Battle of Holwinn

Battle of Holwinn
Conflict:	Civil War in Goldshire
Date:	22 Gevrader – 15 Fasmas 1643 AN
Place:	Airle, Cabbagefall, Demonsfall, & Tyrelwynn (Holwinn)
Outcome:	Decisive Imperialist victory. Fall of the 1st Triskelion. Destruction of the Lunatic Legion.
Combatants
Imperial Republic of Shireroth		Duchy of Goldshire (Mercaja Faction)
Commanders
Adam Ayreon-Kalirion Tokaray al-Osman Michael Verion Isabella Simrani-Kalirion		Mo'lluk Hawthorne
Strength
Imperial Army Palatini Corps: 75,000 Classis Rubrum (V Corps): 38,066 Imperial Shirerithian Air Forces Bomber Command Strike Command Shirerithian Supplies Service Imperial Order of Technomaezji: 6,000 Rrakanychan Watch: 24,750 S.W.O.R.D.: 27,975 Jaysh al-Sathrati: 36,036		Army of the Golden Dawn: est. 310,000 Lunatic Legion: 4,500
Casualties
27,049 dead 14,529 wounded 5,365 missing		239,800 dead
Notes
After the fall of Tyrelwynn, the Imperial Forces unfurled the blood banner, making it a capital offence to take a prisoner, or to allow oneself to be captured and taken as one. Consequently no P.O.W. figures were recorded for this battle. Civilian casualties sustained during this battle were heavy.

The Battle of Holwinn saw the Mercaja advance of Cabbagefall and Demonsfall during the Civil War in Goldshire. During the course of 20 days, Mercaja forces overran most of Holwinn by the mobile operations of Triskelions, golem-tachanka and Octalune cavalry, followed up by rebel militias under the banner of the Army of the Golden Dawn and the Lunatic Legion. Their rapid advances, following earlier significant gains during the Battle of Tyrelwynn, brought the Imperial Forces screening the southern and eastern approaches to Shirekeep to the point of collapse. Only massive and unrestricted chemical and biological warfare, beginning on the night of the 19th of Filadinu, the 22nd day of the battle, checked the momentum of the rebel advance and killed many of the command staff, mages, alchemists and formshapers responsible for keeping the more esoteric of the rebel's weaponry in working order, including the dreaded Triskelion. Driven by fanaticism and desperation, the rebels pressed on their attacks for another 10 days in the hope that they might yet be able to threaten Shirekeep in sufficient numbers that the Landsraad could be panicked into deposing the absent Kaiser and the pro-war faction in the Imperial Government. It was a forlorn hope and the despairing charge of the full strength of the Lunatic Legion against Cabbagefall at dawn on the 4th of Fasmas ended in a futile slaughter, after which the Palatini Corps of the Imperial Army moved onto the counter-offensive on the 7th of that same month. The counter-offensive was the beginning of a surge which saw the Imperial Army overrunning and recapturing the entirety of the county of Holwinn amidst scenes of massacre and reprisal.

The battle is considered to have ended on 15 Fasmas 1643, with the simultaneous entry of Imperial Forces into Airle and Tyrelwynn, after which point the fleeing Army of the Golden Dawn was a spent force.

Prelude

Beginning on 14 Oskaltequ 1642 with the release of lethal levels of a potent cocktail of hallucinogens and neurotoxins in aerosol form, followed by a probing reconnaissance-in-strength carried out by Octalune cavalry, the network of defensive positions held by the Jaysh al-Sathrati in the county of Holwinn rapidly unravelled, leading to a rebel advance towards Tyrelwynn and its eventual evacuation and abandonment by the Imperialists.

This collapse had the effect of confining the ESB Group backed militias along the lower reaches of Red Elwynn to the river port of Teldrin, which subsequently came under a close siege from the County Militia of rebel-held Lunaris. The river Elwynn trade, lifeblood of Shirekeep's economy, was effectively choked off.