Historians worldwide agree upon this period being identified as the single darkest era in Krizovatkan History, known in German as the Große Schlachten, or Great Slaughter, or better known by non Krizovatkans as the Krizovatkan Genocide. On the 25th of December, 1932, the Fakolan Empire began gathering, isolating, and shipping people of the Krizovatkan Region, and the people ethnically tied to it, to hidden and isolated slave and death camps.
These camps provided very few necessities for the Krizovatkan Prisoners. A meal a day, a metal bed, and ten hours a day of mining metals. If they failed to meet their quota, were injured on the job, or failed to address the Fakolan Imperialists with the respect they demanded, they would be sent to a death camp. Death camps' functions were to eliminate any and all ethnically Krizovatkan people who failed to meet the expectations of Fakolan Industry. Methods of death include, but weren't limited to, gunshots, stab wounds, gas, drowning, poison, being buried alive, being dropped from high altitudes, and being beaten with blunt objects.
In the beginning of the Genocide, from 1932 to mid-1933, prisoners taken to labor camps were separated by age and gender. As the unrest between the Empire and the swiftly strengthening Drovan Resistance Movement increases, the efficiency of Krizovatkan Labor and death camps begin to decline as their inhabitants hope for liberation in the near future, however, many prisoners do not live long enough to see it. In the early months of 1933 the unrest and rebellion escalates to a full scale war between separatists and loyalists, however this news is intentionally kept from the guards of the camps as to not bring suspicion in the prisoners. Only the camps near to the Kroatzein territory understood what was to come.
In the winter of 1935 to 1936, following the separatist triumphs in the Sea of Orixtal, came the Stunde der Verzweiflung (Hour of Despair), where the Fakolan Empire began emptying the labor camps into the death camps and slaughtered Krizovatkans by the millions. Death camps were overstocked with Krizovatkans to be executed. As the officers were told of the course of the war and probability of liberation for the camps they began digging mass graves, where they dumped thousands of living Krizovatkan people, and thousands more of their dead on top.
Kronatan Secession
Preparation
In the first week of December, 1932, local politicians and imperial military officers around the Drovan river area, including an envoy for the Mayor of Drovan City, met in the small town of Katzenlohe to discuss preparations for an armed coup d'etat against the government, in an effort to reform it. An agreement between the parties had already been made, in that, under no circumstances, should harm come to the royal family. On the third day of meeting, December 5th, as heated discussion was underway, a messenger from Drovan arrived, bearing news deemed, "of the utmost importance and urgency."
Under authority of the Emperor and his government, I have been forced to renounce any and all citizenship of, civil rights for, and even the very concept of the co-existence with, the Krizovatkan people within the city of Drovan. It is with a gun to my skull, but metaphorically and, darest I say, quite literally, that I was forced to sign such a law into immediate enforcement within the federal city. I shall conduct all actions that I can to subvert this motion of the Imperial government, but the knowledge persists that Drovan is not the only region where such similar devices have been put into effect. I urge the delegacy to find ground quickly, as time wasted is time for Krizovatkan lives to be desolated.
By the next meeting on December 6th, the meetings had turned from planning a coup, to planning a revolution. Over the next two weeks, the delegates compromised and developed a document, called the Katzenlohe Agreement, creating a new region of Kronatan People within the Fakolan Empire, providing itself with full autonomy against the imperial government. This region would have the full capabilities of any sovereign state, including the ability to formulate treaties with foreign nations, establish a standing armed forces, and the passing and disregarding of laws independent from the imperial government's, thus making the Kronatan region de facto independent from the Empire. On December 23, 1932, the Mayor of Drovan, Josef Gustavan, signed the Agreement as law for all imperial territories along the Drovan river.
Declaration of War
It would take another week and a half before the new Kronatan Assembly organized itself enough for a formal declaration of war.
Course of the War
Early Stages
Operation Breathless
At the onset of war, the various secessionist military command were divided on the issue of what course the war would take. The southern states were confident that with the help of the other powers involved, they coulde secure the victory by the end 1933. The main opponents of this position was Major-General Christoffel Jonckheer who doubted a decisive victory could be achieve in such a short amount of time by what was, at the time, multiple armies with limited coordination. Many imperial officers had deserted to the secessionist side, but those were jugde insuffisent to garantee victory against a centralized and higly efficient imperial military. In the end, General Jonckheer and the few who had sided with him were proven right, when in early 1935 only a stalemate had been achived with little to no territorial or tactical gain. The Kronatan general opinion blamed the situation on the Vostari high command who had used the 2 years to reinforce their border and organize their military, all the while only offering limited support to the general war effort. Unbeknownst to the public though, the Vostari had actually been carefully planning Operation Breathless (Vostari: Operation Ademloos) in conjuncture with the Kronatan army. The operation had but one objective: To sap as much men and equipment away from the Kronatan front and disturb the imperial suply lines, thus giving the Kronatan military the opportunity to lauch amphibious assault in the spring of 1936. On february 21st 1936, the 1st and 2nd Vostari Army, as well has 3 divisions of the Bergstrijder crossed the Beikpiek and stated to destroy as much of the industry as the could and seizing vast stretch of land.
A crossing the mountain chain of Vostari states was believe to be impossible, espacialy during the winter, but with careful planing, the Vostari military command had slowly transfered both men and equipment to the border ever since the outbreak of war. By november 1935, the Bergstrijder (Vostari's mountaineer troops) had secured a route over the Beikpiek and Mount Luus (Luusberg). That allowed the army to move to the other side of the natural border, and the complacent imperial high command never even thought to watch their north-western border, thinking that if the Vostari army was to make a move, they would do so through their southern border which was in the lowland.
On the 1st of March, the Imperial 12th Army made contact with the 2nd Vostari Army, while the 1st Vostari Army was retreating to avoid the 5th and 8th Imperial Armies. The Fakolan High Command pushed hard against the Vostari and ended up retaking much of their teritory until, on March 6th, the Vostari 3rd Army and the 7th Bergstrijder crossed Luusberg and encircled the 3 imperial armies with the help th 1st and 2nd Vostari Armies. With a large portion of the imperial forces stuck north and with no way for the Fakolan Empire to send a relieve without endagering the souther front further, the Kronatan military lauches the ambitious amphibious landing plan that would end the war.