A group of Jedi and clone troopers study their latest objective (Tommy Lee Edwards)
“War is bloody mathematics seen through to the solution.”
—Firmus Nantz, admiral, New Republic
Throughout its history, the Jedi Order oscillated between standing apart from the Republic’s government and institutions and being tightly integrated with them. Beginning with their role as defenders against threats beyond the galactic frontier, the Jedi sought to protect civilization—and for all its imperfections, the Republic stood for millennia as the highest embodiment of civilization. From early in their history, the Jedi were wary of ruling others, fearing such power as an invitation to the dark side. They preferred to remain guardians and watchers, not military leaders, ministers, or kingmakers.
Yet over the millennia, the Republic occasionally fell into darkness, led astray by evil leaders who used the levers of democracy to amass power for themselves. And sometimes it faced terrible external threats—most notably that of the Sith, whose power would wax and wane over the eons. Each time civilization threatened to topple into ruin, the Jedi faced a momentous decision: Did the Republic’s survival require the Order to intervene directly in its affairs?
At various points in galactic history, the Jedi reluctantly decided such intervention was necessary. They stepped in to prevent the young Republic from annihilating the Tionese, plotted in secret to overthrow the Pius Dea chancellory, and served as chancellors while directly ruling large swaths of Republic territory in the chaotic centuries before Ruusan. Each time, the Order surrendered the powers it had assumed, returning to its guardian role. But as the Republic decayed and the Separatists gained strength, the Jedi began to once again debate whether a more activist role was required.
By 22 BBY matters had reached a crisis point. This time it was the Supreme Chancellor himself who asked the Jedi to assume a new role: A powerful army awaited Republic command, but the Judicial Forces were ill prepared to lead them. Mindful that the Separatists were led by the Jedi apostate Count Dooku, the Jedi agreed to lead the Grand Army to Geonosis in an attempt to short-circuit the Separatist threat.
The Jedi—technically already members of the Judicial Department—were appointed officers in the Grand Army, as well as the Republic Navy, Starfighter Corps, and Special Operations Brigade. While the Jedi were officially part of the military hierarchy, their responsibilities and commands were fluid, with Jedi Knights such as Anakin and Obi-Wan leading troops into ground combat one day, commanding a naval task force the next, and accompanying commandos on a secret mission the day after that. For the sake of simplicity, Padawans considered suited for military duties were given the rank of commander, while Jedi Knights and Masters were referred to as generals.
This wartime bargain caused a rift in the Jedi Order. Some Jedi welcomed the chance to take action, but others saw leading troops as a betrayal of key Jedi precepts. Even Jedi who accepted their new responsibilities were badly strained. They grappled with the morality of leading clones who had been bred for war, and watched Padawans and younger Jedi Knights succumb to impatience and anger, burning for revenge on the Separatists and their leaders.
“In this war, a danger there is of losing who we are,” Yoda admitted in one of his darker moments. But the Jedi Grand Master had no idea just how much truth his words held.
JEDI CRUISER
The Venator-class Star Destroyer, popularly known as the Jedi cruiser because of its use as a flagship by the Republic’s newly appointed Jedi generals, was designed to play any number of roles in the Republic Navy. It was fast enough to run down blockade runners and small enough to land on a planet, but big enough to lead independent missions against Separatist forces. Venators served capably as both warships and starfighter carriers, with dorsal flight decks and launch bays that allowed hundreds of fighters to launch in short order. The Venator’s dual bridge reflected its two missions: The port bridge was used for starfighter command, with the starboard bridge the standard helm. Emblazoned in Republic red, the Venator would emerge as an emblem of the Clone Wars.
The Venator was joined by other ships in the new Star Destroyer class. Walex Blissex had left KDY for Rendili StarDrive, and his Victory-class Star Destroyer emerged from a collaboration with KDY ordered by the Supreme Chancellor and known as the Victor Initiative Project. The Victory was smaller but more heavily armed than the Venator, with a much smaller starfighter complement. The Victors were pressed into early service after the Separatist Admiral Dua Ningo broke out of Foerost with his Bulwark Fleet, chasing Ningo across the Core Worlds and finally destroying him at the Battle of Anaxes. Late in the Clone Wars, the Venators were themselves supplanted by two new classes of KDY Star Destroyers: the hangarless Tector and the Imperator. While the Tector would see relatively limited use, the Imperator class would be renamed the Imperial, and become the signature warship of the Empire.
JEDI STARFIGHTERS
Shortly before the Battle of Geonosis, Saesee Tiin supervised the creation of a corps of Jedi starfighter pilots, and worked with Kuat Systems Engineering on a replacement for the Jedi Order’s small, aging fleet of Delta-6 starfighters.
The new starfighter, the Delta-7 Aethersprite light interceptor, was a significant advance on earlier models in the Delta line, boasting a state-of-the-art targeting system, an advanced shielding system that directed protection as needed, and the capability to hardwire an astromech droid into the fighter. As with earlier Delta models, it was designed by Walex Blissex, who drew upon the design of the Aurek strikefighter used by the ancient Republic. (That same design would inspire the A-wing series Blissex created for the Alliance.)
The Delta-7 was designed as a medium-range reconnaissance vehicle and lacked the ability to calculate hyperspace jumps. For faster-than-light travel, Jedi mated their Delta-7s with Syliure-31 hyperdrive rings made by TransGalMeg. Obi-Wan Kenobi flew a Jedi Order Delta-7 across the galaxy on the trail of Jango Fett.
Blissex adopted a number of the Jedi modifications in the Delta-7B, which also added a standard astromech port forward of the cockpit. But his next Jedi starfighter was a bold new direction: a fast, agile craft designed as an extension of a Jedi pilot’s abilities and reliant on her Force-enhanced senses. The Eta-2 Actis interceptor lacked shields, and its armor, sensors, and systems were radically stripped down, allowing a Jedi behind the stick to fly almost as fast as she could think.
Kuat Drive Yards became a dominant military manufacturer for the Empire, but its specialty was warships, not starfighters; most Imperial starfighter contracts went to Sienar Fleet Systems. But the Eta-2 wasn’t forgotten: Sienar borrowed some elements of the last Jedi starfighter for its TIE fighter, such as the twin ion engines, the radiator panels, and the design of the viewport. Moreover, the TIE was an extension of the minimalist philosophy behind the Eta-2: a fast, nimble fighter for a daring, skilled pilot. Unfortunately, very few TIE pilots were the equals of Jedi.
AT-TE
The All Terrain Tactical Enforcer Assault Walker, or AT-TE, emerged from a Rothana Heavy Engineering industrial security vehicle used to defend mining facilities in the wilds beyond the Rim, with its six-legged stance borrowed from Rothana’s arctic horny whelmer.
When Kuat Drive Yards won the contract to outfit the Republic’s clone army, it beefed up the AT-TE into a formidable ground vehicle, one that could handle everything from transporting troops to supporting them and assaulting hard targets. The AT-TE’s principal weapon was a heavy mass-drive projectile cannon, backed up with six anti-personnel laser cannons. The AT-TE’s feet had clawed magnetic grapples, allowing it to climb steep slopes and even cliffs, and its natural grounding made it immune to ion weapons and able to pass through particle shields, unlike repulsorlift vehicles. The Battle of Bothawui demonstrated the vehicles’ versatility, as Anakin Skywalker deployed them on asteroids as a screen against Grievous’s task force.
The AT-TE was a mainstay of Republic forces in countless battles of the Clone Wars, and performed well, though it proved vulnerable to mines and its stubby legs limited gunners’ field of fire. KDY would attempt to address such shortcomings with long-legged walkers such as the AT-HE, a forerunner of the mighty AT-AT.
The Ruusan Reformations decentralized the bulk of the Republic’s military power, establishing the Judicial Forces as a rapid-response force and giving responsibility for defending the new regional sectors to the Planetary Security Forces.
This system proved all but useless against the growing Separatist threat. In search of greater coordination and control, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine invoked ancient Republic law, appointing Governor-Generals to coordinate military action in each sector in consultation with its Senator, while answering to the Chancellor. In the final days of the Republic, this system would give rise to a permanent class of regional governors, who assumed direct control of the regional sectors when the Senate was disbanded.
The Governor-Generals greatly improved the effectiveness of the Planetary Security Forces in supporting the war effort, but they weren’t an answer to coordinating the overall strategy of the war. The Republic armed forces were divided into twenty Sector Armies, each charged with military control of a different kind of sector—known as an oversector or priority sector. (Contrary to what one might have gathered from the HoloNet, the Republic’s armies contained both clone troopers and non-clone units—some epic battles of the Clone Wars were fought without a single clone in the Republic ranks. While clone and non-clone units sometimes served side by side, coordinating the two proved difficult; with the exception of officers, most non-clone troops served in the Planetary Security Forces, which were largely used in defensive deployments, or with the Judicials.)
In the first weeks of the war, the GAR numbered the equivalent of just two Corps, but soon 3 million troops were ready, and each standard Sector Army numbered nearly 150,000 clone troopers, a number that grew dramatically as more clones were grown and entered the war.
Each Sector Army was divided into four subordinate corps, paired with four navy assault lines, each containing two Acclamator-class transports and two frigates. This formation was designed around the so-called 1/4/16/64 Plan, in which one corps acted as a mobile armored reserve while the others were divided into progressively smaller components for more local missions. In practice, one corps in each Sector Army remained largely intact as an assault division, but the others were divided into hundreds of fast-moving raiding companies, with only a dozen or so formations operating at battalion or brigade level—most of them usually drawn from the reserve corps itself.
As the war unfolded, commanding Jedi generals often led reinforcements to relieve other Sector Armies, and advances and retreats muddled territorial boundaries, leading to overlapping oversectors and commands. By the end of the war, the effective numbers of troops in some oversectors had increased many times over, while others had diminished to little more than bookkeeping formations. The major fleets also became operationally separate from the armies. The twenty army commands remained, however, and in the first days of the Empire they became power bases for a new class of regional governors—the Grand Moffs.
What follows is a snapshot of the twenty Sector Armies:
With their headquarters in the Core Worlds, these six com-mands were designated as reserves, but their roles varied.
The First and Second armies were defensive commands for the heart of the Republic, but also provided a reserve of troops for campaigns across the galaxy. The Third and Fourth armies were designed as rapid-response commands for Mid Rim and Outer Rim campaigns, with bases inside Sector 1. Sector 5 and Sector 6 were garrison commands in areas believed to be secure, used to provide training and support.
The First Army was the main defensive command around Coruscant, and took the Anaxes fleet base—the defender of the Core since the Azure Imperium joined the Republic—as its headquarters.
The Second Army defended the Denon and Duro hyperlane junctions, and blockaded the Neimoidian Purse Worlds.
The Third Army was intended as a reserve command for Mid Rim operations, and also given responsibility for patrol along the Perlemian. Its forces fought extensively alongside those of the Twelfth Army in the Clone Wars.
Aayla Secura and Commander Bly on Saleucami (Chris Scalf)
The Fourth Army was a reserve force to support Mid and Outer Rim campaigns, and extensively reinforced the Thirteenth Army, essentially becoming an Outer Rim command as the war intensified. Sector 4 troops did see action within their own theater late in the war, blockading and then invading Neimoidia.
The Fifth Army was a reserve army garrisoning the Deep Core, and many of its assets were shifted to busier theaters in relatively short order, leaving skeleton forces behind.
The Sixth Army was a reserve command dominated by repair yards and training camps. Its territory continued the half circle of Azure Hammer in the western quadrant, with an extended theater of operations intended to guard against threats from the Unknown Regions. As with the Fifth Army, many Sixth Army forces were shifted to areas of greater need, leaving the oversector thinly defended.
Systems Armies Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta divided the northern quadrant beyond the Core perimeter.
The Seventh Army was primarily a defensive command, charged with patrolling the Namadii Corridor as far as Ansion and the broad sweep of space between Dorin and Bogden; the Seventh also stood ready to support the Fifth Army against threats from the Unknown Regions, and its forces conducted secret scouting missions beyond the frontier.
The Eighth Army focused its operations against Muunilinst and Mygeeto, and saw some of the heaviest fighting of any Sector Army. It was repeatedly reinforced by units from reserve commands.
The Ninth Army saw extensive fighting early in the war, as the Republic tried to break the Separatist lines connecting Muunilinst and the Outer Hydian.
The Tenth Army’s primary role was to defend the Outer Hydian, standing ready to reinforce the Ninth and Tenth armies while guarding against the possibility of the Separatists wooing neutral systems in the region led by Mandalore’s Duchess Satine.
The Eleventh Army was a military salient to prevent the Separatist enclaves on the Hydian and Perlemian from joining forces.
The Twelfth Army was charged with invading and controlling the Separatist enclave on the Outer Perlemian, which included many of the Confederacy’s most productive and best-defended industrial worlds. The Twelfth advanced early from its secure rear base at Lantilles to Centares, with forces from Sector 3 reinforcing its Coreward positions. Twelfth Army forces played a major role during the Outer Rim Sieges.
The Thirteenth Army was given a sprawling theater of operations because its responsibilities included the core territories of the Hutts, where few Republic forces were deployed with the exception of the Toydaria base. The Thirteenth defended Kamino against repeated Separatist attacks, and held the line against the Separatist attempt to cut off the Republic’s Rimward forces at Christophsis. Sector 13 was extensively reinforced by the Fourth Army.
The Fourteenth Army deployed on the Outer Corellian Run and was primarily a defensive command intended to protect Rothana, Excarga, and the Rimward approach to Kamino. It reinforced the Thirteenth Army repeatedly, and repelled a Separatist attack in its own theater of operations at Ryloth.
The Fifteenth Army was envisioned as primarily a reserve force able to reinforce troops seeing combat on the Corellian Run, Hydian Way, and Rimma Trade Route.
The Sixteenth Army was an important but largely defensive command, ready to move Coreward to reinforce Corellia or Rimward up the Corellian Run, and protecting the Coreward Hydian Way and the Shipwrights’ Trace.
The Seventeenth Army defended a salient around Malastare, and reinforced the Eighteenth Army in a number of campaigns.
The Eighteenth Army defended the besieged salient around Eriadu, where propaganda made Tarkin and his mix of clone army and Outland Regions Security Force troops into heroes, and saw extensive action along the Hydian and Rimma.
The Nineteenth Army was charged with defending the outer Trade Spine, and fought a number of battles as the Separatists advanced from Kinyen to Bomis Koori, retaining control of the Kriselist junction in a hard-fought campaign.
The Twentieth Army fought a skillful back-and-forth war on the Rimma and Trade Spine around Thyferra and Bestine, where Separatist forces maintained significant strength until Grievous stripped the region of assets for his raid on Coruscant.
ARC-170 FIGHTER
Built by Incom and Subpro, the Aggressive ReConnaissance-170 starfighter was designed as a rugged, durable fighter suitable for long-range missions and able to stand on its own without support from carriers and warships.
The ARC-170’s split transverse wings unfolded to expose heat sinks and radiators, aiding the fighter’s shielding and helping it shed excess heat. Its nose was packed with sensors, scanners, and jammers. Armament was provided by two forward-facing laser cannons, two aft cannons, and a sextet of proton torpedoes.
The ARC-170 was a critical part of the Republic Starfighter Corps during the Outer Rim Sieges, battering Separatist warships and ground targets while Jedi Eta-2s and lighter V-wings gave it cover. The ARC-170 proved particularly valuable as a part of the Open Circle Fleet, with the ranks of clone pilots supplemented by non-clone volunteers who’d proved themselves in the Planetary Security Forces and Judicial service. The Empire selected some of those pilots as the progenitors of new clone lines.
The ARC-170 began as a heavier version of Incom/Subpro’s Z-95 Headhunter, beloved by pilots across the galaxy as a reliable, easily modified fighter. During the Clone Wars, the ARC-170s would be modified to produce a pair of heavier bombers, the PTB-625 and the NTB-630. In later years the ARC-170 would be succeeded by the T-65 X-wing, which sacrificed some of the ARC-170’s firepower in favor of regaining the Z-95’s agility.
The following letter, from Padawan Ahsoka Tano to her friend Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy, represents a rare firsthand account of this important battle; how it came to be among the papers of the Yularen family is unknown.
Click here to read letter.
Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano work to lift the siege of Christophsis (Paul Youll)
By the third year of the Clone Wars, the citizens of the Republic were weary of war, and terrified of deadly Separatist incursions such as Grievous’s strike against the Core and Dua Ningo’s breakout from Foerost. The war seemed like it would drag on forever.
But the reality was different: The Republic was winning.
The Republic had finally directed a substantial proportion of its industrial might to the war effort, and its production now vastly outstripped Separatist capabilities. New laws and amendments had tamed the Republic’s tangle of competing priorities, jurisdictions, and commands, giving the Supreme Chancellor and his key ministers the ability to direct wartime production and military assets quickly and efficiently. The economic powers that had underwritten the Separatist movement were under a terrible strain, and the citizens of the Confederacy of Independent Systems no longer believed the Republic would sue for peace.
The Separatists had never controlled substantial swaths of territory outright, but for much of the war, this hadn’t mattered: The understaffed Republic military had needed to extinguish the fires of Separatism in system after system and hunt down Separatist task forces and fleets charged with launching hit-and-fade attacks throughout Republic space. The Separatists had a loose network of far-flung factory worlds, a vast fleet of warships, and millions of targets to choose from. They could be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, placing the Republic in a grim trap. It could defend its worlds against Separatist terror and incursions, giving the core Separatist territories time to crank out new warships and droid armies, or it could try to reclaim those territories while leaving Republic worlds vulnerable in the public perception.
This puzzle was never solved; instead, the Republic outgrew it, with its massive military buildup and coordination of existing forces finally allowing it to pursue both goals and begin to grind down the Separatist war machine.
By the third year of the war, the Separatists had been ejected from their bases in the Core and the Colonies and driven back to the Mid Rim and Outer Rim in the Slice. Steady pressure had cleaved Separatist-controlled regions in the New Territories into two pieces. The Separatist enclave on the Corellian Run Coreward of Ando had been reclaimed, with Confederate forces falling back to the Outer Rim in disarray. And much of the Rimma had been retaken as well, with the Separatists clinging to holdings around Xagobah and Yag’Dhul.
The main thrusts of the Outer Rim Sieges came in six theaters—dubbed Mygeeto, Serenno, Felucia, Siskeen, Yag’Dhul, and Praesitlyn after key Separatist worlds in those theaters. In what would prove to be the final weeks of the Clone Wars, Republic forces were making progress in all six campaigns and cleaning up remaining Separatist resistance elsewhere, such as within Neimoidian space.
In the New Territories, Plo Koon broke the Separatist defenses at Ywllandr, clearing the way for Ki-Adi-Mundi’s forces to assault the key InterGalactic Banking Clan world of Mygeeto. Jedi-led fleets assaulted New Bornalex and Ord Radama, attempting to clear the way to the key world of Celanon and Dooku’s homeworld of Serenno. The fiercest fighting came in the Felucian theater—home to many of the Confederacy’s key factory worlds—with pivotal battles at Kashyyyk, Boz Pity, Saleucami, and Felucia. Forces from Rothana and Excarga sought to clear the outer Corellian Run of Separatist units. And the Praesitlyn theater saw troops from Eriadu besiege worlds such as Xagobah and Sluis Van—with the Separatist leadership evacuated from Utapau to Mustafar.
Fighting was different in the Yag’Dhul theater, which the Separatists abruptly all but abandoned to supply warships for General Grievous’s daring strike at Coruscant via a secret route through the blazing heart of the galaxy. At first the strike exceeded even Grievous’s hopes: He spirited Supreme Chancellor Palpatine off the planet to captivity aboard his flagship, the Invisible Hand. This was the moment of Grievous’s greatest triumph, and the cyborg warlord waited to see Palpatine humiliated in a HoloNet broadcast and carted off to captivity and torment. But the Separatists’ ultimate master, Darth Sidious, ordered no such transmission, and bade the Invisible Hand to hold its position. Within hours Count Dooku was dead, the fleet had been shredded above Coruscant, Grievous himself had fled in an escape pod, and Anakin Skywalker had somehow landed half of a Separatist flagship intact, saving Palpatine and perhaps also the Republic.
The raid was the Separatists’ last gasp. Grievous himself would soon die on Utapau, and Anakin Skywalker, now Darth Vader, would slaughter the Separatist leaders on Mustafar. With its droid armies deactivated, the Confederacy of Independent Systems would effectively cease to exist. But all had proceeded according to Sidious’s plan: By the time the Outer Rim Sieges ended, the Separatist cause was dead. So, too, was the Jedi Order, and the Republic it had served.
Ki-Adi-Mundi and his troops in action on Mygeeto (Drew Baker)
From the Journals of Kol Skywalker, 123 ABY:
Nearly a century and a half after Darth Sidious’s triumph, I am struck by how few within the Galactic Alliance and the Jedi Order truly grasp the complexity of the plot he wove to destroy the Jedi and the Republic.
Consider everything that Sidious needed to restore Sith rule. He needed a centralized military state created where none existed. He needed the galaxy’s powerful corporations and guilds brought to heel. He needed the idealistic, charismatic members of the Senate killed or marginalized. And he needed the Jedi Order destroyed. Even for a Sith as powerful as he, it must have seemed like a mad dream. But over decades of careful planning and manipulation, he made it a reality.
To understand how, begin with his guise as Palpatine, Senator from Naboo. As his political career blossomed, Palpatine became a trusted ally of Chancellor Valorum—and helped push the galaxy into war. Palpatine encouraged Valorum to adopt measures that radicalized the Trade Federation—an organization that Sidious controlled, and had encouraged to invade Naboo as a protest against Valorum’s policies. In the chaos that followed the invasion, Palpatine manipulated Naboo’s Queen Amidala into a no-confidence vote in Valorum, then rode a wave of sympathy for the Naboo to his own election as Chancellor.
Palpatine was now the highest-ranking elected leader of the Republic—but the Republic was so weak and rotten that he had no effective control of it. To gain that control, Palpatine needed an existential threat to the Republic. He needed an enemy, and a war. Working as Sidious, he created both. One by one he drew other megacorps and economic powers into the same web that had ensnared the Trade Federation, creating the Separatist movement. He seduced Dooku into abandoning the Jedi Order to become the Separatists’ public face and his own secret apprentice. Through Dooku and his other pawns, he ensured the creation of a terrifying Separatist war machine. As Palpatine, he manipulated the Jedi Sifo-Dyas into secretly ordering the creation of a clone army. As Sidious, he arranged for Sifo-Dyas’s murder, and the existence of the army was kept secret.
During Palpatine’s second term as Chancellor—the final one he could serve under the Galactic Constitution—the Separatist crisis he had engineered exploded, and the galaxy began a steady march to war. Working behind the scenes as Supreme Chancellor, Palpatine ensured the passage of the first of many Republic laws and amendments that would steadily erode the power of the Senate, delivering control of the Republic into his hands.
There were literally hundreds of acts, amendments, decrees, and directives that chipped away at the Republic’s laws and the rights of its citizens and gave more power to the Supreme Chancellor, not to mention the appropriations bills and deregulation measures whose Senate passage Palpatine engineered. Every act was approved by Palpatine with a show of reluctance and a promise that it would be set aside as quickly as possible. But six measures above all ensured that when Palpatine moved to eliminate his enemies and declare himself Emperor, no one was able to stop him.
The first was the Emergency Powers Act, which eliminated term limits for the duration of the Separatist crisis, keeping Palpatine as Supreme Chancellor and giving him widespread latitude in taking measures to end that crisis.
Next came the Military Creation Act, which reestablished a centralized Republic military, allowing Palpatine to order the Kaminoans’ secret clone armies into battle.
After that came the Enhanced Security Enforcement Act, which abrogated or suspended many of the rights of Republic citizens for the duration of the Separatist crisis. Widespread surveillance, search and seizures, detention without trial, secret trials without due process—all of these tools were wielded in the name of security to create a police state under the Supreme Chancellor’s control.
Next came the Reflex Amendment, which allowed Palpatine to bypass the Senate and the bureaucracy in directing the war effort. Palpatine used this power to begin to build a quasi-military government structure in parallel to the Senate, appointing Governor-Generals to coordinate the Republic’s sector defense forces and industrial production.
On the heels of the Battle of Coruscant, the Senate approved two Security Act amendments—the Supreme Command Amendment and the Judicial Command Amendment. The two measures formally named the Chancellor Supreme Commander of the Republic armed forces and the Jedi Order for the duration of the war, creating an explicit chain of command every clone trooper understood.
Finally, there was the Sector Governance Decree, which appointed regional and planetary governors for each sector and system. This decree made the military system of Governor-Generals ubiquitous and permanent, creating a new power structure that would lead to the Senate being sidelined and ultimately disbanded.
The Sector Governance Decree came in the final days of the Clone Wars, which fulfilled the rest of Sidious’s mission. The Republic was reorganized as a centralized military power answering only to the Supreme Chancellor. The Jedi were kept off balance and distracted, and their ranks thinned by battle after battle. The galaxy’s economic institutions either swore loyalty to the Republic and became part of its military-industrial complex, or declared loyalty to the Separatists and set the stage for their own disenfrachisement. And Sidious offered just enough clues to draw out his enemies in the Senate and the Jedi Order, manipulating them into conspiring against his rule and leaving themselves vulnerable with gestures such as the Petition of 2,000.
In its final days, the Jedi unwittingly gave Sidious exactly what he wanted. They pushed Anakin Skywalker, my ancestor, into a close association with Palpatine, hoping to discover the identity of the Sith Lord they knew stood close to the pinnacle of Republic power. They never dreamed the Sith Lord was the Chancellor himself. And the Jedi really did move to forcibly remove Palpatine from office, and make plans to take control of the Senate until its corrupt members could be purged. In his first address as Emperor, Palpatine said the Jedi had plotted against him and the Republic and attempted to assassinate him—and all of that was true, from a certain point of view.
Imagine the reaction of Mace Windu when he discovered Palpatine was the Sith Lord the Jedi had hunted so desperately. All at once he must have grasped the enormity of what Sidious had done—and realized that the future of the Jedi Order hung by a thread. But Windu didn’t understand everything. He didn’t know that Sidious had all but completed his seduction of Anakin, playing on his terror of losing the woman he secretly loved. And he didn’t know that Sidious had an army of executioners at the Jedi’s backs.
Order 66 came with the greatest of the Jedi Masters far from Coruscant, mired in the deadly distraction that was the Outer Rim Sieges. Most of the Jedi were alone, their senses dulled by war and the dark side, and surrounded by troops they had grown to trust. Order 66 was one of more than a hundred contingency orders every clone had memorized, covering emergency situations that might occur during the war. Only in retrospect does its drab military-speak strike us as sinister: “In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander, GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander until a new command structure is established.”
That Supreme Commander was Palpatine. The very genes of his clone army had been altered to ensure loyalty and obedience, and the clones had been conditioned since birth to follow orders efficiently and without question or debate. When the clones received Order 66, the vast majority of them simply followed it, turning their guns on their Jedi Generals. Because they did so with neither malice nor hatred, few Jedi sensed anything amiss until the first blaster bolts ripped through them.
Within a few hours, the Jedi had been reduced to a handful of hunted outlaws. Within a few days, Palpatine was Emperor. The megacorps and guilds were dissolved, nationalized, or broken. His political enemies were dead, in detention, or living in fear. And a vast military machine answered to his orders and his alone.
His triumph was complete.
Order 66 is carried out on New Plympto (Bruno Werneck)
