The end of the Clone Wars saw the end of both
the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, as the Empire became the
dominant force in the galaxy. But the end of the Confederacy wasn’t the end of the Separatist
movement, or the end of the Empire’s other enemies. For years after the end of the Clone
Wars, the Empire waged war on their enemies in a campaign called the Reconquest of the Rim.
Though on paper the sides of the Reconquest of the Rim were the same as those of the Clone Wars,
the Reconquest was a much more brutal conflict. Jedi leadership had always tempered the harshness
of the Republic military during the Clone Wars, but with the Jedi gone the clone Stormtroopers
and their commanding officers became outright vicious. The Separatist Holdouts
and the outlaws they allied with were shown no mercy, and there was no one left in the
galaxy that would hear their cries for help. Following the Declaration of a New Order,
Emperor Palpatine finally had the power base he had been working towards for decades. He had
dictatorial command of a massive civilization, a powerful police state to keep it in check,
and a massive military-industrial complex to bring to bear against all who opposed him in
force. With the Jedi gone, he had a number of highly skilled officers and millions of devoted
clone Stormtroopers at his command. But by the nature of such a state, the Empire needed enemies
to justify its existence. The military needed a war to prove that it was necessary, and the
police state needed hidden traitors to root out to silence dissent. In two simultaneous
campaigns, the Empire justified both of them. The more publicized of these campaigns was
the Reconquest of the Rim, a war against the Separatist Holdouts and the pirate bands they had
allied with. Following the Mission to Mustafar and the slaughter of the Separatist Council, the
Confederacy of Independent Systems dissolved and its armies were shut down. But Separatists that
supported the Confederacy were determined to not go quietly into the night, and across the Outer
Rim they made trouble for the fledgling Empire, sparking what amounted to a
second round of Clone Wars. The Imperial Military gleefully went after the
Separatist Holdouts in a series of six campaigns between 19 and 17 BBY. The Ciutric Offensive,
Sy Myrthian Insurrection, Five Veils Campaign, Listehol Campaign, Noolian Crisis, and Western
Reaches Operation were all wildly effective and greatly expanded the borders of the new Empire.
They also solidified support for the Empire, Palpatine, and the Stormtrooper Corps, as well as
newly minted war heroes like Grand Moff Tarkin, Admiral Yularen, General Romodi, General
Dodonna, and Admiral Screed. But despite all the propagandizing Imperial media did
for the war, the Reconquest of the Rim was a very dark and bloody conflict, more so
than the Clone Wars themselves had been. With the Jedi gone, the Imperial Military became
outright merciless. Clone Stormtroopers had always hated their Separatist enemies, and when the
officers that commanded them started to encourage them to turn their hatred into bloodthirst,
they were all too willing to comply. The clones had never really cared about the civilians
of the galaxy - they weren’t trained to, after all. As a result, they showed no mercy
to civilian populations, especially those that had once been Separatist. This behavior
was encouraged by many of their officers, and by Darth Vader, who intermittently worked
with front line units during the Reconquest. Take the Battle of Ostor, for example. In that
battle, a part of the Western Reaches Operation, a force of Clone Wars veterans under General Rohm
attempted to wipe out a Separatist holdout that had taken root on the planet, fleeing Imperial
“justice.” The Separatists retreated between Rohm and his clones, and he ordered them to
pursue and execute any survivors, ordering CT-5539 to shoot anyone that turned back. In doing
so, he led his men right into a Separatist trap. Nearly every clone in the unit was killed,
and when General Rohm attempted to flee, CT-5539 shot him per orders, and
reported back to Darth Vader himself. Vader personally oversaw the counterattack, this
time opting to attack the Separatists from above, CT-5539 flew alongside him, but he was shot
down by one of the Separatists’ leaders, a clone deserter. CT-5539 survived and was captured by the
Separatists, who held him prisoner in a hospital and tried to win him over to their side. Instead,
CT-5539 killed the clone deserter and sabotaged the city’s defenses, allowing Vader and his
wingmen to swoop in and raze the whole place, killing Separatists and their civilians alike,
including all of the wounded in the hospital. This was pretty common fare for civilians on
the wrong end of the Reconquest of the Rim. As far as the Empire was concerned, if there were
Separatists on a planet, the whole planet was Separatist, and thus they deserved to die. Even
more disturbingly, Imperial citizens actually cheered on these war crimes much of the time. The
Reconquest of the Rim was happening exclusively on the fringe of the Empire, far from where most
of its civilian populace lived. They didn’t care about they lives of people out on the Rim, even
innocents, and they bought into the mentality of Separatist cells making populations
Separatist just as much as the clones did. Now, that’s not to say that the clones became
monsters without the influence of the Jedi. For his part, CT-5539 was horrified by what he saw on
Ostor, and after the battle he chose to retire and become a farmer. But the Kaminoans did engineer
the clones to be naturally aggressive, for obvious reasons, and by and large they also had more
than their fair share of pent-up anger from being treated like droids all their lives. As a result,
it was easy for them to snap when there weren’t people actively working to keep them centered and
calm, which Imperial officers generally didn’t even know how to do. Clones that were sent to hunt
down rogue Jedi were particularly liable to snap. Simultaneously with the Reconquest of
the Rim, the most skilled units of clone Stormtroopers were sent out, under Darth
Vader, to continue the Great Jedi Purge. A little over a hundred Jedi survived the
execution of Order 66, and those clone units that had proven themselves capable of killing
Jedi were sent to finish the job. Oftentimes, Vader chose the original units of particular Jedi
fugitives to hunt their old generals down, turning their shame over failing their mission the first
time into a bloodthirsty drive to make up for it. When such units weren’t available, he
typically sent in the 501st Legion instead. An example of one such battle was that
of the Subjugation of New Plympto. Though New Plympto was a Core World,
it had seceded during the Clone Wars, and after the rise of the Empire its Separatist
natives had rallied around a Jedi, Dass Jennir, who led them in resistance
against the Stormtrooper Corps. A detachment of the 501st Legion under Commander
Vill was sent to suppress them, and Darth Vader personally oversaw the mission, as Jennir’s
presence among the rebel ranks was well known. Vill and his men ultimately pushed the Nosaurian
rebels back to Half-Axe Pass, where Jennir and his men rallied for a last stand. While the
families of the rebels evacuated on the other side of the pass, the Nosaurians fought until
they were completely overwhelmed by the 501st. When the battle was clearly lost, many of the
remaining Nosaurians surrendered, only for Commander Vill to order them all shot. Every last
fighter - except, ironically, for Dass Jennir and one other - was murdered, and their families were
shipped off to slave colonies. To top it all off, Darth Vader had more misgivings about any
of those things than any of the clones did. This wasn’t a one-off thing, either. On Toola,
Commander Keller used similar methods to, unsuccessfully, track down a pair of Jedi
survivors, even going so far as to impose martial law on a whole city over the Jedi. On
Kashyyyk, Commander Faie attempted to carpet-bomb a whole Wookiee village and a large swath of
the surrounding forest to kill Quinlan Vos. A month later, clone Stormtroopers did
similarly horrible things all over Kashyyyk, rounding up much of the population to be
used as slave labor and burning entire cities solely because some Jedi fugitives
happened to be passing through at one point. For enemies of the Empire living through this
period, it was nothing short of terrifying. They didn’t know that a rebellion would be able to
bring the Empire down in just a few decades. All they saw was the ruthless annihilation of anyone
that was the slightest bit associated with enemies of the state, and most of the galaxy cheering it
on. It was only a few years into what Palpatine had said would be ten thousand years of Imperial
rule, and anyone that didn’t wholeheartedly support the new regime had to wonder how many
of those years they’d be able to live for. It also made the galaxy forever after fear
the face of Jango Fett. The Great Jedi Purge and the Reconquest of the Rim showed the galaxy
how far the Empire’s clone Stormtroopers were willing to go in following their orders, and it
made the galaxy fear clones all the more for it. During the Clone Wars, Separatist propagandists
had depicted the clones as unhinged, bloodthirsty abominations, and many an
Imperial citizen that caught wind of what Stormtroopers had done quietly thought
that they might have been on to something. So, that’s the story of the second Clone Wars, the
Reconquest of the Rim and the Great Jedi Purge. But what do you think? Would you like
to hear more about the Reconquest of the Rim? Feel free to post your
thoughts in the comments below.
