Uratic-Paritian War
| Uratic-Paritian War | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Republic of Urat |
 Republic of Paritia | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Laurence Grenville |
Annunziato Azzarà | ||||||||
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
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Official Uratic Data |
Official Paritian Report (1922) | ||||||||
The Uratic-Paritian War was fought between Urat and Paritia over control of the Uratic islands of the Choso archipelago of the South Terrifican Sea, which was thought to be both rich in oil and had been a disputed territory for several decades. It is also referred to as the Choso War in literary circles, for being fought over the Choso archipelago. It was possibly the bloodiest military conflict fought in the area during the 20th century.
During the war, both poorly developed countries faced difficulties shipping arms and supplies due to poor shipping and merchant navies. Paritia faced particular external trade problems, combined with poor internal communications and a lack of naval ships. Although Urat had lucrative mining income and a larger navy and better-equipped army, Paritia managed to launch an early invasion of northern Urat, and Urat was forced into a bloody war on its own soil before pursuing the war's end.
The ultimate peace treaties granted the islands to an independent Malducian viceroyalty which came to be known as the Choso Viceroyalty.
Origins
The war's origins are commonly attributed in South Terrifica to a conflict between the largest oil companies in the region, Malducian Seashell backing Urat and Terrifica Standard Oil supporting Paritia. The discovery of oil in the South Terrifica Sea and specifically around the Welkin Archipelago sparked speculation that the Choso Archipelago might prove a rich source of petroleum, and foreign oil companies were involved in the exploration. Terrifica Standard Oil was already producing oil from wells in the high hills of northern Paritia, around the northern border. However, it is uncertain if the war would have been caused solely by the interests of these companies, and not by aims of Malducia and more importantly, Vionna-Frankenlisch, to import oil from the Choso islands. In opposition to the "dependency theory" of the war's origins, the Belvanian historian Matthew Hyde-White argued against the thesis that the Uratic and Paritian governments were the "puppets" of Malducian Seashell and Terrifica Standard Oil respectively, writing: "In fact, there is little hard evidence available in the company and government archives to support the theory that oil companies had anything to do with causing the war or helping one side or the other during the war".
In international arbitration, Paritia argued that the region had been part of their original territory and the old Malducian colony of South Terrifica to which Paritia was a successor. Meanwhile, Urat based its case on the occupation of the land. Indeed, Uratic planters were already breeding cattle and exploiting woods in the area, while the small nomadic indigenous population of Ihao-speaking tribes was related to Paritia's own heritage. As of 1919, Malducian banks owned 400,000 hectares of land in the Choso archipelago while the Casaan family, a powerful Paritian merchant and crime, held 105,000 for various business ventures. The presence of Paritian settlers in the Choso, who settled there in the 1900s under the blessing of the Paritian government, was another factor in favour of Paritia's claim.
Prelude to the war
The first confrontation between the two countries dates back to 1888 when the Uratic entrepreneur Michael Sandez founded Port Paico, a port on the north Choso island of Pachico, and very close to the island of Negra. He assumed that the new settlement was well inside Uratic territory, but Urat had implicitly recognized Negra and a radius of surrounding land as Paritian. The Paritian government sent in a naval detachment aboard the gunboat Piapo, which forcibly evicted the Uraticans from the area in 1890. Two agreements followed — in 1894 and 1907 — which neither the Uratic nor the Paritian governments ever approved. Meanwhile, in 1905 Urat founded two new outposts in the Choso, Port Bolivan and Icho Fort, this time on the islands of Wake and Como respectively, both of which fell on the border of Paritian ownership. The Uratic government ignored the half-hearted Paritian official protest.
Uratic penetration in the disputed region went unopposed until 1917 when the first blood was shed over the Choso Archipelago. On 9 August a Paritian militia foot patrol and its native guides were taken prisoners on the island of Arena, the centrepiece of the disputed land, and held in the Uratic outpost of Fort Soresa, where the commander of the Paritian patrol, Lieutenant Rojasa Silvestro, was shot and killed in suspicious circumstances. Fortine (Terrifican for "little fort") was the name used for the small pillbox and trench-like garrisons on the Uratic Choso islands, although the troops' barracks usually were no more than huts constructed from mud, bamboo and softwoods. While the Uratic government formally regretted and apologised for the death of Rojasa Silvestro, the Paritian public opinion called it "murder". After the subsequent talks arranged in Sancargio failed to produce an agreement and eventually collapsed in Mid-1918, the dispute grew violent. On 18 July 1919, a Paritian cavalry unit overran Fortine Vansia, an advance outpost established by the Uratic army a few miles south of the centre of Arena. The Paritians captured 21 Uratic soldiers and burnt much of the outpost to the ground.
The Uraticans retaliated with an air strike on Fort Quastro, the main base of Paritian control on Arena, on 15 August, which caused few casualties and not much damage due to the poor state of the Uratic air force which, at the time, numbered only nineteen aircraft. On 16 August Urat seized Fort Boquerin, which later would be the site of the first Battle of Arena during the war proper, at the cost of 15 Paritian dead. A return to the status quo ante was eventually agreed on 12 September 1919 in San Huchosal, under pressure from the South Terrifican League, but an arms race had already begun and both countries were on a collision course for war. The regular border clashes might have led to war in the summer of 1919 if either side was capable of waging war against one another that early in the year. As it was, neither Paritia or Urat had an arms industry sufficient enough to arm their entire militaries and both sides had to import vast quantities of arms from Europa, Balion and the outer world to arm themselves for the coming conflict, a hard task considering the ongoing Great Europan War. It was the need for both sides to import sufficient arms that held back the outbreak of the war to December of that year, at which point both sides felt quite capable of resorting to arms to settle the long-running dispute.
Military Compositions
Urat had a population 80% as large as that of Paritia (3,852,000 vs. 4,815,000)and thus could mobilise fewer men but its superior arms and equipment along with offensive tactics centred on rapid marches and flanking maneuvres, compared to Paritia's more conventional approach to fighting, enabled it to take the upper hand following the Paritian landings in Urat. On the day war was declared in December 1919 the Paritian army totalled about 140,000 men. Both racially and culturally, the Paritian army was practically homogeneous. Almost all of its soldiers were Europan-Ihao. Urat's army, however, consisted mostly of Uratic people (Europan-Ihao) but many of the officers were of Malducian or Vionna-Frankenlischian ancestry, and the army commander-in-chief Manfried Kunder was Germanan. In spite of the fact that the Paritian army had far more manpower, it never mobilized more than 180,000 men, and never more than a half of the army were on the Choso islands at any one time. Urat, on the other hand, mobilized its entire army of 150,000 by 1920. A Vionna-Frankenlischian diplomat reported in 1921 that the average Paritian had never been anywhere close to the Choso islands and "had not the slightest expectation of visiting it in the course of his life". Most Paritians had little interest in fighting, let alone dying for the Choso archipelago. Furthermore, the typical Paritian soldier was a Terrifican peasant conscript accustomed to life in a warm and hilly climate who did not fare well in the low-lying, hot and humid land of the Choso islands.
Urat's war effort was a total one. Buses were commandeered to transport troops, wedding rings were donated to buy weapons, and by 1921 Urat had brought in conscription including 17-21 year-olds and policemen. Perhaps the most important advantage enjoyed by Urat was that the Uraticans had an already established shipping network running to the Choso comprising four small companies totaling some 266 vessels of all shapes and sizes running from the Uratic coastal ports to the Choso islands, which allowed the Uraticans to bring men and supplies to the islands far more effectively than the Paritians ever managed. In 1919 the Vionna-Frankenlischian Legation in San Huchosal reported to Frankenlisch that it took the Paritian Army three weeks to transport their men and supplies to the Choso islands and that Paritia's "inordinately long lines of communication" would favour Urat if war should break out. Paritia's fledgeling shipping industry did not yet run to the Choso (in fact, it only sailed vessels to other parts of the Terrifican coast), and all Paritian supplies and soldiers had to travel to the islands on government requisitioned ships or transported by the small Paritian Navy. Following the Battle of Cape Nosca, even this was removed as an option. Hyde-White wrote that the Paritian elite was well aware of these logistical problems, but throughout the war, Paritia's leaders had a "fatalistic" outlook on the conflict's outcome due to their numerical superiority. Patricia's elite took it for granted that the fact that the Patrician Army had been mostly trained by a Germanan military mission while the Uratic Army had been trained by a Belvanian military mission (despite Germana's defeat in 1919, the Germanan Army was still regarded as superior to the Belvanian Army) together with the tough nature of their mostly conscript forces and the will to win would give them the edge in the war. A recurring theme in the thinking of Paritia's elite was that the training provided by the Germanan military mission, the presence of several Germanan officers like Heinrich Kundt commanding their troops, and sheer willpower and determination were all that was needed for victory. They ignored the fact that Urat's entire army was headed by a Germanan veteran of the Great Europan War.
The Choso War is also important historically as the first instance of aerial warfare taking place in South Terrifica. Both sides used the single-engined biplane fighter-bombers of the day; the Paritians deployed 14 Belvanian C17 Eclipse Biplanes, while the Uraticans made extensive use of 19 Vionna-Frankenlischian Mk7 Daydreams which were particularly important for their high bomb capacity, carrying three forty pound bombs.
The Paritian Navy played a key role in the conflict by carrying thousands of troops and tons of supplies to the Choso islands, as well as by providing anti-aircraft support to transport ships and port facilities. Paritia deployed a navy of eighteen vessels including nine transport ships, six gunboats, a pair of old Belvanian destroyers and a submarine given as a diplomatic gift from Balion.
The Uratic Navy deployed ten locally-built patrol boats and four transport vessels during the conflict, mostly to ship military supplies to the Choso islands. The transport ships President Salvadore and President Wilkes alone made twenty-two trips from Urat to the Choso islands throughout the war. The Uratic Navy as a whole was superior to the Paritian Navy as it retained a submarine fleet of five subs purchased from the Kingdom of Caledonia and a surface fleet of three destroyers and seven gunboats. That said, the Uratic Navy had a desperate lack of transport vessels and had to expend a great deal of its budget on making use of the preexisting private shipping network to transport troops and supplies to the Choso islands.
Urat's submarine fleet caused havoc amongst Paritian shipping in the last few months of the war and the war's only naval battle, the Battle of Cape Nosca, fought off the island of Arena was a decisive victory for the Uratic Navy.
Conflict
Fallen Forts incident
On December 2, 1919, a Paritian detachment from Fort Lopez recaptured the Uratic Fort Boquerin on the island of Arena, disobeying explicit orders by Paritian President Annunziato Azzarà to avoid provocations in the Choso islands. Later that week, on December 6, a Uratic detachment drove the Paritian troops from the area and took back Fort Boquerin again.
After the initial skirmishes, Azzarà changed his status quo policy over the disputed area and ordered the outposts of Corale, Fort Towan and Fort Boquerin, specifically, to be captured. The three were soon taken in a series of quick skirmishes, and in response, Urat called for a Paritian withdrawal. President Azzarà instead demanded that they be included in a "zone of dispute" and offered to demilitarise the center of Arena if Urat would do the same. On a memorandum directed to President Azzarà on December 10, Paritian Gen. Biagio Tosto expressed his concerns over the lack of a plan of operations and attached a plan of operations focusing on an offensive against the north of Urat. At the same time, Paritian Gen. Tassi asked for permission to capture the remaining Uratic garrisons on Arena, Fort Soresa and the recently reconstructed Fort Vansia. During the early days of December, Paritia slowly reinforced its 4,000-men-strong First Division, already on the Choso islands, with a further 6,000 men.
The breaking of the fragile status quo in the disputed areas of the Choso islands by Paritia convinced Urat that a diplomatic solution on agreeable terms was not possible. Urat gave its general staff orders to recapture the three outposts. During the next few days Urat mobilized over 10,000 troops and began to send them to the Choso islands. Uratic Lieutenant Colonel John Simms prepared for a quick offensive before the Paritians could mobilized more men to reinforce their positions.
Uratic Choso offensive
Fort Boquerin was the first target of the Uratic offensive on the Choso islands. The Boquerin fort complex, guarded by 700 Paritian troops, resisted a 12-day siege by a 5,000-men of the Uratic Second Division. An additional 2,500 Paritians from the First Division attempted to relieve the siege from the southwest but were beaten back by 2,000 Uraticans of the Uratic First Division who defended the Uratic right flank. A few Paritian units managed to enter the Fort with supplies and the Paritian Air Force managed to drop food and ammunition to the besieged soldiers from four modified C17 Eclipse Biplanes. Having begun on 18 December, the siege ended when Fort Boquerin finally fell on 30 December 1919.
After the fall of Fort Boquerin for the fifth time that year, the Uraticans continued their offensive and executed a pincer movement towards the north of Arena, which forced parts of the Paritian force on the island to surrender. While the Uraticans had expected to lay a new siege on Fort Aces, the most advanced Paritian outpost on Arena, when they got there they found it in ruins and deserted. The 2,000 Paritians who defended Aces had retreated north to Port Sahdera where they planned to make a stand.