How the Empire lost almost 25,000 STAR DESTROYERS after Endor | Star Wars Legends

[Music] art afflict out the viewport it's still not over yet sir but it was and deep down Palin was sure art if knew it as well as he did a thousand systems left out of an empire that had once spanned a million two hundred stardestroyers remaining from a fleet that had once included over 25,000 of them specter of the past book one of the throng duology does a good job of setting up the dire straits of the Empire at about nineteen years after the Battle of Yavin the Empire has crumbled and even the ultimate symbol of their power their massive star fleet has now dwindled to a hundreth of its former power but how is that possible how in less than two decades did the Empire managed to lose over twenty thousand star destroyers that's what we'll the examining on today's video so the information for this video obviously changes depending on whether we're examining cannon or legends today we will be looking at Star Wars legends but if you'd like me to also take a crack at cannon make sure to LIKE this video and let me know down below with legends however there's no one clear answer rather it was a variety of factors which caused the Empire to lose the majority of their fleet from mismanagement a lack of a central leader after Palpatine Imperial infighting defections and ship captures and of course major events like Operation shadow hand I think it makes most sense to examine the losses chronologically let's start first with the Battle of Endor and Endor like with the destruction of the first Death Star represented a serious loss of leadership for the Empire not only of course was the Emperor killed along with lord Vader but the second Death Star was destroyed as was the executor and a fairly large portion of death squadron all of these assets would have had the best-of-the-best within the empire stationed on them and thus the sort of range reign would make the loss of ships even more common just because the officers whether commanding the ship or performing secondary duties would have just been of well lesser quality on several occasions pelion and the Thrawn Trilogy and later remarks at the young age of those on the bridge of the various star destroyers and later the Empire more heavily takes on women and later even allows aliens into their rank that being said the loss of Palpatine himself was the much much more serious issue when it came to the imperial throne there was no line of secession there was no one who could step into Palpatine's position and command the loyalty of the Imperial Starfleet for example after the Battle of Endor the remaining Imperial ships first heeded the orders of the ranking officer due two deaths captain pally on but after the escape they basically broke up and went their own separate ways this basically represented how all Imperial Starfleet acted well some did fall to the ruling council which was perhaps the most legitimate successor the majority of resources went elsewhere whether the deep core back to their home systems or perhaps falling into the service of the now dozens of warlords which were beginning to claim power the creation of warlords and mini imperial states was incredibly important to the new Republic anyway because although it meant that the new republic did not have another head of state that they could quickly kill and weaken the Imperials further it also meant that the thousands of fleets across the galaxy were no longer unified under a single leader we had fleets which swore loyalty to the deep core warlords or artists Cain and the Pentastar alignment or warlords inge or dozens of others as I said but not only were they not attacking the New Republic in any sort of coordinated way the warlords were also jostling against each other cinge for example would often encroach on the territory of both smaller and other large warlords and the key is many didn't see themselves as a second Empire or a continuation of the Empire rather their own new thing so their first primary goal wouldn't have been continuing the war against the New Republic but rather establishing and protecting their own territory so right away ships would have been bled due to infighting by being prey to larger newer public fleets without the support of other Imperials and just lost due to essentially falling into a private hand and disappearing interestingly this loss of ships is kind of similar to a strategy used by the Rebel Alliance even when Palpatine was alive the Empire was heavily fractured and the Alliance would sometimes attack on the edge of a territory belonging to a certain moth knowing that because high Imperial officials guarded their assets so closely it was unlikely that a moth in a neighboring sector would send out any ships for support the post Endor era was sort of like this but magnified because now there was a massive power vacuum and the Imperials were killing each other basically to try to gain that position by two or three years after the Battle of Endor the new republic was making inroads to the inner rim and the core managing to attack smaller warlords or even planets not formally under control of a warlord but which had a small Imperial defense force occupying it one good example of this would be Bakura which the Alliance of free planets as the new Republic was called at the time managed to essentially free from the Empire and one of the karez major problems was that no Imperial defense forces were nearby to aid them what does this have to do with losing Star Destroyers though well essentially the point is that even though the New Republic had only a few ships it allowed them to be the dominant force and many of the battles that they engaged the Empire in in the first few years and especially before the Battle of Khorasan they weren't really hitting up against any large Imperial forces this was also a period of defection and I think people really really underestimate the amount of star destroyers and other ships that the Empire either lost or had captured for example the heip and Navy managed to secure several dozen imperial star destroyers in the years after the Battle of Endor and they were a pretty small and certainly very isolationist faction the New Republic's early years were focused on diplomacy and many planets flocked at join their ranks many of these would have had ships belonging to the Empire technically under their command and one of the major things that mon mothma pushed for was what was called the defence declarations which was an executive order basically d nationalizing planetary security forces and what that means is that if a planet like Corellia had a defense fleet instead of that belong to the empire it would actually be in control of Corellia here's what the essential guide to warfare says about this pivotal decision the defense declaration devolve control of planetary security forces nationalized by the Empire to their sectors New Republic member sectors would be expected to support the military Starfleet but would retain command of their local forces word of the defense declarations rippled through the galaxy sector's loyal to the Empire or at least by powerful moths dismissed the measure as illegal but for others it was the deciding factor that led them to break with the Empire or join the New Republic and some sectors loyalties proved sharply divided leading to hundreds of battles between rival and periodic forces that further diminished the Empire's ability to wage war so yeah not only did planets and their defense forces join the New Republic that would have included some star destroyers but it also caused further infighting as the war progressed another major issue for the Empire was the loss of their major shipyards fond or for example was seized very early while other planets like Corellia and kuat joined the New Republic this meant that not only did the Empire lose its ability to make ships something that the Thrawn Trilogy really explores but the New Republic was now heavily militarizing Mon Calamari and the defense forces generally created several new ship designs and cruisers were being pumped out at this point the New Republic would have been able to take on the Empire at a larger scale the New Republic was not only capturing Star Destroyers at this point but even dreadknots like the liu Sankhya and the later Guardian a common tactic as we'd see during the Battle of Endor would be to overwhelm the enemy and then just require a surrender than taking the vessels and this seemed to be so successful that even the New Republic successor state the Galactic Federation of free alliances was still relying heavily on old imperial class Star Destroyers to make up much of their Navy one of the largest warlords at this time and the largest for sure after the death of Zinj was Grand Moff artist Kane of the Pentastar alignment Kane had a lot of resources at his disposal including a super star destroyer but he was almost completely non aggressive against the New Republic so basically he had a lot of ships tied up doing nothing as and I quote diplomacy and the defense declarations had divided the imperial military with many deciding that their loyalties lay with their home sectors not the vacillating ruling council as moths and admirals with imperial ambitions of their own had begun battling over territory Kaine really kind of squandered an opportunity because he had the opportunity to tack Mon Calamari in force and was in position to do so after Endor but instead he withdrew to essentially secure his holdings and it wasn't until Thrawn that we see a real coordinated effort amongst various imperial sub factions that being said thron didn't really pull from imperial resources across the galaxy he did take some from the Pentastar alignment but most of his resources came from the remains of death squadron he purposely left other Imperial fleets in defensive positions notably however Thrawn's death brought chaos across the galaxy and the New Republic used that to take large swaths of territory attacking for example crenel and his hegemony however by this point the empire on a totality still held the balance of power in the galaxy this would change with operation shadow hand there were two main factors that led to ship loss first of all ships began mysteriously leaving their posts and heading towards the deep core New Republic intelligence thought that one of the warlords in that area had gained prominence as even important planets were left undefended then however an invasion fleet led by twelve dreadknots and presumably a similarly massive support fleet took the core as the empire united for the first time to flex its power however shortly after the Blitz there was a massive imperial mutiny which shredded the Empire's fleets and killed many capable officers it's very likely that thousands of ships including the majority of the Empire's remaining dreadknots were destroyed at this time as the essential guide to warfare says the Empire would limp along under succession of leaders after this point but it's dreams of reconquering the galaxy were dead the New Republic would also use this point to claim territory that was under the control of the empire including even more shipyards however the Empire would have also lost massive resources during the destruction of Biss which was blown up by the Empire's own Galaxy gun here is where the scales tip even as the warlords unified at toss beacon or rather they were killed and the large portion of the Empire was unified by dala the New Republic now was more powerful than the Galactic Empire dalla squandered Imperial command losing perhaps dozens of star destroyers and one of the Empire's last super star destroyers then command moved to Admiral pelion who completely changed Imperial doctrine deciding to move out of the core and into the outer rim he realized that the Empire was now not powerful enough to fight the New Republic directly and instead went on the defensive however his Council of moths argued for one last offensive which led to the kind of disastrous Orenda campaign although the Empire did secure some victories in the end they lost even more dreadnaughts and bled star destroyers this essentially leads us to the position of the empire in the throng duology a much smaller faction which now can't even make its own TIE fighters the Empire would gain a bit more power as they made peace with the New Republic and took some more territory in the aftermath of the Yuuzhan Vong war and the later second Galactic Civil War however they wouldn't truly gain power again until the legacy era which we can discuss in a later video but did you enjoy this information is there anything I missed do you have any further questions let me know all that more down in the comments if you haven't already consider following me on Twitter and Instagram and if you enjoyed this video make sure to LIKE subscribe and do all those things until next time glow guys this has been a carts letter have a great day and may the force be with you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: EckhartsLadder

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Keywords: star wars, star wars lore, star destroyer, star wars legends lore, star wars legends, super star destroyer, star wars ships, eclipse super star destroyer, star destroyer types, super star destroyers, eckhartsladder, eckhartsladder star destroyer, how did the empire lose 25000 star destroyers, how did the empire lose, what happened to the empire, imperial star destroyer, eckhartsladder star wars legends lore, star wars explained, galactic empire, eckharts ladder, capital ship

Id: fMsPMHgasTk

Length: 13min 27sec (807 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 04 2019