Kryfona Civil War

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Kryfona Civil War
Kryfonacivilwarbattles.png
Date:9 September, 1900–4 August, 1902
Place:Kryfona Kingdom
Outcome:
Combatants

Kreifonswies.png Kryfona Federation and Presidentialists

Foreign Brigades

  • Arieles foreign brigade.png Arieles Foreign Brigade
  • Stjetima foreign brigade.png Stjetima Brigades
  • Kryfona territory army.png Kryfona Territory Army

Kryfona royalist trans.png Monarchy in-exile (KRM) and Royalists

YaraaFlag.png Yaraan Kryfon's Movement

  • Partisan Yaraan militias
Commanders

Kreifonswies.png Yhurtienaid Qailenid

Arieles foreign brigade.png Tadis Fală
Stjetima foreign brigade.png Siwa Dainăn Kalen
Kryfona territory army.png Dazszne Varykel

Kryfona royalist trans.png Kghyilda Svariyantina

YaraaFlag.png Qasyimene Gautrik

Strength

1,557,225 soldiers (1900)
3,188,552 conscripts (1901)
>3,000,000 civilian 'soldiers'

1,899,440 soldiers (1900)
4,588,000 volunteers (1901)
>3,000,000 civilian 'soldiers'

Casualties

1,154,882 dead
2,599,421 WIA or captured

1,430,448 dead
2,349,331 WIA or captured

~800,000 civilian deaths and ~2,800,000 casualties
~3,400,000 dead and 7,800,000 wounded, MIA or captured
7,000,000 displaced

The Kryfona Civil War was a massive and devastating civil war that broke out in the Kryfona Kingdom–then established as the Kryfona Federation–on 9 September, 1900, running almost two years before concluding on 4 August, 1902. Of the nation's 62 million people, more than 18 million Kryfona mobilized and fought in the war in some capacity; a roughly equal number of these Kryfona fought on both sides of the war. A number of foreign legions, particularly of Arieles origin, also fought in the war, many of them on the side of the Presidentialists. As a practical matter, the war was total, and involved the political and military power of both sides. It is estimated that at least 3.4 million Kryfona were killed during the war, and another 7.9 million were wounded, captured, are missing in action, or another such circumstance. This makes the Kryfona Civil War the most devastating war in the history of the Kryfona Kingdom in terms of casualties and fatalities. The war was also devastating to the economy, political power, and military power of the Kingdom, and it would be almost four decades before the Kingdom made any sort of significant recovery.

The civil war began over what was by then a very serious and extremely controversial political and constitutional crisis in the Kingdom. A number of days after the death of King Yeqsrin Worissilo in early February of 1900, "King" Yhurtienaid Qailenid dissolved the monarchy and established a Federation in its place, effectively exiling the monarchy from the Kingdom–thereafter renamed the Kryfona Federation. At the time, there were no provisions in the Kryfona Kingdom establishing it as a monarchy in perpetuity; however there was an expectation that no King nor ruler would infringe upon the existence of the Monarchy, and Qailenid quickly crossed such a line. Despite backdoor politicking efforts on the part of the Kryfonsparliszaiye to resolve the situation, Qailenid was insistent upon the end of the Monarchy, and declared on 12 April, 1900 that the monarchy was "...over, and finished altogether as an institution." Subsequently, the Kryfona Royalist Movement–essentially the Monarchy in exile–established itself and began plotting for armed insurrection.

The plan for starting an insurrection was plotted out through most of spring and all of summer in 1900. Operation Jaigha Qailenid (literally, "Exile Qailenid"), as the insurrection came to be called, called for killing Qailenid and ending the Federation with force. The date for the insurrection established by the KRM was originally set on 8 August, 1900 but, owing to the successes of Yiulsztihq Vryge in convincing army leaders to go along with the idea, was ultimately pushed back to a month later, on 9 September. On that day, the plan was executed, but failed to capture Qailenid or kill him, resulting in a state of affairs akin to a coup d'état more than anything. Nonetheless, the government was pushed out of Nylzsryf. Subsequently, large scale revolt by the population against the government and aided by military support under Vryge established a "royalist enclave." This marked the beginning of the civil war.

Although they had early success in pushing out the government around Nylzsryf, it quickly became clear to the KRM that there would have to be an active war against the Federation to end the state upon the failure of Jaigha Qailenid. Although uprisings in Gelaa, Galaszyz, and Moszejye preoccupied the government and led to large gains around Nylzsryf, the government pushed back hard and vanquished forces trying to take Uszyaa. A failed effort to retake Nylzsryf also occurred in late November of 1900, by which point the "front lines" of the early war had essentially been established.

1901 was when the majority of the vicious fighting took place. With the rebels–now calling themselves the legitimate Kryfona government–in control of much of the rural land and small cities, they began a systematic campaign of attack against the government's cities. The government, in kind, would often strike back in tit-for-tat exchanges that largely went the way of the "better disciplined" revolutionaries. In theory, anyways (and usually in practice), the rebels had a far larger army and more manpower. Realistically, however, the forces were often even, and grueling battles ensued. By mid-1901, it was clear that the rebels had the upper hand, and they had taken a number of cities including Maszje, Walissa, and Teras from the government. Thus the government launched the Xisir Kil campaign, which sought to destroy the rebellion in one swoop. However, Xisir Kil was a disaster, and probably decisively broke the government's ability to fight. The government never again seriously challenged the rebels.

The war wound down in 1902, when it became clear that the rebels were likely to win. A gradual city-storming campaign began, and by early-1902 had kicked the government out of most of the east. Only the Western Kingdom remained a stronghold for the government; however, that too eventually fell. After a decisive campaign in the summer of 1902, the rebels began to storm Azsaeh and Wavoldes, the two remaining government strongholds. Fierce fighting occurred in both cities, but eventually, on 4 August, 1902, Qailenid gave an order of surrender to his troops, and the war was swiftly ended.

The war was the deadliest, costliest, and most destructive war in Kryfona history, and the Kingdom would not recover until the 1940s from the matter. The war led to the passing of the Kingdom Amendment of 1903, which established a perpetual monarchy, and also caused Qailenid to be exiled from the Kingdom permanently, in lieu of execution, which was the fate of many other "Presidentialists". Ultimately, however, the establishment of the Yaraan Kryfon's Movement as a political power would be one of the biggest results of the war, and it would cause the Kingdom great amounts of trouble in later parts of the new century.

Background

A great deal of things had to go wrong in the Kryfona Kingdom for the outbreak of the Kryfona Civil War to occur as it did. In many respects, the background to the story behind the war can be traced all the way back to the original split between Royalism and Loyalism, in the Crisis of Cizoqwi-Nizli and the establishment of the parties now associated with them. Generally, however, the outbreak of the war is traced to three specific events: the rise of the democratic-left from its grave, the subsequent rise of the Presidentialism Movement from the democratic-left in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and the ascent of the 31-year-old Yhurtienaid Qailenid to a position from which he ultimately was appointed to succeed King Yeqsrin Worissilo. All three of these events occurred effectively in lock-step, and did so in such a way as to guarantee the outbreak of the war. Thus, they are listed only partially chronologically.

1868-1876: Qailenid and his youth

Main article: Yhurtienaid Qailenid

Yhurtienaid Qailenid was born on 14 February, 1868 in Iliõrafili, the Arieles Kingdom's capital and largest city, and it was ultimately this event that set Qailenid up for not only his ascension to power, but also the political views that allowed him to rise in the first place. Qailenid's family had moved to the city not long before his birth–they had originally hailed from the Kryfona Territory within the Arieles Kingdom–in search of opportunity. His father had found it in the capital city, and subsequently the family settled there–an oddity among Kryfona. This had two effects on Qailenid growing up: one, he came to appreciate the Arieles system of power, in which the Monarch was not a supreme power as in the Kryfona Kingdom. Secondly, and more importantly, Qailenid was exposed to the then-blossoming liberal movement in the Arieles Kingdom that advocated for the establishment of a democracy and a presidential system. Qailenid at the time did not yet agree with it, but the ideas which had been implanted within him by the movement stuck with him, and sometime in his late childhood, he came to love the idea of a functioning democracy within his ancestors' country. Without these events, Qailenid would not have been able to ascend, for it was these that eventually got him into the cabinet of Yeqsrin Worissilo.

The upbringing of Qailenid in the Arieles Kingdom was only partial, it should be noted. Qailenid's family returned to the "motherland" of the Kryfona Kingdom in 1876, when he was a ten-year-old and greatly struggling in the majority-Arieles system. He soon thereafter was exposed to the monarchy which at the time he knew only from story, and which he would come to in many respects loathe for its supposed despotism and overbearing power. But this was to come later, and the ten-year-old Qailenid for the time settled down with his family in Nylzsryf, where he later would establish himself as a name in politics.

1870-1895: A surge of presidentialism

Two years after the birth of Qailenid, the first stages of the movement he would come to love began to establish themselves–very slowly, it must be said–on the other side of the border between the Arieles Kingdom and its Kryfonic counterpart.

Before the rise of the democratic-left and the establishment of the Presidentialist Movement in Nylzsryf, the ideology of presidentialism was rather fringe within the Kryfona Kingdom. Although not tethered to the political spectrum like other ideologies, presidentialism had simply never caught on in the Kingdom, owing to the successes of the monarchy after its implementation in 1248 and the failure of democracy in states like the First Adborthos Republic, where a democracy had been established but collapsed and was swept out of power by revolution in 1771. Likewise, the only "credible" movement for democracy in the Kingdom prior to the Presidentialist Movement, the Worker's Democratic Community, had been established nearly a hundred years before, and in a "predictable" fashion had self-immolated not long thereafter. Essentially, prior to the democratic-left's sudden resurgence, the only experiences Kryfona had with democracy or proponents of it had either failed simply, or exploded violently–in a sense, democracy in the Kingdom was associated with failure, and nobody wanted to associate with "failure."

The feelings of failure among Kryfona began to waver, however, with the establishment of the Democratic Front of the Kryfona Kingdom in 1874–in many ways, the first marker of the coming resurgent democratic-left in the Kingdom. The Democratic Front was tiny, of course, and in the grand scheme of things was a wholly irrelevant group in the politics of the time. But, its creation inspired the democratic-left and galvanized those who supported it. The year after, in 1875, the Democracy in the Kingdom organization established itself, and led the first members of the new democratic-left into politics. Of course, many of these members ultimately went nowhere and did nothing. Despite an energized democratic-left, the number of left-wingers elected was but a small bump. Democracy in the Kingdom was largely unsuccessful in its goals, and in any case democracy remained unpalatable to many of the Kingdom's citizens, who greatly preferred the King and the Monarchy. But it was a start, and one which only further energized some members of the democratic-left. By 1880, the left-wing democratic movement would establish a foothold for itself in the Kryfona Kingdom.

1884-1895: "Presidentialism first!"

The Kryfona Kingdom of the mid-to-late 1890s was undergoing something of an unusual transition, particularly in the political and governmental sectors. Very suddenly at the turn of the 1880s, what had previously been a quite nationalistic, imperialistic, and functionally jingoistic government under the King Yeqsrin Worissilo changed virtually overnight into one that more resembled a liberal, loyalist government, not unlike the one assembled by Werykoev Ceudininkon, an Aryela-born Kryfona. The U-turn in policy was likewise quite swift, and certainly unexpected from both within the government and outside of it; Worissilo, who previously had been well known as a "royalist," now suddenly shifted his attention to policies that would have been well placed in a loyalist manifesto.

There was quite a row, and certainly quite an amount of turmoil over the sudden shift. Worissilo had never been known for his liberal tendencies, at least not in public. (In private, he was certainly more liberal than he let on; however, that never became public in his life time.) Thus as the 1880s closed and became the 1890s, there was a sense of nervousness among the Old Guard of the Kingdom and the politicians of the Kryfonsparliszaiye that there was a great shift occurring beneath their feet, and Worissilo had sensed it when they had not.

There was. Although at the time, it was not immediately obvious, the left-wing in the Kryfona Kingdom was rising, and Worissilo was well aware that the politics of the Kingdom were about to shift. In 1881, there had been a sudden jolt in Adborthos-Yolatho Republic when, suddenly, the democratic process was introduced and became massively successful. The Palidaija, a great parliament intended to directly answer to the people, had been convened and a republic "officially" established. The monarchy of the Republic was thrown out, suddenly, and a New Guard rose up to take its place–that New Guard, of course, was very left-leaning. It had been years since then, of course, but it was clear that what had been a small fire was destined to grow. As the 1880s progressed, the Kryfona democratic-left saw a sudden uptick in growth and, eventually, in its overall size. When the monarchy had been done away with to no ill effects–or at least that's how it seemed– in the now-Adborthos-Yolatho Republic, it had made people aware that democracy could easily be implemented (or so they figured) in the Kingdom. The monarchy was useless–utterly, utterly useless!–those liberals then thought, and as the decade went on they only grew in number as the Adborthos experiment grew longer and longer.

They had no political power yet, of course, when Worissilo in 1889 had decided to begin his shift. But it was inevitable that the New Guard would take its place in politics, and Worissilo was a smart man. He stepped in early–without warning, as well–and shifted before the trouble brewed. He probably chose wisely. The confusion of the shift, the anxiety of the people, and the restlessness for the future suddenly came to a head in 1890, and without warning there burst onto the scene the first of that New Guard. A wave of left-wing candidates, political would-bes, should-bes, could-bes, and of course plenty of drop outs and failed prospects suddenly swept over the political landscape. The first "out-and-out" anti-monarchist organizations were formed in 1890. But the real, sincere efforts to implement the democratic process did not come until 1891. On a rainy, yet unseasonable March morning, the political party that is today known as the Presidentialist Movement was founded in Nylzsryf, and announced itself to thunderous applause in front of a crowd of that New Guard. Among them was a quiet royalist, yet sympathetic listener in Yhurtienaid Qailenid, an Iliõrafili-born Kryfona with the viewpoints of a Ceudininkon but the politics of an Awaseq.