The Britannian War
The Britannian War, or the Razing of Britannia, was a conflict fought between the united nations of Britannia and Sammichian colonial forces from 1676-1679 CE. The conflict was the result of a dispute between a rogue Britannian paramilitary and the newly-acquired Sammichian town of Little Wangleton, and exploded into a massive total war for survival. In the following bloody and destructive war, three quarters of the population of Britannia was eradicated from the region (mostly due to famine and enslavement) and the entire race of Britannians was segregated to the Northern coast of the continent, where they would eventually found the Republic of Orange and Purple.
Background Context
Throughout the southwest of Britannia, splinter factions, zealots, pretenders, and particularists all competed for power with the monarchy, which resorted to paying off whoever was the weakest in order to kill those who were stronger. This led to a rise in reactionary paramilitaries, including the notorious Hunter Corps (Dutch: Jagercorps). The Corps led expeditions into the countryside, terrorizing farmers and townspeople who were too weak from famine to fight back. They raped, pillaged, and looted their way into Little Wangleton territory. The witches of the Delphic Coven cast a spell to keep the scourge from attacking the town, but this only made the Jagercorps more determined. They infiltrated the village by night and committed hate crimes and assaults against witches young and old. They snuck in during crowded market days, blending in amongst the Zeeder and Eesti merchants and consumers, and defiled houses and stands of those who harbored the witches. The Delphic Coven began casting spells to differentiate these witch hunters from the rest of the crowd, to be arrested on the spot.
When a rogue witch who had had enough harassment struck back by sinking a ship filled with Jagercorps mercenaries bound for Taynia in 1653, the rest of the army hatched a plan, then disbanded. Over the next few years, the Jagercorps infiltrated the Delphic Coven, lulling them into a sense of security. In 1670, the first Witch Trial was held across the river from Little Wangleton in a village near the Riverland. Over the next five years, over 130 witches would be sentenced to death by the Jagercorps, including former Corps members themselves. The Third Federation attempted to squash the out-of-control behavior, but the Jagers would disappear into the forests and hills, and Trials had now extended from the Jagercorps to the Little Wangletonians themselves, who blamed the witches for the chaos. The Third Federation looked to the Suuth monarch to stop the violence, but the response was uncaring and even supportive from the halls of Denguus III. International outrage was widespread, from Caffa to Sol, from Fulfwotz to Clementine.
In 1674 CE, the Kingdom of Fulfwotz, having newly acquired the colony of Activia, caught wind of the Trials and immediately blamed the Third Federation, unaware of the fact that Suuth still existed as a sovereign state condoning the Trials. The Sammichians annexed Little Wangleton in 1675, and stationed a 4,000-man garrison of colonial soldiers in the town. It was discovered at this time that the subject of one of the Witch Trials was none other than King Tophaeres III's daughter and heir. The King blamed the Federation, not knowing the Suuth's involvement in the crisis. Some historians believe that at this time, the King had already made up his mind to take military action, as drafts of mobilization were already being written for unknown reasons in Fulfwotz in early 1676.
The Sammichian contingent was better equipped and better trained than most of the Third Federation's army and all of the Suuth forces, and this greatly impressed the Jagercorps. Their bloodlust led them down from the mountains to the Federation side of the Wangleton River, where on a crowded market day, 750 Jagercorps soldiers wearing Federation and Suuth uniforms fired two musket volleys onto soldiers and civilians in the town, killing 18 and wounding 3. The garrison responded by organizing and firing back, killing 7 and wounding 12 Corps members. The Jagercorps retreated, but left behind the wounded, who all claimed to be Britannian regulars from both armies. Fulfwotz took this to be fact and declared war on all of Britannia on October 12th, 1676.
1676
Initial Actions
The war began with the Little Wangleton Garrison taking positions across the river in the forests of the Zeeder. The Zeeder retaliated with their naval superiority by bombarding these forces, refusing to allow them to fortify. The initial goal of the Federation was to contain the Sammichian forces, but not to harm their civilians. A Nooter army of 12,000 pikes, musketeers, cavalry, and cannons then occupied fortifications in the hills above Little Wangleton. Their superior position drove the enemy back across the river to wait for reinforcements. On October 26th, 9,500 Sammichian colonial veterans marched over the mountains into Phobon valley to relieve Little Wangleton, but they came into contact with over 25,000 Eesti soldiers, equipped with antiquated swords, chainmail, crossbows, and spears. In the First Battle of Phobon on October 27th, 1676, over 19,000 casualties were inflicted on the Eesti, while the Sammichians suffered less than 1,500. Leaving behind 1,000 to occupy Amica, the 7,200-strong army reinforced Little Wangleton unopposed.
The Federation in Crisis
Hearing of the staggering losses from the Eesti, the Federation army and navy gave up on its wargoal and adopted a new strategy of all-out total war. In Purpur and Grinvalde, manufactories and workshops churned out weapons by the dozens every day, and training was non-stop in regimental camps. The navy cranked ship-building to a maximum, including making several expensive galley purchases from their rival, Caffa. Massive fortifications and earthworks, including the star citadel Fort Grazigberg, were erected in choke points throughout Federation territories. The Federation war machine was capable of cranking out two galleons a month and 1,000 trained soldiers every week. The only problem was that Suuth and Eesti could not keep up, and Riverland had no manufacturing capabilities besides a single workshop where blacksmiths, gunsmiths, fletchers, and bowyers had to take shifts working around the clock.
On November 20th, 7,000 Sammichian soldiers left Little Wangleton and moved Southeast through the Phobon valley to finish off the Eesti. The Federation told the Suuth to immediately cut them off with their entire army, more than 35,000 strong. The Suuth, however, declined and instead sent 3,000 soldiers of the newly reformed Jagercorps to harass the supply lines of the Sammichians. Instead of mounting an effective campaign, though, the Delphic Coven cast a spell which led to the Jagercorps all receiving dysentary from the same river, thus rendering 3,000 troops out of action for at least two weeks.
The Siege of Eastport began on November 24th, and could not be lifted by any best effort, due to early snows that rendered large-scale movement useless. The siege forces were reinforced by land with 3,000 fresh troops on December 9th, and Eastport fell in a bloody assault on the 20th. The city was ransacked through and through, then razed to the ground. Colonial forces took it on themselves to massacre or enslave every man woman and child in the city upon capture, but many escaped and hid in the forests outside the city, later being evacuated by sea to the north or joining the Enpeecee population of Amica. This event marked the beginning of the Britannian diaspora.
1677
The Assault on Little Wangleton
The occupying force of 10,000 men would remain in the city until the snowmelt in March, and the Federation knew this, so an operation to capture Little Wangleton was incubated in December. In the dark morning hours of January First, 1677 CE, over 13,000 Zeeder soldiers and artillery were landed on the peninsula east of Little Wangleton, and the 12,000 Nooter troops stationed in the hills moved down to the riverside. At the break of dawn, new years day, artillery on the hills, water, and peninsula bombardeded on the town for 24 hours straight, killing 60 civilians and 189 soldiers. When the assault began the very next dawn, the attackers were horrified to find that the Sammichian fortifications had held, and were even strengthened in some places by round-the-clock civilian repairs. The 4,000 strong garrison, along with 250 militiamen and witches, held off 25,000 Britannian regulars for 18 hours of assault.
Word was received that very day in Eastport of the attack, and the army of 10,000 immediately set fire to the 1,000 year-old city, leaving 1,000 men behind to ensure that no settlement would remain as they marched back to Wangleton. On the way, they discovered the camp of Jagercorps men, who immediately surrendered with an offer to change sides in the war. Showing no quarter, the colonial soldiers butchered every last person in the Corps, including approx. 300 camp followers. They then burned the camp and marched onwards. Only upon receiving word of this did Denguus III realize the magnitude of the crisis, but did not dispatch his 35,000 to fight the Sammichians until after winter, in March.
After four failed assaults on Wangleton that day, the Zeeders immediately began reembarking their troops, now down to 8,000 at arms, and landed them outside of Purpur well away from the Sammichians. The Nooters withdrew as well after a closing artillery salvo, having fared worse with a surviving force of 7,500. The Wangleton garrison held, but at the cost of 120 militiamen and 2,200 trained soldiers, and 15 civilians.
General Hasa's Letter
When the relief forces arrived, they were shocked to find much of the old city damaged, and large numbers of wounded and dead men laid out on the snow in the square. In a rage-induced spasm of Sammichian penmanship, Colonial General Amicus Hasa wrote a spirited letter to the King, demanding that he send "50,000 of the Empire's best men to wipe this barbarian filth from the face of the earth." Upon reading this letter on January 16th, the emperor supposedly stated, "Wow, that's racist." then proceeded to send 15,000 of his worst-trained, worst-behaved colonial troops to Britannia, in the hopes that they would learn a lesson in morals. They were designated Battalion X, which the men boasted made them true Xamichine descendants.
Hasa's Letter is today archived in the Suerdem Memorial museum, which details the Britannian Culture. It is widely considered one of the most valuable and significant documents in Britannian History, next to the scriptures of RNG and the Handvest van de Republiek van Oranje en Paars.
Beginning of the Downfall
All sides waited out the rest of the winter before returning to the fight. The Nooters and Zeeders raised their armies at breakneck speed, with each nation hosting an army of about 16,000 by March 1677. The King of Suuth had an army of 35,000, but refused to raise any more levies because his vassals were growing impatient with him. On March 12th, the 15,000 new colonials arrived to meet the Wangleton forces. Amicus Hasa combined the armies, giving them the title "The Legion Xamichine" (In his journals, Hasa wrote of his adopting the new soldiers' belief in "Xamichine descendancy"). He then began his march with 24,000 soldiers into the Riverland on March 15th.
Second Battle of Phobon
The Riverland defense was supervised by Nooter engineers, who organized massive tracts of earthworks in key defensible locations throughout the grasslands. The goal was to make the necessary river crossings so hazardous that the Sammichians would have to split their forces and flank around, then Federation forces would attack from the North and Suuth from the South, catching the entire Sammichian army in a pincer, crushing them. This plan would have worked, because the Federation fielded over 30,000 trained, well-equipped, and battle-ready troops, and the Suuth fielded 35,000 adequately trained and equipped soldiers, but Denguus III desired glory for the Suuth above all else. On March 15th, he consolidated his forces in the Phobon valley for a head-to-head fight with the Sammichians, ignorantly thinking that Suuth numbers and his own ill-advised "tactical brilliance" would win the Second Battle of Phobon. The result was a massacre, with over 27,000 Suuth casualties, including the King, who was shot off his horse by a Sammichian crossbowman, and trampled beneath his own cavalry. The routed Suuth forces ran in every direction, with most reaching Riverland, but 3,000 others retreating to the East, where they were cornered on the slopes of the Phobon mountains and slaughtered. The second victory at Phobon put a 5,000-man dent in the Legion Xamichine, but the return of the 1,000-man Eastport ransack garrison covered for the losses with fresh troops.
The Armadillo Strategy
The Federation was now at a loss of 30,000 expected troops, and had no hope of regaining that number. The plan changed to all-out survival. Half of Riverland was scorched in order to harass the enemy, and plans were made to evacuate Suerdem. The fortifications of Grinvalde were brought to maximum preparedness, and Purpur destroyed all land routes into the city. Known as the Armadillo Strategy, this defensive strategy still exists today as a method of protecting the Continental Provinces in the Republic of Orange and Purple.
Modern critics of these actions cite the inhumanity in its abandonment of the Rivermensen and the Suuth, and the usage of that land as a buffer state against the Sammichian forces. Proponents of the use of this strategy cite that it saved the Britannian race from annihilation, and allowed the Nooters and Zeeders to create the Republic, thus prolonging the survival of the Britannian race for all time.
Spring of Sorrows
The Legion Xamichine entered the Riverlands unopposed on the 20th of March over an icebridge and a light snowfall. Knowing that he would find no food in the already-burning croplands ahead of him, Hasa forced his slave battalion to run supplies from Wangleton and Phobon. As his troops drew nearer and nearer to the heart of the Riverland, his troops grew more reckless. They began branching off into nearby towns and slaughtering the townsfolk. Reports of rape and murder that made it back to Hasa were denied, and Hasa turned a blind eye. Very soon, men were all but deserting their posts to ransack the villages of the Riverland. The destruction was so great that the Spring of 1677 is permanently remembered as the "Spring of Sorrow" in Britannian folklore. When Hasa victoriously marched into the fortress of Tyne on April 15th, the fortress was already abandoned. The Rivermensen were too starved and downtrodden to fight the invaders, and thus suffered at the hands of the bloodthirsty Legionnaires.
As the Northern Armies perfected their defenses, the Suuth government was in chaos. Evacuations were going too slowly and the merchant class refused to assist in the effort, because they were too busy draining the treasury of materials and bullion. When word reached Suerdem of Tyne's fall and the slaughter of the Rivermensen, the Suuth emptied the forests, village by village. Only the old and infirm were left behind, as anyone who could walk and carry supplies retreated to the seacoast. The Northern Fleet attempted to evacuate as many civilians as possible, and merchants from Tomoya tried the same, but the amount of refugees kept the process slow.
Amicus Hasa meanwhile ordered the dismantling of the Riverland. He hired slavers to haul off the population, village by village, and ordered his troops to aerate and salt the farmlands twice over, rendering them infertile for generations. Finally, as he prepared for his next campaign against the Nooters, he gave one last order to his garrison: "dismantle all physical remnants of this civilization." These 3,000 men of the Riverland Garrison would be in charge of the dismantling of Tyne and the burning of the villages.
Campaigns in the North
Fort Grazigberg
On June 30th, with 17,000 eager men behind him, Amicus Hasa departed Tyne and traveled the Riverroad towards Grinvalde. There, an army of more than 11,000 Nooter veteran land troops were waiting, buried in hundreds of miles of earthworks. The center of the fortifications was the star citadel of Fort Grazigberg, which commanded an excellent view of the fields surrounding it. Place exactly at the Neck of the Grinvalde peninsula, it posed a difficult threat to Hasa's army.
Still riding off the high of conquest, Hasa deployed his army just outside the cannon range of Fort Grazigberg on July 9th. He confidently sent out surrender conditions to the commander of the Nooters. The response was a mooning by almost all of the 5,327 men stationed with the citadel. Enraged, Hasa ordered a general barrage lasting 3 hours, followed by an assault of 5,000 crack veterans and 6,000 regulars. The assault was repulsed with heavy losses, and in a foolish maneuver, Hasa gave up the Western flank of his siege when he sent in an extra 2,000 men to support the assault. In a matter of minutes, 6,000 Nooter soldiers erupted from their hiding places in the fields west of the fort.
Overwhelmed and surprised by the shock charge, the Sammichians routed from the Citadel, leaving behind valuable equipment and horses. Once the Legion Xamichine regrouped, the Nooters had returned to their defensive positions, now better armed than the day before and only short 500 men. Hasa returned to his camp with significantly less weaponry than when he departed and 4,000 less men. He immediately sent a letter to the Emperor, embellishing his victories, and requesting another 10,000 men to "finish the savages off". Unbeknownst to his advisors, however, he sent 4 other letters to the most powerful families in Caffa, requesting aid. The tide of the war would turn thanks to Hasa's ingenious diplomatic maneuver.
The Caffan Incursion
Of Hasa's four letters to Caffa, 2 were subsequently thrown out by the receiving families, and another was "left to be decided" by the Emilio family. The fourth, sent to Commodore Graziano, commander of the Caffan fleet, was exactly what the man had been looking for. In September 1677, Graziano began personally scrambling the fleet, proposing an "advantageous mission" to attack the Britannians in the North. As the magistrate had rejected Graziano's attempts for a war declaration, he poured his own money into hiring out mercenaries and merchant marines to do his bidding. On October 2nd, before the harsh winter of the West could prevent offensive operations, Graziano sailed out of Caffa's harbor with 15 Galleys, 2 Galleons, and 12 Flutes loaded with 300 mercenaries each. The mission was to collect supplies and equipment on the way in Valenciennes, Knavobuki, and Taynia, so that the marines could hold a blockade for the winter, possibly.
Graziano received word that Emperor Tophaerus III had sent only 2,000 soldiers to reinforce Hasa, so on his stop in Knavobuki, he made a deal with an army of Taynian Vikings that they could keep any loot they take from Britannia. They agreed to fight for the Sammichians for extra pay (out of Graziano's pocket). 2,000 Taynians hopped into their longboats and together with the Caffan fleet, sailed for the Bay of Zeeder, convinced that nothing could get in their way. After dropping 9,000 mercenaries and Taynians off near the Ivory Beach Isthmus, the fleet moved north to relieve the blockade of Little Wangleton, and threaten Purpur itself.
The Zeeders received word from trading partners in the small nation of Birchbosque that the Caffan fleet was approaching. The news had not traveled fast enough, however, and as the Zeeder fleet lifted their anchors, Graziano's fleet was spotted on the horizon. Admiral Pieter van Nootzee, an aging and seasoned commander, ordered his ships into battle formation, to fight to the death if they must. The Zeeders were trapped in the battle for a total of 15 hours, with massive casualties on both sides. When the Caffan formation began to break, Graziano called off his ships and ordered a withdrawal, waving a white flag.
In a moment of confusion, many of the Taynian ships took the flag as a sign of surrender. Disgusted, they did not remain with the Caffans, leaving a few messengers behind to recall their mercenaries and offer a truce to the Zeeders. The Zeeder fleet was horribly battered, and although Pieter van Nootzee returned home with a broken fleet, his sailors praised him for not backing down nor abandoning his ships. The Zeeder fleet would remain anchored for the rest of the war, and although Graziano secured victory, he was forced to anchor in Wangleton Gulf for the remainder of that winter, unable to besiege Purpur.
1678
Invasion of Suuth
On January 4th 1678, Hasa received his mercenaries from Graziano, and later that week, he received a reply from the Emperor, stating that 5,000 were on their way and that there would be no further reinforcements. Without the Taynians nor the Emperor's reinforcements, Hasa was short 7,000 men for his plans to re-invade Nooter. To make matters worse, the Riverlands had no grain, and the fields were already destroyed by his own reckless orders. In a bold move to remain in control of the situation, Hasa ordered his army forward into the forests of the Suuth.
Town by town and village by village, they conquered more territory, this time securing the winter stores of each town as they went, and enslaving the locals. By January 20th, Hasa had cleared a path from the Riverlands to Suerdem itself. With a corridor from Tyne to Suerdem, Hasa split his forces, with one minor force seizing the farmlands in the far South, and another invading the western end of the continent. The force in the farmlands of the far South encountered little resistance, and made massive gains in supply and slaves. The loss of the southern farmlands was a crucial gain for Hasa, and the death blow to the Suuth, who now faced a full siege of their capital with nowhere to run but the sea.
Tragedy in the West
Upon departing the camp of Hasa, the recorded actions of the Western Detachment (mostly made up of Caffan Condottieri mercenaries) become murky. From the few recordings there are, we know that the detachment was halted by representatives of a Suuth deserter army on February 1st, and that a deal was struck between them and the Caffans. The two forces broke orders and went bandit, burning villages and plundering the countryside. A rush of civilians fled northwards towards the free city of Portroyal, and westwards towards the Suuth settlement of Uuchet. Those who fled via Portroyal mainly ended up staying in the city or scattered across the Western Shire via merchant vessels. The ones who fled to Uuchet, however, were not so lucky. The next Nooter ship to dock in the destroyed port entered a silent husk of a city, save a few unlucky souls, cleaning up and disposing of the dead. The survivors reported that the mercenaries launched diseased corpses into the town by makeshift catapults, and the Deserters snuck in through the sewers and sacked the town. After a disagreement on who got to keep the spoils, the Caffans sieged the city again with the Deserters inside, and every last brigand was slaughtered in the assault. One of the survivors, a young Brim de Vers (who would later found the Paarsdam Merchant's Guild) hid in a longboat in the port during the first and second assaults, and in later life wrote a history of the conflict from his own perspective, today known as "When Silver Burned Green". Much of our contemporary knowledge of the siege of Uuchet comes through his account.
The Siege of Suerdem
With the Suuth completely defeated, Hasa awaited the word of surrender from the city of Suerdem. His reinforcements arrived from the East on February 25th, boosting his besieging numbers to over 21,000. The forces within the city numbered a well-trained and disciplined 6,500, but was steadily dwindling due to food shortages and desertion. The remaining civilians were continuously evacuated, but as the seas calmed in the North, the Nooters could no longer afford to send their ships southwards, and the threat of Sammichian artillery gave many captains reason to steer clear of the city for fear of losing their whole fleets.
Trapped in the city, cannibalism grew, especially among civilians. The garrison had rationed most of the leftover food amongst themselves, and as the siege crept on for months, they too would sometimes resort to eating the weak. Ersatz, leaves, bark, and grass became common food substitutes, and fish from the sea, though meager, kept the garrison well-fed. Plagues broke out to worsen the famine, and when space ran out for burying, many corpses were left in the street or thrown into the water. Several diseased cadavers were even launched at the besiegers, causing a breakout in disease amongst them as well.
On May 3rd, 1679, Hasa ordered the final assault to begin against a breach in the Eastern part of the Wall, as well as the Northern gate. The battle raged on for hours of hand-to-hand combat and close-range musket volleys. The outdated firearms and antiquated melee infantry of the Suuth was effective for a time, but as they tired, the onslaught became more one-sided. In a cunning move, Hasa and his own imperial guards mounted rowboats and landed on the Suerdem peninsula, assaulting the walls from the opposite side. Surrounded, exhausted, and panicking, the Suuth formations shattered. The Royal Guards stayed inside the city's citadel and protected its remaining relics until the last man, and the remaining soldiers either committed suicide, or attempted to flee by water in the last remaining boats.
In the aftermath of the battle, Hasa lost a hefty 3,452 men, while the Suuth lost everything. By the end of the siege and subsequent sacking of the city, only 8,000 Suuth survived the siege, out of an estimated 58,000 who were present at its beginning. In one enormous, calamitous, and catastrophic campaign, the Suuth civilization was completely destroyed. As Hasa's forces marched out of the destroyed city, he ordered not a single person to touch one stone of its wreckage, as a warning to any who dared oppose the Kingdom of Fulfwotz's might.
Subsequent Attrition
Word of the Suuth's complete and utter destruction was heartbreaking in the North, but it also motivated them to hasten their war economy. The Nooter fleet patrolled the Westenzee that Spring, finding several opportunities to skirmish with Commodore Graziano's raiding fleet. The Zeeders could not replace the navy they lost, but focused instead on improving its defenses. In colloquial Britannian (Dutch) the term "Winnend met Water" (winning with water) means to circumvent a major obstacle by creating another, and refers to the Zeeder's defensive plan, referring to the massive trench dug between Mt. Ijzer and the mainland, which was subsequently filled with water, forming a canal. Hasa attempted many times to circumvent the Zeeder and Nooter defenses, but each attempt failed. A war of attrition between the two armies began, forming an ugly stalemate between the two forces, with each side occasionally making an attempt to sabotage the others to little avail.
Fulfwotz In Turmoil
While the Britannian War was hailed amongst the military and royal circlesas being a massive success for King Tophaeres, his own authority was steadily eroding amongst the bourgeois and intellectual classes of the Kingdom. Many found the war disagreeable, seeing it as a self-serving and morally repugnant revenge conflict solely for royal interests. The merchants in particular despised the war taxes raised to support the invading force, and petitioned the King twice for an end to the conflict.
Having declared war on the Britannians out of his own despair on false pretenses (a fact that he came to despise being reminded of), King Tophaeres was himself tired of hearing the petitions for peace from his subjects and the spear-rattling from his Generals. After a stress-induced bout of pneumonia left him bed-ridden for weeks in the summer of 1679, it was Hasa's final letter requesting bombard cannons and "magic-powered flying machines" that convinced the King that Hasa had done enough.
The Treaty of Activia: 1679
On July 25th, 1679, the Federation received messengers from Fulfwotz, and the Emperor himself. While the tone of the letters offended many in Grinvalde and Purpur as dismissive and entitled, the central terms were agreeable for ending the war. Representatives of the two parties met in neutral Activia, where an official Treaty written in the Emperor's hand was signed. The terms of the treaty were as follows:
- All hostilities between the Britannian peoples and the Kingdom of Fulfwotz would effectively cease.
- Any captives or slaves would not be released unless specifically claimed by their nation of birth. (Suuth and Eesti were unaffected by this, as they would later discover their nations ceased to exist.
- The Federation of Britannia would continue to hold its sovereignty, and would be recognized as such by the Kingdom of Fulfwotz.
- All Britannians would be given a full pardon for any accusations against them.
- Amicus Hasa would retire, but would not undergo any sort of persecution for his actions as general. (Referred to today as the Butcher's Clause)
- Little Wangleton would continue to be a territory of the Kingdom of Fulfwotz, but would be free to trade with any nation it chooses in the interest of peace. Should the Britannians commit any act of war against a territory of Fulfwotz, it would be met by the full force of Xammichia once again.
- Commodore Graziano would be granted a fief within the Kingdom of Fulfwotz (later repealed when Graziano was arrested and executed for siphoning funds from the Caffan treasury to repay his sailors)
- The Kingdom of Fulfwotz would be free to colonize and/or annex any territories it sees fit in the vicinity of the Western Sea, without threat of repercussion.
- Greater Britannia would remain further unsettled and uncolonized by either party without each others' permission.
With these terms signed into law, the conflict was officially over, and Britannia returned to a cold peace. The nations in ruins and its population scattered as captives and refugees, there was never a chance for the continent to return to what it once was. Many Suuth and Eesti never returned to Britannia or the Western Sea at all, but the ones who did began to crave a city of their own, defensible and glorious as a rebirth of their own civilizations.
Aftermath of Conflict
Founding of the Republic of Orange and Purple
With much of Britannia lying in ruins, the populations of Grinvalde and Purpur were starving, and famine took hold of many agricultural communities still struggling to provide subsistence. The influx of refugees during and after the war was breaking the back of public order, as ethnic tension begot riots and protests in the streets. By the end of 1680, the remaining Britannian civilizations almost seemed doomed to collapse. In order to avoid a catastrophe on the scale of the war itself, an emergency meeting was called of Britannian nobles, burghers, and other powerful representatives. From the meeting was born a great union between the last of the Britannians: The Republic of Orange and Purple. The Handvest van de Republiek-considered by many one of the Shire's first constitutions-was drafted, as well as a bill of rights to accompany it. It created three houses of government: The Afvaardigenhuis (Delegates House), The Gildehuis (Guild House), and The Volkshuis (People's House), as well as a mediative, rehabilitative judicial system controlled by the Volkshuis. The original capital was located in the Great Guildhall of Zeeder.
After the formal creation of the new Republic on August 1st 1681, the Britannians confronted the refugee crisis publicly, with a series of forums held in Purpur. Several solutions were considered, including settling the isolated continent of Thrennex to the north, or exploring the vast Westenzee to find the lost Wester city of Westenaarde. The true solution, finally chosen on July 27th, 1682, was proposed by Kristiaan van Tyne a former merchant of the Riverlands. A small, sandy island north of Purpur, barely inhabited and known only as Eiland Paars, would become the stage for a new city built entirely on water. Today that city would expand into the now capital of the Republic, Paarsdam.
Revolution and Civil War in Fulfwotz
After the Britannian War, things were not so calm and constructive in the Kingdom of Fulfwotz. Opponents of the war saw it as a largely dynastic affair, with King Tophaeres avenging his daughter's death, and intellectuals across the Kingdom appalled by the brutality of Hasa's actions. A rebellious faction within the Kingdom, the Vara se Populae, used the weakened state of the crown as a jumping-off point for a republican revolution. After a series of protests were bloodily crushed by the monarchy, the Vara se Populae gained greater power and support both outside and within the Kingdom. On September 17th, 1681, the Fulfwotz Civil War began with a mass attack on the Imperial Guard in Fulfwotz, and the Vara se Populae declared civil war on September 20th.
While the Vara se Populae was initially defeated in most of their major battles, a Republican Pact drawn up by leader Solomon Golding gathered significant manpower from the Demmatrodine Enpeecee population. In the early summer of 1863, a massive surprise attack ensued in Fulfwotz proper, and the capital city fell to an impressively large Republican army, with King Tophaeres III himself being surprised in Castle Mugg mid-battle, and surrendering on the spot. With the fall of Fulfwotz and subsequent exile of the Royal Family, the Republican faction declared the First Chancelloric Republic in 1684.
Casualties and Accusations of Genocide
Such massive numbers have been reported in both oral and written histories that many have had reason to doubt their legitimacy, but with the advanced nature of the Sammichian training and tactics, as well as better equipment, counteracted by the majority zealous colonial soldiers that made up the reserve elements of the Sammichian colonial forces, the losses of the Britannians were absolutely staggering. The Suuth as a people were barely saved by the mass evacuations of civilians in May 1677, but their nation was ravaged. Out of an estimated 450,000 pre-war citizens, only 20,000 Suuth made it to Paarsdam by 1680, and an estimated 150,000 were either enslaved or forced to populate Sammichian cities across the Shire. About 100,000 ended up as refugees across the Western Shire, many running to Sol and Avignon, some making it as far as Gunderhelm and Spirulida. The other 180,000 Suuth peoples were left dead in their fields and cities. Most of which being the old and very young, due to starvation and disease. Most of the Eesti and Rivermensen managed to blend with the Enpeecees in Amica, which was later sold to Nuova Venezia, or escaped to Paarsdam with the re-settlers. Their civilizations were also wiped from history, never to be seen again, along with over 80,000 of their people, dead or deported. In comparison, the Sammichians lost 18,510 soldiers in the entire campaign, along with 1,700 Caffan Mercenaries, and 115 civilians dead from the siege of Little Wangleton.
The fields were then salted or planted over, and the cities burned and ripped apart, looted for every valuable material that the treasure ships and soldiers could hold. The entire civilization of the Suuth, the Eesti, and the Rivermensen were erased from the continent forever. Just fields and forests. The last remnant of the Britannian civilization lies in Suerdem itself. The city was left a solemn ruin, not even dismantled as Eastport was before it, as a message to those who would fight Sammichian imperial authority.
To this day, the New Sammichian Empire remains unforgiven by the Republic of Orange and Purple for their actions in Britannia, despite multiple attempts to reconcile. The key conflict between the two nations was that the Colonial forces either did or didn't act outside of military central command, completely on Hasa's orders. There is also disagreement that the mindset of the colonizers that built the size and might of the New Sammichian Empire today, also contributed to the destruction of Britannia.