Runes History Articles

The Poniatovii and Bufo Wars

This pair of conflicts is generally considered the most consequential wars since the Mittelatlantis Crisis a century previously, with the Poniatovii War of 1694 (colloquially known as the Prelude War) resulting in unreconciled and exacerbated disputes between the Sindo-Nusantaran Partnership (SNP) and the Lechian Hegemony. Despite a brokered ceasefire, there were five reported clashes and a number of 'near-misses' between 1702 and 1706 before war returned with a vengeance in 1707 as first shots were fired in the Bufo constellation. Formally known as the Bufo War, most people instead use the vernacular - the Toad War.

The SNP was richer and significantly more populous, the Hegemony was more militarized and had a stronger local position. Unevenly matched but events were to show neither side held knockout superiority - both also had internal social pressures that all but forced them into continually doubling-down on a conflict far from Midgard. Several rounds of negotiations led by other MidFed powers went nowhere until the Hegemony came apart in what became known to the Lechians as the Deluge, ending the war in 1713.

Much of the war was shaped by the logistical demands of getting materiel to a distant theatre of operation; both Midgaran powers had their heavy industry clusters on or near Midgard, not out in the Verge or Veil. Even the Hegemony's model colony of Carpaty that had been the recipient of sustained investment for generations had an industrial base that was built around the demands of the civilian sector. This would change and over the course of the Toad War both the SNP and the Hegemony would make heavy use of in-situ manufacturing. Even so, for the duration of the war much of the heavy lifting of producing weapons and ordnance was done at Yggdrasil.

The primary pipeline for the vast quantities of materiel was the Bifrost network; both great powers were members of the MidFed and could not be simply shut out of using the network, nor was either desperate enough to actually threaten Bifrost traffic - a guaranteed war-losing move. Neither was foolish enough to try and push shipping down a corridor rife with hostiles though and outside of a few merchant ships caught up in geopolitics and captured, within a few weeks both combatants had effectively 'claimed' one of the primary Bifrost routes to the Veil; the SNP the Golden Trail to Columbiad and the Hegemony, the Great Wall Line to Eversea.

The initial stages of the Toad War favored the Hegemony as their forward-deployed forces in the Veil went on the offensive and scored a number of early victories against scattered SNP squadrons, sinking several ships - more than one of which was ambushed without even being aware they were at war. The two fast battleships of the Hegemony's Group K proved decisive in this early stage, their concentrated firepower simply too much for the lighter ships of the SNP. Forced onto the back foot, the SNP had to abandon several colonies and outposts to Hegemony troops. The pyrrhic Battle of 59 Ascending Grundig halted continued Hegemony advance but, critically, failed to stop the Hegemony from landing troops on Gundig proper where land forces were to engage in running battles for the next three years, supplied and reinforced from orbit.

With the early blitz exhausted and both highfleets seemingly limited by the logistical leash, both sides avoided large fleet engagements. Instead they adopted the traditional tactic of cruiser raiding and interception, exactly the sort of dashing independent operations that had captured the hearts of Midgaran captains-to-be for a century. Dashing and flashy they may have been, but their results varied widely - from the destruction of five out of six ships in a supply flotilla to an ignomious entrapment by capital ships. It was a pendulum, but one that seemed to be going nowhere. The Battle Over Rhodora broke the stalemate, the Hegemony going on the offense once more and landing a hundred thousand soldiers on a world of limited importance but useful position.

The Partnership's response was the first of several major escalatory steps and wide-scale use of 'new' technologies in the Toad War. This was the launching of umbral diveships on seek-and-destroy missions, the Partnership having succesfully concealed the full scale of its production program from spies. Plagued by very real operational limits and maintenance hurdles, these diveships struck first at identified military targets and soon, at Hegemony civilian traffic in the Veil as well. One spectacular success was the D-21 that managed to put a pulse-bomb into a Hegemony cruiser that had emerged out of Bifrost less than twelve hours previously. The resulting sudden discharge of un-dissipated energy left no survivors. New Hegemony weapons were rushed forward even as local industry frantically retooled to construct a force of umbral-hunting escorts. The battle of 26 Ascending Grundig saw the Hegemony use crude but effective 'shield-buster' missiles to great effect, a pre-war research project hurridly weaponized.

By 1710 both belligerents were fully on war footing with new ships and aerospace squadrons steadily making the trek to the battlezone. In particular the Hegemony's shipbuilding sector was starting to be strained as so much of the civilian sector necessary for unglamorous but vital freighters and transports had been taken up to build warcraft while delays plagued efforts to being new shipbuilding clusters into service. As the Hegemony pulled ever-more civilian ships into war-related service to replenish its losses, the SNP - long favoring unconventional warfare - stepped up its commerce raiding campaign.

The Campaign of 1710 was a significant broadening of the conflict as the Partnership took two consequential steps. The first was to expand the target set of the diveship campaign to include the various neutrals that were providing shipping services. The bulk of these were not Midgaran megacorporate-owned ships but Veil-flagged and operated, which meant little political say in the halls of MidFed. This put additional stress on the Hegemony's logistical efforts both by choking the supply of additional merchant hulls and forcing the Hegemony to spread its counterumbral forces more widely and adopt even slower and less efficient mega-convoys to ensure sufficient protection. The second was the covert delivery of weapons and fabricator blueprints to various armed groups - fringers, outlaws and desperados from the ragged edges of the Veil, along with Nureeg corsairs - and encouragement to go after vulnerable Hegemony and Hegemony-supportive locations. While not as effective as hoped, from the perspective of the Partnership on distant Midgard it was a cheap spoiler.

Of course for those living in the Veil that had to deal with an interstellar wave of pirates flying efficient and high-spec corsairs printed from hidden bases as opposed to the occasional freighter refitted with a couple popgun blasters, it was something very different and explains the continued antipathy a significant part of the Veil holds towards the Partnership ever since the masterminds of the plot was discovered.

1712 saw the first real rumblings of discontent inside the Hegemony, political classes in the second- and third-tier nations starting to voice displeasure at the continued war and its spiralling economic cost. While this was controlled by the Hegemony's internal stability apparatus, it spoke to the economic strain the war was putting on the Hegemony. The round-the-clock production of carriers, escorts, armored vehicles and fightercraft plus the military draft laws that by then had put well over a million citizens into uniform was not something the Hegemony could sustain indefinitely. The response was to be the Battle of the Bengal Drift, an effort by the Hegemony to break open a flank of the Partnership's defensive cordon. Two Hegemony fleet carriers along with a smaller light carrier twice as old as the two bigger ships put together clashed with two SNP carriers of equally recent vingage, the first true carrier-on-carrier battle since the late 16th century adoption of modern energy shields. Both staggered away having lost a precious carrier, but the Hegemony's attack was foiled. Two months later the Hegemony mauled the SNP's fleet over Grundig during the pullout of the remaining Hegemony ground troops, but even that victory couldn't disguise the worsening war situation or the cost it was imposing on the Hegemony.

The end began over the 1712 holiday season, as ever-larger marches, demonstrations and work stoppages staggered the Hegemony and local political agitation radically increased. The first constituent state to declare independence was Bolokhov with the Act of 11 March 1713 and over the next two months a number of others followed suit. The attempted coup in August by a group of ultra-hardliners sought to seize control of the Hegemony and use military force to bring the wayward republics back in line. Its failure was the death knell of the Hegemony, which was officially signed out of existence by the final Prime Minister on Black Easter of 1714. By then the Toad War was also over, a ceasefire being called in September of 1713 which led to the surrendering of not only the captured Partnership territory but much of the pre-war Hegemony territory as well - the soon-to-be-former Hegemony was left with little more than Carpaty and a small slice of recognized space.