Clone Wars

The Clone Wars was a galaxy-spanning conflict, fought between 22 and 19 BBY, that pitted the Galactic Republic against the Confederacy of Independent Systems, which had seceded from the Republic. It took its name from the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic, who fought the Separatist Droid Army. With clones and droids fielded in enormous numbers, the two were the largest military forces in galactic history, and fighting between them swept across the galaxy for nearly four years. Unknown to almost everyone involved, the war was orchestrated from end to end by the Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious, who controlled both sides in a plot to destroy the Jedi Order and remake the Republic as a Sith Empire.

Origins of the conflict#

Before the war, Darth Sidious, in his guise as the politician Sheev Palpatine, spent years amassing political power, eventually using the Trade Federation's invasion of Naboo to become Supreme Chancellor of the Republic. Through his Sith apprentice, Count Dooku, he sparked the Separatist Crisis, causing thousands of star systems to secede and form the Confederacy with Dooku as its Head of State. The secessionist movement drew on genuine grievances over taxation, corruption, and neglect of the Outer Rim, but it was steered by the same corporate powers that had crippled the Galactic Senate.

On the Kaminoan homeworld of Kamino, the bounty hunter Jango Fett provided the genetic template for an army of clone troopers, raised in secret under an order originally placed by Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas. When Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi tracked the Fetts to Geonosis, he discovered that the Geonosians were manufacturing battle droids by the millions and that Dooku was merging the resources of the corporations into a Separatist Droid Army.

The First Battle of Geonosis#

A Jedi task force drawn from the High Council and the Order's Knights and Padawans was dispatched to rescue Kenobi from imprisonment on Geonosis. The galaxy teetered on the brink of civil war. In the arena and the battle that followed, Mace Windu beheaded Jango Fett, an act that earned him the lifelong enmity of Fett's son, Boba. As the surviving Jedi were surrounded, the newly arrived Grand Army of the Republic deployed clone troopers, walkers, and gunships, overwhelming the Separatist forces. Dooku fled after a duel with Master Yoda and reported to Sidious that the war they had worked to instigate was now underway. Though Kenobi believed the clones had won a victory, Yoda recognized the truth: the Clone Wars had begun.

The galaxy at war#

From Geonosis the conflict spread across countless fronts. The Confederacy seized control of major hyperspace lanes, isolating the Republic from much of its army, until an alliance with the Hutt Clan, secured by Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano after the rescue of Jabba's son on Teth, reopened those routes. Battles raged on Ryloth, Christophsis, Felucia, Malastare, Quell, and many other worlds. The Separatists developed superweapons, including the ion cannons of the warship Malevolence, commanded by General Grievous, and biological weapons such as a variant of the Blue Shadow Virus. The Republic answered with offensives like the Second Battle of Geonosis, which destroyed the droid foundries there.

Many worlds struggled to stay neutral. The New Mandalorians under Duchess Satine Kryze, who led the Council of Neutral Systems, sought to keep Mandalore out of the fighting, but found it difficult to escape the carnage as the Death Watch and Separatist intrigues drew the planet toward conflict. A proxy war also emerged when Mother Talzin and the rogue Sith Lord Maul pursued their own vendetta against both the Sith and the Jedi.

Failed peace and escalation#

More than a year into the war, Republic Senator Padmé Amidala and Separatist Senator Mina Bonteri collaborated on an initiative to end the fighting, winning approval for peace talks in the Separatist Senate. Dooku destroyed the process with two attacks: the murder of Bonteri and a bombing of the Republic capital on Coruscant. A later peace conference on Mandalore, overseen by Duchess Satine, also collapsed. With no end in sight, the Jedi worked with local militaries such as Mon Cala's navy and Naboo's Gungan Grand Army, and covertly trained an insurgent cell to retake Onderon from Separatist occupation. The Confederacy in turn relied on factions like the Umbaran Militia and the Zygerrian Slave Empire.

The final year and Order 66#

In the war's third year the Republic drove the Separatists into redoubts in the Outer Rim Territories, beginning the campaign known as the Outer Rim Sieges. To reverse the war's course, Grievous launched a massive strike on Coruscant through the Deep Core, leaving the lightly defended capital exposed. Much of the Confederate fleet was destroyed in the assault, and Head of State Count Dooku was killed by Skywalker aboard Grievous's flagship. Grievous himself fell soon after at the Battle of Utapau, and the Separatist Council was massacred on Mustafar.

Sidious's deception was finally exposed when he revealed himself as the Sith Lord behind the war. Evading arrest by Mace Windu and a cadre of Jedi, he succeeded with the aid of Anakin Skywalker, whom he seduced to the dark side and molded into his apprentice, Darth Vader. Sidious branded the Jedi as traitors and issued Order 66, forcing the Republic's clone troopers to turn on and execute their Jedi commanders in a galaxy-wide Great Jedi Purge. He then declared the Clone Wars at an end and proclaimed the transformation of the Republic into the first Galactic Empire, with himself as Emperor.

Legacy#

The war had accomplished exactly what Palpatine set out to achieve: the Jedi Order was destroyed, the Republic became the Empire, and the Galactic Senate became the Imperial Senate. In its aftermath, Senator Bail Organa reflected that he was unsure there had been a "right side," opposing the Confederacy's tactics while recognizing well-meaning people among its ranks and wondering whether the entire war had been a misdirection by those who already wanted an Empire. The Empire tried to bury the memory of the troubled era, but the seeds of the future Rebel Alliance lay in the local resistance cells the Jedi had established on Confederate worlds and in the Delegation of 2,000. Veterans such as the future Grand Admiral Thrawn remembered the Clone Wars as the cause of billions of deaths and hundreds of ruined worlds, and the conflict left lasting animosity between humans and aliens that fed the xenophobia of the Imperial era.