Operation Purple Splendor

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Operation Purple Splendor
Part of the Wars of the Disinherited
Date 11.VI.1717 AN - 1.XIII.1719 AN Location Keltia Result Annexation of former Bassarid territories in Keltia by Nouvelle Alexandrie Two new regions of Nouvelle Alexandrie are founded: New Caputia and Boriquén Death of King Manco Cápac I and Basileus Giakoumis Defeat of the Dispossessed in Passas.
Belligerents
Raspur Pact  Constancia  Nouvelle Alexandrie Israati-Haifan Defense Force New Order of Rochefort Wakara Pathfinders (after 1718)	Confederacy of the Dispossessed Wakara Pathfinders (1717-1718)
Units involved
Keltia Command Banner Group Santander Banner Group Skerries Banner Group Valencia Banner Group Wechua Keltian Armada

Operation Purple Splendor was a military operation launched by the Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie on 11.VI.1717 AN that lasted through 1.XIII.1719 AN. The operation's purpose was to annex the territories along Nouvelle Alexandrie's borders in the continent of Keltia that had recently fallen into chaos following the slow collapse of Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union's authority over them. The operation pacified and annexed the affected areas and created two new Regions of Nouvelle Alexandrie, New Caputia and Boriquén. The annexation was accompanied by paramilitary violence against the Bassarid population of Passas, the expulsion of that population to Corum in the Pallisican Migration, and a reprisal campaign, Operation Purple Shroud, against the leadership of the Confederacy of the Dispossessed after the shooting down of Condor One.

The relationship between the Haifo-Pallisican Empire and the Federation of Nouvelle Alexandrie was been marked by a long-standing regional animosity and only a recent history of uneasy coexistence. The weakening grip of the Haifo-Pallisican Empire over its territories in Keltia and Eura and the increasing instability along the shared border, prompted the government of Nouvelle Alexandrie to launch Operation Purple Splendor in Keltia. A separate military operation, named Operation Purple Reign was launched to seize the former Bassarid territories in Eura.

In preparation for the operation, the government of Nouvelle Alexandrie conducted multiple military exercises, including the major exercise Operation Sovereign Borders, to train the military and improve their readiness. These exercises also served as a cover for testing and developing new weapons by several Raspur Pact defense manufacturers, many of them based in Nouvelle Alexandrie.

The Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie, consisting of the Grand Army of the Federation, the Federal Navy, the Federal Air Force, the Federal Coast Guard, the Federal Border Guard, and the Federal Support Corps, were deployed to carry out Operation Purple Splendor across Keltia. The operation was a massive undertaking. It faced robust opposition from the local population and remnants of the Haifo-Pallisican Empire, known as the Confederacy of the Dispossessed.

Background

The relationship between the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union and the Federation of Nouvelle Alexandrie has been marked by a long-standing regional animosity, with only a recent history of uneasy coexistence. As the grip of the Haifo-Pallisican Empire on its territories in Keltia and Eura began to weaken, the Nouvelle Alexandrie government grew increasingly concerned about the instability along their shared border. In preparation for Operation Purple Splendor, the Nouvelle Alexandrie government carried out multiple military exercises, including the major exercise Operation Sovereign Borders, to train the military and improve their readiness. The exercises also served as a cover for the testing and development of new weapons, to mixed results

The decline of the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union began with their economy, started facing serious labor crunches, economic inefficiencies, and serious lack of food production which led to severe famines. Lack of administration and management led to the mismanagement of farms and reduced worker productivity. Problems such as a scarcity of educated workers, saturation of unskilled workers and jobs made obsolete by technology, and poorly trained and educated farmers brought costs up and drove production down. Cumbersome procedures for bureaucratic administration foreclosed the free communication and flexible responses required to deal with the developing economic crisis, in particular issues with worker alienation, lack of innovation, dwindling customers, and unreliable suppliers. Corruption and data fiddling, long a regular practice in the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union to project economic prosperity and power, has become such a common practice among bureaucracy that when the economic crisis started affecting the Empire, no one was equipped with the correct information to address it.

Furthermore, the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union faced diplomatic isolation as it lost allies and economic trading partners due to its belligerent and hostile attitudes towards most Micran nations. This isolation was exacerbated when Jingdao, a major ally and financial backer of the Bassarids, rejoined Shireroth, leaving the Bassarids without any significant economic or military support.

The first signs of destabilization began in the Bassarid Keltian territories of Passas and the Dependency of Tanah-Baru, with famine, mass unemployment, and localized disease running rampant. Governance started to descend into nothing but survival mode and sheer corruption as leaders and religious leaders realized their regime's downfall was imminent. In a desperate bid to secure their own interests, they began pilfering from state coffers and government stockpiles as much as they could from the state to prepare for their evacuation to Corum, where the Bassarid metropole was centered.

Policymakers and military officials in Nouvelle Alexandrie started to notice the growing instability in Bassarid Keltia and instructed its military to begin preparations for a possible Bassarid collapse. While preparations were initially not prioritized, as the situation worsened, Nouvelle Alexandrie increased its focus on military readiness. The government organized readiness drills, increased ammunition purchases, produced more weapons, and invested in research and development to strengthen its military capabilities in anticipation of what would become Operation Purple Splendor.

Operation

The Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie, consisting of the Grand Army of the Federation, the Federal Navy, the Federal Air Force, the Federal Coast Guard, the Federal Border Guard, and the Federal Support Corps, were deployed to carry out Operation Purple Splendor. The operation was a large-scale military campaign that took place across much of Nouvelle Alexandrie's Keltian southeastern and southwestern borders and was aimed at annexing territories along the borders that had recently fallen into chaos following the end of the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union's control over them. These territories later became the 11th and 12th Regions of Nouvelle Alexandrie, Boriquén in the southeast and New Caputia (formerly known as Passas) in the southwest.

Pre-planning

Before launching Operation Purple Splendor, the Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie spent months conducting a secret campaign of espionage and subversion in Passas, the former Bassarid territory that they planned to invade and annex. The main objective of this covert operation was to secure the cooperation or defection of key Passasian figures who could facilitate the New Alexandrian advance and undermine the Bassarid loyalists. These included military commanders, local officials, high government officials, tribal leaders, religious authorities, and influential businessmen. To achieve this, Nouvelle Alexandrie relied on its contacts and allies among the native Keltian populations living in Passas, who had long suffered under Bassarid oppression and discrimination. These Keltians acted as intermediaries, informants, and saboteurs, reaching out to sympathetic or dissatisfied Passasian figures and convincing them to join or surrender to Nouvelle Alexandrie rather than resist its invasion. Many of them agreed to do so, either out of fear, greed, or genuine support for Nouvelle Alexandrie’s cause. Some of them were offered incentives such as money, protection, amnesty, or positions of power in the new administration. Others were threatened with exposure, arrest, torture, or death if they refused to cooperate. As a result, Nouvelle Alexandrie slowly gained valuable information on the resistance strength and locations of the Bassarid loyalists, who started calling themselves the Dispossessed and vowed to fight to the death for the restoration of their fallen empire. The operation also enabled Nouvelle Alexandrie to identify and initial leadership targets of the Dispossessed during high-risk reconnaissance missions conducted by its special forces. These missions involved infiltrating enemy territory, gathering intelligence, sabotaging infrastructure, assassinating key figures, and creating chaos and confusion among the enemy ranks.

The pre-planning for the invasion of Passas involved not only covert operations, but also extensive logistical and diplomatic preparations. The Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie had to mobilize and transport thousands of troops, vehicles, weapons, and supplies across vast distances and hostile terrain. They also had to secure the cooperation or neutrality of neighboring countries and regions to ensure safe passage and access to strategic locations. To achieve this, Nouvelle Alexandrie used economic aid, military assistance, or political concessions to its allies and potential partners. The pre-planning for the invasion of Passas was a vastly complex and challenging process that required careful coordination and execution by Nouvelle Alexandrie.

Role of Caputian and Haifan paramilitary forces

The information obtained by the covert actions by Nouvelle Alexandrie were further facilitated by the organization and deployment of several Caputian and Haifan paramilitary groups that sought vengeance and retribution for their own oppression and violence at the hands of the Bassarid Empire. Among the communities from which the Caputian groups drew was a Melusinian minority that had lived in the ports of Passas before the invasion, keeping the worship of Melusine under Bassarid rule and suffering for its faith and its origins. These port communities were distinct from the Caputian diaspora that resettled the territory in large numbers only after the annexation. These paramilitaries would later play a crucial role in overcoming the strong resistance from the remaining Bassarid forces. They provided additional manpower, firepower, and local knowledge to the New Alexandrian forces. They also carried out brutal attacks on Bassarid civilians and collaborators, often with little regard for human rights or international law.

In the lead-up to the invasion and after the Bassarid administration collapsed, a wave of violent riots swept through Passas, triggered by two incidents by Bassarid-aligned military remnants that were perceived as ethnically motivated acts. These acts consisted of attacks on Alexandrian cultural institutions and buildings in Corcovado as well as some sites of worship for local Caputian populations that worship Melusine. The violence quickly spread to other parts of Passas, with Alexandrian, Caputian, and Wechua communities and cultural heritage (churches and monasteries) attacked by crowds of Bassarid citizens, who blamed the collapse of their vast Empire on the native Keltian minorities in Passas. The Bassarid collapse had also induced a famine of such scale, that many Bassarid peoples in Passas embraced their proclivities towards cannibalism and targeted other groups to obtain sustenance for their own communities. Some of the locations that were targeted were ostensibly under the protection of several of the Haifan and Caputian paramilitaries, as well as the developing communitarian groups among Alexandrians developing due to the violence at the time. During the riots and violence, at least 35 churches were damaged, including 18 monuments of culture, which were demolished, burnt or severely damaged.

Invasion

In the days leading up to the invasion, Raspur Pact forces had imposed a no-fly zone over Passas and on the Dependency of Tanah-Baru, with the Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie serving as the main force enforcing the stipulations of the no-fly zones established by the Keltia Command. These no-fly zones were established to protect Nouvelle Alexandrie, neighboring Raspur Pact allies and forces, as well as the native Keltian communities in Passas that were under threat by the Confederacy of the Dispossessed ground and air forces. The no-fly zones forbade aircraft associated with the Confederacy of the Dispossessed or the Bassarid Empire from flying inside the zones, as well as commercial air traffic in the area. During the enforcement of the no-fly zones, several attacks from the Confederacy of the Dispossessed were neutralized by Raspur Pact forces. As time wore on, the attacks would intensify in sophistication and technology, as the vast weapon caches maintained by theHaifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union started to fall into the hands of the Confederacy of the Dispossessed. In response to the attacks on Raspur Pact air patrols, Nouvelle Alexandrie's air force launched a bombing campaign designed at specific military targets and infrastructure that slowly began to erode the ability of the Dispossessed to seriously attack patrol aircraft. Air defense systems were specifically targeted by this campaign. These growing attacks, coupled with the developing violence in Passas, and growing public outcry for an intervention in Nouvelle Alexandrie led to the official launch of the invasion.

The operation was launched on 11.VI.1717 AN. The Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie faced stiff resistance from locals that remained loyal to the Haifo-Pallisican Empire and the Confederacy of the Dispossessed. However, the well-coordinated and highly-trained forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie, backed by the paramilitary support from Caputian and Haifan groups, were able to secure significant territorial gains in the early stages of the operation.

Phase One

In the first phase of the invasion started in 11.VI.1717 AN, the New Alexandrian forces focused on securing key border crossings, strategic cities, and critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, damns, power plants, and communication hubs. The Federal Air Force provided air cover and reconnaissance support, while the Federal Navy patrolled the coastal areas to prevent any seaborne reinforcements from reaching the disputed territories. This phase was largely successful, as the forces were able to secure most of their initial objectives, although they faced fierce resistance from local militias and remnants of the Bassarid remnants and their associated military forces.

Phase Two

The second phase of the operation, beginning in 23.XIV.1717 AN involved securing the remaining contested territories and consolidating the gains made during the first phase. This involved rooting out pockets of resistance and engaging in a series of hard-fought battles with the remaining forces of the Confederacy of the Dispossessed. New Alexandrian forces used a combination of conventional military tactics, counter-insurgency strategies, and psychological warfare to break the resolve of the remaining defenders. During this phase, New Alexandrian forces also focused on winning the hearts and minds of the local population, especially of the Keltian native populations, who were hellbent on obtaining justice through vengeance due to the ongoing terror campaign wrought upon them by the Confederacy of the Dispossessed. New Alexandrian forces provided humanitarian aid, started rebuilding crucial but damaged infrastructure, and worked closely with local leaders to address grievances and start to establish new, stable governance structures that could help stabilize the area and bring order under the New Caputia Provisional Authority.

Post-invasion phase

Insurgency of the Dispossessed

Soon after the second phase of the invasion ended, an energetic insurgency rose from Bassarid remnants and from commercial interests associated with the West Keltian Trade Association. Knowing that no meaningful efforts to retake Passas were being made by the Bassarid Empire, the Bassarid remnants and the West Keltian Trade Association joined the Confederacy of the Dispossessed, fueled by a large cache of sophisticated weapons from the New Zimian War League. From 1718 AN to 1719 AN, the Confederacy of the Dispossessed primarily targeted the Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie, but later started stepping up its attacks on the paramilitaries that were still operating in Passas and collaborating with the New Caputia Provisional Authority.

A full scale sectarian war erupted between the Caputian, Alexandrian and Haifan paramilitary groups and the Confederacy of the Dispossessed in may parts of Passas as the paramilitary groups waged campaigns of vengeance for the actions of the Bassarid Empire and the West Keltian Trade Association, which regularly engaged in piracy that targeted them for centuries - not to mention the cannibalist practices that had Caputians, Alexandrians, and Haifans as their main victims through the West Keltian Season'd Beef Yard. Soon attacks from the Confederacy of the Dispossessed began to target New Alexandrian forces and the developing civil authorities of the New Caputia Provisional Authority.

The insurgents were composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Bassarid units or mixtures opposing the New Alexandrian forces, Raspur Pact supporting forces, and the Caputian, Alexandrian and Haifan paramilitary groups. The insurgents were involved in asymmetric warfare and a war of attrition against the New Caputia Provisional Authority and New Alexandrian forces forces, while conducting coercive and violent tactics against anyone who cooperated with them.

New Caputia Provisional Authority

The New Caputia Provisional Authority (NCPA) was established by Letters Patent of the King on 11.VI1717 AN in order to begin the work of establishing a governing authority over the new territories. It was then that Nouvelle Alexandrie renamed Passas into New Caputia, a name change that surely fueled the rabid insurgency and opposition of the Pallisican people in Passas. The NCPA derives its authority from the Humanitarian Assistance and Protection Act of 1717. Following its establishment, the NCPA vested itself with executive, legislative, and judicial authority over New Caputia from the period of its inception until New Caputia is admitted as a Region of Nouvelle Alexandrie by the Federal Assembly.

1718 Condor One shootdown incident

In 1718 AN, King Manco Cápac I of Nouvelle Alexandrie and Basileus Giakoumis of Constancia passed away in a plane crash over Passaswhile en route to Parap to attend a Chamber of Peers session in Nouvelle Alexandrie. The plane was shot down during their journey by The Gunsmith and ballistics unit of the Confederacy of the Dispossessed. The news of the deaths of King Manco Cápac I and Basileus Giakoumis sent shockwaves throughout both nations, leaving the people of Nouvelle Alexandrie and Constancia in states of grief and disbelief.

Paramilitary-led anti-Bassarid pogroms and extermination campaigns

The paramilitary groups raised for the campaign fought outside the federal chain of command. The Israati-Haifan Defense Force, formed in late 1716 AN by New Alexandrian citizens of Haifan and Israati descent who had formerly been Caputians, had "not received any official sanction or approval for operation" from the Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie, which forcibly closed several of its training camps near the cities of Judah and Midyan in early 1717 AN. It was accused of being "nothing more than a band of vigilantes, driven by personal vendettas and a desire for revenge." The Sons of Meir and the New Order of Rochefort were raised on the same footing, without federal sanction; the Wakara Pathfinders fought for the Confederacy of the Dispossessed until 1718 AN, then changed sides.

The shooting down of Condor One on 20.VI.1718 AN was followed by an intensified offensive. On 13.X.1718 AN airstrikes were reported against settlements across Passas, causing extensive damage and heavy civilian casualties. The cities of Northman, Zimia, and Zidado West were subjected to what was described as a "devastating kinetic area bombardment," with residents reporting entire neighborhoods flattened, thousands killed, and many more driven into the surrounding wilderness. Zimia and Zidado West held the largest concentrations of Kralians, the oldest recorded people of the region, descendants of its earliest inhabitants, whose lands had been claimed in turn by Passas, Gralus, Alexandria, Hamland, and Passio-Corum across the centuries before the Bassarid period. The bombardment of the two cities therefore fell most heavily on the region's indigenous population.

Caputian militias raised in the months before the operation were reported to have "slipped the leash" and set off in pursuit of the displaced population. A source within the Caputian paramilitaries said the militias had been given free rein to track down and apprehend suspected Bassarid collaborators. The government of Nouvelle Alexandrie neither confirmed nor denied the account, which was reported alongside concern among human rights organizations at the prospect of indiscriminate violence against the civilian population.

The surviving Bassarid population of Passas was expelled to Corum. The Israati-Haifan Defense Force, the Sons of Meir, the New Order of Rochefort, and the Wakara Pathfinders each received the commendation of Felipe de Almagro, by then Secretary of Defense, "for their services during the campaign and the subsequent expulsion of Bassarid subjects to Corum."

The expulsion, known as the Pallisican Migration, ran from 1718 AN to 1720 AN and was made by sea and by air. An estimated 80% of the ships attempting to reach Corum sank, their loss attributed to poorly maintained or overloaded vessels, dangerous seas, and a lack of navigational knowledge or resources. The Confederacy of the Dispossessed abducted the refugees who were useful as replacement crew or worth a ransom, and abandoned the rest. Human rights advocates accused the Federal Humanist Party government of encouraging the Federal Forces to bring down suspected refugee flights from beyond visual range and over international waters, to avoid attribution. In 1720 AN alone, 247 bodies suspected to have come from downed aircraft were recovered at sea. Reports said federal coroners had been directed to record such deaths as attributable to people smugglers and pirates. The federal government rejected the accusations, and no inquiry was opened.

In 1721 AN the administration of the Federal Humanist Party announced that it would regularize the former loyalist paramilitary groups as part of the Grand Army of the Federation.

Operation Purple Shroud

Addressing the Cortes Federales in eulogy of the dead King, Felipe de Almagro, then Premier and Secretary of Defense, declared, "until the corpses of his assassins are laid out before his tomb, I shall address no further words in the eulogy of his Majesty."

From IX.1718 AN the effort to capture those responsible for the shoot-down was superseded by Operation Purple Shroud, a reprisal campaign directed against the leadership cadres of the Confederacy of the Dispossessed "as well as against their families and clan hierarchies." It was conducted jointly by the Raspur Pact in southeastern Keltia, using special forces drawn from member nations. An early attempt miscarried. On 17.XI.1718 AN a task force of the Federal Forces and the Federal Gendarmerie tracked the Gunsmith to a hideout in heavily forested country; a brief firefight with his supporters wounded men on both sides, and he escaped. The intelligence recovered there was credited with aiding the later effort. The campaign ended in a nighttime raid on a concealed bunker on 15.VI.1719 AN, three days after the collapse of the Bassarid Empire, a date several Raspur Pact countries marked as V-B Day.

Among those killed were the Gunsmith, Mads Frederiksen, an Elwynnese soldier who had escaped The Scouring and had designed and built the surface-to-air missile system used against Condor One, and his superior Fíalara Préidon, known as the Red Admiral, a former Bassarid sailor who had led the Confederacy from 1717 AN. The two had founded the movement with the Ocian political thinker Lucius Tanah-Leyte, at meetings held in Passas in 1716 AN around Tanah-Leyte's pan-Greenist pamphlet The Wretched of the Green. The pamphlet called for "a Confederacy of all the Dispossessed and the Stateless of Micras, to rise and defend our families," and the movement understood its war as the resistance of the stateless against a Raspur Pact expansion it cast as another razzia upon the peoples of The Green. The Orchestrator, who had commanded the ballistics unit that supported the attack on Condor One, was taken in the same crackdown.

On 20.VI.1719 AN, one year to the day after the shoot-down, the bodies of the Gunsmith and his accomplices were laid before the mausoleum of the late King at Parap, alongside live captives who were forced to kneel through the day and night in postures of supplication. Shackled members of the Dispossessed, among them rank-and-file fighters and their kin, some of them very young, were paraded through Cárdenas the same day, followed by captured vehicles and war banners.

Final offensives and defeat of the Dispossessed in Passas

Nouvelle Alexandrie answered the shoot-down with a sustained offensive and bombing campaign intended to break the Confederacy's hold on Passas. Natopia entered the campaign in XI.1718 AN, and the Natopian Spacefleet conducted a retaliatory orbital strike on Northman followed by further airstrikes. Orbital strikes against former Bassarid ports in Corum, Eura, and Keltia forced the dispersal of the corsair fleets and reduced the support available to the resistance in Norasht and Passas.

The Confederacy had begun the war with thirteen corsair fleets, twelve operating in the Sea of Storms and a thirteenth in the Strait of Haifa. Its Keltian fleets were largely destroyed in repeated engagements with the forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie, Constancia, Natopia, and the Imperial Federation. The remainder sailed for Eura and were absorbed into the Euran fleets, and the flotilla based in Passas was severely damaged in the fighting.

With Préidon and Frederiksen both killed in the reprisal raid of 15.VI.1719 AN, the Confederacy lost the two founders who had directed its Passas campaign, and the collapse of the Bassarid Empire two days earlier removed the state whose stockpiles had armed it. Fighting continued on a diminishing scale through the remainder of 1719 AN and ended on 1.XIII.1719 AN. Among the New Alexandrian commanders in the closing phase was José Manuel Montero, Deputy Commander of the III (Wechua Nation) Combined Arms Corps. No surrender was signed and no instrument of capitulation was executed. Aida the Avenger was still at large when the operation closed, and the Confederacy was never formally disbanded, its surviving warbands going to ground or withdrawing into the Green.

Conclusion

Operation Purple Splendor closed on 1.XIII.1719 AN, two years and seven months after its launch. In its report of the launch on 3.VII.1717 AN, the NBC Newsfeed had given the operation's purpose as the annexation and pacification of territories abandoned by the Haifo-Pallisican Imperial Trade Union, and had judged the resistance to be "continually hampered by their disorganization and internal conflict."

The Confederacy of the Dispossessed was defeated in Passas, and Nouvelle Alexandrie annexed the former Bassarid territories along its Keltian borders, creating two new Regions from them: Boriquén in the southeast, around Lake Cherusken, and New Caputia, formerly Passas. Where the expansion of the Federation overlapped that of Phinbella, the two states settled their claims by the Treaty between Phinbella and Nouvelle Alexandrie. In the assessment of the wider Wars of the Disinherited, the conquest of Passas counted as a major victory for the allied cause.

Participating Forces

Raspur Pact & Federal Forces

•  Keltia Command
  • Banner Group Santander
    • IV (Santander) Combined Arms Corps
      • Tercio de Extranjeros, 3rd (Santander) Brigade, Constancian Foreign Legion
    • 3^rd Air Fleet
  • Banner Group Skerries
    • VI (Outremer) Combined Arms Corps
    • Zylenisí Command (including Nijima island)
    • Talenore Defense Force
    • 5^th Air Fleet
    • 8^th Ground-based Air Defence Division
    • 9^th Ground-based Air Defence Division
    • 10^th Ground-based Air Defence Division
  • Banner Group Valencia
    • V (Valencia) Combined Arms Corps
    • 4^th Air Fleet
    • 11^th Ground-based Air Defence Division
  • Banner Group Wechua
    • III (Wechua Nation) Combined Arms Corps
    • 2^nd Air Fleet
  • Keltian Armada

•  Trans-Euran Command
  • Susa Banner Command
    • I (Alduria) CAC
    • 511^th Army (Razjania Province)
    • 1^st Air Fleet
    • 2^nd Federal Air Defence Wing
    • Euran Fleet

The Disinherited & Dispossessed

Believed to consist of forces, partially modelled on the New Zimian War League, organised into twelve autonomous corsair fleets, capable of operating at will along the littoral of the conflict zone and across the Sea of Storms in support of local militias comprised of those who stand to be disinherited by the fall of the old regime.

Aftermath

Government of the conquered territory passed to the New Caputia Provisional Authority, which held executive, legislative, and judicial power over it. Under the Authority's Adult Resettlement and Integration Program, the peoples of New Caputia were encouraged to identify Bassarids who had held prominent political, military, economic, or religious positions under the old regime. Those identified were interned pending the outcome of an inquiry before the Keltia Command Tribunal for Bassarid Accountability and Justice, whose bench included General Étienne Moreau as military liaison, an officer who had helped plan and execute both Operation Purple Splendor and Operation Purple Shroud. Alongside the military liaison the tribunal seated a civilian and international bench, presided over by Chief Judge Amandine Leblanc, a retired judge of the Federal Courts, with Máximo Yupanqui as Chief Prosecutor and an associate judge, Marcella Alvarez, drawn from the law of human rights and of nations. Its rules provided for the internment of the accused pending inquiry, for legal representation and access to the evidence, and for the cross-examination of witnesses. Bassarids who passed investigation, and many convicted of what the Authority termed lesser crimes, were granted parole to depart for Corum on condition that they not act against the peace of the region.

Under the Child Integration and Rehabilitation Initiative, children under the age of seven belonging to Bassarid families were declared wards of the state and sent to foster homes in Lyrica and Alduria. Children between the ages of seven and fifteen were assigned to the Honourable Company, the merchant-military arm of the ESB-Jörmungandr Group that ran the ports of Eura, where they entered its formal grade of Apprenticed Trader. A separate federal program, the Integration of Bassarid Knowledge and Expertise for Nouvelle Alexandrie, recruited Bassarid scientists, engineers, and technicians into government employment in aerospace and weapons development, and established re-education camps in the territory under the name Centres of Prevention, Integration, and Citizenship. The program was directed as much at denying that expertise to hostile nations and to the Confederacy of the Dispossessed as at securing it for the Federation, on the model of the 1686 Nouvelle Alexandrie Cira Expedition.

The two Regions were admitted on different terms and at different speeds. In the southeast the Federation annexed the country around Lake Cherusken, the homeland of the indigenous Wakara, and constituted it as the Region of Boriquén. Where New Caputia was taken by conquest, Boriquén was annexed at the request of its own Cacique, Guarionex II, whose people the Confederacy of the Dispossessed had overrun in the years of anarchy before the operation. Boriquén entered the Federation as its 11th Region in 1718 AN, under the Boriquén Admission Act, 1718 introduced by Deputy Daniel Valkory, and the Plan de Hato Rey, which confirmed Hato Rey as its capital, and took its place under the self-government of its indigenous people. That early admission came after the Wakara Pathfinders changed sides in 1718 AN, having fought for the Confederacy since the war's outset, and regional government passed in 1723 AN to the Wakara People's Party. New Caputia remained under military government for four years longer. The New Caputia Admission Act, 1719 was presented to the Cortes Federales in 1719 AN by Deputy Felipe de la Vega of the Federal Humanist Party, but did not receive Royal Assent until 1722 AN, when it admitted the region on equal footing with the existing Regions, fixed its capital at Ravaillac, and dissolved the Provisional Authority. Its first Regional Governor was Elizabeth I, the deposed Queen of Caputia, who held the office until her death in 1723 AN and did not seek election to a full term. The expulsion of the territory's Pallisican and Bassarid population was paired with the mass resettlement of the Caputian diaspora, scattered half a century earlier by the White Plague and the fall of Caputia, who entered under the citizenship-by-graces of the Proclamation of Punta Santiago and made New Caputia a homeland for the Caputian people. With admission the region became the Federation's second Caputian region, after the Isles of Caputia, joining the Melusinian port communities that had lived there before the war.

Nearly 100,000 troops returned from overseas deployments by 1722 AN, of whom about 35% re-enlisted. Marriages contracted on deployment, in New Caputia, Normark, and Moorland, were common enough to be reported as a phenomenon of the demobilization, which strained the Federation's arrangements for reintegration and for the mental health of returning soldiers. The Veterans of the Wars of the Dispossessed was founded in 1719 AN and had some 50,000 members by 1739 AN.

The armaments effort that supported the operation produced the Emergency Shipbuilding Program procurement scandal. On 9.VII.1720 AN the Federal Gendarmerie investigation into contracting for the Manco Cápac-class cruiser, built under the Emergency Shipbuilding Program and named for the dead King, was reported to implicate de Almagro. Investigators found a chain of more than 200 emails between him and executives of ESB Susa and ESB Armada in which he pressed for a hastened procurement cycle, and a reallocation of funds within the project that compromised quality checks; two Gendarmerie agents who had leaked material from the investigation were dismissed. The Piquot-Rivera Report, released on 13.II.1722 AN, absolved him of direct financial gain but faulted his role in pushing for an accelerated cycle, and identified a failure of oversight at the National Ordnance and Procurement Board that had allowed contractors to operate with limited accountability. In polling published that month, half of respondents believed de Almagro directly involved and 48% believed the same of Premier Paolo Antonio Aguilar; corruption ranked second among national concerns, at 84%, and support for the Federal Humanist Party fell by 1.4 points. The wider Wars of the Disinherited records that the Emergency Shipbuilding Program "demonstrated the extent to which the ruling FHP and the Honourable Company had permitted a culture of corruption to flourish at the expense of efficiency."

Defense manufacturers expanded on the war orders, among them ESB Armada, the Pontecorvo Firm, and Javelin Industries. Unemployment across the Federation fell from 7.8% in 1715 AN to 3.8% in 1719 AN, a decline attributed to demand in construction and manufacturing and to the correction of the supply-chain problems behind the Recession of 1709. The reconstruction of New Caputia was financed in part by the House of Sternberg. Several New Alexandrian systems entered operational service during the operation, among them the Athena Air Defense System and the revised NovaVision Surveillance Rover. The operation's maritime lift was sustained in part by Shipping Taken Up From Trade, under which the Keltian Armada requisitioned tankers, freighters, and passenger ferries from commercial traffic, and the military logistics system LORKS received its first operational testing during the campaign.

The Memorial for Operation Purple Splendor stands in the Parque de la Victoria at Cárdenas, beside the Cárdenas Victory Column and the National War Museum. Service in the operation is recognized by a clasp to the Keltian Frontier Medal. New Caputia was among the regions most affected by the unrest of the Spring Crisis of 1739, where residents of Ravaillac organized neighborhood defense committees and Federal Guards intervened to stop lynchings.

See also

• Federal Forces of Nouvelle Alexandrie
• Operation Sovereign Borders
• Operation Purple Reign
• Operation Purple Shroud