Cadenzan-Kelonnan wars
| Cadenzan-Kelonnan wars | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Brimstone off Viqalka, a contemporary painting of the Battle of Torim Viqalka (1673) by Rethriq ti'Maspai | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 Cadenza |
 Kelonna | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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Pirys Doredh Callador Lokaran Adm. Kienet Reran |
Thomas Obry | ||||||
The Cadenzan-Kelonnan wars were a series of conflicts fought between Cadenza and Kelonna in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The wars, invariably spurred by conflicting colonial ambitions, pitted the newly-consolidated Kelonnan kingdom against the established republic of Cadenza and its small colonial empire. Fighting focussed around three Cadenzan earldoms - Axio, Elagesk and Viqalka - of which only Viqalka remains Cadenzan today.
The Cadenzan colony of Axio was initially settled in the early 1630s and over the next decades grew to become a major sugar producer and the beachhead for successive Cadenzan invasions of the mainland. Three major expeditions - in 1638, 1645 and 1649 - attempted to seize a substantial territory in northeastern Kelonna but ultimately only achieved a modest strip of coastline organised as the earldom of Elagesk. Axio meanwhile remained under threat from Kelonnan pirates and occasional punitive expeditions by the royal navy.
In the 1660s, the island of Torim Viqalka was settled by Cadenza and developed as a provisioning station for the navy and treasure convoys from Cadenzan Kamalbia. Within five years it fell to a Kelonnan invasion force which intended to use the island as a staging point for an invasion of mainland Teudallum, but a Cadenzan fleet en route to Kamalbia arrived and retook the island early the following year. The island was again conquered by Kelonna later in 1673. During this time, Kelonna also attempted to conquer Elagesk, but its repeated failures led to it ceding Torim Viqalka in 1676. The treaty responsible permitted Kelonna to maintain a garrison on the island, but in 1684 its fleet on the island was burned at anchor and led to a brief conflict wherein the garrison was starved into surrender.
As Torim Viqalka's importance to Cadenza - and, moreover, the importance of the Kamalbian diamond trade - waxed, Axio's waned, and by 1720 the earldom's garrison was a token force numbering no more than four hundred. A large Kelonnan invasion force arrived in 1721. After a brief resistance, the Cadenzan government agreed to sell the island to Kelonna rather than fight to keep it.