War of St. Brendan's Strait
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| War of St. Brendan's Strait | |||||||
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| Part of First Great War Kiro-Burgoignesc Wars | |||||||
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The culmination of the Kiro-Burgoignesc Wars, the War of St. Brendan's Strait was a conflict between Burgundie and Kiravia to settle territorial disputes in the confluences of the Odoneru Ocean, Tainean Sea, and Polynesian Sea, or as landlubbers would call it, the island chains between Crona and Sarpedon. The war lasted for a year and a half, from March of 1895 through August of 1896. Due to the equatorial climate and the advancement of technology, it was fought year-round, one of the first wars to do so in the Occidental canon, and is considered, along with the '97 Rising to mark the beginning of truly mechanized/modern warfare. It saw the first use of machine guns used by occidentals, against occidentals, solidified the preference for the pre-dreadnought over ironclads for naval ships of the line for "big gun navies" like Kiravia and Urcea, and the development of Jeune École by the Navy of Burgundie.
Background
The centuries-long Kiro-Burgoignesc Wars began to heat up in the 1860s and 70s when the various principalities and church-lands were mediatised during the First Fratricide. This specifically contentious after the unification of the Burgundie-Faramount Union, County Palatine of Estia, Duchy of Martilles, and the Duchy of Marialanus, into the The Grand Thalattocratic Republican Principality of Burgundie and her Commonwealth. The legal status of the various colonies administered by the countries that now made up Burgundie which were of interest to Kiravia was called into question and Kiravia laid claim to Islevenin colony, Nauta Normand, much of Equitorial Ostiecia, and reiterated its claim of Wintergen. These claims were initially tooth;ess and beyond commerce raiding and minor colonial skirmishes that had characterized the Kiro-Burgoignesc Wars to date, nothing else happened.
In 1894, Great Prince of Burgundie Pau II died and his son Esteve I came to power. The ambitious 42 year old Great Prince felt he was past his prime to rule and must therefore make up for lost time. He set about ambitious projects to centralize control of the Burgoignesc Thalattocracy among these efforts were some cultural and linguistic mandates which were unpopular everywhere, but especially so in the colonies. Previous rulers had been much more laissez-faire about how the colonies were administered as long as they were not hemorrhaging money. Esteve took a personal interest in the colonies and their administration which frustrated the ruling class as well as those they administered. Esteve toured Islevenin colony and Equitorial Ostiecia in early 1895 and was heavy handed with the Burgoignesc South Levantine Trading Company (BSLTC) officers who were in charge. He fired many of them and brought in industrialists and proto-scientific managers to "efficiencize" the colonies. He planned to do the same in all of Burgundie's colonies but his drastic shift, high expectations, and compressed timeline only got as far as two months into his tour when a mutiny erupted. Farmers who were being told to vacate their private land so that it could be combined into vast commercial farms managed by the (BSLTC) refused and killed the representatives. The Trade Company sent 50 guardsmen to enforce compliance but were attacked by the farmers. Soon fisherman and cottage industrialists who were also being forced to embrace industrialization joined them.
Prince Esteve branded them a luddite peasants revolt and demanded that the Trade Company illustrate that they were in charge or that he would replace them all....TBC