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// The Wingbard War 
// Story: Exiles at War 
// by Exiles at War 
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The Wingbard War



Falcor was one of the few vassals in the empire that didn’t leave the empire as soon as it had the opportunity. This was mostly down to the fact that the Queen of Falcor, Maximilliana, feared that Falcor would simply fall under Wingbardian influence should it declare independence. Left with the choice between an imperial overlord that had brought peace to Falcor for two centuries or domination by the ancient enemies of the Falcorians, the most despicable Wingbardians, she chose the empire. Like the rest of Griffonia, Falcor’s economy also collapsed with the empire as borders started to matter again. Unlike most of Griffonia, the Falcorian economy bounced back within only a few years since the mostly agrarian nation was not greatly dependent on trade and could simply sell more of its produce to the Herzlands.

The revolution in 978 effectively gave Falcor independence as the empire was now busy fighting for its very life and could no longer afford to garrison Falcor. Due to the nation's trade ties with the Herzlands the Falcorian economy collapsed again, but this time the recovery was much slower. The revolution also meant that Wingbardy could now assert its claims on Falcorian territory, and Falcor was forced to step in to defend itself. The Falcorian army was a modern force, but it did not have nearly the numbers needed to take on Wingbardy and so conscription was introduced, tripling the size of the active army and giving Falcor the ability to mobilize a large force quickly.

In 985, a clash broke out in the border town of Meranclawo. Both sides sent in reinforcements and the clash became a skirmish, the skirmish became a battle and finally the battle became a war.

985

Thanks to having been first to mobilize and her efficient mobilization system Falcor got to enjoy a three to one advantage over the Wingbardians in the early weeks of the war. Knowing that this would not last, Field Marshal Neighg ordered a front wide offensive to crush the Wingbardians before they could mobilize their forces. This started the 2nd bloodiest two weeks of the war as open combat on a modern battlefield left soldiers no cover from artillery, mortars, machine guns or gunfire. 

Thanks to their superior numbers in men and artillery, the Falcorians suffered only 23.000 casualties compared to the 35.000 on the Wingbardian side, a 50% loss ratio for the Wingbardian troops on the border. Nevertheless the offensive was a failure since reinforcements left the Wingbardians with more numbers in the field than at the beginning of the war. Additionally most of the Falcorian casualties had been with her best professional army units, leaving her with little offensive capabilities. In the weeks following the (offensive) both sides were incapable of offensive action, instead using the time to dig in and replenish their numbers. Thus ended the short but brutal phase of open combat, replaced with slightly less brutal trench warfare. 

986

Only in February of 986, six months after the war began did the staring contest across no man's land end with the 2nd battle of Meranclawo. The Wingbardians had long realized this would be a war of attrition and had planned their offensive accordingly. 

The battle began with an hours-long bombardment from 500 pieces of artillery, followed by an assault from 3 infantry divisions. The assault faced fierce resistance from the Falcorians whose trenchworks had mostly survived the bombardment but the outnumbered Falcorians were still pushed back to their second trench line by the end of the first day. On the 2nd and 3rd day the offensive slowly ground down, giving the Falcorians time to reinforce their positions and bring in their artillery, evening the field. Even as mountains of casualties piled up on both sides neither was willing to accept defeat so the battle went on for months longer. During the 3rd month of the battle the Falcorians introduced poison gas to the battlefield which was soon also adopted by the Wingbardians. The 2nd battle of Meranclawo only ended in December of 986 as by then the Wingbardians had firmly exhausted themselves.

Behind the lines Falcor was struggling along as the war economy and mobilization were putting the already poor peasantry into even more dire positions. These conditions were fertile grounds for republicanism and communism to fester and spread. Meanwhile, Griffonstone was watching the events in Falcor with great interest, sensing both the opportunity to return Falcor to the empire and also the threat a republican Falcor would pose to the imperial position. Consequently Griffonstone began sending military and economic aid to Falcor so as to alleviate the situation there.

987

Thanks to the imperial aid Falcor was in a much better position and could finally prepare an offensive of its own to knock out the Wingbardians for good. This was to be achieved by attacking the weak left side of the Wingbardian front and exploiting any breakthrough with relatively light infantry formations. Once the offensive began in March of 987 the weak 2nd Army was quickly overwhelmed in the battle of Clawporetto. Within only three weeks the Falcorians advanced the frontline more than 20 kilometers deep into Wingbardy, even encircling and wiping out two divisions. The success of the offensive could have ended the war, were it not for the flooding of the Piumave River which gave the 2nd Army the time it needed to rebuild its defenses.

For all the victories it brought, the offensive had come at the great cost of nearly 50.000 casualties. Additionally, the offensive had only been possible due to the withdrawal of several divisions from the right side of the front where the Falcorians consequently were heavily outnumbered. Once the Wingbardians caught wind of their weakness attacked with devastating success, especially on the right flank where the 4th Army managed to cut the rail connection between Sudfolc and Falcor and the 3rd Army advanced ever closer to Falcor.

In June, the heavy casualties taken in the prior three months, the bad living conditions on the front and in general and an unwillingness to fight for feudal lords lead to a wave of desertion and rebellion in the army. In a desperate attempt to restore morale for at least a few weeks, Queen Maximilliana promised democracy to her subjects. This restored some semblance of order to the army enabling one last desperate counterattack.

In their advance on Falcor and Sudfolc respectively, a three kilometer gap had opened between the 3rd and 4th armies. Erika Feveros, who at that time was only commander of a single battalion, exploited this gap to get behind the 3rd Army and attack it from behind. This caused sufficient chaos to stall their advance for just long enough to allow the forces in Falcor to launch their offensive which managed to push back the Wingbardians back out of artillery range from Falcor.

While Falcor was struggling to stay alive, the vultures in Sicameon used the opportunity to seize the JoJo islands. Falcor was unable to react to this, but it was able to call out to the empire for aid. As tensions between the empire and republic had slowly decreased after 985, Griffonstone finally felt ready to intervene directly. The empire also drew in Cyanolisia which had been waiting for a good casus-belli against Sicameon ever since the War of Asterionese Independence. This started another war, the JoJo War, between the empire and its vassals / allies of Falcor and Cyanolisia on the one and Sicameon and Asterion on the other side.

Seeing as Falcor was just weeks away from total defeat, the empire wasted no time and immediately sent 350.000 soldiers to the front under the command of General Cornelio Galluzzo. This drastically changed the balance of forces from one somewhat favoring the Wingbardians to one favoring the empire and Falcor. Yet, Gen. Galluzzo did not use this advantage for the time being, instead replacing most Falcorian units on the frontline so as to enable the Falcorian army to rebuild itself. Thus, the Wingbardians continued to have more troops on the frontline even as they had inferior numbers in total. Still, now that they no longer had an advantage in resources they were much more reserved with offensive operations for the rest of the year, only launching a few small offensives to secure their grip over the Falcor-Sudfolc rail line.

988/989

The imperial intervention in the war led to a panic in Wingbardy as the war suddenly seemed both impossible to win and to be about national survival. The prospect of losing their independence rallied the Wingbardians better than even their hatred of Falcorians had, and even the socialists and communists that so far had been fervently opposed to the war aligned with the Monarchy, favoring the bourgeois democracy to the feudalistic empire. With newfound morale and another wave of freshly trained troops Wingbardy entered 988 with a force that could and would still fight. Additionally, WIngbardy also tried to put pressure on Francis VIII. to join the war, but Francis refused due to the threat of an Aquilean intervention to retake Tarrin.

988 had battered the Falcorian army so thoroughly that it took almost a full year for it to fully recover. While some forces har been ready to fight again as early as October of 988, those were used to staff the relatively inactive front with Sicameon. Overall this meant that for the first few months of 988 the Wingbardians would retain their advantage in numbers, but as soon as the Falcorian army would be back in the fight the Wingbardians would be outnumbered very heavily.

The Wingbardians, very aware of this, planned one major offensive for the year to inflict high enough casualties on the empire to convince it that the war wasn’t worth it and withdraw from the war. Thus in spring of 988 the Wingbardians launched their final offensive, named after their king Garibald. The Garibaldi offensive was supposed to cut the land route to Sudfolc while also taking Falcor as a side objective.

Once the offensive began it quickly became clear that the offensive would not go as planned. The first day of the offensive saw an entire division wiped out and the next few days didn’t go much better as the Wingbardians were torn to shreds under heavy artillery barrages. After only 14 days the offensive was called off due to unsustainable casualties. As it turned out, Gen. Galluzzo had, with considerable help from Gen. Feveros, predicted that the Wingbardians would try to cut off Sudfolc and prepared accordingly. Nearly all of the imperial artillery had been concentrated on the small Wingbardian bridgehead across the Falcor River. And thus, once the Wingbardians attacked from said bridgehead they were under constant bombardment with no shelter. Consequently the attack did not only fail miserably, but half of the 100.000 casualties were deaths. As it was now clear that Wingbardy would lose the war, Talouse, which had joined the war back in 986 and done nothing for the duration of the war, withdrew from the war and signed a ceasefire with the empire.

Not long after the failed Garibald offensive did the Falcorian army finally return to the frontline, cementing the imperial advantage over Wingbardy. As the Falcorians and imperials were growing ever tired of the war they wanted to bring an end to the war as soon as possible. Thus they made sure not to give the Wingbardians much time to recover, and launched their own offensive to end the war. Having learned from years of trench warfare, the Falcorians and imperials finally adapted their tactics to a modern battlefield and implemented so-called “stormtrooper” tactics (developed by a certain Gen. Feveros). Heavily armed knights and tanks would break the enemy line in a given place, after which lighter infantry would exploit the breakthrough and wreak havoc behind enemy lines.

Once the offensive began the stormtrooper tactics proved devastatingly successful. Within only a few weeks the Wingbardian army was pushed back into Wingbardy. The advance was temporarily halted for a few weeks by the bad infrastructure in northern Wingbardy, giving the Wingbardians some time to dig back in. Once imperial engineers had managed to build a proper supply line the offensive continued on. Again, the Wingbardian lines were broken easily. By November the imperials were at Griffano where the Wingbardian 1st Army had dug in. Protected on one side by the Warthog Forest and on the other by Talonca River it had to be taken if the imperials were to continue their advance on Karthin. 

The battle of Griffano was the last major battle of the war as the Wingbardians were unwilling to give even an inch of the city and thus contributed all forces they had left to the defense of the city. The battle itself was a slogfest as the imperials didn’t want to risk unnecessary casualties in an assault and thus just kept on shelling the city for months. In February of 989, King Garibald Talonuel III was killed during a front line visit to Griffano. News of his death broke the morale in the city leading to mass desertions. Finally, the Imperials attacked the city which fell with almost no resistance. As the news of Garibald’s death and the fall of Griffano spread, the spirit to fight on  was finally broken. Thus, the Wingbardians signed a ceasefire that put half the country under imperial occupation. 

Aftermath of the War

While half of Wingbardy was under imperial occupation, the other half was collapsing into civil war. Communist revolutionaries proclaimed proclaimed a Worker’s state in Wrobert and began fighting the liberals, reactionaries were fighting the communists, the conservatives were fighting republicans, the new king was fighting the liberal government, the liberals were trying to hold the country together and what remained of the army was fighting everyone and itself. 

The imperial government originally had planned to just annex Wingbardy, but seeing the absolute state it was in it did not wish to get any more involved than it had to be for any longer than it had to be. Thus, the empire left as soon as it formally ended the war with the Treaty of Karthin. In exchange for Independence, Wingbardy ceded Asbolus, and much of the borderlands up to the Warhog River, dissolved the Karthinian Pact, ceded its fleet to Cyanolisia, (promised to) demilitarize and was to pay millions in reparations. Knowing that the government that signed the treaty would collapse as soon as the imperial occupation ended, the empire demanded all of its reparations be paid immediately. However Wingbardy was at this point all but bankrupt, so it instead had to pay its debts by handing over what assets it had, foreign and domestic, to the empire.

The chaos of the Wingbardian Civil War gave Francis VIII an opening to seize the crown of Wingbardy for himself like he had done with Tarrin a decade before. In spring of 990, Francis crossed the Folino and began his invasion of Wingbardy, adding another side to the war there. As he had a professional army he was easily the strongest of all belligerents and quickly managed to take control of Karthin. 

Conquering the rest of Wingbardy proved not to be so easy as he spent the next two years in fighting the communists in Wrobert all the while having to put down uprisings in Wingbardy and Tarrin. In an act representative of the whole war Francis VIII torched Wrobert to the ground after finally conquering it. This act and the many others like it that occurred during the invasion and civil war caused immense destruction to the nation, killed many tens of thousands and displaced millions, causing a refugee crisis in southern Griffonia.