A Guide to Recent Equestrian History

by mint20

The Harmonious Revolution

As with almost all revolutions, the Harmonious Revolution started with a declaration. This document is known by many names, including the Declaration of Equestrian Sovereignty, the Declaration of Harmony, the Declaration of War and Revolution, and the Declaration of the End of Chaos. No matter what it is called, the document declared that Equestria was a nation on its own, and Discord was no more than a foreign criminal, with no right to rule Equestria. Appropriately enough, the Declaration was signed on Hearth’s Warming Eve in 2143 by the Royal Sisters and every member of the Alliance that could make it to the secret council held on the fridge of the modern-day Everfree Forest, numbering around nine thousand. The signing lasted for almost three days, and by the end, the document stretched for several hundred pages.

News of the declaration spread like wildfire, engulfing the land. In almost every village, ponies rallied, cheering and weeping for the newly independent nation. Arms were distributed to everypony, regardless of age or gender. The drums of war were heard in every corner of the land, and trumpets blared as the ponies rose up in revolution.

War was upon Discord. While he remembered the Battle of the Republic, and he was no stranger to the nuncieses of combat, never before he he seen an entire population rise up so completely against anybody. As riots broke out and armed rebellion began, he struggled to put down the Harmonious Revolution. He quickly learned, however, Equestria was waging a total war. Absolutely everything, civilian or military, was levied to maximum. All ponies were expected to contribute in some way to the war effort, be it by fighting, smithing, or some other means. As 2143 ended, most everypony considered themselves ready for open war and direct confrontation.

However much they thought they were ready, though, the Equestrians were losers on the field of battle. In 2144, the ponies clashed with Discord outside a small settlement that would gradually evolve (after its utter destruction) to become Ponyville. Known as the First Battle of Ponyville nowadays, (although, there was no Ponyville at that time), the battle was brutal. As brave and determined the ponies were, Discord was still extremely powerful and cunning, able to easily defeat the two hundred thousand ponies that attacked him. The battle lasted for three days, and by the night of the third day, the battle had slain thousands. The Army of Equestria retreated, blowing horns and carrying the wounded.

After this shocking defeat, Equestria quickly changed tactics. Instead of meeting Discord in open battle, Celestia and Luna had the Alliance instead fight on the homefront: small local rebellions, and plenty of them. They knew that mighty as Discord was, he could not possibly put down very last rebellion.

However, Discord was aware of this, and he enlisted help in the form of the old ancestral enemies of ponies: Changelings. Now, this was one of Discord’s greatest mistakes. To put it bluntly, allying with the Changelings is one surefire way to piss everypony off.

And pissed off they were. Membership in the Alliance doubled after Changelings were first spotted. Many once-defectors switched sides back to Equestria, and even a few of the ponies from the Crystal Empire returned to assist their friends against the hated Changelings. In the years 2144-2146, thousands of skirmishes and minor engagements were fought against Discord and his Changelings. As a rule, the ponies tended to be very successful in small-scale battles, often driving back Changelings with few casualties.

War was the new trade of Equestria. After several years of fighting on the homefront, Celestia and Luna decided to once again risk open war. They marshalled an army of almost one million strong to face an army of Changelings at the Battle of Ghastly Gorge in late 2146. The Changelings numbered about one hundred thousand.

On the first day of battle, all seemed to be well. The ponies shoved the lesser force of Changelings around, commanding the battlefield. The ponies had taken very few casualties. Celestia and Luna fought on the front lines themselves, wielding their powerful magic to great effect, annihilating the enemy. However, the trap would come that night.

According to logs kept by the sisters and warriors, it was about three o’clock in the morning when an elite force of Changelings raided the camp where the ponies were stationed. It was slaughter. It was followed up by a much larger force of Changelings the next morning, and several ponies who turned their weapons on their fellows, due to the fact they weren’t ponies at all, but rather Changelings planted the night before. The battle quickly fell into disarray, and the Changeling forces capitalized on this, crushing the army.

The battle ended after two days, with over five hundred thousand dead or wounded, more than half. By comparison, the Changeling force, in spite of being outnumbered ten to one, had lost about forty thousand combat troops, most from the first day of battle.

It was clear to everypony who looked that something had to change. Discord remained as mighty and strong as ever, and his Changeling armies, while they had taken damage, seemed to be never-ending. It became clear that the ponies could not defeat Discord though the force of arms. Rather, something else had to happen.

Rumors of a powerful magic deep within what would later be called the Everfree Forest started to surface. Princess Celestia and Luna spent many months researching the so-called “divine power” before finally deciding to explore themselves. Their first expedition took place in the summer of 2147, and they explored much of the northern and western half of the forest. Nothing was discovered.

Discouraged, the expedition returned. The Harmonious Revolution seemed to be collapsing, no long a possible thing. When Celestia proposed another exploration, nopony responded.

Celestia was angered by the general apathy, and proposed to her sister, Why don’t we explore the eastern portion of the Everfree ourselves. Luna agreed, and they set off alone, to try to find mythical Elements of Harmony. The voyage lasted for many weeks, for only the pony(ies) who were pure of heart and absolutely determined could find the Elements. It is said that the Elements presented the Alicorns with trials, to test their charity, compassion, devotion, integrity, and optimism, to see if they truly did have the sacred right to posses the Elements. The Princesses refuse to discuss the trials that they faced, if they did at all.

Regardless, the sisters did eventually discover the Elements of Harmony. The sisters remember finding the Tree within a cave as stumbling into some kind of paradise. The Tree was strong enough to not only resist Discord’s magic, but also regulate the conditions of the cave and push back against Discord.

Embedded in the Tree of Harmony, if one thinks of the Elements and Tree, the best way of thinking of them is that the Elements both amplifies internal magic and taps into a force that resides in us all, the force that the Windigos found to be poisonous to hatred. The Tree, in turn, acts as some kind of power manger and battery, able to draw in more power than it needs to sustain its magic. In turn, the Tree stores the magic power for later use. This is how the Tree was able to regulate the Everfree Forest for over a thousand years after the Elements were removed. We will cover the Elements of Harmony and the Tree more in depth later in this book.

With the Elements of Harmony, Celestia and Luna felt that the time to advance against Discord and make a stand for Equestria had come. First, though, they had to convince the ponies of Equestria that it worth fighting for independence.

They called an emergency meeting of the Alliance, claiming to have found “the divine power with which we will defeat Discord once and for all, and banish him from this realm forevermore.” Interested, a huge number of ponies showed up, almost a million. The Alliance was lucky that at the time, Discord was preoccupied with a massive uprising at Pegasusoplis.

The sisters demonstrated the power of the Elements in a rather foalish and reckless move: they repeated the feat that earned their fame and Alicorn status. Using the combined power of the Elements and their own natural affinity for the heavenly bodies, they once again seized the Sun and Moon, showing that Discord’s power was no match for both the sisters’ and the Elements’.

Discord noticed this, and attempted to take back the heavens, only to fail miserably. This worried him, though he did have a plan. He had heard the rumors of the Tree, and decided to move his “capital” (if one can call a lone throne on a small hill a capital) to near where he suspected the Tree to be. After he completed that, he started sowing “plunder seeds” in the ground in the area, expecting that the seeds would be able to grow up and steal the magic from the Tree of Harmony. Thus, he was unconcerned as the ponies mobilized for one last battle in one last, desperate attempt to overthrow the tyrant and establish Equestrian sovereignty.

The final battle approached. Celestia and Luna knew it. The Alliance knew it. The Changelings knew it. Discord probably knew it, but it is impossible to tell with that one. Accordingly, Celestia and Luna threw in everything. Ponies everywhere answered the call to arms, young and old, stallion and mare, pegasus to unicorn to earth pony, from the north to the south, east to west. The newly formed Crystal Empire even sent a small army to assist. Allegedly, a few tribes of Zebras and Buffalo, fearing for their safety should Discord move on, joined forces with the ponies. On top of that, even some xenophobic griffons ambushed the Changelings part way through the Second Battle of Ponyville, much to the surprise of everypony, changelings and ponies alike
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The preparations for war took the greater part of 2148. By November of the year, the army for Equestria was numbering something approaching three million.

Let us pause for a moment and consider the logistical expertise and experience required to mobilize such a massive force. On top of that, one must consider the extreme cost to upkeep such an army. Remember that each warrior has to eat, and have equipment. Also, armor and weapons have a nasty habit of breaking and wearing out.

Equestria rose heroically to the challenge, producing tens of thousands of sets of armor in a month, raising a great deal of crops, and otherwise making sacrifices to maintain such an army. Meanwhile, the Princesses-to-be were drawing up battle plans and discussing the upcoming battle.

On the other side, the changelings were not idle. They were arming themselves and otherwise preparing for war, as well. They saw the fire in the ponies, and knew that this would not be an easy win. The changeling general recalled all her armies in preparation to launch a massive assault against the rebels. Unfortunately for her, the Royal Sisters saw this, and ordered the Army of Equestria to harass, raid, and otherwise try to stop the changelings from meeting their fellows.

The action is regarded as one of the wisest in military history. Most scholars agree that if the force of ponies where to meet the full might of the Changelings hoof to hoof, the rebels would have been crushed. This way, Celestia and Luna manipulated the situation so that they could exploit their number superiority to compensate for the fact that in a straight-up duel, changelings were vastly superior soldiers to the poorly (if at all) trained pony warriors.

These military deployments and plots certainly help, but Discord was still the main threat, not the changelings. As the Revolution had proved that armies were of no use against Discord, Celestia and Luna decided to use the battle as an elaborate smokescreen to distract the changelings. Then, they could take the Elements and challenge Discord directly.

The Sisters, in the deep winter of 2148, decided that the time had come. On November 20, they began moving their enormous army to the settlement later known as Ponyville. As the muster point was about ten miles north of present-day Canterlot, it was about a fifty mile trek. The voyage took almost all of five days, due to the slow speed of some of the ballista and catapults the army was towing. They were attacked while on the march two times by changeling forces. Both times, the fighting was light, as the changelings unwilling to commit to an extended battle.

On November 25, the army finally arrived and began fortifying the settlement, which took the better part of two days. It was very early November 28 when the enemy army first appeared. A vast host of changelings appeared over a nearby hill. The Royal Sisters knew that they had to attack before night, else the changelings infiltrate the army they had built. First though, they fashioned a flag of truce and met with the changeling leaders. Luna kept a log of the very brief conversation:

Changeling Leader: What do you want?
Celestia: We offer peace and friendship with you and your people. We have no quarrel with you, merely with Discord. Stand aside, and we will guarantee your safety. No harm will come to you.
Changeling Leader: We have sworn to assist and protect Discord, and so we shall. Disband your troops and surrender your weapons. Only then will there be peace.
Luna: Very well! The hoof of friendship has become the buck of war! Just remember, you brought this upon yourself.

That concluded negotiations.

Celestia and Luna returned to their army, and delivered a speech. It went as follows, delivered by Luna:

“Ponies of Equestria! Unicorns! Pegasi! and Earth Ponies! Our herd. We see it in your eyes. The very fear that would take our hearts in a second. Know this! A day may come, when the courage of ponykind fails. When we abandon family and break all bonds of friendship. Not today! An hour of hatred, an hour of sorrow when the Fire of Friendship is snuffed out, never to be relit! But this day is not that day! For this day we fight! So this day, remember your family, remember your friends!” Here Celestia joined in and bellowed alongside her sister. “WE BID YOU STAND, PONIES OF EQUESTRIA!!”

As one, the ponies lowered their spears and adopted a defensive stance, preparing for the attack. And the attack came. The Changelings surged forth, many getting caught on the spears or falling to arrows. And so the battle began.

Now, one must consider that, while in the grand plan, the battle was merely a distraction, the ponies considered it to be the real thing. Commanders of the pony forces reasoned that if they are going to throw themselves into this battle, they may as well earn something from it. As such, the army quickly sought to envelope the changeling lines and encircle them, which would allow them to abuse their numerical superiority. The changelings saw this coming, and fought back the flanks of the pony lines. After this, the whole battle collapsed into chaos and confusion, and little is known.

Meanwhile, Celestia and Luna fought alongside their troops for about two hours until they decided to move. They quickly slipped away from the battle, managing to avoid detection from changeling fighters, and moved to attack Discord directly.

Discord saw them coming, but was confident that his plunder seeds would be able to steal the magic they wielded. He thus adopted a cocky and smug attitude while addressing them. Also, despite hearing about them, Discord had never seen the Elements of Harmony. Thus, when the Alicorns brought them out of their bags, Discord did not believe that such unremarkable things could be the Elements. So confident was he that he failed to notice the magic-infused rainbow that arched down to petrify him. Thus, Equestria’s foreign tyrant was defeated.

Meanwhile, the battle against the changelings was progressing poorly. While the ponies were technically winning, the battle was costing many lives. However, this would change when a large squadron of griffons, numbering some fifty or so strong, attacked the changelings in the air, taking a great deal of pressure off of the pegasus forces. The militaristic Griffons were brilliant fighters, able to cause severe damage despite their small numbers. This continued for some time until the two Alicorn leaders flew onto the middle of the battlefield, with a petrified Discord in their magical grasp. They demanded the changeling’s surrender, explaining that they snuck past the changelings, crushing Discord’s magic. Most of the changeling’s surrendered on the spot. A few continued to resist, but it was over. Equestria was free. The war was not cheap or easy, though.