Siege of Arrakeen

The Siege of Arrakeen, sometimes called the Battle of Arrakeen, was the surprise night assault on the city of Arrakeen on Arrakis in March 10191 AG. In it House Harkonnen, secretly reinforced by Sardaukar of the Padishah Emperor, fell upon the recently arrived House Atreides. The attack destroyed the Atreides as a ruling House, killed Duke Leto Atreides, and drove his heir Paul and concubine Lady Jessica into the deep desert.

Background#

When House Atreides took up the planetary fief of Arrakis, the move was a trap laid by Baron Vladimir Harkonnen with the secret backing of the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. The Emperor had grown wary of Duke Leto's rising standing in the Landsraad and lent the Baron a force of Sardaukar to ensure the Atreides could not survive the contest for control of the spice. To conceal Imperial involvement, those Sardaukar were dressed as Harkonnen troops, so that any account of the attack would record only a quarrel between two Great Houses.

The betrayal of Yueh#

The siege was made possible by the Suk physician of House Atreides, Wellington Yueh. The Harkonnens had taken his wife Wanna captive and held her under torture, and they used her to break the conditioning that was supposed to make a Suk doctor incapable of betrayal. Yueh sabotaged the Atreides defences, including the shield protecting the city, opening Arrakeen to the attackers. In return he was promised his wife's release. He also fitted Duke Leto with a false tooth loaded with poison gas, intending that the captured Duke might use it to kill the Baron.

The attack#

The Harkonnen and disguised Sardaukar forces struck Arrakeen and its governor's palace by night, with the defences already crippled. The Atreides garrison was overwhelmed. Swordmaster Duncan Idaho fought through the assault, and the warmaster Gurney Halleck broke out of the city with a body of surviving troops. Both escaped, though scattered. Paul and Jessica were seized during the fighting and carried off as prisoners, while the bulk of the Atreides forces were killed or taken.

Death of Duke Leto#

The paralysed Duke Leto was brought before Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. Yueh came to claim the freedom of his wife, but the Baron had him killed instead, telling him he would be reunited with Wanna only in death. As the Baron gloated over the end of the long Atreides-Harkonnen feud, Leto crushed the poison tooth and released the killing gas. The Baron survived through the speed of his shield and his personal precautions, but the Duke and several Harkonnens in the room died, among them the Mentat Piter De Vries.

Aftermath#

Paul and Jessica, carried off into the desert, escaped their captors and survived on the equipment Yueh had left them, eventually finding refuge among the Fremen. The Harkonnens reoccupied Arrakis under Glossu Rabban, believing House Atreides extinguished and the Fremen too weak to matter. That belief proved fatal. Out of the survivors of the siege grew the Arrakis Revolt, in which Paul, risen among the Fremen as the prophet Muad'Dib, would return to take the planet and bring down the Corrino Empire at the Battle of Arrakeen two years later.