Second Navo-Lhaeraidh War

Second Navo-Lhaeraidh War
Part of The Lhedwinnic Wars of Unification
Modern re-enactors in 17th Century Lhaeraidh uniforms.
Date 15th May 1609 - 4th May 1613 Location Crylante & Navack Result Lhaeraidh Victory: Territorial status quo antebellum. Navack to pay reparations to tir Lhaeraidd. Navack renounces all claims to Crylante and Vrnallia Navack surrenders much of its navy. Navish army limited to twenty thousand men. Tir Lhaeraidd agrees to end its expansion in Lhedwin.
Belligerents
Kingdom of Navack Kingdom of Navack	Teyrnas tir Lhaeraidd Template:Country data tir Lhaeraidd Supported by: Crylantean Loyalists
Commanders and leaders
Navish Expedition	Template:Country data tir Lhaeraidd Rí-Fórsaí Armtha Teyrn Alwaen IV/I Crylantean Loyalists Sir August Brynjoln
Strength
50,000	Template:Country data tir Lhaeraidd 60,000 20,000
Casualties and losses
: 28,000 (1764 est.)	Template:Country data tir Lhaeraidd: 14,250 (1764 est.) : 11,000 (1764 est.)
Casualty estimates based upon the 1764 historic work by Lhaeraidh historian Domhnall Réamann.

The Second Navo-Lhaeraidh War was a conflict fought primarily between the forces of Navack and tir Lhaeraidd between 1609 and 1613. The war is considered to be a significant escalation in the military capabilities of Navack at the time, and is widely considered to be the spark for the unification of northern Lhedwin. The forces involved in the Second War were significantly greater in number and more closely matched than they had been in the First War, though much like the First War the fighting was largely confined to the campaigning season.

Precipitated by the Lhaeraidh annexation of Vrnallia which had commenced in 1598 the war began in 1609 when Navish armies crossed the border into Crylante. The Navish expected the same swift advance and rapid occupation of the bulk of Crylante which had been achieved in the First War, however this swift advance did not materialise with Navish forces becoming bogged down just a few miles south of the border due to a massive building up of Crylante's military and of the border defences. A string of fortresses and fortified outposts now ran along the entire border and the Navish military found it difficult to push any further south than this line for fear of a logistical disaster.

The initial stages of the war saw heavy casualties inflicted upon the Navish Army, in spite of the significant increase in numbers and advancement in technology and strategy they employed. The Navish suddenly found that they were fighting a brutal, modern war, not against Lhaeraidh troops, but against their professed brothers, the Crylanteans. Unable to break through the line of Crylantean defences on the mainland the Navish strategy shifted and in January of 1610, in the middle of winter, they landed troops in western Crylante aiming to capture the island rather than the portion on the Lhedwinnic mainland. The Crylantean defences in the west were far less organised and fortified and within nine months the Navish forces had succeeded in capturing almost all of the landmass and from October 1610 the Navish were able to land sizeable forces on the mainland, bypassing the line of defences in the north.

The success on land was not mirrored by success at sea however. The Lhaeraidh navy was as large as it had ever been and despite the preponderance of older ships it was still as efficiently run (and much better led) as it had been in the First War. Navish naval units tried time and again to break through to Vrnallia but were each time intercepted and repulsed. The Navish exacted a punishing toll against the older ships of the Lhaeraidh fleet, however when the elite Black Squadron entered the fray the Navish had no answer. The Black Squadron consisted of tir Lhaeraidd's own state of the art ships, heavily armed with cannon, with thick double hulls which made them all but impervious to the smaller calibre guns which the Navish favoured in their sleek new vessels; with their own sleek design these new ships were only marginally slower than their Navish foes. However the Black Squadron could only ever be in one place at a time and the Lhaeraidh Admiralty prioritised the defence of Vrnallia over that of Crylante.

The steady loss of territory in Crylante finally prompted the Teyrn to mobilise Rí-Airm and deploy them to Crylante; initially it had been believed that the Crylantean forces would be able to hold and defeat the Navish with the help of the fortified line in the north and so the Teyrn had seen no need to commit Lhaeraidh troops to fight. However the landings of 1610 and defeats of early 1611 prompted a change in policy. The Teyrn already had a force of thirty thousand men in Vrnallia fighting against local rebellion and resistance to his rule; deploying further soldiers overseas would be costly and it was only reluctantly that a force of sixty thousand soldiers, including five thousand marines, was deployed. Reluctance though did not equate to a lack of motivation or resolve; as far as Alwaen IV/I was concerned once the troops were deployed the expenditure was unavoidable, so he may as well seek a swift conclusion and mitigate the costs. Landing in the last remaining western port of Neititsnot under the command of the Teyrn the sixty thousand Lhaeraidh troops began a systematic campaign against the Navish forces. In a little over six months the islands of western Crylante had been retaken. Earlier defeats to the Lhaeraidh fleet in the east had cut off any hope of supply or reinforcement to the Navish forces in Crylante, except via the western landmass, with this too now under Lhaeraidh control the Navish forces which had invaded mainland Crylante were now surrounded.

As 1612 began the Navish renewed their offensive with a conscript force of ten thousand marching south in an effort to bludgeon their way through the as yet unbroken line of defences south of the border however the effort proved fruitless. What a force of thirty five thousand well trained and drilled professional soldiers could not achieve in 1609, ten thousand poorly motivated conscripts found impossible. On the third attempt to march south the conscript force was surrounded by Crylantean forces near the site of the Sailla Massacre in the First War; in the resulting battle of the seven thousand conscripts who began the fight for the Navish only eight hundred returned to Navack alive. Once again the Lhaeraidh advantage in manpower and supply was proving to be Navack's downfall; Navack alone could not match the sheer numbers on the Lhaeraidh side. Even at sea with a brand new fleet, with kill ratios of three to one, the Navish could not turn the tide, the Lhaeraidh Teyrn simply had more men, more ships, and more firepower at his disposal and seemingly a ruthless willingness to take advantage of it.

Finally in March 1613 the Navish commander of the main force now trapped and surrounded in Crylante surrendered to the Teyrn, resulting in the capture of the ten thousand or so remaining Navish troops. With ten thousand Navish soldiers and their officers now in captivities the King of Navack sued for peace and agreed to meet Teyrn Alwaen IV/I at Nebligen to agree to peace terms. Though this time the Lhaeraidh had not managed to push back into Navack itself it was clear that with the capture of their main army such an eventuality was inevitable.