War of Haesanite Succession

War of Haesanite Succession
Part of the Eastern Wars for Empire
The 1792 Treaty of Levesque ended the War of Haesanite Succession
Date 1790-1792 Location Haesan Result Haesan and Seogura "indefinitely" ceded to Opthelia Opthelia voids all claims to the Duchy of Fells-Haute
Belligerents
Opthelia	Haesanite French
Commanders and leaders
Duke Rayleigh Ascott	Colonel Cyril Gerard
Units involved
2,000 Imperial soldiers 12,000 Haemi conscripts Fleet of the Orient: 1 Ship of the Line 15 frigates 30 sloops	800 Colonial Guards Corps 5,000 Arrivée 2,000 Haemi volunteers Task-force fleets
Casualties and losses
550 Imperial soldiers 4,000 Haemi conscripts 4 frigates 15 sloops	200 Colonial Guards Corps 2,000 Arrivée (combat) 3,500 Arrivée (civilian) 1,000 Haemi volunteers Various small fleets

The War of Haesanite Succession was a conflict fought between Opthelia and France from 1790 to 1792 that was part of the Eastern Wars for Empire. After colonial forces built military installations in Haesan throughout the 18th century, Opthelian governors grew wary that it would soon become impossible to remove the French from their currently held territory and launched an attack on Lemonnier. Over a two year campaign, Opthelian forces marched through the Haesanite north and would besiege the French colonial capital at Anfe. Ultimately the siege was successful, and the French surrendered their colony and signed the Treaty of Levesque, while ensuring their other claims in Eastern Hesperida would remain uncontested.

Prelude to war

Starting in the early 18th century, both Opthelia and France began their colonization of Haesan, with the Opthelians predominantly in the south and the French mainly in the north. Opthelian authorities cooperated with local Haemi elites and prominent merchants in order to coopt and control the port cities in the nation's south, while the French initiated a large wave of immigration, with over 100,000 Arrivée coming to their colonial between 1740 and 1790. The French also built up a series of castles to secure their possessions called the Chateauvignts system. Meanwhile, Opthelia had established a colony in Pharitaya since 1736, and colonial authorities believed that was coming under threat from French aggression. The Treaty of Kamome in 1788 between France and Misumi was thought to give the French control of key ports and trade routes throughout the Gulf of Haesan, while a French garrison at Saikane was seen as a threat to the Opthelian ports in Seogura. In March 1790, the colonial governor of Haesan, Duke Rayleigh Ascott, received orders from Eddington to attack the Chateaux Lemonnier and was notified that the Fleet of the Orient would be dispatched to aid in his mission of pushing the French out of the peninsula.

Conflict

Caught by surprise, the small garrison defending Chateaux Lemonnier was easily overwhelmed by the force of nearly 1,000 Opthelian troops, and Opthelia's advanced artillery destroyed much of the frontier fortress. As the troops tried to progress northwards towards Anfe, they soon encountered difficulty traversing the the brush of the plains provinces, and were bogged down by contingents of local fighters who had a much deeper knowledge of the terrain. Meanwhile, both sides marshalled up their own forces. Opthelia relied on their inside connections with key business figures and urban leaders to conscript many factory workers and civilians from southern cities to join their forces, estimated to be around 12,000 in total. The French were laissez-faire about administering their colony, and as such, their force rallied many Arrivée to protect their homeland, along with about 2,000 Haemi volunteers who feared Opthelian rule.

Well outfitted and organized under the lead of Colonel Cyril Gerard with the assistance of his elite Colonial Guards Corps, as the Opthelians attempted to advance up the Gulf coast in April 1791 the French them at the Battle of Marquette. Receiving news of this, Duke Ascott commissioned the Fleet of the Orient to bombard the city, the start of a turning point in tactics in the war. With a combination of naval support and troop superiority on the ground, Opthelian forces advanced further northward with a decisive victory the the Battle of the Cross, and marched onwards towards the French colonial capital, Anfe. Unable to directly capture the large, fortified settlement, Opthelian troops resorted to siege tactics, using their navy to bombard the port while cutting off strategic supply lines into the city. While the Arrivée attempted to use task forces of flaming ships and smaller boats to attack the Fleet of the Orient and break the blockade of the port, they would ultimately only reduce the size of the fleet as attempts to damage the flagship HMS Avalonia were repeatedly unsuccessful. After a 6 month seige, and after a long winter in which many colonists in the city died due to lack of food, a white flag was raised over the capital, bringing the war to a close.

Aftermath

The two parties signed the Treaty of Levesque in March 1792, formalizing the transfer of French Haesanite territory to Opthelia. In the interest of maintaining peace in the Eastern Hesperidan region, Opthelia ceded all claims to the Duchy of Haute Fells, and a border was drawn at the Argenac River between Lienne and the Littoral Marches. France also agreed to vacate their troops from Saikane and respect Opthelian control of Pharitaya and Seogura. The treaty set a new model for balancing interests amongst colonial regimes in the region, and was be one of the last major boundary re-drawings before the start of decolonial movements.

Opthelia established a national governate for the colony of Haesan after the war, and mismanagement of the colony, along with lingering discontent over the often underhanded techniques used to conscript Haemi soldiers for the war, led to the outbreak of unrest like Cho's Rebellion in the following decades. Arrivée largely turned to subsistence agriculture in the years following the war, as they were often more neglected by the Opthelian authorities than the local Haemi, who were seen as more easily co-optable. As time progressed, this dynamic led Haesanite Arrivée to be greatly resentful of Laeralian Arrivée, who were seen as benefitting from their suffering, a grievance which remains common in the present day.