Battle of Kien-k'ang
| Battle of Kien-k'ang | |||||||
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| Part of Pan-Septentrion War | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 ThemiclesiaTemplate:Country data Organized States Rajamaan Yhdysvallat  New Tyran |
 Dayashina MengheDzhungestan | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
| 🤔 | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 131,243 | |||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 5,202 | |||||||
The Battle of Kien-k'ang (建康之役, kian-k'ang-tje-gwljik) was a year-long siege of the Themiclesian capital city Kien-k'ang, from the end of June, 1940 to mid-July, 1941, by the forces of the Dayashinese Empire and the Greater Menghean Empire.
Background
Laying the siege
Terrace City engagements
Having found the walls surrounding the city impenetrable, despite constant artillery bombardment, the Dayashinese forces began to parachute units into the city directly. Due to the rather diffuse layout of the city, with large residential areas and multiple commercial centres, the parachuters found it difficult to inflict sufficient damage before the city's defence forces could react. As there were few dedicated military installations within city limits, and most of them in inconspicuous structures (at least in aerial view), the defence were able to capture most of the paratroopers or otherwise nullify their assault. One paratrooper unit landed in Nov. 1940 in the Terrace City (the palace, located centre-north of the city and just south of the Gwin-mja Lake). The unique geography there permitted them to maintain operative capacity for much longer.
Themiclesian forces noticed that paratroopers, under the cover of the night, landing in the palace, which had been evacuated months ago when the government relocated to Rak-lang in early 1940. The city's defence hesitated in entering the palace, with respect to its historical significance and unfamiliarity with its layout. Only very senior officers would have been within its confines, and its floorplans were kept highly secret even during peacetime. Similar issues also beset the paratroopers; 19 days passed before the first raid on the defence occurred, this time evidently passed on studying the geography within the palace and securing its provisions for their own use. At the same time, the city was reluctant to spare troops to guard against possible assaults from the Terrace City, though the Citadel, which surrounded the Terrace City, was thoroughly evacuated in anticipation. The government issued no special instruction for potential engagements with the paratroopers.
Since the Terrace City had only five gates, the defence set up tripping wires in their vicinity that sounded an alarm in a garrison just east of the Citadel when activated; the Citadel's gates were bricked from the inside to prevent exit, leaving only Hwljin-mrjang Gate (on the east) passable and defended against an attempt to breach. In the evening of Jan 2, 1941, the Dayashinese sent scouts to investigate the Citadel just beyond the area they controlled; two scouts were captured by Kien-k'ang Metropolitan Police when they emerged from the Hwljin-mrjang Gate and transported to the OS Department of State for questioning, while a third committed suicide before he reached OS shores. On Jan. 30th, a larger detachment of Dayashinese troops made a break for the Hwljin-mrjang Gate, inflicting considerable casualties in the defence, but ultimately were pushed back into the Citadel; one part of the detachment fled back into the Terrace City, while the other fought a street-to-street battle with the Left Guard regiment, before leaving only five prisoners to capture. These five were retained in Themiclesia and compelled to pose for photographs before tables full of food, later distributed as propaganda material beyond the city to demonstrate its ability to withstand a siege in the long term.
On Feb. 3rd, a similar attempt to breach containment occurred, with similar results, though the Left Guard reported 151 dead and 394 wounded—an extremely powerful blow against the 2,120-strong regiment. Following this engagement, the Dayashinese attempted to exit the Citadel from the westerly Si-mrjang Gate; since this gate was bricked from the inside, they utilized a very large amount of explosives to remove the mass of bricks; when it detonated, shards of brick were said to have landed well beyond the Citadel. However, rather than clearing the bricks away, it only caused the bricks to cave inwards into gatehouse, which made it just as impassable as before. Realizing that the blast would have alerted the Themiclesians as to their plans to exit from the west, they retreated into the Terrace City yet again. In response, fearing the leaning bricks would force the gate to collapse, a similar mountain of bricks, debris, and even rubbish was thrown into the Si-mrjang Gate from the outside, to counterbalance the bricks leaning from within. For the remainder of February, the Dayashinese did not attempt a break.
By mid-March, the paratroopers fell short on supplies. The palace had most of its food removed and distributed earlier to the city's residents. Evidently attempting a last stand, close to a thousand men rushed from the K'ljang-gep Gate (Terrace City's south gate) to the Hwljin-mrjang Gate, where they again engaged with the Left Guard, which now shared a position with the 3rd Division of the Themiclesian Army; outnumbered, the Dayashinese fought very fiercely and broke into several spearheads, possibly to throw an organized defence into chaos. Though temporarily successful, breaking formation dramatically exaggerated their numerical inferiority and caused alarm in multiple wards of the city. It is reported that, hearing the frantic Dayashinese, residents of apartment blocks began to cast all manner of things out of windows to disrupt their progress. In the end, several street mobs formed, armed with spades, shovels, sticks, sports equipment, and even heavy books, and began to attack the Dayashinese. The citizenry managed to stop several of them, before the armed forces managed to catch up and persuaded them to return home, and before the day ended, most of the paratroopers had been routed. The remainder, who chose to defend the Citadel instead, were forced back into the Terrace City and never exited again. Their remains were found in 1945, all 132 under the Cherry Blossoms of the Illustrious Woods (華林園, gwra-rjom-gwrjan), when the government began to restore the palace; they died of starvation probably shortly after the events of mid-March, 1941.
While the paratroopers were ultimately unable to contribute to the Dayashinese assault on the capital city, they did manage to take several pictures immortalized by the Dayashinese propaganda machine. The first and perhaps most famous is of the Daih-gjok Hall, the main hall of the palace, where receptions of diplomats, conferral of titles, and most major state ceremonies are held. The second is of a rather large Cherry Blossom garden in the north end of the palace. Other photographs in the collection depicted almost every major building in the Terrace City, and later historians have claimed that this is the first photo album to be made of the Palace, since before it was considered highly improper to do so. Some pieces also depicted Dayashinese paratroopers' horseplay in and around the buildings, such as scaling roofs or tipping fixtures. One photo showed a Dayashinese paratrooper standing on the Empress' bed; this photo made it into Themiclesia's culture textbook, with the caption, "not all cultures have the same idea what a bed is; what is obvious to many of us is not to many others."